Shirley Q Liquor Performing
Chris Burchette
Guest Contributor
19 July 2012, 02:15 GMT
“When men dress in drag and supposedly imitate women, it is most often very sexist in a remarkably similar way to the whites imitating racial minorities…All the things I have shunned as part of the ancient ‘cult of womanhood,’ all the superficial, commercialized, and fake aspects of ‘femininity’ that I have fought to be freed from, these men were embracing as their ‘womanhood!’ Tons of make up, huge dyed bouffant hair-dos, binding lingerie, heels, nylons, shaving…and these men in drag who were supposedly acting like women, also acted giddy, stupid, shallow…it is odd to me that this could be seen as anything but blatant sexism.”Kirsten Anderberg
With the announcement of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars, there has been some chatter about the recent winner of Drag Race Season 4 Sharon Needles. Drag Race is an American reality show contest shown on digital cable Logo channel (a channel geared toward the Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual and Transgendered community owned by Viacom).
The show features many varied drag queens who perform to be the next Drag Superstar. And Drag Race has brought RuPaul back into the spotlight along with creating new drag sensations, such as Sharon Needles. Ms Needles is a self-proclaimed underdog, though she did win four challenges. She was a standout the whole season with her cutting edge fashion, spooky yet accessible sensibility and self mocking humour. She also has been exciting fans throughout her Absolute Vodka tour.
But with fame all things come to the surface and her act pre-Drag Race has been criticized for being racially provocative and insensitive to Jewish people.
As a result of the criticism, Ms Needles has begun to back track on the frequency of some of her more controversial drag personas, yet there is another type of harmful drag persona that has reared its ugly head: The Black-Face Drag.
To a sizeable majority of people, Black-face wouldn’t be considered drag and there would be many drag queens who would find this type of costuming hateful and offensive. There are also some feminists who feel that Western traditional drag performed by men is as degrading to women as Black-face is to the African-American community.
First what is Drag?
Drag is defined by Merriam Webster as “clothing typical of one sex worn by a person of the opposite sex”.
This definition should not be modified to include racist, negatively racialised or stereotypical ideas of dress and physical adornment
. For the uninitiated, what then is Black face? The following video shows how white culture in the early to mid-twentieth century perceived black culture. This video is for educational purposes and to further the conversation. This video does not reflect my own views and it could be that as a white writer, I’m treading on dangerous ground here. But as you will see from the caricatures (some familiar, some new) it remains a devastatingly disturbing footnote in media history.
These were the images that were shown in the homes of white America throughout most of the 20th century. This is more than unfortunate, yet how does a drag queen resemble the offensive Black-face?
The writer, Kirsten Anderberg, who was quoted above, feels that drag is antagonistic toward women. To her, drag takes away power from women and subverts it for showman purposes. She’s also stated in her article that it is offensive because the male paradigm is the dominant one.
Dred is the world’s foremost Drag King
Most drag is performed by gay men. Gays and lesbians in most societies, inclusive of the US, hold a less dominant status – albeit there are mitigating factors such as race and class. But as Anderberg equates drag with Black-face I can’t help but disagree. It can be construed as racist on her part to make the parallel.
Most drag queens are trying–some superbly, others less so–to honor and emulate the women in their lives that have supported them, raised them up, and fought for them.
Drag is a performance art. Most drag queens are gay men who have found power in alternative personas. And because they find power in powerful women, drag is a tribute to women, whereas Black-face was a mockery of a group of people as a way to devalue them. Most performers channel other qualities that they do not have in their daily lives to entertain – daring, sex appeal, confidence, defiance. Additionally, there are many different types of drag (pageant, club kid, theatre, camp, faux etc.) More and more, drag transcends both genders and creates new avenues to empower both sexes.
Unfortunately there are exceptions to the case and one is the very controversial (and horrible) Shirley Q Liquor.
Shirley Q. Liquor a ficticious black southern woman on welfare with 19 kids, is performed by a white gay man named Chuck Knipp.
The name says it all.
This type of drag is not empowering and should be questioned. Shirley however has been defended by household name RuPaul.
RuPaul should know the difference between “good drag” and “racist drag”?
