Guardian journalist: Don't debate drag

[RoyalCorgi]

Guardian journalists, eh? They never tire of telling women to shut up:

twitter.com/ChrisPJGodfrey/status/1209040941648138240

"In all other areas, it’s generally accepted by progressives that members of a dominant/oppressor class should not dress up as and mock the members of a more marginalized class — especially when that costume involves harmful stereotypes"

"Suspiciously missing from the public conversation were the voices of any actual women — just men talking to other men about how totally not sexist they are

"These criticisms missed two main points: drag queens do display disdain for the women they mock (more on this later), and drag queens are men playing women — an inherently privileged position"

I’m not into the who woke IDPOL thing personally, but presumably this Guardian chap is?

So how come only POC people get to decide what’s racist?
And only gay people get to decide what is homophobic?
And only trans people get to decide what is transphobic?

But men get the final say on what is it isn’t misogyny?

As my nana would’ve said, ‘Cock off, mate’.

Here is a very recent piece, from The Guardian, on how much Chris Godfrey loves drag: www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/sep/29/rupaul-drag-race-uk-bbc-alan-carr-graham-norton-interview

Here is a very recent piece, from The Guardian, on how much Chris Godfrey loves drag

Of course he does.

So how come only POC people get to decide what’s racist? And only gay people get to decide what is homophobic? And only trans people get to decide what is transphobic?

Explore this and you very quickly find that it's only the right kind of POC and gay and trans people who get to decide, ie only the ones properly on message. Which means this is nothing more than a shield of bullshit for a very unpleasant kind of politics that aims to coerce and to silence to enforce RightThink according to the gospel of Orwell, as opposed to coping with a range of views from within a community and accepting that people think, believe and value different things, and disagree. And understanding that grown ups should be able to handle this without their heads exploding.

Absolutely, Michelle! Toe the line, be a good right-thinker, or no matter what you will be censured, even legally compelled.

I think it's past the stage where it's possible to right the ship and head away from authoritarianism. It seems to me we are lurching ever forward into a twisted dystopia.

ArranUpsideDown - just read that twitter thread on why it is racist to compare womanface and blackface and to be honest, not really getting it. She makes the completely untrue point that no--one would ever compare things to the Holocaust because they get there are boundaries around that experience but have no compunction about comparing things to the black experience eg slavery.

But that's simply untrue. I'm Jewish and people compare things to the Holocaust all the time. They do it so much that the phrase Godwin's law was coined. And as a Jew, I do it myself - if I think that something tends towards fascism, I will notice that and call it out - I want to prevent future Holocausts by identifying similar initial behaviour before it gets that bad.

So I can't see why womanface can't be used - it's not denigrating slavery or racism, it's making the (valid) point that being a woman is not just a (literal) dress or made-up face that anyone can put on and take off.

I don't find a hierarchy of oppressions helpful, TBH. Racism is wrong. Misogyny is also wrong.

And I think that where one experience of discrimination can shed useful light on and enable us to better understand another, in another context, that is helpful.

I often notice similarities between anti-Semitism and misogyny - women and Jewish people are often attacked in similar ways, seen as simultaneously powerless and too powerful. It also tends to also be the same people attacking both groups - both the woke and the far right. I think we can all learn from each others' experiences of discrimination, and successful methods of fighting back.

Explore this and you very quickly find that it's only the right kind of POC and gay and trans people who get to decide, ie only the ones properly on message.

Yeah, I am actually not happy with the idea that any group gets to define what counts as oppression or an ism regarding them. There is an assumption that the group could never get it wrong, and I don't think that's necessarily going to be true, even f you did have a unity of opinion. There is a significant difference between even "often" and "necessarily". And yes, that unity of opinion is pretty rare really. So someone is deciding which opinions count. Even if the basis is just the weight of numbers, I don't think that is good enough.

Agreed Goosefoot. It also relies on a set of circumstances in which that affected and impacted group is being fully heard and fully represented and as we know to well, that’s often not the case.

Just to add to my post above, AOC very recently called immigration centres in the US 'concentration camps ', which most Jews understandably found offensive as it wrote out of history that concentration camps were rather more than harsh holding camps where a few people died, they were mass killing centres where millions of people, particularly Jews, were systematically rounded up, tortured and and murdered.

So the idea that the Holocaust is always treated as sacred is rather a bad joke for a WOC to be making.

That said, AOC had a valid point to make, which I think most Jews would agree with, just badly phrased - while the US immigration centres are not yet concentration camps, there are clear similarities between Trump's treatment of immigrants now and the Nazis' treatment of Jews initially, and we need to pay attention now to prevent things getting as bad as they did then.

So I would reiterate - (accurate, non-hyperbolic) comparisons ARE helpful and if we don't learn lessons from history, we are bound to repeat it. It's not rocket science to suggest that comparisons are more effective if they avoid overreach, and that all marginalised groups will be more effective if they support each other and avoid denying or minimising each other's suffering.

It is indisputable that POC AND women AND Jews all suffer from horrific discrimination and have done so historically.

