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.

Amy Schumar should visit her GP if her genitals smell - what you say she is describing is neither normal nor healthy.

I wonder if Plan would consider it " art" if someone parodied being disabled for laughs, just because some disabled stand up performers might use their disability in their acts? If the answer is no, then there is also no place for drag in a society which at least pretends to treat women with respect.

The fact is that Amy Schumer’s comments are unusual in that people are identifying one particular female who made unfunny jokes about her vagina. It’s not common practice that groups of women on tv or the stage routinely ridicule women’s vaginas and call them fishy. It is not something that generally women do in public to raise laughs.

It is something that men who dress up as women do. Pointing to Amy Schumer as a reason to vindicate isn’t a very strong argument.

I have always found drag uncomfortable to watch and it is only as I’ve got older that I’ve started to realise why. That it’s belittling and misogynistic. Even as a child I found the pantomime dames a little awkward to laugh along with. I distinctly remember that - and this is ‘my truth’ so it must be valid!

if anything even worse than a man doing it

On what planet is it worse for AS to joke about her own vagina than for a man to do it? Is it because you hold women to a much higher standard than men? 🤔

OF COURSE it's worse for an oppressor to make derogatory jokes about the people they oppress than for one of the oppressed to make a joke about themselves.

What on Earth is your explanation for thinking otherwise?

@aSofaNearYou

if anything even worse than a man doing it

On what planet is it worse for AS to joke about her own vagina than for a man to do it? Is it because you hold women to a much higher standard than men? 🤔

OF COURSE it's worse for an oppressor to make derogatory jokes about the people they oppress than for one of the oppressed to make a joke about themselves.

What on Earth is your explanation for thinking otherwise?

You’re spot on. We expect better of females and accept abuse from males. It’s why drag is celebrated yet any other form of mocking, dehumanising, “joking” of an oppressed group by the oppressor group is not tolerated. We are simply support humans. Here to be kind.

Amy Schumer making unfunny "jokes" about smelly vaginas- absolutely not fine, if anything even worse than a man doing it.

What the fuck? How is it worse than a man doing it? It's her vagina, she can make jokes about it if she wants - and you think it would be better if a man made jokes about her vagina for her instead? What?!

Jesus Christ, can you imagine the reaction if Amy Schumer started making jokes about gay men's smelly genitals? Do you think people would be saying 'well, better her to make those jokes than gay men themselves'....

Is it that you don’t think men should make vagina jokes? Or no one should? And what about dick jokes? Women make those all the time regarding size, crooked or not, ugly, dangly ballsacks, etc. Is that for men only to joke about and women should stop? Or should we all just make joking about genitals a no go zone and stick to jokes about farts.

Women discussing their vaginas or men discussing their penises are not the same as a entire genre of male performers feeling that it is ok to make vile generalizations about females and their genitals.

if men in drag didn’t make jokes about vaginas, would that make it ok?

If they also stopped the parodying of females. If they dropped the offensive names. If they never again parodied female bodily functions/health again, including taking the option of terminating a pregnancy. That would be a start.

There is no way that drag’s misogynistic side can be ignored. There is no way that drag’s misogynistic side can be considered ‘ok’. It is about the class of people who oppress woman and the power differential.

Gay males can most certainly hold misogynistic attitudes, and can still abuse all types of female’s labour,

The fact is that Amy Schumer’s comments are unusual in that people are identifying one particular female who made unfunny jokes about her vagina. It’s not common practice that groups of women on tv or the stage routinely ridicule women’s vaginas and call them fishy. It is not something that generally women do in public to raise laughs.

No but the number of times I’ve heard women make jokes about male genitalia is huge so don’t pretend that doesn’t happen or isn’t a thing. There have been loads of kiss and tell stories about how small some male celebrity’s penis was and how shit he was in bed.

Yes, it’s misogynistic for men to laugh about women having smelly genitals. It absolutely is. I still don’t think that it’s akin to blackface but that aspect of it is misogynistic. But to make out that women don’t make cruel jokes about men’s genitals is beyond disingenuous. It’s extremely common and almost socially acceptable to do so.

