“After tweeting photos of the costume, she received several outraged responses on social media from members of the LGBTQ community.” And rightly so. Last year, a drag queen named Daytona Bitch was fired from a Toronto Pride event for a blackface performance in which, as Laura Kane reports, “she dressed up as Miss Cleo, a kitschy telephone psychic from the late ‘90s, complete with black face paint.” If only being a woman was simply a costume one could take off… Why is it funny for men to dress up as women and not for women to dress up as men? There’s something about this performance that says that femininity and, in turn, women, are a joke (just like white people dressing up as “Indians” for Halloween turn Indigenous peoples and cultures into a joke or simply a costume one can put on or take off at will). There must be a reason women don’t do this to men - turning masculinity into entertainment or a joke, that is. I imagine that the defense of drag would include arguments that say this performance of femininity is so exaggerated that it doesn’t mock women so much as it mocks a cartoonish version of extreme femininity, but I’m unconvinced that turning women into extreme, cartoonish charicatures that are to be mocked is particularly progressive - rather, it feels regressive to me. To me it seems equivalent to cultural appropriation or the way in which white people have mocked black people, Asian people, Indigenous people, and pretty much every other race/ethnicity that isn’t theirs, under the guise of “performance” or “satire.” Why is it cute or funny or entertaining for men to mock women via drag? Why is it not considered to be a form of cultural appropriation, but with regard to gender? Why have progressives and mainstream feminists avoided critique of these performances, in large part? It’s possible I’m missing something here… Why is drag any different? Really, I’m asking. As I watched, I was struck by how accepted drag is by liberals and progressives - people who will, without a second thought, call out things like blackface and yellowface, which are understood by most ( frustratingly there are some who continue to need education on why blackface isn’t funny or ok) to be racist. The other night I was at a bar for a gay night and a portion of the evening featured drag queens. But because it isn’t very much a part of my world, I think it’s escaped my radar in terms of a feminist analysis. It’s pretty impossible to have missed drag. That said, it’s been around for so many years that these performances are practically mainstream - many a documentary has been made about drag culture and drag queens and drag performances are often a part of gay/queer nights, fundraisers, and other events. I suppose that form of entertainment simply has never interested me. Not as a political or even personal decision - in fact, it’s not really something I’ve thought about all that much. I don’t intentionally go to many drag shows.
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