Is drag blackface for women?

[heateallthebuns]

I feel a bit like it is. I see Mary Cheney compared the two. As drag artists exaggerate negative female stereotypes in their performances. This view has been criticised as blackface was more widespread, and, white men were in the power position impersonating men while drag performers are a minority themselves.... but does one minority impersonating another make it ok? Would bkackface have been ok if it was more limited historically? I don't think so. I am beginning to feel uncomfortable with drag, as a woman.

I should say that of course it’s a pastiche, and is meant to be. I do find myself thinking though, that is really not at all representative of women. It’s ,a lazy stereotype that doedn’t at all amuse me at all.

You are probably right, to be honest.

To my shame, I will never stop finding Some Like It Hot funny, though.

I think it is. I've always found it uncomfortable and not funny. I don't know why blackface is now routinely condemned but nothing could be cooler than impersonating women .

I feel the same whether it's done in the name of comedy or because certain men enjoy the costume of femininity and like wearing heels and therefore feel it's ok to claim that that they are practically women (Sam Smith).

as soon as he pokes fun at women's actual bodies it is akin to putting on black paint to poke fun at actual dark skin.

@GuardianLions has put it better than I could there. I have been uncomfortable about drag since I was living in university halls, a number of the boys who were very into the gay scene started doing drag competitions. The caricature of femininity they performed was overtly sexualised, pathetically ineffectual, bitchy and frivolous. It was offensive, I didn't find it funny, and I think there is a pressure for women to laugh along due to a supposed feminine affinity with these drag queens. One claimed to have 'the soul of a black woman' and didn't see how that was at all offensive to say as a white middle class boy.

I saw on another thread someone posted a song that RuPaul sang, about how biological women needed to 'step their pussies up' and that drag queens and MtT were doing womanhood better than actual women. It is an attack, mocking and belittling 'typical' attributes and behaviours that perpetuate negative stereotypes.

Okay, here is my attempt. I would draw a line between parodying or performances based on the performance of femininity -- so, make-up, hair, dresses, these are just 'costumes' in effect used to perform femininity, but anyone can wear them and the fact is that it means something different when a gay man performing to gay men wears them (when the performance can be about effeminate gay men), or when a gay man wears them performing to straight people.....

The line I'm trying to draw is when additional things are used (like removable or actual chest inserts), because then you are trying to replicate an actual physical characterisitic that you don't have. So, males wearing 'pretend' boobs, or implanted bags of silicone, is akin to white folks wearing make-up trying to look like black skin, or black hair. The issue isn't the amount of make-up or the clothing, it's when the line is crossed between a performance that anyone can do (a female can wear this dress, a male can wear this dress, it's just an item of clothing, although the social meaning varies depending on who wears it.), versus a thing that only a certain type of person can do (i.e. a black person 'blacking-up' doesn't work, they don't need to!).

The difference for me after watching gay men in drag when I was younger was they weren't trying to pass for anything other than a man in drag -- they are capable of saying misogynistic things or having objectionable elements in their act, but the costume itself isn't. And I think Drag Kings are different again in that whilst not passing, they are coming at the sexual inequality they are parodying from the 'weaker' side, not the position of power. So, even when packing, or with false stubble, it's not quite the same.

As I recall, the issue with the men dressed as nurses was that they were in fact dressed as the usual sexualised stereotypes of female nurses, and it was that sexualisation of the professional role that was objectionable, and would have been objectionable I think even if it had been females dressing in sexy nurse costumes. Although having males doing it with fake boobs would have made it a double whammy.

It became noticeable a few years ago that young women increasingly wear make-up that has a drag look, almost as if being female isn’t quite enough, you have to work at it and prove yourself feminine.

The issue with power though, are gay men more powerful than women? I think the gay subculture has grown from the lack of power and places people could feel safe. That is a different history to slave masters mocking black people and making them perform. Gay men didn't abuse women in a systematic way. I don't think drag acts have the same history as blackface.

I think there is a cruelty lacking in drag , it's more affectionate. The portrayal of women in something like Little Britain (someone mentioned David Walliams upthread) is much nastier- but not drag, as in the art form.

I am conflicted, I am very much “all the clothes for all the people”.

However, Drag I have seen has too much misogyny at its core. It is performance of someone’s (a man) interpretation/ caricature of femininity, with vile insults about natal women, for example, calling an artist “fishy” if he looks too much like a natal woman.

Its not kind, its not positive.

Misogyny isn’t a hate crime. Drag isn’t Blackface. Transracial is racist and transsexual isn’t sexist.

For some reason. I can’t for the life of me work out what the difference is.

Oh yeah it was me who posted about that Ru Paul song, id totally forgotten about it!

Here are the lyrics again.

Alright now!
All you biological females, who used to have the upper hand
It ain't like that no more honey it's a got real tough up in here.
You got your Trisexual
You got your Bisexual
You got your Inner Sexual
Girl you have to step your Pussy up!

If you're trying to be somebody,
Girl you better step it up!
If you're trying to be somebody,
Girl you better step it up!
If you're trying to be somebody,
Girl you better step it up!
If you're trying to be somebody,
Girl you better step it up, girl step it up!

Step it up!
(And she come out there wearings some 300 dollar boots)

Yeah girl!
All you biological females out there,
It ain't same as it used to be,
You ain't got the upper hand.
Uh-uh

Look Here!
You got your trisexual
You got your inner sexual
You got your intellectual sexual
Girl goin' have to step your Pussy up!

WOW!

