Why so anti drag?

[nicetoseetgesunsout]

I've just watched the Paul oGrady tribute programme and it brought me to tears.
He did so much for children and their families and for so so many animals, plus against social injustice for gay people and anti section 28, not being scared to raise its injustice on mainstream tv.
My 75yr old mum is very upset about his passing.
Why the hate for drag performers?
My children grew up with Boy George,Marilyn and Leigh Bowrie RIP as they are friends. My children (boy and girl, now a woman and a man) always knew that they were, and are, men and saw them without costume wigs and makeup.
I'm also friends with a married couple who were drag queens a long time ago. My children have always known that these guys are men, dressing up as women, as they liked to and it was entertainment.
No offence meant to women. They saw them dressed as their drag persona but also without costume and mostly as men.
One couple of ex drag queens I know are now a Director for a hospice and his husband is a social work manager. Reputable jobs, no desire to be women and have two cats who are their babies. Lovely men.
Pantos have always had men playing women but we all know that they're men. Shakespeare plays had men playing women - that's more offensive to me.
Female authors like SE Sinton wrote and published amazing books without her obviously female first names - as she couldn't get published otherwise. These upset me much more

@CurlewKate I would appreciate that too and they are not entwined for me. I am absolutely in favour of women only spaces, trans men not being allowed to compete with women in sport. Completely different subject for me. None of the drag queens I ever knew wanted to be women.

Seriously? He dresses up and helps disabled children. This thread is awful.

Apparently if you have a penis you have to dress and act a very specific way which is entirely ‘masculine’ although also gender is just a construct and there is no masculine way of dressing and they’re all perverts so really men shouldn’t be allowed to exist.

It's not that people shouldn't dress how they like

It's that people should mock others or dress and act in a way that others feel is mocking them ( hence no black face)

What he does is great and I’ve learned some makaton through him that has come in useful, but I still think the character of Mr Tumble is a bit creepy. He’s much better when he’s just being Justin.

So one good drag waxy excuses all the others ?

Would it be okay then if a woman dressed up as an exaggerated stereotype of an effeminate, camp gay man and made offensive jokes about gay men?

Well, Catherine Tate did this with her Derek Faye character. IMO it was very funny. Although the subject of the joke was the way he took offence and the sheer level of denial he was in, rather than the mannerisms themselves.

Some gay people didn't like it but I think most saw the funny side. It was deftly done (like most of her stuff).

@Newnamenewname109870 "Apparently if you have a penis you have to dress and act a very specific way which is entirely ‘masculine’ although also gender is just a construct and there is no masculine way of dressing and they’re all perverts so really men shouldn’t be allowed to exist."

Please could you point out where anyone has said any of this complete bollocks?

Hang on-Mr Tumble isn't a drag queen is he? I thought he was a clown.

Because a man dressing in any way like a woman is offensive to women.

@Newnamenewname109870 . As far as I am aware nobody has said that. What people have said is that a man dressing as an exaggerated stereotype of a woman is offensive to women. Rather different.

Isn't it interesting that everyone is allowed to be offended except for women?

Women must do as we are told. If men say drag isn't sexist and offensive we must defer to their superior knowledge.

We are not allowed opinions of our own.

I don't know about that, really. This thread is 12 pages and almost 300 posts long (at time of typing this) and the vast majority of the posts are women explaining why they're offended by drag (or some drag). Women's opinions, being posted and debated. People have expressed views, linked academic posts, cited individuals and groups. I don't think a single post has been deleted or blocked (yet).

Personally I'm not someone who's automatically offended by drag; at least not the medium itself (some performers are offensive, definitely).

But I appreciate that some women are offended by it, and I think what's happening here is important and a good and healthy debate.

Women are allowed to think different things on topics, disagree with each other, and that's OK. Unless you feel that women should be like the Borg, and only hold a single shared opinion on any given topic?

