Cast off the chains of the binary

Rupaul's Drag Race cannot escape the Patriarchy

Reception of my dissertation research has been fairly polemic thus far. Titled ‘Gentlemen Start Your Engines: Gendered Aesthetics and the Structural Misogyny of RuPaul’s Drag Race (RPDR)’, the paper explored how the early exclusion of women affected the political messaging of RPDR as it expands into a growing global empire. As an AFAB (assigned female at birth) artist who works with drag the paper’s primary focus was on the changing landscape of the public face (or Visage) of female drag: with the introduction of multiple cis female contestants across the international variants of RPDR and the cultural recognition of Chappell Roan as a drag queen and cis woman expanding the public perception of what it means to be ‘in drag’. Binary is a key component of early RPDR emphasised through catchphrases and background music that form a kind of heteropatriarchal subliminal conditioning— sinister for its lack of intent. But the show has never and will never be a place only fit for male contestants: as early as season 2 women have appeared on the show, with Kylie Sonique Love (formerly Sonique) being the first to come out as a trans woman on the show, and non-binary contestants featuring heavily throughout, the gender binary has no real place in the world of drag and is so clearly enforced to appease and cater to a predominantly cisgender straight audience. As discussed in my dissertation, the inclusion of trans but not cis women sets an incredibly dangerous and bio-essentialist precedent in which transgender women are viewed as more comparable to gay men than their cisgender female counterparts.

This is the crux of my argument. Upon mentioning my dissertation topic, and so so frequently in my personal life since the age of 11, I am met with the “solution” that there should be a version of Drag Race that would cast exclusively female competitors. This is the issue with society. A statement that reads as dramatic and overly sweeping in its complete rejection of gender segregation, but it isn’t really if you think about it. The binary notion that biologically determined sex- largely in relation exclusively to external gender markers- has any impact on an individual’s ability to succeed, or a naturally occurring perceived advantage is outdated and serves only to keep the female population on the back foot. While gender equity in fields of employment, education, pay, or other similar areas in which there are systemic issues at play is, of course, an example of circumstances in which a definition between genders is necessary (i.e. through affirmative action), this same division cannot be applied in every instance. The argument of “biological advantages” is a thinly veiled transmisogynist micro-aggression. A woman is no better at performing gender than a man, as the same is true vice versa, therefore to enforce segregation of the sexes in drag is to diminish the abilities of women; it is also to say that the only important factor in a drag performer’s success is their ability to “look like a woman”. If women have an advantage in their passability it would then be reasonable to suggest that any male performers who have undergone aesthetic treatments to enhance their feminine appearance are “cheating”. This argument would discredit many RPDR winners, some of whom are the most cherished by the fanbase: Alaska and Chad Michaels have notably had plastic surgery to appear more feminine in drag whilst not identifying as women in their personal life. So it isn’t the aesthetics of the natural female form that are the issue. It falls again to it being an issue of gender binarism in which there is no feasible argument for exclusion aside from the Otherness of women.

The first trans woman to be openly casted while identifying as female was season 9’s Peppermint who had transitioned socially but not medically. Following her run on the show Ru himself was interviewed saying that Peppermint ‘probably’ wouldn’t have been cast if she had undergone a medical transition (i.e. gender affirming care including HRT, breast augmentation, and SRS) further pushing an aesthetics argument. If Peppermint had physically “looked more female” in Ru’s view, she wouldn’t have been seen as a drag queen but as a woman, as though the two are mutually exclusive ends. This opened the can of worms that is the transmedicalism debate- that a person has to medically transition in order to change the sex that they are viewed as- an argument that is now widely disapproved of by the queer community. It all comes back to Woman being the Other. No one can seem to define what it means to be a woman, and, as the government’s favourite political football of our time, the “debate” is pushed into the realm of Pantomime. No one has to define manhood because the Patriarchy does such a clear and concise job of it. But the woman is the Other, She has been the Other since before Simone de Beauvoir wrote it in print, She has been the Other since the birth of Patriarchy. When a trans woman expresses her womanhood she is told that a woman is a Cunt. When she spends decades on a waiting list for SRS (sex reassignment surgery/ or vaginoplasty) she is told a woman is a womb. When she is dominant a woman is submissive. When she works for a living a woman is a housewife. A woman is a thing that does not exist. An oxymoron. Womanhood is a fabricated lie told by the state to enforce a sense of belonging in the prison that we are born in— the prisoners fight amongst themselves, some even evolve into the wardens who police them, but they do not escape their chains. A woman is state owned. A national resource, as Atwood put it.

This would seem a facile subject to many. Who gives a fuck if there are women on Drag Race? It’s not that deep. But it is. The windows of escapism given to queer people, especially women and those femme aligned, are so narrow, so sparse, that when we peer through the bars of our cold grey cells (get it? like biological cells) we can’t help but notice the storm grey cloud of the Man raining on our parade.

Malawitte, the most recent cis woman cast on a RPDR franchise (France) was sent home second yesterday (spoiler alert). She is only the second cis woman of colour and fifth overall amongst the hundreds of international competitors. It was such a joy to see her announced after following her career for many years, and yet the constant drumming from the jury, the incessant rumble of what an honour it was to have her there, of how important representation is, how brilliant it is that she is a cis woman, a lesbian, a woman of colour. It feels disingenuous. A female contestant shouldn’t need to be praised so constantly to the detriment of her talents— Malawitte is an incredible artist but her time on the show was so vastly overshadowed by her personal identity. It puts me in mind of the crowning speech of Landon Cider, the winner of Season 3 of The Boulet Brother’s Dragula (an alternative drag competition show), Landon was praised his entire season as the first drag king on the franchise and one of the first AFAB performers alongside Hollow Eve who also featured on season 3. He made it clear that he was not to be tokenised and that his win was not a result of anything other than his incredible talent. Equity is important but positive discrimination (the uglier term for affirmative action) is often a band-aid on a fracture in relation to RPDR and indeed in many other social circumstances.

I want to see a woman celebrated for her drag— not her womanhood. Her womanhood should be the least interesting, least remarkable thing about her. Womanhood is not so abject, not so strange, that its presence needs to be highlighted in such vivid and neon tones. The virtue signaling of those franchises with female competitors, particularly cis women, is alarming. It is not an act of service nor of charity and it should be as commonplace to cast a woman as it has been to cast men. Of course it should be recognised that women have been disenfranchised from the show, and affirmative action should be taken, but not in such a way that makes it seem like a chore. Women have been doing drag for decades. Transwomen pour and have poured so much into the artform since its very conception and get so little back. Our culture is uncomfortable with crediting the women who built it: the black and brown transgender women that are behind the art of drag, and almost every trend of the modern era and yet society treats them as the Other— to be feared and suppressed.

Everything is that deep to me. Everything is this important, and complex, and weaved intrinsically into the structures that all Western society is enmeshed with. The weeds of patriarchy spread their roots across the globe, rotten tendrils of fear bear the fruit of hatred and sicken the withering tree of life. Through the cracks few flowers have the breath to grow. I had the immense pleasure of seeing Jinkx Monsoon live this week, a woman whom I have loved for nearly a decade, and she made me cry in person— fulfilling the prophecy born when 12 year old me wept watching her crowned from the sofa-bed of the spare bedroom in my childhood home. The end of the world is coming. The weeds are overpowering our eco-system. But it is Their world that is burning, not ours. As Jinkx prophecises. Jinkx is the most beautiful flower, and a shining example to trans and queer people everywhere that winning is possible. The most awarded contestant ever on RPDR is a woman. The wind is shifting. And it is Monsoon season. I welcome the rain that shall wash this forsaken planet clean.