Please can someone explain the appeal of drag? ***MNHQ TWEAKING TITLE TO POINT OUT STRICTLY SPOILER IN THE OP***

[CurlewKate]

Watching Celebrity Strictly last night, it was obviously set up for Tayce to win. Why? A group of celebrities of varying degrees of charm and bumble- then they are all soundly beaten by a clearly skilled dancer who's a drag queen.
There have been drag queens on Sewing Bee and Masterchef and House of Games. And loads of other shows I can't remember.
What's the appeal? And why no drag kings? Strictly has been great at featuring same sex couples- why not do more of that?

I would love it if we could discuss this in a way that doesn't get the thread deleted, so please post with care.

Has that rubbish? Just come from the back of your head because that’s not true majority of drag queens I see are gay men.

And in answer to the "There are drag kings too" posts...

Can someone cite an appearance by a drag king on the BBC?

By "drag king" I mean a female performance artist dressed in stereotypically masculine dress and personifying stereotypical masculine gender stereotypes.

You do realise that most drag queen's are straight men who actively hate women these days

Where is this happening ?? 🤣

I have no idea how you can be offended by a pantomime dame.

Again, as a woman of colour, I couldn’t agree more.

Nd that poster who loves drag queens keeps going on about power dynamics. The largest power imbalance to ever exist for humans is the patriarchy. Yet men can mock us, kill us and dress up as us and we have to just smile like the good little women we are and pretend it’s art? Fuck that!

Switched off - rubbish - end of ……

Are drag queens killing us? Are they not likely themselves to be a attacked by the same men that you don’t like? Because the truth is that drag queen is gay men are still very much homophobic abused by the same patriarchy that you don’t like to lump them together is ridiculous.

Agree completely. The fetishism is well-known by now and there are some contexts in which it's never appropriate. Anywhere around children is one of them. The more viciously, vindictively misogynistic variety is another: the ones who make constant reference to women's anatomy, have 'witty' names to that effect, and don't even attempt to hide their visceral hatred of women. These are never entertaining IMO and very uncomfortable to watch.

I don't know why, but I did always find Divine very funny. Back in the day I also enjoyed Adventures of Priscilla. As for Kenny Everett, his Cupid Stunt parody was obviously disgraceful: I just couldn't not laugh.

What I’m mostly baffled about is men wearing drag on benign shows like Bake Off.

It used to be that you’d appear on these shows in your every day person and there would be montages to work or hobbies throughout the show. But drag is extra special and that hobby or job needs to be front and centre. You don’t have participants wearing scrubs or having a snorkel attached to their face to keep a constantly highlight on it. When did this change specifically for drag or all things?

Drag isn't parodying women, exactly. As noted upthread, Queens aren't very womanly.

As ever the.point is about power.

Queens are parodying, reflecting, and exploring a power dynamic - and it's about sex. How to appeal to straight men, at base. The male gaze, the power differentials between men and women, plus between straight and gay men. The description of them as 'sex clowns' is bang on the money.

Questions to consider - why is the charge/fascination of drag focused on men parodying women? Why is this presented as 'being who you really are' when it's all outlandish fakery?

I'd say that it's all more of a conversation between men about masculinity - in drag women aren't seen as human, just as props/backdrop/resources.

I'm old. Many years ago there was a very heated debate about The Black and White Minstrel Show. Many people thought it was just traditional and should be allowed to continue. Many others, and I was one, thought it was extremely offensive to black people,and had no place in modern society. FYI Lenny Henry took part, in the touring show.
I don't suppose anyone actually thinks the show should be on television these days. No one needs to black up to sing.
In the same way, I find drag offensive. A man parodying a woman, often in an offensive way, is just that. Offensive. It's not showing solidarity with women or highlighting the daily trials of being a female. It's making fun of us as a group.

Thank you for explaining but lumping the black population with drag queens is deeply offensive and r a c i s t.
Just so you know.

"I just think people have become snowflakes now I really do and I think we’ve imported this from America. We’ve had a long history of drag queens in this country and yet we are now all getting our knickers in a twist and it’s just the rise of the right again all over the world doing this."

