A MEDIOCRE EXAMINATION OF INCREDIBLY TALENTED WOMEN Emma Dent

by Emma Dent

OF INCREDIBLY Talented WOMEN

WRIT 1133: Writing & Research | Professor April Chapman-Ludwig

I CAME OUT BECAUSE MY MOM WAS SICK. MY MOM WAS diagnosed with terminal esophageal cancer and given an impossibly short amount of time to live when I was fifteen. I was gay, and my mom was dying. I wanted her to know.

I was also the daughter of a Catholic woman—not a terribly ruthless Catholic woman (though that may be redundant), just a Catholic woman. In my experience, religion and love have shaped much of my family’s cruelty. You want your children to be safe, intelligent, respected, successful, and saved. You also want your children to abide by the morality you were taught was right. My mom could be a bitch, but she was because she loved me, because she thought she was doing right by me.

Coming out when you’re a sophomore in high school is weird because nobody believes you, including yourself. Despite how right you may be, youth comes with a funny kind of imposter syndrome. You are too young to know who you are but old enough to fall under the guise of an assumed heterosexuality. I had an especially hard time because I came out as bisexual. You know, the stepping stone sexuality? The same one where bisexual men are considered gay, and bisexual women are considered straight (because god forbid someone isn’t attracted to a man).

At the time, my mom was less than accepting. I’m a little surprised

she didn’t expect at least one of her children to be gay. She basically raised us in various Pottery Barns across the US. That’s gaybaiting. She said I was too young and didn’t know what I wanted. That was the end of the discussion. To be fair, I didn’t know what I wanted, but I knew who I wanted—a girl. My mother died shortly after I turned sixteen, and for the remainder of my high school experience, I put my sexuality on the backburner. You can’t argue with a dead woman. I’ve tried.

Ellen is on her way to becoming a hyper queen. We’ve

spent the last two quarters picking out names and

makeup and fashions that do what she wants. She is an

artist, like my mother. My mom would have loved her to

bitter pieces. Her creative visions are specific without

being concise. She is not sure what she wants, but she

certainly knows what she doesn’t want.

The problem with putting things on the backburner is that the world doesn’t stop. You don’t change just because you’re not equipped to deal with your current situation. I graduated high school, and I attended my first Pride parade. I found myself on the outside looking in on a community I knew I was a part of since I was eight years old.

I’m learning more and more about queer culture every day because simply being gay doesn’t mean you’re “in.” Over the past three years, my perception of the LGBT community flipped on its head ten times over. We are oddities, commodities, freak shows, grandparents, quiche makers, parents, coworkers, and cool aunts. I am what’s known in the community as a “babygay,” which means I’m young and ignorant—probably because mainstream culture has a habit of acknowledging

that gay people exist but doesn’t actually show what the communities look like. So, when gay kids turn eighteen, they’re young and novice. They have lots of expectations, questions, and things they (we) do wrong. * * * Ellen and I discuss drag like it’s our damn job. She is a creative genius and I am an official queer representative, which makes conversations like this easy and an outright pleasure to facilitate.

“Okay. So, I’m worried about having my name in it because, like, I’m worried that other people in the community will think, you know, “This is our culture, and I don’t want to be appropriating it.”

“Right. Yeah.”

“I know I have a right to perform as a biological female or faux queen—that’s not the issue. But is it okay to do this as a non-queer person? I don’t know.”

I met Ellen during freshman orientation, after a group of people in our hall had knocked on our door and invited me and my roommate to partake in an art night. Ellen was the last to leave. She’s a tiny little blonde thing with a chronic illness and the kind of self-deprecating humor you almost feel bad laughing at. We spent ten minutes brainstorming what she wanted her fake name to be for this project., We eventually came up with Ellen DeMiserly (in contrast to Ellen DeGeneres, a true gay icon). Ellen is on her way to becoming a hyper queen. We’ve spent the last two quarters picking out names and makeup and fashions that do what she wants. Thus far, we’ve accumulated almost nothing she actually likes. Hopefully there is a learning curve. Hopefully the first looks are the hardest.

