Everyone is a Drag Queen

October 6, 2017 | Autor: Martijn Crowe | Categoria: Gender Studies, Social Sciences
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Everyone is a Drag Queen

Cheating, stealing and lying

None of what I say in this lecture is new. None of the concepts are not already worked out before. I only repeat what I have heard before. I know that, but you as an audience might be new to the concepts and ideas. That is why the lecture will be available in printed version as well. That will assure that when I am not here anymore, my words might stay.

I rather be called a philosopher than a scientist. Science is preoccupied with a social construct called truth, while a modern philosopher is not interested in that concept at all. To be more practical, as a scientist you have to proof what you are saying and your colleagues will judge you on your proof. As a philosopher, you will never be judged by your proof, but by your impact. In fact, nearly all the modern philosophers I know, are playing with truth.

So giving myself the label of philosopher is giving me the possibility to lie to you, to cheat, and to hide information that is not fitting my personal stakes. And of course my aim is that one day, my truth will be the new truth of the world. Being able to define what is truth or not, means being in power. Truth is a social construct that is used to constitute the world we are living in and that is called society. Truth has not so much to do with reality, as well with the powers in place that are given the right to define what is the truth and an audience that believes in it, although knowing better. Truth is a concept of power and needs to be challenged.

I even rather be called an artist than a philosopher. As a philosopher, I still have to deal with a concept called reality, be it true or not. I still will be judged by the world on what I say. If I lie too much, if I cheat too openly, if it is clear that I am the only stakeholder of my philosophy, I will be judged because of that and hanged on the first tree available. Or more worse, I will be simply ignored, the community will kill me by complete oblivion. As an artist, all I make is always fake. Not even a representation of reality but creating a new reality, that believers will hold for a representation but that will never be. So please don't trust me at all. All I have to say today will proof to be untrue and not real.

I gave this introduction of my self not by accident. I gave a first description of a Drag Queen. A Drag Queen is a fake woman. A fake woman that in her/his representation in a theatrical environment is creating an illusion, while everybody knows the Drag Queen is cheating. And even in the show they give they are lip-syncing the popular songs while imitating the "real" performers. Everything a Drag Queen calls for is an illusion. And the audience knows it. The Drag Queen is also hiding her little secret, with all kind of means. You know they do it with duck-tape? More than that, they shave their body hair and hide their real hair with wigs. They use make up to create a total new image of the self. And last but not least as part of a bourgeois movement they try to look better than a real woman.

A Drag Queen is the kind of woman a real man likes to have. Powerful and tender. Not the monthly mood shift. Honest and openly cheating, A clear presence hiding a humble and shy personality begging for love, affection and attention. A Drag Queen is a men's best friend.

So this sounds almost like myself. I am a Drag Queen or as the famous American Drag Queen RuPaul states it: Everybody is a drag queen. And in this self-representation I offer you the paradox that is offered by Drag Queens: Don't trust me, I am not for real. Saying this is a paradox in communication because when you accept this message, you trust the speaker, while if you don't trust these words, your only way out is believing the speaker is not lying.

In all aspects a Drag Queen is a philosopher, creating confusion where certainty rules. It is clear that there are distinct biological differences between man and woman. As my son of three already found out: Mama does not have a willy. Gender on the contrary is a social construct. The complete set of behaviour that is obliged because of the biological differences as well as the ideas about being male or female are constructs. By dressing up as a girl and giving a show on stage, Drag Queens confuse and challenge this gender construct. They raise a question. They leave confusion on all kind of levels. You know it is a man, but you can fall in love with the female personae. Well at least I did.

In all aspects a Drag Queen is an artist as well. Like any good artist, lying, stealing and cheating. Her main goal is not to challenge the doxa of the gender, her main goal is to use illusion to earn money and gain local power. The France philosopher Gilles Deleuze introduced the word doxa. He calls the ruling and dominant construct in a society about how to behave and what is truth or not the doxa. I will come back to that later.