With RuPaul, we come full circle to Sharon Needles. As a fan of Ms Needles, I was disheartened to find out that she had in the past used these types of imagery and words found with Shirley’s act. After watching a whole season of Ms Needles, there was never any indication of racial prejudices. She was friendly, charming, and disarming. The one time she did “throw another contestant under the bus” she quickly apologized. As far as her acts outside of Drag Race, I have not seen them… but to use such hateful imagery and words even with alleged non hateful intentions is desperate and incorrect.
The question for the future may be -
How do you make a man in a dress and full make-up lip-synching to current pop songs seem more than just a sad tired act?
Maybe you grind up dollar bills and then drink them, as Ms Needles has admitted doing. I think all of her incendiary actions in her pre-fame days were to make a name for herself. Her creator Aaron Coady has begun to have serious conversations about the hurt his past performances have caused.
Whereas the creator of Shirley Q. Liquor has been more ambivalent in his regrets.
The closest to an apology came in 2007 where he stated:
“Wealthy white people are starting to hire me for private parties, where I play the raisin in a bowl of oatmeal…From the way they interact with me, I can see that my being there as Shirley makes them feel it’s acceptable to openly mock black people in a way they otherwise would not, and that does cause me to have second thoughts. If what I’m doing is truly hurtful, then I need to stop.”
But s/he didn’t.
I don’t know about you RuPaul, but its time we dare drag to serve as a creative, innovative art-form and not pander to the vile and lowest denominator in society. There is nothing new, creative or innovative about racism. Shirley has been hired by Sela Ward and country music star Dunn from Brooks and Dunn.
Utilising racist white priviledge in drag performance, especially in the face of global homophobia is pathetic.
Reblogged this on Feminism and Human Rights.
Thanks for you comments. My reply is below.
First I want to say thank you for responding to my article.
You say that gay men are over-represented in the performing arts. I don’t believe that is necessarily true. Maybe there are more gays and lesbians in the performing arts than other professions but it is very difficult for gays and lesbians to be out in the public. Many publicist advise against coming out. Since Ellen has came out-and her career temporarily ruined in the process until her comeback with Finding Nemo and her talk show-there have been more and more TV actors who have been coerced out. (Neil Patrick Harris is one star who comes to mind.) I don’t really want to discuss Jodie Foster’s disastrous quasi coming out at the Golden Globes.
But when actors do come out their careers are damaged or limited. Matthew Bomer came out, quietly, and has since been rumored to have been passed up for the Superman role due to the fact he is gay, despite beforehand being a frontrunner. He was also in the movie Magic Mike but his role was limited and he did not have a solo strip scene in the movie. No one has said why but it is something that does seem noticeable.
I think that the reason some feminist have questioned Drag and have equated it to black face is the misconception that Drag is parody. I don’t feel that Drag is parody. Parody is meant as a way to mock the establishment, to criticize the mainstream, and to shine a light on hard to digest topics. If you have gone to any drag show you will see that gay men (and some straight men) who perform in Drag are using Gender Identity as a statement for LGBT issues or for entertainment. Actually most Drag is for entertainment and a lot of Drag Queens will call themselves clowns.
I will admit that Drag can be uncomfortable and it can come across as insulting. That is why I talked about Shirley Q. Liquor in my article and some of Sharon Needles work, however to say that drag queens just emulate the catty and oversexed qualities of female gender identity is misplace and uninformed. Yes there are catty drag queens and there are catty straight men, but to take the work of someone like Divine who was a force of change in the mainstream community in how gender roles are perceived is to undercut the work she did.
Thank you for your information about the NAACP. I didn’t know that and it would make a great article. Maybe you could write about it as a guest contributor.
Thanks for the interesting article. I think it was pretty fair and balanced. However, I disagree with some of the things you say.
You say that there’s a difference between black face and drag in terms of offensiveness because black face was done by white people, whereas drag is generally done by gay men, which makes it more OK because gay men are a minority group.
However, if you think of an area in which gay men are overrepresented, in which gay men are very visible and in which gay men often excel and reach the top of their field- you’re likely to think of the performing arts. I’d guess that when it comes to the theatre, musicals, etc, gay performers are at least at the same level of acceptance and representation as women, and I don’t think that there is an argument to be made that they are routinely discriminated against. This is the exact arena in which you claim they are dressing up as parodies of womanhood in order to ‘empower’ themselves. So the idea that it’s OK because gay men are so oppressed they need to pretend to be women in order to feel empowered jdoesn’t work. Besides which, is it really OK for one underrepresented group to empower themselves at the expense of another? Whether you’ll accept it or not, black women who were in the NAACP during the 60′s have testified that they were institutionally discriminated against by men (I recall one particular male NAACP leader was quoted as saying: “The only position for women in the NAACP is prone!”). Maybe discriminating against black women made black men feel empowered. Does that make it OK?
