Drag - Fun or Fundamentally Insulting

[hellosumner]

Triggered by the strictly line up thread I wonder how people feel about drag.

YABU - Drag Queens are incredibly witty and talented and they are not insulting women by dressing as an exaggerated version of the female sex. It’s funny and clever.

YANBU - Drag is woman face and any other type of comedy based upon stereotyping a group in an exaggerated manner would be seen as unacceptable.

The drag queen that you have referenced in your op La Voix (taking part in this years strictly) is actually much more akin to the old school drag artists that have been mentioned with nostalgia. They aren't offensive and are very entertaining and during their season of Ru Pauls drag race came across as a lovely person.

However I will admit that I am biased as I like drag.

Do white men wearing blackface claim to be black then? Or was it just the same as drag an appalling caricature looking completely outrageous and over the top? I think they are very similar

I've never found drag particularly funny or interesting.
Paul O'Grady was always more entertaining as Paul O'Grady than as the act of Lily Savage.

I have tried to explain too and your argument doesn’t stack up and is actually pretty offensive.

I agree that if it were directed at any other group it would be seen as hateful. I just find it very dull and repetitive. It's never really funny or intelligent in anyway. I just have zero interest in it. I always find people who love it seem a bit empty headed.

This ☝

I see traditional drag as ok, it's not nasty or overly sexualised and it laughs at the social gender stereotypes. It's men doing things they are "not allowed".

Some of the new drag laughs at women as sex, not gender. And that's the line for me. Stupid names with pornographical references, over sexualisation.

I see traditional drag as ok, it's not nasty or overly sexualised and it laughs at the social gender stereotypes. It's men doing things they are "not allowed".

Some of the new drag laughs at women as sex, not gender. And that's the line for me. Stupid names with pornographical references, over sexualisation.

*He. He is a man

Interesting thread.
I hadn’t thought about this before. Drag isn’t automatically funny, it’s about the comedien. I found paul o Grady a funny man, it wasn’t what he looked like in drag that made me laugh.
I hadn’t ever found drag offensive. Not funny per se.
But I can see where people are coming from comparing it to appropriating women and how black face isn’t acceptable.
on the other hand people should dress how they want & why shouldn’t men be allowed to wear make up.

Femininity is essentially a costume for everyone, so I'm not any more upset by men wearing the most extreme version of that costume then I am women wearing the most extreme version of that costume. If anything, it's an interesting way to notice the layers and possibilities of femininity.

The difference is that the stereotypes of blackface were ideas of what black people actually looked/were like. I just don't think the stereotypes of drag are anything more than a costume. Someone wearing 5 inch long nail tallons isn't suggesting that that is how women's nails actually grow, whereas someone wearing the bright red exaggerated lips of blackface is suggesting that that is what black people's lips are like.

Men can wear makeup, however, drag artists are depicting women with fake boobs and talk crudely about their vagina’s and fish etc.

What about the fake tits and vagina jokes?

Whereas make up, big hair and dresses are not uniformly ‘womenly’ I don’t wear make up or dresses, and men can wear them if they want to. It is not inherent to who women are

Can you answer this question please?

Who do you think they're copying?

1. Men?
2. Women?
3. Squirrels?

''@hellosumner .
Do white men wearing blackface claim to be black then? Or was it just the same as drag an appalling caricature looking completely outrageous and over the top? I think they are very similar''

I genuinely have no idea of what argument you are trying to make at this point with comparing drag to blackface.

Frankly considering the real threats that women and girls face in their daily life (domestic violence, sexual assault) and the fact that equality still has not been achieved someone doing a drag show that you can choose to attend or not really does not register with me as anything to be concerned about.

For me being a woman isn’t a costume, my boobs are not a costume thanks

I haven’t voted because I think different things depending on the circumstances.

I think it is very possible for drag to show a kind of affection and honouring of parts of feminine culture that can genuinely be positive. I also think that drag can take off femininity in a more aggressive way and still be funny, although as a feminist I would analyse that aggression as a kind of misogyny.

I think drag is always adult and always has a transgressive frisson about it - surely that’s the point. It originated at times when in some countries it was actively illegal to wear the clothes of the opposite sex, so it genuinely was a rebellion against the idea that dressing up or performing altered your social status or your sexuality, as well as a chance to showcase sexual nonconformity.

