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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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The great comedy films of drag: The Birdcage, Mrs. Doubtfire, To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything! Julie Neymar, White Chicks, Juwanna Man. All of those make a great joke of men dressing as women, but not one portrays their protagonists getting off on dressing in drag. Rather the comedy comes from classic "Women be like" or "men be like" jokes, plus the inevitable OW My Balls, and one or more romantic interests who do not realize the true identity of the man in the dress. Wong Foo and White Chicks in particular revel in putting very masculine actors (Terry Crews, Wesley Snipes, Patrick Swayze) in dresses, the gag is largely in reference to seeing those guys in drag; I'm especially partial to Wong Foo, it's essentially a scene for scene remake of Roadhouse but Swayze is a drag queen saving the town instead of a laconic bouncer saving the town.

IIRC every protagonist finds romance in the film. Sometimes the gag is a straight man falling for a man in a dress (The Birdcage, Wong Foo); other times it is using the cover of drag for a man to talk to a woman intimately on a non-sexual basis to find love (Juwanna Man, Mrs. Doubtfire); the perfect hetero implications of heterosexual love and homosociality.

So no, I'd say the simple act does not seem to be sexually coded in the sense of "Any man wearing a dress is doing it because wearing a dress gets him off." But the crossing of gender boundaries naturally implicates sexual and romantic interludes, so I guess to say it is totally non-sexual is also a little silly.

As its Halloween weekend, I'll also throw in a personal anecdote: once in college, my gf (now wife) and I dressed for Halloween parties as each other. My costume was such a hit, she forced us to leave the party early because I was getting too much action, too many other girls trying to get up my skirt, or give me a hilarious girl-on-girl lapdance. So that was sexual, but not at all in an "I get off on feminization" kind of way.

I will also point to Eddie Izzard as (eventually gender-stuff) drag that is generally not about sex, even where the comedy bits are.