How to respond to blackface vs drag Queen disagreement

I have to admit, when I came into this thread I thought this was balderdash, but after reading some of the comments here, I'm rethinking my position. This post deserves more upvotes for the good discussion it's creating, and it's a shame that downvoting makes it less likely for this post to be seen.

I'm Gen X and it was legal to blatantly discriminate against women for credit, housing, and employment IN MY LIFETIME.

How can you think women were not disenfranchised?

I personally think both are derogatory. The overly exaggerated feminine behavior and make up drag queens do is no different than over exaggeration of African American features, pronunciation of words, and dark skin that was done in black face. Those are my thoughts.

As a woman, I find drag to be offensive. Generally, a drag performance is a campy, exaggerated form of womanhood intended to make people laugh. I see no distinction between drag and blackface.

It’s very important to keep in mind that drag performers are not trans; they are men impersonating women. Sometimes people get this confused in the debate on this topic.

I really think there should be more discussion of this. (Taking blackface off the table. It's abhorrent. End stop.)

As a woman, I do feel vaguely uncomfortable with drag and the extreme sexualization and gendering of what it means to be a woman. I wouldn't feel comfortable voicing that publicly. Why?

I'm also ok with people wearing whatever they want, regardless of their gender. I have a trans child, and we have had a lot of conversations about gender norms in our family. I don't think we belong in boxes, which is one reason why it rubs me the wrong way.

Immediately shutting women's experience down is not cool. This is more nuanced than "nothing is wrong with it."

I have long thought that drag is exactly the same as blackface and don’t understand why it’s so widely accepted.

It’s not ok to exaggerate the stereotypes of any group even if it’s under the guise of flattery.

You don't respond, you agree with them.

I loved Drag Race when it came out, really loved it.

They were celebrating women and femininity!!! At first I ignored the insults and little digs - it was just in fun! So regressive it was progressive!

Eventually, I had to stop lying to myself. It wasn’t an honor, it was a parody.

Look up what it means if a queen is “fishy” and tell me if that sounds like a celebration of females.

Drag can be done thoughtfully, but it generally isn’t.

I have a lot more respect for gender non-conforming men who challenge stereotypes in their day-to-day life than someone who puts on a costume of me.

This is a great topic, and one that has never crossed my mind. But you’re right OP. Drag Queens over exaggerate female behavior for entertainment. Much like blackface actors in the past.

I've always felt a little bit like this. I've got more lgbtq friends than straight and I've guest performed with a drag kings troupe several times in the past. But I could never really reconcile how wonderful and compassionate the community is with how it's also seemingly perpetuating negative stereotypes and demeaning caricatures.

I like what another poster on this thread said about its acceptability being owned by the groups it caricatures. If the majority of women in a society are offended by drag queens, then it should go the way of the dodo; but if they're not, then no harm, no foul. I'm just not sure that the drag community has inquired into those perceptions as much as it perhaps should have.

Women are second class citizens, legally and socially. Men still have most of the power and own most of the resources.

Blackface vs drag is a different conversation imo, but women are an oppressed class, and nearly always have been. 

This is a really good post OP. Never heard or considered this argument before.

There was a time where blackface was seen as "all in good fun" by those who did it and society at large - even if it was not fun for those they were mocking. Hindsight is 20/20, and we tend to assume that people who did things that offend us now were aware of how offensive they might be perceived in the future. The reality is, we are currently doing things that we consider normal that will offend the hell out of future generations.

An even more controversial version of this conversation would be the treatment of transgenderism/transsexualism vs transracialism in progressive circles. If a biological male (considered privileged) wishes to convert to female (considered marginalized) and use female spaces, this is fine because trans people are marginalized as well. If a white person (considered privileged) wishes to convert to being a black person (considered marginalized) this has been rejected. Assuming that the people in these scenarios are acting in good faith and genuinely feel dysmorphia about their bodies being either the wrong sex or the wrong race - how can these incongruities be reconciled in progressive thought? If anything, someone who is transracial is also a marginalized minority - not feeling a part of their native racial group but also rejected by their converted racial group.

I'm not advocating for one thing or another, I'm just curious about that apparent contradiction.

As a woman and a supporter of to the queer community: I always feel like a drag show is, although entertaining, a parody of my body. When I learned about minstrel shows, I immediately saw parrallels. The man's body is "priviledged" in most societies and it is safer to walk around as a man. You dressup us a woman and get to have our curves for your 15 minutes. You step off stage and can take of the curves. I have to live with them everyday, and those curves come with the pain of harassement, period pains, discrimination etc.

