Says RuPaul, interviewed in The Guardian. (I've watched a couple episodes of the show in the last week, entirely because I love Tom & Lorenzo's podcast, and they talk about it in detail.)
RuPaul speaks very carefully and cagily about transgenders. The interviewer (Decca Aitkenhead) guesses that "he doesn’t want to offend anyone by explicitly acknowledging the contradiction between his playfully elastic sensibility and the militant earnestness of the transgender movement." RuPaul responds:
“Ye-es, that’s always been the dichotomy of the trans movement versus the drag movement, you know... I liken it to having a currency of money, say English pounds as opposed to American dollars. I think identities are like value systems or currencies; there’s not just one. Understand the value of different currencies, and what you could do with them."The interviewer expresses puzzlement about how a transgender woman could have been permitted to compete on the show, because "if transgender women must be identified as female, how can they also be 'men dressing up as women'?" RuPaul literally looks around the room for an exit:
“Well, I don’t like to call drag ‘wearing women’s clothes’. If you look around this room,” and he gestures around the hotel lobby, “she’s wearing a shirt with jeans, that one’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt, right? So women don’t really dress like us. We are wearing clothes that are hyperfeminine, that represent our culture’s synthetic idea of femininity.”The interviewer snatches the opportunity: But then why not allow a biological woman to do the show and transform herself from everyday look to hyperfeminine? RuPaul demurs:
“Mmmm. It’s an interesting area. Peppermint didn’t get breast implants until after she left our show; she was identifying as a woman, but she hadn’t really transitioned.” Would he accept a contestant who had? He hesitates again. “Probably not. You can identify as a woman and say you’re transitioning, but it changes once you start changing your body. It takes on a different thing; it changes the whole concept of what we’re doing. We’ve had some girls who’ve had some injections in the face and maybe a little bit in the butt here and there, but they haven’t transitioned.”That's as far as it goes. I'd like to hear much more about the "playfully elastic sensibility" versus "militant earnestness" dichotomy. Looking back at the article, it's full of references to seriousness and fun. I think seriousness and fun can go together, and the best real-life situations and entertainment offer both.
Posts
74 comments:
No space-time continuum memes?
Miswiring has nuances.
"What a drag it is... getting old."
So a woman who transitioned to a man would be eligible to compete ? Asking for a friend.
Well that's the way that I want it to stay
And I always want it to be that way for my Lola
La-la-la-la Lola
Girls will be boys and boys will be girls
It's a mixed up muddled up shook up world except for Lola
La-la-la-la Lola
Well I left home just a week before
And I'd never ever kissed a woman before
But Lola smiled and took me by the hand
And said little boy I'm gonna make you a man
- The Kinks, "Lola" (1970)
T
Let's see... teachers on every level are extremely liberal and the vast majority of them are female and their pets in the classroom are the gay boys.
The hetero boys are viewed by most of these teachers as a behavior problem they need to solve through suppression or drugging. In college, they are beaten down by hostile adminstrators and forced enrollment in courses that browbeat them with Marxist feminist and queer theory.
And it's the faggy and trans boys who are pissed on?
You've got the world upside down, Althouse.
I retired partly because I was financially able to, and partly to get you and your sisters' boot off my neck. I no longer have to attend the re-education sessions in the office.
The entire educational establishment, including you, is marshaled against ordinary, hetero boys. You're the authority, Althouse. Women control everything... liberal women. You're the oppressor. You have been my entire life.
I'm sorry, but that whole discussion is simply whack. Who watches that show?
I know you're not supposed to ask this, but does RuPaul have any talent?
Does she sing? dance? act? play a musical instrument? tell funny jokes?
I mean, in the old days, you got famous for actually DOING something that impressed us peons.
If RuPaul is merely a tall black man, who plays pretend dress-up in woman's clothes, umm, no thanks.
He used to go to 688 way, way, way back in the day.
Just another 7’ tall punk rocker. Nice guy!
"I think identities are like value systems or currencies; there’s not just one." That's his problem right there. Once you are a white male, you are bound to be a racist supremacist. Once you are trans, no one can challenge your identity claim. And so on, and so forth. Extreme subjectivism leads to stifling determinism.
I don't understand the appeal of homosexual and its attendant perversions to the Mandarin class.
This is a very old phenomenon. Althouse is following suit. She is, of course, by dint of her status, a sort of queen among the Mandarins, since she was a gate keeper who issued credentials.
