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."

People keep asking because you don’t answer with a ‘why’ only with a ‘what’.

You just repeat WHAT you think (that drag isn’t offensive but that minstrel shows are) but you’ve never explained a rationale for WHY you think drag is different.

Both minstrel shows and (current day, Ru Paul esque) drag performers feature an oppressor group dressing up as an oppressed group and making jokes at the oppressed groups expense.

The axis of oppression are race, sex and class.

If you believe that minstrel shows are unacceptable due to the history of white people oppressing black people surely you can also see that the history of men oppressing women makes drag similarly unacceptable?

Drag queens are marginalised? Fuck me, I've heard it all now!

Oh yes. Not allowing them to mock women Is bigotry don’t you know. Next they’ll be demanding drag rights. The right to cheap makeup and reduced prices on size 10 stilettos

How quickly did you resort to personal attacks?

just because you cannot recognise misogyny when it is right there in front of you. That is your issue to deal with.

Coming onto a feminist board and telling women who do recognise misogyny that they are extreme and effectively anti-feminist is not unusual. And yet, you have not countered anything presented and then resorted to attack.

You do seem to lack self awareness to recognise the hypocrisy of posting on a feminist board.

Drag Queens are marginalised?

Oh no they're not!!!

Sorry, I'm getting them confused with panto now. 😅😅

I am waiting to hear how choosing names like Anna Bortion, Miss Carriage, and I am happy to create a list of others are NOT mocking women’s oppression.

I am waiting to hear how using the word ‘fishy’ referring to the smell of a vagina is NOT mocking women and their body.

I am waiting to hear how simulating lap dancing dressed as a woman is not mocking women, many of whom turn to do those roles due to desperation.

There is very clearly a disconnect here. Males were allowed to due this for decades as ‘drag queens’ and it was never appropriate.

I am waiting to hear if it’s only women who aren’t allowed to make a comparison between blackface and womanface or if black men aren’t allowed to make the comparison either?

Because lots of black men absolutely do make the comparison.

I may be wrong, but I think perhaps your explanation of why isn't landing particularly well, is because your reasoning can also be used by people who have done black face, ie it's just clothes, makeup and acting.
That's why blackface keeps being brought up.
Because in it's very essence blackface is also clothes, makeup and acting.

If I'm being honest, I am not 100% comfortable with the term "woman face", it does sound ridiculous and almost in the same vein of "super straight" if you remember that trend a while ago? (Though I can also fully see why super straight became a thing, even if it does sound stupid)
But I also recognise there is a degree to which women are being stereotyped in order to portray things such as drag acts & panto.

• Overtly sexual
• Jokes that mock women & their anatomy, or overly vulgar
• Acting over the top feminine/stereotypically
• "Barbie/Bratz" esque

I can't think of a single drag queen that dresses even mildly like most actual women do, even for a night out at a club. It's hammed up to the nth degree, the same way that blackface is.

Before making this thread that wasn't actually something that had occurred to me.
In my mind it was very much "just acting", or "You do you, live your life as long as it doesn't impact anyone else", etc.
But in reality it's pushing stereotypes in the same sort of way that black face does.

That's not to say that all of it's bad either, as an example I'd consider something like The Rocky Horror Picture show to be a fairly good example of genuinely just dressing/being how you want.
At least my interpretation of RHPS is there's no suggestion of "Playing a woman" really.. well.. at all?
It's a man crossdressing, alien arguably. Not pretending to be a woman, not woman face, just makeup in general, no mocking women as far as I can remember.
Perhaps with the exception of the song "Wise Up Janet Weiss", but I feel you can attribute this more to the plot rather than like.. Actual overt sexism?
The character is a villain after all, and sex (arguably r*pe) stuff happened with both Brad & Janet.
It's not unique to men to criticise women sexually. Women criticise men sexually all the time.
Janet overtly sexualises Rocky in the movie to an equal extent imo w/ "Touch Me", and that's also why Frank even breaks in to "Wise Up" to begin with, Janet shagged his man basically.