As a straight white male, I can see the point if a woman was offended by drag. It is caricature, fetishising, and all the other things that are wrong about blackface.\ My guess is they got away with it so far because it’s predominantly a gay man activity? Like it emerged from a marginalised group?\ Like I said, I can totally understand a woman being hurt and bothered by drag, and I think she’d have a valid point, but I don’t think I’d be comfortable joining a protest to get drag cancelled or banned or limited.\ As a straight dude I’d feel totally out of place trying to police what lgbt people do in their spaces?

Are you serious?? Women are STILL under attack and second class citizens TODAY. Drag is an outlandish caricature of women

You disagree that women have historically been portrayed as second class citizens? It’s actually worse- and not a portrayal at all - it’s a reality.

You’re having a hard time because your 2 supposedly progressive worlds are clashing- trans rights or women’s rights.

Do women have the same right as black people to say that they believe that men who dress up to degrade women and make money from degrading women are kinda sexist at the very least?

The argument you have chosen holds no water, unfortunately, because your logic doesn’t hold up. I think sexism predates racism.

You’re having a hard time coming up with an argument because you don’t have one because actually black face and drag queen really are two birds of a feather. 

There isn’t much difference. It’s mocking someone you aren’t. It’s awful

I am a boomer gay man and I have always hated anything that suggests to the population that all we want is to be women.

Drag is destructive to our community’s mental health and encourages a level of cosplay that causes people to foment hatred for us (not comparable to the black experience) and a level of exclusion to the non-feminine community of gay men.!

Stop dragging me!

Both performances promote ugly stereotypes that some people enjoy. Why bother arguing?

I agree with the other someone.

Wow... I've been conflicted about drag for a long time. I couldn't put my finger on it.

Drag is hateful to women. It's sick.

I agree with OP's friend on this one...

I just imagine those men who aren't openly drag queens in their every day lives. They go to their office jobs or whatever and enjoy the male privileges (more respect, more authority, being taken more seriously as a man..)

And during drag shows they pick out the good parts of being a woman (pretty clothes, "slutty" dancing, female vocabulary..) but they do it in such an extremely sexual and exaggerated way that it looks more like a parody or caricature. It over-sexualizes femininity, it mocks and pokes fun at all the women who have been shamed into modesty for centuries.

Then after the show is over those men can just take off their wigs and makeup and continue being regular men to the society while women still continue to struggle to be accepted in every aspect of their lives.

Edit: grammar

I think your friend is using some darn good logic.

If anything drag shows are more like minstrel shows than blackface. It seems like every LGBT related event has to have a drag show. There's more to LGBT culture than drag shows.

I like the debate. I could never put my finger on my dislike for drag queens.

I always thought it started with that music video from Queen where Freddy mercury is vacuuming in a dress. I felt offended. I was maybe nine years olds. I didn’t understand it.

But now I can see I saw a rock star making fun of my mother. Perhaps?

Interesting comparison. I also always thought it was wrong to lie to people. For me, a person pretending to be a woman was Like showing their cards that they’re a cheater and a lie.

The black face thing never made Comfortable because I don’t like when someone joins a crowd Making fun of themselves. I’m thinking lou jowels

Both are hateful. That is all.

There was definitely a time when blackface was considered "all in good fun" too 

One thing I find interesting is that I almost never hear woman say anything about feeling stereotyped from a drag performance.

Hypocrisy is the new normal.

Well you're supposed to be outraged by one and the other is socially celebrated.

That's it. We talk about race or gender being social constructs, and I think this outrage is even more of a social construct.

Your friend makes a good point

Trans woman here -

The very best way to “respond” to that is not to respond. People who are obsessed with hating others aren’t amenable to reason, and you’re not reasoning them out of their hatred.

The second best response is to tell them that this is beneath responding to, and move on to something else.

Drag isn’t gay men doing stereotypes of women to promote hatred of women. (Please believe me — I have a whole system for “is this speech act hatred”, and breaking it out just derails the convo)

Drag is primarily (but not exclusively) gay men doing parodies, satires, and performances of femininity (and masculinity!).

The last one, “performances*, is important.

All gender is a performance. The way femininity and masculinity are performed and presented by cis men and women, heterosexual men and women, etc - all performances. When a businessman wears a necktie, that’s gender performance.

Most people doing drag are not doing it in a way that promotes hate speech, harassment, or violence towards women, towards vulnerable groups. An example of someone doing drag who had an effect of promoting hatred towards vulnerable groups was Rudy Giuliani & Donald Trump for a charity event in 2000, but the harm from that wasn’t overtly evident at the time and is more from them both being horrible people than from that one performance. (It gave cover that they were allies of drag / LGBTQ culture, which is false)

Drag performers are simply performing outward displays of social gender, in a way that often parodies or satirises cultural views of gender.

