Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Leila J. Rupp
University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
Verta Taylor
University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
Eve Ilana Shapiro
Westfield State College, USA
drag kings perform gender and sexuality and engage in the political work
of drag.
The panel brought together Key West drag queens Sushi, Kylie Jean
Lucille, and Gugi Gomez, and drag kings Max Madrigal, whom the drag
queens read at first as male and then persisted in calling she, and one of
us, also known as Noah Boyz. It all started off well enough with a
discussion about identity and dressing in drag, but the tension in the
room ratcheted up when Sushi, who, as her Japanese mother complained
once, has no shame, said she thought issues of gender, sexuality and
terminology should not be taken so seriously. As the story in the student
newspaper quoted her, You suck cocks or you lick pussy. Who cares?
Were all the same (Gonzalez, 2004: 5). She went on to say that in her
small town high school, she used to cry when she was called a jap or
faggot, but explained that now she and the other drag queens use words
such as spic and what she called the n word as a way of strengthening
themselves and deflecting hatred with humor and light-heartedness.
As the perceptive reporter noted, the drag kings were less flamboyant
than their fellow panelists (Gonzalez, 2004: 5). Max, who had graduated
from the university, commented that audience members at a drag king
show should leave thinking about their own sexuality, and Noah expressed
the hope that queer audiences would explore issues of war and politics
while straight ones would contemplate gender and sexual identity. The
contrast between the drag kings and drag queens, flamboyance aside, was
striking. Although both engaged with issues of gender and race, the drag
kings were serious and overtly political, the drag queens campy and
verging on the outrageous.
In this article, we explore the differences and similarities between drag
queens and drag kings: their divergent routes to performing drag, the
different contexts and styles of their shows, and yet the similar critique of
hegemonic gender and heteronormativity that emerges from their
performances. There is a great deal of scholarship on drag queens, begin-
ning with Newtons (1972) classic study, while research on drag kings is
still relatively new, given the fact that drag kinging became a widespread
phenomenon in the USA only in the 1990s.1 Drag queens are gay men
who perform in womens clothing, although they are not necessarily
female impersonators, as the descriptions of the 801 Girls will make clear.
Drag kinging includes female-bodied individuals performing masculinity,
transgender identified performers performing masculinity or femininity,
and female identified individuals performing femininity, the latter known
as bio queens. We base our analysis on our two case studies: the drag
queen troupe at the 801 Cabaret in Key West, and the self-named
political feminist collective the Disposable Boy Toys (DBT), a drag
troupe based in Santa Barbara.
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This is the first systematic comparison of drag queens and drag kings,
and it enhances our understanding of the gendered dynamics of drag.
Drag queens tend to engage in gender transition early in life and come to
drag in part as a resolution of gender identity issues. In contrast, drag
kings tend to rethink their gender identities as a result of doing drag. In
addition, the drag king troupe, with connections to a university
community, engaged with gender and feminist theory, which shaped their
performances and other activities in ways quite foreign to the drag queen
world of a gay bar. Nevertheless, we argue that, despite the very different
ways that members of these troupes came to drag and the different
kinds of theoretical and political consciousness they express, in their
performances both drag queens and drag kings embody resistance to the
gender structure and heteronormativity. Performing different genders in
different ways, evoking a range of sexual identities, and eliciting non-
normative sexual desires from audience members, their performances have
a similar impact on their audiences.
Theoretical framing
The existing literature on drag suggests that drag queen and drag king
performances do not critique the binary gender system in the same ways.