⁰

It is only the oppressor groups that benefit from this kind of divide and rule among oppressed groups, and no member of any of the oppressed groups has the right to demand that members of any of the others stay quiet.

To go back to the original point, I remember feeling very uncomfortable in the 70s and 80s watching eg Les Dawson, because his portrayal of ugly, crass older woman was absolutely of a piece with his mother in law jokes - the audience was laughing at older women, not with them. The punchline was basically 'Aren't older women ugly and stupid?' And even as a child, I was very uncomfortable with that.

So I think the intention behind men dressing up as women is key - is the butt of the humour women, ie hitting down, or not? That is the deciding factor in whether or not it is acceptable.

So eg a Globe Theatee production I saw of Twelfth Night, with the female parts played by men, was not in any way offensive - it was done for reasons of historical authenticity but also to cast light on the complicated sexual politics in the play (as Shakespeare intended).

Something like Drag Race, though, is offensive. It is laughing at women, not with us.

I'm not getting and not buying why the comparison shouldn't be made between womanface and blackface. I'll continue to try to be open minded that I'm wrong on that score.

An otherwise intelligent friend of mine literally shouted at me that "TWAW NO DEBATE!!!" when I dared to say I didn't think men belonged in women's sport. I'm a lefty liberal, and frankly I belong on her side. I'm desperate to hear an argument that convinces me I'm mistaken and I can relax about men in women's spaces. I'm ripe for the picking. "No debate" isn't going to magically make me change my mind though, and I find it a very rudimentary method which I hear as "I know my argument doesn't stand up to scrutiny, so I'll try to prevent that scrutiny." Of course, "No Debate" doesn't give a shit about convincing me, it just wants me to shut up and go away and stop asking awkward questions.

I find drag so unbelievably offensive because women are portrayed as caricatures of themselves, all the worst stereotypes exaggerated and pointed and laughed at. To No Debate it, is to try to help it hide in broad daylight, which frankly it's already doing all too well.

Blackface isn't just a caricature, it has been used as the costume when attacking/lynching Black people.
That's why.

That doesn't mean we can't debate drag. It's just different.

I don't have a problem with the idea of drag at all. There are plenty of examples of men performing female characters and it isn't offensive. I even went to a drag show once that managed not to be (no fish references etc and tbh it could have been a real woman and still have worked). And what about drag kings? They exist but I've never seen one.

But honestly, the drag scene? Is full of raging misogynists. So of course we aren't allowed to discuss that

I did laugh when RuPaul said he didn't want trans women on Drag Race and the trans community threw a fit. Honestly! Women traditionally aren't included in drag queen performances. Drag queens are for men. I am sure there ARE women out there performing as drag queens not kings but that isn't the norm at all. I suppose thats the end of the drag scene as we know it - if trans women are accepted as drag queens then there's no way to refuse any woman who wants in without being transphobic and then gay men have lost their thing. Wonder how happy and inclusive they'll feel about that.

drspouse

You wrote: "Blackface isn't just a caricature, it has been used as the costume when attacking/lynching Black people."

I may have misunderstood what you meant, but have just googled and can't find any reference to what you seem to be saying, white people donning blackface and then lynching black people.

Wikipedia has pages and pages of reference to black and white minstrel shows etc but nothing on this.

Can you explain, or do you have a link/s?

Everything I've read suggests that blackface and drag are very similar, in having long histories and being used in popular entertainment that mocked black people/women respectively. The main differences appear to be:

a) that blackface has completely died out in the US in acceptable society in recent years (and when old photos surface now of white people in blackface, it is a scandal). Whereas drag is, by contrast, becoming more mainstreamed in recent years and increasingly portrayed as all-round family viewing.

b) black people themselves took part in minstrel shows riffing off the stereotypes (presumably as a way of making a living). Whereas you don't really get women dressing up in drag that I can think of.

I still can't see any reason why blackface should be regarded as completely socially unacceptable yet drag is regarded as not only acceptable but even progressive.

Nor why the term 'womanface' should not be used, given that is exactly what drag is.

I think the lynching connection is in a US context. In the UK afaik blackface s had a vaudeville quality just like drag. Both aimed at ridiculing the other. And clearly anything that ridicules and belittles another group will be damaging to them both directly and indirectly. Perhaps drspouse hasnt heard of the millennia of violence against women by men born out of misogyny. That doesn’t count.

Funnily enough I am aware of VAWG but there is no equivalent in drag of the association between blackface and the KKK.

www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47125474

xxyzz

I found your post really helpful to read.

I also agree that racism seems to be not socially acceptable in a way misogyny is. (Of course racism effects men so it must be called out). I also find disablism is more socially acceptable than racism, and again disablism disproportionately effects women more than men (women are more likely to loose jobs to be a carer, women are blamed for disabled children’s behaviour, women are the ones who become sole carers when families split- which is higher for families with disabilities- and women are more likely to be the ones caring for other relatives) and again homophobia towards gay men appears to be called out way before lesbophobia is (my guilty pleasure is watching real housewives franchise- the host, a gay man, correctly calls out things like women calling someone’s husband fruity, or referring to gay friends as their best gay etc, but he also openly talks about whose swam in the lady pond and seems to see the women kissing each other as a funny display and eggs it on- as if lesbian sexuality is only for male pleasure or a side show or freak show to be laughed about).