And then the question of power I already introduce for the second time in this lecture. By giving a show dressed up as girl, the boys or man are getting all the attention and are given, even if it is only during the show the power of definition of what is true or not. The latter is a very well known social process. By doing something outstanding, out of the ordinary and by even suffering danger because of that, human beings gain authority. It is like the monks in the old days that did not have sex, (so they said), living in monasteries, denying themselves all kind of luxury (so they said). It was with this myth they gained the power of defining what is true or not.

The first time I really saw Drag Queens was in Sao Paulo in the Italian neighbourhood called Bella Vista some 5 years ago. There is a huge dancing club there. I was supposed to meet some friends there and have a good time.
In Sao Paulo you always have to wait outside until you can come in. A long line waiting for other people to come out. Of course everything is corrupt, even in Sao Paulo, so the only thing I had to do was calling my friends and they would let me in.

So I posted on the other side of the street out of the line. Waiting for my friends to come out and let me in. Before I go on, it is good to understand the Brazilian society in some statements. Sao Paulo has a population of 23.000.000 people. It is a city of bankers. It is the financial city of Brazil. There is a lot of industry around it as well. The young people in Sao Paulo do three things. They work at a bank, they study in the evening and they party at night. There goals are the goals of the bourgeois: settle, have a family and a car and be financial successful. The city is in all its complexity very conservative in thinking and behaviour. This means that they like to be more or less the same. There is not so much diversity in clothing and behaviour. Let's put the image a little bit exaggerating. I saw a long line of young people in blue jeans and white T-shirts, with the inevitable tennis shoes. Boring for me, more of the same, not challenging.

And than it happened. On of the main doors of the dancing club broke open and a large group of young Brazilian's all dressed in blue jeans, white T-shirts and the inevitable tennis-shoes burst into the streets, next to the long line of waiting people. And than, high rising above them I saw some demonic creatures all in black and extravagant colours with strange huge wigs and extraordinary clothing, rising high above them, following them. As if the young people were driven out by them. It was an image from purgatory itself. It was an image of Jeroen Bosch in which the poor victims are pushed around by strange looking creatures. It was the inferno of Dante depicted by Gustave Dorée. Those creatures were the first Drag Queens I really saw.

Men dressed up as girls, larger than life and more profound different from the rest. That was the moment our project of Drag Queens was born.

The years that followed I met dozens of them all over the world, from New York to Sao Paulo, from Cambodia to Shanghai, From London to Amsterdam. Making studio photos of them, filming their shows, interviewing them, getting them as friends. My marriage was carried out by a Drag Queen, and attended by 5 of them all dressed up. I first thought that Drag Queens was something obscure, only happening in a certain scene, at clubs by night and hard to find. Now I have the impression that the opposite is true. Every city were at least one gay lives, there is a gay bar and 1 out of 2 gay bars have Drag Queen shows, Drag Queen Hostesses and Drag Queens attending behind the bar.

In our research, we gathered more than a thousand "glossy" articles about Drag Queens. The articles come from all over the world, the right winged Muslim country Tunisia, the conservative Indonesia, the more or less liberal countries in Europa, African countries, Asian countries, former Russian countries and so on. I only think that Antarctica, the North pole and some uninhabited isle in the pacific don't have Drag Queens.

Defining Drag Queens

We come back to the lying. I would lie if I gave a definition of what a Drag Queen is. Giving a definition is a question of truth and thus a question of power.

We found enough definitions in scientific research. None of them fit my experience. The exceptions are abundant. A definition says: "Drag Queens have nothing to do with trans genders" I definitely know three trans genders that have theatre shows and television acts and are called Drag Queen by everybody, including themselves. Miss gay Brazil, Ariadna Shine, dressed up as a Drag Queen, tells me during the interview with her: I am a girl, I am a girl from the moment I can think, I am not gay. I am definitely not a gay, I am happily married with my husband.

