Drag and misogyny

[SnowWouldHelp]

Do you find drag as a concept misogynistic? It came up on Thinking Allowed where it was compared to blackface and I realised I'd never thought of it like that. I haven't actually any seen any either so I don't know much about it and wondered what other people thought.

@SoapboxFox

Yes. Everyone knows Blackface is racist. In a similar way, Womanface is misogynistic.

Why was Rachel Dolezal heavily criticised for self-identifying as black, yet males self-identifying as women are protected to the extent that anyone challenging their claims gets cancelled?

Why do the same people who would be up in arms over 'cultural appropriation' feel they must support the appropriation of womanhood by men?

Absolutely 👍

This is an article by a woman who enjoys watching programmes like Ru Paul's Drag Race but also acknowledges that the misogyny of it is a problem - m.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ashley-clarke/rupals-drag-race_b_4957651.html

👆

This!!!!!!!!! Brava Let's get ready.

Hang on, so any criticism of drag is automatically homophobic?
I believe so as drag is all about fighting the oppression of gay men, apparently.

We're yet to be graced with an explanation as to how the features many of us are discussing empower gay men though. Funny that.

@Waitwhat23

'Like everyone else here, you're saying that drag is bad because a drag performer did a bad thing. That's a logical fallacy.'

You keep talking about a performer as if it is one-off examples. It's not. This is terminology and stereotypes which are used across the drag community. You are being deliberately disingenuous.

Ah... a genderist lecturing us about logical fallacies. It's like watching fainting goats.

Yeahbutnaw, you manage to incorporate a straw man arguement into an incorrect accusation of a generalisation fallacy, it really is quite, quite mesmerising.

Not sure I can put this into words, but I'm wondering what all this escape into the despised other, as it were, is about? What's the psychology behind wanting to dress up as something else in order to demean and belittle it?

Most of you here are more clever than me. What am I missing?

I can't help but come back to the earliest transwomen I knew, fiercely angry with women who wouldn't do what we were told, absolutely desperate to be accepted as women while behaving like the worst kind of destructive, angry, woman-hating man. Lacking any vestige of respect or understanding of what it really is to be a woman.

Oh sorry I didn't realised we had reached the ad hominem flounce.

They didn't respond to the point about straight men or Trans Women doing female impersonation drag either.

Are these drag queens homophobic?

attitude.co.uk/article/drag-sos-stars-cheddar-gorgeous-and-anna-phylactic-reveal-why-they-wont-use-the-term-fishy/22435/

They seem to agree with us on the misogynistic language point.

Also:

Cheddar, who along with Anna and the other queens of Drag SOS helped to give Lorraine Kelly a royal drag makeover for Attitude's January 'Activists & Allies' issue - goes on to explain that the term, which has found its way into everyday use following the rise of shows such as RuPaul's Drag Race, is "out-of-date" and "offensive to women".

Everyday use. It's not ''just a few''.

It is not just women who have a problem with drag either. I've sat with men when Ru Paul's show has come on and they have asked for it to be turned over as they find it stomach-churning.

shedbuilder

I don't think you are missing anything. I think that it is clear that it is punching down because they fear the reception of other males.

And yes, we are women who won't acquiesce.

@LolaSmiles

With that yeahbutnaw insults women who discuss misogyny and flounces out the metaphorical door, having conviently refrained answering questions of substance related to the debate.

How long till the comeback?

They won't be back they are incapable of stringing together a coherent argument or answering reasonably put questions, they know it, we know it and everyone watching and reading knows it.

The best they can muster is whataboutery, hyperbole and slurs and that is the limit of their compelling argument for perpetuating the hideous misogyny of drag.

@yeahbutnaw

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

Haha so no intelligent response at all to me pointing out that gay men are no more exempt from misogyny as women are from homophobia? Nice. What a smart guy.

Well you probably shouldn't base a worldview on what one person thinks?

That's not listening to gay man. That's listening to a gay man. Singular.

She, as a woman, doesn't need to listen to any men, gay, straight or bisexual, to understand whether something is misogynistic. Because it's not up to men to decide for women. Hope that helps.

@Shedbuilder

Not sure I can put this into words, but I'm wondering what all this escape into the despised other, as it were, is about? What's the psychology behind wanting to dress up as something else in order to demean and belittle it?

Most of you here are more clever than me. What am I missing?

I can't help but come back to the earliest transwomen I knew, fiercely angry with women who wouldn't do what we were told, absolutely desperate to be accepted as women while behaving like the worst kind of destructive, angry, woman-hating man. Lacking any vestige of respect or understanding of what it really is to be a woman.

