Why is comparing Womanface to Blackface offensive?

[Backinthecloset123]

I've seen quite a few people state this is offensive and still don't understand why.

Here's an example.

twitter.com/Bon_QuiGirl/status/1189546024479707137?s=19

Could someone explain?

The way I see it, the abhorrence of the history of slavery and racism, and of course blackface, can be equated to the abhorrence of Womanface due to the history of the rape, abuse, murder and hatred towards women by men, the FGM taking place to this day, the murdered female infants, the list goes on.

I am trying hard to understand and would love to hear why my thinking is wrong, and the comparison offensive. I have no hidden agenda.

"Is It Racist To 'Call A Spade A Spade'?"

www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/09/19/224183763/is-it-racist-to-call-a-spade-a-spade

There is a tendency at the moment to claim all kinds of comparisons are offensive, which seems to mean mainly that the person complaining thinks the two things are different. Given that when you compare things they generally are different to some extent and the comparison has a limited quality, and even if someone makes a comparison you think doesn't work it isn't usually considered offensive, I am a pretty suspicious of the whole thing.

It is a painful and inaccurate comparison for black people and especially black women.

Blackface mocks and dehumanises black people simply for how they were born. There is a long, painful history of white people (men and women) dehumanising black people by mocking their skin, hair and facial features.

Drag is sexist and offensive imo. But it does not mock the colour of your skin or continue a cultural tradition that helped justify chattel slavery in all its horror (including the rape of enslaved black women, by portraying them as hyper-sexualised).

Drag mocks femininity - you can opt out of femininity but Black people cannot opt out of their skin colour.

TLDR I wish white women would stop comparing drag to Blackface. It’s like when men compare recovering from a vasectomy to the pain of childbirth.

Drag on the other hand while insulting, is not being used to stir up hatred against women and justify acts of violence against us

Yes it is. It often portrays women as stupid, weak, frivolous, catty, bitchy, sex objects.

You can't opt out of your sex or femininity.

How can sexism be as bad as racism? Sure, it only affects half of the people on the planet.

Some more background: Blackface began in the US in the 1830s and was very popular following the end of the Civil War in the mid-1860s.

It portrayed Black people as less than human, and also as hyper-sexual. This contributed to attitudes whereby white men raping enslaved black women was widespread and accepted by white people. Many ADOS find this when researching their family tree.

Blackface comes from that era and those attitudes. Minstrel shows sometimes portrayed lynchings... and coincided with a period in which over 3000 black people were lynched in the US.

(I know MN is UK-based but those Twitter threads are US based.)

Again, opposing drag is absolutely, 100% fine, I get it! But please, unless you happen to be black and female, think twice before making any comparison with Blackface.

Feel free to AMA also - better here than on the hellsite.

Because even some feminists don’t really believe that women are oppressed on account of their sex. If they did, the parallels would be undeniable.

I think most of us in the UK are thinking about drag on TV now being equivalent to The Black and White Minstrels in the 1970s. Blackface as mainstream TV entertainment, drag is becoming mainstream TV entertainment. That's how it seems to me, no-one is making any comparison to the origins of blackface as far as I am aware.

This shouldn't be black women v white women. Black women have a worst time because they often suffer both sexism and racism.

It's a futile argument, like trying to argue whether heart failure is worse than cancer. Or that while one exists, you can't be bothered about the other.

Sexism is bad, and racism is bad

Black women endure sexism and racism

Black women (not white or male people) are asking you to please critique drag without invoking Blackface. That is all.

There have been detailed tweet-threads painfully explaining the reasons for this request

When Black or brown women raise sexism with men in our community, they tell us to be quiet and unite to combat the real enemy: racism

When we raise racism with white women they tell us to be quiet and unite to combat the real enemy: sexism

Black and brown women don’t have the luxury of fighting only one of these

In the same way that some white men talk over and ignore women, in the GC movement

some white women talk over and ignore black or brown women

I didn’t understand before I saw the twitter thread a pp linked to but I think it is very clear. It also only really works in a US context as far as I can gather so it makes sense that the difference isn’t so immediately clear to those based elsewhere.

While blackface and drag are both offensive impressions and both classes are killed, subjugated and appropriated the key difference is the blackface was used by white supremacist groups to impersonate black people not for entertainment or because they wanted to live that way, but to create a false impression of them to whip up hysteria which lead to their mass lynching.

There is a causal connection between the use of blackface and the deaths of black people. If someone hadn’t have used blackface then some black men would still be alive.