Homosexuality and its attendant perversions was a class marker to the Chinese imperial Mandarins long ago.
I've never been a member of the Mandarin class, by choice. What is this shit all about? Why is the embrace of homosexuality and perversion so important to the Mandarin class?
It’s about recognising that you are God dressing up in humanity, and you could do whatever you want.
No you aren't and no you can't.
"If RuPaul is merely a tall black man, who plays pretend dress-up in woman's clothes, umm, no thanks."
Does it bother you that a lot of makeup and costumery is involved in theater and opera?
It's a complex performance that has numerous difficult elements and it's been made into a reality show where RuPaul is in the position that Donald Trump was in for the "The Apprentice." It's not easy to do a good reality show. Ask Arnold Schwarzenegger? Does that guy have any talent?
They have to devise competitions that fit the kind of contestants and they have to judge them and have an interesting narrative arc to the season and a method of determining the winner that engages us.
The actual performance is obviously difficult, involving creating characters, doing very elaborate makeup (similar to clown makeup, actually), devising costumes, dancing, and acting (mainly in a comic style that's expected to be very funny). It think the skill is much more difficult than what you see in the singing contests or the standup comic contests.
If you watched the show — you might have to overcome an aversion to the whole idea — you would definitely be impressed by the amount of skill and talent. The ones with low skill fail and get booted off and insulted. RuPaul is very funny critiquing the contestants in a sometimes mean way that's also comic.
I have some trouble dealing with the way they are exaggerating and basically opining on what women are. There's a minstrel show quality. What makes it different from the obviously impossible show that has white people making themselves up to do an exaggerated comic performance as a black person? They're kind of making fun of women or saying women are these bizarre... clowns.
Maybe some of you misogynists could test-watch the show and get back to me. You might find it very entertaining to see men performing a man's idea of what women really are.
Ann:
Why isn't this show considered both sexist and racist?
"Maybe some of you misogynists..."
The word "misogynist" is a deliberate lie that Althouse repeats constantly.
Nobody hates women. (Well, I've met a few of her precious gay boys who were repelled by women's bodies.) Many of us find Marxist feminists tedious, obnoxious and devious people.
What Althouse means by "misogynist" is "somebody who rejects Marxist feminism." The proof that she is a Marxist feminist is contained within this lie. She's insisting that she represents a class, women, and that refusing to accept Marxist feminism is a hateful attack on women. This tactic is a deliberate lie.
This lie you're telling is pretty stale, teach. Stop lying. You're always insisting that others be precise about language.
Bingo, David! I find drag queens very insulting to women. I went to see The Lady Chablis of "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" fame, and I couldn't believe women were applauding. If I ever I needed a wake-up call about why minstrel shows were offensive to black people, that would have been it.
All you have to do is consider what Schwarzenegger has accomplished in bodybuilding, SoCal real estate investment, film, and politics to realize that he is very talented in terms of will and hard work, if nothing else.
I am constantly amazed by the servile capitulation of professed feminists, those who decry misogyny as the most depraved of mortal sins, in the face of its most malicious form — that woman is so inconsequential that she can be replaced, that with a bit of eyeshadow and gold lamé (and perhaps a not-so-subtle stoke of the knife) woman can be bested at her own game.
I am Woman. Hear me roar. Bullshit. I hear nothing but a whimper.
Western civ is a comedy skit gone horribly wrong, isn't it? The clowns and buffoons have stampeded off the stage, into the stalls, up the aisles, and into the street.
A "playfully elastic sensibility" aptly describes the first stage of decay when the clowns and buffoon start to elbow the patrons from their seats, appropriating their popcorn. Performer or audience? Fiction or non-fiction? Illusory or concrete? Fictional people can do anything. The never grow old and they can fly with but a liberal sprinkling of pixie dust. They can fill every hour betwixt waking and sleeping with games and jolly battles with ineffectual pirates and never miss a meal. Fictional people belong in Neverland. When they intrude on the real world the timid call it "militant earnestness."
I state: "If RuPaul is merely a tall black man, who plays pretend dress-up in woman's clothes, umm, no thanks."
AA asks: "Does it bother you that a lot of makeup and costumery are involved in theater and opera?"
I answer: No. What a silly un-Althouse question.
