Trans people claiming that Drag Queens contribute to objectification & oppression of trans people.

In My Humble Opinion
1

This article synopsizes the issues that some trans people have with Drag Queens. Some object that the language of drag is contemptuous and objectifying as below -

but the main issue per the articles and quotes below seems to be that drag performers make (usually) no claims to being inherently female and the drag performance potentially confuses people and devalues their reality as trans people into being some kind of gender minstrels vs being actual trans-women and trans-men regardless of sexual equipment.

Does this argument have merit or not? Should trans people be getting up into Drag Queen’s grills on this issue? Drag Queens at Stonewall and elsewhere often led the way on a lot of gay progress over the last several decades. Do trans people have any purchase to call them out?

Trans women are not drag queens

The worst assimilation of all: How modern-day drag hurts trans women and achieves little or nothing of value

2

I’ve already posted extensively about this. I don’t want to repeat myself because it would be boring.

The divide is growing deeper between the two communities. Increasingly as we are coming out and demanding equal rights in the workplace, in social and professional groups, at shops, in restaurants, etc. we are also increasingly viewing drag queens as African-Americans view black-and-white minstrel shows. Seriously, there is a strong parallel here. The change has been profound just in the last 3-4 years, and RuPaul isn’t helping with his idiotic and insensitive statements. You wouldn’t believe how utterly hated that fucking clown is in the transgender community. Even Eve has said things to me about RuPaul which turned my ears blue.

Last December I attended a Christmas performance put on by a gay men’s chorus, when halfway through the first program a crossdresser came out and started camping it up with lisping and mincing and jokes about his genitals, and even jokes about being sexually harassed. I didn’t find it funny, but nor was I offended. I turned to my right to look to my right at my friends - 4 transsexual women like myself, all of them transitioned socially and legally, most medically. The look on all their faces…well, it was not good. Afterwards, they all said that the entire program (which I thought was rather good) was “ruined”, and two were so offended they would never return. I kept quiet.

Does drag objectify or mock transgender people? Depends on who you ask. Most drag queens I know are unfortunately cheerfully clueless or simply uncaring of any friction. I for one am pretty tolerant of drag queens and crossdressers, provided they never claim they are the same as a transgender person. Stonewallers were not (mostly) drag performers (there may have been a few in the group, I don’t even remember) - they were crossdressers and transsexuals, along with gay men and a few lesbians.

I think it’s embarrassing when cisgender people think they can ask leading questions implying that we don’t have a right to take offense at something. Yes we can damn well get “into Drag Queen’s grills.” And what is this immense progress that all these Drag Queens have been leading? Because I haven’t seen them testifying at the city councils, meeting Congresspeople, working with the Mayor’s office, giving lectures to educate at churches, schools, universities, businesses, and civic groups. I mostly see them bitching about Facebook’s “real names” policy, and taking the opportunity to slur transgender people as “no different from us” and “getting an unfair advantage.” :smack:

When Sunday night comes, the Drag Queen cold creams his makeup off, and Monday morning goes to work in his blue jeans and flannel. His family, friends, co-workers, the guy at the deli counter, the government official, the minister…none of them need be the wiser, unless he wants them to know.

Really, this isn’t even a “battle” that cisgender people should be getting involved in. It’s something that the two communities will work out for themselves.

3

Oh, lord, that’s what irritates me most about most arguments over this kind of issue these days. See: the Pit thread on PC.

Um, I thought drag queens generally WERE cis, and that was part of the problem to begin with?

4

Are we allowed to have opinions? Are we allowed to express opinions? I don’t want to step on any toes by thinking wrongly about something, or saying the wrong thing.

Roddy, a cisgender gay person.

5

Why?
Is this a version of “it’s a black thing”?
Yeah, the “battle” is between you guys ultimately, but we bystanders need to know and ask and have an opinión.
Full equality means no more “you can’t understand it because you’re not X”.

6

Feel free to run up your post counts with manufactured offense, especially those of you who are on record as being rather unsympathetic towards transgender people (ahem). It should have been clear to anyone who honestly cared about the issue that the objection was to the way in which the question in the OP was framed.

7

Under the broadest definition of “transgender,” drag queens are included because they violate social norms of gender expression. However, as I frequently use “transgender” in the narrow sense, you bring up a good point.

8

Speaking as someone who, I would hope, has shown himself to be a trans ally, and who is honestly concerned about trans issues, I have to say that was not remotely clear from your post. Nor is it clear to me what the issue was with the way the OP framed his question.

