Is female impersonation/drag offensive?

[dannybb]

Hi. As a teenage hairdressing apprentice I used to do a drag act in my spare time - a few decades ago. With more time on my hands I'm now thinking of returning to female impersonation - doing drag queen bingo and entertainment mainly in old peoples homes etc.

While I am (and always will be) very respectful of women I'm wondering if the era of men dressing as women to provide entertainment has had its day.

Has this now become offensive or inappropriate?

Any responses much appreciated!

But maybe drag is kind of taking the piss out of men as well as women? Dresses and make-up throw into relief how clunky men are in comparison to women.

Well maybe, but perhaps we should be embracing the idea that even clunky people with deep voices can wear dresses? There are plenty of women who aren’t delicate or dainty. It would be a shame if fear of being seen as ‘mannish’ prevented those women from wearing what they want to wear.

Why don't you do a bit of Black And White Minstrels too? It's all a bit of a laugh, after all.

I never used to have an issue with it until very recently, and am so sad I do as I have fond memories of the sweet and lovely guys who used to do a Friday night drag act at the one and only gay pub which when I first came out was the one place I could be myself. It was a part of everyone singing along and having a great time, gay men who enjoyed being able to be as feminine as they wanted in a safe place among friends.

Now I see the constant ads for 'Drag SOS' and want to throw things at the tv, I have to change the channel. 'Let's put make up, high heels and a wig on randoms blokes, isn't that hilarious'. Why is it hilarious? Would it be as funny if you blacked them up or put them in Native American costume? There's no comedy whatsoever in putting women in short haircuts and trousers. It's to do with the humiliation factor for men stepping down to be women, and the caricature of 'women' in outfits and appearances actual women very rarely do outside of very specific situations. Sex work being one of them.

I probably wouldn't think like this if I hadn't had it ingrained on me over the last couple of years, by men who present in this way, making very clear what they think of women, the desire to erase women as a sex class, the desire to sexually dominate and be sexually aggressive in all women's spaces and who see women as a kind of slave class. Fuck that. Woman isn't a costume or flouncing around in heels, its a biology you get stuck with, can't identify out of and causes you life long issues with superior men unaware of their privilege and the society created by them, for them. Appropriating woman is wrong, colonising women is about as shiny as what Custer did to the Native Americans, using very much the same terms and values.

Dresses and make-up throw into relief how clunky men are in comparison to women

More stereotypes.

Just going to leave this video demonstrating how “clunky” men are...

m.youtube.com/watch?v=c-tW0CkvdDI

Yes, I am completely offended by it.

Doesn't everyone realise though that comedy is never a nuanced exposition of a set of ideas making sure to include all the little issues and being kind to all? That's just not what it is. Some people don't like any comedy which is fie but it doesn't really make sense to criticise it for being sometimes vulgar or uncomfortable or making generalisations.

Oh, is that the beautiful dance piece to Take Me to Church? Love that, amazing.

I feel very similar to Michelleoftheresistance (excellent post) .
Back in the day we used to share nightclubs with transvestites and drag was a significant part of the gay scene in the cities I lived in. But - just as the Black and White Minstrels, Benny Hill, Bernard Manning etc are now seen as regressive, racist and sexist, I now see drag as a form of sexual appropriation. The fact that so many people who condemn the Jamie Oliver's of the world for cultural appropriation when daring to make 'jerk rice', yet advocate for a man's right to appropriate women's identities, safe spaces, sport etc demonstrates just how easily misogyny and contemptuous attitudes to women are engrained in people - even women.

Funny how so many attitudes change but good old oppression of women carries on and on and on.....

I wonder if the OP is a journo. Come back OP and tell us what you think of our replies!

Drag has been allowed to continue because it is primarily gay men mocking women and straight men can laugh along with the joke. If they were mocking men of any class it would have been deemed unacceptable decades ago.

Goosefoot well that's how I'd see it. I don't mind stereotypes being used in humour, it depends on whether it feels gratuitously cruel or offensive, and I think even that's a matter of personal taste.

Dame Edna and Lily Savage are exceptions because they are character portrayals rather than drag acts portraying/parodying “woman”. Dame Edna isn’t funny because she’s a man in drag, she’s funny because she is so overwhelmingly, monstrously egotistical and over the top. I don’t like drag, though. Once you’ve seen the parallel with blackface you can’t unsee it.

Oh my god, that dancing, just incredible

although to be fair to the rest of the male sex, I don't think many humans move like that

Here’s another clunky fella:

Great post Michelleoftheresistance and I feel the same. Bit sad.

Can I keep Cissie and Ada though? Pretty please?

I'm sick of it. Didn't mind in the past but I've seen drag tied up with so much misogyny I have had enough.

That is is sexist is simply a statement of fact; it's a caricature of one sex by the other /(more powerful one). But is it misogynistic? I increasingly think so, yes.

It really confuses me that it's acceptable and I've actually been hoping that someone would persuade me otherwise but nobody has been able to. It's womanface and I think only more acceptable than blackface because half of black people are men. Sexism is still so ingrained in our conscious that people are more blind to it.

Also read this, on how (I believe) the presence and acceptability of drag is linked to the acceptability of misogyny based on an incident at Manchester Pride last year by a man who runs drag nights but was not in drag at the time.

link.medium.com/L6odP9LOMX

When I lived in Sydney I saw a lot of drag shows because many pubs had regular acts. Some of the shows were witty and thoughtful, most weren’t. Even in the witty ones there was always a subtle undercurrent of misogyny that women were just expected to ignore.

I refuse to be a good sport about drag ever again. Women-mocking men can fuck right off.

I've never found it entertaining or funny but would have been of the "live and let live" camp. I now find it offensive. I've had it with "woman" being treated as some sort of panto costume.

I think it is vile. Exactly the same as blackface.

Does anyone else remember Kenny Everett's "Cupid Stunt" how the hell that was allowed I'll never know.

It's inappropriate in care homes, please steer clear. That glitter gets everywhere and is not conducive to good health. Plus glitter is contributing to the plastic in our water ways and seas.

In Elizabethan times women were not allowed to act so the men took all the women's roles.

Just stop. It's not funny or entertaining. It's the Black and White Minstrel show of our times.

Just dreadful. Your talents are better off used elsewhere. Get some imagination first.

HTH

Woman face is offensive. You might as well black up.

Does anyone else remember Kenny Everett's "Cupid Stunt" how the hell that was allowed I'll never know
Because it was all done in the best possible taste?!

Can I keep Cissie and Ada though? Pretty please?

Cissie and Ada were characters. At the risk of being pretentious it could be argued that they allowed Dawson to explore a comedic point of view which wasn't available to him as a working- class, Northern man.

Both Lily Savage and Dame Edna aren’t drag acts, they are female characters acted by the men who invented them, and they absolutely were not mocking women, they were powerful, and their creators clearly loved them and everything they represent. Drag isn’t just the act of a man pretending to be a woman.

Drag on the other hand is womanface. It is utterly offensive and a caricature of female traits and biology with a strong undercurrent of how disgusting female biology is, and how unlikeable being female is, and how humiliating to be a woman. It doesn’t matter to me whether it’s a gay man, a straight man or a woman doing drag, it still offensive. And it’s part of the pushing of our boundaries, that we are meant to be fine with it, and cool, and have a sense of humour about our abuse at their hands, so they can just keep on pushing.