I’m not sure your point that drag is OK because it’s done out of admiration is valid either. Just because you admire an absurd parody of femininity, doesn’t mean reinforcing the stereotypeon stage or TV is OK. I mean, I genuinely admire anyone who has rhythm and can play jazz well (as I have neither quality).Seems like those are two stereotypically ‘black’ qualities, as the video seems to suggest. Does that mean it’s OK for me as a white woman to black up so I feel ‘empowered’ during my dance class?
I have no problem with drag provided that it is done intelligently, the objective being to demolish stereotypes about gender. In fact it could be a very effective tool for satire. Also, if a white performer could pretend to be black for intelligent comedy that exploded myths about race, I would have no problem with it at all. But if it’s just a case of performers putting on sparkly dresses and making catty remarks and indulging in stereotypes – even if done out of admiration for catty, sparkly women – then forget all this who’s-more-persecuted-than-who stuff: it’s degrading to women and really no different **in essence** from white performers putting on black make up and playing trumpets.
Btw thanks for liking my blog ceciliawyu.wordpress.com. I like your honesty in dealing with some hard issues. goodluck! all the best.
I don’t mind drags. We’ve all been to drag shows that are well..top-biling and tasteful…like the club in Melbourne Australia Kylie Minogue used to with some really amazing burlesque drag shows!
But I mind when the personality behind the Drag is aggressive and anti-social and then uses their right to be a drag to ALSO bully! Read this horrific Groupon story by this drag-skank who basically assualted me and then used being a drag as an excuse to force women to have to pretend the business is acceptible! I’m like, what is your problem, you are just a evil liar and it has nothing to do with your gender preference, sometimes a nasty personality hoe is just a nasty BIG personality hoe with or without a dress on! I’ve Never met a Gay or Drag I did not get along with until I met this Nasty Hoe of a Business in England !
http://ceciliawyu.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/groupon-horror-story/
I only have one comment in your caption: “A few cast members from 2009′s Drag Race including (from left) Jade, Bebe, Zahara Benet, Akashia, Nina Flowers and Ongina.”
Bebe Zahara Benet is one name, the season 1 winner of RPDR.
Thanks ljlenehan. What you said is exactly one of the points I was trying to make in my follow up comments to Ms. Anderberg. We in most Western soceties have the right to choose how to dress. This is an expression of our free speech. Unfortunately that applies to Shirley Q. Liquor. But in many countries there is not that choice. I live and teach in South Korea. It is a new democracy. Before the change in the 80′s from a military dictatorship to a representative democracy, men couldn’t even have long hair. If you were found with long hair the police would round you up and force you into a barber shop and cut your hair according to standard. I know to some this is a trivial tidbit but personal expression is a source of expression and speech for many people who otherwise wouldn’t have a voice. Thank you for responding.
I think everyone has the right if not the obligation to express themselves however they see fit. Some people express through academics, sport, writing, art, flamboyant clothes, pretending to be something else. Part of what makes this world and culture such an amazing place to be is that everyone is different.
I am a pretty average thirty five year old mother of two. I work full time, write poetry in my spare time. Every time I see someone that is brave enough to express themselves I applaud them. It is so important.
I did not show my writing to anyone for seventeen years because I was afraid of what people would say or that they would judge me. But I’ve realized over the last couple of months. Who cares?
I have the right to express myself my way and so does everyone else. I have met a number of drag queens and they are very nice individuals.
Note from Femficatio Editor:
Ms Anderberg
While I acknowledge your passion, unfortunately your argument is racist in nature. One can have difficulty with the concept of drag… and as a feminist I can appreciate such sentiments, but to equate black-face with drag is categorically bigoted, dangerous and lacking in sensitivity.
The fact that a woman’s external persona is one of glamour is not an indicator of lesser IQ, her ability to be leadership in service of women, or her ability to overcome tremendous and restrictive obstacles. Dolly Parton, Pam Grier and Tina Turner are examples of women who personify extreme glamour, over-the-top sexuality and femininity and do not represent mindless womanhood. Drag Queens imitate these women as well. And those who don’t simply don’t – that is a separate issue. Roseanne’s act challenged patriotism (as a masculinist paradigm) – not patriarchy, because women can be militaristic too. You’ve mixed your P’s.
