my first instinct was to yell profanities and to move along. but then I thought for a moment and decided to make this an opportunity for learning. so let's sit down and learn together about trans misogyny, trans womanhood, transfemininity and drag.
I'll center the post around two main statements:
1. drag is not a caricature of trans womanhood
2. the modern (western) trans woman is not the only transfeminine being present today, let alone throughout history
I will elaborate in a moment, but first, an important definition:
«"Trans misogyny" refers to the targeted devaluation of both trans femininity and people perceived to be trans feminine, regardless of how they understand themselves. [...] It trans-feminizes its targets without their assent, ...» - Jules Gill-Peterson, "A Short History of Trans Misogyny"
the reason I start with this quote is its use of the term "trans-feminisation" as an action imposed onto people regardless of their true identity or intent. I point this out, because to deconstruct the notion of "people who dress up and pretend to be trannies" we first need to agree on who these people actually are - both as persons and as drag participants.
drag is not a caricature of trans womanhood, and this is most clearly visible through who does it. (note here that, as you likely know, feminine drag is not the only type of drag, but going forward I will be referring exclusively to feminine drag) drag can be performed by gay men, as it historically has and stereotypically still is done. drag can also be performed by anyone, including trans women, and most importantly, drag queens - and I make a purposeful distinction here. nowadays drag is oftentimes understood to be a purebred performance art. yet its seemingly often forgotten that drag is an identity first and foremost, and as such comes with a rich history of its own - one both tied to trans womanhood, as well as distinct in its own right. and I'll be a bit direct and rash here, but not knowing this history does not give you the right to dismiss it by accusing drag queens of "dressing up and pretending to be trannies". we'll dive into this history in just a spell.
the modern (western) trans woman is not the only transfeminine being present today, let alone throughout history. as a matter of fact, as Jules Gill-Peterson's wonderfully detailed "A Short History of Trans Misogyny" points out, there is no one history of trans womanhood or transfemininity as such. instead there are many histories of many people living without the incessant need for binarity (and as such likewise with no need for the "boundary-crossing" - read, trans - angle to their beings) and a history of an almost equal amount of attempts by colonial actors to impose said binarity and cookie-cutter gender definition onto these people. «Today, a trans woman and a gay man are presented as different species, one defined by gender identity, the other by sexual orientation. [...] But the revisionist history that sees gay men and trans women as separate groups, a narrative that serves the ends of US identity politics, isn't just historically inaccurate. Terribly, it can't explain what it means to be a queen. A queen is now just a metaphor, a relic of an era now anachronistic, when gay men were perhaps less sure of their distance from trans femininity.»
if I could I'd simply dump the contents of the entire book into this post, but instead I'll summarise the point most relevant to our discussion - trans womanhood and transfemininity were not born in Berlin or New York, and neither was drag, and despite being intertwined in nature they are neither identical nor mutually exclusive. diving into even very recent history reveals that drag is not as black and white as "a man dressed as a woman - a being clearly distinct from the trans woman". «The uncertain line between an effeminate gay man and a trans woman wasn't so ironclad in the 1950s and '60s, when it functioned as a class distinction.» - quoting again the aforementioned "A Short History of Trans Misogyny". my point being - our modern consensus of trans womanhood often lays false claim to reign over the definitions of transfemininity as a whole, in both its modern and historic entirely - a claim you too attempt by conflating the domains of drag and trans womanhood.
what you presumably read as caricature is the exaggerated performance of femininity at the core of drag. and today more than ever this performance is a celebration of femininity.
how does Drag Race fit into all this? I couldn't tell you. perhaps it's a bastardisation of the aforementioned celebration of femininity, of that stage where anyone can bask in the blinding glamour of the superfeminine. or perhaps it's the inevitable return to the roots of the trade as guided by the uncaring hand of capitalism, back to the 19th century, where the dressing up as a woman was simply part of a vaudeville act. I believe arguments can be made for both, yet neither is relevant to what I want to say with this post.
what I want to say is you could've avoided this entire rant if you had simply abstained from generalising :/ cause yeah, some drag acts likely are still beating the man-in-a-dress horse. but that's not what drag shows are. that's not who drag queens are.
I want this post to be a reminder to my fellow trans women of who we are, where we come from and whom we should pay respects to. I want you to watch Sylvia Rivera's "Y'all Better Quiet Down" speech and rewatch it and show it to your friends and your family and the trans women in your life who start to wonder about their roots, and remind them - Sylvia Rivera was a street queen.
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