Some scholars view drag queens as primarily reinforcing dominant assump-
tions about the dichotomous nature of gender presentation and sexual
desire because they appropriate gender displays associated with traditional
femininity and institutionalized heterosexuality or because, despite their
performance of femininity, they embody masculine privilege (Dolan, 1985;
Frye, 1983; Gagn and Tewksbury, 1996; Schacht, 1998, 2000, 2002a,
2002b; Tewksbury, 1993, 1994). Others, influenced by the writings of
queer theory, argue that drag queen performances are transgressive actions
that destabilize gender and sexual categories by making visible the social
basis of femininity and masculinity, heterosexuality and homosexuality, and
presenting hybrid and minority genders and sexualities (Butler, 1990,
1993; Garber, 1992; Lorber, 1994, 1999; Muoz, 1999; Rupp and Taylor,
2003). The concept of gender performativity in queer theory (Butler,
1990, 1993; Garber, 1992; Muoz, 1999) implies that the theatrical
performance of gender is a form of resistance that undermines the assumed
connections among gender, sex, and (hetero)sexuality (Moloney and
Fenstermaker, 2002). For Butler, traditional gender loses some its claim to
naturalness and authenticity through drag, which uses parody to reveal the
fundamentally performative nature of gender. The literature on whether
drag affirms or contests hegemonic gender is not, however, entirely polar-
ized, as suggested by the work of Schacht (2002a), who argues that drag
queens represent a masculine embodiment of the feminine and the
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Methods
Both of our case studies made use of multiple qualitative methods. Data
on the drag queens is based on research in Key West from 1998 to 2001.
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Although neither the 801 Girls nor the Disposable Boy Toys can be
taken as representative of all drag queens and drag kings, neither are they
unique. Both perform a style of drag that can be found throughout the
USA and around the world.4 In this article, we use the drag names and
the pronouns of choice of the performers. The drag kings were more
likely to match pronouns to gender of presentation than the drag queens,
who in everyday life switch back and forth between masculine and
feminine pronouns.
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then change into an outfit made up of his fathers pajamas and her
kimono, prompting a call from the school principal. By his senior year,
Sushi was, in his own words, a flaming queen, wearing full makeup and
platform shoes. Kylie describes their dressing up as starting out as flam-
boyance but ending up as dressing in womens clothes.
While Newton (1972) also finds a history of cross-dressing at early ages
among the drag queens she studied, our interviews suggest that same-sex
desire and identifying as gay were even more important in the adoption
of a drag queen identity. Like the Brazilian travests researched by Kulick
(1998), desire for men when young was what they described as the critical
factor in becoming drag queens. Inga, a towering blonde from Sweden,
said matter-of-factly that she started to do drag because of coming out
being gay. Most of the drag queens responded to the question of how
they began to dress in drag by telling us of their first sexual experiences
with boys or men. Scabby responded that he had always been gay, always
attracted to men, and told a story about kissing another boy in kinder-
garten. Milla always knew what I liked, which was I knew I liked boys.
Ive always known I was gay. I always knew I was attracted to men,
reported Gugi.
Of course not all gay men react to their experience of same-sex desire
by getting into drag. What emerged in the drag queens stories is that, for
them, drag is related to their desire for straight men, or straight-seeming
traditionally masculine men. Sushi connects this to a sense of being trans-
gendered. Her desire to become a woman and her decision to pass as a
woman for over a year she says is because I wanted to have what men
want, I wanted a pussy. She thought, Oh my god, I look like such a
woman, maybe I am a woman and it sort of confused me. Now she
describes herself as some place in between a woman and a man, I know
Im a drag queen, I finally realized that. Yet Kylie thinks Sushi still has
a struggle . . . whether she should be a woman or a man. Sometimes Sushi
identifies as transgendered. Watching a television show one night about
transgenderism, Sushi had a very emotional reaction, feeling that she was
really a closeted transgendered person, not a drag queen. But mostly she
just identifies as a drag queen, even though she says its not that I realized
I was a drag queen, I learned how to become a drag queen.
Gugi also connects doing drag to being transgendered. She feels
feminine and says she always wanted to be a woman. But, like Sushi, she
knows that, at least in part, she wanted to be a woman because she is
attracted to men. She took hormones for a while and stayed in drag all
the time, going to the straight end of town to pick up men. She admits
she would love getting breasts. But she herself is not clear how much this
is because she wants to be a woman compared to wanting to be desired
by (straight) men.