She is an artist, like my mother. My mom would have loved her to bitter pieces. Her creative visions are specific without being concise. She is not sure what she

wants, but she certainly knows what she doesn’t want. Most of my drag knowledge comes from her. It was never really my thing before college. The only queen I’d have been able to name was RuPaul. * * * Acknowledgment of drag culture is disappointingly clinical. Not all of it is intended to be severe and insensitive. In fact, current drag is much more indicative of the current socio-political climate of LGBT rights, but it’s hard to step in any direction academically without being bombarded with papers that demean drag as a performance art and reduce and dehumanize its participants. Everything written about drag subculture (or any subculture) is seen through individual, private knowledge. Researchers explore the drag community without looking objectively—and rightfully so. You can’t be indifferent to everything, especially when it comes to drag. More often than not, those who are invested in what it means to be a drag performer hold even more solidified opinions of the subculture. This leads to pre-existing colloquial information rooted in confusion, hatred, ignorance, and overwhelming misunderstanding. * * * My aunt accidentally found herself entrenched in the queer community. I remember her saying, very clearly in my adolescence, that she has“no problem with gay people. They’re just going to hell.” Casually. In the past five years, she became close friends with a woman who opened her own candy shop. My aunt even left to work for her. At the time, my aunt didn’t know her friend was gay. My mom informed her of this fact. The candy shop she works in is full of old lesbians with cats. Their humor is quick and dry, and my aunt fits in well.

A couple years ago, I called my aunt on Mother’s Day. In passing, I mentioned in I was gay, a fact I thought I had mentioned earlier. She stopped me.

“Emma, did you just say you were gay?” “Yes.” I hear a chuckle from my uncle in the background. “Good thing your mom never heard about that.” “I told her after she was diagnosed.” “And how did that go?” “Not well.” “I didn’t think so.” * * *

Denver Pride 2018 © Adrian Michael / Flickr.com /photos/126438536@N03

Current drag is much more indicative of the current

socio-political climate of LGBT rights, but it’s hard to

step in any direction academically without being bom

barded with papers that demean drag as a performance

art and reduce and dehumanize its participants.

As far as my aunt is concerned, the gay community starts and ends with the lesbians who work in her candy shop. My introduction into the LGBT community as a true member felt like falling down

the rabbit hole. Because the LGBT community is essentially a set of Russian nesting dolls demographically, it’s important to identify what drag culture is. I started my research specifically intending to research “bio queens,” or drag queens who identify as female. There is not nearly as much academic research on “bio queens” as there is on drag queens, which limited my inquiry. “Bio queen” isn’t listed in the Oxford English Dictionary, and “drag queen” only has one definition, which limits a drag queen to someone who is biologically male (2017). For female identifying performers, these gaps in recognition exist everywhere and are indicative of gender norms—even within a community that denounces gender norms. There are three main contributors to drag performers coming to be: “gender transgression, masquerade, and same-sexuality” (Taylor & Rupp, 2004, p. 119). While true, there is no doubt that male identifying performers benefit from their own gender transgression disproportionately to female identifying performers.

Rose Alice has been a drag performer in Denver for almost two years. Her inspiration came from RuPaul’s Drag Race, and she quickly developed from an obsessive fan to a full-blown participant. Rose recalls, “I felt like, oh my god, they’re complete weirdos like me with huge personalities and a passion for music, performance, fashion, etc!” While watching Season 8, she remembers telling herself, “Holy shit, if I were a man, I would be so good at this. But I didn’t think anything of it because I had never heard of a ‘hyper drag queen.’”

I, too, had never heard of a hyper drag queen until my interview with one. I read several academic papers differentiating drag queens and “bio queens,” and I wrote an ethnography using the words “bio queen.” Yes, hyper queens and “bio queens” mean similar things. I assumed that bio queen is an umbrella term for all female identifying performers, but “bio” is shunned by the drag community as a trans-exclusionary term. Moving forward, these participants will be referred to as hyper queens.

In recent years, academic research on drag has shifted to narrate the gay community’s endorsement of hypermasculinity as a way to distance themselves from the femininity that plays into drag performance (Bishop, Kiss, Morrison, Rusche, & Specht, 2014, pp. 555-564). This begs the question: How do hyper queens reap the consequences of this mentality? Bishop et al. (2014) account for this phenomenon by suggesting that the AIDS crisis caused gay men to reject characteristics they deemed weak to become more socially accepted. That gay men embraced traditional gender roles provided male privilege as a way to recoup some of the losses of a disenfranchised community but detracted from another (p. 561). It makes sense. It follows logic, but it doesn’t make it fair to performers today who are forced into lesser roles because of the drag climate. Drag queens are still regularly regarded as freaks and novelties, but they are more respected and appreciated now than they have been in decades (Horowitz, 2013, pp. 310-313; Moncrieff & Lienard, 2017, p. 1). It’s as if the accolades for the drag community serve as a cultural deterrent

in the queer community. Because drag performers are now endorsed more publicly, those in the queer community generally respect their craft but not necessarily their personhood.