There is a really strong line of misogyny present in drag that some performers tap into and some don’t. Lily Savage was a performance of affection for real women, and Edna Everedge was a character piece that was more about nostalgia for interwar Melbourne than dissing women as such. Both were toned down a lot for TV. But they showed that talented performers can do things with drag that are theatre not misogyny.

This all means that to me, a child doing drag, as opposed to dressing up, is disturbing. It isn’t for kids. I think the opposition to Drag Queen Story Time is overdone and ended up being homophobic, but it is still a truly weird idea at heart, and much more about the performers than the children.

So should racist comedians still continue then because people have much more racism to deal with outside of the racist jokes?

The use of drag to shoehorn Queer Theory into primary schools in the last few years is horrendous.

The actions of some schools bringing in Drag Queen ‘Story’ Time to read and ‘perform’ to children and normalise and promote trans ideology is directly harmful. The books read were often promoting trans ideology. Some schools did this without telling parents or giving them the ability to opt out which tells us a lot about their intentions.

One of the popular school performers, Aida H Dee fundraised for the funeral of a friend of his who had been convicted of child sex offences.

MSP Mhairi Black was criticised for organising a school visit by ‘Flowjob’ who had posted highly sexual content in his social media.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-51617457?app-referrer=deep-link

There is quite a list of the drag performers with sexual content on their social media and/or sexualised performances that are also being introduced to children. The ‘performance‘ by a guy (from Drag Race - surprise) using an angle grinder on his crotch to create sparks at a family theme park in Southend is just one more example.

The use of shows like Drag Race to promote drag and queer theory to kids is a serious issue imo.

Femininity is essentially a costume for everyone, so I'm not any more upset by men wearing the most extreme version of that costume then I am women wearing the most extreme version of that costume.

How do you defend all the crude jokes about stinking cunts and festering cum holes OP?

This wasn’t my post!

Sorry, not OP, that was to @Everydayimhuffling

I could cope with drag-just about-although I do lean towards the “womanface” interpretation. What I REALLY can’t understand is the way it seems to be seen, for some people at least, as an identity-even a sexuality. Surely it’s a hobby. Or a job…..

Similar in some ways, yes... but not the same.

Let's consider the differences.

1. Blackface is about members of a majority group (at least the majority within western countries) dressing up as members of a minority group. Drag is not.

2. Blackface performers often (I'm not saying always) had no family or other close personal connections within the group they were dressing up as so were completely representing an outsider view. With Drag that clearly isn't the case - all men have grown up with girls and women around them.

3. Blackface was sometimes a way of giving white people roles that probably should have gone to black people (eg productions of Othello in which white actors pretended to be black and were taken seriously within those roles). Drag however is not giving men a role that 'should' go to women - the whole point is that men are dressed up as women.

4. Blackface comedy often had the goal of mocking stereotypes about black people in a way that was designed to poke fun at their supposed difference and supposed inferiority. Blackface comedy characters tend to be deliberately made out to fulfil racist stereotypes. In contrast the feminine characters or personas adopted by Drag Queens are often powerful, beautiful and funny in the sense of being able to tell jokes and dominate the room (the characters are orchestrating the laughter rather than necessarily being laughed at / mocked). I do acknowledge that this differs from performer to performer though - some play more into the mockery angle for sure but by no means all.

5. Perhaps I'm generalising but aside from perhaps some dramatic actors who took their roles very seriously, I don't think most people doing blackface have any admiration for or interest in the types of people they're impersonating or their cultures. They're just looking for funny mocking stereotypes. In contrast a lot of Drag Queens are fascinated by femininity, by beauty, by women, and are doing a homage rather than a mockery. I doubt many people were out there doing blackface as a form of sincere self-exploration and identity-seeking. Drag however means a lot more than dressing up and being silly to some performers.

6. A lot of Drag Artists are gay and are the sort of people who would, in other times and cultures, be persecuted or marginalised themselves (and often still are in our own time and culture of course). This means Drag doesn't feel like a powerful group 'punching down' in the way that blackface does.

7. There's a contrast in terms of audience. There must have been some people who watched blackface comedy come on the telly and genuinely already believed in the stereotypes being peddled, or had their own racism reinforced by watching it. In contrast I don't think most audiences for Drag would take a women-hating message from it or are likely to be women-hating to begin with. I've not known many misogynistic abusive men who are also super into Drag... although of course I could be wrong.

I'm sure there are loads more.

I agree.

It’s the misogynistic hypersexualisation and obsession and disrespect of female anatomy that I can’t get on board with, I quite like Mrs Doubtfire.