Drag and Praxis: Personal Narrative

Critical geography scholar, Sarah Wakefield defines praxis as the “melding of theory/reflection and practice/action as part of a conscious struggle to transform the world. Put simply, praxis is giving life to ideas about the way the world is—and could be—by acting on one’s convictions in daily (work and home) life.”[i] My praxis—the meeting of theory and action—of drag and masculinity manifests in two ways: my own performance and through my reflection of drag and masculinity in Asheville.

My conviction that old definitions of drag are insufficient results from my own personal experiences in the queer community, in college(s), and in Asheville. My experience with drag requires a bit of revisionist history on my part. As a child, I did not see dressing in any certain clothes as “drag.” But, through reflection (a dangerous activity: committing the intangibles of the past to the certitude of the written word) I have discovered my own gender experimentation and performance exhibited mostly through play. Through playing “dress up,” “house,” and—a favorite of my sister and mine—“The Wizard of Oz,” I was able to try on different genders and roles for a short time. I soon regulated myself to masculine roles in our play and experimented with what I determined masculinity to be (my masculine roles wore glitter, aprons, and pigtails). But I won’t dwell on the too-often-told stories of how children learn gender and especially the “correct” gender. I’d rather focus on how my gender nonconformance became personal and political choices.


Drag has long been a dream of mine. I played with gender-bending as a child, requesting un-ladylike short haircuts: secretly enjoying the thrill and outrage of being mistaken for a “boy.” I started experimenting with femme drag in high school as a social and academic experiment for my first college Women’s Studies course. The all-female class was asked to perform publically a stereotypically gendered task of the opposite sex and record/reflect on the public’s reactions. I chose to be high femme for a day, borrowing a femme friend’s clothes: high heels (which required walking lessons), a short dress, pearl necklace and earrings, straightened hair, body hair removal, and a rigorous amount of makeup. I was astonished by the different treatment and attention I received from others. I continued to play with femme and, what I called, “boi” drag for parties and my own pleasure through high school and into college.

As admirer of drag, I was inspired by drag’s many possibilities. Much more than mere male/female impersonation, I discovered that drag was subversive and often political, even if the performer’s goal was only to impersonate male/female realness while lip-synching to a song. Drag pushes the audience to confront any and all pre-conceived notions of gender, sex, sexuality, and desire. My first opportunity to perform on stage came with the Alliance Drag Ball. The obligation as organizer and group leader hurdled me over any reservations and into my first drag routine.

For the first show, a group of three friends and I decided to toy with the homoeroticism of 90s boy bands: thus the Dragstreet Bois were born. We choreographed a dance routine to the Backstreet Boys song “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back).” During the musical interlude, we illustrated the homoeroticism implicit in the boy-band competitions by kissing posters and magazine covers of rival band NSYNC. The group was such a success that the Dragstreet Bois performed again at the second drag show with NSYNC’s “Bye, Bye, Bye.” During the second show, I also collaborated with a friend to Ludacris and Shawna’s “What’s Your Fantasy.” In this number, I performed as Shawna: wearing a borrowed skin-tight leopard-print dress, black wig, and black high heels. As a transmasculine person, femme drag continues to push my comfort zone. I don’t often dance and eroticize my body in a traditionally feminine way. But switching rapidly from femme to boi drag was an incredible experience. Performing two drastically different personas required eroticizing my body in very different ways. Moreover, performing two roles really pushed me to reflect upon my own masculinity.

Masculinity deserves some investigation. My focus on masculinity in my research is the product of its invisibility and perceived naturalness. Often drag is perceived as limited to feminine attire. Femininity is commonly perceived as unnatural, forced for both male and female-bodied people. Masculinity, however, is perceived as natural to male-bodied people: its locus residing somewhere, mysteriously, within male genitalia. Transgender people, butch lesbians, and drag performers all contest the “naturalness” of masculinity to male bodies. My daily genderbending performance allows me to occupy the unmarked, liminal space between male and female. My transmasculinity affords me male privilege most of the time. I feel comfortable walking alone at night and rarely do I receive unwanted attention from men.

