Drag Thought Dump
I am a drag king. I am also a transman. Whenever I tell people that I do drag, they often give me a confused look and then ask what kind of drag I do. When I respond that I am a drag king, two peculiar things tend to happen:
1. They question how one can do “drag” when they are the same gender they are performing.
2. They say “obviously”, or another similar statement, sending the message that because of being “really a girl” it’s only “natural” that I would be “pretending” to be a boy.
Is drag any less of drag if I am performing my gender? If I decide to be a drag queen, would I be any less of a queen because of my “female” body? How much does the “validity” of drag rely upon my gender identity?
I view my relationship with drag as means through which to entertain while dually expressing hyper masculinity. It’s a a space where I can “butch it up” when in reality I do not feel as masculine as “macho men” in a way that entertains others and myself. I have never viewed drag as an expression of my trans identity, though I have heard of people using drag this way.
Often we confuse drag with crossdressing, transwomen with drag queens, transmen with drag kings…and it’s left me wondering what (if any) the key seperations are between these categories. While none are mutually exclusive, and all have a high frequency of overlapping, I believe the key to drag is the entertainment/performance and the presence of an audience.
I suppose the whole reason this is all on my mind is because drag has been very complex for me lately. I have been torn between being an entertaining king (which often defaults to portraying misogyny, sexism, and other forms of bias in a comedic manner) and maintaining my social conciousness. I have had to make mistakes, step back, re-evaluate, and move forward again. I am learning how to be a king that is both entertaining and socially conscious, which in the drag environment I perform in, is not as easy as it sounds.
Like I said in the heading, this is simply a thought dump.
Filed under: All Posts, Cultural Analysis
After several discussion with people who fall across the spectrum in terms of gender and identity my understanding of Drag has come changed quite a bit. Drag is an exaggeration of a gender. Simply an exaggeration of gender that does not rely on imply a starting point or an ending point (ie a man dressing as a woman). So I wouldn’t worry about the validity of your expression of such.
Anyway, thanks for sharing the thought dump.
i think the problem you’ve pointed out has to do with common misconceptions and/or a certain connotation that the average person associates with drag. it seems like the solution would either be to educate the public about the nature of drag as an exaggeration of gender (rather than as a performance necessarily based on cross dressing)—by performing more shows and putting more out there in the mainstream consciousness (articles in mainstream media, etc.); or the other solution might be to give it a new name/classification, if the association of “drag” has become too strongly associated with a certain preconception in the public.
the public certainly has a huge need for education about many gender-related issues, and i think that the first solution could do everyone a lot of good . . .