Talk:Drag queen

Editorial change

Since we are apparently a society of full inclusion, no matter what, I would like to ask that the term cisgender be removed from the article and replaced with heterosexual or straight as I find the above term non inclusive of the rights of heterosexual people. Thank you. 31.126.66.175 (talk) 16:15, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Heterosexual refers to sexual orientation, whereas cisgender refers to gender identity, i.e., same gender identity as your assigned gender at birth. The article should not be updated with the proposed change because these words have different meanings, and we need to follow common usage. Hist9600 (talk) 13:04, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Etymology

This is most likely a red herring, but in case anyone feels like investigating further: one of the words for 'a costume' or 'an outfit' in Norwegian, Danish and Swedish is

• Norwegian: en drakt
• Danish: en dragt
• Swedish: en dräkt

—suggesting a connection with being 'in costume'.

(Links go to dictionary entries in those languages.)

In German, I think it's Tracht. Not sure about Dutch.

It's perfectly possible,though, that being in drag is unrelated to these. The OED don't mention anything along those lines, for example. (When learning Norwegian, I assumed the words were related, and remembered drakt that way.) Musiconeologist (talk) 16:50, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Interesting theory. Needs a reliable source here. Scottish? --SergeWoodzing (talk) 07:47, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Transmen

You should point out that trans men can also be drag queens (and not only drag kings) as a performance like the famous Gottmik. 2A01:E0A:5DA:C520:C076:CBBE:592B:1EBF (talk) 15:11, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

"History of drag"

Isn't it obvouls that this whole section belongs in the arcticle Drag (entertainment), not here? SergeWoodzing (talk) 14:36, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Rollback

I rolled back 2 edits where an image had been added here as a separate section, but with no explaiation or request, SergeWoodzing (talk) 08:38, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

A need to rethink how we write on gender impersonation and drag.

@SergeWoodzing I just created a quick article on Female impersonation (needs expanding) which makes an important separation from drag (entertainment), although it might be better to move it to gender impersonation. In general, I think we need to do a better job differentiating between gender impersonation and drag because they aren't exactly the same thing. This book makes a compelling distinction where drag is defined as different than female impersonation because of its specifically queer identity: French, Sarah. Staging Queer Feminism. Palgrave Macmillan UK. p. 94. ISBN 9781137465436. We need to recognize that much of what is being presented here as "drag history" isn't exactly drag history but the history of female impersonation which for the majority of history looked nothing like the drag queens of LGBTQ culture. For one thing, female impersonators were predominantly cisgender heterosexual men (at least as far as the public knew) through most of history, and they were taking on female characters in plays and comedy sketches performed for heteronormative audiences as opposed to adopting/developing a drag persona and identity for a queer audience. They also were predominantly performing in works with little to no queer subtext, and in fact there was a concerted effort to deliberately dissociate from queer identity in most cases. Minstrel shows, vaudeville, burlesque, early films for the most part were presenting female impersonators as heteronormative, although undoubtedly some of the performances were queer coded and performed by queer artist who were closeted in some instances. (and those are exactly the types of examples we should be highlighting when looking at drag's roots within the broader subject of female impersonation) In short, I think we should move much of this history to the female impersonation article, and really focus in on the queer identity aspect of drag within this article . 4meter4 (talk) 05:40, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

I do not undertand the use of the word queer in these contexts and decided years ago not to try to figure it out. I have had a number of drag queens as friends and in shows I worked on. Some of them are against the use of that word, others are not. So, proceed and do what you feel is good for Wikipedia, and we'll let others weigh in! All I ask is that you proceed with caution. It's still a controversial word, believe it or not. Best wishes, --SergeWoodzing (talk) 21:06, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

@SergeWoodzing I hear you, but I think its equally controversial to tie up all female impersonation up into drag. Dame Edna Everage for example really shouldn't be in the drag (entertainment) article because Barry Humphries insisted he did not do drag and was not a drag queen and was merely an actor performing a character. When we get down to it, drag queens are an intimate part of and are inextricably linked to LGBTQ culture, and they perform a unique social/cultural role in the LGBTQ community. Drag queens work in gay bars and in nightclubs, and the ball and pageant systems were built around a gay and transgender sub-culture. Drag queens also have their own subculture not shared with female impersonators with words unique to their world (see Drag Race terminology). The drag queen is a performer attached to a certain socio-cultural and even political setting (the gay rights movement was influenced by drag queen activists). Drag queens are involved in pride parades, and LGBTQ rights protests. That's very different than the long history of female impersonators working in minstrel shows, vaudeville, burlesque, plays, musical theatre etc. for predominantly straight audiences, and by mainly straight men who never performed in gay clubs, participated in the ball or pageant drag scene, or engaged with drag queen culture (ie. the ball scene, the LGBTQ nightlife scene, the linguistics/language of drag, etc.). Female impersonation is not attached to a particular socio-cultural group, whereas drag is. That said, there is always going to be some overlap between the two, and there will inevitably be certain performers that do not fit neatly anywhere or bridge the divide. It's a very difficult thing to concretely define. Best.4meter4 (talk) 22:06, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

I was very surprised that a link to "female impersonator" brought me to this article. I don't understand the nuances, but I thought they were different. If they are in the same article, perhaps it should be entitled Drag. Humpster (talk) 07:34, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

"Usually gay men" does not seem accurate?

