If you enjoy drag, to ask why?

[ForestGoblin]

I don't get it at all. It looks to me like a crude mockery of women. Even on the presumably somewhat sanitised RuPaul, the word for a "realistic" (ie could pass as a woman) drag queen is "fish"... A reference to being so womanly it's as though they have a vagina. I feel like they hate women and are performing all the things they find ridiculous about us in a really hammed up way. Making us seem bitchy and preening.

Also, more fundamentally, I don't understand the entertainment factor of "oh haha it's a man who looks a bit like a lady haha he's in a dress haha". So? On which note, how on earth are the lady boys of Bangkok still going strong with their tour. Don't give me oo the costumes and skillful songs and dances - as if people would go to see "the costumed dancers of Bangkok". There's some wow factor to seeing "ladyboys" specifically.

But loads of my friends love it. So it can't actually be as bad as I think. (Can it?)

Yanbu - drag is offensive to women or just not entertaining

Yabu - drag is awesome

I used to think drag queens were very funny and sharp - but also very much adult entertainment, along with strippers. But these days they seem to parody women much more and becoming more offensive.

I don't think anyone is offended by the dressing up or make up. It's the 'woman' act while dressing up, wearing make up and acting out stereotypes about being bitchy or whatever.

I think in the last few years mainstream drag seems to be making a move to be more about the art and costumes than the horrible misogynistic names and offensive banter. At least I hope so. Women could help by boycotting the crass seaside hen do type shows, I've never got why people support these. I love to see what Utica is wearing from Ru Paul's drag race because that is an androgynous alien style.

I don’t think that’s why people think it can’t be compared. It’s because blackface is without exception offensive. There’s a wide range of drag with only the extreme end of the spectrum being offensive

I agree with you that blackface is always offensive, but I think that there was also a range and that some forms of blackface were deemed offensive before others.

For example it used to be commonplace for white actors to wear makeup to play parts such as Othello. Laurence Olivier did so and I think it’s on film. Now it is accepted that a black actor should always play the part of Othello.

Also, regarding men playing women’s parts in Shakespeare’s time. This wasn’t a choice made by playwrights or theatre companies. Women were not allowed on the stage in Shakespeare’s time, so if you wanted to write a play with women’s parts a workaround had to be found. This was to have young boys with unbroken voices (not men) playing women as they could most convincingly do so. Even so Shakespeare often contrived to have the female character disguised as a boy for much of the play, so that the portrayal didn’t actually have to be that convincing or jar too much for most of the performance.

Once women were allowed on the stage they did play women’s parts. No one claimed that there was any tradition, art or merit in men continuing to do so.

What’s offensive about playing a character? Actors do this all the time.

I think that gay men know they’re bitchier than women. This is them poking fun at themselves!

Yes it’s very very obviously about cat fishing. I don’t know how people would miss that.

Drag has been around for many hundreds of years and IMO is an acceptable form of comedy. Pantomine dames can be very funny as can characters such as Dame Edna and Lilly Savage. I do not personally find most of this stuff in any way offensive. I am less certain about some of the very sexualised drag artists that I now see becoming mainstream. Personally I think this is best confined to specialist clubs, but that is a personal preference.

It actually has different forms. In the U.K. it tends to be a comedic act, a stage persona, they don't pretend they are women and in real life most dress in standard menswear. Some are funny though it doesn't tend to be my kind of humour (to be honest I'm not keen on the traditional baldy British honour style whoever is talking, old fashioned for me).

Elsewhere drag often is more dance and music based, seems to be more trans people uninvolved, or at least those who desire to permanently look more feminine, make up and wigs are more natural etc.

But ultimately it is just part of the cabaret scene, something that doesn't really rock my boat but i can't get too worked up about. Just vote with your feet, if people don't go, they don't exist (the fact they do means someone dies like it)

I don’t like all drag. I find some fantastic. I love The Vivienne. But some artists can be pretty vile and cross lines.

I would fully recommend watching 'Paris is Burning' - a fantastic documentary.

Theres also a great article here which delves into the queer and racial context of it.

https://www.byarcadia.org/post/the-evolution-of-drag-a-history-of-self-expressionism

You're wrong. 'Serve fish' is used interchangeably with 'serve cunt' in drag and refers to a woman's vagina. Look it up.

I saw Cheryl Hole perform in a drag show before he went on Ru Paul and the TV appearances. The best part of the show was an extract done from Oliver involving picking the audiences pockets. Not done in drag and showed that Cheryl is talented and doesn’t need to dress up. I won’t watch Ru Paul and similar, I really don’t like the snide jokes etc

Nothing offensive about playing a character, it's that the whole genre is about doing the 'woman' persona.

Whoa. Lots of sticking labels on people there. It's not just gay men who do drag. Not all gay men are bitchy. Not all women are bitchy.

Why pretend to be someone else if you're making fun of yourself?

If you watch any sitcom that is over about 10 years old you’ll see at some point a man dressed up as a woman or a woman pretending to have been born a man dressed as a woman (if you see what I mean), it’s a cheap laugh and always has been.

I can’t really judge fully as never been to a show as it just doesn’t appeal to me. I’ve heard some can be funny and challenge sexism rather than participate in it. My experience through clips or appearances on tv is that is very old boring comedy with innuendos and the like. I’m against cancel culture so if people want to go watch that go for it.

It doesn't offend me, but I don't get why it's so popular. Everyone seems to go wild over Drag Race etc but I just don't see the appeal myself

No it means looking so convincing as a woman that you actually smell like a vagina. It’s an awful term.

The ones I've seen just mime to songs and do funny skits with the audience.Usually aimed at embarrassing men in the audience.
We know they're not women and they know they're not women.
Doesn't offend me.

it's not about cat fishing at all. it is in reference to a fishy smelling vagina

It's so awful. Whoever agreed on including this moron has no respect for women.

You know that they've been calling it fishy since before catfishing was even a thing?

Reading