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Milla, like Sushi, passed as a woman for over a year. She took hormones
and seriously considered sex-reassignment surgery. But she came to realize
that she was running away from herself, although she also loved the atten-
tion of men. She would go out dressed as a woman and just have the men
fall over, all over me, and with no clue, no clue. Others never thought of
themselves as transgendered, feminine, or women. As a young gay
teenager in New York in the 1950s, Margo read about Christine
Jorgensens famous transformation from a man to a woman, and it scared
him. I did not want to be a woman, and here it is in the paper that this
may be what I have to do.
Despite the gender-transgressive experiences of many of the 801 Girls,
none at the time of the research identified as transgendered. Later, the
troupe came to include Colby Kincaid, a tittie queen who had breast
implants but kept her penis, and Baby D, an 18-year-old on hormones
who was saving for sex-reassignment surgery. There was a lot of discussion
about Colby; Kylie thought that she was not a real drag queen because of
her breasts and did not belong in the show. In a conversation about the
book with the drag queens, Margo commented on how much more they
had learned about the transgender thing since the book came out (Rupp
and Taylor, 2005). And even transgender sensibility does not always, for
the drag queens, translate into real understanding of transgenderism as an
identity, as is clear from our description of the drag queens confusion
about the gender identity of the drag kings at the panel discussion in Santa
Barbara. Since that event Sushi met one of the drag kings, now a transman
with top but not bottom surgery, and expressed shock at the idea of a man
without a penis.
In contrast to the drag queens, the drag kings tended to experience
identity transformation as a result of performing as a drag king, although
many were butch or masculine women before joining the troupe. But it
was not gender identity that attracted them to drag; rather, they joined in
search of queer community, performance opportunities, and time with
friends who were already involved. Yet doing drag in the Disposable Boy
Toys fostered gender shifts both coming to a new gender identity and
defining or understanding a pre-existing gender identity in new ways for
most members. When they joined DBT, almost all participants thought
of themselves simply as female; only two members identified as trans-
gender and one as genderqueer. By the time of the interviews, however,
almost half of members identified themselves as genderqueer, FTM
(female-to-male), or transgender instead of only as female. The term
genderqueer claimed an identity outside of the male/female binary,
FTM signified moving from a female to male gender or sex, and trans-
gender referred to a wide range of gender non-conformity, including
genderqueer and FTM identities. As the complexity of these identities
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the straight man crouched over his pelvis. By asking presumably straight
audience members to enact queer sex acts, and by encouraging them to
try it, you might like it, they contest heteronormativity.
The drag queens also move out into the audience, hoping to arouse
men they identify as straight by touching and fondling them. One night
a straight couple got in a fight because the man got an erection when
Sushi caressed his penis. A straight woman tourist, on the other hand,
loved when the girls fondled her husband. Its like heres this man
touching my husband, its like really cool. And hes standing there letting
him. She found this the sexiest part of the show, there was something
crackling the most. Her husband described his own response: Im sitting
there and theres a little bit of me saying, This is sexually exciting and
theres another part of me saying, Wait a minute, dont do this. Youre
not supposed to be sexually excited, this is a man . . . . At one show, a
very macho young man there with his girlfriend took one look at Sushi
and confided in us, I could do her. The drag queens report that often
when straight men approach them after the show, they are interested in
taking the insertee rather than inserter role in sexual encounters.
And it is not just straight men who experience sexual desires outside
their claimed identities. A lesbian woman described feeling very attracted
to Milla: She was so sexy, and a straight woman agreed, commenting
that I was very drawn to her sexually. I felt like kissing her. And Im not
gay at all. Another straight woman started falling in love with Milla and
announced, I want to make love with her. Straight women in the bar
sometimes take to kissing and fondling each other during the shows.
