#drag performer

[mild-goth-sauce]

An informational comic I drew last year for my Comics 2 class, reposting it to my new account (had to jump ship from the old one unfortunately) with some minor grammar changes and learned my lesson in adding watermarks! Happy early pride :)

[genderqueerdykes]

I think a lot of people on this website would benefit from hearing that back in 2011 when I was a part of my college's pride group, I was friends with a gay cis male drag queen whose roommate was a lesbian. They had sex with each other often, but it didn't stop my friend from identifying as a gay guy, nor did it stop their roommate from being a lesbian. Neither of them identified as bisexual. This kind of stuff happens between queer people of "conflicting" identities all the time, it's nothing new. There aren't any rules

[thousandairesshow]

She's been QUEER the whole time!

[oleandro-drag]

saint sebastian tended by saint irene but they're both drag artists

felt like this might be something this site would enjoy

on stage: oleandro & delfi oraakel, photographer: peroksiid (on ig as oleandro_drag, delfi_oraakel and peroksiid)

[gor3sigil]

One day, I'll talk in depth about how it felt to be the only trans drag king in my local scene surrounded by radfem cis kings who only wanted to make fun of masculinity and how it led to me giving up because I faced more transphobia and misgendering in the few nights I performed, by cis queers, than ever in my life.

It was AWFUL. I just never wanted to perform anymore because the TOXICITY of it all was disgusting.

And I love drag with all my heart, but when you get she/her'd IN DRAG KING, spend your time being belittled because you're a drag king (because let's face it drag kings don't get the credit they deserve) by other performers or because you're transmasc by cis drag kings and you can't find any place in the scene if you do anything else than mocking masculinity, fuck it. I hope I can perform in the future but it won't be in this scene.

[junossay]

I will always love you, theater kid Killer Queen, couldn't resist doing a lil study of him

Btw l rlly like posting on Tumblr (that l confuse w twitter much) so l just wanted to thank for the community here and all of the love and the amazinness!! (--)//~☆

[justdavina]

I just love this picture of this sexy transgender woman! I guess I love dark green or something?

[gagmedrag]

King Molasses, 2023

[dragkingsrule]

Orlando, Porto, Portugal-based drag king

Image sources: 1, 2, 3, 4

Artist links: Instagram

[oxytocinatrocities]

Just a hunch.

Matt 25:31-45

[certifiablyinsanez]

I love weirdos. I love people who have walls covered with manga pages and anime posters. I love people who have way too many stuffed animals and toys strewn about. I love people who have little space in their rooms and homes because they’re full of bookshelves for their figures, manga, books, comics, toys, etc. I love people who wear weird things like “cringe” merch, stuffed animal bags, cloaks, capes, etc. I love people who experiment with unconventional makeup. I love people with mullets or shaved heads. I love people who complete their looks with fishnets and colored contacts. I love people who have half finished cosplays in their closets. I love people who write and read fanfiction. I love people who make fan art, whether it’s “sellable” or not. I love punks, lolitas (the Japanese alt scene), scene queens, emos, bimbos, femmes, butches, studs, drag performers, etc. I love furries and therians. I love witches and pagans. I love the people on the outskirts. The weirdos. The freaks. The undesirables. Because in them I don’t just see myself, I see joy. The reality that life can be lived authentically in countless ways. I see that we cannot be doomed to conformity or homogeny. We are vibrant, we are beautiful. We are worth saving. Life is good. Life is fun.

[genderqueerdykes]

i think it's sad how narrow of a view of drag people end up getting when they only see it through ru paul and other hyper commercialized avenues. drag is not only for conventionally attractive, thin, toned, or muscular people. it's not just for people assigned male at birth. it's not just for gay men. drag does not lean heavily white. drag does not have to be feminine.

drag is everything but that. drag is full of fat and chubby performers, performers of color, disabled performers, drag kings, male impersonators, men performing as men, women performing as women, people who perform as multiple genders, people who perform as no gender, people who perform as nonhumans, trans, men women and nonbinary people, lesbians, bisexuals, and whoever else you can think of.

drag is diverse as hell and it's best served hot, so checking out your local drag scenes is crucial to enjoying a taste of what it really has to offer as an art form.

[thousandairesshow]

Is Dirty Laundry in the room with us??? 🥂

[frilledshark-enthusiast]

Rupauls drag race is straight peoples drag

Let me explain 

While Rpdr has played a big part in the normalization of drag and queer art it’s still held to the standard of gender norms and sex conformity. In Rpdr it’s common to see queens be chastised for not having enough padding, not looking enough like a “girl”. Rpdr has created this idea that instead of an art form that includes all genders and all gender presentation it’s just male to female makeup. Queens have been in the bottom for just not looking “female enough”. We also see this in other unspoken rules of drag race like always wearing heels and padding. While Rpdr is very important for drag as is (almost) all mainstream queer media it’s filtered through the norms required to keep it comfortable for straight people so they don’t have to do actual contemplation on how they view the world as a whole.  (and there’s a whole conversation about how this also ties into transphobia but I really need to go to bed)

in other words

[gor3sigil]

Trans drag performers deserve better.

