Drag Shows, Panto & Hard Line Stances

[SpicyMoth]

I've seen a lot of media reporting essentially insinuating that there was a lot of anti-trans rhetoric leading up to the shooting, specifically referencing legislation against "child friendly" drag shows that very much are not child friendly.

And I can't help but wonder what the hell happened to Pantomime?
I know it's a very British thing so might not translate to the States particularly well, but this seems like such an easy compromise to me and genuinely child friendly?

Do you think compromise on things like this are even possible?

Is there a way for us to be heard without being so blunt, calling all TW men or AGP's as a blanket statement for example? It just seems so harsh.
I love Posie to bits because she's actually managing to get opposing views heard, but I'd be lying if I said there haven't been times were I thought she could've said something with a bit more tact.
I respect why being blunt, and honest and truthful, is very much needed - but sometimes I just can't help but be reminded of the saying "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar."

As I said, you might see it as mocking.
I don't.
And explained why.

so women are allowed to be mocked and degraded in the name if “entertainment” but no other group is? Why @CremeEggQueen ? I’m just trying to understand why one group of people are allowed to be mocked and ridiculed but others not?

Which post is the one where you explain why one is and the other isn’t? Thanks

I’m a free speech absolutist so my own opinion is irrelevant, as far as I’m concerned people have the right to be offensive and the right to be offended.

Lots of posters on here find female impersonators to be as offensive as blackface, hence ‘womanface’.

You don’t agree.

So why is your opinion more important than theirs?

FWIW I reckon drag will peak and die out naturally and eventually we’ll look back in horror at how an ultra misogynistic form of drag performance became ubiquitous in the early 2020s.

Are you cross posting or not actually reading what I'm posting?!
I've answered several times now and told you why I don't see it as offensive.
You do.
Ok.

what Is not mocking and offensive about reducing a group of people to offensive stereotypes? Calling women “fish” is acceptable to you @CremeEggQueen ?

Again for anyone who doesn't seem to have seen why I dont think it's offensive.

Sorry, I’m just trying to understand your logic. It’s ok to mock women but no other protected group but you haven’t said why? You’ve said you’re against blackface but surely that is also just people dressing up in the name of entertainment? What is do offensively you about blackface that is acceptable to you in womanface?

Thank you. I saw that post, but I don’t think it really explains the clear distinction you are seeing.

Its a bit snippy that you suggest only insecure women would disagree with you.

I don't get how anyone can look at the ugly sisters, window twanky etc and see anything but sexism that draws humour out of the fact that older women are seen as sexually undesirable yet want attention from men and are overtly sexual and.desperate.

I don't want to ban it. I'd like people to have the sense to see it for what it is and it to naturally fall out of favour. It'd show growth away from sexism.

I'd like entertainment for children to actually put children's wants and needs first over adult entertainment. Jokes for adults can be done without a man in drag. See Disney and the Simpsons for examples of clever subtle adult humour. Comedy tits are not needed to make something funny and neither does a penis.

I know that's obviously unlikely seeing as we are living in a patriarchal society so recessive they think there's an argument for a male to be referred to as she because they wear pink leggings after partaking in a bit of rape.

All those arguing for the 'tradition' of panto' seem to be forgetting that the tradition of a female lead has been largely dropped. Funny that.

And yes, men have played women for centuries. That's kind of the point. It was due to absolute sexism that there's a tradition of male actors playing females because women weren't allowed the same freedom as men. It actually took the ruler (King Charles) to have a vested interest in letting women on stage (his mistress was an actress) to get women on the stage playing women.

It stuck because it's better. It's much more authentic and any crossdressing, Mrs Brown's Boys, Lily Savage always derives humour from the fact these are the 'wrong sort' of women. The old ones, the promiscuous ones, the unattractive ones. It's the Victorian New Woman, anti feminist trope on steroids. Sometimes the men doing it are aware of that on a conscious level. Sometimes not. But if you examine it within the context and history it's born from how can you conclude anything but.