If you ain't goin' step inside this,
Then you'd better drop a sign, then!
If you ain't goin' step inside this,
Then you'd better drop a sign, then!
If you ain't goin' step inside this,
Then you'd better drop a sign, then!
If you ain't goin' step inside this,
Then you'd better drop a sign, then!
Girl you have to step your pussy up!

Step it up

If you're trying to be somebody,
Girl you better step it up!
If you're trying to be somebody,
Girl you better step it up!
If you're trying to be somebody,
Girl you better step it up!
If you're trying to be somebody,
Girl you better step it up, girl step it up!

Go step it up!

Girl you have to step your pussy up!

I’ve been thinking that for a while now. Why is Drag race ok when the Black and White minstrel show isn’t? Both rely on exaggerated culturally grounded stereotypes of race or sex being ‘performed’ by people who do not belong to that race or sex.

I've always hated drag and never been able to put my finger on why until I started reading discussions like this. I absolutely find it offensive and disrespectful of women. I've never felt able to say that though for fear of not really understand the significance of it for gay men.

I think I think along the same lines as somedyke.

The men I know that do drag are very much a gay man in a dress wih a wig and make up. Effeminate yes but really an exaggeration of themselves in real life for the most part.

I don't think it's quite the same as pretending to be a woman/ mocking women.

It's very much a gay man dressing up to me. But perhaps that's just the people I know .

My best friend is a drag queen. He’s always joked about the fact he started doing it because he was no longer a young attractive twink and squeezing into a dress and heels was easier than going to the gym.
He gets attention, free drinks, sex, told he’s gorgeous and paid to ‘dj’.

When drag was 'just' gay men, performing to mostly gay men and lesbians, well, then the lesbians could get stroppy and object, but it was always recognised that in a sense it was just us amongst ourselves. It didn't include people like 'I'm not gay' Danny La Rue or Liberace. I guess the point I'm trying to make here was there was a difference between complaining about drag in gay venues to gay folks, and when drag became more mainstream. Then more objectionable, despite the history of drag amongst gay culture. I wouldn't want to forget the history as regards drag queens and effeminate gay men, as opposed to the mass (i.e. straight) money-making selling of drag. It's the difference, I suppose between 'gay culture' as gay culture amongst gays, and sanitizing and turning part of gay culture into a mass-market commodity. And frankly, further tension since historically camp gay men (e.g. Larry Grayson) were seem as entertaining and non-threatening, whereas gender non-conforming female homosexuals (i.e. butch dykes) never were (Oh goodness, can anyone remember anything other than the killing of Sister George!)....................
I'm afraid that despite lesbians and feminists objecting to the misogyny of (some?) drag for many years, it will probably be the non-passing style drag stars who look like poorly-passing M2T who will probably put drag beyond the pale. Taking the piss out of women is fine, but not M2T! Although I notice on Wikipedia at least Drag Kings seem to have been subsumed in the transgender topics, The transgender unbrella gets larger and larger.................

I don’t think it really affects me at all. It’s just not very important.

Trans activists have been arguing with the pride event in our town for years as to whether drag queens should be allowed as they think they make a mockery of them.

Trans activists have been arguing with the pride event in our town for years as to whether drag queens should be allowed as they think they make a mockery of them

Yes, we've had this as well. Funny that they are up in arms caring about it when it's positioned a 'trans issue', when quite clearly, drag is to imitate women.

"Trans activists have been arguing with the pride event in our town for years as to whether drag queens should be allowed as they think they make a mockery of them."
It's the re-writing and/or suppression of gay and lesbian history. So, the drag queens that precipitated the Stonewall riots are being transed. So are the women (many of them lesbians) who passed as men because at the time it was the only way they could pursue the career they wanted, or live with the person they wanted, or just because living as a woman was so shit!

Drag/effeminate gay men isn't necessarily 'imitating' women, it was gay men who were brave enough to be openly gay (by being effeminate), and developments from that. The point being that understood in this way it was saying just because we fancy men, and like wearing fancy clothes, doesn't make us less male or lesser men, and men who are attracted to use aren't less gay. Although I think to understand it properly you need to look at it in the context of gay history. And it is exactly this viewpoint that TRAs are trying to rewrite, since given their simplified script, a penchant for dresses (when you're a kid at least) whilst being male makes you trans, as opposed to just making you someone who likes dresses..............

I guess I';m saying it's a complicated part of gay and lesbian history whose meaning has changed and been debated as other things (like feminism) have developed. Whereas the 'new trans history' seems to prefer a simpler male+dresses=trans (and actually a girl) rhetoric, whereas female+trousers=trans (and actually a boy). We have all seen this happening, and if erasing the richness of gay history is something they have to do, then that seems to be what they will do. Hence trying to get the drag queens out of current marches (because a M2T might get mistaken for a drag queen once they are side by side), as well as transing those whose part in gay history was too big to be simply forgotten.

The point being that understood in this way it was saying just because we fancy men, and like wearing fancy clothes, doesn't make us less male or lesser men, and men who are attracted to use aren't less gay.

But isn’t that reliant on the idea of women as ‘lesser’, in order to subvert it. (Sorry if I’ve misunderstood.)

I have always disliked drag and the parody of femininity.

Drag being the equivalent of blackface makes absolute sense to me.

Without wanting to argue is drag really a problem is there the same issue with women in men's clothing?

a lot of slave owners really felt a lot of affection and love for their slaves

This is the most mind-boggling stupid and offensive thing I’ve ever read on this site.** Jesus fucking Christ.

Without wanting to argue is drag really a problem is there the same issue with women in men's clothing?

You didn't bother with giving this a single millisecond of actual thought, did you?