Racist stereotypes perpetuate and give justification for violence against Black people, including Black women and Black children. Have you seen those racist cartoons by American Greetings that show Black children being swallowed by alligators? The concept of Black-face is a construction that encapsulates both literal black face, and other viciously dehumanizing caricatures of Black people, many likening us to animals.
How does Drag put women at risk for violence? You have not been able to name a single instance. Yet, we can see where Drag at times has been racially offensive – the latter of which Chris Burchette has aptly challenged and you seem to have ignored.
We at Femficatio believe in an open exchange of ideas. But I was THOROUGHLY offended by your statement that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was a pig. Referring to someone as sexist is a critique of actions (of which you don’t support), but to call the world changing pacifist, philosopher, humanist, freedom-fighter, highly principled and tenacious man who paid the ultimate price for his convictions, Dr Martin Luther King Jr a pig, is downright low.
For future reference, a starter list of men who are off-limits for pejoratives (especially those unfounded and hostile):
Martin Luther King Jr
Mahatma Ghandi
Malcolm X
Noam Chomsky
Frederick Douglas
Geronimo…
For a further list, please query us. We try not to call names here, or use pejorative terms to get our points across. The actions of these men to liberate the most vulnerable of humanity, far out-weigh your skewed, vague and narrow definition of sexism.
Thank you for replying to this article.
Kamaria Muntu
Editor of Femficatio
First I want to say thank you for responding to my article. Sharon Needles has yet and I know RuPaul probably won’t.
Second, please understand that Femficatio is more than just my writings. It is a site that is truly dedicated to women’s rights of all colours.
Now I want to address your claim that the women you know do not dress the way a drag queen dresses. I am assuming that you are from Portland because your article was published with a Portland based media outlet. I am not really aware of how most women in Portland dress, but I am aware of how most women in the South dress. Before I go on I want to say DO NOT insult Southern Culture. I feel that Southern Culture is a lot braver than most of the US in terms of dealing with, discussing and acknowledging racism than most regions of the US.
I do see many women of all races and ages in the South, and other parts of the US that I have visited, choosing to dress in a myriad of ways. And, Yes some of them resemble drag queens. But whether how they dress or what they choose to adorn on their bodies is not really the issue. They are choosing to dress this way. They have a choice. Women in Western Societies even have a choice to dress as Drag Kings. Which I have yet to see you even write about. So I am asking you what is your take is on Drag Kings?
They are not as visible in the culture as Drag Queens because, as I have yet to see, there is not a performance aspect to the art of Drag Kings (except for Dred, who gender bends to be a man and woman depending on the show – and some Drag King plays).
Roseanne is an example that you bring up as a woman imitating a man and getting boo’d. If any man or woman had gone up to the podium and sang the NATIONAL ANTHEM and acted the same way she did while sing a song of National Pride, I am sure a MAN would have been boo’d too. It was within the context that she did these acts that got her criticism.
Marlene Dietrich was famous for gender bending performances.
“Even at the start of her film career, Dietrich would often include masculine clothes in her wardrobe, giving herself an androgynous quality” – http://www.stylehop.com/fashion-blog/2009/04/21/fashion-icon-marlene-dietrich Stylehop – Fashion Icon: Marlene Dietrich
Look at Annie Lennox, She herself was very much androgynous/masculine during her time in the Eurythmics.
Many Drag Queens emulate women such as Cher, Madonna, and Liza. These women, strong women who have been THE driving force in their careers, often use hyper sexualized symbols of feminity in their acts. Is it because they are women it is ok for them to use the trappings of the “Cult of Womanhood” as you mentioned in your article and it is ok for women such as Annie Lennox and Marlene Dietrich to use male stereotypes and images but it is not ok for mostly GAY men to use symbols of womanhood?
That is a double standard.
As far as gay men are concerned, I do not know your sexual orientation but I will say as a gay man I at this moment CAN NOT marry the man I want to in the US. I live in South Korea and if I wanted to marry my partner I can but it would not be considered a marriage on the federal level and he would have to obtain citizenship through other means.
How fair is that?
