I strive to be an ally, to transgender people and to folks of whatever gender identity who might choose non-traditional things like cross-dressing or drag. As far as I can tell it’s reasonable for trans people to ask non-trans cross-dressers/drag queens to not use slurs like “tranny” and “shemale” – those really are horrible slurs that have been associated with violence and terrible mistreatment. Also, as far as I can tell, it’s reasonable that some cross-dressers/drag queens might have a desire to claim such slurs as their own, in a way, because they may feel that by reclaiming these words they lose their power to harm (at least for them). From my understanding, some non-trans cross-dressers/drag queens have similarly also been victimized with violence accompanied by use of these slurs.
Which means it’s an extremely complicated issue, and one that I don’t appear to be involved in at all (other than refraining from using such slurs, and calling out/correcting others who use them). I wish everyone the best and I hope a resolution can be found that does the least harm.
I’ll also add that the “cisgender” silliness is just that, and un-comparable – the term “cisgender” has not been associated with violence and mistreatment to any significant extent whatsoever. If someone personally doesn’t want to be called “cisgender”, that’s fine with me and I’ll choose not to call them that, but that doesn’t mean it’s comparable to others slurs that are truly associated with violence, oppression, and mistreatment.
It sounds like a balanced approach to the issue. I’ll also note that there are plenty of drag queens who are strong allies to the community, and some who are actually transgender themselves (which begs the question of whether they are doing drag in the first place…I don’t want to tackle that philosophical question on a Friday).
There are a wide variety of drag queens, just like any other type of performance. Some do it as a kind of respect and honor for women, some do it more for the spectacle and pageantry, and some do seem to do it to mock women.
Also, it does seem that for a lot of drag queens, being outrageous and offensive is part of the performance. So I could definitely see how some, especially some beginning performers, can lean too much into being offensive.
I have been to a few drag shows and enjoyed them, and I love RuPaul’s Drag Race. But I can understand why some transpeople are bothered by drag or don’t like it. And I’m glad that RuPaul has listened and learned to some extent, and taken out things like “she-mail” from the show, and learned to be incrementally more sensitive.
I second this. You are someone from this board I admire, and I wish I had one tenth of the energy and patience you seem to have.
I think of them as making fun of sexual gender roles, both male and female. They are not mocking women for being women, they are not mocking men for being men, and they are not mocking trans people for being trans. They are mocking society and culture for having such absurdly stiff and hierarchical gender stereotypes, and for trying to apply them to everyone. (Disclosure: I have not been around drag performers for 25 years or more; what I am describing is the way it was then. Things may have changed - feel free to enlighten me about that).
As for **Una Persson’s **objections that drag performers and their shows give ammunition to the stupid, that doesn’t seem to me to be a valid criticism, nor does it invalidate Miller’s post about those slurs and where they originated. Unfortunately those slurs cover a lot of territory, territory that includes some trans people, plus a lot of other people. I would love it if those slurs would go away (and all the other slurs that other groups have self-adopted, I don’t like any of them); I would love it if stupid hateful people would change. However, I don’t think drag shows are a legitimate target, even the ones that are not heartfelt and beautiful.
When I see a trans person don makeup and heels in order to “be” a woman (those are not scare quotes–I am saying the clothes do not make the woman), as a woman, I am a bit annoyed. It contributes to the idea that women are exclusively people who engage in these frivolous and irrational activities and “look like women.” How much extra time per day is spent by women engaging in activities solely to “enhance” their appearances? It adds up to hundreds of hours per year, tens of thousands per lifetime. Billions of wasted woman hours per year! Plus the expense of purchasing products, the worry that none of it is good enough, etc. It’s one of the big reasons women cannot gain equal footing.
I am a woman, no matter what clothes I wear or whether I “do” my hair daily.
Or am I? Because when I see that adopting the conventions of dress and style are considered key to acceptance as women for trans women, I don’t really know anymore and must conclude that none of it actually matters at all, but then I am still annoyed that I have to deal with the expectations and consequences that come with not conforming to these gender stereotypes.
So are transvestites and drag queens somehow giving people ammunition to use against trans people? Maybe. But should they stop, hide, or go away? No, because it is no more trans people’s business to impose their will upon drag queens than it is mine to request that women quit wearing makeup and heels because I feel it’s dragging down my gender. We each have the right to dress and identify ourselves however we want, and if exercising that right has an indirect negative effect on how others view a group, so be it. It isn’t each person’s responsibility to modify their own look or career to control public perception of trans people, women, etc.
Tolerance means accepting people doing things you may prefer they not do: there is obviously no need to “tolerate” behavior you approve of.
AnaMan, I’m guessing that you “read” as female no matter what you are wearing or doing. You probably don’t have broad shoulders, big hands, or a male facial structure. You don’t need stereotypically feminine clothing or accessories to present and be read as female. The same is often not the case for trans women who went through male puberty. Hence the exaggerated stereotypical femininity of clothing, hair, nails, etc.
Should trans women have to do all this to be perceived as women? Of course not, in a better world than we are living in at the moment.
