Drag queens banned from Pride event "because they may offend transgender people"

[CoteDAzur]

“The decision was taken by transgender individuals who were uncomfortable with having drag performances at the event. It was felt that it would make some of those who were transgender or questioning their gender uncomfortable."

So... Very male-looking transwomen making women uncomfortable in toilets and changing rooms everywhere is OK because their feelings can't be hurt, but crossdressers must be excluded from a Pride event because they might make trans people uncomfortable?

From London Evening Standard

Eddie izzard isn't a drag act - his comedy is not about parodying women or playing up to stereotypes, he's just a comedian who sometimes performs in lipstick and heels, much like many female comedians. He will sometimes use his gender performance as a subject for comedy but equally so do women comedians. He's not mocking or sending up women, he just likes to wear typically feminine clothes.

Is my impression also ehric
However he does/has identified himself as such. Although he identifies as a lot of things...I feel in a way as to say, it doesn't matter, stop trying to apply labels?

Is the proper definition of drag, a parody of women?

He has identified as what? A drag performer or transgender?

AFAIK, Eddie Izzard identifies as a transvestite. He's a man, who sometimes chooses to wear clothes more usually worn by women.

He's an executive transvestite

And an action transvestite

I love him

Judith Butler reckons there's no difference between women performing 'femininity' and men performing 'femininity' as in both cases the performance is a cultural thing that has no basis in the material reality of people's bodies. In that sense women who perform 'feminine' are in drag, just as much as any drag queen. It's just more obvious when a man does it because it's not normalised.

From this perspective the transX are the mistaken ones, as they are reifying the cultural, artificial performance (gender) while denying any importance to the only thing that does actually matter (bodies). So it's no wonder some find drag artists offensive, as they're parodying the artificiality of the very gender performance that transgender people want to claim is natural and innate. In other words by parodying 'femininity' they are showing transgender up for the nonsense it is.

I agree with that OThe but somehow Judith Butler concludes that sex is also socially constructed and therefore identity is the core aspect of whether a person is male or female.

Soo - what about Lily Savage and Dame Edna Everage then? Are they offensive too? I've not seen any offensive-to-women as a whole in their acts, but maybe I wasn't watching carefully enough.

Flora - well I missed that memo. What solipsistic bollocks

My brains hurting is a "cis drag" queen a man (who was born a man and believe they are a man) pretending to be a woman or a woman (who was born a woman and identifies as such) parodying a draq queen look?

Not read Judith butler with agree with Manatee that the only possible TG objection to drag is that it shows the difference between gender and sex, and shows performing femininity for the total bullshit it is.

I have a problem with the 'banning' of drag or men dressing up in 'women's' clothing.

DH is from the sort of rugby/sports playing background where he and his peers have frequently taken up the opportunity to go out on special nights out (celebrations, birthdays, stag do) dressed in 'women's clothes'. They don't do so to mock women. There is even no real sense of it being 'humiliating' to wear women's clothes, given the glee with which they volunteer themselves to do it.

As far as I can tell, it allows them the opportunity to let down their inhibitions a little and to be more flamboyant than they would normally. Yes, it is seen as a bit of a laugh and a bit silly, but no more than any other dressing up.

In my view, any attempt to prevent such cross dressing other than as a serious expression of gender identity just further enforces rigid gender identities. If you say "a man in a dress must be mocking women/trans people" then it takes away the idea that men might like wearing dresses and makeup for no other reason than that they occasionally enjoy doing so.

I think there is a fundamental difference between blacking up and drag. It is only if we make rigid distinction between 'men's clothes' and 'women's clothes' that a man in a dress is seen as appropriating female attributes, whereas putting on black face paint is appropriating an actual, rather than constructed attribute.

In that sense women who perform 'feminine' are in drag, just as much as any drag queen.

I find that comment pretty offensive.

And the comment Likewise I find some born women's gender performance offensive.

Oh dear, they might women , but shudder, they are the wrong sort of women.

"‘It was felt by the group within the Trans/Non Binary Caucus that some drag performance, particularly cis drag, hinges on the social view of gender and making it into a joke, however transgender individuals do not feel as though their gender identity is a joke..."

So, the social view of gender (does that mean the prevailing view?) is problematic. And making conventional gender roles into a joke is problematic.

Personally, I don't agree with either of those statements, to the extent that I can understand them. This action does worry me, particularly when I remember that a lot of people who are trans or supportive of trans equate intellectual disagreement with the conceptional foundation of transgender as it is currently most commonly expressed, with hatred of trans people.

Are LGB people who do drag going to be accused of transphobia as well, now?

And why is it problematic for people to cross-dress?

I do strongly dislike some drag acts, and find them very misogynistic. I have heard drag queens who were otherwise funny refer sneeringly (definitely not affectionately) to fish or "that fish over there" meaning a woman. It made me aware that although lesbians and gay men may be thrown together at times, there are still tensions between their different needs and attitudes.

That said, I think there is a difference between drag and blackface in the sense that feminine dress is an acquired/imposed characteristic but skin colour is something we all just have. We all live in and are for now stuck with a world of gender stereotyping and I feel instinctively wary of anything that seems to go along with that and says only people who are 'officially' (by some definition or other) one thing get to wear certain clothes.

