This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
A question: Is dressing in drag (that is, a man dressing like a woman potentially with makeup and so on) an inherently sexual act? I ask because it seems to me differing beliefs about the answer to this question are at the root of differences in belief about the propriety of events like Drag Queen Story Hour and perhaps related to trans issues more generally.
For my part, I think the answer is "No". This isn't to say that nobody ever dresses in drag for the purpose of engaging in a sexual fantasy, certainly some people do. Similarly I do not intend to claim drag events are always appropriate for children, I've been to ones that certainly would not be. There does not seem to me anything inherently sexual about someone in drag reading an age appropriate book to children though.
So I guess I'm interested in hearing from people who would answer the opposite way to my posed question and why they think so. Some ancillary questions: If it were a cis woman dressed similarly would it be equally inappropriate? Or is the fact that it's a man dressed that way central to the impropriety? Is there an implied inference that the only reason a man would dress in drag is for a sexual purpose? That seems like a failure of imagination to me.
Is blackface inherently racial? Is blackface inherently racist?
"Wearing women's clothing" isn't drag if you're wearing a woman's... sweater, say, or overalls. A guy in a pink parka isn't "in drag." I'm not a big fan of "no true Scotsman" arguments, I don't think I know enough about drag to say there's a bright line here or there. But I can't think of anything I'd call drag, that wasn't at least sexual to the extent of "involving what would likely be regarded as 'sexy clothing' on a woman." I don't think it's plausibly a drag show if you're wearing baggy blue jeans and a loose t-shirt from the ladies' section at Walmart.
Eddie Izzard's an outlier, but exists. Most of that small class of that sort of drag queen that's more exaggerated comedy, though they're sometimes criticized from the other direction (eg, Martina's kinda a harridan).
Eddie Izzard is an interesting case to me, personally, because the first show I saw him in, I didn't notice anything about his clothes. Someone later said something about his skirt and I was like--wait, what? I did notice his eyeliner but guys in show business were doing a lot of weird eye stuff in those days. I have often referred to him as a cross-dresser, but would not spontaneously think of him if someone asked me if I'd ever seen a "drag show." Automatic mental categorization is weird.
Anyway see my comment above re: makeup. As I said--I don't feel like I know enough about any of this to be drawing bright lines around what does and doesn't count. Nevertheless, when someone tells me drag is not inherently sexual, I feel like I am being invited to participate in kayfabe.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Dina Martina seems to do a sort of housewife drag that isn't trying to be sexy. There's also a long tradition of impersonating female celebrities, some of whom dress sexily and some of whom do not. Judy Garland impersonation tends not to be overtly sexual, for example. Admittedly, this Garland impersonator says that "My wig designer and friends of mine have said I’m not a drag queen because drag tends to go over the top." There's some truth, there -- drag doesn't always have to be sexy but it's often comically exaggerated in one way or another, with sex and sexiness as frequent aspects of such comedy.
I can't speak for America, but in the UK the canonical example of family-friendly cross-dressing is panto. The ground rules of panto include that the hero is played by an attractive young woman in skin-tight trousers (usually leather) and the "dame" (the principal comic relief character - this is very definitely clowning) is played by a man in a dress with footballs sewn into the bodice. Panto is explicitly considered child-friendly.
The culture of people who self define as "Drag Queens" is very different, and it appears to be a part of broader LGBT culture.
Dame Edna Everage is closer to "housewife drag" but is clearly drawing on the tradition of pantomime dames.
Then you had the likes of Lily Savage, who blurred the line between his drag act performance, and the performances he did on television. Some of the act was indeed too strong for TV which ended up as outtakes, but mostly audiences considered such an act funny, vulgar, but not beyond the pale.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The thing that draws my notice in the housewife and Judy Garland examples is the makeup. The earliest arguments I'm aware of that makeup is inherently sexual are from feminists critiquing objectification; for example:
More recently we see makeup tracked as inherently sexual by Jordan Peterson, who is arguably a 2nd or 3rd wave feminist (via his work coaching women for career advancement) but would likely be disclaimed by most feminists today.
That's a pretty broad culture war spectrum agreement on the idea that makeup, at least in the classic foundation-lipstick-blush-eyeshadow configuration, is inherently sexual. It's not strongly sexual, and I think many, maybe most people do not consciously think of it that way, most of the time. But I think that's one of those ways people kid themselves about our inescapable nature as sexually-reproduced members of a sexually-reproducing species. Noticing that makeup is inherently sexual breaks the kayfabe, but that doesn't mean it's a mistake--to the contrary, what generally breaks the kayfabe is the truth.
