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Original poster

To find drag queens offensive?

999 replies

MrsMummy500 · 12/12/2020 18:39

AIBU to find drag queens really bloody offensive?

I hate the term offensive, it’s bandied around far too often at far too insignificant things (am aware this may be one of them). BUT, men dressing up as some fetishised version of a man made ideal of a woman really pisses me off. Hyper hair, max make up, drink in hand, revealing clothes.

I do not know a single woman like that. It riles me and I feel like I’m unable to express it as women have lost so much of their space to LGBTQ+ community (I perceive this, I don’t say it as a fact).
potential bomb drop alert but if white people are taken down (rightly IMO) for ‘blacking up’ should it be acceptable for men to parody women in the form of drag queens.

Ps- I do not buy for one minute that they are celebrating the female form with balloon breasts. It feels more like a piss take.

OP posts:
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Teddy1258 · 12/12/2020 19:08

Not sure why dressing up as somebody you aren't is offensive. It doesn't have to be mocking them. (some do) but the majority aren't saying "i'm dressing up as a woman because I hate them and want to mock them."
They may well admire women and want to pay tribute. There are so many different forms of drag, we can't generalise.

Skyshale · 12/12/2020 19:08

I absolutely adore drag queens and so do most of my friends.

I do not find them offensive in the slightest, but to each their own.

CoalCraft · 12/12/2020 19:09

A drag act is just that - an act. A drag queen is only pretending to be a woman in the most superficial of ways, and makes no serious attempt to pass as female - no one really mistakes a drag queen as a woman - that's not the point.

I don't see dressing in drag as mocking women at all. It would be if the act involved putting on negative traits stereotypically associated with women. Instead, the characters portrayed by drag queens are almost always confident, bold and outspoken, and often sexually liberated too, and these are good things. Fundamentally the comedy of the act is the mild shock value of seeing a man do something men generally don't do (dress in dresses and makeup), along with the wit of the performer.

And how absurd to suggest that "woman face" could ever be a thing. Even setting drag queens aside, men are entitled to wear whatever they please, and if that's a dress, because they find it more comfortable or more aesthetically pleasing, fine. You might as well suggest a woman wearing trousers is putting on "man-face" and just don't it to mock men, as though it shouldn't just he for convenience or personal preference.

Really, I sometimes feel MN's particular brand of feminism is more interested in erecting barriers between the sexes than breaking then down. In an ideal world there'd be know men's clothes and female clothes, and people would just wear whatever they want.

I guess we can just start with ourselves and our children. I wear dresses sometimes and masculine clothes at others. I dress my baby DD in whatever I like, whether pink or blue, flowery or covered in cars, and when she's older she'll be offered everything from dolls and bake sets to trucks and tool sets. If she decides she wanta to cut her hair short, wear overalls and play with action men, I'll laugh in the face of anyone who suggests she's pretending to be a man. And if I ever have a DS he'll be treated exactly the same. If that means having a son who likes to wear dresses and play with Barbie, cool.

Freshcoatofpaint · 12/12/2020 19:10

YANBU. Thinly veiled misogyny.

cherrypie790 · 12/12/2020 19:10

Totally agree, OP.

BrumBoo · 12/12/2020 19:10

@Teddy1258

Not sure why dressing up as somebody you aren't is offensive. It doesn't have to be mocking them. (some do) but the majority aren't saying "i'm dressing up as a woman because I hate them and want to mock them." They may well admire women and want to pay tribute. There are so many different forms of drag, we can't generalise.
I bet plenty of people used to say exactly this about The Black and White Minstrel Show....
flaviaritt · 12/12/2020 19:11

A drag queen is only pretending to be a woman in the most superficial of ways, and makes no serious attempt to pass as female - no one really mistakes a drag queen as a woman - that's not the point.

How do we reconcile that with ‘blackface is offensive’? Personally I don’t find someone painting their face ‘offensive’ as such, but it is generally accepted to be so. So why is this different?

BrumBoo · 12/12/2020 19:11

@Freshcoatofpaint

YANBU. Thinly veiled misogyny.
Absolutely everything to do with gender is thinly veiled misogyny, and internalised homophobia.
Teddy1258 · 12/12/2020 19:12

Dressing up as somebody black (for fancy dress) doesn't mean you hate black people and are racist.

HeadNorth · 12/12/2020 19:12

@Teddy1258

This is Leigh Bowery, passed away now but this was the sort of drag he did, he's not remotely parodying women or mocking them, he's trying to look different, not like a woman.
Leigh Bowery was not drag, in the same way David Bowie and Boy George aren't drag. They were amazing dressers who didn't conform to gender stereotypes in how they dressed. The opposite of drag, really. They were never about parodying or pretending to be women.
Eckhart · 12/12/2020 19:13

I went to an LGBTQ event a couple of years ago and the host was a drag queen. I've never heard such slating of women, and all the women present laughed along merrily. I sat there thinking 'Hang on - that's a bloke on a stage, making sexist jokes about women!'

