Drag History Month: No boys allowed? Or is it no girls?

Apparently January is the 2nd annual National Drag History Month. A month-long event that “salutes the richness of drag culture and pays tribute to the courageous queens & kings who have fought for equality while inspiring, educating & entertaining us all.” Sounds cool right? But when you click the link you may feel the same disappointment I did in seeing that “drag history month” is nothing but a LOGO ploy for programming (also see excellent blog by Queerty). You may become depressed at the fact that the link itself has the word “franchise” in it. Or you may just be downright confused how there is not one mention of any female-bodied or gender transgressive/genderfuck performers. I guess National Drag History Month is for girls only… or is it for boys only because they are drag queens? Either way, WTF? Do drag kings have no history of doing anything? Not that LOGO would know either way because no actual history is ever talked about in the programming.

It is a common misconception that drag kings and genderfuck performers don’t exist, but we actually do. It isn’t like we aren’t out and about. Now days its hard to hit up a lesbian bar without finding some trace of drag kings or go to a queer space without at least some knowledge somewhere of genderfuck performers. Female bodied gender performers have been gaining speed and spectrum, in the past ten years especially, but still we get thrown to the back of the bar. Why? I remember when I was first getting into drag and I told my sister about a drag king show. Her response, not knowing any better at the time, was “Drag king? But isn’t the point of drag being flashy with sequins and glitter? Boy clothes are boring.” I responded with a very humble, “Well… but… I wear sequins too…”

Male bodied gender transgression has always been more visible, either because of guarding masculinity or simply because they are a lot taller. As a result so many female bodied performers have busted their asses with character, choreography, and costume and still never gotten to top the bill when queens are around. Now don’t get me wrong, I have some very dear friends who are queens, drag or otherwise. Some of my favorite performers are drag queens. That said, the constant removal of non-male bodied drag and gender performers from the drag movement, or even the queer movement, is fucking bullshit. Drag queens have long been a trademark representative of visual queerness, not because they are better in any way, but mainly because of the cultural dissonance caused by any male person “giving up” their masculinity for the less than desirable feminine presentation. I’m not saying drag queens having been around the block, fighting the good fight. I’m just saying they weren’t the only ones there. Another element that I feel may contribute to the muffling of drag kings is the stereotyping of female-bodied queerness. it isn’t just straight porn projecting “straight looking” women fucking each other anymore. Shows like the L Word promote a gender-normative, hyper-sexualized female queerness that leaves no room for anything or anyone else. Who decided that genderfucked female bodies weren’t sexy? Homonormative, HRC pumping queer gentrification rears its ugly head again.

x posted midwestgenderqueer.com, AmplifyYourVoice.com

'Bobbi with a I' and I

I'd run across "Bobbi with an I" by country singer Phil Vassar a few months ago and was intrigued. The song tells the story of the singer's friend Bobby, a former "linebacker, a quarterback sacker," who drives a tow truck and bench presses 335—and who shows up one night at the local bar "in his pink party dress." Jaws drop, but over time nobody gives it a second thought, it's "just Bobbi with an I."

Given that country music isn't known as a bastion of social progressivism it was a pleasant surprise, with a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor (one reason Bobbi gets respect is because "he's been known to knock a few teeth out if you ask him for a beauty tip") that doesn't make Bobbi the butt of a joke. It seemed like Vassar either knew someone who crossdressed, or at least had run across crossdressers hanging out at a bar somewhere.

Vassar just released a music video for the song and it's got some, ah, interesting differences.



The video adds a prequel where Bobby is invited out by his friends, but demurs because he's broke. But his eyes light up when his friend mentions "it's Ladies Night, free drinks for the girls!" Did someone say: free drinks? Cue the music. Bobbi enters the bar, a cigar-chomping burly "man in a dress" (in fact he's wearing sunglasses to conceal the fact that he's not wearing any make-up). And in interviews and his "behind-the-scenes" video, Vassar says: “Bobbi is actually a guy I knew—this outrageous guy who showed up at a club one night dressed as a girl. It was just a funny way to pick up chicks.” In other words—it's all just good fun, it's a one-time thing, and Bobbi doesn't really want to be seen as a woman.

I'll take Vassar at his word, he seems like a decent guy—but also a guy who comes across as savvy enough to know how far he can push things with his fans. Not that that might be a reason the video is at odds with the actual lyrics. (And don't think too hard about how Bobbi, who's flat broke, manages on short notice to get decked out in a cocktail dress, high heels, earings, platinum wig, fashionable women's sunglasses and a black sequin purse, or why he's got seemingly hairless legs.)

But even if the video undercuts the lyrics, Bobbi's having a great time, his friends are having a great time, in fact everyone's having a great time except an eye-rolling old man, who's presented as a curmudgeonly killjoy. The "big-boned girl with a platinum curl" is the life of the party. As Vassar sings: "That's how it is, nobody gives a second thought these days."