@Interestedparty132

The fact is that Amy Schumer’s comments are unusual in that people are identifying one particular female who made unfunny jokes about her vagina. It’s not common practice that groups of women on tv or the stage routinely ridicule women’s vaginas and call them fishy. It is not something that generally women do in public to raise laughs.

No but the number of times I’ve heard women make jokes about male genitalia is huge so don’t pretend that doesn’t happen or isn’t a thing. There have been loads of kiss and tell stories about how small some male celebrity’s penis was and how shit he was in bed.

Yes, it’s misogynistic for men to laugh about women having smelly genitals. It absolutely is. I still don’t think that it’s akin to blackface but that aspect of it is misogynistic. But to make out that women don’t make cruel jokes about men’s genitals is beyond disingenuous. It’s extremely common and almost socially acceptable to do so.

Men are the oppressive class. That is why they shouldn’t make jokes about women.

Similarly, black comedians make fun of white people but white people (the oppressive class) cannot make jokes about black (the oppressed class) stereotypes.

Do you not understand the imbalance of power?

It also has to do with which group holds power over the other group. And context.

But again, there is never any context that a drag performer who is male that makes the names, the derogatory portrayals of females, the derogatory portrayals of female bodies and female opression, ok.

As well as it being very different for an oppressor to make these jokes about the oppressed than the other way around, I don't think it's all that common for women to make derogatory jokes about men's genitalia, certainly not much more specifically than "big" or "small". Most of the female comics I can think of mock themselves more than they mock men, take of that what you will. There is no established genre just for imitating men, either.

Yes, it’s misogynistic for men to laugh about women having smelly genitals. It absolutely is. I still don’t think that it’s akin to blackface but that aspect of it is misogynistic. But to make out that women don’t make cruel jokes about men’s genitals is beyond disingenuous. It’s extremely common and almost socially acceptable to do so.

Are men a group which has suffered violence, discrimination etc by another more powerful group? Do the women mocking men dress up as horrible parodies of men while doing so? If the answer to these questions is no then the mocking of men by some women cannot be compared to drag.
Drag is part of the oppressing group punching down at a more vulnerable group. The fact that some drag artistes may be gay is totally irrelevant. Just because you may be bullied by a stronger group does not excuse your bullying of an even weaker group. Drag should have no place in the 21st Century.

Drag is part of the oppressing group punching down at a more vulnerable group. The fact that some drag artistes may be gay is totally irrelevant. Just because you may be bullied by a stronger group does not excuse your bullying of an even weaker group.

It does seem that this has been said repeatedly throughout this thread, and yet, it is simply being ignored. I keep wondering what will next be used to excuse it.

I wonder how much of drag is actually intentionally malicious towards women and how much is simply bad comedy. Drag, having come out of the gay clubs, didn't used to have to try to appeal to a wider audience, it wasn't to be consumed by women. It was mainly made by and for gay men, and existed to reaffirm a loud and proud gay identity as much as anything else, and had a ready made supportive audience. It's main aim wasn't to compete with other comedians on the circuit in terms of its content - I'm speaking in general about all this, of course, there will be exceptions. Now drag has moved into the mainstream, although the costumes are elaborate the content still seems to have the amateurish quality that you'd find down the local gay club. Professional comedians have to work the circuit performing night after night to test their material, and it takes years to hone their act. They get to know what works and what goes down like a lead balloon, by contrast drag acts are mainly performing to supportive niche audience and don't get to hone their comedy skills in the same way. I therefore think that a lot of drag is misogynistic, sometimes intentionally, sometimes by simply not considering women as the audience, and sometimes just by being bad comedy. In any case, I'm not a fan in general, but then how many comedians are any good anyway? There are very few I'm a fan of, and so long as drag gets a free pass from any kind of criticism then it will remain misogynistic unfunny crap.

