Anthony McCarthy of Echidne of the Snakes wrote about the touchy subject of drag queens and the performance of gender. Here’s the basic pitch

Whatever I might think about drag and its relationship with the wider view of gay men, I’m certain that the drag queen role isn’t a good one for women to follow. The paper today informs us that RuPaul has a new program which is based on professional drag queens instructing women on how to be women.

He said it here.

Yeah, about that. But first let’s get a couple caveats out of the way. Is McCarthy bashing trans people (transsexual, transvestite, or transgender)? No, I don’t believe he is. Is he rejecting the notion that gender as a component of identity separate from sex? No, not that either. And, since it’s often confused even though they’re actually miles apart, is McCarthy confusing “female impersonators” like RuPaul with transgender or transexuals? Again, no. He’s just calling into question the notion that it’s a good idea for people who dress like women but make a point of not identifying as women giving women who do identify as women instructions in how to perform as women.

I mean, the only possible real good that could come out of the whole concept of the program is that gender, as opposed to virtually all other elements of identity, is constructed and performed based on the approval, disapproval, or outright direction of others rather than ourselves.

That the best people to instruct women in how to perform their gender might be men who are said to perform it better than women naturally do only makes the whole gender enterprise more contrived.

Which is fine, of course, and not in a “nothing wrong with that” way… I mean it _really is fine to be have in contrived and constrained ways — we do it all the time in games, say, where the rules can be almost completely contrived.

Unless you’re so far into it you mistake the game for reality, and the rules for laws of nature, and performance of the game for the way we “naturally” ought to be.

Which, unfortunately, when it comes to the game of gender an awful lot of people do. With very unfortunately consequences.

McCarthy continues

The story is that when the Stonewall Inn was raided it was the drag queens who were the first to resist. I wasn’t there and have never spoken to anyone who was. Since that is widely reported by people who were there, it’s a laudable act on the part of those who resisted anti-gay oppression. But that doesn’t erase the negative implications of drag and its promotion of oppressive stereotypes for women, and, indisputably, gay men. Living a phony stereotype is oppressive, especially one assigned for the purpose of entrapping victims into oppression. The powerful elite, comprised of straight men, wasn’t going to allow those assigned roles to be empowering. I don’t for one second see adoption of those roles as being empowering, that is a delusion useful to the established order. With this show, with the actual instruction of women by professional drag queens in how to live their act, that promotional aspect isn’t deniable.

Yup. I think if you want to go careening about in stockings, high heels, heavy makeup, and a wig more power to you! Lots of people do — from the annual Pride parade to the very elderly housewives in the grocery store next to my old neighborhood.

But thing is it really is approximately as likely, and as appropriate, and most importantly as authentic(!) on men in parades as women in grocery stores then why continue pretending that it’s actually about women at all? That it’s about cross-dressing at all, instead of just dressing? And just enjoy it for what it is instead of what-it’s-not-but-pretends-to-be?

Because if you’re going to go the other way, and go ‘round saying oh no these guys can show you how women really are? I don’t think that’s a very good idea.