I feel in principle that anyone should be able to wear whatever clothes they want, including for dramatic purposes, and what they do and say should be assessed separately from dress. So if someone was to decide not to hire drag queens because they found their words misogynistic or nasty, that would make more sense to me than saying the problem is the mere fact of a drag queen dressing in certain clothes without having declared himself as trans and therefore "really a woman".

As they are saying trans drag queens would be OK (but they don't want to have to ask), they are basically saying that anyone who is 'officially' (by their definition) a woman can wear certain clothes and cosmetics, but people who aren't 'officially' women are causing offence by doing so. There's something fundamentally wrong with that. Also with the idea that drag queens are making a joke of trans women's clothes but it's irrelevant what they have been doing all along in aping and making a joke of 'women's clothes'. This has a huge whiff of "now it's annoying trans people it matters, when it was only annoying feminists it didn't".

"And why is it problematic for people to cross-dress?"

If someone is wedded to the idea that wanting to wear certain clothes is supporting evidence for them being "really a woman" (even if they also say that "feeling like a woman" still trumps everything else), then perhaps they feel self-identified men wearing them takes away some of that supporting evidence?

I have no problem with drag. I have done male drag on occasions, and some of my gay friends are professional drag queens. However, I have problems with misogynistic or racist drag.

For example, RuPaul's Drag Race is great fun and all, but it lost me once I realised how appropriative and misogynistic it was. Referring to each other as "bitches" and the total appropriation of black woman culture by black males and white males alike.

I went to a horrifically racist, anti-semitic and misogynistic drag show and had to leave half-way through, it was so awful. The response to our strongly worded complaint was "but the performer is gay so he can't be racist or sexist, he's oppressed too. Plus he was performing as a woman, he clearly loves them!" That sort of drag is disgusting.

Ha, yes to the "performing" aspect to getting "done up" in accordance with prevailing feminine standards! I do it every work day

And whether drag acts (as opposed to blokes who wear some female clothes / get done up as women / etc just because they feel like it and with no accompanying "routine" IYSWIM) are offensive or not.... I think the point is that quite a few feminists / women have been saying for years that they find drag acts offensive - usually down to a feeling I guess that they're just taking the piss - and everyone said so what it's just a laugh innit. A few trans people say they don't like it and BOSH banned from an event where they have been heavily involved for yonks.

So

That NUS thing is ridiculous also. So if a woman wants to go to a fancy dress party dressed as, I don't know, David Bowie, that's against their rules? Erm OK.

This is a new step isn't it, for certain sections of the trans community. To say that not only does everyone have to accept that they are what SEX they say they are, irrespective of body, and they can and should dress accordingly and even more use facilities and so forth, but that people who are comfortable with their sex MUST dress and present according to prevailing gender norms? I mean, that's just wildly regressive, isn't it. Back to Bowie - so he'd be banned by them.

YY to sum up.

If drag acts are taking the piss out of anyone, it's women.
And yet it's only when some trans people complain (that that joke makes them feel uncomfortable, even though they aren't the target) that people say oh SHIT you can't do that it's outrageously offensive.

Also WTF is cis-drag?
What would trans-drag be then and is that OK?

I agree with Manatee.

I think the rugby club types who love to dress as women "for a laugh" are the ones heading in the right direction though- wear a skirt for fun, because you like it- who cares if you are biologically male or female underneath?

Agree with drag queens performing femininity whilst being male clashes with trans ideas of gender as innate, though do hate how some drag artistes belittle women, though ime this is a minority.

Wish clothes were more neutral- though have always wondered why trans women in the public eye never want to wear jeans, mum boots, a fleece and a sensible handbag!

FWIW I once saw a bunch of paratroopers on a night out and they were dressed in tiny low cut skin tight lycra dresses. They all had very muscular physiques and the dresses were very revealing, it was quite a sight to behold. At that moment I realised just how different men's and women's "standard" attire is in terms of revealingness - a man dressed up in the equivalent of that dress wouldn't have anywhere near so much "on show" - on these men you could see everything.

That's kind of by the by but just made me remember it.

I notice the difference in "display" on male and female clothes all the time now and have done for years - and which situations it is marked and which it is less so. you can't un-notice this stuff!

People who've never seen a funny inoffensive drag act should really see Clive Rowe as the Dame in the Hackney Empire Panto. God he's funny, and that singing voice! My life's regret is that I missed Sir Ian McKellan as Widow Twanky. But I'm not doubting there's a lot of actually misogynist drag out there.

I think the answer to the NUS drag ban was that you could wear whatever you wanted as long as it wasn't with comic intent. So the rugby club needed to invest in a job lot of discreet badges saying "I am wearing this tutu and feather boa purely to indulge my own personal sexual fetish, please don't stare".

I've seen Clive Rowe as the dame several times. I don't think that's a drag act though. A pantomime dame is a different thing.

Also, drag acts on TV and in children's panto are inevitably going to tone it down for the audience.

Every time I've seen rugby types dressed "as women" they wear huge fake breasts and wigs which means they are not just men transgressing gender norms in clothing as men but are presenting as caricatures of women.