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.

Paul O'Grady hated the new generation of drag, and with good reason. Lily Savage was a lovingly crafted character drawn from the women who had helped raise him. All those old school artists like Danny la Rue, Dame Edna and all were female impersonators. This new wave are mostly vicious and nasty.

Yeah, and I don't blame them!

Same 😁

I have no issue with certain drag queens I don't think it is woman face or insulting every woman is entitled to her opinions on this and if they feel it offends them then they are offended , the drag queen that is going to be on Strictly is a bit "showbizzy" some others are far too sexualised and they wouldn't be for me or probably 7pm on a Saturday night.

Oh I didn't know that about Paul. I also didn't know 'newer' drag queens are vicious and nasty. The ones I have seen (not many, maybe 3 in 10 years) have been fine. I did love Lily Savage! 😍

I saw Lily Savage live, an absolutely brilliant and well crafted character. Any man who calls women 'fishy' no matter how much slap he's wearing is a misogynistic bastard.

Funnily enough the schools tended to be rather cagey about this but yes, there are images and footage of Aida H Dee in a skintight rainbow jumpsuit with his genitals apparent and being hugged by small children who were very close to touching him there. If a child’s performer is not aware that having children hug him near his crotch is totally unacceptable, he has no business being a children’s performer.

I suggest you google Flowjob and Deag Queen Story Hour if you want any more images. One of the performers with several large horns on his head is quite terrifying - he’d give me nightmares, let alone my kids. Obviously photographed reading to kids - possibly in the US where DQST started in 2015 apparently).

Most of my experience comes from watching RuPaul. What I see is a deeply caring community where people can get together and share experiences, usually of being gay in environments where they weren’t supported or actively discriminated against.

I don’t see anyone ‘supporting harming of women’ or being insulting. In fact they actively involve family members in the show.

For me it's unwatchable. Slapstick, dated, insulting.

Oh that is not on I must admit. Calling a woman 'fishy.'

I work in events, know a few drag queens through work.
Nice guys, all old queens. Whatever makes them happy!

Ooh interesting! I don’t think there was anything that isn’t the absolute truth. I linked to an article in the Critic entitled How Drag Degrades Women

I mentioned the day job of the drag queen that @FreezeDriedStrawberries askrd about and that there are pictures of a certain other performer that show an extreme lack of safeguarding knowledge. I have definitely seen these images and wonder if the evidence has been removed and references to it are monitored.

I have definitely seen these images and wonder if the evidence has been removed and references to it are monitored
You're in conspiracy theory tin hat territory now. Links to articles do frequently get hidden automatically.

This bloke in drag on Strictly has a woman’s place. He is literally pretending to be a woman. Outdated, tedious stuff. Yes, I know about the history of drag and this is a whole new, deeply unpleasant level.

Yes it does.

I am a woman and I am offended. I find women's bodies being reduced to tits, arses, 'holes' and 'cracks' deeply offensive. Always have, always will.

Drag Queens are just blokes wearing a shield. A shield that allows them to say vile, degrading and nasty things about women that men without dresses would love to say, but daren't.

They didn't have equal women last year either i see what you are saying but we have to ask why there is more men than women.

I don't find it offensive per se, but it's incredibly tedious and not at all funny.

While I agree with #3, your thinking is otherwise flawed. Racism isn't to do with majority vs minority, it is to do with power. White colonialists were not the majority party in India, for example, and yet they were still very much racist and looked down upon those whom they considered beneath them as they held the power, as do men over women. Gay men still get paid more than women etc etc and as such are in a more powerful position generally.

Also, there are plenty of men, even the 'nice' ones, who have misogynistic and sexist ideas and ideologies due to the imbalance of power between the sexes over centuries. Look at the number of men who leave all, or the majority of, housework and childcare to their female partners, who are otherwise good men and not sexist - this is to highlight how insipid it is in our society. Add to this incels and the far right who wish women to go back to the kitchen and be baby making machines, of which there are increasing numbers, so yes there definitely is an audience of people for whom woman hating, or even 'just' keeping women in their place, messages are encouraged.

That's interesting, I didn't notice, as it happened.

But it doesn't make me happy and I'm the paying audience.
I'm not sure I can explain but there's a huge dichotomy, for me between the likes of Hinge and Bracket and modern overtly sexual drag. Ru Paul? No thank you.

Thanks, mocking me is not going to change anything. It could well be the link but I don’t see why. Have you not seen posts on here that refer to certain celebrities disappear extremely quickly in a number of occasions? Either there are monitors watching or some names are flagged.

Meanwhile the images are currently nowhere to be found on my internet search. Now, either they are residing somewhere obscure or they have been removed. Search on that particular children’s performers name and you’ll see that quite a lot of material pertaining to him has been removed from the internet.

It’s repugnant.

Strictly has lost the plot. I won’t be turning it on at all this year, and I think it a real shame that a fun Saturday night family show has politicised itself to this degree.

About men being able to wear dresses and lipstick - of course they can. But these people are called 'queens' not 'kings', which tells you something. They've appropriated a female name because they are impersonating females. Further than that the reason that any of them are funny is usually ironically directed at the fact that we know that they are a man really. Think about that next time you watch Mrs Brown's Boys. Drag queen men are not wearing dresses and makeup just because they like them - they are wearing them as part of a performance, an over-the-top exaggerated performance of a female stereotype of their choice. That isn't warm or funny, it's damned insulting.

https://x.com/RuPaulsDragRace/status/1680642200969834496