Okay so since y'all seem interested, here we go.

[This is about MY experience as a “former” transmasc drag king, in my local scene. This isn't representative of the drag scene as a whole because drag is a wide, huge scene with pretty much any type of people in it. I have never done paid gig. I only performed a couple of times before deciding to stop.]

I discovered drag with RuPaul like a lot of people, and for a long time, I only knew about drag queens. It’s when I learned about an initiation to drag king happening in my town that I decided to try it. I did a bit of research before the event took place and that's how I learned that drag king is widely undocumented, compared to drag queen. A bit disheartening but I was excited to do something new and especially to get back in my local queer community after 2 years or so of “no contact” with it because trauma (see my post about my first T4T relationship to understand why).

First surprise when I got there, I was the only transmasc present as an attendee. The organiser and person who teached us is agender and go by he/him, and his at the time SO is a transmasc enby but appart from them, I was the only trans person. Most of the others were cis lesbian women. Makes sense. The initiation weekend went really well and we ended up performing in an open scene at the end. I can't count the amount of times I got misgendered by other kings during this weekend and I have to say, it pissed me off so fucking bad because I was the only one getting consistantly misgendered. But I brushed it off and had a blast.

My drag persona is more of a dragula king, really goth, and I did a lipsync performance on a Black Dresses song. I loved it and had a blast. A year or so later, we decided with other drag kings to do a little group to perform together.

Once again, I'm the only trans person.

And that's when the shitshow kinda happened. From all the drag kings present, I was also the only one who wasn't already part of a collective. So the group we had was composed of people from 2 collectives who would basically cheer each other out at every show, and it's great !! But I wasn't being integrated into the group, and I felt defeated. One of the main reasons why I didn't go to drag shows was because I was FLAT BROKE. I couldn't attend these events as they were always or in a bar so you have to at least buy a drink, or had a fee, and I couldn't afford that.

We started doing rehearsals and I set up a discord server for us all to use and organize the said rehearsals. It soon became apparent that they weren't really serious about this group, that they were more involved in their own collectives and it was HELL to have at least one rehearsal a month. But we had a show scheduled for september, and half of the kings weren't ready, didn't know their texts nor songs. I knew it was going to be bad. Also we were confirmed that the gig was going to actually happen 3 days only before, because the people who said they were going to do the visuals NEVER DID and we had to fumble something quick so the event was promoted very fucking late and we weren't sure we could even afford to do it, because not many tickets were sold.

During the rehearsals I got singled out for everything. My voice was dropping because of the T (I had started 8 months prior) and I tried to do my best with the singing parts but got told a few times that my low voice would sound “weird” amongst the sopranos. Also, one of the solo part a king was going to perform was on a very upbeat music and he said we could join IF WE WANTED.

I said I'd pass since it wasn't my style at all.

And when we got to the venue, the venue didn't have any backstage and I had my solo part just after that, so I couldn't just stand there on stage and do nothing. The others in my group KNEW IT as they had performed in this venue BEFORE but just told me “oh, too bad, improvise something” when they were the same ones who told me that taking part in the number was not mandatory.

Regarding the other artists, man, I hated everything. I got misgendered constantly IN KING LIKE - I'M A DRAG KING FFS. Even by others in my group.

When I corrected another performer, a cis gay dude, he laughed at my FACE and told me “but you're trans aren't you like, against gender or something ?”. As I was pre op and still early in my transition I was basically outing myself everytime I told my pronouns and I got so many cis performers ask me invasive questions about my sex life, or being like “yeah I have a trans friend who goes by X but I knew them as Y so it's Y to me but it's not in a disrespectful way you see”.

So yeah, I didn't have a great night. :)

The cis kings called me “girl” or “sis” because “I'm one of them” even after telling them time and time again that I wasn't comfortable with that.

And after this quite disastrous experience, the same ones who called me “girl” and me got into an argument because they wanted to change a song about forced toxic masculinity which is an INCREDIBLY POWERFUL AND BEAUTIFUL SONG into lyrics to talk about femininity. I said that we could use another song then, because there's so few cis men singers who sing about being forced into toxic masculinity and virility that I found that a bit disrespectful to take this important message and make it about women and femininity. There's plenty of songs about that that we could use.

And now guess what ? I was a MEAN MAN who wanted women to NOT TALK ABOUT THEIR ISSUES because I was a very MANLY DUDE DISGUSTING MALE.

The same people who couldn't gender me correctly and called me “sis” a WEEK BEFORE.

So yeah, I got the fuck out and gave up.

I really wish I can perform again one day, but it'll be in another scene.

So PSA: book drag kings, because they are so underrepresented it's disheartening, RESPECT trans drag performers, don't but bioessentialism in drag for the LOVE OF GOD IT'S DRAG. Like imagine being transphobic as a DRAG PERFORMER. Learn the history. And fucking do better.

[transsexualfiend]

If you're trans and you think drag "makes fun of trans people" I need you to take a good hard look into what drag is and understand why that makes absolutely no sense.