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!

Ill be honest I don't really get drag.

Is it supposed to be funny, sexy, creepy - what is the intended outcome?

I have no strong feelings either way as long as I don't feel the Drag Queen has a bee in their bonnet with women as a whole.

I think it might be inappropriate for that environment. If some of the old people in the care homes have dementia they will be struggling to figure out basic everyday normality, what seems like fun to you/ us could be distressing to them.
A relative of mine used to get really upset at certain adverts because they were just too confusing - one was alien creatures going shopping, another was the Money Supermarket men dancing in high heels and hot pants.
(Not suggesting all care home residents would be like that of course)

Yes, it's misogynistic - the gender equivalent of blackface.

Yes, it is an offensive demeaning parody. Once perhaps acceptable, but now, in this age of men pretending to be women on the basis of the same characteristics parodied by drag, distasteful.

I assume that men in drag despise women, because the picture of women they portray, being shallow, silly, and over made up, is so contemptuous. Drag artists aren’t dressing up as female accountants and doctors, are they? Care assistants, social workers, and overworked mothers?

I’m really baffled as to why womanface is so acceptable in media , tv, etc, when blackface isn’t. Presumably it’s because contempt for women is so widespread that it is accepted as the norm.

It’s always been offensive and inappropriate. It’s taking the piss out of women, full stop.

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.

I'd agree with that. Miranda Yardley told me that Les Dawson was a great fan of Trollope, which makes so much sense.

Dustin Hoffman on Tootsie had an interesting revelation

www.businessinsider.com/dustin-hoffman-cries-talking-about-female-beauty-2013-7

No drag. It’s misogynist. You can’t compare women aping men any more than you can compare blacking up to the genius of the goodness gracious me cast going out for an English

Don't go anywhere near people with dementia with your 'man pretending to be a woman'. It's cruel and unsettling to dementia patients who have lost a lot of understanding of the real world but still recognise and respond to sex differences. It's really really mean to unsettle them with 'womanface' ie they instinctively know you're a man but then you sort of look like a woman... Don't do your caricature of woman in old peoples' homes. Please.

Don't know if this has been asked before but what do posters think of pantomime dames? Or the pantomime leading (wo)man?

Its not the same as blackface.

People are born black, women are not born wearing dresses.

I didn't used to think it was but lately I've realised how in poor taste it is, given the wider context. It's not so much the dressing as a woman but the mockery of it all I guess, stereotyping.

I never used to think of it as demeaning to women either, but having seen a few drag acts recently, I now think it is. I don't like this portrayal of women at all and I'd like to stop, tbh.

the exagerated blackface makeup is the same as the exaggerated drag make up. similar "storyline" that an other can impersonate better than the original.

I think we really need to stop comparing blackface and drag. They are different types of oppression. There was a good thread about it on the Gender Critical subreddit.

i find it offensive. There aren't female performer aping men, for a reason.

Dame Edna is only one of Barry Humohrie’s characters, and she was created to make fun of a place and time. The “housewife” bit was important, because Edna Everage was commenting on the stultification of middle class life in the suburbs.

Tracey Ullman does make characters, but again, she’s using her characters to make very sharp, political observations.

I’ve never really enjoyed drag, but it seems to have become so ubiquitous that the performance and entertainment aspects have disappeared and the only joke is parodying women. Was it in here I saw that the video of the drag performer at a library? The performer was monumentally untalented, so the only joke was a chubby bloke in a bad outfit.

So what to do? How to exist beyond the restrictions? Not to be a new type of man but perhaps how to be a new type of person while never denying the reality of biology...

I really enjoy Jeffree Starr because he’s perfectly happy to dress up, wear as much make-up as he fit fit on his face, without ever pretending he’s a woman. It’s a very camp performance, but not drag. He clearly enjoys the artifice of appearance, at the same time acknowledging that it is artifice.

Is there a point to your drag persona, some nuance that you can’t get across as a man in a beautiful outfit? Is your drag persona one you use to hide yourself because you’re not confident of your talent? Because I love looking at beautiful, outrageous outfits and amazing hair and makeup (probably because I never do any of those things), I’d enjoy it a lot more comfortably if it wasn’t a mean-spirited piss-take of women.

The last thing I'd want is to cause my attempted escape from conformity to result in the strengthening the stereotypes that can confine others.

That's interesting. And worth exploring, OP.

You're not the first man to feel that the only way to escape conformity is to 'change sex'.

Good for you to want to try another way.

Report back!

It's not remotely offensive, OP. It's part of an ancient theatrical tradition.

Btw, Terry Jones as Brian's mother will always be my favourite female character in any film.

“It's not remotely offensive, OP”

There are plenty of people on this thread who think differently!

I find it offensive. The Pythons were a bunch of misogynists.

You believe all the members of Monty Python hated women? Okay then.

This recent craze to try and mainstream drag (RuPaul, Drag Queen Story Time etc) also seems to have another sub-agenda of trying to get us to accept the fantasy that people can 'change sex', and create confusion and blurred boundaries between the sexes (that damn queer theory again). I've noticed a few PPs here calling drag performers 'she'. And people do that in the mainstream too. Why? Why the fuck would you do that? They are clearly blokes. Courtney Act is clearly a gay bloke, and owns that. Why call him 'she'? I'm deeply suspicious of all these attempts to push drag into places like libraries, schools, old people's homes.

Yes it's had its day. Much as white people used to love the black and white minstrels before they realised black people were human beings, many men are now having this realisation about women.