I had never seen a drag performance before my first night at Tracks. The availability of queer culture in sunny Colorado Springs, Colorado is, shall we say, limited. Moving to Denver was my out. In a world that caters to default sexuality, it was exactly what I needed. Tracks, a gay nightclub in downtown Denver, is a hotspot for drag performances and booze-fueled consensual hookups.

Gay nightclubs cover a plethora of demographics. There are showoff gays, “too-cool-to-be-here” lesbians, full drag divas, “still-trying-to-figurethings-out” teenagers, your bears, your otters, your polyamorists, and (of course) straight men who go to LGBT clubs to prey on gay women because their guard is down. Can’t forget about them: they are thrown out every night. Before you ask: Yes, straight girls are there. No, no one invited them.

Tracks is also one of many locations where Rose has performed and competed. She refers to Tracks as her breakout introduction to drag: “I moved to Denver, Colorado and I started going to “Drag Nation,” one of the biggest drag shows in the US at Tracks, Denver. They bring in different RPDR queens every month as well as having a regular Denver cast, including Nina Flowers. There, I was immediately drawn to the Denver queen Yvie Oddly. I befriended her soon enough and one night told her that I felt like a drag queen stuck in a woman’s body.” Rose sent me that statement over Facebook, where I did most of my coordinating with her over a few weeks. Rose is a hairstylist by day

and a fierce competitor by night. She is also queer.

We briefly touched on sexuality but only so far as to ask, “Are you queer, too?” which was followed by a resounding, “Yes.” It’s hard to examine the relationship between hyper queens and sexuality. Truth be told, I have no idea if hyper queens are more likely to be queer than heterosexual. Drag has reached an era where its audience is much broader than its former demographic, which will shift the people who choose to perform and engage. I am queer. My gal pal Ellen is straight, and she convinced me of the drag community’s validity.

The drag community has a lot of internalized hatred. Based off my observations, the current drag climate is uneasy and somewhat cringey. Within the community, drag is given accolades as an art form, but drag performers are still disrespected, sometimes right in front of us. * * * A small man in a red puffy jacket keeps grabbing at the performers when they walk the front of the stage. He is called out by several performers. I have seen this man before; there are about five men at Tracks who regularly harass women/drag performers and get thrown out of the club. This man was quickly removed immediately after a drag queen performed.

I’ve found that even in queer clubs, there can be a predatorial environment for female-conforming people. My friends and I had a man thrown out of the club for the same thing, which almost helps you relate to the queens. Even though most are males, while performing, queens are treated with the same disrespect. It’s as if dressing as a woman is an automatic invitation to touch, harass, and disrespect. Even though many men

Yvie Oddly at RuPaul’s DragCon 2019 [Los Angeles] DVSROSS [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]

in the club are queer in some regard, it doesn’t exempt them from misogyny. Sexism is still sexism, no matter who does it. The man my friends and I had thrown out had profiled us before. That was the third time we had him removed. * * *

The origin of negating drag performers is unclear, but

it’s led to a culture that treats them as commodities

instead of human beings. It’s as if dressing up as a

woman encourages people to treat them as a woman,

accompanied by all the negativity that women face,

multiplied by the audacity of the queer community.

I don’t know what compels men to act that way. There is a genre of queer people who think the rules of physical touch and human decency don’t apply to them because of their sexuality. While this is not limited by gender, nine times out of ten, it’s cis men who are the aggravators. Moncrieff and Lienard (2017) write that “the cost of the behavior is clearly recognized among gay participants” (p. 4). The origin of negating drag performers is unclear, but it’s led to a culture that treats them as commodities instead of human beings. It’s as if dressing up as a woman encourages people to treat them as a woman, accompanied by all the negativity that women face, multiplied by the audacity of the queer community.

I don’t really know what conclusions to draw. This has been an entirely mixed bag. In one regard, hyper queens have challenged what it means to be

female and to culturally and creatively represent the queer community. They also have channeled obscurity into art. On the other hand, being a drag performer comes with physical, logical, and emotional risks. I have an exorbitant amount of respect for these people, but they are not without flaws. There is a cost to their craft. I wonder what will happen in Ellen’s hyper queen career. I wonder how she will present, how she will be regarded, and (unfortunately) how she will be victimized. * * * My brother and dad hold a collective teacup’s worth of emotional vulnerability. They’re very similar that way—they don’t like to talk the way I do. Generally, they’re pretty cool about who I am. They make fun of astrology, which is blatantly homophobic; but, apart from that, we’ve been doing all right. Occasionally, my dad has outed me at dinner parties to win arguments. I think it’s funny because I would do the same thing. My brother and I talk about girls as much as you can talk about with girls with someone who hosts a weekly board game night. It’s not perfect. I don’t always get the support I need, but I have the support that I have. I’m usually quite pleased with it.