9

This:

… sort of reads like a different version of “do all those black folks have the right to be so angry?” But, in the context of talking about all these contributions Drag Queens have made to “gay progress” (which is not the same as “trans progress,” and which I’m not certain is factual even in that prior context) it sounds like a superficial question anyhow that I shouldn’t even have really taken offense at. I apologize.

10

Has the word “Transvestite” been abandoned?

Google shows 3,500,000 hits on the term and it has a Wiki page. VB does not flag it as a misspelling.

Why is the term transgender been appropriated for/by transvestites?

11

It seems sad to me that two groups that should be natural allies against traditionalist repression and conservative hatred should, themselves, fall out in opposition to each other.

(It makes me think of the breaking up of the old black/Jewish alliance for civil rights.)

Of all the groups of people who ought to stand in alliance, back to back against a common enemy, these two should be a sterling example of cooperation. How the right-wing bigots must be grinning to see this contention!

12

The argument that some bigots use it as an excuse to hate people is of course not valid. You could say the same thing about Gay Pride parades. If drag performers are using terms that are demeaning to trans people, they should stop, just like anyone else.

The idea that drag is a minstrel show is stupid, since they aren’t pretending to be trans, but pretending to be women (or men for drag kings). And, unlike in minstrel shows, they are not doing so in a way that demeans them. Blackface was ultimately about how big a buffoon black people are. That’s not the case with drag performances.

Finally, there is the issue that you should not be conflating crossdressers and drag performers. Drag performers are crossdressers, but not all crossdressers are drag performers. Many just don’t abide by the gender binary. Someone who believes they are male may want to show their feminine side.

Or it may be a fetish. And who are we to tell consenting adults that their sexual preferences are wrong?

Finally, I want to reiterate that arguments based on “it gives transphobic people ammunition” are absolutely stupid. If there is confusion, you should simply seek to remedy that confusion with information, not treating the confusion like it makes drag or crossdressing wrong.

The only legitimate gripe I see here is the one about using slurs.

13

Huh. I thought the current thinking is that whatever someone self identifies as, we aren’t allowed to object or judge, but to accept on face value. If someone wants to be a flaming drag queen, who is anyone to tell them they can’t be? As usual though, it seems those demanding tolerance refuse to be tolerant of others.

14

And now for what Una brought up. I don’t think that minority groups are inherently right about what is offensive and should stop. I know some people do believe that, and usually that’s not too bad an idea (as long as it’s the minority group as a whole that finds it offensive) since there are usually no rights issues on the other side except the right to unnecessarily offend.

But we have a case here where the thing one group is offended by is a legitimate right of another group. We can’t just say all drag is offensive and call it a day. That would be forcing a type of gender conformity. We have to look into it more closely, find out why it’s offensive, and see if those offenses are legitimate.

The problem is, I don’t know entirely what it is that trans people find offensive. I know being offended that they can take off the makeup and no one has to know seems like petty jealousy, and seems like something that those who are offended need to work on. I know that the use of slurs is something drag performers shouldn’t do, since they can do their thing without using them. It’s unnecessarily offensive. And, again, when it comes to a lack of information to the general populace, the solution is just more information. Neither side needs to “win” anything.

But those don’t really seem to get to why Una’s friends found the drag performance to be so offensive. It seems they were offended by something else. Unfortunately, Una’s descriptions don’t help me. I can think of many different types of “jokes about his genitals.” And jokes about being sexually harassed could be making light of it, or dark humor, depending on what they were.( The latter would mean they had the right to be offended only in the same way that every other person does. IOW, if you dont like it, don’t watch it.)

Ultimately, some sort of balance is going to have to be struck here. Both trans people and drag performers are going to continue to exist. You can’t deny the gender noncomformists their outlet. But you also can’t treat the offense of trans people as inherently illegitimate, either.

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Even the slur thing isn’t as cut and dried as it might seem at first blush. Terms like “tranny” and “shemale” weren’t coined solely to describe transexuals. A lot of drag queens have been attacked by bigots using these terms, and many of them chose to adopt it as a self-descriptor out of defiance. Now they’re being attacked again, from the opposite direction, by people claiming they’re the bigots for using the term to describe themselves.

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Transvestite in modern use in the United States carries a stigma in that it was used clinically to describe crossdressers who dressed for sexual thrill.

I don’t get that. We’re not natural allies. Drag queens are actors. Your example of blacks and Jews uses two groups who are not actors.