AA writes: "It's a complex performance that has numerous difficult elements and it's been made into a reality show where RuPaul is in the position that Donald Trump was in for the "The Apprentice." It's not easy to do a good reality show. As Arnold Schwarzenegger? Does that guy have any talent?"
Well, in general, drag queens haven't been funny since Milton Berle. And, yes, Arnold Schwarzenegger sucked on The Apprentice.
"They have to devise competitions that fit the kind of contestants and they have to judge them and have an interesting narrative arc to the season and a method of determining the winner that engages us."
"The actual performance is obviously difficult, involving creating characters, doing very elaborate makeup (similar to clown makeup, actually), devising costumes, dancing, and acting (mainly in a comic style that's expected to be very funny). It think the skill is much more difficult than what you see in the singing contests or the standup comic contests."
"If you watched the show — you might have to overcome an aversion to the whole idea — you would definitely be impressed by the amount of skill and talent that's involved."
Or I might be bored out of my mind, desperately wasting the opportunity to watch Will Ferrell in "Talladega Nights" for the 25th time.
"I have some trouble dealing with the way they are exaggerating and basically opining on what women are."
No shit
" There's a minstrel show quality. What makes it different from the obviously impossible show that has white people making themselves up to do an exaggerated comic performance as a black person? They're kind of making fun of women or saying women are these bizarre... clowns."
"Maybe some of you misogynists could test-watch the show and get back to me. You might find it very entertaining to see men performing a man's idea of what women really are."
Yes, us misogynists will spend hours watching RuPaul and her band of merry Al Jolson pranksters play dress-up in women's clothes and will give a lengthy, cogent book report on it. Or I could watch unfunny clips of Flip Wilson doing Geraldine in the 70s
In weaponized transgender rule power still comes out of the barrel of a gun like it always has done.
Now about gun confiscation....
Of course, trannys can't replace women biologically, at least not yet. Thus their place in the near future is assured... until menopause, that is.
"Maybe some of you misogynists could test-watch the show and get back to me. You might find it very entertaining to see men performing a man's idea of what women really are."
If a man says he prefers women who wear feminine clothing and make-up, and act in a feminine manner, he is a misogynist.
Unless he says this by wearing feminine clothing and make-up, and acting in a feminine manner. Then it is empowerment.
Is Drag not gender blackface?
The Germans have a word for this.
I see Bay Area Guy brought up the minstrel aspect, too.
I knew he was smart.
Over the years I have found that the people who most think like me are usually brilliant.
The Germans have a word for this.
"We are wearing clothes that are hyperfeminine, that represent our culture’s synthetic idea of femininity.”
Choosing to be a synthetic ideal.
One step away from sex robots.
The Germans have a word for this.
Does it bother you that a lot of makeup and costumery is involved in theater and opera?
No. It bothers me when having paid a lot of good money to see Das Rheingold I'm offered a Wotan who looks like stubble-bearded street derelict, but not as much as an opera singer who demands I take him for a Germanic deity off-stage as well as on. It also bothers me when liars demand my complicity in their lies.
"We are wearing clothes that are hyperfeminine, that represent our culture’s synthetic idea of femininity.”
This effect is magnified by wearing polyester.
The Germans have a word for this.
"We are wearing clothes that are hyperfeminine, that represent our culture’s synthetic idea of femininity.”
There is no shortage of women who wear clothes that are hyperfeminine, that represent our culture’s synthetic idea of femininity. It is they whom a lot of these men mimic.
"We are wearing clothes that are hyperfeminine, that represent our culture’s synthetic idea of femininity.”
Hookers also do this.
What is the current feminist take on hookers?
Are they sex positive?
Are they oppressed by the patriarchy?
And which of them have won Oscars?
The Germans have a word for this?
"There is no shortage of women who wear clothes that are hyperfeminine, that represent our culture’s synthetic idea of femininity."
Yes, but these are the women that are not militantly feminist.
Men in drag are appropriating another culture.
Which is good. Except when it is bad.
The Germans have a word for this.
I like this German poster! He is quite insightful.
I like Althouse too! But I reject the label "Misogynist". Au Contraire Generally, I love women. Admittedly, I have some issues with ugly women and leftist women (and they often overlap in the Venn Diagram of life). But I'm trying. Nobody's perfect.
Quaestor: Western civ is a comedy skit gone horribly wrong, isn't it? The clowns and buffoons have stampeded off the stage, into the stalls, up the aisles, and into the street.