From different vantage points, then, the drag kings and drag queens
perform in ways that underscore the social construction of gender and
sexuality. The drag kings very consciously and deliberately invoke queer
theory and the perspectives of the transgender movement, raising ques-
tions about what is real beneath the costumes. The drag queens play with
categories of gender and sexuality out of their own histories and desires,
but they announce that they are gay men with intact male genitalia. They
transgress in different ways, sending different messages about what queer
genders and sexualities look like. But both, in the process, contest binary
gender and heteronormativity.
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happens when] someone in the audience is attracted to both of them and that
person thought they were straight? It makes people question themselves and
any of the strict biases and prejudices they have in their head because they see
it in themselves, then.
From an entirely different perspective, the drag queens also challenge
hegemonic masculinity and heteronormativity. Although none of them
have read Judith Butler, they, too, get across to audiences the per-
formativity of gender and the fluidity of sexuality, race and ethnicity. They
see themselves as challenging their audiences and raising consciousness.
As Milla put it, We are attractive to everybody. We have taken gender and
thrown it out of the way, and weve crossed a bridge here. And when we
are all up there, there is no gay/straight or anything. Race, ethnicity, and
class are also explicit in their performances, but in a complicated way. On
the one hand, the drag queens deploy the tradition of camp humor, which
can be read as self-denigrating and incompatible with assertions of gay
pride (Newton, 1972). Sushi, for example, asked the audience to call her
a nip, gook, and chink and deliberately played on stereotypes of Asian
sexuality, and Destiny identified as white trash while performing Harper
Valley PTA. On the other hand, the drag queens embrace a more fluid
conception of race and ethnicity when they engage in what Robertson
(1988) calls cross-ethnicking: Gugi performed as Cuban or Mexican as
well as Puerto Rican, and Milla, whom the other girls called a Black
woman trapped in a White male body, favored numbers by Black women.
The strategies of both the drag queens and drag kings with profoundly
different theoretical foundations called attention to racial, ethnic and
class difference, appealing to some audience members but not others.
And in fact, as focus group members made clear, their message got
across. One gay man concluded that the labels of gay and straight, like
man and woman, just do not fit: You leave them at the door. Said
another, the drag queens are challenging the whole idea of gender and
so forth and theyre breaking that down. A straight male tourist put it
this way: I think that one of the beauties of attending a show like this is
that you do realize that you . . . shouldnt walk out and say, I only like
men, and you shouldnt say I only like women, and it all kind of blends
together a lot more so than maybe what we want to live in our normal
daily lives.
Despite fundamental differences between the drag queens and drag
kings, both troupes make a real impact on peoples thinking about the
boundaries of gender and sexuality. They bring people together, blur the
lines of gender, and arouse unaccustomed sexual desires. The drag kings
consciously embody a queer theory perspective, but the drag queens,
without the language of social constructionism or gender performativity,
trouble gender and sexuality in similar ways.
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Conclusion
As the events at the UC Santa Barbara panel discussion with which we
opened this article make clear, drag queens and drag kings do not always
see eye-to-eye. The 801 Girls do not quite know what to make of drag
kings, and drag kings often view drag queens as misogynist. When DBT
was first emerging, the troupe often performed with local drag queens,
sometimes to the dismay of the kings. Earl remembered thinking, Holy
shit, are they going to just make fun of women all night? Yet despite the
very real differences the different histories and trajectories of coming to
drag, the different theoretical foundations, the different styles of per-
formance the intent of the shows and the potential impact of drag queen
and drag king performances have something in common.
For young men like Sushi and Milla and Gugi, drag queen as a
potential identity allowed them a place between man and woman and to
assert their gay identity. Male effeminacy is more stigmatized in US society
than female masculinity, so the world of drag queens has long provided a
haven for men with the desire to perform femininity, on stage and off.
Although neither female masculinity nor female drag are new, drag king
communities are a recent development, so they do not play the same kind
of function for masculine women. Rather than attracting individuals who
were in the process of exploring their gender identities, we found that
DBT sparked among its lesbian membership the reconceptualization of
gender identities. Drag kinging is in many places closely connected to
university communities, bringing theoretical perspectives on gender and
sexuality and an intersectional political consciousness to drag perform-
ances, but not offering an easy access to a range of individuals as does the
older and more common venue of the drag queen bar.