Would I have preferred that the video stayed true to its roots and cast someone like Victoria "Porkchop" Parker as Bobbi? Hell ya. But if the "lite" version ends up making life a little easier for some trans person in some shitkicker bar somewhere, I'm not gonna complain too much.

* Before anyone kvetches, yes I know Porkchop is a gay man who's a professional female impersonator. But she's burly enough as a guy to be a convincing Bobby and femme enough to be a Bobbi who would've left viewers stunned and amazed.

Kilts and Cross-Dressing and Utah (oh my!)

Originally I was going to make my first post to the TGB a bit more of a commentary on GenderQueer identities: and then this came up and I had to share it with everyone…

Utah School Forces Student to Change out of Kilt

Basically, a student was forced to change out of a kilt because he was mistaken for a “cross-dresser.”

Riddle me this: if I, as a female bodied, GenderQueer, masculine person was to wear a kilt (which happens frequently, I might add) to this school, what would happen? Would I be a cross-dresser, now that the principle is aware that a kilt is traditionally masculine? This is yet another example of the problems associated with having such a strict gender binary. We get these kinds of knee jerk reactions to any article of clothing that steps outside what society sees as normative.

On another note – I realize this is Utah, and, by default, a little conservative (not all residents, of course). That being said, I still find it amazing that “cross-dressing” is so openly criminalized in public situations.


...and for a comparative study in gender. James Bond (Sean Connery) in a kilt.

Thanks everyone!

Mayor Comes Out as Trans, is Re-Elected in Oregon

Stu Rasmussen was the Mayor of Silverton, Oregon (population 7,414) from 1988 to 1992. He was transgender, but in the closet. In 1994 he came out and started cross-dressing in public. In 2000 he got breast implants, but he continues to identify as male and hasn't modified his voice.

On November 4 Rasmussen won a third term, beating the incumbent by thirteen points to become the first known openly transgendered Mayor in the US. Thanks to Metafilter for the link.

Tribeca Film Festival's trans "humor" (the sequel)

Over at Bilerico someone posed the question about whether I was being ashamed of trans hookers and couldn't the ad be viewed as a message of tolerance, i.e. "hey it's OK to be a lawyer by day and a crossdressing part-time hooker by night."

For the record, I don't think sex work is something to be ashamed of, nor should we be ashamed of trans hookers.

But the premise of the joke was that the mom with her kids was utterly blase about something that we the audience are supposed to find freakish and probably shocking. You could've substituted a talking dog and the premise would be the same. Ever in my rewriting of the ad, the joke remains premised on the crossdressing lawyer being a "freak," but at least my version tries to show something unexpected about someone who's perceived that way. Similar to a "Sex and City" episode I once saw where one of the characters was upset about the boisterous trans hookers outside her window, but through some plot twist that I don't remember, she ends up befriending them and discovers they're human too.

It's true the ad could be viewed as "hey there's nothing wrong with that" and if there was a lot of other kinds of protrayals of trans people in the media I might agree. Or had the scene been played straight and not for laughs. But let's be honest, the vast majority of Americans (even New Yorkers) do see prostitution as disreputable -- otherwise "whore" wouldn't be an epithet -- and the ad clearly seems to be making the lawyer a hooker for the additional shock value.

But the other part of what makes the ad problematic is that it's trafficking in stereotypes, i.e. if someone's trans, we obviously they must be a hooker.  It's similar to historical complaints about blacks and Latinos only getting roles that depict them as crack dealers and gang members, gays only getting roles that depict them as stereotypical caricatures, etc.

Tribeca Film Festival's trans "humor"

While this ad for the 2006 festival (which recently resurfaced on YouTube) was undoubtedly meant to be edgy and funny, it's belittling and reinforces stereotypes that all trans people are prostitutes. The key is that we're not laughing with the lawyer/hooker, we're meant to be laughing at her.

And yeah, it hurts more when it comes from folks who undoubtedly would be horrified at equivalent humor aimed at minorities. Do you think they would've done an ad showing a black lawyer who moonlights as a crack dealer? Or a female attorney who moonlights as a hooker? I thought not.

The truly sad thing is that the ad's joke about jaded New Yorkers could have just as easily been accomplished with a positive portrayal (and just a few minor changes in the script). For example, the crossdressing lawyer could have been out for a walk with her wife, who she introduces to the the mother with her kids, who's just as blase about it all.

OK, maybe I'm being humorless, but having two trans people (Cameron McWilliams and Simmie Williams) and a gender-variant kid (Lawrence King) who might (or might not) have later come out as trans gunned down in apparent hate crimes within less than a month kind of leave me not in the mood for this sort of "humor."