My mother always said it only takes one person to change the way you think about certain demographics forever. If she were still here, she would be more understanding of me. She was an incredibly smart woman, and I like to think she reacted the way she did because she was embarrassed she didn’t know me as well as she thought. I believe in consolation, and I try to think the best of people until they give me reason not to. In the generations that

follow, our children will have it easier than us in this regard. I look forward to that.

Adapting is hard. Being gay is hard. Thinking your child is one way and then finding out they are actually a vastly different person than you anticipated is difficult to accept—especially when you know you won’t be around to see your child become that person. With each passing day, I see myself turning into a taller, gayer version of my mom. I see her in so many of the things I do: the way I chop vegetables, my inability to drink anything until I’ve brushed my teeth, our shared talent for arranging flowers. I’m disappointed I don’t get to share who I am with her now, but I’m not angry at her initial reaction. Things take time to process, something she didn’t have. But I feel her around me in the ways that I compose myself. Whether she supported me or not, there is a little dash of Charlene in queer culture because she made me. I’m grateful for that.

Denver Pride 2018 © Adrian Michael / Flickr.com /photos/126438536@N03

REFERENCES

Bishop, C., Kiss, M., Morrison, T. G., Rushe, D. M., & Specht, J. (2014). The association between gay men’s stereotypic beliefs about drag queens and their endorsement of hypermasculinity. Journal of Homosexuality,61(4), 554–567. doi:10.1080/00918369.2014.865464 Horowitz, K. (2013). The trouble with "Queerness": Drag and the making of two cultures. Journal of Women in Culture & Society, 38(2), 303–326. Retrieved January 27, 2018, from http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.du.idm.oclc.org/ehost/ pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=1&sid=0f03c041-d30f-47a6-b673-fd052ce54563%40sessionmgr102 LeMaster, B. (2015). Discontents of being and becoming fabulous on RuPaul's Drag U: Queer criticism in neoliberal times. Women's Studies in Communication, 38(2), 167–186. Retrieved January 27, 2018, from http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.du.idm.oclc.org/ehost/pdfviewer/ pdfviewer?vid=1&sid=c90ddcfb-e3e2-4dc0-8e19-84f781f9c499%40sessionmgr104 Moncrieff, M., & Lienard, P. (2017). A natural history of the drag queen phenomenon. Evolutionary Psychology 15(2): 1–14. Retrieved January 27, 2018, from http://journals.sagepub.com.du.idm.oclc.org/doi/ pdf/10.1177/1474704917707591 Rodi, R. (2018, February 29). Drag queen. In Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved January 29, 2018, from https:// en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/drag_queen Taylor, V., & Rupp, L. J. (2004). Chicks with dicks, men in dresses: What it means to be a drag queen. Journal of Homosexuality, 64(3/4), 113–133. Retrieved January 27, 2018, from http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.du.idm.oclc.org/ehost/ pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=1&sid=de653d78-25bb-48aa-9c73-633479d30101%40sessionmgr4006

image provided by author

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Emma Dent is a third-year student from Colorado Springs with concentrations in socio-legal studies and Spanish and a minor in psychology. After receiving her undergraduate degree, Emma plans to teach for a few years before returning to school to get a masters in psychology and become a sex therapist.

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

I wrote this paper during my second quarter at DU, when I was eighteen. It is a compilation autoethnography of everything I wrote over the course of my first writing class in college. I got a rocky start. I chose to focus my research on queer community, and I experienced one less-than-kind peer review very early on in the quarter. Needless to say, everything I wrote for the remainder of the quarter was very angsty. I felt very angsty at the time.

The paper has since been edited by a slightly-more-stable twenty-year-old Emma. It is still angsty, as I wanted to do justice to the very real emotions I was processing at the time—leaving home, slowly integrating into a community that had loud and proud queer folk, and coming to understand that my familial life as I knew it was ending.

This is an essay on oversharing, as I am one to do. It’s also an explanation of who I was in my first few months away from the home I grew up in. It’s disorganized, sarcastic, observant, and full of grief. April Chapman-Ludwig, my professor at the time and editor of this essay’s final draft, encouraged me to chase those feelings. Reading your old writing can be embarrassing and cringey, but I am grateful for the support I encountered and glad that I let those feelings take shape instead of dissipating into something that could have been.