In a new interview with the Guardian, RuPaul stood firm on his stance that trans women and bio-queens are unwelcome on Drag Race. After explaining that drag’s political power lies in the dissonance of “men dressing up as women,” Ru was asked if he’d allow a “biological woman” to compete on the show.
“Drag loses its sense of danger and its sense of irony once it’s not men doing it, because at its core it’s a social statement and a big f-you to male-dominated culture,“ RuPaul tells Guardian. “So for men to do it, it’s really punk rock, because it’s a real rejection of masculinity.” When asked if trans women can be drag queens, he brings up season nine contestant Peppermint, who was the first out trans woman to compete on the show. “Mmmm. It’s an interesting area. Peppermint didn’t get breast implants until after she left our show; she was identifying as a woman, but she hadn’t really transitioned.”
The interviewer goes on to ask if RuPaul would allow a trans woman who was actively transitioning to compete. “Probably not. You can identify as a woman and say you’re transitioning, but it changes once you start changing your body. It takes on a different thing; it changes the whole concept of what we’re doing. We’ve had some girls who’ve had some injections in the face and maybe a little bit in the butt here and there, but they haven’t transitioned.”
These statements go to show how antiquated RuPaul’s conceptions of trans identity and the queering of gender really are. For someone who is deservedly lauded as an icon of genderfuckery, the fact that RuPaul still sees drag as a boys’ club is disappointing, not to mention the fact that he reduces trans identity to whether or not a person has had surgery. The notion that the only true power to be found in an art form that has expanded so much since RuPaul came up seems insulting in the face of the incredible female artists — both cisgender and trans — who are doing drag today, largely thanks to the influence of Drag Race.
Wait… if he won’t let cis women be on the show, then isn’t he just being consistent here by viewing trans women as real women?
I think Ru Paul’s stance is logical.
And, believe it or not, it’s consistent enough that I think there’s one member of the trans community they WOULD allow on Drag Race, given the stance on pre-transition transwomen, women dragqueening as women and cis men dragqueening as women.
Transmen.
It’s still queering. They’re queering their identities as men. If transwomen are women, then transmen are men. And it’s therefore queering for transmen to dress in drag.
UNLESS, by definition, to be trans is to be queer. Which is a statement that cis and heterosexuality are the norm and standard. Making them inherently different, and noteworthily so by the differences.
So, for both Ru Paul AND his detractors to remain honest about their intentions and misgivings, Ru Paul should logically favor transmen being able to drag. And those criticizing Ru Paul about his “exclusionary queerness” (can any group have ANYTHING to themselves, anymore, without some other complimentary group trying to widen the pool?) either must confirm that a transperson is queer and different from a cis man (and the differences do and can matter to cis people) or that a transman is only queer when he dragqueens.
A transman dragqueening is therefore the ultimate expression of “fuck you” to a hetero and cis exclusionist culture, as well as one in which wants to eliminate gender altogether as just a bunch of institutional, arbitrary identities.
Now that I actually see what he said this isn’t about him being out of touch or even transphobic and more about cis and ostensibly queer women being mad that a specific space isn’t all about them
^Yeah, it’s logically consistent. Plus if women want to do drag, and dress up as a dude, that’s being a drag king. Funny how they get very little attention to the point that apparently no one knows they exist.
^^
Shhh…don’t let them know. It goes against their narrative.
But yeah, drag queen participants are typically only men (and transmen of course) while drag king participants are typically only women (and transwomen of course) like…how did this become an issue again? Feels like the the whole boyscout girlscout discourse but the topic is drag race…
-mod scifi
