I think my issue with drag is that men have decided that’s their safe space to play with femininity and womanhood and it’s an integral part of gay culture allegedly but like what if (hear me out) you were just openly feminine without acting like you’re putting on a female caricature? What if instead of making fun of yourselves or over-sexualizing yourselves for being feminine and acting like it’s part of this female caricature, what if instead of that you just acted like it was normal and doesn’t make you like a woman in any way shape or form and there’s nothing to perform because you’re just being yourself? There’s all these talks about whether drag is ok for kids but like what are you teaching them? That men have to dress up as women to be feminine? And that’s the joke? Wouldn’t it be better to teach them that you can be a feminine man without making fun of women or comparing yourself to them? Wouldn’t it be better to show little boys that it’s ok to be gender nonconforming and that doesn’t make you womanly or the butt of the joke?
Agree with the sentiment here. Femininity is a male fantasy, it has nothing to do with womanhood. I would not have as many problems with drag if they stopped calling each other "girl"/"ladies", stopped using terms like "fishy" or "serving cunt" to describe particularly feminine drag looks, if they stopped picking female names and calling each other "she". In short, if they stopped making drag a caricatured reflection of womanhood. They're playing into stereotypes that will never affect them, they're reinforcing the objectification and sexualisation of women - a kind of oppression that is not about them or directed at them. As much as they're brave for eschewing masculinity under patriarchy, in this instance they're also cowards. It's time for drag to be a reflection of manhood. Start using male names, using "he" pronouns, ditch the breastplates and the padding and maybe we'll get somewhere. Just keep women out of your mouth.
If men start dressing feminine without pretending it makes them women, or representations of women, they’re no longer doing drag. The ‘I am acting as a woman’ part is essential to drag, so there’s no amount of scaled-back drag that I’m okay with, because men dressing feminine isn’t automatically drag.
If you read the Sins of Jack Saul, which is a historical non-fiction book about the Cleveland Street Brothel scandal of 1889, at one point the author goes into a digression about the gay male history of pretending to be women as a homosocial bonding tool - it wasn’t automatically a public entertainment, they kind of merged later, through music hall / variety shows. It actually happened a lot in private, with men recreating the public rituals they were able to have with their wives with other men - there are documented accounts of weddings, with cross-dressing in wedding dresses normally happening by the working-class rent boys and the upper class clients remaining male grooms. Not just weddings, but also mimicked pregnancies giving birth to wooden dolls. I don’t think the class/power disparity is a coincidence in who has to be the bride - but it still initially presents it quite sympathetically, he then (critically) goes on to talk about historical examples of straight men pretending to be women too - the example that stuck with me is the priests of benin (the city, not the country) who would expel all women from the city for ritual holy days, where they would dress up as pregnant women and do a dance around the city. If any women were found hiding they would be savagely beaten.
Basically, mocking women by pretending to be them is a homosocial bonding tool that repeats throughout history, but the idea that it’s exclusively a gay male thing born out of repression and homophobia is a fairly recent development and while there’s probably some truth to it on an individual level, it is also a convenient narrative that allows a continuing, socially acceptable public outlet for men mocking women by pretending to be them. Even women who are open about being made uncomfortable by trans women usually give the benefit of the doubt to drag.
say the word sexuality really, really slowly.
its not called genderality for a reason.
"by definition" 💀
guess I'm asexual since neither my wife nor I subscribe to gender identity
When men mansplain like this they should get a permanent life long ban from the internet
i don't think i'll ever fully process that we went from arguing homosexuality exists in animals, that it's innate and natural but now we're having to argue to defend the definition itself. we face actual violence for saying straight men aren't lesbians...
