Fifteen Minutes To Fame

It’s more complicated than I feel like really getting into right now, but the short answer is that drag itself, as a historical outlet for people exploring their relationship with gender, is fine and I have nothing against it – we owe a lot to it and it has been critical in making all of our lives possible in the 21st century.

But modern drag culture is a different thing entirely.

In its current state, drag is largely a glamorized, commodified, capitalist exploitation by cis gay men of performing an extremely exaggerated caricature of femininity for entertainment.

There are still people who get into it for the same reasons as the people at its historical roots – Carmen Carerra is a prime example of an out trans woman who started out as a drag queen on RPDR.  But as a whole, the culture surrounding it is garbage.  Most of the people in it are cis gay men who think because they’re gay that they have a free license to fetishize, capitalize, and stereotype femininity for personal gain because they don’t feel like they can be fairly called “misogynist” for it.

Meanwhile, while in character, they steal a lot of trans language – slurs proudly and incessantly included – while simultaneously exaggerating their personas and pretending that they have any meaningful affiliation with real trans women.  Yet out of character, they are often masculine and want to distance themselves from the trans community.  Drag culture both pretends to celebrate the trans umbrella and occupy space within it, and constantly starts fights with real trans people over their use of slurs, people like Ru Paul say horrifically problematic shit like “the difference between a drag queen and a trans woman is $25,000 and a good surgeon” and they absolutely flaunt and embrace the single most deadly misconception about trans women – that we are nothing more than men in dresses.

The public embrace of drag queens, even among trans allies, makes modern drag culture a bigger threat to us than TERFs.  (Some of them are literally friends with prominent TERF activists, including the absolute devil who is a fake goth and shall not be named.)  It actively promotes the number one idea that gets us persecuted, legislated, and killed.  And it does so with the support of the queer community at large – even among people who otherwise consider themselves trans allies.

Conchita Wurst is not Eurovision’s 2014 trans superhero.  Conchita Wurst is a drag character invented by a cis gay man (Thomas Neuwirth) who rejects any association with trans people out of character, who invented the false persona as literally a man (with full beard) in a dress, and named that character “Pussy Sausage”.  That 2014 Eurovision success was socially engineered as rallying anti-LGBT support behind a drag character:

Conservative Russian politician Vitaly Milonov urged Russia’s Eurovision selection committee to boycott the competition as a result of Wurst’s inclusion, describing her performance as “blatant propaganda of homosexuality and spiritual decay” and referring to her as the “pervert from Austria”.[20]Armenia’s entry for the contest, Aram Mp3, stated that Neuwirth’s lifestyle was “not natural” and that he should decide whether he was a man or woman. Neuwirth hit back: “I told him I don’t want to be a woman. I am just a working queen and a very lazy boy at home.” Aram subsequently apologised, stating that his prior comments had been intended as a joke.[4]

Reacting to these sentiments, the New Statesman commented that “a vote for Wurst is another vote against Russian homophobia and transphobia, and a win would send out a strong message of defiance eastwards”,[10] while the International Business Times called on readers to vote for Wurst to upset homophobes.[21] Highlighting statements such as these as evidence, Spiked declared that many Western European commentators and politicos had adopted Wurst as “a symbol of everything that makes Western Europe superior to the East” and that she had thus become part of a culture war against both Russia and “the so-called bigots and backward types” in their own nations.

Consider how different this really is from someone like Miley Cyrus exploiting an aesthetic she stole from black women, promoting it as some kind of “ghetto” or “thug” performance, capitalizing it while it was exploitable for a profit, then dropping it when it wasn’t a benefit to her and assuming none of the socioeconomic or cultural dangers of being tied to those things intrinsically.  Conchita Wurst is an example of a cis gay man adopting a fake trans identity and capitalizing it for personal gain.  When told his lifestyle wasn’t natural, his response was that he was just a man at home.  That’s hardly a defense for the trans community – instead of opposing the idea that we are some horrific disgrace to humanity, he saved his own face by distancing himself from us.  I.E. ‘You are unnatural spiritual decay’ ‘No I’m not one of them’.  Drag queens largely aren’t interested in defending us; they want to perform femininity and then take it off at the end of the day because actually being associated with trans women is a huge inconvenience for them.

For drag queens, womanhood is an exploitable, caricaturized performance.

For trans women, womanhood is an identity.

Drag culture is essentially gender appropriation.  It’s fake, it’s performative, it is a glamorized capitalist exploitation of stereotypes for the benefit of people who drop all association with what they’ve coopted as soon as it could be personally inconvenient for their lives outside of the performance, and it actively promotes harmful stereotypes against the people it was stolen from.

Drag was an essential part of our history.  I fully acknowledge that, and the foundations of our community were built on the bravery of people who called themselves drag queens because that was the best term they had at the time.

