Right-wing Dallas Express uses Radical Trans & Feminist Arguments to attack Drag in Dallas. Update 1.
How a trans attack on drag in 2014 has evolved into a feminist attack on drag used by the right-wing.
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Prolog
This is going to be a difficult thing to discuss, but I am going to be reporting on the issues that come up in Dallas, whether people are going to be happy or not.
Dallas Express launches “feminist” attack on drag in Dallas.
This is a recent July 9, 2023 article titled “Taylor Swift ‘Drag Brunch” Held at Dallas Bar,” at the right-wing publication The Dallas Express.
https://dallasexpress.com/lifestyle/taylor-swift-drag-brunch-held-at-dallas-bar/
This is the page saved at the Internet Archive, just incase it gets deleted. Sometimes the Internet Archive is slow so be patient, sometimes you will need to use the refresh button.
The article is about a Taylor Swift themed drag show at Mr. Misster on the Strip on Cedar Springs on July 8, 2023.
What is first notable is that even though this wasn’t a kid friendly drag show, The Dallas Express is still going to go and attack drag shows. Now that kid friendly drag shows have stopped, that hasn’t stopped the right from going after drag.
From the article:
While the drag brunch was not explicitly marketed to children, similar events in the Dallas area have prompted controversy by allowing minors to attend, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
This reporting also implies that kid friendly drag shows were targeting children, when they merely were saying that children could attend with their parents. [See link to article on the problems with the terms “kid friendly” at the end of this post.]
The author of the article, Justin DeSales, listed as staff writer for The Dallas Express was there at the show talking to attendees as the article makes it clear. Venues which have drag shows might consider who they let in.
As the article notes in its conclusion, legislation signed by Texas Gov. Abbott is going to be banning all kid friendly drag shows in Texas in Sept. The issue of kid friendly drag shows is going away in Sept. 2023. The question will be how will the right continue to attack drag. This article in The Dallas Express makes it clear what the new mode of attack will be.
Not finding anything objectionable to report about the drag show the article moves on to undertake a feminist attack on drag.
Walter Wendler, president of West Texas A&M University, who cancelled a drag show at his university, is quoted as saying, “Drag shows are derisive, divisive and demoralizing misogyny, no matter the stated intent.
West Texas A&M University is in Canyon, Texas, which is south of Amarillo, Texas which is in the Texas Panhandle. Suddenly in the middle of nowhere do we have a hot bed of radical feminism, or maybe someone has opportunistically discovered a new way to attack drag.
The right has discovered the radical trans and feminist attacks on drag and they know something that is useful when they see it.
Update 1:
Another article by the Dallas Express attacking drag as being the equivalent to blackface.
https://dallasexpress.com/lifestyle/will-new-texas-law-end-drag-controversy
“Girlface” and the Trans and Feminists attacks on drag.
First thing, that needs to be clear is that not all feminists attack drag and not all trans attack drag. The attack on drag is led by those who have issues and are putting a radical gloss over their personal issues.
Some of them are worried about what the straight people will think, but imagining themselves as radicals, rather than realizing that they are just cosplaying being radical, they can’t do the usual conservative Gay rejection of drag queens, they must give it a “radical” cover.
Even though the West Texas A&M University president Walter Wendler only used a feminist approach to attack drag, I am going to include the trans attacks on drag since many of their attacks on drag were done as feminists attacks on drag.
It seems that that there are two groups attacking drag and the trans opponents of drag adopted feminist arguments. It is hard to tell.
Previously those attacking drag have been some conservative Gay men and other men who are the type that worry, “What will the straight people think.” They are Respectability Gays. It is no longer the case that attacks on trans come from conservative Gay men.
The attacks on drag are now from multiple directions in the LGBT.
This article hopes to educate the reader on the whole range of attacks on drag by persons who don’t label themselves as conservative. We need to know where future attacks on drag might come from and how these attacks on drag will be done.
Trans attacks on drag
The trans opposition to drag first became widely known in 2015 when drag was banned at the alternative Pride event in Glasgow, Scotland.
These are some articles.
“Pride event BANS drag queens in case they are offensive.”
https://www.thepinknews.com/2015/07/20/pride-event-bans-drag-queens-in-case-they-are-offensive/
“Glasgow gay pride march’s U-turn on drag queen ban.”
https://www.scotsman.com/news/glasgow-gay-pride-marchs-u-turn-on-drag-queen-ban-1499257
This article in Slate, a US publication, in 2015, “In Defense of Drag’s Offense,” reported on the Glasgow ban and how there is an increasing condemnation drag as anti-woman. She also reported how this opposition was bought into by “LGBTQ+” persons.
