Drag on BBC

[Ariana12]

Is anyone else moticing the Beeb obsession with drag? Can anyone explain it? I used to enjoy drag acts in the old gentle days but how did it all become so crude? And why is it de rigeur fot our kids to know all about the sexualised version??

illinivich · Today 08:32
I remember when the trans community hated drag. They didnt like the use of pronouns, the superficial idea that clothes alone make a man a woman, and the comedic element of men dressed as women. So I'm not sure whats changed?

I can remember when the gay community [gay men, that is] hated drag.
I can remember when gay men hated flouncy pseudo-feminine camp behaviour and condemned it as an offensive stereotype of gay men, who are men who are attracted to other men, not men-pretending-to-be-women.
I can remember when you had to go a good distance down the Mile End Rd to find drag acts, and they were only popular with a small number of people.

So I'm not sure the renaissance of drag originates from gay men as a community - misogyny will use any means possible to get at women, I suppose, and any existing strand of sexism, however niche, will be co-opted to carry and normalise the anti-women message. Currently it's drag.

I find drag these days, absolutely grotesque and derogatory. In the old days, the 70/80s, it was clearly men dressed as women, such as Hinge and Bracket, Danny La Rue, nothing too offensive in my view. Just funny.
These days these drag acts even try to talk like women! I find the whole thing repulsive to be honest. There is no real humour about it. Just a hideous parade of the most outlandish make up, hair and outfits.
Ru Pauls Drag Race especially, makes my stomach, as well as the tv, turn over!
What is the agenda they're pushing?! They're even included in adverts now. It's truly awful.

I think 'gay mens club' drag has always been more misogynistic than the drag we traditionally saw on TV.

Its a disgust of womens bodies and mocked straight men falling for femininity. They will say its a reflection of the women they grew up around, but thats them seeing women only as carers. Everything else about us is grotesque to them.

Did it start in the 90s with a sudden craze for drag queens in movies? I remember one film where a female R&B singer sang an outro under the credits dressed in drag. I can't remember the film, though.

Traditionally drag would come from the gay clubs and then performers (like Lily Savage) would hone their act to become mainstream.

Nowadays it appears that as soon as you put the veneer of drag over anything it all becomes acceptable. Drag Queen Story Time sees a lot of men (who I doubt were drag queens before) do a lot of lewd behaviour in front of children, but it's acceptable as long as cross-dressing is involved.

I don't particularly have a problem with drag, but what I have a problem with are the (essentially) amateur performers catapulted into mainstream without having done any of the hard graft and changing their act to be suitable for mainstream.

There are fantastic makeup artists about, so TV productions can drag anyone up, but after the drag makeover what talent do these people have? Being loud and screaming a lot is not a talent. Whereas Lily Savage, Dame Edna etc were truly talented and it wasn't the drag part that was the talent.

They just can’t make up their minds, can they? It’s almost like they’re determined to be offended and marginalised at all costs…

You're right, so everything we do & everything we don't do is to be laughed at!

I went to see a pantomime recently with the children.
Two things struck me:

First, the "Principal Boy" always used to be played by a young female decades ago, now it is always a male. Why? What changed?

Second, the "Dame" had truly awful clothes and make-up - and that is a big part of the joke. Sparkly blue eye shadow up to the eyebrows, a big blob of pink on each cheek, and bright red lipstick badly applied. Silly, jokey pantomime costumes.
The panto dame is not like modern drag, because modern drag artists take the make up and clothes seriously. Where did the new drag queens come from?

I don't mind pantomime dames. The previous generations of performers mentioned up thread were more like dames than today's drag queens. They were deliberately "unconvincing" imitations of women.

I have never been comfortable with drag - I cannot understand how women are torn to shreds for cultural appropriation for wearing corn crow braids and events like darkie (darkening) day are depicted as racist (actually symbolises the winter solstice) but men can dress up, pretend to be women and it is celebrated. The nuances are lost on me.

Because men get a pass in this society where women don't.
It's ok for a man to "punch down". Not acceptable for a woman.

Nowadays it appears that as soon as you put the veneer of drag over anything it all becomes acceptable.

👆I agree, @YesterdaysFuture. The sacred caste.

But who exactly is the BBC trying to appeal to with all the drag output? I find it quite baffling, no one (male or female) I know likes it.

Because drag has become conflated with transwomen, the most vulnerable and marginalised in the victim hierarchy, I'm not sure their supporters would even agree they are punching down. Women (ofck) are so much more privileged.

If a woman took a drag act's stand up and, not changing anything else, played it straight I wonder how it would come across?

I was just reading this from Metro who have form for writing similar. The style it's written it's almost hard to believe it's not a spoof. Then there's the bit about Blankety Blank was "made famous" by a drag queen; as if Terry Wogan and Les Dawson hosting from 1979 - 1990 it was an obscure programme :-

apple.news/Aa4lB0MlURaCezb1NdwDRaA

To me, I see drag as a clear agenda. I think you are all naive. The BBC is promoting drag for a purpose.
It softens up the audience to be much more accepting of men dressed as women. It's becoming the norm. It also makes mocking women the norm. Think of it like the daily hate from 1984 but with womanhood held up as the thing to hate and laugh at.

People say, dress how you like, present how you like, down with sex-based stereotypes of what people should wear. And that all sounds very fine and noble. But how do you square that with a view (which many here hold) that men attired as women is 'woman-face'? Seems to me there must be a line somewhere.

My objections to drag.
It's woman face
It's misogynistic
It's not funny
It's adult entertainment presented to children in the name of diversity and inclusion [by people whose fucking brains have fallen out]
It's everywhere.

Surely the point of a drag queen is precisely that they’re not female?

Drag on The Wheel tonight 🙄. And what a bore he is too.

As someone said up-thread (and I also thought this before) the BBC has Drag Race and it basically manufactures "celebrities" to appear on all their other shows, it allows the BBC to tick their diversity tick-boxes with the gay/trans requirement, whilst having these people on their books for cheap employment.

The BBC hasn't got to poach ITV's Love Island for "celebrities" they've now got Drag Race for that.

They even had a question on drag. This is trolling.

Hate it would never watch it. Never had a satisfactory explanation of why it’s different to blacking up.

Because drag is taking the piss out of women, usually in a sexualised way. I see a man in a skirt or make up and i think (well i don't, I don't generally notice) "fine, a man in a skirt and make up". I see a man in a skirt or make up claiming to be a woman and I think it is off. I see one using it to take the piss out of women and I get angry. That is the difference.

99% are not gay. No exact figures but if you are feeling brave Google the cotton ceiling- the difficulties that trannswomen find in lesbians having boundaries and and not considering males as sexual partners. In fave you will now see in lesbian literature guidance on how to please an "enlarged cliterous".

I agree that it is often seen as a shorthand for LGBT+ but it really isn't that simple.

I think this is reaching. I don't think the BBC is a homogeneous organisation; despite having a director general and a chairman. I think it's a vast organisation and different departments might have trans friendly producers, programme makers and head of departments.

World of Wonder produces Drag Race UK, which, yes, the BBC does commission.

I think it's more likely that there aren't enough people at the BBC who are pushing back to counterbalance those with an interest in promoting a TRA agenda.