Another definition says "Drag Queens are men dressed as girls giving a show in a bar". In Bolivia are several Drag Queen families; we met in La Paz and in Santa Cruz de la Sierra. In Santa Cruz de la Sierra, a stronghold of anti homo manhood, there are no drag shows and they only have a possibility to show themselves at parades. In China and Japan cross-dressing man and boys are a secular tradition in theatre. They fit any idea of a drag queen, but there are enough people that would defend that they are definitely not Drag Queens.

We could go on examining all the definitions we found, and I would lie all the time. That is because defining something is killing something. This is the paradox of scientific research: In order to know how old a tree is, a scientist has to lumber that same tree and count the year rings. Leaving the tree for dead. In order to study a fish, a scientist has to catch the fish and the thing he studies is not even half the phenomena he saw in real life, especially when he cuts it open to see what is inside. Any research of social phenomena changes the phenomena. The simple reflexive question: "What are you doing, and how long are you doing it?" can start a reflexive process in the person interviewed and might make him decide to change his ways or even stop doing it. A girl of 18 asking this question will start another reflexive process than a 50-year-old male. The same question done by email will have a different response than asking the question from face to face. And last but not lost, social research invents the phenomena they are researching, as Foucault showed in his study "The will to know", showing that most "perversions' were invented by researchers imagining the possibility and than finding it, even having retarded people jailed, accused of perversions the poor guy admitted without understanding where they were talking about.

As soon as I give some kind of a definition of Drag Queens, I will find exceptions. In general, from any given definition I will find men dressed up as girl that fit the definition, I will also find phenomena that are definitely what we are looking for but not fitting the definition, and I will find phenomena that are definitely not were we are looking for but fit the definition.

Moreover giving any definition is part of the discourse of power, politics and discrimination. Most scientific literature I read is written by American scholars or supervised and paid by American universities. Rupaul and other famous American Drag Queens fit in their definitions, the rest of the world is at stake.

I can only reveal some circumstances and phenomena I met and than you can decide whether you will recognize a Drag Queen when you meet one. To be more precise, I would not talk about Drag Queens as factual things. I am more interested in the production of the myth. Producing Drag Queens is a production process that happens on daily basis and is changing over time.

1. Cross Dressing

Man dressing as girl is called cross-dressing in gender studies. The oldest story found about cross dressing is that of King Ashurbanipal from Assyria, who loved to dress as a girl and wear make up, enjoying himself in his harem with his concubines. We speak of the 7th century before Christ. His noble man used this excuse to revolt against him and he finally committed suicide, amidst his harem, by setting everything on fire. The famous painting of Eugène Delacroix depicts this moment. What ever is true, the story exists and has survived the ages. Cross-dressing is in this story related to violence, to rage because gender rules on how to behave are trespassed. There is no connection with homosexuality. King Alexander cross-dressing as Artemis might have homosexual connotations.

In the 13th century in Europe, the church forbade women on stage, leaving the theatre and stage performers no other option than to cross dress. This situation was kept until the 17th century, when woman are allowed again on stage. Here the cross dressing is related to public appearance and not a private matter. Here again, the cross dressing is related to violence. Not allowing women on stage is an act of aggression against women. The definition of what gender is, was in the hands of the church, imposing their truth on the rest of the world, which is violence.

In China and Japan a very old tradition of man acting as woman in Chinese and Japanese Opera exists. The gender discussion is strong in this part of Asia in the sense that what is allowed on stage, is absolutely prohibited on the street as the saying goes: Ying can never become Yang. Relation with homosexuality is weaker. The performer might be, but is not necessarily.

In the ninth century, the first Drag Queen shows are mentioned in England. Here the upcoming of gay bars, goes hand in hand with the shows. A first clear relation with cross-dressing and homosexuality is established.