Also, it needs to be pointed out — cis women do female drag performances; i’ve seen cisgender hetero women do drag as Elvira, Dolly Parton, and a variety of other personas. Elvira herself is a cisgender woman doing drag.

Also some drag queens are also trans women, who do drag to explore and perform gender in ways they don’t typically present.

Also, the pedigree of the “drag is just blackface” is that it’s a wedge issue argument designed to get drag queens and african-americans to infight and split politically. No one knows exactly where it originated from, but it is the same “play one disenfranchised and politically persecuted group against the other” tactic that the enemies of both groups love to promote, and in Chinese tactics is called “Kill With A Borrowed Knife”.

Entertaining the bad faith proposition they put forward tells them that you are open to other such bad faith propositions in the future, and they will come back time and time again with others until they find the key, and then you belong to them - because they fulfill your psychological need for a narrative that explains (in a “socially acceptable” way) the hate you feel (consciously or subconsciously).

That’s why the best response to that is no response at all, and the second best response is to tel, them it’s beneath you / you thought better of them than to bring it up, close the topic, and move on.

Because a large chunk of these are fishing expeditions, looking for folks willing to nibble on hatebait.

There has actually been some discourse recently about drag being offensive, but I don’t think it ever became widespread 

I think they're right and you are wrong. Drag is insulting to women. And it doesn't matter if it's a gay man - they're a man. I also find transgender male to female insulting. And I have to agree with someone else that I respect gender non-conforming appearances and ideals more.

Women have been disenfranchised and are still held down in many ways, but drag isn’t just dressing up as women. (That’s called cross dressing.) Drag queens don’t dress, look, or act like everyday women. It is an expression of gender in exaggerated ways using stereotypes satirically, and drag culture seeks to promote and support inclusion and acceptance of all people regardless of gender identity, sexual preference, etc. Drag queens are often advocates for equality and inspire others to embrace themselves for who they are. Black face was derogatory to blacks for entertainment purposes and exploited unfair stereotypes. BIG DIFFERENCE.

I’m Gen X. Who gives a fuck?!! We all need to stop being so fucking goddamn offended all the fucking time.

The act of dressing up as someone outside your group is a human storytelling tradition that goes back thousands of years.

Should I get offended that someone from Africa smears white paste on their face and pretends to be white? Or even if they make fun of some stereotypical mannerisms that make a caricature of white people, or should I just laugh?

What about when women dress up as men pretending to be macho and strutting around the way men do? Should I correct them about the way we sit down with our legs open? I could point out that because if we sit down like they do we’ll crush out testicles between our legs. Do they care? No!

What’s really messed up is that people are getting fucking offended with cuss words but let children watch violent movies where human beings are getting mauled and ripped apart, and where they watch cities being destroyed.

If you’re getting offended by someone in blackface but haven’t spent a penny doing something about actual slavery happening in Africa today, you’re just trying to score goody-two-shoe points without earning it. YTA!

If you’re a moral person who boycotts products, when did you last participate in boycotts of plastic which are clogging our oceans, chocolate or computer chips/smart phones both which use minerals that are extracted by slave labor? When did you last fight against forcing prisoners to fight forest fires? What about slave wages for farm workers? There are real problems that need to be solved. Stop wasting your energy being offended for other groups.

Grow a pair. If you are not personally and intentionally being offended, STFU! If you’ve gotten this far and downvoted me go back to riding your uncle you inbred retard.

Edited for typos

Is it "all in good fun"? Gay men are not immune from misogyny just because they are disenfranchised. It also doesnt matter that some drag queens are great, loving people who have never considered the harmful impavt of what they do. It is what it is, though I think it will take some time for the culture to be willing to face this.

I had never considered the parallel.

I'm reminded of how John Lennon wrote a song comparing the status of women and black people.

Woman is the n* of the World. Controversial in 1972. However, both women and black leaders seemed to agree with him that they faced unjust bigotry.

Seems relevant here somehow

Doing one will get you cancelled (at best) or murdered (at worst) by all all mainstream media, politicians, and activists.

Doing the other will get you applauded, and told you are stunning and brave, by all mainstream media, politicians, and activists.

