Is drag sexist?

[EatsBrainsAndLeaves]

I have just been reading this interesting article on drag and wondered what others thought? Below is an extract.

www.wbez.org/blog/city-room-blog/onstagebackstage-drag-sexist

"What?s so funny about drag, anyway? Maybe it?s the simple incongruity: you can always knock ?em dead with chest hair pouring out of an evening gown?s cleavage. But this seems like a pretty thin joke on which to hang decades of amusement. Unless you think men are from Mars and women from Venus?that is, that differences in gender behavior are huge and immutable?the contrast doesn?t hold much interest. Certainly, the contrast between white performers and black characters was not enough in and of itself to make blackface funny. There had to be something else?and there was.

There was ridicule of African-Americans. ?Look how silly they are! But look how they laugh, and doesn?t that prove they?re happy in the confinement in which we?ve placed them?? Likewise, men who dress up as women and adopt stereotyped feminine behaviors are comical because of their stereotyped behavior, and the inference the audience is encouraged to draw is not that stereotypes are comical but that women are.

Just as in blackface African-Americans were shown singing, or dancing, or being foolish, or longing for the old plantation, in drag women are shown nagging, or domineering, or primping, or longing for male protection. Each form even has two insulting ?types.? Blackface offers Zip Coon (an urban dandy out of his depth) and Sambo (a shuffling rural fool), the first making fun of black people for being free and the second for being slaves. Drag presents the Glamor Girl and the Pantomime Dame, the first making fun of women for our sexuality and the second for our lack of it."

Yes.

It's a way to denigrate and reduce the 'power' of the female. To make them laughable, hideous, frightening. Look at all the pantomime dames - none of them are 'normal' - all freakish creatures.

How about the possibility that when in drag - i.e. outside the tramlines of 'masculine' roles - some performers are able to say what's deemed unsayable when they're in what's seen as their 'conventional' costume?

Also, how about Cathy Burke, Catherine Tate, and that young comedian who did a Boris Johnson skit and also a chubby schoolboy (she's contemporary - I'm not talking about Jimmy Cranky...)

And does Eddy Izzard count as drag? Or how about Julian Clary - blingy and flamboyant, very, very, camp, but no false breasts or dresses, IIRC.

How about the possibility that some male comics, being 'quirky', as comics often are, simply enjoy wearing dresses, heels, makeup, jewellery, etc?
Is that in itself taken to mean that they're denigrating women? I really don't see how it does.

Am also thinking of Paul O'Grady (who I find quite amusing and very likeable on R2 god help me)

I often think it's interesting that inititally he became known as Lily Savage (who was fairly hideous and frightening, but also quite astute... )
Interesting that having 'been' LS, O'Grady is able to be very much the same character.... without the wigs, heels and frocks.

I think a lot of films show male caricatures (maybe especially action flicks) and I question their value as entertainment or as a mirror to the reality of the male experience. Not that I personally have experienced the male experience so I am in no position to judge, but some films seem to show characters that are two dimensional at best.

Drag has always made me uncomfortable. What it does more than anything else is portray women as 'other' just as blackface did/does.

I agree with Limitedperiodonly's impressions of attitudes in the gay community; I have had similar impressions over the years. I don't think despise is too strong a word. I don't think that feeling is limited to the gay male community either. There are many men with very mixed feelings about women. Not mixed in the sense of being bisexual, but a combination of fear and desire.

'I can get a bit uncomfortable with some drag acts. They seem to be sarcastic/bitter in their comedy. Aggressive really. '
I agree with you there Tiggy, and I agree with your distinctions between female impersonators and drag artists and transvestites. Danny LaRue didn't raise any hackles, or Hinge and Bracket. With drag artists I have felt pilloried, as a woman.

I see Monty Python as comedy of the absurd and more situational than drag, and don't see any intention to single out women for the ridiculous treatment. It's an equal opportunity poking of fun more than anything anti women or anti men.

"Drag comedy is sexist. Imitating a caricature of a woman is no different than imitating a caricature of a black person, an Asian person, a disabled person etc etc. It's promoting hateful stereotypes in all cases and it's wrong."

Hear! hear! Lurking

When Kathy Burke is being Perry she is 'playing a role' - Kevin is the actual stereotype teenager. In a similar way when Watson and Oliver do it - the script is written and a female is playing the male role. That is very different from a 'drag act' which is all about stereotyping for jokes. The drag artist might feel more liberated, able to be more outspoken with the make-up caked on- in glittery clothes, but the process of getting into that state is to embody a stereotype that does no favours for real women.

Remember watching Pete Burns on Celebrity Big Brother a few years ago, used to really like his style and music, but he had become a caricature it seemed.

What shocked me was his hatred and venom to two of the women there, and I couldn't see why, until it clicked..they were what he wanted to be, and his vitriol was jealousy and envy. Not always true of drag acts , but there is a misogyny there that can be vicious.

It's great I found this thread, as I read about this website/youtube channel in the Independent today:

and didn't know why it left me feeling so uneasy. It's from the shitgirlsay website, which is apparently huge. Now, on one level it's taking the piss out of the banality of text/web speech and 'youth' communication, which is fine - but they only show girls being dumb and stupid (boys presumably soliliquise) . And in the youtube clip it's a man in drag saying all the dumb lines (even funnier!)

Now, I do think it's very hard with comedy to define what is offensive and what is pushing boundaries (see endless debates in press about 'offensive' comics). And comedy has to be about taking the usual/everyday and making it ridiculous or humorous otherwise it's just social commentary, isn't it? Men with chest hair and strong jaws dressed up in sparkly dresses, dolly-parton wigs and make-up do look ridiculous, so there is the setting (although not the essence) for comedy right there.

What is important, I think, is the intent. Lots of posters have already pointed out they have seen drag acts where they have felt deeply uncomfortable. However, I have seen plenty of straight comedy acts where I felt strongly that the comedian hated women.

Not sure where I'm going with this, but I agree that drag can be very uncomfortable for women in the audience sometimes. Do you think it's because we are all being asked to laugh particularly loudly at a joke because an ugly woman is saying it?

Maybe it's a bit like the a privileged class (in this case boys who are also light skinned so twice privileged) poking fun at people who are not privileged on three counts generally poor, black and female, and in the case of drag the men are still men no matter how much ambivalence they may feel about that..