Decline and degeneracy only happen in non-woke people's places and times. What you're seeing here is a vista of the broad sunlit uplands of equality, free choice, and non-discrimination. Ignore the smell.
They, both lots, are rather mad, but one lot is more mad than the other. Its a sign of sanity that the one bunch knows that it is laughing at itself. Ru Paul comes off as a sensible sort; of a sort.
I think seriousness and fun can go together, and the best real-life situations and entertainment offer both.
To follow the Ru Paul article with the Valentina Petrenko article is brilliant.
Great juxtapositions today.
The clowns and buffoons have set themselves up as professors, filled the universities, and wont let anyone else in.
“Elastic sensibilities “ are only good when there’s some stretch left. It’s fun then.
"There is no shortage of women who wear clothes that are hyperfeminine, that represent our culture’s synthetic idea of femininity"
I am reminded of Gilda Radner on SNL pitching the first carbonated femine hygiene product, "Autumn Fizz."
The Germans Have A Word For That. said...
...Is Drag not gender blackface?
The Germans have a word for this.
They have a word for it because it's just some other words with the spaces left out.
Q: Is Google male or female?
A: Female - it doesn't let you finish a sentence before making a suggestion.
It seems to me that drag queens can't be compared to minstrels because any expression of homosexuality is, in the year 2018, to be celebrated. If there are white drag queens who vamp in blackface as black women, I have to believe this would be viewed as their personal expression of their sexual identity and would be safe from criticism. Surely there are white drag queens who dress up as Geishas? Appropriation of identities that are not actually your own is now ok, even celebrated, so long as that appropriation lets you express your sexuality. The world gets more interesting all the time.
Decca Aitkenhead is one of my favorite Englishwoman names. The other: Patience Wheatcroft, journalist and baroness.
Hookers also do this.
What is the current feminist take on hookers?
Are they sex positive?
Are they oppressed by the patriarchy?
And which of them have won Oscars?
________________________
Only the ones that went to whore school.
“Quaestor: Western civ is a comedy skit gone horribly wrong, isn't it? The clowns and buffoons have stampeded off the stage, into the stalls, up the aisles, and into the street.”
I was thinking about this earlier while I was swiffering the kitchen floor. We’re living in a bizarre, unpredictable moment in the history of humanity, wrought by the confluence of Western affluence and the rise of the Internet and social media. Without these things, all the gender-bending would be strictly fetishy back-alley stuff. I often read comments here wondering how it’s possible for hundreds of thousands of years of human development to be stood on it’s head and blithely ignored. Well, the answer is it can’t. This moment will be as brief as it was sudden.
It has been said that the greatest female impersonator of them all was Mae West. I propose Joan Collins as the second.
The clowns and buffoons have every right to believe themselves superior to people who assume that their own reflections are the natural standard. There is not a single reasonable standard for dress or sexuality out there once you get past the mechanics of procreation. Is a necktie a sign of enlightenment? Is short hair manly? In 14th century Europe everybody went crazy for pointy shoes, certainly including the manliest grand-man-father of the blowhards who blast away on this blog’s comments.
It never ceases to amaze me how many reactionaries comment on this blog with regularity. Where’s the love for your fellow human, you jerks? -willie
Drag loses whatever power it had when it's taken as a literal representation of female-ness. If wearing the clothes and make-up of femininity makes you a woman, the irony is gone. The artificial becomes actual. And the ability to be transgressive disappears.
Gay culture is dying. What used to stand in ironic juxtaposition to the greater culture is now, increasingly if not totally, simply part of the greater culture. It's a net gain for gay men and women as individuals to be able to live amid the general population, but it comes at the expense of a deep counter-culture. Among the things that's happening is drag is losing it's ability to comment on the artificial cultural distinctions that define masculine and feminine. And that comment was often joyous and raucous and silly and fun.
But we're at a point now where putting on a dress and heels is a statement of identity instead of a comment. It's an act of self-creation and will and it demands to be taken as authentic and genuine. Irony is not allowed.
Drag and transgenderism diverge to the point of conflict on the issues of identity and authenticity. Transgenderism is defeating drag. And RuPaul knows it.
When culture moves far enough into the weird, it is the reactionaries who are the creative, radical cutting edge. The more reactionary, the better.
Join me! Restore the Spanish Empire under the House of Bourbon. Into the heavens to conquer, Plus Ultra!