I'm happy to be convinced otherwise, as I may not have thought this through enough and may be taking the plot too much at face value.
I may also be a bit biased because I love Tim Curry and RHPS has a special place in my heart ;o;
Lmk if you think what I said is stupid please <3 :')

I’ve not really thought about RHPS in GC terms in any in-depth way (I don’t see the point in being overly critical of art that was made in a different cultural climate and RHPS is older than me and I’m a middle aged mother of 3 😆) but I have always been fond of it and the creator has made some pretty GC comments in the not too distant past.

It seems to me that the plot of RHPS of 1975 fits pretty well with Richard O’Briens’ state opinions.

There are no drag characters in RHPS, the cross dressing is all grounded in the material reality of sexed bodies and the only pretence is aliens masquerading as humans.

First two screen shots are from Pink News in 2016 and the next two are from the Guardian in 2020.

Obvs I think the 70/30 thing is a bit silly but RoB is saying that he thinks of himself as 70/30 M/F not that he is 70/30 M/F and he doesn’t enforce this slightly silly idea (imo) of himself on anyone else by encroaching on spaces, services or sports for women, nor does he shore up negative stereotypes about female people - IIRC the female characters in RHPS exhibit a pretty full spectrum of human behaviour.

RoB is an eccentric, GNC male with a flamboyant sense of dress and I think that’s a pretty cool way to be.

I'm not sure that this is as simple as people would like it to be.

If depicting a person who is not of the same kind as the performer is inherently offensive, then that pretty much means all acting is impossible. You get the kind of situation where people are saying only gay men can play a gay man. A Native American actor couldn't take a role playing someone of Asian descent. If you want a film about a guy who weighs 500 lbs, you need to find an actor that is also 500 lbs.

It's not common to see a coherent explanation of which characteristics it's ok for actors to pretend about, and which it isn't, and why some make the cut and others don't.

If the issue is the content of the performance, it's much easier to say particular performances are offensive or not. But that doesn't lend itself to a blanket condemnation of a particular type of performance unless that element is necessarily present, or at least always present in fact.

I think you can make a very strong argument that drag - that is, gay men dressed as a kind of hyper-woman - is always, content wise, inappropriate for children, and that is inherent to the form which is always about the intersection of gender presentation and male same sex desire. Which to me is a strong reason to say it should never be in schools and libraries.

Oh - I meant to say - I think that's why RHPS doesn't have such a nasty vibe. It's not in the content. It's playing with ideas around gender presentation and what is sexually alluring, but not in a way that seems especially nasty to any one group of people. To some extent it pokes fun at sexual desire itself.

@DemiColon I think that you are confusing acting with caricature.

I was thinking earlier about what’s left without the costumes.

Some of the songs written for the minstrel shows are still played today. Most of us will have heard of at least one or two, even in the U.K. The songs seem old fashioned, for sure, but nonetheless they have stood the test of time when uncoupled from the costumes.

Lily Savage without the costume was the much loved Paul O’Grady - the jokes barely changed (I watched some footage of him last night where he says he often felt frustrated on his teatime show because he’d be interviewing a celebrity guest, have a great gag pop into his head and have to stifle it because it wasn’t suitable for a family audience 😆)

What would be left of an average Drag Race style queen without the costume? A bit of a lip syncing and some misogynistic jokes?

I agree that I wouldn’t want drag completely banned though, partly because I’m a big believer in free speech and partly because the arts would be very boring if only socially acceptable characters and plot lines were permitted.
eg there is a bit in Mad Men where Roger does Blackface for a party. The plotline is that Roger is behaving like a shitty person, not that it’s ok to dress up as a crude, unflattering caricature of a black man. A blanket ban on all depictions of blackface would mean no scenes like that could be made.

Some kinds of acting are composed in large part of caricature, sketch comedy for example. It's all shorthand, you have these recognizable "types" of all of the roles, they aren't in depth developed roles, or older types of theater with certain roles appearing again and again. Sometimes for comic effect, or to skewer certain people or ideas or behaviours.

I think the relevant difference is between depictions that are well done, and those that aren't. Bad comedy and social criticism always falls flat, at best, and is often rather offensive and stupid.