During World War II and afterwards in mainly the American army abroad, men performing in shows as women become highly popular. The relation between homosexuality and this kind of cross-dressing is weak, though a relation between the sexuality and gender exists: the need for women in the male dominated armies gave birth to this kind of cabaret. The use of female clothing and make-up seems to be enough to give an illusion of woman performing on stage. The shows were highly popular.

After world war II and mainly in the sixties and the seventies, the LGTB movements come up, fighting for gay rights. The gay bar Stonewall in New York, a mafia owned bar, is mentioned as the first bar in 1969 with Drag Queen show's opposing the moral majority of that time. Nowadays it seems that every village were at least one gay live, there is a gay bar and in out of two of these bars have a drag show.

The theme of cross-dressing is thematized in Film. The upcoming of the liberation and emancipation of men and women can be seen by the number of movies made. We saw around 40 movies were men dressing as women occurred. 9 from the fifties to the seventies, a span of 30 years, 6 from the eighties, 9 from the nineties and 18 from the new millennium. The message in the movies changes over time from the funny movie: Some Like It Hot, to the documentary Tamid oto chalom an Israeli TV series about drag queens in Tel Aviv.

Rupaul's Drag contest is from this millennium although his personal public performances date back from the eighties. His show's mark an other milestone, cross dressing and drag queens are no longer only to be seen in the bars, but also available in public domain as a general available article.

2. Audience.

A Drag Queen without an audience does not exist. The existence of an audience is a necessity. There are at the moment five different locations where Drag Queens meet their audience. Audience come and pay to see them in most cases. Number one are the bars, followed by festivals, parades, television shows, movies and last but not least at private parties and events where they are hired as hostesses or entertainers.

Television

The shows of the famous Drag Queen Rupaul attracts millions of people and in Brazil several Drag Queens are on national television as well. From Australia we have the famous talk show by Dame Edna that is popular in Europa as well, especially in England.
In Asia we did not find any Drag Queens show on television as well as Africa. The understanding of the phenomena of Drag on television is complex. Of course the shows only stay broadcasted on television because there is an audience watching it. It means that the drags adapt to some kind of average definition of what a drag should be and do according to the majority of the spectators. So in Brazil they are exploited on television and paid for being abnormal, absurd and ridiculous, representing a low level of human being of whom you can make fun. In America, the shows are well… American, competitive, full of shallow one liners, beauty means success, and the message to the world is the Christian doctrine that we should love each other. That is the Republican American way of loving each other of course, which has cost the live of millions. The autralian Dame Edna is totally different. It is more the irony and the confusion the actor is playing with. Not hiding that the she is a he, ugliness as a trade mark and breaking with all the convenience rules of an interview as much as possible.

Audience is highly involved in the creating of these characters, which are clearly caricature. Rupaul is miss Universe, the Brazilian Drags are rudimentary human beings and Miss Edna is daring to do and say things we all want to say but are afraid to do so.

Movies

The serious movies on cross-dressing and Drag Queens are in a way more documentaries than fantasy. Be it Priscilla, queen of the dessert or "Tamid oto chalom" from Tel Aviv. As far as we know the films are highly regarded within the LGTB community and less appreciated outside this community. Somehow the movies have a strong emphasize on identity. This kind of movies seems to have the message: we are there and we are ordinary people, like you.
Parades

On Festivals and parades they are the centre of attention. Be it Gay parades, or festivals like Wigstock in New York or the yearly manifestation at the gay monument in Amsterdam. At moment in the Netherlands gay people and Drag Queens led by initiatives like lady Galore are attracting a bigger audience and especially politicians seems to see in them an opportunity to manifest themselves. The major of Amsterdam is regularly seen in the media embracing and kissing Drag Queens.

