That's why I think it will have originated in the gay-subculture, we don't have records of that apart from when it occasionally impinged on mainstream culture - usually in the courts.
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Drag Shows!!
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That's why I think it will have originated in the gay-subculture, we don't have records of that apart from when it occasionally impinged on mainstream culture - usually in the courts.
TragicMonkey
Poisoned Waffles
Which makes me suspect Polari, but even knowing that existed is not mainstream knowledge, even among gay people.
catsmate
No longer the 1
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There is some suggestion that it was originally theatrical slang, but absolutely no proof (or even reasonable evidence) and it's attributed to every period from the Elizabethan to the late-Victorian (the first appearance of the term in print) though the existence of 'drag' performances (and indeed 'Uranian' Balls) is documented far earlier.
Of course there was significant crossover between the theatrical and gay subcultures.
Like any subculture that is subject to official displeasure, prejudice and violence there are, as you say, little in the way of verifiable records.
Thermal
August Member
Wasn't there an idea that it came from a slurring of "grand rag", which meant a masquerade ball?
Thermal
August Member
Sidebar: I really am trying to get a handle on this whole gender thing, and understand what they are trying to say. I mean, it seems like a load of double talk and kidding themselves, but there's an awful lot of them, so I'm allowing that it's just me not getting it, and trying to see the POV. One or two superficial questions and they get all sagey and say it's complicated. That's pretty much as far as we get.
"I'm trying to understand."
"It's complicated."
"Okay help me understand."
"I'm sorry did you not hear me, I said IT'S COMPLICATED."
"Okay but..."
"COMPLICATED" *Wipes Hands*
Has been too much of this discussion, yeah.
"It's complicated."
"Okay help me understand."
"I'm sorry did you not hear me, I said IT'S COMPLICATED."
"Okay but..."
"COMPLICATED" *Wipes Hands*
Has been too much of this discussion, yeah.
wareyin
Penultimate Amazing
I mean, "they don't care about pronouns" =/= "gender fluid" isn't that complicated, but it's taken some 5 or 6 pages of the thread to sort of agree on that...
Thermal
August Member
That was never an issue, and you damn well know it.
Emily's Cat
Rarely prone to hissy-fits
Good luck with your endeavor. I don't think you're ever going to be able to get a reasonable explanation in this context, not one that actually makes sense.
From my perspective, I take it from the feminist perspective. That perspective separates the social confines and expectations that are placed around a person's sex in a limiting and regressive way from the fact of their sex itself. Thus, a female person is female, no matter what. But all of the notions wrapped around that, of females being docile, subservient, quiet, of females being "naturally" suited to homemaking, to care giving, of females being unsuited for decision making and leadership, of females being dominated by their emotions and unable to employ logic or reason, the conflicting narrative of females being simultaneously required to be pure vessels in a virginal state but also being dried up prudes if they are, the entirety of the madonna-whore concept, the pervasive view of females as being "lesser males" whose primary value is based on how well they please males in terms of their availablity for titillation (even to the extent of females being expected to smile on demand because it makes males happy to see females smiling), their willingess to subdue their own needs in order to see to the desires of males and provide for male comfort, etc.
All of those things are what feminists coined "gender roles" and "gender expectations". Don't get me wrong, there are just as many wrappings placed around males, and some of them are even stricter than for females (for example, what clothing a male is allowed to wear and still be considered "male enough").
The feminist take is that all of those socially-constructed barriers and constraints are what comprises "gender". Our physical state, our bodies and the experiences of those bodies, those are "sex". Sex is a matter of reality, of fact; gender is a result of society - specifically a result of a male-dominated society that was constructed by males for the benefit of males.
That is my understanding of gender. So far as I can tell, that's also the concept of gender that underlies "gender identity". Gender identity implies an alignment with those restrictive social barriers, a desire to conform to those social shackles and to revel in them. When you start asking transgender people what "woman" means to them, it almost always comes back around to those stereotypes, those artificial boundaries placed on the sexes. And those stereotypes get held up as an ideal that defines the female sex, as if a male who feels alignment with those stereotypes is somehow a "kind of female" rather than a gender nonconforming male. (Same for the opposite direction).