Bourbon? Leftists. Hapsburgs forever!
drag queens haven't been funny since Milton Berle
Monty Python's Flying Circus. OK, the only real "queen" was pantomime Princess Margaret.
drag queens haven't been funny since Milton Berle
Well, Harvey Korman and Benny Hill.
Personally, I would have rooted for the Trastamaras, but they died out. So also the Spanish Habsburgs, irrevocably.
And the Habsburgs of whatever branch haven't had a monarch in a century, nor an empire, and no credible pretender in two-and-a half centuries.
The Bourbons do still exist, are the oldest surviving European royal house, and still have the seeds, at least, of an empire.
So there, my extreme radicalism is nevertheless rooted in practicality.
And, of course, we must persuade the Church to revive the Inquisition. The inquisitorial spirit is alive and growing, but is, unfortunately, at present serving the devil. This must be channelled to Godly purposes.
From the interview:
"[Drag is] a social statement and a big f-you to male-dominated culture. . . . [I]t’s a real rejection of masculinity."
But if a man expresses any negative attitude toward drag, he's a bigot.
I commiserate Buwaya's partisanship while remaining myself devoted to the House of Austria-- Blessed Karl, pray for us! "The inquisitorial spirit is alive and growing, but is, unfortunately, at present serving the devil"-- no truer word ever written here.
There is a very spiritual aspect to what RuPaul was saying which relates to the Hindu concept of the relative world in which we live being a fiction, an illusion (maya), in contrast to the unmanifest and unchanging reality (of God). He had that personal realization and embraced this idea to the point that he refuses to limit himself to a single identity. You can either see him as a freak or as a courageous person for expressing that realization. Judaism also has that concept of the manifest and unmanifest aspects of God, contained in the teachings of the Kaballah, but people are expected to honor the body they have and the natural system of creation. Most of us stick to our lanes even though we recognize that gender identities are collapsing.
Whereas RuPaul recognizes that he contains multiple identities he runs into a philosophical problem with transgenders in that they claim a real, fixed identity, only that "nature" has made a mistake by putting them in the wrong body. I prefer RuPaul's approach. I find quite pathetic the aspiration claimed by transgenders of becoming their "authentic" selves, i.e., when being authentic requires altering one's body. Whereas I find RuPaul to be spiritually expansive I find the transgender movement to be regressive and not expansive. RuPaul is saying he's a man who also expresses an admitted fabricated femininity as a public performance, the transgender woman is saying I reject being a man and am adopting a female presentation to convince others, as I have convinced myself, of being an authentic woman. The admitted fake is more real than the fake who claims authenticity. IMO. BTW, I understand gender dysphoria, so I don't deny the suffering of transgenders and their desire for relief, I just find the solution philosophically and spiritually regressive and unfortunate.
I've been thinking about this topic for awhile. Appreciate the opportunity to share my thoughts here at Althouse.
It all sounds so erudite and *important*, e.g., "our culture’s synthetic idea of femininity", etc...
But at the end of the day, it's just about some dude deciding whether to wear pants or a skirt this morning.
The "clown show masquerading as serious high-culture moment" thing about the draggistes and their tranny xitheren will never get old for its absurd humor. Some of the drag queens aren't even gay!!!
What I still can't figure out is why men who are not attracted to women are attracted to men who try to look like women. At what point does the mimicry become so accurate that it is unattractive?
BAG: "I like Althouse too! But I reject the label "Misogynist"."
After they label you a Nazi mass murderer, being called a misogynist is "small potatas"...
Oh my GOD some of you people take everything so seriously; it's tedious. Get a sense of fun. Some drag queens are the end of Western civilization? Come on. Lighten the everloving fuck up.
If you're going to worry about anyone, worry about the Puritans, who as RuPaul correctly points out, are the militant trans fanatics, not the people out for some spectacle and comedy. Those people are harmless and their kind of antics keep us all sane in the Era of That's Not Funny.
John Pearley Huffman: Gay culture is dying. What used to stand in ironic juxtaposition to the greater culture is now, increasingly if not totally, simply part of the greater culture. It's a net gain for gay men and women as individuals to be able to live amid the general population, but it comes at the expense of a deep counter-culture.
