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this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2024
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You believe there is no barrier to entry? I invite you to go try it. Not just walking around in make up and a wig and bouncing around in front of your friends mind you. Go in front of an audience that payed a cover and entertain them for half an hour. Charm a room full of patrons who showed up with expectations. Deal with hecklers and queerphobia in a way that makes an audience laugh.
What you seem to require to recognize the value of a performer is being legitimized by a school that is validated by historical structures that determine art. Queer culture is generally not legitimized outside our own internal structures. We were frozen out of legitimacy and devalued by those structures. We had to create our own and because of criminalization our culture was atomized and localized. There is no acreditiation process for drag queens yes....Think for a minute why that is. I realize you are not intending to be discriminatory or cruel but regardless you are upholding a culture of discrimination that refuses to treat these historical arts as being valid unless someone in your wider dominant heterosexual culture rubber stamps it in a ritual of wide cultural accreditation. As a community that has been constantly under political fire and faced routine attempts at exterminaton for centuries yeah you can't go to a university for a drag queen program. That doesn't mean that you're going to be instantly accepted as a queen if you tried to take a spot.
But moreover hackles down. You want to believe that I am condemning your soul as being evil that isn't the case. You are ignorant. That is okay. There isn't shame in being ignorant but if you dig in your heels and feel attacked because you are being challenged you will make this all about soothing your need to feel like you are a good person...and you can be a good person and still be doing harm by perpetuating something unthinkingly. This isn't about you being a good person, it's about the idea you are hauling along with you that holds a seed of subjugation of a community you do not understand.
I am sorry but what? None of the things you described involve any distinct skill or talent, like for example clowns doing juggling. Going in front of people to present and having to deal with bad reactions is not distinct to drag as a hobby, expression or job. Any job may necessarily have that as a component to some degree.
Look I get it, drag is personal expression that’s part of queer culture and queer culture has been condemned and embattled forever.
But I don’t think anyone who doesn’t find value or skill in drag is being ignorant (which by the way is crutch you’re using because that’s easier than accepting that I may have a point).
We don’t have to automatically give respect to someone’s cultural thing. Like someone may wear Burqas or get facial tattoos or do drag or make their babies get circumcised.
None of things are above criticism or being challenged just because they’re from a non-dominant culture. Non-dominant cultures are still composed of people who have the same bad ideas and ills as those in dominant cultures. I don’t care if people do drag, I don’t care if a skilled and talented person does drag story hour. I support queer culture (I am part of it), but queer culture is not a religion and it is not above criticism or right about everything all the time.
Edit also things like art and music do have a barrier to entry, basically talent. Drag doesn’t not require skill or talent, same as being goth or Juggalo doesn’t
Edit2:
Art and art forms are never above critical analysis, and if they are it’s just dogma. It’s okay if drag is queer culture dogma, like wearing a burqa is for someone else’s culture.
But reframing drag as a cultural expression and as a way to resolve psychological incongruities to act out personas (expression as therapy) helps motivate drag story hour by full time drag queens.
People do other things as part of their tribal membership (like Christmas trees) which just have cultural significance and nothing more, so drag is okay itself too and doesn’t need any more hardening than being a part of queer culture. I appreciate the poster who mentioned Stonewall to me, that was a good reminder.
Thankfully our library system has more respect for the craft and the authenticity of cultural practice they choose to present to patrons. There is more here to unpack than I personally care to engage with.