And the history of gay men used it as an outlet is rubbish too, as that is very clearly men punching down. Men who have zero interest in women historically, though due to science are showing an interest in their uteruses and ovaries but not much else.

Drag really needs to get in the bin and people should have the intelligence to put it there voluntarily rather than being forced to.

There is no ‘why’ in your post!

they just have a persona

They have a female persona. Which given the actor is, in fact, a man, unavoidably means engaging a whole load of cultural signifiers to communicate (1) this character is female not male, and (2) what sort of female she is.

At the "just a bit clueless" end of the scale that might be "an Irish Mammy". At the "fuck me, you really hate women don't you?" end it's the hyper sexalised cum slut with the "funny" edgy double entendre for a name and the degrading jokes about holes.

As I said in my earlier post, while drag can certainly be seen as challenging constricting gender roles and heteronormality for men, it is still a product created within a sexist culture and reproduces that sexism rather than challenging it.

I see it as a manifestation of the same unconscious (on a personal level) an structural (on a societal level) sexism within art where female bodies and lives are seen as the raw material for male artists to make art about...the cultural narrative of womanhood is produced by men, and women's value is in what they enable men to say not what they may say themselves.

But you haven't said what you think you've said, despite posting several times that you have. People are reading your posts, you've just worded them in way that is unclear.

I don't understand how what you wrote here
"I see panto dames and drag as performance, panto dames are acting, drag acts dont see anything wrong with people expressing their selves via clothes and make up.
You'd think anyone who is "GC" would be fine with drag - I mean, it's not like they usually go around saying they are literally a woman, which people usually have a problem with."

is different to
"I see blackface as performance, blackface performers are acting, blackface performers dont see anything wrong with people expressing their selves via clothes and make up.
You'd think anyone who is "antiracist" would be fine with blackface - I mean, it's not like they usually go around saying they are literally a black person, which people usually have a problem with."

I mean, apart from the obvious. You haven't said why you think the first is ok and the second (presumably) not - unless you think both are fine? Can you see what people are asking you to explain now?

Little Britain wasn't mocking a disabled person, so much as a weird relationship with someone pretending to be disabled.

I’m struggling with the repeated reference to racism in order to defend what is another form of bigotry.

Telling people what they can/cannot wear, how they are allowed to express themselves, perform or exist is … extremist. It’s anti feminist and frankly bonkers.

I’m amazed those attitudes appear to be so normalised on these threads.

I agree.
I just don't see it as the same.

Telling people what they can/cannot wear, how they are allowed to express themselves, perform or exist is … extremist. It’s anti feminist and frankly bonkers
Agree. Although we're obviously never going to agree with those who feel they're being made fun of
We clearly all have different outlooks as I see it as the same as you.

Part of the confusing here might be that the meaning of "blackface" has changed pretty significantly in recent years.

At one time it means a pretty specific kind of depiction that you would see in a minstrel show, and maybe some things closely related to that, like golliwogs. But it did not refer to serious portrayals by actors, even serious comedy portrayals. Or the kinds of things you see in sketch comedy or acting troupes where a limited number of people play all the roles.

People often use the term now for all of those things, but if someone is still using it in a more limited way they probably aren't going to equate blackface and any instance of a male playing a comedic female role.

Telling people what they can/cannot wear, how they are allowed to express themselves, perform or exist is … extremist. It’s anti feminist and frankly bonkers.

I’m amazed those attitudes appear to be so normalised on these threads.

I suspect that's because you've not thought about it properly.

It's very simple.

To dress, perform, express oneself or exist "as a woman" implicitly assumes there is a specific way which women do these things. Drag reproduces reductive assumptions society has about what women can/cannot wear, how they are allowed to express themselves, perform or exist.

While your analysis may currently stop at "if someone wants to do something It's bigoted to challenge them", looked at through a wider lens, drag is serving the Patriarchy by perpetuating bigoted and reductive concepts of womanhood.