There is so much more to write and if you want Maybe we could do a back and forth with each other on this blog or other blogs.
I do feel that we probably will have to leave this with a “Let’s agree to disagree.”
Thank you for your response Kirsten.
When women imitate men like that, i.e. Rosanne spitting and scratching her crotch while singing the National Anthem at a baseball game, it is MASSIVELY CONTROVERSIAL, pissing off men all over…hmmm, can you say DOUBLE STANDARD? You say, “I don’t know about you RuPaul, but its time we dare drag to serve as a creative, innovative art-form and not pander to the vile and lowest denominator in society. There is nothing new, creative or innovative about racism.” But why do you stop short of including sexism in that sentence? Shouldn’t that sentence say, “I don’t know about you RuPaul, but its time we dare drag to serve as a creative, innovative art-form and not pander to the vile and lowest denominator in society. There is nothing new, creative or innovative about racism or sexism.” Why is it alright to be sexist in drag? Is there some reason drag queens must be sexist? Are there ANY feminist drag queens? I would LOVE to hear about them. I still see no difference between whites playing shuffling fetchandstepit black characters and men playing a fantacized version of what women supposedly are, that includes acting ditzy and giddy and stupid, and being into a ton of superficial things most women I know want nothing to do with such as high heels, tons of garish makeup, bouffant hairdos…male drag queens are like women clowns. It is fine if they call themselves women clowns, and can handle women making fun of men as “male clowns” but on the whole I still see men imitating women in a way that is completely unreal, and sexist…in a way very similar to how whites imitated blacks for so long…in ways that had nothing to do with black culture, just like these drag queens have little to nothing to do with womanhood. You say I am racist to make that comparison but do not say why. I still stand by my statements and think that drag queens are also racist a lot of the time in their exaggerations in the same way they are sexist. It almost seems that since predominantly gay men are involved, people are afraid to call out cries of racism and sexism! Gay men can be racist and sexist too, just as civil rights leaders such as the Black Panthers and MLKing, jr. can be sexist pigs. I have no problem with gay men dressing and acting as flamboyently as they would like, I applaud such freedoms, but I do not like the false imitations of the female gender as their avenues to expression. Or I do not like it being represented as imitating women. It is NOT imitating WOMEN. It is imitating a fantasy that has zero to do with women. It is like they are imitating aliens, not women. Again, I know no women who dress like drag queen men. Also, you say these drag queens are merely imitating women that were powerful in their lives, as some type of tribute. LOL! That is a ridiculous claim. I want to see pictures of the actual WOMEN these men in drag are supposedly showing respect to in these acts, women they claim to be in roles such as mothers, aunts, etc. – I highly doubt the women in their lives were in that type of drag as women. No women I know dress like men in drag do…it seems to be a male fiction of what they want womanhood to be JUST LIKE the way whites portrayed what they thought black culture was….it is still a dominant paradigm mimicking a class with less rights…it is still men imitating women or whites imitating blacks, either way, it is still the dominant paradigm getting all the air time and when the few women try to do the reverse, such as Rosanne did, they take a TON of shit. In many ways, this is still about MALE PRIVILEGE! The beginning of this country included NO VOTES for woman, minorities, etc. The only people who were allowed to vote in this “democracy” in the beginning were white men with money. For a very long time, women and racial minorities could not even own property, much less human rights. I think there is something to the observation that white men doing drag re women is still the dominant speaking for, almost, the women. I remember when I protested all men emcees at the OCF Midnight Show for decades and so the next year the Flying Karamazov Brothers just came out in drag, saying now there were women emcees. So for a long time, the way men got around including women was just to imitate them…this is not new. I am willing to speak openly on this topic that terrifies so many, as I do think there is serious sexism in all this and that men are definitely getting male privilege in this whole male drag queen thing. Again, when women imitate the exaggerations of how men look and act, everyone FREAKS OUT as if it is an affront to HUMANITY! So…when Rosanne scratching her crotch and spitting on the baseball field imitating men is embraced with an equal openness as male drag queens are now, I will be very happy to see that. But for now, there is a great chasm re sexism and male drag queens are not helping women reach equality with that crap. And again, why are there not male can can lines like there are women can can lines? That really speaks to me about the sexploitation of women and sexism…it should be equal amounts of exploitation of both genders to not be sexist. This is sexploitation of women by men thru imitation, that is really what I feel.