Bars

The Bars were historically seen the most important to develop the phenomena of Drag Queens. Here we talk about a liberal world of survival of the fittest and given the fact that in 1969 only one gay bar existed in New York and now almost every village worldwide has one, it seems to fit. A big repertoire of shows is given to attract clients. In Bolivia this phenomena does not exist. In Brazil, the bars are located around the square Largo de Larouche a famous cruising spot for gays and are giving a mixture of Drag Queens performing and Go Go boys. It is clear with this that the audience is gay and 99% of the audience is male. In Europa, the bars in Berlin, Amsterdam and London give shows that are more cultural oriented. The quality of the shows we saw there, are more artistic and show mostly young and high-educated performers that express themselves as artist in a more European and thus romantic way. Also the audience in Europe is gay and from a higher level of education than average. One of the bars that is having Drag Queens shows, Club Church, is also advocating a liberate sexual behaviour and exploiting a famous dark room. In Cambodia, the clubs we attended are in fact places were the sex tourist and the expat can find himself a prostitute. Most of the drag queens are prostitutes, doing the shows to attract extra attention. The dresses are more oriented to female impersonating than the extravagance and artistic values in Europe.

In all cases the relation between attracting clients for the bars and the shows exist. Most of them are innovating their shows and in Brasil there is even a big difference between the kind of show they give, It can be the impersonation of a famous artist, even like the France Edith Piaf, Karikata's, impersonating clownish personalities and "Bacha Cabella's", who do a wild performance with their wigs or if possible their real hair, waving it around as wild as possible. However, the relation between innovation of shows and costumes, gay audience demanding new shows, and performing artist that adapt to the local taste and expectations is clear.

Private parties

Last but not least, they are hired by people to enlighten parties and do presentations or act as hostesses. It's part of the job, of earning money. It feels here that they are invited because of their extravagance, their difference from standard and are strictly hired to perform according to the expectations of the people that hire them. It is more a kind of service than an artic expression or an act of rebellion.

Conclusion on audience?

With entering in public space by performing on television, partaking in manifestations and parade and being hired by the bourgeois that can afford them, Drag Queens also enter the public space and are strictly bound to the rules of how to behave in the bourgeois society they are part of. In fact it means in a way that they are accepted and useable for the bourgeois and the challenge and the rebellion is over. The beginning is always better than the end of a development. The demand of the audience of the bars is the demand of innovation and interaction with the public of the bar and in a financial way with the owner of the bar.

And in the audience we also see the double helix of the two images that intertwine all the time: the artist working for money and local power and pleasing the audience, and the challenger of the doxa in the festivals, manifestations and parades. It is both always there.

We expect this tendency of finding the public spaces and becoming a settled show a development that will go on for some time. Finally the phenomena will be assimilated in culture and be part of it. That's the moment were art will stop, the lying will stop and Drag Queens will be institutionalized, even having schools were you can learn to be drag queen, specialized costume makers of which there already are, and a complete service industry keeping the phenomena out of any dispute, be it positive or negative.

Rites the passage.

The last phrase I like to elaborate on is Rite the passage. Rite the passages are necessary acts that have to be performed before someone is accepted to a group. Most of these rites are highly superficial and pure ritual. Like doing your exam at the university to be part of the group of people that have a master degree. All that passed that exam know that it is an empty ritual.

There are several Rites we encountered worldwide and I would like to elaborate three here.

1. Contest

The first is the contest. In most bars, you have to win a contest before you can do your performance. Winning contests is something very important for Drag Queens. In one of the glossy articles we found, a physical fight was shown between two Drag Queens, because the jury made a mistake! Nearly everybody whom I interviewed talked about winning a contest. Some won by their own surprise and some won after a lot of work. But winning a contest is highly evaluated and used to gain more local power and earn money. We attended at the Bar Queen in Sao Paulo, the yearly Drag Queen contest. They had 20 attending drag queens and 20 prizes. Everybody won something! One for the best Eye laces, one for the best performance, one for the best costume, one for the best website etc. And everybody was extremely happy with the prize, thanking all the others in a typical Brazilian ritual of naming everybody personal for the support they received and so on. You have to be a Brazilian to appreciate this ritual. But everywhere in every country, there are contests; Drag Queens that fight for the prize and an audience that love to see it. Drag Queen Rupaul's show Drag Race is no exception and his title of miss Universe fits perfect in this rite the passage. And even I won a prize, by photographing a famous Drag from Bolivia. The route to win was interesting. The Drag asked me to enter with one of the images I made of her to the contest and she would help with the winning. And so I did. My image 2 by 1 meter, hanged in all the main bus terminals in Bolivia and I got the honours and the credits.