Younger trans women, especially those who bypassed male puberty entirely or partially, tend not to dress in a hyper-feminized fashion. They pass (dreadful word but the one in use) just fine no matter what they are wearing and so they have the freedom to dress as they please.
Yes, people perceive me as female with no effort on my part. Why should I want this though? So I will be invited on group bathroom trips? I don’t want to go to the bathroom with other women, so no advantage there. I guess if people thought I was male, they might assume I was interested in the activities of professional sports teams, which would be kind of annoying. Still, the higher pay and automatic respect would make up for this slight benefit.
I don’t care what gender people think I am. I think of myself as a person, not a gender.
As a person with the classic “female” uterus/ovaries/vagina combo, I’ve long been considered a woman. If things have changed and “woman” now means “person who wears make up, dresses, and heels,” far be it from me to cling to old-fashioned ways. I would prefer that we not squabble about who goes in what box and instead do away with the boxes altogether, transcending gender/race/etc., but most people prefer the box system I guess.
I don’t think it’s so much a preference as an acknowledgement of the reality that gender plays a huge role in many aspects of society. Pretending it doesn’t exist is like pretending race doesn’t exist. So for a person who wants to be treated by society in a way that conforms to their gender, and who will not be treated that way in the absence of the kind of efforts you describe, they will conform themselves to gender stereotypes so they are treated accordingly–but it can be out of reluctant acknowledgment of the way society actually works, rather than because they prefer the box system.
Note that being treated by society in a way that conforms to their gender means things like not getting assaulted for going to the bathroom of your preferred gender.
That’s a good example. It would be great if you could just choose to have society treat you as a man. You’d certainly choose that during salary negotiations!
But, as should be obvious, you don’t have that choice. Just like a transgender person does not always have the choice of being perceived as their preferred gender without engaging in gender-conforming behavior.
I am also a cisgender white male*. Do not attempt to speak for me.
I have a friend who is a ciswoman. She worked for some years as a waitress at a drag club. She has told me that the whole drag culture really rubbed her the wrong way. Oddly enough, Una described my friend’s thought process pretty well in this post:
[QUOTE=Una Persson]
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.
[/QUOTE]
…and this is what drove my friend crazy. As she told me, she has to live with being a woman (i.e., an underprivileged class) in this society 24/7, but these people get to wash off their make up when the show is over. She found it a mockery to the shit women have to go through on a day-to-day basis.
Dear Una Persson,
Keep up the good fight. Your patient calm explanations have educated and enlightened many more people than you think. I haven’t been posting on here very much in the past couple of years, but I really wanted to thank you here.
By putting on the make up and heels, they are reinforcing that THAT is the gender-conforming behavior that makes someone a woman at the moment, which is bad for people like me, who think that behavior is making women as a whole worse off.
But whatever, it’s their choice to wear that stuff and their right to do so, regardless of how it contributes to the marginalization of women, just as drag queens get to do their thing and the rest of us have to suck it up and deal with the repercussions.
What you’re missing is that they aren’t choosing make-up and heels because they want to reinforce the gender-conforming behavior that makes someone a woman at the moment. They are doing so because it simply wouldn’t work to do otherwise. Whereas a drag queen is not compelled by anything to marginalize women in the way you suggest, a trans person must do so to have the simple privilege of doing things like using a public restroom.
Huh? If they didn’t put on the make up and heels, who would question their presence in the men’s room? They can use whatever bathroom they want, for all I care, as can men. If it was socially acceptable, I’d use the men’s room myself, if it was more convenient.
I’m sure most women who wear make up and heels do not do so to assert their second-class status, but because they want to. The negative repercussions are an unintentional side effect.
I’m sure we cannot know why every drag queen is a drag queen, so speculating that they are less “compelled” seems unnecessarily judgmental. It isn’t as if drag shows are hard to avoid. How about people that do not enjoy them just seek some other form of entertainment more to their liking and leave the drag performers to lead whatever lives they find fulfilling?
Not sure if the chain of reasoning was somehow lost here, but in this example I’m talking about transgender women who wish to use the restroom of their gender. There are many cases of such women being assaulted or otherwise harassed if they do not sufficiently “pass” as women–that is, are accepted as women by other people. And one of the best ways to be accepted as a woman is to be gender-conforming.
That is one example, but there are thousands of examples in which gender-conforming behavior is required of transgender folks whose features are not sufficient on their own to ensure social acceptance as their gender.
People are talking about how cisgender isn’t offensive. They are right, it isn’t. The offense is in how it’s used:
So… what, 97% of the people on the planet, some 7 billion people, all called you tranny and were rude to you? Really?
I’ve never used the term personally, and have never in my life been rude to a transgender or any other LBGT person, but hey, go right ahead and tar me with that brush anyway, right?
I’d like to echo this – speaking as a cisgender straight white male, every issue is about me. Whenever you whiny minorities and supposedly oppressed people are talking about being beaten or murdered or thrown in jail or some other whiny little trifle, what you’re really saying is that I personally am a bad person who has beaten, murdered, and thrown you in prison.
So stop it, already! I have some shows on HBO to watch, and this craft beer isn’t going to drink itself.