Drag Queen on Strictly

I'm pleased to hear this and I hope his appearance on the show bears it out. I do think I hope and would rather see Chris Dennis doing Strictly than La Voix. It's not easy to get to know and like a persona.

I saw La Voix on RuPaul and he came across as a very lovely person. I am looking forward to watching Strictly and I couldn’t care less whether he had a male or a female partner.

La Voix is IMO old school drag: Danny Le Rue, Lily Savage. Elaborate costumes, great showmanship and a joy to watch.

Don’t get me wrong - there have been some RuPaul contestants who are creepy AF and some who do not hide their loathing of real women. I think the producers chose Chris Dennis for a reason.

I live where La Voix was a pantomime regular I hate drag with a passion and DQ story hour even more do. It’s offensive mockery. I didn’t see La Voix on Ru Paul, so I don’t know if he strayed into that sexualised territory, but I think La Voix has for years been what would have been called a female impersonator. He does the big voiced divas and sings, no lip synching. The outfits are glam rather than tarty and the breasts realistic. I’m a bit conflicted, because I think he has talent beyond doing his make up, and probably earned a place more than a lot of the influencers they’ve had on.

What does a man with bootpolish on his face singing about plantations have to do with Jim Crow laws?

Yawn. How tediously predictable.

And lots of he/hims when dancing out of drag, and she/hers when in drag.

But its not about a parody of women, apparently.

If drag is just panto, why is it treated as if its something extraordinarily good?

Do we think a feminists thread about the sexism in panto would go the same way?

Of course there is a drag queen on strictly and the judges will fawn all over him
🙄

Panto season is going to be a time to avoid here...

So you can’t answer the question about parodying women - you just say we should be kinder ?

did you say that to PoC when they objected to the black and white minstrels? When people
object to morris dancers blacking up ?

If drag queens aren't mocking women, whats going on?

If its nothing but men wearing wigs and miming, why is it everywhere and treated as some fantastical entertainment that we need to see over and over again?

And why is it beyond criticism?

Goodness me. I think there needs to be a huge amount more empathy understanding and grey areas in the world.

What do those things have to do with a man in a wig lip syncing to Shania Twayne?

It's interesting that those arguing the 'it's nothing like blackface' side seem to have a a very US-based view of racism.

And no apparent awareness of couveture (not the chocolate), the Married Women's Property Act (and reasons it was fought for), the history of divorce and child custody laws, the Victorian sanitary laws to prevent VD, the practice well into the 20th century of committing 'uncooperative' women to asylums and laundries, the police returning women to abusive husbands (again, well into the 20th century), the extension of suffrage to different groups ...

Both of these names have been mentioned here already, so at the risk of repeating myself/speaking for others:
Paul O’Grady and Barry Humphries were always crystal clear that their drag personas were just that. A performance and a character, not them themselves.
So I think both of those men would have appeared on Strictly as themselves, not in drag.

"For another thing, do you actually think that drag queens are emulating and mocking natural looks of women in the way that blackface was to ridicule the features of black people??"

Yes, I think that's exactly what they're doing.

Well. You and Black cat combined have 8 posts deleted, I would call that many on one thread.

My contempt only started when you decided to be incredibly condescending and take joy in trying to make me look stupid.

These are things I am criticising you for and they are very much things that were posted. I know what was in the deleted posts because I read them before they were deleted, and they were deleted for being personal attacks as have been pointed out by the posters who reported them and were being attacked.

No one is berating you for being female (I'm fairly sure we're all female here), or being brown. We are berating your rudeness.

Sorry you think gay men enslaved women for hundreds of years, beat them, raped them, mutilated them, tortured them, lynched them and then after abolition enacted racist laws to continue to discriminate against them? No, of course you don't. Which is why it's crass and lazy to compare the enslavement and brutality of white men and women against the black population, to talk about the oppression of women in a way that completely erases and undermines the oppression faced by black women in particular. For god sake, read a history book and actually articulate an argument against drag based on its own merits without coopting racism and blackface and slavery. Enslavement isn't a synonym for oppressed.

For another thing, do you actually think that drag queens are emulating and mocking natural looks of women in the way that blackface was to ridicule the features of black people??

How can you be racist to someone by calling out their behaviour in non racist terms when you don't know their race?

All whilst pointing out how offensive black face is!?

Good grief

Good heavens.

Is the point of this post

"I was racist to you before I knew you were black"?

hardly anyone of worth wants to be in this tedious, dated and predictable show

the dancers are more famous than the “celebs”

I think this really needs to be addressed. The racism on Mumsnet it disgusting and the fact the moderators allow it is disgusting too. Same for ableism, it's so blatant here and allowed to stand.

However.

You and Black Cat have been rude and hostile from the start, the poster calling Black Cat toxic actually thought she was white and my opinion on both of your behaviour was formed before you announced you were women of colour.

"This type of feminism being toxic" as in the behaviour being complained of here has nothing to do with posters being women of colour, it's about the prevailing behaviour style on the FWR board which is to insult and belittle the dissenting voices until they shut up and leave and mock them mercilessly between themes to achieve this goal. Many women who identify as feminists want nothing to do with this board because of the behaviour of the feminists here, not because of behaviour the women of colour and I doubt many posters know who is white and who is not anyway because it's an anonymous forum.

I actually don't think women who treat women the way the posters here do are truly feminist at all, but that's irrelevant to the point I'm making.

If you personally are accused of being toxic here on a regular basis, you may want to reflect on why that is. It's certainly not because of your ethnicity, which none of us knew until you announced it long after you showed contempt for many of the posters here.

I think you have nailed it with “light entertainment show”. That is what Strictly should be, a family entertainment show , much loved by little kids and grannies alike. What it shouldn’t be is

a platform to normalise the mockery of women by over sexualisation of the perception of a female body

a celebration of an entertainment genre that builds its following on dubious names, very sexual innuendo and the sort of “jokes” that should have been buried with Bernard Manning and his ilk.

For the last few years Strictly has done a huge amount to highlight dancers with “differences”, so dancers with hearing or vision loss, physical disability, sexual orientation etc. And that has been hugely positive , raised awareness, discussion and respect. Kudos to Strictly for using their position so positively.

I can’t see that drag artistes have anything to bring to the table, especially since they already seem to have their own successful platforms to expound their ideas. Putting a drag Queen on Strictly is a bit like saying well, the EDF have a strong following and say they are often misunderstood and overlooked , maybe they could put a candidate forward to open up discussion.

"Are drag performers performing in a system where their function is to dehumanise a whole group of people that they'd historically enslaved?"

I'd argue that yes they are. Maybe not "enslaved" as such, but women as a group being oppressed by men? I'd say yes.

I never told you to not worry about it. I was responding to you saying that drag is a parody of women, but misogyny is everywhere. And talking about it on a feminists board makes us outraged.