2. Adoption

The second rite the passage is being adopted to a family of Drags. Everywhere we encountered families of drag queens, being the more older and experienced Drags called mother and the new and fresh ones called the daughters. The process of becoming a family member is different. Most of the times a mother chooses a young Drag Queen as a daughter, even sometimes several drags choose one. The young drag is helped to dress, to do the make up and is helped to give shows and is introduced in the network of bars and audience. Families are loosely coupled individuals that more or less stay attached to each other, known by other families or the audience. Al the Drag Queens have show names, like Diamond Divas, the Hopelezz family, the house of Galore etc.

3. Gosipping

The third rite the passage is gossiping. You have to be in the middle of some kind of scandal to be appreciated and you have to know everything of all the other local drag queens. We met many young Drag Queens, who were building a career by misbehaving, thus giving the community a basis to gossip and to forgive. I never met a community of men that gossiped that much and that mean. They all had an opinion about the other drag in the family, about the other family and this opinion had to be shared. Gossip establishes and sustains groups. As long as they do, they are a group. So if you want to become a Drag Queen, start perfecting your gossip skills, the meaner the better.


How are Drag Queens produced?


So what is going on? What mechanism in human behaviour and in society gives spaces to phenomena like drag queens? How is it possible that cross-dressing changed into Drag Queens, changed into Celebrities of universal grandor?


A society, of which we are all part of, is not a given fact. The participants of a society create society on an almost daily basis. The interaction people have with each other is producing this society.

The rules on how to behave are produced like for instance the rules of gender, the punishment is arranged if these rules are not obeyed, the definition of what is truth and what not is laid in the hands of special groups and forces, and the mechanism to make people believe these "truths" are human, all too human. Most people were taking the church for granted, like now many people take science or medical doctors for granted.

We can discuss this process as profound as we want, but the basis is clear. Societies are rules and ideas producing systems, and provide their own mechanism to prohibit a too quick change of these rules and ideas.

The changes we see over time start with a question, a challenge of the dominant ideas. It is the question of the snake in the biblical parable of Adam and Eve. The snake asked Adam: "Is it really truth what god said? Thus challenging the power.
The result was clear, the power spoke: the snake lost it legs and Adam his everlasting life. They were expelled, the snake from heaven and Adam and Eva from paradise.

Foucault spoke about this mechanism of expelling in his speech, "The order of speaking". People that challenge the rules, are just not listened too, ignored, made clown and made fools of, made suspicious and eventually, if they don't stop challenging they get killed. And more worse than all this are defined to the status of author. Be it for real or not.

By doing that, society creates it's on change it is opposing. To put it too simple, by killing the messenger, a new Christ is born, neglected, feared and killed, and the doxa slightly changes, empowering his followers.

Every power will always be challenged, that is human also, all too human. It is called puberty or adolescence when we are young and full of surprise and energy. It is called anti-culture, or Avant garde when we deal with artist`s. Every generation will place question marks by the "given" society every artist and philosopher should. Placing question marks is their work, not drawing nice pictures that do not challenge anything.

The violent oppression of homosexuality was challenged in the sixties and the seventies, and with that, performances of Drag Queens in bars came to be. That was a real challenge in many ways. In the sixties the gender discussion and the discussion about homosexuality, being first a discussion of intellectuals like Virginia Woolf and by the suffragettes became more part of a young culture as well. Who is nowadays, still afraid of Virginia Woolf?