So whether or not one believes in actively banning drag, certainly anyone who believes being a woman is more than outmoded stereotypes, or that women should be telling their own stories rather than men telling made-up women's stories, should certainly be challenging drag supporters why they think it's ok to make entertainment out of mimicking harmful or reductive tropes about a marginalised group.

@SquirreNutkinsTail
Total agreement on the analysis about what is wrong with womanface.
I can believe that for some drag artists/female impersonators personally, the intention is not to mock but to pay homage. But women's position in society makes it impossible for a grotesque parody not to be offensive. That does not apply to an actor playing a man disguised as a woman as in Mrs Doubtfire, IMO. There may be other issues with that portrayal (I was very young when I saw it and can barely remember it) but I don't think it is offensive in itself.

for a man* presenting a grotesque parody...

Mrs Doubtfire is an interesting one. Williams plays her with love, and that's why there's a heartwarming feel to.the story. If you read the original book, the character has a vein of nastiness much more obvious that was toned down for screen.

I think it's still there though. Jokes laughing at the bus driver for fancying her (old women are sexually unattractive.) The joke about his sister being very ugly made by a social worker. The humour around the fact a man is doing domestic jobs(assigned to women normally of course, despite the woman in the film being the professional breadwinner and the husband a failed hobby jobist)
In the context of the nineties I believe you can miss the inherent sexism in it because you can view these through a 'laughing at crossdressing and how people can be deceived' lens. The pre genderism stance of men in dresses are funny because they are unconvincing stance. I do think at the core of that is the 'what a woman should be' trope and is therefore sexist.
But I do agree the sexism is less obvious than modern interpretations. Personally, I believe that's a reflection of.how.society as a whole has got more sexist. Sexism was there as an undercurrent in the nineties. It's allowed free reign and been written into the law since 2004 though.
I appreciate the way I look at the film has been influenced by the books original themes though and that isn't as obvious from the film's.
I imagine Williams would have been horrified by the thought it was a sexist portrayal. In the context of the whole history of sexism and not just the vacuum of the brief moment in history of that decade though, I think it is.
But again, it does tell us something about the attitudes of the time and how they'd improved from the previous decades a bit that the misogyny is played down. Still there though. You only have to look at other films of the time like Ace Venturer where women are merely sexual conquests and crossdressing laughed at because only mental people would dress as women because they are lesser to see misogyny was still underlying these men playing women.

Clearly, I must watch Mrs Doubtfire again. I only remember bits with the kids.
It does seem that it is a question of relative sexism/misogyny.

I believe the genderists must hate Doubtfire though. Seeing as the entire premise is that men will dress up as women for reasons other than a gendered spirit (more nefarious in the book and toned down for the film) and that men cannot be attractive when doing an impersonation of a woman.

It's one of those films as a feminist I can pick out the many,any misogynistic elements(the worst one being the 'woman having a career=womanning wrong' trope. Yet because William's was talented and engaging it makes it still watchable for me. It's testimony to his appeal that he could make a character dressing up as a woman to stalk his family and ex wife family friendly.
I really do sound like a hardcore Williams fan here and I am not sure I am..just appreciate anyone else playing the role would find it difficult to make it such a beloved character. Good casting imo.

DQSH is a commercial product and it and its offshoots speculate in both the popularity among children and parents of rupaul’s drag race, schools and libraries’ diversity and inclusion politics, and the general #bekind attitude of women working in the culture sector.

widow Twanky will never be an acceptable compromise because panto hasn’t got anything to do with those things.

Widow Twanky the humour largely runs off the fact that men don't make convincing women.
Ru Paul runs off the presumption that men 'make.better women than women'.
So no,.I don't think the genderists would consider panto a 'compromise' as it kind of operates in the opposite direction to queer theory.
Both sexist, just in different ways though. Twanky is a product of a time where women knew their place as sex and domestic servants. Mainstream drag of a time where women need to be 'put back in their place' having stepped away from those spheres.