Is it because the targets of ridicule are women?
The Wagga Feminist asks a question:
So can someone explain (in a way that is logical and makes sense) why men wearing woman face in drag (exaggerated stereotypes cos I have never seen a woman look like a drag queen) is ok but white people in black face (exaggerated stereotypes of black people) is not ok. And just to be clear, focus on the first part, I know why black face is not ok, I just don’t see how drag is any different yet it is acceptable. Is it because the target of ridicule are women?
I’ve wondered the same thing.
I suppose one answer is that misogyny is even more pervasive than racism, but really that’s just the same question. Why is misogyny even more pervasive than racism? Why is it more socially acceptable than racism?
It’s not a trick question; I don’t know the answer.
One partial answer is that the traits adopted by drag queens are only coincidentally associated with gender and not intrinsic to it; indeed, one can say that women are expected to adopt those traits *because* they’re women, at least in part, instead of being labeled as women because they’ve adopted those traits. (And there’s quite a significant segment of trans activism which is opposed to drag for that same reason–because they *do* think that adopting the traits makes one a member of the category, rather than the inverse.)
Seth beat me to it, although I’ll toss in my two cents anyway. Femininity is a social construct, and a significant part of drag is *mockery* of that social construct and its absurdities rather than mockery of women as such, and that seems very different from mockery of an entirely non-chosen, involuntary trait like dark skin. Although it is certainly policed and enforced, women still can and do choose to a very significant degree how much they are willing to adopt or “perform” feminine identity and its trappings, whereas one is simply born with a skin tone and other markers of racial heritage. (I’m not only thinking blackface here, but the European actors who played Charlie Chan, or Charles Heston in “latino-face” as a Mexican police officer in A Touch of Evil.) Drag can certainly “punch down” with misogynistic stereotypes, especially the frequent exaggerated “cattiness” and so on, but drag also often “punches up” with mockery of the idea that clothes and makeup are constitutive of womanhood — which the trans ideologues *really hate*.
Seth, G. Felis, maybe. I would buy that argument, and have, but there is a problem. The fact that these are not intrinsic to womanhood is a poorly understood concept, even by most women. The performative aspects of femininity are understood by large swaths of people to actually be intrinsic to womanhood. They are believed to be part of our DNA, and we (people like me) are punished for not conforming. We are also punished for conforming. When I was younger and “did” femininity for a few years, I was punished because I was “too pretty” and “too feminine” to be any use to a workplace. When I ceased doing that after my first marriage ended, and no one at home was policing my behavior or choosing my clothes and accessories, I was punished because I wasn’t “really” a woman, and why couldn’t I just put on some make up, high heels, etc. Now I am sort of in between; I have some quirky accessorizing I do, but because I am both a scientist and a playwright, people put it down to my “innate” weirdness, the inability of my brain to cope with the reality of functioning in both left brain and right brain simultaneously. (God, I hate that constant attempt to “left brain right brain” everyone).
So I’m torn on this. Yes, they are mocking the stereotype, or maybe they’re mocking the stereotype, or maybe they’re doing what they assume is woman…I don’t know the answer to that, and I suspect it varies as much as any other behavior in motivation and rationale. The problem is that how people perceive it is not always how it’s meant. I had no idea they were mocking the stereotype until my 50s. I was uncomfortable with what appeared to be a display of excessively, overtly feminine identified behavior that fit no female I have ever known anywhere in my life. As a young woman, I cringed, thinking “is that how men really see us?” And for a lot of men, the answer is yes. That is how they see us.
So, yeah, men doing woman face has a lot of the same problems as white people doing black face.
I’m not defending the exaggerated and misogynistic aspects of modern drag (e.g., ‘fish’), but part of the difference as I see it has to do with minstrelsy and blackface being more entrenched culturally during its time, and specifically used to reinforce vicious stereotypes that rationalized slavery, Jim Crow, and other forms of legal subordination (happy slaves, sambos, pickaninnies, mammies).
Studebacher –
I don’t think anyone is comparing women’s position to that of slaves, or are they?
“In the years following the Civil War, Harriet Beecher Stowe campaigned for the expansion of married women’s rights, arguing in 1869 that:[17]
[T]he position of a married woman … is, in many respects, precisely similar to that of the negro slave. She can make no contract and hold no property; whatever she inherits or earns becomes at that moment the property of her husband. … Though he acquired a fortune through her, or though she earn a fortune through her talents, he is the sole master of it, and she cannot draw a penny. … [I]n the English common law a married woman is nothing at all. She passes out of legal existence. ” (from wikipedia)
For some fun facts, see https://www.theguardian.com/money/us-money-blog/2014/aug/11/women-rights-money-timeline-history
To underline iknklast’s point, it doesn’t much matter if a performance mocks a stereotype or mocks a group of people, the audience is likely to see it as reinforcing the stereotype.
Cazz,
Yeah both definitely spread harmful stereotypes regardless. I do think blackface has its own unique historical factors that add to why people react more strongly against it (misogyny certainly doesn’t help). I wonder if popularization of drag (e.g., through RuPaul’s drag race) and cooptation of Pride and other aspects of gay culture will expand the reach of the harmful aspects of modern drag?
Thank you for the guardian link. I didn’t know too much about the history before 1700.
I understand the argument, but I’ve never thought of drag as making fun of women. It’s guys who enjoy dressing in women’s clothes, playing it up to the nth degree. It gets cartoony but always seems to have a “look how fabulous I am!” vibe.
Blackface on the other hand seems designed to mock black people. The vibe is “look how ignorant and foolish I am”.
An outrageously over the top drag queen might make people laugh, but I don’t think in a “yeah, women are so ridiculous” way. To me a drag queen vamping it up isn’t saying anything about women in the way blackface is about black people.
But if people disagree, that’s fine. If drag offends women and becomes socially unacceptable, then so be it.
I get the sense drag queens don’t see themselves dressing up “like women” so much as they see themselves dressing as outrageously femininely as possible. (They’re not sending up women when they do drag; they’re sending up gay male stereotypes.) Maybe that’s a distinction without a difference? Let me try and explain what I mean. Gay men are always on guard about our effeminacy — we’re hyper-aware that we don’t fit into traditional male gender roles (or are always accused of not fitting into them) — and watching or performing drag is a way of coping with that. With drag performer friends of mine, I think diving deep into a wild, unabashedly effeminate persona for a while is a kind of release valve for all the anxiety and tension we carry with us about how we’re perceived by society. It’s not exaggerated womanhood, it’s exaggerated not-manhood. It’s exaggerated everything straight men stereotype us as, first and foremost that we aren’t real men. Of course, the only thing a not-man can be is a woman — it’s one or the other. But maybe some of the cartoonishness of drag is a way of trying to make a distinction between performing a wildly effeminate not-man and performing an actual woman.
I know all this, and agree with it…and I think I’ve written about this ambivalence before…I get it but at the same time…there is that difference between womanface and blackface. I wobble back and forth between finding drag funny and finding it mocking. I get that mockery isn’t necessarily the intent, but it isn’t necessarily entirely absent either. Like what iknklast said.