The error is the demand that what is marginal (marginal in an objective, statistical sense) be considered normal. It is not possible to be both unconventional (eccentric, transgressive) and normal. The unconventional only has meaning, and use, relative to the superstructure of normality. Marginality can be creative, or pathological and destructive (or sometimes both at the same time), but it cannot be normal. (This applies to a lot more than gays or drag queens.)
Thus the current crazy. There is a massive contradiction here. Or rather, a mass of massive contradictions. X is totally normal, just like everybody/everything else. At the same time the normal must be destroyed to accommodate the outlier. The outlier is special, creative, and brings a perspective and insight the normal don't have. But at the same time the very concept of outlier is condemned as an artificial construct, an "othering". Just as "normal " doesn't really exist, except as a system of oppression.
...absent a common sense understanding of normal vs. marginal, and why normal has to be maintained as, well, the norm, nothin' but ever increasing crazy.
Among the things that's happening is drag is losing it's ability to comment on the artificial cultural distinctions that define masculine and feminine. And that comment was often joyous and raucous and silly and fun.
But we're at a point now where putting on a dress and heels is a statement of identity instead of a comment.
I would disagree if you are saying the male/female distinction in itself is artificial, but the distinction in the last sentence above - statement vs. comment - is nicely put and thought-provoking.
Some of you need to spend some time at the Take-the-stick-out-of-my-bum camp. It's fun, it's playfully transgressive. Hell, I'll say this: RuPaul is a true American-- self-made, unapologetic, true to himself. The dude isn't some militant radical trying to burn the place down, he's making space for people like him. That's all good in my book.
Pants @4;08
Pants gives best rants.
(Encomia of Pants would work as analog of Burma Shave series.)
There is probably no such thing as "gender dysphoria", as a biological affliction. There is no, or extremely little history of it (unlike both homosexuality and dressing in drag). Nor is there any uniformity in rates across even developed countries - the opposite is true. And the extreme rate of increase also argues against any biological "born that way" explanation.
If there was something like it in history, it was extremely rare. The present has these people popping out of every bush, and there are places where a quarter of the high school kids seem to think they are so afflicted.
I suspect its a fashion in manias, in expressions of mental or emotional distress. A few years ago there was a terrible rate of anorexia nervosa and bulimia. And there was a rash of cults.
These have fallen in popularity, perhaps partially replaced by this. The official support for it promises to keep it going longer than those other obsessions, which were frowned on.
And it seems to hit a higher rate in kids on the autism-aspergers spectrum. They obsess easily.
"What I still can't figure out is why men who are not attracted to women are attracted to men who try to look like women."
What makes you think they are? Gay men don't wear drag to attract gay men who like men dressed as women. Gay men wear drag as public performance, or to act out some inner impulses. Gay men who watch drag queens perform do so to enjoy the performance. They're not getting turned on by the appearance of men as women.
There are, of course, straight men who dress in drag, too. They do it because they achieve sexual satisfaction wearing women's clothing.
What I still can't figure out is why men who are not attracted to women are attracted to men who try to look like women. At what point does the mimicry become so accurate that it is unattractive?
Do you really think there's a sexual attraction? It's an appreciation of outrageousness coming from alienation--prick up your ears.
The mimicry is no where close to accurate, except maybe to Joan Rivers.
Now the trans females I think are attracted to straight men not gay ones; they ignore that the men willing to have sex with them aren't exactly straight.
Dammit, beaten by Cook.
I didn’t call anyone a misogynist. I just threw the term out in a shoe-fits-wear-it fashion.
you are God dressing up in humanity
It's a huge sin to think this way
God created everything, including us
And so certainly we are all holy, and part of God's creation
nonetheless, we are not God
there is an important separation
and to walk and talk as if you are the most important thing in the universe
is a very big mistake
I make it all the time, actually
classic sinner's move
Angle-Dyne,
Thanks for your comments. Yeah, feminine and masculine are not male and female.
An effeminate man is still a man. And he experiences his femininity and masculinity as a male.
A masculine woman is still a woman. And she experience her femininity and masculinity as a woman.
Men and women experience the world subjectively as individuals. Not as representatives of their gender or archetypes of their chromosomes. And as individuals, we have to recognize that which we can change, that which we cannot and that which we can screw around and play with. We are all in a marginalized population of one.