I really don't understand why they're accepted, doing what men used to unacceptably do on stage in the 70s (accompanied by their 'beautiful assistant') just because they're in a glittery frock and a wig. And as part of the queer community too, where acceptance of difference is surely meant to be key?

nocoolnamesleft · 12/12/2020 19:15

Another vote for drag being womanface.

BrumBoo · 12/12/2020 19:15

It would be if the act involved putting on negative traits stereotypically associated with women. Instead, the characters portrayed by drag queens are almost always confident, bold and outspoken, and often sexually liberated too, and these are good things.

Jesus the brainwashing in society about why shit like this is 'positive' is absolutely fucking horrifying. This is how men want women to be seen, the same men who have created a culture where when we are 'outspoken', they make memes about how we're 'Karens'. You literally cannot make this shit up.

fairydustandpixies · 12/12/2020 19:15

Are you that bored? May I suggest a dot to dot puzzle or an colouring in book?

queenofknives · 12/12/2020 19:16

@Thespidersweb

I’ve never been bothered by drag queens, growing up I spent a lot of time in the gay village in Manchester. It was done tongue in cheek and for adult humour.

However - now, in this current climate it’s a totally different scene. I was horrified to see videos of drag queens reading bed time stories specifically aimed for children, filmed in scruffy dirty apartments. Drag queens reading stories to children in library’s and hospitals. Why? Why would a man dressed as an over sexualised, grotesque version of a women be needed for that?

Absolutely hideous.

I agree. I quite liked some of drag I saw in clubs, it was often funny and clever. Quite liked pantomime dames too, although if anything that was always more sexist and offensive to women that drag in nightclubs was. But now it is totally different and just gross. The idea that drag queens should be reading to small children? Wtf is that about? It makes no sense and it's just confusing and scary.
MeMarmite · 12/12/2020 19:17

Of course it's offensive. But you'll be told otherwise and gaslit to hell around here.

MizMoonshine · 12/12/2020 19:17

This is a hill that I will die on!

I have said it before I will say it again. Drag queens are fucking horrid.

It is offensive to me as a woman.
No, it is not a legitimate gateway for Trans women to emerge.
No, it's not entertainment.
Yes, it is similar to black and yellow face.

Women have historically been marginalised and, to this day, are having to battle for equality.

Drag may have had a place, once. But so did minstrels and Golliwogs.

ZenNudist · 12/12/2020 19:17

I just can't get offended by it. I'm not interested in it. It's all very end of the pier tawdry "entertainment". I think its quite fascinating when men manage to actually look like a woman. 99.9% they look like drag acts. It's not the same as trans IMO.

BrumBoo · 12/12/2020 19:17

@Teddy1258

Dressing up as somebody black (for fancy dress) doesn't mean you hate black people and are racist.
This is where society is heading. The shit that was obviously offensive a few years ago are now being explained away, as people's 'feelings' matter more than their actions.
Staffy1 · 12/12/2020 19:17

I've never really thought about it that deeply. I never found it offensive when Monty Python or the two Ronnies dressed up as women is less than flattering caricatures, just quite funny. Do you class that as the same, or is it worse when it's done in the tarty, almost cartoon-like way of drag queens?

confusedfeelingss · 12/12/2020 19:17

So I'm assuming none of the posters 'offended' by drag ever go to the panto then?

Honestly, get something new to complain about

If any of you have actually looked at drag properly, you would see that it is an art form a lot of the time. Yes there is some crap, same as with anything, but to tar all drag in the same way is ridiculous

flaviaritt · 12/12/2020 19:18

BrumBoo

Indeed. Women making cock jokes and showing off their actual breasts would be called dirty sluts. Men doing it with their fake ones? Artists.

Hmm
Soontobe60 · 12/12/2020 19:18

@WhoseThatGirl

Good drag isn’t like that any more. It can be a real art form and done well it’s not offensive. Of course some drag is offensive and quite frankly shit.
Ive never seen any that’s not taking the piss out of womanhood! Can you give some names?
DougalandFlorence · 12/12/2020 19:18

@Eckhart

I went to an LGBTQ event a couple of years ago and the host was a drag queen. I've never heard such slating of women, and all the women present laughed along merrily. I sat there thinking 'Hang on - that's a bloke on a stage, making sexist jokes about women!'

I really don't understand why they're accepted, doing what men used to unacceptably do on stage in the 70s (accompanied by their 'beautiful assistant') just because they're in a glittery frock and a wig. And as part of the queer community too, where acceptance of difference is surely meant to be key?

This. Men, dressed as as a parody of women, making sexist, misogynistic jokes about... women.

What’s not to like? Confused

LizzieVereker · 12/12/2020 19:18

I have never seen a drag act that wasn’t a nasty, mocking caricature of what is perceived to be female. There may well be drag acts in the world that aren’t nasty and misogynistic but I just haven’t seen one yet. I’m worried about the mainstream acceptance of drag, it’s like we’re all supposed to accept its nastiness because “it’s just a laugh” in the way that Benny Hill and builders wolf whistling was once seen as harmless and “just a laugh”.