Nevertheless, both the theoretically grounded, feminist and explicitly
political numbers of the drag kings and the sometimes raunchy and in-
your-face tactics of the drag queens create new gender and sexual
possibilities through their challenge to hegemonic gender and hetero-
normativity. Both troupes use entertainment as a means of education, both
create solidarity among queer audience members. And both allow us to see
the ways that consciously performed gender has the potential to change
both the performers and their audiences, perhaps even to dismantle rigid
and binary gender and sexual categories and subvert heteronormativity.
Thinking about the difference gender makes in intentional performances
of femininity and masculinity and the acting out of complex sexual desires
can also help us to understand the significance of doing gender and
sexuality in everyday life for challenging the gender and sexual system.
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Notes
1. Newton (1972); (see also Butler, 1990, 1993; Dolan, 1985; Frye, 1983;
Gagn and Tewksbury, 1996; Garber, 1992; Halberstam, 1998; Lorber,
1994, 1999; Muoz, 1999; Rupp and Taylor 2003; Schacht, 1998, 2000,
2002a, 2002b; Tewksbury, 1993, 1994). The literature on drag kings
includes Halberstam (1998), Murray (1994), Shapiro (2006), Troka et al.
(2002).
2. A full description of the study can be found in Rupp and Taylor 2003.
3. A full description of the study can be found in Shapiro 2006.
4. Although some drag queens are female impersonators who maintain the
illusion of femaleness throughout their performances, the literature on drag
queens, our own observations of drag in different locations, and focus group
research with audience members makes clear that the 801 style of drag is a
common alternative to female impersonation. DBT was part of a national and
international drag king community, as reflected in the annual International
Drag King Extravaganza held in Columbus, Ohio.
5. This discussion is based on Taylor and Rupp 2004.
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Biographical Notes
Leila J. Rupp is Professor of Feminist Studies and Associate Dean of Social
Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is co-author, with
Verta Taylor, of Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret (2003) and Survival in the
Doldrums: The American Womens Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s (1987)
and author of A Desired Past: A Short History of Same-Sex Sexuality in America
(1999), Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Womens Movement
(1997), and Mobilizing Women for War: German and American Propaganda,
19391945 (1978). Her most recent book is Sapphistries: A Global History of
Love Between Women (2009). Address: Department of Feminist Studies,
University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 931067110.
[email: lrupp@femst.ucsb.edu]
Verta Taylor is Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology at the
University of California, Santa Barbara. She is co-author with Leila J. Rupp of
Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret (University of Chicago Press) and Survival in
the Doldrums: The American Womens Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s
(Oxford University Press); co-editor of 8 editions of Feminist Frontiers; and
author of Rock-a-by Baby: Feminism, Self-Help and Postpartum Depression
(Routledge). Her articles have appeared in journals including The American
Sociological Review, Signs, Social Problems, Mobilization, Gender & Society,
Qualitative Sociology, Journal of Womens History and Journal of Homosexuality.
Address: Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa
Barbara, CA 931069430. [email: vtaylor@soc.ucsb.edu]
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Eve Shapiro, an Assistant Professor at Westfield State College, received her PhD
from the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Santa
Barbara, with a PhD certificate in Womens Studies. Her research is guided by a
theoretical and empirical interest in how individuals and communities respond
to social change. Eves study of drag kings has been published in Gender &
Society as well as in several edited volumes. Her book Gender Circuits: Bodies
and Identities in a Technological Age (2010) explores the impact of new
biomedical and information technologies on the gendered lives of individuals.
Eve Shapiro is also Associate Editor of the Encyclopedia of Gender and Society
(2008). Address: Department of Sociology, Westfield State College, Westfield,
MA 01086, 4135725385. [email: eshapiro@wsc.ma.edu]
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