Ok, my husband and (cue gaps of horror) teenage daughter started watching Drag Race maybe a year ago, and I quickly got sucked in; we have binged the whole series now. My husband, a man of surpassing frugality, has PAID for many of the seasons on Netflix or Amazon or whatever. At first it felt to me as if I was watching a kind of... Cirque du Soleil or something - performance art that was nearly grotesque in the details, from which I had to pull back to see the artistry, lest I get too hung up on the performers' sweat and grimaces.
But then... we all started to appreciate the therapy RuPaul offered "his girls." (One of many catchphrases from the show: "Bring back...my gels!") For one thing, he doesn't specifically require male or female pronouns for himself; we tend to call him "he" when he's dressing as a man and "she" when as a (hyperfeminine and spectacularly improbable and gorgeous) woman. Similarly, he doesn't let his queens wallow, whine, or make demands; they are there to prove something to HIM and to themselves, and it takes work and commitment. For another thing, because he's older than any of the competitors, he remembers and draws on the history of gay counterculture, both the struggles and tragedies and the whackadoodle excesses and fun. The younger competitors, therefore, aren't allowed to believe that they invented drag or that they have suffered anything like the accused that their... um, foremothers? suffered. He's basically like, "Yes, your stepdad called you a pansy and kicked you out at sixteen. What are you going to do NOW and for the rest of your life? Because you can't dine out on that sob story for long in this community, sister. Everybody's got a story like that." The competitors come away, even in the early rounds, recognizing things about themselves that they never knew before. It's wildly transformative, which is saying something in a show about drag...
A study some years ago hypothesized that gay men should exhibit hypermasculine traits - promiscuity, social dominance posturing and contests - and, IIRC and ipso facto, found that it was so, at least in a statistically significant percentage of gay men, no matter how femme they acted. It's another fascinating aspect of Drag Race that these are men with, it seems, an often hypermasculine drive for dominance, playing out that drive in hyperfeminine (some might call it "bitchy") ways. Sometimes it seems a fight is going to HAVE to break out, but is it going to be shouts and punches or shrieks and fingernails? It's entertaining as hell. I've ended up a fan, very much in spite of myself.
My favorite queen is Bianca, hands down.
"Accused" should have been "abuses" above. Sorry, LONG post on a phone screen!
This show and Glee created the millennial Twiterati, if you ask me.
I know you're not supposed to ask this, but does RuPaul have any talent?
RuPaul is a very interesting man when he speaks, he is clearly the star of the show by star quality alone, and he is so much better at what he does than any of his “girls” I ever saw when my teenage daughters lived at home. So yes, he has talent. I am guessing he is the kind of person that it would be an honor if he were in your life. This is why I can never really be a conservative, even if they are mostly right about the big things. I can’t get into all of the blind judgement of people and things that being a conservative seems to entail as much as thinking by knee jerk reactions seems to define liberals.
JP Huffman: Men and women experience the world subjectively as individuals. Not as representatives of their gender or archetypes of their chromosomes. And as individuals, we have to recognize that which we can change, that which we cannot and that which we can screw around and play with. We are all in a marginalized population of one.
Well, no, we're not. Most of us are normal, mediocre. In the sex-linked behaviors we exhibit as well as other behavioral traits. That's what normal is.
Just a quick comment here 'cause this looks like a dead thread (maybe you can pick it up in a cafe if you're still interested):
I think what you're doing here is opposing two views of reality, both of which are false - believing that "masculine" and "feminine" are artificial, arbitrary social constructs that don't reflect the real behavioral variation in a population, vs. males and female as "essences" or archetypes".
Somebody once quipped that the real problem with the world is the inability to think statistically, and I think you've got that going on here. People aren't essences or archetypes, but neither are "masculine" and "feminine" artificial, arbitrary social constructs. Masculine and feminine are not synonyms for male and female, but do describe highly correlated traits. No male and female, no "masculine" and "feminine. You get overlapping normal curves plotting the incidence of such traits in a population, not random points that form no meaningful pattern. That norm is an accurate depiction of reality, and that norm is socially meaningful.
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Angle-Dyne,
Your point on correlation is appreciated. And correct. But variations are so common that the definition of "normal" can be very broad. It's not abnormal for individuals to have some masculine and some feminine characteristics. And it's not abnormal for a woman who is more masculine to be that... or a man more feminine. But those differences don't change their objective standing as a man or a woman.
This is a big phenomenon we're amid. And getting my mind around it is an ongoing project.
Thanks for contributing to my mind.
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