Armchair psychology but... Unresolved mummy issues and object relations/attachment theory seems to be quite neat. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_relations_theory

The symbolic Function splitting of the symbolic maternal object into good (omni available) and bad (withheld) breast, leads to splitting into good feminine (self/feminine side/woman doing exactly what the ego needs) and bad feminine ( other/real women/women thwarting ego needs)

Gay or straight, It's always the mothers fault. Real or symbolic. Didn't you know?

WOMEN are homophobic too. Straight people are the oppressors of gay people.

Not just straight men. Women too.

And GAY MEN are often every bit as misogynistic as any other men. Not just straight men, gay men too. Men are the oppressors of women.

running through drag which is different from the panto dame/principal boy cross dressing to which it’s so often compared

But actually I think pantomime dames are pretty misogynistic.

@IntoAir

running through drag which is different from the panto dame/principal boy cross dressing to which it’s so often compared

But actually I think pantomime dames are pretty misogynistic.

I agree-although I can live in a world that contains Aunt Polly Tumble a lot more easily than one which lauds Anna Bortion and the others.

It’s a caricature of women. Overly exaggerated makeup, over the top hair and clothes.

Yes exactly ! Gay men love calling women “fish“. People act like gay men are about misogyny because they are gay. Well they’re still men and hold the exact same belief systems that all men do.

Above* misogyny

I agree-although I can live in a world that contains Aunt Polly Tumble a lot more easily than one which lauds Anna Bortion and the others
I feel similarly, though have a problematic fondness of panto from my childhood.
The stereotypes for laughs doesn't sit well with me, but then I also think panto as a genre is full of over the top stereotypes. When I was a child I remember Peter Pan being played by a woman. There's also innuendo in panto at times, but at the pantos I've been to it's not been anything that's left me particularly cross, though I'm under no illusions that some performances cross the line and that should be challenged.

The reason I find much of the drag form problematic is becoming it's predominantly focused on mocking women's bodies and women's sexuality.
The other issue that stands out is that if we had a discussion about panto as a genre then we would probably have an interesting discussion, people would agree and disagree, largely respectfully. Discussions about drag seem to quickly turn into telling women to shut up and centre men.

I've always found drag unpleasant and offensive. Most of it revolves explicitly around how repulsive, ugly or disgusting the parodied woman is, almost always the idea of the middle-aged or older woman. Even something like "Mrs Brown's Boys" - the whole thing is based that the middle-aged woman is unfeminine and ugly, so much so that she looks "mannish", old-fashioned and repulsive. It's a nasty legacy of the way cultures think about women who are past their "sexy", fertile years and therefore are nags, battleaxes, gossips, caricatures to parody rather than real human women. It's always had its roots in something nasty, sexist, and ageist just as much as sexist, too.

I agree-although I can live in a world that contains Aunt Polly Tumble a lot more easily than one which lauds Anna Bortion and the others.

I agree 100%

I also think one of the things that makes drag sting so much as a woman is the fact that it's actively praised for being progressive. At least pantomines are widely viewed as old fashioned and aren't constantly given a platform and shoe horned into mainstream TV.

"I also think one of the things that makes drag sting so much as a woman is the fact that it's actively praised for being progressive."

Good point. As if anything that re-enforces gender stereotypes is progressive.

Which brings me back to the parallels with the trans issues at the moment.

With trans I supported trans rights unquestioningly, then started asking questions... why is identifying as a woman different from identifying as black? Why do gender based rights trump sex based rights? Do you even acknowledge the potential for gender rights to impinge on long fought for sex based rights? What does identifying as a woman even mean?

My experience was that almost every response involved insults and accusations of bigotry. Trans activists actually attempting to answer pretty much never happened, and answering with a modicum of reason literally never happened.

I've never really thought much about drag before today... the more I have read on this thread the worse drag looks... partly because lots of women are making good points, but mainly because the "drag is not misogynistic" side of the argument has a 100 insults to zero well-reasoned arguments, and that's a pretty poor ratio that suggests there ain't ever gonna be a counter-argument coming.

Not read the full thread so I don't know if I'm repeating whats already been mentioned, although I find some aspects of drag to be disrespectful to women i.e. using the term 'fishy' and some of the drag names. I do think it can be an interesting, fun and funny form of performance art. I liked the earlier series of Drag Race and some of the performers are amazingly creative but I think its jumped the shark a bit now.

I do have a real issue with comparing drag to blackface. Blackface has a long and terrible history and was used by groups such as the KKK to cause serious harm to black people. They are not alike.