'Doing Gender'

Do check out the website of a German artist, Martina Minette Dreier, and her portraits of people 'Doing Gender'.

(Thanks to AO for the link.)

Travolta & Turnblad, Topsy-Turvy

John Travolta’s turn as Edna Turnblad in the film of Hairspray has provided the occasion for more than a little awkwardness in the press recently.

The part, which was of course orignally written for, and embodied by Divine in the oriignal John Waters film, has also been played by Harvey Fierstein, who won a Tony for his version of Edna on Broadway.

“Fox News’ story on this turn of events, back in March of 2006, was entitled TRAVOLTA TO TURN TRANSVESTITE FOR ‘HAIRSPRAY.” The fact that the term ‘transvestite’ is now considered a perjorative (at least in this country) apparently had not reached the editors there. (Generally ‘cross dresser’ is considered a bit less incendiary, but then, it also depends who you ask.)

There have also been more than a few raised feathers given the fact that Scientology has an allegedly anti-gay bias, thus making Travolta a curious choice for this most iconic gay role. The controvery was addressed in a piece in the July 15, 2007 Sunday New York Times. The Times piece, by Jesse Green, is actually very good, and focuses largely upon Travolta’s process as he prepared for the role.

Still, one thing that got my attention in the Sunday NYT piece was Travolta’s repeated line about how “he didn’t want to play Edna as a drag queen; he wanted to play her as a woman.”

This line of course, in countless variations, is exactly the line spoken by thousands and thousands of MTF transsexuals, who, as they come out, want to be seen as women, not as transsexuals.

I said as much my own self when I came out. I wanted people to know that the woman they saw before them was an authentic soul. I still want that.

But I’ll also admit that lots of transsexual women make a big deal of coming out as women, and not as TS, because they look down on cross-dressers, and people doing drag, as individuals somehow not as exhalted as their own selves. It’s a prejudice I hear all the time– including from a number of very visible trans-women in the public eye right now– that they are all for fighting for their own civil rights as gender variant individuals, but at the same time, drag queens, cross dressers and other fellow travelers make them uncomfortable. The division between transsexuals and cross-dressers, sometimes, echoes the old division between transpeople as a whole and the gay and lesbian movement. That is to say, everyone is afraid that these other characters, these “lesser beings” will somehow “make them look bad.”

And so here comes John Travolta, playing one of the most iconic gay drag characters in film history– and what does he want? He wants to be seen as a woman, not as a drag queen. Cause, like, if you’re a “drag queen,” oh that is so very bad, but if you’re a WOMAN, well hey. You’re Good Old Mister Normal.

This subversion of drag strikes me as so nutty I can hardly write about it: it’s like the entire point of drag is to subvert, to make us challenge our ideas bout gender. Plus, have some fun. So instead, here’s Travolta NOT DOING DRAG, but being an ACTUAL WOMAN because its– “ACTING!”

I don’t consider my own life as a woman an act of drag; but it is an act of transgression, I suppose. And sometimes I do think of Ru Paul, who said, “We’re all born naked; everything else is drag.”

Travolta not doing a drag part as drag means he’s doing it as An Actual Woman which means you can Be an Actual Woman and Still be a Man as long as it’s Acting and Not Be Gay.

No wonder Fox news got all confused with its headline. And they’re usually so cutting edge on GLBT issues.

Drag: Not Just Men in Heels

Tomorrow I'll be glamming it up for the premiere of a new documentary "Drag: Not Just Men in Heels," directed by Amir Jaffer, which takes a look at a variety of San Francisco female impersonators, drag queens, drag kings and faux queens. Being a mere drag-princess-in-training, I'm not in the film myself, but I do know several of the people featured, and the movie looks quite promising, judging by the trailers and other excerpts posted online. Unfortunately, the premiere appears to be sold out -- but if it's as good as word-of-mouth says it is, hopefully it should be appearing on the film festival circuit.

Speaking of drag kings, San Francisco's 12th annual Drag King Contest is coming up on Aug. 18.

Was King Hatshepsut Trans?

Egypt's most famous female pharaoh, alternately called Queen or King Hatshepsut by 21tst century media outlets, ruled ancient Egypt from 1473-1458 B.C. S/he was apparently well known for wearing a false beard--although it's not known if s/he really wore it all the time or just had depictions of her/him done with the beard in place to more closely resemble the previous pharaohs.

National Geographic says "Art from this period shows her wearing feminine garb but capped with the headdress of a male king. Eventually Hatshepsut was depicted in statues and wall carvings as afully male ruler: bearded, bare-chested, and without breasts."

National Georgraphic also calls Hatshepsut "the gender-bending queen." But is it really accurate to use our modern terminology to describe someone who existed before those words were invented? Especially when we don't know if the motivation for those actions were the individuals gender identity or desire to be taken seriously as a ruler?