Have you actually spoken to any black women about drag?
😂😂😂

Black women are often MORE socially conservative and LESS tolerant of misogynistic performance than white women.
Give it a rest - you won’t find many Black women supporting your transphobic cause under the banner of feminism. Black women are, for the most part, able to spot bigotry a mile away.

Yes, I think there is a lot of drag that in terms of performance, is just pretty shitty. It's really at the level of strippers, or sometimes it's like an ok karaoke performance, or amateur dance performance.

But I find most amateur comedy events, or a lot of amateur dance events, like that too. Many seem to be filled with people that just aren't that great, and sometimes there is a tendency to try and be edgy to make up for it.

I see the context of drag is males who are sexually attracted to other males, who in many cases are sexually attracted to women. For most heterosexual people, there is a kind of congruence between typical gender presentation, your own body, and what you desire. Ultimately you grow into your own relation to all of those things which is usually not at the stereotype level.

It's more complicated when socially conditions sexual signals and your sexual interests seem to be at cross-purposes. For me drag is a performance where male people take on what are normally considered attractive stereotypes of feminine sexuality, but in a deeply masculinized way. I always find it odd that drag has been sucked into gender ideology because it seems like it depends so much on a clear sense of the difference between sex and culturally mediated sexual presentation.

But mainly it is going to be a thing that is of interest to gay men, and doesn't make much sense if it's universalized. So I'm not really an audience that is going to appreciate it unless you are talking maybe about the most amazing examples that transcend their origins.

I appreciate your thought provoking reply, @FlirtsWithRhinos.

That’ll be a no then.

Black women are, for the most part, able to spot bigotry a mile away.
Obviously not speaking for everyone here, just more musing aloud - bigotry "arguments" whether it be racism, homophobia or transphobia - they all tend to be the same.
Right down to the ",discussion" tactics
So yes if people recognise bigotry they should be able to see it in all forms.
Else be a hypocrite

I read that post with the laughing emojis to "have you ever spoken to a black woman about drag?" as not worthy of a response so laugh emojied instead as they either do know people who are black or are more likely black themselves?
Happy to be corrected though if not

Thanks so so much for the article/s!
Genuinely so relieved to see that O'Brian seems to be one of the sane ones!

Yes, absolutely. For me, as a female person my experience of sexism on both the up front and personal level and on the deeply structural within culture and society level made me also aware of society's inbuilt structural racism and homophobia (though I genuinely think the latter has lessened (not gone, but lessened) in my lifetime at least as far as acceptance of gay men goes.)

It is exactly that experience which makes it very clear to me there is a huge gap between the genuine bigotry of people who want to police, attack, silence and shame people for not conforming to restrictive gender norms about how each sex should dress, behave and think, and the false accusation of "bigotry" laid against people who accept, even welcome people rejecting restrictive gender norms but don't think adopting a cross-gender identity should be considered equivalent to actually being a different sex.

Because believing that female people have a right to keep their historic name and to speak about their experiences under that name, and that single sex provisions exist for good reasons that have nothing to do with gender identity and will be compromised if opened up to the opposite sex because of gender identity is not bigotry. Saying "No" to trans women when saying "Yes" will jeopardise, marginalise or disempower female people is not bigotry.

So yes if people recognise bigotry they should be able to see it in all forms.
Else be a hypocrite

yes I would agree with this

so anyone who is very hot on what they consider to be transphobia for example shouldn’t really be making racist comments

i would imagine the same for agism, sexism, homophobia etc…..do you envisage it covering those as well?

Yes they are. We can tell why it's degrading just by seeing that as soon as a male dons fake breasts and dresses up in overstated clothes, make up, hair it is automatically 'funny'. This is because we are culturally programmed to view males as superior so them dressing up as women is amusing because they are ridiculing themselves, because women are ridiculous. Women laugh because of internalised misogyny and fear of appearing out of kilter or not getting the joke, social pressure.

Everyone is a hypocrite. The worst are those who think they aren't.

It's why we cancel historic figures though. Our modern narrative is very simplistic and babyfied - good vs evil - nazis and fascists vs 'the right side of history'. Most campaigners for progress and human rights throughout history had their blind spots of racism, sexism, ableism, xenophobia etc.