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

688 replies

CurlewKate · 26/12/2024 08:51

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.

OP posts:
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FlirtsWithRhinos · 28/12/2024 18:00

Bobbingtons · 28/12/2024 12:59

Drag is not a single thing, there are multiple forms of drag and a number of drag cultures that are independent of each other. Take your example to the ballroom scene from New York. Within drag balls drag isn't just about men dressing as women, but people dressing as something other than themselves. Dressing in a suit and tie is part of drag as 'passing' it's an important part of the scene. There are plenty of lesbian performers too.
We all know the Mumsnet brand of feminism hates drag with a passion, but takes a very one dimensional view of it in order to justify their hatred, but the culture of drag is incredibly complex and hundreds of years old and largely tied into struggles of lesbian and gay liberation.

Very early in the thread someone commented that the use of feminine pronouns was a recent thing in drag. Which is an astonishing rewriting of the post as that grew out of Polari which as a cant has been around for hundreds of years and influenced modern language.
Also the linguistic circles bring drawn to justify the love of drag queens like Lily Savage by claiming they were never drag is just ridiculous.
Just own your prejudice mumsnetters, we know you hate drag, don't tire yourself in knots justifying it, just admit you find it icky!

Ignoring the tedious "Icky", "Mumsnet brand of feminism" comments which simply illustrate that self-styled "open minded, art culture" people (and once upon a time I was one so I know whereof I speak) are just as prone to lazy stereotypes about people they assume they understand without needing to engage with as anyone else, I actually agree with a fair amount of this post.

I have a lot more time for the grotesque, art form of drag than I do for the mainstream BBC / DQSH version (albeit that like most of the art world it is still infected by the misogynistic belief that women's bodies and everyday lives represent not relatively disempowered individuals doing what they can day by day with the resources that have within the social contructs they have to deal with, but some sort of representation of bourgeois, or in the latest jargon "cis normative" values made flesh that need to be ridiculed and debased).

Similarly, drag's place as part of LGB culture being a F-you to mainstream gender roles and gender culture may be genuinely empowering and laudable from the perspective of the LGB players and audience, but it's still embedded within and informed by the sexism of the wider culture. Drag may play with the stereotypes of mainstream culture but it doesn't really undermine them - it's not saying "this housewife has her own dreams and rich inner life that is a million miles away from how culture constructs her role", it's saying "hahaha look I'm pretending to be a housewife! A housewife! How crazy funny would that be, if Mr I'm So Straightlaced's little wife was actually a gay man? How funny would it be if she was really thinking really dirty thoughts?". Being marginalised doesn't make people immune from enacting their cultures's other prejudices.

I would love to see a new version of mainstream drag emerge from this that was no longer based on female impersonation and sexist tropes but on imagination, fantasy/grotesque characters and costumes. But that is not what has happened, so using art drag as an excuse for sexist mainstream drag does not fly.

Ultimately, you cannot get away from the fact that whatever drag may mean to the men who perform it, when male drag artists perform as "women" they are treating women as a palette of pieces and concepts, a cultural language from which to assemble their art rather than dignifiying us with respect as humans just as complex and worthy as they are.

ToomanyMilesAway · 28/12/2024 18:17

Yes some of us do hate drag and there is no need for us to justify it - so what? 🤷‍♀️

ToomanyMilesAway · 28/12/2024 18:18

And here we go again with the struggles and because of that we have to feel sorry for them? 🙄

Interested in this thread?

Then you might like threads about this subject:

ThePoshUns · 28/12/2024 18:29

buttonousmaximous · 28/12/2024 11:06

@LeticiaMorales I didn't see Tayce do anything crude or offensive to women?

Hi took a competitors spot that could have been taken by an actual woman

Bobbingtons · 29/12/2024 11:33

ThePoshUns · 28/12/2024 18:29

Hi took a competitors spot that could have been taken by an actual woman

So did every other man, it's neither a single sex event or one with sex based quotas so this is the most pointless and tedious stretch so far to have a dig at drag!

Thegoatliesdownonbroadway · 29/12/2024 11:36

Other channels are available.

GailBlancheViola · 29/12/2024 12:30

Thegoatliesdownonbroadway · 29/12/2024 11:36

Other channels are available.

They are, however, the BBC is a PUBLIC broadcaster not a commercial one benefitting from a special status that commercial broadcasters do not have and has the monopoly of charging the Licence Fee which non payment of is severely punished.

LeticiaMorales · 29/12/2024 12:35

Thegoatliesdownonbroadway · 29/12/2024 11:36

Other channels are available.

People can still have an opinion.

FlirtsWithRhinos · 01/01/2025 19:15

A genuine question for the drag fans - do any male drag artists have a drag persona who is a trans woman? Are there any Cheryl Poles or Dolly Hard-Ons out there?

To be clear, I don't mean trans women who do drag, I mean drag performers who were registered male at birth and still identify as men who perform a trans woman character.

I'm interested in whether the "it's not offensive, it's all in fun" arguments still hold when it's male people on the receiving end.

(I did find one Dolly Hardon, but Dolly appears to be a full time trans woman who does drag, not a man dragging up as a trans woman).

PeachyKeane · 01/01/2025 19:38

I imagine they wouldn't dare.....

They can demean and take the piss out of actual women, but trans is a sacred cow that they would be far too scared to mock.

GruffaloChildCrimbo · 02/01/2025 00:39

FlirtsWithRhinos · 01/01/2025 19:15

A genuine question for the drag fans - do any male drag artists have a drag persona who is a trans woman? Are there any Cheryl Poles or Dolly Hard-Ons out there?

To be clear, I don't mean trans women who do drag, I mean drag performers who were registered male at birth and still identify as men who perform a trans woman character.

I'm interested in whether the "it's not offensive, it's all in fun" arguments still hold when it's male people on the receiving end.

(I did find one Dolly Hardon, but Dolly appears to be a full time trans woman who does drag, not a man dragging up as a trans woman).

No.
Nearest to that is Matt Lucas/David Walliams with their "I'm a laydee" sketches.
And they were bloody awful tbf and not something to go back to.

You have transwomen doing drag acts (e.g. Peppermint) trans men ( e.g. Gottmik) and non-binary (e.g. Bimini and possibly Victoria Scone, although the latter was she/her previously).
But none are gay doing trans as a character, no.
They won't as the trans community will claim transgender isn't putting on a costume/dressed as a girl/cross-dressing even though the latter was put under transgender umbrella.

They will claim female impersonator is one thing, transfemale impersonator another. I'm not sure transwomen tuck. Possibly Conchita Wurst (Tom) is the nearest to bending gender (as Conchita or as Wurst) but he was clear it was a drag performance.

Hazylazydays · 02/01/2025 14:08

Bobbingtons · 29/12/2024 11:33

So did every other man, it's neither a single sex event or one with sex based quotas so this is the most pointless and tedious stretch so far to have a dig at drag!

Well some of us like to see real women and real men not some ridiculously dressed man posing as a woman!

chaosmaker · 24/07/2025 18:59

HoppityBun · 26/12/2024 09:57

Looking back, I wonder what people / we were laughing at with some of those. I liked Lily Savage, but some of the humour is so dated it’s like mother in law jokes. With the distance of time, it’s interesting to think what was actually going on. A way of getting at women. There weren’t female comedians making mirror jokes about men.

I don’t think that they were challenging stereotypes in the slightest, they were cementing them in.

Sorry, old thread I know but French and Saunders did the fat old bald men shagging the telly when some female celeb was on it, or just women on their telly. Definitely as offensive and hilarious.

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