I find people react to the idea that the same class oppression effects women in the same way it does pov very aggressively. They start spouting about how women weren’t slaves (they were and still are all over the world) and that fgm happens to woc (but it happens because they have vaginas) or that things like rape, murder, child marriage, forced marriage happen much more to woc so white women need to shut up about it. Sure woc are even more effected by these things than white women but rape and murder are common for all women, it’s not like predominantly white areas find women are never raped or murdered, and forced marriage and child marriage do effect white women also, just less so. Imho I find people argue this way as another way of silencing women. And I’ve found people say how offensive it is to discuss hitler used in the same way. If I was in conversation with someone who was Jewish and they said they found this offensive I’d respect that within the conversation, but I appreciate hearing your view on that because I often find it’s used as a way to shut down conversation, to control it, and I find that frustrating so I’m glad to hear your view.

Toco men performing as women isn’t necessarily drag though is it? They could be performing traditional Shakespeare for some reason, they could be in a spoof that’s making fun of drag itself, they could just be dressing in women’s clothes & make up- which is fine, these things should never just be for women anyways. But drag directly makes fun of sex role stereotypes that are harmful to women and used to keep us in our place below men in the gender hierarchy. They use exaggerated parts of ‘womenhood’- massive over sized fake breasts, over the top make up/hair, overtly sexualised clothing/heels, and manorisms and language are a caricature on things women are unfairly accused of- teasing men, being ‘bitchy’, whiny, and so on. I’m very good with men in women’s clothes -I love all the rockstars in women’s clothing who can still recognise their men, and I’m fine with men dressed as women within context like I said, but drag is about making fun of sex role stereotypes that harm women, it’s about mocking us while presenting us as superficial, slutty, bitchy. It’s exactly the same as blackface, just we get berated if we say so.

As I said, that makes sense in a US context. Not in a Uk context. We simply don’t have that connection. And yet black face is still pretty horrible. I am old enough to remember the Black & White Minstel show. It was pretty banal. And yet looking back, horrible.

The KKK connection to black face is being used as a way for dude bros to say - laughing at black people for being is horrible laughing at women for being female - totally cool.

just read that twitter thread on why it is racist to compare womanface and blackface and to be honest, not really getting it.

I didn't get it wholly but I took from it that there's a different loading on the discussion in other countries or that it's something I haven't grasped fully.

As with PP, I wonder if some of this is different cultural semiotics (?) with different countries and their histories such as the US/UK.

Akin to the recent mention on a thread about 'kith and kin' signalling something in S Africa that it doesn't in the UK.

I don't know if we should be self-editing our conversations for interpretation by an international audience (and abandoning familiar language patterns and reference points) or if that is the reality of social media.

Eg, I'm startled by how much people don't know about events and history in the UK because we've lost communal knowledge of items such as the Aberfan Disaster (I gather it featured in a recent popular series and I was surprised by how many people had never heard of it). I've sometimes had to explain anti-semitism/miscegenation etc to younger relatives when watching a 'classic' film because they don't understand what's happening. (Sometimes it's a plot point, more often it's by-the-by.)

I am quite happy to accept that there are aspects of racism against POC, particularly in a US context, that I don't understand, which was why I was asking for more information.

drspouse - your link doesn't seem to show what you claimed it shows. You said, "it [blackface] has been used as the costume when attacking/lynching Black people", but your link seemed rather to show that someone was wearing blackface on a photo next to someone wearing a KKK outfit, not that blackface was actually worn during a lynching. (Which I have seen zero evidence for.) The article you linked to went on to talk about blackface being used by white people to portray a negative stereotype of black people which underlay discrimination against them - but this doesn't seem to me to be meaningfully different to the negative stereotypes of women (as highly sexualised 'slags' etc) propagated by drag culture, which has likewise underpinned centuries of discrimination against and attacks on women.

As discussed above, I was unconvinced by the argument made in the Twitter thread linked to upthread, stating that comparisons between blackface and womanface should not be made, since the Twitter user's main argument seemed to rest on a comparison with how the Holocaust is discussed, which was simply factually incorrect. I am therefore sceptical as to how much trust one should place in the argument being made overall.

So I'll keep an open mind on this - but as yet, have yet to see any convincing evidence that there is a meaningful difference between how blackface and 'womanface' are used or their impacts on black people and women.

What is clearly different, however, is how blackface is now regarded as completely socially and politically unacceptable, especially by progressives. Whereas by comparison, 'womanface' ie drag seems to be becoming more and more popular, especially among those who would call themselves progressive.

And I really cannot see any valid justification for that. Other than that the latter affects women - and women don't matter.