That is my understanding of gender, and gender identity. I have yet to see anything from the transgender activist community that provides a meaningfully different perspective, one that is not a matter of alignment with stereotypes that are, by and large, harmful to females.
And by venerating those gender roles and gender expectations, by holding up the stereotypes as "what it means to be a woman" and the basis for how a male can be considered a "woman", the effect is to reinforce those stereotypes, and to embed them even deeper into our social fabric.
I know a few transsexual people (I chose that word intentionally, and it is how they refer to themselves) who do NOT reflect that view. These are individuals with severe and very real dysphoria about their sexed bodies. One of them explained it as "Every time I undress and look down, I'm startled to see a penis. It doesn't belong there, and I feel like it's not a part of me, it's an alien appendage".
Thermal
August Member
FWIW, I usually put scare quotes around "queer", because it still means "weird" to me, even though it seems to be a preferred term.
Emily's Cat
Rarely prone to hissy-fits
I know a LOT of gay and lesbian people who absolutely do NOT prefer the term.
wareyin
Penultimate Amazing
Yes, it was something you simultaneously weren't certain of, but were definitely going to defend for 5 or 6 pages. Not an issue at all.
wareyin
Penultimate Amazing
The folks in the LGB Alliance who're trying to split up the whole LGBTQ+ thing?
I don't use quotation marks because that is the pejorative most often heard during my teenage and young adult years, that's why I really object to its appropriation by non-homosexual people and totally reject the idea that there is LGBTQ. Queer meant homosexual.
But hey the kids have taken it up so all I can do is shout "Get off my grass you queers!" And have them laugh at the old git.
Thermal
August Member
Now that I think of it, it was used as an unflattering term for gay men over here, just not tremendously popular.
Re: the hilite. Do you mean that among the gay community, queer is ok to use, but not among the not gay? Kind of like the n-word?
In general terms - with there obviously being exceptions and some grey in the borderlands.
Drag queens are men who play a female character, being a performer of drag does not mean you are genderfluid, or that you don't think you are male or that outside your performance present* as anything but male/a man or consider yourself anything but a male/man. The majority of performers of drag are male homosexuals, again being a male homosexual does not mean that you don't present as a male/a man and consider yourself to be totally male/a man.
*Present here simply being "wouldn't look out of place in any group of men/males in general society" in other words look "stereotypically" male for their society and culture.
No. The word's meaning has changed from meaning a homosexual to now meaning someone who to paraphrase others "describes a sexual orientation that does not conform to societal norms and does not match conventional labels like gay, lesbian, or bisexual." (Some also say the Q can stand for "questioning".) To me it sounds like an excuse to hang out with the cool LGBTers!
Thermal
August Member
I know that it's not an absolute thing, and that different people will do drag for different reasons, but I really thought Drag Queening was parading an alter ego, more than play-acting. Most seem to adopt a permanent performing name and consistent persona, like it is something far more developed than throwing on a dress.
ETA: Although I guess the same could be said of a ventriloquist who has a consistent personality for his puppet, or an actor playing the same role in a series
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Emily's Cat
Rarely prone to hissy-fits
No. The word's meaning has changed from meaning a homosexual to now meaning someone who to paraphrase others "describes a sexual orientation that does not conform to societal norms and does not match conventional labels like gay, lesbian, or bisexual." (Some also say the Q can stand for "questioning".) To me it sounds like an excuse to hang out with the cool LGBTers!
There was a tik tok video of an older lesbian saying that everything to the right of the B was "spicy straight". I tend to think that definitely applies to the Q.
Thermal
August Member
Puts Asexuals and Trans in a weird position though, doesn't it? Might make the "+" feel a bit like a minus if they get denied options.
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