Now, I do think @Gillitrut's phrasing is a little ambiguous; I'm not claiming that every man who participates in drag is doing so for personal sexual gratification. But the phrase "inherently sexual act" strikes me as inescapably inclusive of either doing or parodying things that are historically about sexual attraction and value. The objectification of women is not accidentally sexual. (I think this also accounts for much of the discomfort people express at seeing makeup on young girls, e.g. in beauty pageants.)
The best objection I can think of, right now, to my view is that men doing drag could claim to be somehow defusing the objectification of women, by making makeup and sexy dresses just another thing humans do with no sexual connotations whatever. But this would strike me as on par with holding minstrel shows for the purpose of fighting racism. I occasionally hear people claim they are trying to "break down the gender binary" by doing gender-nonconforming things, but sex and sexuality have such a (so far) inescapable biological grounding that it would be very hard to persuade me that this is even an achievable result (modulo transhuman levels of body-mod tech), much less a likely one.
Saying that Makeup is done by women to add to their sexual value, so therefore anyone wearing makeup is engaging in sexual activity, and we should keep that away from children, leads in pretty weird directions by analogy. Makeup is inherently sexual in the same way that most behaviors that aren't related to food-shelter-safety needs are inherently sexual. Most things can be argued as "about sex" and part of our "inescapable nature as sexually-reproduced members of a sexually-reproducing species" by evo psych or RedPill or freudian types. Or as Dave Chapelle put it: "If a man could fuck in a carboard box, he wouldn't buy a house." Is there any aspect of improving one's appearance or lot in life that isn't about sexual value by some definition?
Men engage in athletic competition to show off their fitness and get laid. Therefore, athletes shouldn't talk to kids. And for God's sake, don't let a bodybuilder get within 500ft of a school, that's as sexual as it gets. In fact, they shouldn't really be allowed to watch movies with guys who lift weights in them, Marvel bodies are homoerotically sexualized and should be banned. (To be fair, I'd take that last one if I never had to hear about them again)
Fashion is about sex, clothing is tailored to give women hourglass figures and men's suits are tailored to give them broad shoulders and narrow waists; better keep fashion designers and tailors away from kids. In fact don't even let anyone wearing a well-tailored suit talk to kids, that guy is really working on his sexual value.
Guys join bands to get laid, don't let kids listen to anything other than devotional music. And never, ever let them dance or see anyone dance, that's all about showing off one's skill as a potential sexual partner.
Once you start down this path you just end up with John Lithgow in Footloose as your YesChad meme. Which, to be fair, in my state right now I feel like if you asked Doug Mastriano if kids should be allowed to listen to Rock music it's 50/50 he'd say no it's the devil's music.
Going by OP's definition of drag (a man wearing women's clothing), drag is not inherently sexual. What makes sexualized drag queens performing for children bad isn't that they are doing drag, it's that they are overly-sexualized.
The OP's question wasn't about what should or shouldn't be kept away from children, but whether drag is inherently sexual. That's the only question I was answering, so following that up with a discussion of what is or isn't appropriate for children seems like an orthogonal and perhaps just uncharitable response. Nothing you've said here is responsive to any of the arguments I raised for the particular claim that drag seems to indeed be as inherently sexual as blackface is inherently racial.
If I am in favor of keeping children in the shallow end of the swimming pool, I must by analogy oppose tall drinking glasses, I suppose. Some slopes are indeed slippery, but you seem to have engaged the genuinely fallacious version, here. "If we stop kids going to drag shows, what's next!? Banning dances and bringing back Victorian fashions?"
Funny, when I read your reply, I thought to myself "Gee, did I misread OP and insert my own preexisting knowledge of culture war bullshit into it? That was rude of me!" Then I reread OP:
The whole discussion in the OP is about whether Drag is sexual, and whether that sexuality makes it inappropriate for children. OP further cites questions of the drag queens themselves engaging in "Sexual fantasy" as a potentially inappropriate element for children. So no, that question is not "orthogonal" to the one raised in OP, the entire question in OP is not whether drag is sexual in a banal sense (a point I addressed in my own reply to OP), but whether it is sexual in a sense that is inappropriate for children.
Your little syllogism of "JP/Feminists say Makeup is sexual >> Drag Queens wear makeup >> Drag queens are sexual >> sexual things are inappropriate for children >> Drag queens are inappropriate for children" doesn't work because the meaning of "sexual" shifts midway through. Feminists/JP define makeup as sexual in the banal sense in which athletics, dancing, etc are sexual; then you shift that definition to "too prurient for children" midway without showing your work. So my slippery slope is on point here, just as athletics aren't inappropriate for children despite having sexual elements to them, makeup isn't inappropriate because it has sexual elements to it. Your own article proving "makeup is inherently sexual" contains the passage:
Trying to draw some kind of weird logical circle for why inappropriate stuff is inappropriate leads to over-classification and lack of clarity. Sexualized drag shows are inappropriate for children due to content, not because you can point to some banal element of drag as inherently sexual. @hoffmeister25 is on point here, it is inappropriate if the people involved are doing or being inappropriate things; trying to draw the line at an arbitrary point like "Man in a dress" or "Makeup" creates an illogical boundary, making compliance more difficult and the purveyors of the rule look foolish.