I wonder how much of drag is actually intentionally malicious towards women and how much is simply bad comedy. Drag, having come out of the gay clubs, didn't used to have to try to appeal to a wider audience, it wasn't to be consumed by women.

All of it is intentionally misogynistic. That fact that it was performed in gay clubs simply meant that that misogyny was allowed to develop and no women were present to hold them accountable. They built a culture where women were the accepted as less than human and therefore ok to abuse. If it made gay men feel better about themselves they were doing this through the exploitation of women who were classed as inferior.

Not all early drag was comedy though. Also, some gay clubs included women and some of these impersonated men.

Tibtom "That fact that it was performed in gay clubs simply meant that that misogyny was allowed to develop and no women were present to hold them accountable."
I agree with this. I also think that any criticism of drag by women would be met with a vicious response from gay men, which is really a sign of entitlement. For me though, I'm not someone who likes censorship, so I'm trying to think if there's a way that drag could be more acceptable by not being so misogynistic. I never had problems with some of the older, mainstream drag acts like Dame Edna, Pauline Calf and Lily Savage, for example, but then these are actual comedians, so I think therein lies the difference: they actually consider the response of women in their audience when homing their material.

*honing

@Helleofabore

Of course there is a difference between someone discussing their own genitals in comedy and a group of people parodying women and making jokes about women’s genitals.

A woman making poor taste jokes about her body is not the same as a person from a group of people belonging to the sex class that oppress women making derogatory jokes about women’s genitals.

In your opinion. I don't want people like Schumer peddling nonsense about smelly vaginas and I don't like apologists making feeble excuses for such nonsense.

In your opinion. I don't want people like Schumer peddling nonsense about smelly vaginas and I don't like apologists making feeble excuses for such nonsense.

I don't like male apologists detracting from a huge, mainstream movement by an oppressive group of people, in order to focus on one woman making similar jokes.

Interestingly, turning the jokes your oppressor makes about you into a caricature to get back at them is exactly the defence that is given for what drag acts do. And yet when Schumer does it, even though she's specifically talking about herself, you see it as unacceptable.

And even more bizarrely, you see it as worse.

It's interesting to me that Victoria Wood (who I love) is popular with gay men, who seem to like the campness and the downtrodden or trashy female characters. Victoria Wood was very much a woman's woman and may not have necessarily written for a female audience, but certainly wrote strong female characters and blew the lid off the reality of everyday life for ordinary women. I sometimes see drag attempting to recreate these kind of characters, but getting it horribly wrong and ending up being completely misogynistic. Why is that - because they're laughing at us and not with us? Drag characters often end up simply being grotesque rather than having the warmth of Victoria Wood's characters, which is surely something to do with the way these men see us, as something grotesque rather than to be empathised with.

@334bu

I wonder if Plan would consider it " art" if someone parodied being disabled for laughs, just because some disabled stand up performers might use their disability in their acts? If the answer is no, then there is also no place for drag in a society which at least pretends to treat women with respect.

This ^^

@Letsgetreadytocrumble

Amy Schumer making unfunny "jokes" about smelly vaginas- absolutely not fine, if anything even worse than a man doing it.

What the fuck? How is it worse than a man doing it? It's her vagina, she can make jokes about it if she wants - and you think it would be better if a man made jokes about her vagina for her instead? What?!

Jesus Christ, can you imagine the reaction if Amy Schumer started making jokes about gay men's smelly genitals? Do you think people would be saying 'well, better her to make those jokes than gay men themselves'....

Another apologist. Is it beyond your comprehension to see she is validating men who say this or even worse, believe it? Well obviously it is.

Oh and by the way I've no ides what your last paragraph is supposed to mean. It seems another attempt to create a strawman.

To make it clear I am as unimpressed by one of the "oppressed class" doing this as one of the "oppressor class" . I'm equally unimpressed by members of the ^oppressed class" making feeble excuses for such behaviour.

@aSofaNearYou

And even more bizarrely, you see it as worse.

If that's to me, yes. Why should women complain about drag artists talking about fish - here's this idiotic woman validating them.