Did you know that the church at one point taught woman did not have a soul? The Catholic Church resolved the question of whether women have souls in 1950. (Woman was made from the rib of a man. Woman when they marry become one with their husband.) Did you know now woman as a group do not make as much as men as a group. This largely due to the fact woman care for their children. When a kid is sick it is often the wife who misses work to care for them. This leads to fewer promotions. Did you know when there is a divorce the woman lifestyle declines because she has less to begin with. To think woman are no longer disadvantaged is just wrong.

With nuance, and a casual interest in the history of each.

Drag as we know it evolved from gay people congregating in secret when it was illegal to be themselves. They'd hold "balls," or in more modern terms, "proms," so that they could have some semblance of a regal community affair as a respite from living their entire lives hiding a criminalized identity. Balls were also analogous to beauty pageants- if you did not pass as a real woman, you weren't going to win (become queen of the ball, again analogous to a prom queen). Drag is not currently what it once was, it isn't what it meant. It was a criminalized people hanging out together, outwardly expressing the innate aspect of themselves that was illegal and hidden the rest of the time. As far as I know, it's never been illegal to be a woman. It's for sure been illegal for women to do stuff, being a biological woman is often pretty terrible, but my vagina and uterus have never been illegal for simply existing. I do not have to pretend to be a man to evade arrest, unless I'm attempting to do one of the actions that were/are outlawed in order to oppress us.

Blackface has never held a cultural significance for anyone who wasn't actively longing for the days of culturally acceptable, overt racism.

Every drag queen I've had the pleasure or misfortune to know disdains Rupaul's Drag Race. That show is offensive to most people and is not indicative of much.

The way I see it, blackface mocks black people. No-one ever put on blackface to depict an extremely witty and beautiful person who was admired by all around them.

On the other hand, drag celebrates a wildly OTT but joyful version of femininity. A drag performer is a “Queen”, stunning and bold.

I’ve been to drag shows as a woman and always felt celebrated. I can’t imagine a black person would have ever felt the same going to a minstrel show.

I agree with them. I don't think anyone ought to dress up as a disenfranchised group. If they are gay, they are already disenfranchised enough without adding to it. Let no one dress up like that.

I don't think they're all gay though. I had a male relative who cross dressed and he was married to a woman twice. The first one died of cancer and the second one died of old age. He finally died of old age too, by the way.

I don't respond.... this is all getting out of hand..

Why not expose children to other mental illnesses? Let’s have schizophrenics and bi-polars come into schools and espouse their hallucinations and delusions? Wait, they’re teachers, never mind.

Women are still second class citizens. Now we have to put up with XY in our XX spaces.

I think they are right that we have been treated as second class/less than human; but, wrong about who does it. Drag Queens have never treated me that way.

Really controversial and split thread. Surprised to see so much anti-drag sentiment here.

Quit bringing black people into bad faith arguments that are designed to distort the purpose and history of drag in order to attack the lgbtq community. If you are going to be hateful don’t hide it behind shitty logic.

Anything can be abstracted to the point that it SEEMS the same but those arguments are devoid of context and lazy af. The point of blackface is to replace and degrade black performers and the community. It is racist, oppressive, and serves no other purpose. Drag has a much more complex history.

Drag can be used to uplift women, if done correctly. I personally find some drag wildly offensive, tbh: potraying women as droolingly idiotic or only vapid fuckable vessels isn't OK with me. It's not parody if it comes from a place of hate, and some of it feels downright hateful. BUT, most drag isn't that offensive and some of it is actually quite beautiful - a way for one gender to participate, develop, create in the culture usually reserved for a different gender.

IMHO, that's the difference. There isn't a situation where blackface uplifts Black people.

Women can also be drag performers :)

So, two thoughts. 1) Women have absolutely been historically repressed and mocked. Still are. Even in supposedly progressive countries. What on earth makes you think that's not a thing? 2) Drag as an art form originated amongst people on the fringes of society. It was not one of the many tools employed by the dominant societal paradigm to subjugate women and keep them in their place. It was, and typically continues to be, a method of deconstructing and making fun of gender constructs. It was pushing back on the rigidity of social mores by having someone born into one gender play act as the other. Blackface was a tool of the oppressor. Drag is a tool of the oppressed. A way of saying that you will not be shoved into the windowless little grey box that society thinks you belong because you were born with a certain set of genitals. Drag queens have rarely been in a position to oppress anyone. By and large they still aren't.

As the world changes the art of Drag will need to change with it. Some things that used to fly are too taboo even for the raunchiest queens to touch on. But it doesn't mean that blackface and Drag are equivalent. They are not.

eh, I don't. it's a pretty valid point. if it was predominantly straight dudes doing drag most women would agree.

