Maybe I can’t take a joke, or maybe I just don’t get them, but I really dislike when drag queens make bad lesbian jokes.
I was reminded of this when I saw a review of Bianca Del Rio’s show last week that said “lesbians in comfortable shoes” were in the firing line. I loved Del Rio during season six of RuPaul’s Drag Race, and I still think most of her jokes are hilarious, but this particular joke just doesn’t sit well with me.
Firstly, it’s the oldest joke in the book. Lesbians wear ugly shoes. Lesbians wear flannel. Lesbians like flat-pack furniture, don’t have sex, have too many cats, and don’t eat meat. These stereotypes often have a grain of truth in them (except, recent research proves, the sex myth), but they’re also well-trodden jokes. They’ve been done before. Move on, find something else to laugh about – invent a new lesbian joke, and maybe I’ll find it funny.
Drag queens exist to parody femininity. They wear ridiculous high heels, fabulous glittery dresses, and paint their faces for hours so we can all laugh at how ridiculous excessive femininity is. So then, when they make fun of lesbians for not performing femininity correctly – comfortable shoes, daggy clothes, flat-pack furniture – it seems contradictory. I always thought one of the main purposes of drag was to critique the gender binary, to satirise this ridiculously rigid set of norms we apparently have to conform to. What else is a lesbian in comfortable shoes if not also fucking with gender norms (while simultaneously maintaining good foot health and the ability to stand and walk for hours on end without cramps)?
We should be on the same team. We’re both fighting back against gender norms in our own ways – the queens in stilettos, the lesbians in sneakers. But the fact is, it’s still ridiculously easy to make fun of a woman who doesn’t do femininity right.
Masculinity is fragile and confusing – football stars tackle each other to the ground in hulky bravado, then cry when they lose the game. But femininity seems so much more rigid, while simultaneously much less revered – we expect our women to wear dresses, exactly because that makes them less mobile, more uncomfortable, more subject to a male gaze. I recently saw a make-up tutorial video that said, “There are no ugly women, only lazy ones,” implying that a rigorous make-up routine is what makes women beautiful. Then there’s the woman who got fired from PricewaterhouseCoopers in London this month for not wearing high heels to work.
These ideas are ludicrous: that women must wear make-up, and must wear high heels in order to properly fulfil ‘correct’ ideas about femininity. So ludicrous, in fact, that we’ve been fighting against them for years. Second wave feminists burnt their bras, and in doing so, burnt unrealistic expectations about femininity. And drag queens have been satirising these expectations for even longer.
When drag queens, in their excessively performed femininity, also make fun of lesbians in their comfortable shoes, the performance becomes less about highlighting ridiculous beauty standards and gender norms, and more about just laughing at women. It becomes even more crystal clear that up onstage is a man, dressed as a woman, laughing at femininity – both those who do it well, and those who ‘fail’. And then, for me, the performance stops being a critique of gender norms, and starts just being plain old misogyny. And not only misogyny, but also – and especially – transmisogyny (the misogyny trans women face), which is why drag queens who use the word ‘tranny’ in their performances are often criticised.
I love drag queens. I’m an avid fan of RuPaul’s Drag Race, and I go to shows at the Imperial on a regular basis. But when drag queens diss women, they reinforce gendered norms and expectations instead of mocking them, and suddenly, that glittery dress isn’t so sparkly anymore.
Or maybe I just can’t take a joke.
This Week:
On Friday May 27, celebrate ten years since Electroclash with Two Thousand And Sexxx at Tokyo Sing Song. There’ll be music from Matt Vaughan, Smithers and Mu-Tache, as well as performances by LaDonna Rama and Apocalypstick.
Then on Sunday May 29, celebrate the House of Mince’s fifth birthday at Cruise Bar with a daytime party (starting at 2pm), featuring Boris all the way from Berlin (and Berghain), as well as Sydney favourites Gemma and Ben Drayton.
