Beyond Kings and Queens

Dred

Transgender subjectivities further complicate the definition of drag. Trans bodies, identities, and sexualities challenge the primacy of the body and “uncovering” in drag. Trans subjectivities performing in drag also dispute the medical transsexual model, the gender essentialist script employed by the medical community to police access to medical transitioning[i]. While the terms “king” and “queen” could be potentially limiting, several trans performers find king/queen identities as liberating and welcoming sites[ii]. Trans subjectivities in drag king communities have been more critically studied. The drag king community tends to write more fluid gender scripts: including more gender-bending performances outside of the stereotypical drag king script. Often kings discover and explore trans-identities through their experience kinging[iii]. “Bio queens,” female-bodied individuals who perform as high femme or drag queens, are also a (contested) part of the drag king community. While existing studies of drag queens have emphasized gay male identities, “drag queen” itself has become a category of gender identity for many performers, a space of anti-assimilation[iv]. Moreover, trans subjectivities on the drag queen spectrum are not invisible either, as the popularity of John Cameron Mitchell’s cult classic musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch suggests[v]. Trans performers queer what it means to be a “king” or “queen” and pushes the audience and the scholar to question the desire to know what kind of body is underneath the drag.

There are some significant shortcomings in the existing research of drag performers. As mentioned, there is a dearth of analysis on drag queens’ relationships to masculinity. How do drag queens experience masculinity on and off stage? And how does one become a drag king? Another failing is the location. Drag has only been studied in bars. What about kings’ and queens’ identities outside of the bar? Theorists have un/intentionally reduced drag kings’ and queens’ lives to their experiences in the bars and on stage. How would research of drag change if we look outside the bar? Furthermore, much of the research aims solely to indict or defend drag performers, rather than acknowledging that drag performers, performances, and audiences are (like queer theory) complex and often contradictory. Existing research overwhelmingly reduces and reifies performers’ gender-fluid subjectivities by “uncovering” them, re-instating the primacy of the body, the genitalia, an individual’s “true” identity. This project hopes to address some of these shortcomings.




[i] Dean Spade, “Mutilating Gender,”in Readings for Diversity and Social Justice, 2nd ed., eds. Marrianne Adams et al (New York: Routledge, 2010), 435- 441.



[ii] Neevel, “Me Boy”; bradford, “Grease Cowboy Fever”; Taylor, Rupp, and Shapiro, “Drag Queens and Drag Kings.” Jay Sennet and Sarah Bay-Cheng, “’I Am the Man!’ Performing Gender and Other Incongruities,” The Drag King Anthology, eds. Donna Troka, Kathleen Lebesco, and Jean Noble (New York: Harrington Park Press, 2002), 39-47.


[iii] Taylor, Rupp, and Shapiro, “Drag Queens and Drag Kings”; Neevel, “Me Boy.”


[iv] Taylor, Rupp, and Shapiro, “Drag Queens and Drag Kings”.


[v] Hedwig and the Angry Inch, DVD, directed and written by John Cameron Mitchell (Killer Films, New Line Cinema, 2001).