A: I DON'T. BOTH ARE FORMS OF ART EXPRESSION. IF I DON'T AGREE W/A PERSON, I DON'T LET MY NOSE GET OUT OF JOINT BC I DON'T HAVE TO APPROVE OR DISSAPROVE BC IT IS NONE OF MY BUSINESS AS LONG AS IT IS NOT AGAINST THE LAW OR HURTING MY FELLOW HUMANKIND.....IT IS CALLED RESPECT......MOM

I have to admit that I'm curious whether to people reflexively downvoting anything that isn't "drag is evil," no matter how thoughtful, are doing it because they're feminist (which I'd understand), or because they've bought into the right-wing narrative about drag being "grooming" (which I definitely would not).

I find it hard to give a fuck about this conversation because it really doesn’t matter - why were you even having it to begin with and why does it matter if you’re right or wrong?

I’ve honestly not given a lot of thought to drag queens. Now that I have I’m finding myself leaning towards yes it is offensive and not any different than black face. How is it that this is not another case of one section of society appropriating another segment of the female experience, and frequently giving the impression they do it better. In a world where women are losing ground it’s just one more than. The difference being that this is something that socially acceptable.

I never thought of drag queens in that light until I heard that comparison. Blackface is worse, but a man dressing up as a woman with like big boobs and hair with lots of makeup doing all kinds of stereotypical female things….kind of makes you think. But still I’m a down the middle guy, drag queens are funny.

I am not opposed to drag queens but it is true women have historically been and still are treated like second class citizens. Actually black men were afforded the vote before women. Institutional misogyny is deep in our culture so deep the people don’t even realize. That being said I don’t think drag queens are misogynists but you do bring up an interesting point. What is the difference?

I must have missed the part where gay dudes enslaved women for hundreds of years and then once they got free made an entire genre of theater dedicated to drag queens mocking every single thing about women, along with all kinds of other horrible oppressive shit.

I mean do you guys even hear yourselves sometimes? Historical context matters to culture and the history didn't start when you were born. Acting like this is some deep discussion. Lord.

Blackface aims to imitate people of color for the purpose of humiliating them. Drag aims to imitate women for the purpose of celebrating them. Drag performers don’t make themselves look ugly and then try to act dumb or cowardly (common tactics in minstrel shows where blackface was often employed), they try to make themselves as stunning as possible (even if their aesthetic is avant garde) and then act as elevated as possible. People can imitate to mock, or they can imitate to flatter. Blackface is a mockery. Drag is flattery, that’s why many drag performers imitate iconic women that they adore.

blackface is used specifically to mock and harm people. drag is just exaggerated. i don't like drag but i don't understand all these people who are offended by it. who cares if someone wears a costume if they're not hurting anyone?

Biracially speaking, you white women are fucking nuts comparing drag to the degradation of blackface.

Here is a documentary: How Pricilla, Queen of the desert changed the world https://youtu.be/vMl9BkS5nnQ?si=bu6ELdksQ_D_zpN9

We will look back on drag queens the same way we look back on black face now. I used to be immersed in drag culture until I realized women are not whiny celebrated but being made fun of

I think the way it makes the people being imitated feel matters. For example, black face is considered very offensive to most black people. As far as I know most women are not offended by drag queens.

Drag is meant to be the subversive parody of gender ‘norms’ and expectations. The use of over the top camp humor and irony is meant to point out the ridiculous aspect of performing gender. The use of stereotype is almost a requirement to traffic in this type of communication.

That being said, when drag devolves into men wearing fake tits calling each other sluts and waving handbags around it can be offensive.

I feel like its one of those situations not worth arguing. Its ok to have a difference of opinion. He has a point, and so do you. Just agree to disagree.

I think your friend is misunderstanding what drag queens are. From my understanding, drag queen’s are men who enjoy dressing themselves up to feminine beauty standards. It’s not about being gay, or wishing you were a woman, or identifying as a woman, it’s what makes these men feel pretty. I don’t even think it’s necessarily paying homage to women or anything that deep: they think they can rock a dress and makeup, so they do. It’s a way for them to express themselves. The practice itself is agnostic towards women, but the appreciation of female beauty standards is real and there in full view.

Blackface, on the other hand, is at its base a discriminatory practice. It was started as a way for white people to caricaturize and demean their image of what a black person was. There’s nothing in blackface that’s an honest representation of what black beauty is. It’s all about hate.

In drag, ideally, the dresses are nice, the makeup is applied skillfully, the performances are impressive. In blackface, the shoe polish is a mockery of black skin, the big red lips are an insult, and the stupid goofs are a statement on what they think black people are. It’s 100% not the same thing.