I occasionally look at "events in my local area" type lists, and there are a surprising number of drag events included in those lists. Clearly they have an audience. And every single one of them that I have ever seen was flagged as "adults only 18+". Sure, you can dress in drag and just do normal stuff, but it doesn’t seem wrong to note that drag is usually heavily sexualized in the specific way Americans think of as inappropriate for children.
If people were putting on Strip Club Story Hour, where the clubs served Capri Sun and virgin daiquiris in the afternoons while reasonably dressed strippers read books to kids, we would probably think this was pretty fucked up and suspicious, even if the kids are too ignorant to figure out the context. If there were multiple videos of kids being encouraged to tip the strippers with dollar bills tucked into their pants, doubly so. And if creepy strip club managers used to opportunity to try to convince little girls to come get a job as soon as they turned 18, I don’t think anyone would be surprised.
Wouldn't this be perceived as "Nice"? But as, something similar did occur and backlash was sufficiently strong to end it, maybe not.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is not how I understood the question, or how I approached it. I took the question on its face:
OP goes on to suggest that this is at the real center of debates about "Drag Queen Story Hour" and so forth, so presumably if we can reach agreement on this question, then we could reach agreement on the latter question. This may or may not be so, but my impression of this framing is that it is a way of trying to get clear about a less-obviously-charged question before worrying about the details of a more obviously charged question. Maybe I'm the one who misunderstood the OP, but I read your leaping straight to "and is this appropriate for children" as missing the point of the discussion.
I have never said "therefore drag queens are inappropriate for children" in this thread. I have explained why it seems clear to me that "drag" is inherently sexual, and you have said nothing to demonstrate otherwise, so if you want to have an argument with someone who is saying the things you're saying I'm saying, you're going to need to find someone else to argue with.
Again--which of my responses to Gillitrut or Gemma are you getting this from?
I feel like you're just spoiling for a fight. I was responding to Gillitrut in an analytic way, describing what comes to my mind when I hear "drag," and also pointing out that I am hesitant to do even this since of course there are many kinds of drag, and edge cases, and etc. I think my analysis is good in part because it also captures the discomfort people often feel in other situations unrelated to drag queens. Others have been quite civil in pointing to counterexamples, and I think in general the question "is drag inherently sexual" is an interesting one for reasons that have nothing at all to do with children. It's not that far from other arguments people have about e.g. whether breasts are "inherently sexual." Personally, I think lots of stuff is inherently sexual, to greater and lesser degrees, and I think that if we were Puritanical or Victorian about those things, I wouldn't personally like it but I would understand the argument.
Sure, fine, whatever, you don't think drag is inherently sexual, I get it. I disagree, for all the reasons I've cited, none of which you've provided any plausible pushback against, because you're too busy focusing on shit I didn't say.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Judy Garland is a gay icon, which suggests it's pretty likely that Judy Garland impersonation is supposed to be sexual.
More options
Context Copy link
Something I learned on the Reddit Motte was that much of drag as a culture is a form of clowning. Yes, as in circus clowns and Vaudeville clowns, but also the Italian tradition, harlequins, and jesters. Apparently it’s about colorful and outlandish drag queens teaching women how to “perform” their femininity. It’s basically the inverse of transsexuality-as-passing, which is to be treated as Srs Bsns.
I immediately saw parallels with pro wrestling and the space opera: they’re loaded with tropes, colorful characters, outlandish stereotypes, meant to teach legible moral lessons and inform men how to perform masculinity and nerds their nerdiness, respectively. (I also started seeing clowning in all genre media at that point, but I’ll stick to pro wrestling and space opera.)
What turned people off of Star Trek Discovery was a clown show with no clowning: it was trying to be Srs Bsns in a space which was designed for clowning. The Orville stepped into the gap, and now so has Strange New Worlds. Stargate: Universe made similar missteps ten years before, but evolved into compelling and operatic expansions of its Stargate predecessors, just in time to be cancelled. Star Trek Picard season 3 looks as it will be a triumphant return to clowning, judging by the trailer. Star Wars 7 and 9 were just clowning, with 8 a crying clown winking at the audience.
My point is that drag is apparently inherently about sex/gender but probably not supposed to be sexy unless the tropes and the funny/dramatic/funny mood roller coaster dictate it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link