Drag Queens, are they outright offensive?

[Sophds]

Now I’ve never been the biggest feminist, I know that’s probably not the best way to characterise myself on a feminism board but I don’t want to quickly be dismissed as wrapped up in groupthink.

Read about todays protest at the tate modern against drag queen story hour and I’ve not read enough in to the story hour thing to have a strong informed opinion about that specifically it got me thinking aren’t drag queens just a misogynist version of black face?

I’ve never really thought too much about it and have never really had an issue with drag queens but now I just feel like something doesn’t sit right with me about men dressing up with hugely caricatured female features and caricatured stereotypical female behaviours that often cross over in to overt sexualisation.

I just feel like the entire idea of drag is to caricature and degrade women? Does anybody else feel like this?

Drag queens are not performing a homage to women.

Photo wouldn’t upload so here’s a link of pantomime dames. Are they offensive? Is this a healthy image of women to promote to children?

m.facebook.com/photo.php/?fbid=510233157762712

there's nothing whatsoever wrong with a man choosing a wonderfully flamboyant clothing style with all the sequins, feather boa and frills that he wants, that's liberating and wonderful.

but drag acts which caricature and poke fun at women using sexist stereotypes most certainly is the misogynist equivalent of blackface, and those who love it would certainly not see themselves as sexist in the same way that our grandparents who laughed and laughed with the blackface minstrels didn't see themselves as racist. to them it was just a bit of fun, but it was and is reinforcing the prejudice and stereotypes and perpetuating discrimination no matter how hilarious.

Drag is outright woman-face. It is grotesque, over-sexualised, and clearly meant to degrade women, reducing us to a pair of boobs or the like.

Why can't a real woman read to children? Why does it need to be someone who is clearly intent on magnifying certain aspects of female bodies and stereotyped emotions, characteristics etc?

Some are. These are usually tribute singers that also dress in drag to appear as a look alike. It’s very serious and they’re not mocking the female singers they are impersonating. Dolly Parton, Beyoncé, Jennifer Lopez, and Cher are popular ones.

‘No kids, it isn’t your loving parents who have your best interests at heart, it’s this childless man in a mini skirt who has taken it upon himself to liberate you from them and educate you about being queer and in touch with your sexuality. And if you don’t believe me, you’re a right wing extremist’

Drag queens are creepy as fuck and no normal man I know would for a moment entertain dressing up in a corset to ‘educate other people’s children’. Think about it, do you know any man who would do this? And if not why not?

As adult entertainment they used to be okay. Unfortunately, because there's inexplicably a massive thing for them now, most of them are really awful. I think a lot crave fame and success on stage but don't have the talent for it so are desperately trying to jump on the latest bandwagon whatever it may be.

As children's performers, definitely not. They are totally inappropriate. I think the only reason it's allowed to carry on is the audience is primarily middle-class. If people like me exposed our children to such highly sexualised shows, social services would intervene and it would be called child abuse.

@Onnabugeisha let me rephrase. Drag queens are not in general performing a lovely homage to women. Some are impersonating a specific artist, rather than parodying women in general.

😁the monkey! The photo that says it all 😁

I used to like them in gay clubs as entertainment.

The mainstreaming of queens has allowed a much greater degree of outward misogyny and cross dressing to be involved. Dislike that a lot

It's still woman face and entirely inappropriate no matter how good at singing they are.

I dont find drag queens offensive in general.
Several of my close friends do drag. Several of their female friends are drag kings.
All have great acts but have never performed half naked or provocatively in front of children. I think anyone who does that is weird and creepy, drag queen or otherwise.

Years and years and years ago, there used to be a drag artist that did the workies circuit, whose name i've never forgotten, right up until i started typing this post, lol.
He used to put on a fabulous show and for the door price of a quid, or two, it was a fantastic nights entertainment, my grandma never could be persuaded that he wasn't really a she.
I remember he had a large snake which would make an appearance, a boa constrictor, i think it was and he'd allow people to acquaint themselves with it after the show. He also had a golden retriever, that would wander around the club, collection tin in mouth raising funds for guide dogs for the blind.
Billy Raymond, that was his name, iirc.
He even got a mention in a more famous drag artists autobiography - Miss Lily Savage ( AKA Paul O' Grady )
I would no more put those two artistes on the same level as the skimpily dressed degenerates reading to kids in libraries, than the man in the moon. I just don't get the same vibes at all, certainly not from POG who many of us have watched over the years in his different programmes.
I'd like to have seen a Lily Savage show tbh, i bet it would have been a hoot.,

I hate drag queens. They're degrading to women and not appropriate around children. However I love Dame Edna, Hinge & Brackett, Danny la Rue etc, even Les Dawson and Monty Python doing female characters as they're talented and genuinely funny. I feel that old school 'female impersonators' and conedians come from a very different place than drag queens.

Dame Edna is GOLD. Bless Barry Humphries

Habreathmint what you described is drag. You like some styles of drag.

As a woman, I find the concept of drag queens offensive. They exploit female sexuality in a seedy, misogynistic, humiliating manner. I can't stand the concept.

Not sure how I feel about this as I don’t find drag queens/ pantomime dames offensive in general, but there a quite a number of situations such as some of those above which I find absolutely inappropriate but not sure I can always articulate why.

One thing that always comes to mind when reading this kind of thread in a memory from when I was little; my dad took us to a pantomime where the dame was played by a man and the male lead ( think it was Peter Pan) was played by a young woman. I asked my dad why they weren’t played by a woman and a man respectively.
He replied that it was ‘ because if a man falls over it’s funny but if a lady falls over it isn’t funny’.
this completely satisfied my 8 year old mind at the time, being to do with the amount of ‘respect’ that the audience owed one character or another. Not sure how this fits in here but thought it was a worthwhile take on the situation!

I used to love going to see drag acts but my views shifted as i realised what a misogynistic world we still live in and how much I'd normalised and internalised hatred towards women my whole life. Now I just see them as woman face, Paul o grady included (if an act centres around impersonating a woman for laughs, this is saying that women are there to be mocked).

Sometimes I feel like people don’t want to call something out because they don’t want to label someone as harmful. Someone can be harmful without realising what they are doing is harmful. I think that’s the case with this more broadly.

In regards to story time the first of these weird incidences I’ve seen is on this thread and don’t want to let that cloud my judgement against a subsection of individuals because the truth of it is where there’s men (not all men and yes some women I know) there tends to be issues.

Like I said my issue has been with the piss takey nature of it all.

I could not agree more OP. I recently raised this very point with a group of friends (who would normally be spot on re any kind of cultural appropriation etc) and none of them had much of a view on it, which amazed me. I can't see how drag queens are in any way acceptable.

I've never like drag, and that includes Les Dawson and the old school womanface.

Every single instance is a man identifying a stereotype and exploiting it.

For Les Dawson it was the gossipy older woman talking to a friend. Didn't he do a lot of mother in law jokes too? Haha let's all laugh at older women.

Sexist misogynistic bullshit.

It’s the make up I find scary. It’s violent and aggressive somehow.

OP - this topic has been discussed many times on here, if you do a search, you’ll find many threads. It’s nothing new to have an issue with drag, i.e. ‘woman face’.

As for ‘homage’…. Honestly, it’s as if people think, ‘if we say it’s a compliment, women will be all flattered, stop caring, and shut up about it’.

How silly do some people think women are?

I hate The Reading Agency that runs DQST for libraries around the country. They get million of pounds from the government to run these things.