And so what if some men hold an opposing view? A man holding a viewpoint is not, in itself, silencing women.

Women are allowed to debate and express opinions and be offended if they want to and that's good, of course. But it's the opinion of men that actually carries weight and gets things done.

That is what I meant by my post.

Nuance is lost on here.

What I meant is that if a man states that something is offensive he should be believed and things will change.

If a woman says something is offensive she is told she is wrong or her opinion doesn't matter.

It's exactly how the TRAs are getting away with framing women being concerned about the erosion of our rights as being bigots.

@lifeturnsonadime Yes, I couldn't agree with you more.

@Knullrufs "And so what if some men hold an opposing view? A man holding a viewpoint is not, in itself, silencing women."
Obviously it isn't. But the point is that it doesn't matter how many women object or debate or whatever, it will not stop men carrying on with the behaviour. Because what men want outweighs what women want.

@CurlewKate @lifeturnsonadime I hear what you're saying. I disagree, or at least I feel it's a lot more complex, because I don't think it's that generalised. Some women are heard greatly and some men are totally dismissed. But at a class level I do hear you.

On nuance — @lifeturnsonadime you are correct that nuance is sometimes lost on here. I hope you can also concede that this concept might work in the other direction, and that there's nuance to the medium and context of drag that doesn't always get translated especially well to these discussions.

This is absolutely untrue.

Back in the 90s no one batted an eyelid, at least not in Brighton where I was a student, at men with long hair, men who wore eye-make up, nail varnish or whatever else they wanted to wear.

The difference was that they did not demand that the whole world saw the way they dress/ wore make up as meaning that they were actually women.

It is not progressive for a man who wears a dress to insist that he is a woman. It is not progressive for a man who wears a dress to stand on stage and refer to women as fish and parody women in the most sexist and offensive of ways.

It is not progressive to tell children who do not conform with stereotypes that they are either non binary or are the opposite sex. It's the opposite.

On the point of Drag Queens, well they are now within the trans umbrella and are part of the agenda of advancing Queer Theory to very young children. They are part of trying to normalise the removal of appropriate boundaries for women and children. That is setting aside the other reasons for disliking trans and perceiving it to be akin to woman face.

We've had a lesbian on this thread saying how horrifically she was treated by drag queens at a Pride event. This is happening more and more often. Lesbians are being treated like this and then called bigots for the very fact that they are same sex attracted and for declining to date heterosexual males who identify as trans.

Where is your outrage at the way Lesbians are being treated? Why is your outrage only for the rights of those who identify as trans who are predominately males who are trying to invade women's spaces without consent?

@Knullrufs

I think that we are at a time where we need to stand up for the rights and women and children to have boundaries at all costs.

Stonewall have harmed the Drag community by including Drag within the trans umbrella and by the insistence that Drag is appropriate entertainment for young children who cannot consent.

That is setting aside the other reasons for disliking trans and perceiving it to be akin to woman face.

That was a typo it should have said disliking drag but it does also apply to the trans agenda which says that by simply putting on a dress men are better women that women, see Dylan Mulvaney and how being a 'girl' has led to presidential and commercial endorsements.

@lifeturnsonadime I completely agree with you on part of this actually. The dragging (!) of drag into the broader trans identity isn't especially helpful — or for a lot of people, true. If drag is performance, and trans is an identity, there's quite a big difference between the two and they shouldn't be elided just because they both involve people pushing back against gender roles.

Within the gay community, a lot of men who perform as drag queens don't like the act they do on a Thursday night being absorbed into the broader trans umbrella. It's a whole debate that's going on at the moment.

Indeed.

For me, it was always really creepy. Even as a pretty small child, I couldn't cope with pantomimes because the dames were frightening not funny. Same with clowns, or minstrels. I am obviously a bit odd, but with all that background, todays drag artists are not only creepy, but also cringy, and just give me the ick. I can't watch them at all.

It's almost as if nobody's heard of David Bowie.