The snowflake argument holds up if the argument being made is that no single group should be excluded from 'comedy' and that no-one has the right not to be offended. This means that every vulnerable group is fair game.

What people are saying on this thread is that they expect the BBC to adopt for and equal standards. Would they invite on to strictly and able bodied person performing in a wheel chair, for laughs. How about someone performing as learning disabled?

Try replacing women for black people and men for white people in your statement and you'll maybe get how most women feel about drag.
Oh and women have been considered aa the property of our father's and then husbands for millennia and still are in many parts of the world.
Drag is the epitome of misogyny

100% this. 👏

There's a great drag king on the Irish circuit.
I enjoy watching them perform as much as the Queens.

Kate Hepburn was one of the most masculine female actresses out there. She also could be a narcissist, and carried on an affair with a married man. I’m not sure I would consider her a role model.

I suspect that the real issue is that people don’t like gender norms being breached or experimented with. Parodying gender norms shows them for their absurdities

Why is it a norm that women wear makeup? Or heels? Or have long nails? It is to please men and be sexually attractive. The drag queens are parodying that. Parody is a great eye opener.

I love the fact that recent Shakespeare performances do gender swaps for key roles. Good to shake things up.

Were men in black face killing black people specifically? Otherwise what’s your point? It’s about men.

Men oppress women. Women are still oppressed by men to this day. Men created drag to entertain other men with women being the butt of the joke. Society should know better, but here we are desperately grasping at straws to dismiss the misogynist treatment of women on TV day in/ day out.

The difference is power dynamics something I have said time and time again on here people are not quite getting that traditionally gay men have been abused themselves. They have not got the strongest power dynamic so when they do it they are not coming from a massive privilege because they are not if you are an able bodied person imitating somebody that doesn’t have privilege like a disabled person then that has crossed the line. Can you not see that?
Even a gay person doing it because they would have more privileged than disabled people because disabled people tend to be at the lowest of everything

Yes this. Don’t know why it’s acceptable…we all know of it was a race being characterised this way it would be highly offensive. But as it’s women then it’s funny apparently.

I agree, personally I loathe clowns, but thank heavens no one at the BBC seems to love them, ditto ventriloquists and roller skaters.

I hope in a couple of years drag will be relegated to where it belongs, in the same OMG We Used to Think This was Entertainment! Dungeon as blackface and Sunday lunchtime pub strippers..

Thank you.

Parody makes you think.

The relentless endless tedious centring of drag by the BBC and the media is I suppose more.to.do.with a.crisis of masculinity and male power than anything else.

The fact that it is using parodies of women that are often offensive and insulting to women to work through this boring process doesn't seem to worry them.

Because women are basically still seen and expected to be the support humans, and not to complain about this role.

Drag was firmly placed under the trans umbrella by Stonewall et al.

The push of things such as Drag Queen story time comes under the remit (apparently) of inclusion and diversity.

Also Drag Queens on tv comes under inclusion and diversity.

I see no justification for any of this. Drag queens are men parodying the dress of women. They are adult entertainers. They are not an oppressed minority, they're a branch of the entertainment industry.

Gay men who are Drag queens face homophobia and bigotry because they are gay.

You said blackface is different to women face because of black-white power imbalance, yet deliberately gloss over the fact that women face has a power imbalance.

A woman is killed by a man every 10 mins worldwide, yet you claim woman face is okay, yet blackface is not ok, despite the power imbalance between men-woman is far greater than the power imbalance between black-white.

Just because you’re ok with it despite saying earlier you “haven’t looked too much into it”, doesn’t mean we all should accept this. It is becoming more risqué and mainstream, which means that path will continue. I don’t want this path to continue for my daughter’s sakes. Men and women are equal. Women should not have to stand being mocked and ridiculed by men who hate us and just accept it.

Love it for you that you love drag acts. But I and many others think they’re abhorrent and misogynistic. Let us have our voice that we’ve fought so hard to have instead of trying to turn us into passive men pleasers.