The Drag Queens fitted in, in this movement. First it is clear that Drag Queens challenged the doxa on gender. It is even suggested that they are a new gender. Not female nor male, but drag. And above this, they are since the seventies the phenomena found its way, an important strength for homosexual emancipation.

There was something to fight for in the sixties and the Drags did, knowingly or not, but feeling for sure. The standard definitions on gender didn't fit any more and new definitions had to be established. They stated by their behaviour that it is not that normal that a man is a gender man, defined by his clothes and a woman is a gender woman defined by her cloths. It is also not so obvious that this gender definition means that all kind of behaviour is mandatory, like the man going out for a job and a woman staying home, taking care of the kids. In this respect they helped in the liberation of women and men. Liberation in the sense that more behaviour for a woman or a man is possible than there was 50 years ago. And more profound, they showed that a question mark could be placed, that liberty was the right to ask and challenge.

In the beginning of the fight, it was dangerous to be gay, and even more dangerous to be a Drag Queen. In fact it was a double coming out. First a hostile world must know that the sexual preference differed from the gender definition and than the second coming out was the cross-dressing, the showing and the exaggeration. So being Drag meant something for the liberation of gender.

And at the same time it was very close to the liberation movement of all kind of sexual behaviour. It is not so long ago that homosexuality was called deviant and was even medicalized. Being gay meant being sick and you had to be cured. Gays were a thread to society, they undermine the family values and by doing this, they make the world decadent, just to mention some old fashioned right winged prejudices, that unfortunately still exist, although western societies seems to be more relaxed. Drag Queens were some of the icons that helped the fight that were used in the LGTB movement and in countries like Russia and Bolivia, they still are.

The question is if they are still that effective in challenging and making people question their own truths. They sure were in the beginning. In the beginning they were part of the avant garde, the anti culture, the contra bande of hookers and cabaret dancers. Musicians like David Bowie, Lou Reed, and the Kinks made famous songs about Drag Queens. They spoke to our fantasy, invisible myths, connected to night live and shadowy bars, were they worked for a couple of dimes. They belonged to the shadow world.

By going on the street, out of the bars, by participating in parades and festivals, by having shows on television, the heft left the shadow world and entered public space, which is definitely occupied by bourgeois rules and ideas.

By leaving this shadow world and entering public space, they have lost their effectiveness. Drag Queens are becoming common good, and the contribution to the gender discussion is long gone. They are their own gender, be it drag queen. Exactly the exaggeration is now making it less confusing. Rupaul as miss Universe can only dream of being a miss of two universes, but the limit is reached. And Rupaul has to keep an eye on the number of people looking to her show, so complex things like gender, forget it. Just the standard values and truths, everybody can agree on: love each other; love your neighbour till it hurts, is their message.

And about the LGTB movement, the fact that they appear in public space indicates that the movement is sorting effect. It means that in LGTB they are becoming common good as well, owned by the public space they are invading.
Invading is a typical male force.

And still there is a paradox in the phenomena of drag queens.

I asked many different heterosexual women, how they experienced drag queens. Most of them disliked the phenomena. They felt them as a new invasion in their female world. Not only by impersonating them, but also by trying to be a better woman than a real woman. And like woman cooking is called a cook, and a man cooking is called a chef, and if there is a woman is chef it is called a female chef, they feel not only the intrusion, but also a new area where men try to be better than woman. So from female emancipatory point of view the Drag queens are rather a negative impulse. Man stay within your own gender, women like to say. This is our territory.

Dis(closure)

I would like to end this speech by saying no more. I have been a Drag Queen for sure during the lecture, lying to you and cheating and stealing my ideas from others, maybe the complete show I gave was lip-synced. None of what I said was truth. But I hope you were challenged to rethink your own prejudices and as the artist in me hopes you liked to hear and read this speech.

Thank you.




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