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.

It's a drag act

Sadly short lived

I wonder if queens are now able to portray a hypersexualised, pornified image of 'femininity' that women can't/don't/won't?

And perhaps that's where the appetite for it comes from.

Greer talked about the 'female eunuch' as an embodiment of 'femininity' that had very little to do with womanhood, I wonder if these queens are exactly that.

None of the inconvenience of women's bodies or physical reality, far less risk of assault so fewer inhibitions. Male sex drives, the male gaze solidified and embodied and reflected back at them. Very pneumatic. Much gratification.

I think you are missing the point Sux.

Most of the objections to drag that have been raised on this thread would disappear the moment drag acts stopped pretending they were woman. Everything could remain the same - the costumes, dance, singing, jokes - they could just perform the part of a male character.

If this is deemed to undermine the crux of the act, let's unpick what that crux is. My guess is that what we will be left with is exactly what those who object to drag are highlighting.

Absolutely agree.

No problem back in the 80s with men in makeup and/or examples like Boy George and even Marilyn (Peter Robinson) They dressed like women, but they weren’t trying to be parodies of women.

For me it crossed the line (no pun intended) later that decade with men like Devine. That’s when the whole gender appropriation bit got really nasty and he started referring to others - particularly to (real) women - as bitch, slut and ‘ho’ and set the trend for what we know have to put up with as ‘normal’ drag queen humour; the excessive sexuality, crudeness and take down of real females.

There’s a subtle, but important, difference between copying and adapting something you admire in another group or culture, and full on pretending to pass yourself off as a member of that group using excessive mannerisms and dress and not stray into an offensive pastiche.

As an older woman I also find it depressing that young people think gender non conformity is somehow a new thing they have invented.

You keep talking about the power dynamic being different. But it isn't.

Gay men have the exact same power dynamic in relation to women as straight men do. Because they're men.

Men doing drag - the entire basis of the 'comedy' being that men are debasing themselves by pretending to be women and mocking them - is exactly the same as blackface.

The power dynamic and oppression between straight men and gay men is completely separate to the power dynamic and oppression between men and women. Except you might wonder whether the drag queens are punching down on women harder, in order to pass on the 'punch down' they feel they got themselves.

And frankly, their oppression is much, much less than women experience. In answer to a pp asking how violence against lgbtq people compares to the 2 murders per week of women by their partner: there's a Wikipedia page here listing each lgbtq murder by name since 1950. There have been none in the UK in 2024, which is obviously a good thing. I wonder whether there will ever be a year where no women are killed in the UK just for being female. I certainly can't imagine such safety for women happening in my lifetime.

And now he's decided he's actually a woman and women aren't allowed to go to the toilet or change away from him, or any other blokes.

@NonPlayerCharacter "And now he's decided he's actually a woman and women aren't allowed to go to the toilet or change away from him, or any other blokes"

Well no, he's decided he has a "boy mode" and a "girl mode" depending what part he's auditioning for......

And where the cold hard cash is.
And everyone going along with it is being played for a fool. Those sky arts portrait of the year "judges" simpering over him, calling him " her" and saying how inspirational the git is......awful awful awful. So fucking insulting to women.

Nice to be able to pick and choose! I think women call that "deciding what to wear today"...

Amounts to the same thing. Women don't get to change or toilet away from him if he's decided that today he wants them as props. And if we can't get away from him, we can't get away from any other hulking men in dresses either. He knows this, but he thinks he overrides it. He knows who the women are and what he thinks they owe the men...

Here is a female who 'transitioned' to calling herself a transman.

Now performs as a drag queen, and achieved notoriety for an act which included her wearing fake arms performing a double mastectomy.

(Breast cancer survivors in the comments are chastised for saying they are disturbed by the act.)

https://www.instagram.com/p/C7cjuAcSiLW/

Its interesting how much drag looks like the sexualisation of woman-hatred.

My guess is that it gives him, and his like, a bit of a rush of power. I mean, how much fun must it be to be legally supported in making uppity women afraid. Man, what a buzz!

The OP's frustration/confusion/incredulity, or whatever emotion it is, was based on Tayce's appearance on Strictly, which was lovely and positive. The suggestion to have more same-sex couples instead of the first drag queen seems strange/arbitrary, why does it have to be one or the other?

The second part of your post is speculative and it would be hard to comment without an actual scenario.

Drag is important because it has historically helped build communities within, and empower, extremely persecuted groups. I'm not saying it is completely unproblematic, but like all artforms it develops over time within a changing society.

Yeah lovely. So empowering.

Frequently, people refer to men in drag as "empowering". Why punch down, then? Surely they'd mock straight, white men.

Wait...explain. is that drag??? Where? How is that drag?

That's the bloke that won strictly on his socials.

So, that's what the kids will see when they Google him.

All good stuff, right?

Christ on a bike.

I give up. I hate men.

Drag is important because it has historically helped build communities within, and empower, extremely persecuted groups. I'm not saying it is completely unproblematic, but like all artforms it develops over time within a changing society.

Within male groups, historically.

I agree there is space for questioning and playing with stereotypes and gender norms, but there is a lot within drag that looks to me like perpetuating and glorifying misogyny, rather than critiquing and exploring. I suppose the question is whether that is increasing.

Are we just noticing the problems more, because drag is no longer a part of gay clubs, but now has been dragged out into the mainstream? New audiences will affect drag. It looks to me like it often uses women's bodies as fuel to 'empower' men.

Audiences that now include women, and increasingly, children, may question those narratives and tropes.

At the expense of women.

“Drag is important because it has historically helped build communities within, and empower, extremely persecuted groups. I'm not saying it is completely unproblematic, but like all artforms it develops over time within a changing society.”

It’s not OK to support extremely persecuted groups at the cost of another persecuted group when this ‘support’ isn’t necessary. If this was originally done in ignorance, once the issues are brought to the attention of the persecuted group causing harm, surely they should amend their ways.

As has been pointed out in this thread. In the UK, between 2 or 3 women are killed per week by men. Isn’t it about time men stopped punching down ‘for laughs’ and for their emancipation. The fact that they are gay, doesn’t give them a green light.

I'll find the research - less powerful males are more sexist than 'alpha males'.

'men often rely on aggression to maintain their dominant social status, the increase in hostility towards a woman by lower-status males may be an attempt to disregard a female's performance'

So, oppressed males 'punch down' at females.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-33613781

I know that gaming study is a slight tangent, but I found it very helpful to see some male behaviour not just in relation to men -> females but also in terms of males' relation to other males in the hierarchy.

I found it hard to understand why men would 'punch down' on women. But that study was a bit of a lightbulb moment for me - these men are focussed on the male hierarchy, and where they fit in it. They punch down at women because they can, to let off steam and displace the pain of their own oppression, but it's not necessarily hatred directed at women, it's misplaced hurt at their own lack of success within the male hierarchy.

In that scenario, men just don't see women as humans at all, but sort of play tokens, a resource to use.

Thanks, @ArabellaScott , that's very interesting.