Feminism and Drag Queens

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I was just wondering if anyone else shared the same opinion as me and this article;

www.feministcurrent.com/2014/04/25/why-has-drag-escaped-critique-from-feminists-and-the-lgbtq-community/

I've always been uncomfortable with drag, but it's got worse recently as shows like RuPaul's drag race have started gaining widespread acclaim. I'll add as a disclaimer that this is nothing to do with homophobia.

Thoughts?

I tend to see it the same as blackface.

I am not generally against white people painting their faces to appear black, and not generally against men disguising as women, but it is often done in a way that reinforces oppression.

And I am sure you can use the disguise to highlight that, for example, a man in a dress behaves the way a woman naturally would if she didn't have femininity imposed on her.

But I am very sceptical of the whole thing, and would never declare all of it harmless.

Many women say that, to see whether women should be doing something (for example putting on makeup) one should ask whether a man doing the same would look ridiculous - and if yes, then it is ridiculous on a woman, too.

But I think if that's what you want to show by putting men in drag, you have to explicitly say so. Otherwise the message will be lost.

Lass - But Mrs Brown by the sheer ordinariness of the character is far worse than the OTT drag queens.

It seems like everyone has their own personal scale of which particular types of drag are worse or not so bad. The point I was making was that women are entitled to be fucked off with the lot of it. Mrs B doesn't particularly bother me, but bothers a lot of other women. Glamorous drag bothers me more than it bothers some other women. I will defend any woman's right to be fucked off with any or all sorts of drag.

I didn't find Mrs Merton in the least bit funny and tbh a bit offensive. Not as much as Mrs Brown but I definitely failed to see the funny side.

I was making no artistic judgment at all, just explaining why it might not be as simple as to just cast an actual older woman for the part.