BBC drops Drag Race UK

[NotInMyyName]

Sadtimes#

“Started in 2019, Drag Race UK brought British drag into mainstream entertainment in the UK”. I think the Black & White Minstrel Show played a similar role in platforming Black performers in the 1950/ 1970s. And made them mainstream entertainment. Giving a voice to marginalised, and underrepresented cultures. BBC

But now how will the beeb keep the thick 30yo woman audience? - their (approx) description of the target market.

Apparently it is moving to a steaming site called WOW.

Although budget cuts mean that they will have to get their wigs and outfits from Temu and be forced to recycle the same old smutty jokes.

Sadly that is not reassuring, given that many in the 'queer community' seem to believe that there is such a thing as a 'trans child' and that they must be affirmed at all costs.

I don't have a problem with drag. It's a niche part of gay culture (that occasionally becomes mainstream with Lily Savage, Dame Edna etc), but disagree with Drag Queen Storytime etc.

It's popular with the BBC as it is a visible representation of LGBT+, as it's the one minority that isn't normally visibly obvious (unlike race and disability). So we end up with the token gay celebrity on Celebrity Great British Barrel Scrapping being a drag queen.

The last thing a young person who may be lesbian or gay needs is men performing ugly and insulting parodies of stereotypes of women. presented as emblematic of the so-called 'LGBTQ+' community.

Drag is drag, and has a history. It is not specifically a gay thing - drag has often been a feature of comedy, where the known male-ness, and arguably the straight-ness, of the man in the frock and wig is the joke.

A few years ago I saw ads for the local Gay Pride festival in a newspaper in a provincial town in Ireland.
The accompanying photo was of a man in drag, not drag in the Lily Savage glittery frock style, but the ugliest, cruellest, most insulting parody of a woman you could imagine - the make-up was so deliberately ugly it verged on the scary.

I thought about a local boy or girl who were questioning their sexual orientation, beginning to realise that they were not like their pals, that they had no interest in the opposite sex, so maybe, maybe they were this thing called 'gay'.

And then they see the ad for 'Gay Pride' in their local town, see the hideous drag queen representing what being 'gay' means, and most probably think
'If that's what 'gay' is, I'm not that!' and decide to give town a miss that weekend..

Or a boy deciding that he is gay, and that 'being gay' must mean doing drag.

Yet another reason to celebrate the disappearance of the Drag Race!

It’s the assumption that queer only means ‘men who want to dress up as an OTT, overtly sexualised stereotype of a woman’ and that they have appropriated LGB that gets my goat. I doubt a young girl wondering if she is a lesbian would watch it and feel she’s found her community.

Ooooh

No not going forward.

certainly not the t and q part

Never watched it so can’t comment other than to say I’m far more exercised about Ski Sunday. Can’t believe it’s been cut after nearly 50 years. End of an era.

Great news - hopefully this is the start of the demise of womanface and goes the same way the B&W Minstrel show did.

Well they are very visible in Coronation Street and Emmerdale. There are some scenes where we play spot the straight man.

I know this board is largely against drag queens, so dont shoot me!

But imo to help the sexism criticism, they needed many more female drag queens really.

I never got why it was only men (I think they had one woman once) - in 2026, we're diverse everywhere except there. That was the big problem for me.

Very good news.

No, they don’t. It’s not appropriate because of the range of ages; what might be age-appropriate for a Year 12 is not the same for a Year 7. It also opens up the older students to accusations of grooming. It would be a safeguarding nightmare.

I love drag race! I’m glad it’s leaving the BBC as I refuse to pay for a license, so I’m happy it’ll be available somewhere else.

The new KCSIE guidance tells staff not to use the phrase ‘trans child’ - it is ‘gender questioning child’. So nobody working in a school is allowed to refer to a child as ‘trans’.

I used to enjoy the show from a creative point of view. The fashion creativity was the main thing I enjoyed. I felt it gave men an outlet for their femininity without saying they were women.

I noticed over the years that they were pushing the trans agenda in almost every episode and a staggering lot of the contestants had transitioned.
I also noticed that the sexist terms to describe women were getting more and more prevalent.
The BBC also seemed to be pushing it into other shows.

I made a solid decision about 2 years ago to stop consuming any drag race content.

I think there is definitely a difference between performers like Lily savage and Edna Everage and the drag nowadays.

Unfortunately, this seems to be in conflict with the EHRC draft technical guidance for schools.

From Sex Matters;
The EHRC’s longstanding view is that a boy who identifies as transgender becomes a “trans girl” and a girl who identifies as trangender becomes a “trans boy”. It advises schools to adopt pronoun policies to refer to these children differently from other children, and warns that if schools treat them like other children this could result in unlawful gender-reassignment discrimination. The EHRC's approach is at odds with the Equality Act 2010 as clarified by the Supreme Court, and with schools’ responsibilities for safeguarding such as those set out in the statutory safeguarding guidance Keeping children safe in education 2026 (KCSIE) in England.

See this thread https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5575821-ehrc-consultation-schools-technical-guidance?page=1

I think that was heavily sarcastic!

I love the old style drag, Paul O'Grady or Julian Clary were bloody hilarious but the 'new style ' drag contestants in these types of shows are full of misogyny in a way it never used to be.

Where does it say this?

Throughout the whole document

It’s LGB and gender questioning throughout

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6a9081309a177a1decf97b00/Keeping_children_safe_in_education_2026.pdf

I’m not sure Julian Clary ever did ‘drag’ as such did he? I don’t remember him ever adopting a fake female persona. He was just a flamboyant very camp gay man wasn’t he - always Julian not Julie Anne iyswim. Looking at his panto roles they seem to be flamboyant androgynous beings rather than him being the pantomime dame.

Before that there were the likes of Danny La Rue and Hinge and Bracket - ‘female impersonators’ rather than drag, and the latter two decidedly not sexualised parodies!

P 33 and 66 onwards