I’ve continued to perform outside of drag shows, including for a presentation of this project in September 2010. I wanted to queer the traditional practice and space of academic presentation and knowledge-making. I wanted to praxis. I opened my power point presentation with a rendition of Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.” Garbed in black jeans, leather jacket, and penciled facial hair, I danced between the aisles of desks, engaging the audience. Meanwhile, a slideshow of statistics of reported and “alleged” queer bashings in Asheville flashed behind me—the most recent having occurred only days before the presentation. I played with the hyper-masculinity and sexualized violence of “Beat It:” performing “Beat It” in its many connotations, from violence upon others, to masturbation, to fleeing. For me, drag is a vehicle for political expression, gender expression, and social commentary. Every time I listen to the radio, I wonder how I will do that number in drag.

My queer praxis is also a part of my reflection on drag and queering the definition of drag. The definition of drag is often dependent upon essentialized notions of binary gender, identity, and location. But I believe this definition has changed, grown, mutated, queered beyond these restraints. Past definitions of drag have placed a lot of emphasis on binary gender and the body. Traditional definitions of drag define it as the dualistic hypergendered performance (either hyperfeminine or masculine) by a person of the opposite sex. Yet, as the prevalence of transformative drag and “bio queens” (problematic term because of its emphasis on genitalia) denotes, drag performers have long been blurring the binaries of drag. The performer’s genitals do not dictate the possibilities of gendered performance. Like art, drag is defined as much by its audience as its artist/performer. A person doesn’t have to identify as a drag performer in order for their performance to be seen as drag. Yet, on the other hand, drag does not require an audience. The performer can be in drag without an audience, without the intention of being seen. Nor, I argue, does drag have to be limited by location. Drag is no longer limited to the stage or local gay bar. Drag, the hypergendered performance, can be seen everywhere from house parties, to concerts, political rallies, the bedroom, colleges, festivals, theaters, and (in Asheville particularly) every other person walking down the street.

In keeping with postmodern ethnographic and feminist methodologies, I situate myself within this body of work[ii]. As a white, transgender, middleclass, queer, TAB (temporarily able-bodied) person and amateur drag performer, my positionality and experiences directly inform the framework, scope, and perspective of this research. My experience as an “insider,” a member of both the queer and drag communities, allows me some privileges as well as some challenges. My insider status has provided me with known contacts, a foundation of trust and (perceived) common-experience within those communities. Yet that insider status poses some problems as well. My insider status may blind me to some observations and potentially prevent me from seeing key differences in experience. Moreover, my insider status may push me to portray my findings in an overly optimistic way or to omit less favorable findings out of group loyalty. By choosing to write about my own communities, I risk the possibility of losing friends and relationships.

Yet I take this risk believing that the experiences of these people are significant to the existing discourses of drag in feminist and queer theory. Therefore, modeling after black feminist theorist Pat Hill Collins and queer writer, performer, and activist Kate Bornstein, I consciously employ inclusive pronouns “we, us, our” to acknowledge my relationship of “insider status” to this community of drag performers and to juxtapose the voices of all kinds of drag performers—kings, queens, amateurs, and admirers[iii]. However distant and fractured our experiences may be from day to day, I believe that this inclusive language fosters a new, if limited, sense of community around our shared experiences with drag and performing masculinities. I understand that inclusive language always risks the possibility of erasure of individual difference of experience. But the language of previous studies in drag has employed very divisive language. These linguistic divisions (male/female; queen/king; masculine/feminine), I believe, have caused readers, theorists, and performers to ignore the common experiences between performers. The queer community’s most beautiful strength is its diversity. I believe that we can create a space and discourse for drag performers in queer and feminist theory that embraces the similarities and difference of experience. I’d like my praxis to contribute to that discourse.

Notes:

[i]Sarah E. L. Wakefield, “Reflective Action in the Academy: Exploring Praxis in Critical Geography using a ‘Food Movement’ Case Study” Antipode (Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2007) 331.

[ii] Joey Sprague, “Qualitative Shifts: Feminist Strategies in Field Research and Interviewing,” Feminist Methodologies for Critical Researchers: Bridging Differences (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2005), 119-163.

[iii] Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, 2000). Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us (New York: Routledge, 1994).