I'd be interested in someone explaining why men in drag isn't of the same concern and level of questionability as whites in blackface.
I don't think that blackface -- which didn't become a wildly popular entertainment form until after the Civil War and the end of systemic slavery, usually in the form of minstrel shows, but later in vaudeville and even into the 1930s with prominent celebrities like Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor on stage and in film -- was related to slavery per se, but to a need for whites to co-opt some aspects of black culture (music, dance, humor, fashion) without acknowledging that whites were actually reveling in it AS whites. It was clearly a patronizing and demeaning practice, something we cringe at today.
This was always a way to perpetuate STEREOTYPES of blacks as lazy, shiftless, not too bright, prone to drink and violence, but blessed with innate animalistic movement in dance and playing uninhibited sexy jungle music. I think that underlies the most obvious reason we now look at whites in blackface as unacceptable.
(Did you know that in the late 19th, early 20th century, BLACK entertainers often had to wear blackface to accentuate their more comical features, like oversized lips and nappier hair.
Here's the great Bert Williams, a black man in blackface! https://collectionimages.npg.org.uk/std/mw76227/Bert-Williams-as-Shylock-Homestead-in-In-Dahomey.jpg
Ironically, when Nat King Cole got the first black-hosted TV variety show, they made him lighten his very dark skin color with makeup at first, effectively a black man in whiteface. https://www.iloveoldschoolmusic.com/nat-king-cole-complexion-white-media-afraid-dark/)
And we now cringe at performers like Stepin' Fetchit (Lincoln Perry) who epitomized the laziest, most shiftless, probably doped-up on pot, barely a man, black stereotype. And lest we forget that the original radio performers playing Amos and Andy were both WHITE MEN using stereotypical black voices and language.
Of course, there is a LOOOONNNNNNG history of men dressing as women, in theater for example, going back to Greece, and notably in Shakespeare's day, on to Charley's Aunt, then TV with Milton Berle, Monty Python, Kids in the Hall, Tom Hanks in Bosom Buddies, or films like Robin Williams as Mrs. Doubtfire, Tyler Perry's Madea, etc. etc. NOT trying to be glamourous or sexy or over-the-top, but often to make fun of some aspects of women, or men's beliefs about women.
Is a man dressing up AS a woman funny in and of itself? My experience is that when a famous male performer appears in women's clothes and wig and sashays onto the stage, he gets a laugh even before saying a word. It goes against expectation. But is it also not offensive in and of itself? Is this a play or film in which there's a reason for pretending to be a woman? (I could ask this as well concerning La Cage Aux Folles where a straight male pretends to be gay, also essential to the plot of Shampoo with Warren Beatty.)
I can't speak for women on how they perceive men in drag, any more than I can speak for blacks on how they perceive the history of blackface and how they react to current notable examples (Ted Danson, Justin Trudeau, a British prince IIRC). I don't think it's woke to try to imagine oneself in a similar situation and realize how whites in blackface is a direct insult to blacks in many ways.
And so I ask if men in drag (particularly over-the-top stereotypical bimbo drag, with huge wigs, way-over-done makeup, exaggerated gestures and slutty demeanor) is one more example of patriarchal demeaning, this time of men over women, rather than of whites over blacks.
On the previous point, I'd add that women were not even considered citizens in the USA until decades after the Constitution was ratified, often couldn't own property or own their own businesses, and (with a few state exceptions) couldn't vote until 1920. It may not have been slavery, per se, but it was a long history of submissive subjugation and lack of equal rights (even today, the ERA, Equal Rights Amendment, has never made it into the Constitution).
And with XY male pseudowomen in chemically or surgically-fashioned "extreme drag," imposing themselves into womens' sports, and a woman's right to privacy and choice concerning a foetus growing in her body being throttled to satisfy a religio-political agenda, I'd say that male privilege, like white privilege, has always been dominant in our culture, and drag may be one way to send that message, subconsciously perhaps, that men can even out-feminine women, just to remind women to not forget their place in the scheme of things, i.e., second-place, second-class.
One used to be able to make fun of the handicapped, or fat people, or those with physical abnormalities; all this is considered politically incorrect today. Yet Don Rickles was still getting howls of laughter over this mine of "humor" and other pokes at ethnic, racial, or religious stereotypes well into the 21st century.
(As a Jew, I confirm that the best Jewish jokes poking fun at Jews are told by Jews to Jews. I don't want to hear a Jewish joke as told by Joseph Goebbels.)
Our modern circus clowns were based on earlier stereotypes of pathetically impotent old men, who were often the butt of cuckold jokes, the opposite image of the virile potent masculine hero type most patriarchal cultures venerated.
If you're pushing 100, like George Burns or Betty White, you can make self-deprecating jokes about being old. Can young comics make jokes about the aged without seeming callous and insensitive? Can non-blacks use the "N" word in a joke, or even use it when quoting blacks using it?
Sometimes the only salient question about humor is... “Is it funny?” Like Justice Potter Stewart said of obscenity, "I know it when I see it." If you laugh, it's funny; if it's not funny, you won't laugh. Maybe you'll groan, or boo, or rush the comedian on stage and WillSmith him.
But is funny enough justification, just because some or most laugh, to ignore that particular individuals or groups are being put down, demeaned, made to appear inferior, etc.? Comedy is supposed to punch up, and take down pompous, self-important sociopaths, not punch down on the victims of bad luck, failure to be born into wealthy families, or those oppressed by the rest of society, whether overt or covert.
To the extent that the justification for drag performers (as it had been for blackface) is that it's "an art form" or "entertainment" or, more currently, "self-expression" and "identity pride," one can say of it, as Thomas Jefferson said of others' faiths, "But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." But one doesn't have to steal your money or violently assault you physically to demean you, humiliate you, try to put you in the inferior box and keep you there, even if it's subtle and barely recognized as such.
Why then, as we become more sensitive to individual expressions of identity claims -- even if there's no scientific basis for dozens of supposed "genders" and getting called bigoted for questioning whether kids are able to "know" that they were born in the "wrong" gender body -- do we ignore that one half of humanity has to watch as members of the other half can brazenly co-opt their stereotypical female/feminine appearance, mannerisms -- usually to the point of over-the-top exaggeration and lusty parody -- as a covert subtle means of promoting male dominance and control of the sexual narrative?
This essay was the result of some comments I made to a post on Facebook about drag performers who were telling adults not to bring their kids to performances because, well, they're not designed for kids, and it gives critics more reason to accuse all drag performers, and gays by extension, of being grooming pedophiles.
The following comments were among those I wrote as follow-ups to the original comments, which were combined in the above essay, and are archived here to flesh out my thinking and questions on the issue.