Christian writer on drag: 'men portraying women as a sex clowns'

[Parisite]

'There should be no place in any Christian tradition for drag... men portraying women as a sex clowns is an act of cruelty, and the opposite of progressive.'

Christian writer on drag in the Olympics opening ceremony, and the rise of the drag queen as a kind of redemptive hero in progressive Christianity.

www.flaneurnotes.com/post/dragging-the-seine

Thanks for this article, it'll help me express my feelings about drag more simply and clearly. I'll be sharing it.
I can't help but compare this writer with another being discussed recently.

I think the wholesale acceptance of gender ideology by the Irish media is also a legacy of people being trained to be conformist when young. Not a universal Irish Catholic experience btw, some of us were raised to be stroppy and argue things out. I wonder is it a class thing? Mercy girls and Brothers boys fighting back back against authority, Sacred Heart and Spiritan pupils basking in a sense of effortless social superiority because they toe the line.

Excellent article - thank you, OP.

The Irish have exchanged one dogma for another.

The team allegiance has changed but it's the same sport, to make an Olympic analogy. "Shut up, I am right and you are an [insert Latin noun] phobe/ heretic and either way you're going straight to hell" is the name of the game.

And I'd like to add, Irish women are obviously kept firmly in their place, their interests ignored. Plus ca change...

not all of us, @mathanxiety, not all of us

@DeanElderberry I sincerely hope that's the case.

So interesting that your own experience from Ireland bears out what he says in the article.

Can you remember who the other writer was?

@DeanElderberry I wonder is it a class thing? Mercy girls and Brothers boys fighting back back against authority, Sacred Heart and Spiritan pupils basking in a sense of effortless social superiority because they toe the line.

Literally could not put it any better myself - excellent observation about the strata in Irish society

@mathanxiety The Irish have exchanged one dogma for another....
And I'd like to add, Irish women are obviously kept firmly in their place, their interests ignored. Plus ca change...

I agree - it's definitely a team allegiance thing of 'tell me what to think and what the good things are to do and I'll do them'. There's very little to no thinking for yourself. And of course, women end up at the bottom of the pile.

@Parisite This new way of identitarian thinking is strange to me in that it affects both religious and secular groups across various societies and it's not often that an ideology does that. The secular like to think that their rationality protects them from believing and doing harmful things, and the religious like to think that their faith protects them likewise. This identitarian, genderist ideology also meets the definition of meme and it’s being spread via the hyper-connectivity and cultural amalgamation of the modern world.

I think you can draw a pretty clear line between female impersonators and drag. They don't typically look the same, what they do isn't the same, and the humour isn't the same.

Most impersonators are closer to sketch comedy where you often have opposite sex portrayals in both directions.

There's a long thread about an article written by Jane Clare Jones which has reached 1000 posts so it's closed now. Fortunately. She writes to impress rather than be understood.

Not the same subject but I couldn't help appreciate the way this article is written so clearly.

This is a very well written clear article. Thank you for sharing it.

As a Christian myself, I wasn't particularly offended by the drag Last Supper as it has become so commonplace to mock and deliberately try to provoke Christians that it just seemed like more of the same. I was disgusted by it in general however as I despise drag, and the fact they had a child performing with the very sexualised drag performers seemed so overtly wrong that I can't believe more hasn't been made of it.

Meanwhile, what has any of this to do with celebrating athletic achievement? Just a big pile of self-congratulatory, disgusting nonsense as far as I'm concerned. Hot mess is the phrase I would use for that opening ceremony, which is a shame, because there were some interesting and entertaining parts and it could have been great.

Interesting comparison with JCJ. Yes, this article is clear, punchy and humorous.

Completely agree with all of this!

The art historians are pointing out that the actual painting depicted on the Olympics float is The Feast of the Gods by the Dutch painter Jan van Bijlert , painted about 150 years after the Last Supper and clearly a secular, specifically non-Catholic response to it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Festin_des_dieux

I'm inclined to think that a joke most people don't get isn't terribly funny, but that there are more serious things wrong with the way this Olympics has been conducted than this.

The organisers have already said that it was based on The Last Supper!

The organisers have said, retracted, repeated and contradicted many things on many subjects. In this case, the tableau had a number of features, notably the figure of Bacchus, that comes from van Bijlert's work. That does not mean the imagery does not ultimately derive from Da Vinci's model.

it is just shit show and thanks that God the Father is real.

mockers of God have always portrayed Jesus and John, leaning on his breast at the last supper as gays and feminised types with long hair. This is on the same line, mocking God, Jesus, John, Leonardo da Vinci and women

Me too. I always loved “proper” old-fashioned drag that was funny, clever or had a satirical point to make. Pantomime dames, Cupid Stunt, Lily Savage, Les Dawson’s “Cissie and Ada” sketches. I still think they’re brilliant.

But I agree with the quote above: “On another note whenever a trend becomes mainstream, it always corrupts the original intent, always.”

It was the same with burlesque, which I also loved. Old-fashioned burlesque was a satire with its origins in commedia dell’arte, music hall traditions and so on. Neo-burlesque was very showgirly, with an emphasis on stunning outfits and set pieces. Most of the burlesque I see nowadays is neither, it’s just a woman in a spangly outfit doing a bit of striptease before waving her glittery pasties around and the audience congratulating themselves on being a bit risqué

Drag has gone the same way, although I’d say it’s worse because the misogynistic tropes are harmful. “Portraying women as sex clowns” is a good way of describing it.

That picture is nothing like the stunt done at the Olympics - apart from having a table. Also, the people who designed the opening ceremony have said the Last Supper was intended. Pun: the Cene (Last Supper) on the Seine.

Some say the figure leaning on Jesus is Mary Magdalen, his wife. If Jesus was a rabbi he needed to be married, I think, which is where the idea comes from. It was Mary Magdelen who first saw the risen Jesus. She thought he was the gardener. Like 'maker' (techne) for Jesus' father, this is a religious reference. The gardener is God, just as the 'maker' is God.
Whatever, the whole tableaux insulted a fair number of people's religion and also mocked women. Bet they wouldn't have done a tableaux of Mohammed and the Angel Gabriel, would they, let alone Mohammed and his last wife.

yes, after Charlie Hebdo and the decapitated french teacher, they won't touch Mohammad even with a barge pole now

I'm Catholic, and like Pope John Paul II said, "It is the duty of every man to uphold the dignity of every woman." Drag is a demeaning parody of womanhood, and womanface is every bit as wrong as blackface.

Regardless of one's view of drag, it's just unbelievable to me that anyone thought it was a good idea to mock the religion of so many competitors and viewers.

It's not just Islam they wouldn't have done this with, had anyone suggested the treat Buddhism or Judaism or Zoroastrianism that way I think they'd have been pulled up well before it got to actually being done.

One thing about that though which may be relevant; it's only my own experience, but I've often been surprised about how many middle class secular people seem really unaware of the fact that a heck of a lot of non-white people are Christians.
Particularly with Africans, and the indigenous peoples in Canada and the US.

So maybe it never occurs to them that there is a mismatch between their id pol and religious mockery?