University students decided to ban drag picking up on this new trend.
However, there was a huge push back from the Gay community over these attacks on drag and I think that the LGBT establishment decided that the campaign against drag was likely to blow up and so there doesn’t seem to be any further attempts to ban drag within the LGBT establishment. But there is a continuing effort to attack drag from those who imagine they are feminists or trans radicals.
These articles show how trans opposition comes to be framed in terms of being feminist defenses of women starting in 2015.
This article, “Wigs, wings and blatant misogyny: Complicating drag,” Feb. 1, 2015, in the Stanford Daily at Stanford University in California by Lily Zheng, a transwoman attacks drag as anti-women.
https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/01/wigs-wings-and-blatant-misogyny-complicating-drag/
Lily Zhang tries to make drag a white Gay practice and drag somehow being something about racism. Being a privileged student at Stanford Univ. and not being part of the Gay community, she doesn’t realize that drag is popular in African American and Latino Gay communities. Evidently has never heard about Ru Paul, but still willing to lecture the Gay community.
I recommend for Lily Zhang the movie, “Paris is Burning.”
This following article attacking drag in 2015 has disappeared, but the Internet Archive has it. July 26, 2015 in the publication Sociological Images, “Are Drag Queens Doing Girlface?,” by Lisa Wade.
Sociological Images still has a webpage and the other articles for this issue are still there. This one got pulled. I suspect Lisa Wade realized she had jumped on the wrong band wagon and had the article pulled.
This is why I save webpages at the Internet Archive. (https://archive.org/)
Someone captured it, on Tumblr also.
https://socimages.tumblr.com/post/125269576495/are-drag-queens-doing-girlface-by-lisa-wade
Lisa Wade is a professor at Tulane University. Her bio says she is the founder of Sociological Images, the publication from which her anti-trans article disappeared.
https://newcomb.tulane.edu/lisa-wade
In her list of selected writings her attack on drag isn’t listed.
This article by Professor Wade seems to be the article which introduces the term “Girlface” into discussions (attacks) on drag.
Note: Another term that is sometimes used is “woman-face” or “womanface” and this term seems now to be the most frequently used term.
Do the drag queens in New Orleans, where Tulane Univ. is located, realize that a serious enemy of drag is right there near them?
Feminism has adopted this anti-drag ideology.
The channel, “Woman’s Declaration Internation,” has 11.4k subscribers.
This paper cites sources from 2006 criticizing drag.
This feminists started to work with a Christian to oppose “Drag Queen Story House,” since she sees it as sexist.
Leftist Counterpunch had this anti-drag article on Jan. 2, 2023.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/01/02/drag-story-hour-and-cultural-appropriation/
If you read Reduxx you would think all drag performers are unapprehended criminals.
These attacks on drag continue to the present.
Prominent trans activist India Willoughby attacked drag.
The author of this following article, March 25, 2021, has 2,100 followers. Drag artists are compared to the monster in the movie “It” adapted from a Steven King novel and she compares drag to blackface.
https://medium.com/prismnpen/drag-queens-and-me-26be77eebdc1
However, mainstream LGBT media isn’t supporting this idea, but it does remain out in the Internet circulating.
However, not all attacks on drag are by small online entities.
In 2022 major media in the United Kingdom had articles accusing drag as being womanface. (Unfortunately they are behind paywalls, I list them to show that they exist.)
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/drag-is-as-funny-as-a-slap-in-the-face-xnp53sqzf
Though girlface and womanface had started out as trans critiques of drag, they have become mainstreamed as a feminist critique of drag.
It is a myth that “girlface” and “womanface” are conservative inventions. It comes out of the trans and feminist communities.
Conservatives know a good ideological dagger when they see it and they are going to be using it in Texas to go after drag shows regardless whether they are kid friendly or not.
Conclusion
The attacks on drag were started out by persons who thought it made them the most radical thing. It is ultraism. This new attack on drag is started by those intoxicated with self-righteousness. American culture continues to have a Calvinist subsconscious imagining the elect and the damned.
This “feminist” attack on drag provides a mask for the right wing to attack drag as feminists.
In Dallas and elsewhere the LGBT needs to reject anti-drag ideology and not let it divide the community.
Like these clowns.
Link to review of Kid Friendly here.
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