Yes there probably is some US / UK disconnect here

there is a causal link in US. Minstrel shows (which always dehumanised black people and sometimes depicted lynchings) were highly popular for a period, during which postcards depicting the lynchings of black people were also highly popular

If this is unfamiliar (quite understandable!) please google http:/ without.sanctuary.org and click through the postcards, this is part of the history associated with Blackface [trigger warning, added by MNHQ at poster's request - deeply upsetting content)

I’m not aware of causal links between the audience members of drag shows (gay men?) murdering women and posing for photos with the bodies

I appreciate the sensitive comments on this thread

Sorry - Trigger warning applies to those postcards - to be clear, they are not of blackface itself

2BthatUnnoticed Thank you for explaining it (and sorry you had to)

Jesus.

Because it’s a mockery of socially constructed gender roles rather than biology. There is nothing inherently ‘womanly’ about makeup and dresses. Whereas blackface is just painting your face black.

Also, drag is performed by gay men. Gay men have been oppressed and ridiculed for being ‘too feminine’. Drag is basically turning it on it’s head and taking back some control. This is different from white people who have historically oppressed black people using blackface. Gay men haven’t been the oppressors of women because in the past, their sexuality was punishable by death etc.

Finally, the major audience for drag tends to be women (and gay men). There is no evidence that black people are the main people who enjoy blackface.

I don’t see it as on a par with blackface at all, unless you’re claiming that femininity, ie gender roles, is something inherently female. Which it isn’t. Drag queens do not say they are women so they are breaking gendered norms, which is a good thing.

I don't think there's an intrinsic parallel between blackface and womanface. Having a dark shade of skin is intrinsic to existence as a person of colour. Faking that is a different category of action to choosing to wear the clothes, makeup and hairstyles which are culturally associated with womanhood because none of those things are intrinsic to being a woman. I don't have a problem with men in drag generally in the old fashioned "obviously I am not an actual woman don't be silly darling I just love the sparkles" way. I have no wish to ringfence sparkly dresses, high heels and makeup as specifically belonging to females. I certainly have no interest in such articles and men have as much right as women to express themselves that way. The only aspect of drag that approaches comparison to blackface is using false boobs as part of the costume, but generally its a totally different phenomenon to the kinds of males wanting to invade single sex spaces.

Breasts, our bodies and our voices are intrinsic to being a woman. These are mocked by men in drag.

Why is it so hard for people, even feminists, to see and name what men are up to.

The fact that there are also accoutrements to our oppression does not reduce the offensiveness of men mocking it, it just makes the term ‘womanface’ inaccurate.

Women die at the hands of men daily because of our sex. They attack and rape us in huge numbers. In India and China millions of female foetuses and baby girls are destroyed because of their sex.

And still men mock us. The Kenny Everett sketch is pure hatred, designed for people to laugh at.

I think Karabair has it. Good old fashioned misogyny means women should just suck it up and stop being spoil sports.

Drag was started by men who were mocked by society for being too feminine. It’s turning that on its head. Gay men were also persecuted.

You can’t compare the public lynchings and slavery to female oppression. Trust me- it’s a really bad look to try to do that. Just as bad as when TRAs try to compare the treatment of trans people to the Holocaust. Women as a whole class have been oppressed but never persecuted.

It’s not womanface- it’s a pisstake of the fact that gay men were called fairies, pussies, girls etc. They are not mocking women as a biological sex but more the heterosexual men who oppress gay men.

It’s also because drag is predominantly performed by another historically oppressed group- gay men. Not the same as white people blacking up to mock the very people that they had brutalised through slavery and colonialism.

Pick another battle.

They used to burn women as witches across Europe. Prostituted women and wives were deemed unrapeable for men to do what they want to.

If millions of women and girls missing across India and China doesn’t strike you as persecution then I don’t know what to say.

Oppression looks different depending on what men want to steal from the group they were oppressing. In the case of African American people, it was their labour in the American South. In the case of Native Americans it was their lands, and in the case of women it is our reproductive capacity, our labour and sexual access to our bodies.

Women are saying it is offensive for men to dress as them. Why don't they have the luxury of being believed?

This^. And also this:

Because even some feminists don’t really believe that women are oppressed on account of their sex. If they did, the parallels would be undeniable.

Exhibit A: the horrific historical photos of what was done to blacks and the connection she makes to the mentality that thinks wearing blackface and mocking blacks is entertainment. And the apparent obliviousness to the wealth of equally horrific current and historical photos of the torture and death of women and its connection to the mentality that thinks dressing up in a woman-stereotype and mocking women is entertainment.

Of course the two are not identical! But the hideous similarities are instructive to anyone who'd like to have some empathy.

I mean hello?! Women are tortured and slaughtered in their thousands daily across the whole planet because of who they are. It's not even history yet. It takes some very motivated obliviousness to overlook that.

You approve of that Kenny Everett skit with Parkie do you Pota? He was gay. Does that excuse him?