Modern drag culture is a betrayal of those roots and achieves nothing of value for us anymore.  It does significantly more harm than good – especially for real trans women who are hurt by the “man in dress” stereotypes and targeted by RPDR segments where the point is to learn how to clock and out trans women, and by the absolutely epidemic abuse of trans related slurs.  All with the approval, endorsement, and celebration of the rest of the community.

Drag itself is not inherently bad.

Modern drag culture, in its current form, absolutely is.

For further reading, here are two great articles on the subject that I’ve had bookmarked since 2014 (sadly the image links are all broken, some of them were really important).  I HIGHLY encourage anyone interested to read them, especially before responding to anything I may have explained inadequately here:

https://the-orbit.net/zinniajones/2014/04/the-worst-assimilation-of-all-how-modern-day-drag-hurts-trans-women-and-achieves-little-or-nothing-of-value/

https://the-orbit.net/zinniajones/2014/05/why-cant-bailey-jay-just-have-her-feelings-about-rupaul-on-the-trans-community-and-differences-of-opinion/

Police officers have arrested a man for filming an arrest even though they acknowledged it was legal for him to do so– and he’s a State Congressman

The police officers seemed more concerned with calling Rep. John Walker a “race baiter” for doing something completely legal than they were in upholding the law. But the kicker is that Rep. Walker had already been arrested for the same thing years ago, which is why he fought for the law (and won) in the first place.

Gifs: John Horse

So it may or may not be what she thinks black people are doing but it’s definitely what she’s doing.

this is not a new thing

Given the fact that women are constantly watched in our society, and we are constantly REMINDED that we are being watched by people making fun of fat, “ugly”, or gender-nonconforming women, it makes me wonder how many women have messed up important tasks or projects or just day-to-day activities because A PART OF OUR BRAIN is permanently being deactivated?

Like talk about a fucking handicap.

Women are constantly held under the microscope- whether we are attractive or unattractive, the gaze of patriarchy never ends.

Just last week I was walking my dog and bent over to literally pick up poop.  Suddenly I heard whistling and looked up cause I knew I was the only person around.  Sure enough, about 300 feet away, some construction worker was perched on top of a building, grinning at me and calling out stuff I luckily couldn’t hear because he was so goddamn far away.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247434408_That_swimsuit_becomes_you_Sex_differences_in_self-objectification_restrained_eating_and_math_performance_Correction_to_Fredrickson_et_al_1998

First, MLK was relentlessly investigated by law enforcement authorities on suspicion of being a Communist. His supporters were abused and murdered by both civilians and law enforcement over the years. The FBI spent vastly more resources trying to demonstrate that he was causing riots as a paid agent of Soviet Communism than they ever spent investigating the endless murder threats to his life. And, of course, the FBI mounted multiple sting and other investigations to expose and exploit his all too human flaws, particularly his cheating on his wife. His life is hardly a good model of police-citizen relations.

Second, King faced endless, brutal criticism for the peaceful protests he led. Lots and lots of (mostly) white people insisted that now was not the time to protest, that social and political change would best happen at its own pace, over a long period. Heck, has anyone actually read “Letter from Birmingham Jail”? The whole thing is a response to a letter published in the Birmingham paper in which white ministers asked why an “outsider” like King would come to Birmingham to lead protests, leading to his famous response “I am in Birmingham because injustice is here.” There is never a convenient time for protest, or an acceptable way to demand change from majorities that like things the way they are. Martin Luther King may be an American saint now. But he wasn’t when he was alive. Let’s not kid ourselves.

Third, is it now required that we all be Martin Luther King? Is it required that we all have the patience to endure endless harassment and violence in order to be “worthy” to protest? Do remember that King himself had largely abandoned the philosophy of nonviolence at the time of his assassination. For example, he was only in Memphis in April 1968 supporting a direct action strike by sanitation workers in the city, an action LOTS of people would have called violently disruptive to the health of the community. His movement only seems beatific in retrospect, through the lens of the rioting and social chaos that ensued his marginalization in the later 1960s and 1970s.  There are no perfect protestors even when there is much to protest.

white americans: uh,,,,,,,  Black people are asking for rights,,,,,,,,let’s move away to isolated communities 

SHELLY: fuck all of you tryhards I’m writing a frankenstein

POLIDORI: frankensteins are not goth

OMG watch this^^^^^

DIS. ARM. These. Psychos.

“You are not following my commands.” “But you haven’t given me any commands?” “Stay right there.” “Uh?”

You want to know why they do stuff like that? Nigga went to court and lost. Think about it. A jury found this type of behavior acceptable. THAT fucked up!

Cop points gun at his head with his finger shaking like a leaf on the trigger for 5 minutes after the situation was under control. Technically it was never out of control til the cop freaked out over a earpiece. This man should not be allowed to own a gun much less carry one everyday. Someone is going to die for nothing.

Time to make this go viral. Nigga that DIDN’T get shot, but easily could have for no reason whatsoever 

You NEVER point your weapon at a target unless you intend to shoot. And you NEVER put your finger ON the trigger until you actually squeeze it.