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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.
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.
Judy Garland is a gay icon, which suggests it's pretty likely that Judy Garland impersonation is supposed to be sexual.
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