A Trans Type Person’s Random Thoughts About Drag Performance
Or why drag queens are like race car drivers
I do not find drag performances entertaining
This is not to say I find them offensive, but I am as likely to voluntarily attend a drag race or be offended by fast cars. You might say I find them both to be something of a drag.
buh-dum-bump
While I have a great deal of respect for the work that these performers do — I also give credit to race car drivers and their crews for their expertise — the extreme campiness just doesn’t do much for me.
In thinking about it, I actually find this strange given how many Saturday nights in my late teens were spent attending performances of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Perhaps early overexposure resulted in avoidance like my inability to listen to a song by The Doors after spending so many years in my mid-teens with their music at the top of my playlist. I haven’t been to a RHPS show in a very long time either.
Is it surprising that I moved from Jim Morrison to Dr. Frank-N-Furter?
I am not saying RHPS is the same as a drag show, but that they share a variant of camp that diverges from the type of camp that appeals to me. I have a great deal of affection for Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and Phantom of the Paradise, while not gender-focused, is one of my favorite movies. They qualify as camp but do not rely on that as a defining attribute.
Aside from the level and type of camp, drag culture does not appeal to me. The wannabe-transgressive [style/fashion/personification] is so intentionally artificial that for all the talent and exceptional craft involved in the creation of a character, it does nothing to express something honest or insightful about the human condition. They are the intentional Other using outlandishness for shock value but have become so ingrained in the mainstream, they may as well be circus performers at cocktail parties — so ubiquitous they have become banal.
There was a point early on in my transition where I joined the chorus of trans women who equated drag to minstrel shows and felt that they somehow made it easier for cisfolk to negate my gender by association. I soon realized cisfolk had no need of drag performers as an excuse to negate me.
I cannot seriously support the idea that the lives of trans people have been negatively impacted by drag performers.
But what about when Ru Paul said he was okay with the T-word? Did that make it okay for cisfolk to use it?
Did cisfolk need Ru Paul’s position to use it in the first place? If anything, Ru Paul’s proclamations hastened the removal of the word from the mainstream.
My perspective changed when I saw drag as not an art movement about performing gender, but a showcase for actors, using extremely gendered elements as a common elements, to create and perform as artificial beings. Ru Paul is a spiritual cousin to Pee Wee Herman. They are both characters who have a life beyond the control of the men who created and perform them. The character of Ru Paul is female as the character of Pee Wee Herman is male.
Much like any costumed performer, at the end of the show, drag performers can quickly remove the trappings of their characters and go out for a bowl of soup.
Transfolk remove the trappings of our characters as we transition. Removing that inch-thick paint can take years — a long time before we can just go out for soup.
This story is a response to the Prism & Pen writing prompt, Let’s Talk About Drag! Pro, Con, in Between.