I understand that while most drag queens throughout history have been gay men, many have also been gender-nonconforming or trans women. One only has to visit a drag show or look at the list of queens who have appeared on Rupaul's Drag Race (at least 20) to see this is the case today, and there are many famous historical drag queens who can be understood as trans women such as Marsha P. Jonson and Crystal LaBeija. I don't disagree with the word "usually" but a more accurate and useful sentence for readers unfamiliar with this topic might be "Historically, drag queens have usually been gay men or trans women, although in recent years feminine drag has grown in popularity among performers of other genders, including trans men (who historically often performed as drag kings)." Rynd (talk) 00:50, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

I don’t think that’s factually accurate. The open acceptance and inclusion of trans women in the drag scene is a relatively recent thing (as in only the last seven years or so). Prior to 2017, drag queens went out of their way to differentiate themselves from transgender women; partly because LGBTQ culture for a long time associated the trans community closely with sex work and drag artists felt a need to protect their image and dissociate themselves from the trans community for this reason. (There’s academic research on this.) That’s not to say that there weren’t some trans women working as drag queens but many were not free to be open because of transphobia in the drag community.

There was controversy surrounding early trans performers on Drag Race and some of the transphobic comments were made by RuPaul and other members of the show’s production team. RuPaul even argued they shouldn’t be allowed to compete because they weren’t drag queens. (This was very much how things were until RuPaul's Drag Race season 9 when Peppermint (entertainer) became the first openly trans woman allowed to enter the competition; a decision which was not widely approved of at the time. It was controversial). Additionally, terms like non-binary or gender non-conforming are relatively new paradigms. We need to be careful to not superimpose 21st century worldviews and constructs onto the past when such ideas were not articulated or understood the way they are today. All of this to say, I don’t think it would be accurate to include trans women as holding a prominent place among drag queens historically because they were systematically marginalized and excluded from the drag community until very recently. A drag queen who was openly trans was practically unheard of prior to the 21st century; although trans women commonly competed in the ball scene in their own separate categories which is a different thing all together. It was a gay men only club for the longest time in terms of drag shows and pageants. 4meter4 (talk) 01:49, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

When did "drag" become "drag queen"

The origin of drag queens doesn't seem to be covered explicitly. It sounds as if it began with or after the Pansy craze in the US.

Acting in drag is a British tradition though it seems to make Americans uncomfortable. The Monty Python troupe often did routines in drag, but I wouldn't consider them drag queens. They are intentionally poor impersonators, so perhaps they fit in the pantomime category. More recently, Hugh Laurie was an excellent performer in drag (and out of it). I don't consider him a drag queen. The 2000 film The Last of the Blonde Bombshells includes a man who impersonated a woman in an "all-girl" band; that's a bit different too.

Then there is the French play and the musical La Cage aux Folles. A character performs as a drag queen, but also impersonates a woman. Then other characters impersonate drag queens. Hey, it's a farce.

So:

1. Is there a spectrum of roles with drag queens at the extreme?

2. What about the many instances of women "in drag" in armies?

3. Is this article US-centric in focussing on drag queens rather than drag in general?

4. As I commented earlier, should the title be simply Drag?

I hope I don't offend anyone. It's a complicate subject and my knowledge is limited.

Humpster (talk) 08:26, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

See Drag (entertainment).

SergeWoodzing (talk) 17:20, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. It was Francis Renault that brought me to this page.

Nevertheless, the definition at Drag (entertainment), ("Drag is a performance of exaggerated femininity, masculinity, or other forms of gender expression...") doesn't fit. I can only judge by photographs but I wouldn't call it exaggerated. Nor does crossdressing fit. So I have linked Renault to female impersonation. That would fit for the fictional character in Victor, Victoria but doesn't work for the masher of "Tipping the Velvet". Crossdressing isn't quite right for women (or men) who disguise themselves of necessity. Perhaps there is a need for an article of definitions!

Humpster (talk) 06:03, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

@Humphrey Tribble You've hit on one of the challenges of editing in this area as there are multiple terms that overlap, and they are terms that have not been consistently defined over time and which have taken on different cultural and political meanings within different contexts. "Drag" as a term comes from English Renaissance theatre where it was simply the term used for men dressed as women because there costumes would drag across the floor. Women were barred by law from appearing on the stage so men had to play the female characters. There wasn't a queer/LGBTQIA+ context though to the performance in the way that we understand today as that kind of thinking didn't exist then (ie gender theory or even a concept of sexuality wasn't in the language). Undoubtedly there were actors who were gay who were playing those parts (we know that based on letters and other primary documents on specific actors which indicate they were having same sex relationships), or perhaps people that today we would consider trans or non-binary, but again that society had no conception of gender theory or gender dysphoria. Regardless the term was more in line originally with the later term female impersonation.

