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

Love the late Paul O’Grady, but never been a fan of drag, I don’t find it funny/amusing, just seems so outdated. Surely people have moved on from the days of Hinge & Bracket?

Because so much of it is overtly sexual or spiteful;

It's nothing like pantomime dames or Danny La Rue. And Lily was based on women that Paul O'Grady loved and had respect for (and was really witty)

Paul o Grady said himself that ru Paul’s drag race is not what drag is about.

When I was young woman I used to go to the Black Cap in Camden and watch the drag acts. It was a great night out and you could have fun without dealing with sleazy men hitting on you. Loved it.

"
I do understand why some people do but personally I don’t see drag as ‘womanface’ because it suggests that there’s automatically something demeaning about being a woman" Sorry? Are you suggesting that blackface suggests that there's automatically something demeaning about being black? Surely not....

I just don't understand why men dressing up as women is supposed to be entertaining. Why is women dressing as men not a thing? Reverse drag or whatever.

This definitely is a thing in LGBT circles

Modern drag is less to do with subverting male behaviour and is just basic - man says nasty things about women. If he wasn't wearing a wig and extra slap he would be called out for the pig he is. It says a lot about the man and nothing about women.

They aren't witty, just shitty.

Barry Humphries however is a genius. Now that's good, subversive comedy.

This ^

Because it's so boring now. An endless stream of half-arsed men covered in shitty makeup (and of course women are told we have to be grateful and acknowledge our drag queenly sisters for inventing techniques that just make women look like...drag queens) caterwauling and making sly digs about how awful women (again, the non-drag kind) are.

I don't doubt that there was and is drag that is inventive, artistic, and shows real creative talent, but the majority of what I see now is lazy and unimaginative, but because loving drag is a nice shibboleth for faux progressive middle class liberals to show how accepting and inclusive they are (way more so than those boring prudes who want to BAN men even LOOKING at nail varnish), we have to pretend some bloke stomping around in a cheap wig and a metric ton of bronzer, calling himself Slagatha Christie or something equally hilarious is actually transgressive and beautiful art.

Going back years and years, there were Hinge and Bracket.

@Knullrufs

Men dont get to use women as entertainment and then tell them it's none of their business or that they have no right to be offended

Fine for folk who like it. Not my cup of tea. Neither are soap operas. Can't get upset about either of them..

I don't like soaps either but I don't see them as encouraging mysogenistic attitudes

Exactly. The word ‘hate’ is becoming meaningless. I don’t enjoy drag because it’s men mocking women. I don’t hate them.

Drag is not one size fits all.

Saw Lily Savage at the Edinburgh Fringe and Paul was very funny and clever in his humour with that character.

Agree

I have no issue with drag in an entertainment venue entertaining adults. I do have a problem with drag artists in a library reading stories to children.

@nakeklak
"It celebrates women. It never belittles them."

I genuinely have no idea how any woman can come to this conclusion.

I disliked Lily Savage, I disliked the drag queens in the gay bars I went into in my youth (who were all without exception bitchy and seemed to be tropes of what a male who doesn't much like women thinks a woman is) and I find 99% of both historic and modern drag offensive to women. I know, I'm a hoot.

The two I can think of that I don't find offensive are Mrs Doubtfire and Mrs Brown. Both just men playing normal women, and it didn't feel like a joke at the expense of the female character or overtired stereotypes like most drag acts do.

I dont "hate" drag, but the more I see of it in live shows etc, the more offensive and gross and outdated I feel it is. Firstly, the defining of being a woman by ridiculous makeup, clothing, being bitchy, referring to women as "fish" (which I have heard many, many times in drag shows etc). I understand that the intention isnt to offend women but the more I see of it the more I just think its really outdated and frankly, really quite sad. It doesnt come across as laughing with womne, it comes across as laughing AT them. Why cant you be funny without having to impersonate women in a really groteqsue stereotypical way? if you cant, and have to put on a huge ridiculous wig and makeup to get laughs then maybe you just arent actually that funny at all..............

I don't like Drag. I think it's to women what the black and white minstrels was to race. Usually a unflattering , supposed to be funny, stereotyping of women is involved.
Paul O'Grady won me over with his attitude to dogs and Tory politicians and his quick wit. I still strongly dislike drag.

@ThereIbledit

My brain seems to accept a man playing a female character (like Mrs brown/doubtfire/savage/everage) as being ok but not the more modern ru Paul types and I'm not really sure why.

Society wouldn't accept a white person playing a black or Asian character. Christ, it wouldn't even accept a non trans person playing a trans character these days

So why is a man playing a woman acceptable?

@Knullrufs

Drag has a long, rich and complex history within gay culture and a bunch of (largely) straight (largely) women are not the intended audience.

Drag acts used to perform to gay clubs, whereupon the (almost exclusively gay male) performers would be taking the piss out of women to the (gay male) audience. The "shared enemy" as it were."

There are many tropes within drag which are actually about challenging and subverting the kind of misogyny which drives homophobia. But the nitty gritty of the cultural context is so specific to gay men’s experiences that to an outside audience it appears impenetrable, open to misinterpretation, or even offensive.

If you have a reference for this I'd be open to reading more about it. As a gay woman in gay bars, it was pretty offensive, and we were often directly (as individuals and as a group) the target of their jokes.

Many gay men find the current feminist angle on drag-as-mockery perplexing because the idea that it is mocking couldn’t be further from their minds. Most drag personas are derived either from an aggregation of strong women in their own lives, or a kind of fantasy figure of a powerful, take-no-shit personality who nevertheless still holds appeal to men.

nah, I just don't buy this. I can believe that they have been thoughtless about whether it's offensive to women though.

The naming conventions (punny stuff like Anna Rexia or Dixie Normous) are intended to be subversive, not funny. If you think it’s a joke, you’ve missed the point. Taking the kicking-down shit that women and gay men get from straight, patriarchal society all the time and making it into a name, a badge of pride, a bold performance, a two-fingered salute. It’s meant to be a fuck-you to the world, not a joke at the expense of women.

I'm afraid I still don't get the point.

I do understand why some people do but personally I don’t see drag as ‘womanface’ because it suggests that there’s automatically something demeaning about being a woman; that there is something inherent in women that is there to be mocked. It feels a bit internalised misogyny to me. But as I say that’s just my view and I know many of you think differently.

The reason why we find it offensive is that drag intends to say there is something demeaning about being a woman.

Of course some drag acts are offensive but then there are offensive performers across all mediums. Finding an individual performer or performers offensive doesn’t automatically mean there’s a problem with the whole medium, or the entire culture.

I agree. I also think that when the majority of performers of any given medium are offensive to the group of people who they are impersonating, it's a problem with the medium, not just the individuals.

This. First paragraph. And if you can't see it, you're really not looking.

I liked both Lilly savage and when Julian clearly was Joan Collins tribute both were funny and edgy.

However both Julian and Paul don't drag up now except for pantomime which is fine.

Drag acts per se are so old fashioned now I regard them as unacceptable to me as black face and find it distasteful and inappropriate now. Ugly too.