No, they are clearly using gender transgression as the butt of jokes. It is a minstrel show.

I’ve probably seen more than a couple hundred drag shows. I am friends with many drag performers. In most of the ones I’ve seen there are jokes where the drag performer apes being transgender, jokes about surgery (“getting a little nip and tuck”), jokes about hormones, etc. I’m certain there are lots of drag performances where that doesn’t happen, and I’ve seen them. Some drag is an art form which should be celebrated. But drag isn’t free from that blackface stigma, and when drag’s “emperor” went around saying shit like “(the difference between a drag queen and a transsexual) is ‘About twenty-five thousand dollars and a good surgeon,’ ”, it certainly didn’t help the divide. When transgender people are killing themselves out of desperation because they’ve tried for years or decades and cannot afford surgery, RuPaul’s mockery falls just a bit flat, you know? RuPaul has changed his spots somewhat of late, driven mainly by declining ratings and being shut out of certain venues and losing his “cultural relevance”, but we remember.

Also note I don’t get offended by drag, I find it unfunny.

Well! As long as you think it’s “stupid”…

As usual, though, it seems those who have a political axe to grind don’t really understand the situation.

Really now.

That is most unfortunate.

Offensive drag goes out of its way to cast the performer as a man masquerading as a woman. Which is what many of the haters of my people feel we are. Offensive drag sexualizes the purpose of cross-dressing, which is what many of the haters believe is the reason we have a different gender presentation. It makes reference and jokes about genitals, which is often used in the slurs against us (“chicks with dicks”) and which many of us do not like to be reminded of. Most transgender people who are pre-op really, truly do not like anything which refers to or reminds them of the fact that they must dress and present and live female, but underneath still have male “equipment.” It’s not just gauche, it’s painful. Unless you are in that situation, you are not going to understand it.

“Tranny” is offensive because it’s often one of the last things a transperson hears before they are beaten unconscious, like my friend M. “Shemale” is offensive because it’s what people yell out at us after we’ve come out of a nice restaurant and had a great evening, like happened to two friends of mine last Friday. “Fucking tranny” is what the manager at JC Penney’s calls another friend when she is thrown out of the women’s changing room, despite being post-op and legally female, while other women stare at her and whisper. “Goddamn shemale” is what my friend S. was called when she was out at a sports bar watching the Royals and having a beer and two frat-boy-types came up to her and demanded a blowjob from her. Both names are what the drunks following us will catcall me and the terrified transwoman I’m escorting out of a nightclub with my CCW purse unzipped and me desperately hoping that things do not go really black and scaly for everyone involved.

Speaking to an imaginary crowd here, if all those cisgender folks out there think we shouldn’t be offended by tranny and shemale, then stop using them to offend.

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And us cisgender white males find this as hilarious as liberals must find the Donald Trump fiasco in the GOP.

Drag Queens are now being condemned as oppressors, even as lesbians are being condemned for not wanting to sleep with “women” who have penises. I knew revolutions tend to devour their own, but this is ridiculous!

18

I remember our high school having an annual “senior boys’ dance” in which the tradition was that the participating boys (95% of them drawn from the athletes) dressed up as girls, with fake boobs and gaudy make-up and wigs and stuff and cavorted around onstage to the apparent amusement of all.

I didn’t know about trans people back then but I thought the spectable was insulting to the girls. That’s still my principle reaction to the whole “drag” thing: if this isn’t who you are, are you mocking? Are you mocking other people for whom this would be an authentic expression?

I’m willing to grant that a given drag queen might be doing respectful homage to women and not be ridiculing them, and/or ridiculing male people who aren’t particularly manly. But it’s not easy because it occurs against a backdrop of such personifications where mockery and ridicule have been stirred in pretty heavily.

19

I never thought of drag queens as mocking women, but more showing a kind of respect to woman.

20

That kind of cross-dressing I think is something quite different from drag queens, for whom the objective is to create the impression that a male is actually a female. The better that impression is, the better the performance is regarded.

This kind of burlesque performance instead is intended to be humorous in playing against expectations. The humor is due to the incongruity of obvious males being dressed as females, and the less the guy looks like an actual woman the funnier it is. And that kind of humor goes both ways, since a female pretending to be male is also regarded as funny (although the reverse case doesn’t appear as often) - for example, Lucille Ball dressed as Charlie Chaplin.

I don’t think the intention is generally to be mocking, but rather deriving humor from incongruity.