The term female impersonator became widely used in the 19th century; originally in the context of the American minstrel show in the 1830s. It extended into variety theatre like vaudeville and then into legitimate theatre, and the Brits adopted the term within the music hall traditon which spawned in the 1850s. It was seen as different than drag which was then associated with specific types of female characters portrayed by men in the British theatre tradition which was adopted in 19th century American theatre. In this 19th century context there still was no attachment between LGBTQIA+ identity and drag/female impersonation. The men in these roles were perceived as straight.

The term drag didn't take on a gay/queer context until the 1920s when the Pansy craze started the beginnings of where we are today. Female impersonators would perform at these clubs wearing drag (although the term drag queen was still not used). However, the formation of a gay club/bar culture in this period is what led to the development of the modern "drag queen". Yet female impersonators were still a popular form of entertainment in straight nightclubs as well, and were not openly gay/queer. It's during this period that amateur drag performers in gay bar culture began to emerge and its this type of amateur gay bar performer that most closely resembles the modern drag queen because it was the first entertainment made explicitly for a gay audience (in this case a gay male audience). Undoubtedly, the professional female impersonator's bag of tricks/skill-sets impacted the bar culture so a clear separation is impossible. Not to be forgotten is the ball culture of the non-white gay culture which is a tradition dating to the 19th century in African-American and Hispanic-American communities, and Cross-dressing balls in general. Many of the drag queen traditions today originally came out of the ball sub-culture, which was an amateur movement and a pre-cursor to drag pageantry.

In response to the new gay bar/club sub culture that started in the 1920s and grew in the succeeding decades, the term "drag queen" was born as a pejorative term in New York City in the 1950s used by professional female impersonators who wanted to differentiate themselves from both amateur gay subculture performers (which threatened their respectability and employment in straight entertainment venues) and from cross-dressers and transexuals (the terms of that period). The latter two terms were associated with sexual fetish/deviancy and with a type of street prostitute. From the 1950s-1970s there was this divide where there were respectable highly paid not openly queer female impersonator professionals that worked outside of the gay club/bar culture in straight venues (such as Dame Edna), and "disreputable" drag queens who were amateurs performing in gay clubs/bars for tips. This latter amateur movement spawned the hall marks of the lip synch and many of the terms and words associated with drag queens.

Starting in the 1980s but increasingly so in the 1990s, the term female impersonator was out of fashion in the United States and drag queen became the more widely recognized term for men performing as women in America thanks in large part to talk shows of the period and performers like RuPaul. The term was also exclusively identified with queer culture/identity, and Americans began to forget the long history of straight men performing for straight audiences in drag under the term female impersonator. The term "drag queen" began to spread outside of the United States as American cultural artifacts like popular film and music using the term spread around the globe. Obviously, Britain and Australia and other parts of the world had gay entertainment subcultures of their own which involved cross-gender performance/entertainment. However, these cultures didn't use the word/term "drag queen" which was birthed specifically as a term in the gay subculture of New York City of the 1950s. I can't really speak to how the term was assimilated everywhere. Many places weren't even familiar with the term until Drag Race came along within their particular country. Other places, like the UK, were familiar with the term long before Drag Race came along, and drag/gay bar culture obviously had some international inter-linking before Drag Race. All of this to say, the American gay club/bar culture "drag queen" became an internationally recognized entertainment through RuPaul's Drag Race which was then globally assimilated into cultures internationally; many of which had their own distinct and unique histories of cross-gender performance within various theatre traditions, and which had their own unique gay nightlife scenes which had had their own histories and traditions involving cross-gender performance entertainment.

Today all of these have sort been lumped in collectively together under the terms "drag" or "cross-gender" performance. This makes writing on drag complex, because the term drag is now being retroactively placed into historical cultures (such as Ancient Greek drama or Kabuki) which didn't use the term drag in some publications. I personally disagree with this approach because the blending of unrelated cultures and only loosely connected theatre traditions into a "history of drag" makes an actual understanding of where the term came from and how it was used during history and understood by people across time muddled. To make matters more confusing, we now have people arguing that drag is a construct involving a heightened construction of gender; meaning that anyone expressing a hyper form of gender expression other than their own natural gender presentation is "in drag". This has led to the so-called "bio queen" (ie a cisgender woman can be a drag queen if she makes herself much more feminine than she is naturally or if she puts on the trappings of the visual aesthetic of the drag queen from the gay subculture). As the inclusivity movement surrounding developments in gender studies/Gender identity/gender expression impacts our world, the term drag is increasingly becoming undefinable, and in many respects is erasing past meanings and understandings of the word to the point that the term's origins in gay male nightlife/sub-culture is being erased in a way that I think is doing harm to the gay community. If a biological straight woman can dress as a woman and be a drag queen as some people now argue, what is a drag queen and what is drag? If drag queens developed with gay male subculture in New York specifically as a means of gay men surviving in a repressive hetero-normative society, is it right to take their artform and cultural tradition and have it appropriated by other people? That's where we are today in a world where gender binary is being deconstructed and anybody can be a drag queen.4meter4 (talk) 21:14, 1 January 2025 (UTC)