In Defense of Drag
As a young woman who came of age in small-town America, I explored my same-sex attraction the only way I knew how: by visiting a random gay bar in a neighboring city. To my dismay, there were no women among its half-dozen patrons on that lonely Tuesday night. But I sat down at the bar and ordered a drink, and soon Jaqquee and Pandora, a gay couple in full drag, arrived to keep me company.
I'd never seen a drag queen before, and I had questions. Were they performing or just hanging out? Were those false eyelashes hard to apply? How'd they create the illusion of hips? Their voices rose with excitement as they brought me into their world, as Linda Evangelista writhed to George Michael's “Too Funky” on the large-screen TV above us. I learned that Jaqquee had gotten her floor-length beaded gown at a thrift store for only five dollars; the rip in the side had proved easy to repair. Pandora had made her enormous earrings with crystal curtain tie-backs. As k.d. lang's “Constant Craving” took its spot on the screen, I began to feel at home. In time, I would see the couple's shows, accompany them to lesbian bars, and spend the night at their cozy Victorian home whenever I had too many drinks. That house was a feast for the eyes: walls of purple velvet damask, glossy haute couture magazines on antique tables, their latest sewing project pinned to a mannequin, wigs and jewelry draped on every surface. We'd sit up late into the nights talking about music, fashion, and Madonna's 1992 Sex book.
I cherish my initiation into gay culture. It was a time of collecting rainbow swag, of finally kissing a woman, of dancing until the bar closed, the lights came on, and the DJ yelled "Hotel! Motel! You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here." My drag queen friends were by my side as I shook off the chains of my religious upbringing and learned to accept myself. They'd fought the same battles, navigating high school crushes and coming out to disillusioned parents. They were natural friends and allies.
So I'm always surprised when drag comes under attack, not by the usual suspects — like religious folks and right-wing populists — but from unexpected corners. Like a modern “trad” movement that isn’t really conservative but calls for a return to traditional gender roles, as well as the contingent of feminists with whom that movement resonates. And a new faction of women who call themselves "gender critical” — women who, at least originally, were opposed to the conflation of sex with sex-stereotypical behavior and dress.
Source: NBC News.
In the wake of the tragic collapse of the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, brought on when trans protesters sought to usurp its "women born women" policy, self-described gender criticals increasingly fixated on the perils of "gender identity" and gender-nonconformity itself. Concerned with crossdressers behaving badly — like government official Sam Brinton swiping luggage from an airport, professional plaintiff Jessica Yaniv pursuing a scrotal “Brazilian wax”, or Texas drag performers twerking for kids under sexually explicit signage — some have come to regard any expression of male femininity as a “mockery” of women, if not a threat.
Feminist author Julie Bindel, who remembers the drag of her youthful bar days as “good, clean fun,” calls today’s drag “a deeply offensive parody of femaleness.” Journalist Meghan Murphy agrees. “There’s something about this performance that says that femininity and, in turn, women, are a joke,” she writes. But as a feminist and a tomboy, I disagree that “femininity” equals “woman.”
Girls aren't made of sugar and spice, and women aren't made of sparkle and stilettos. Those accouterments are acquired by choice, not conferred by biology. In fact, feminists have long criticized the injurious scourge of high heels, pore-clogging cosmetics, and clothing that invites the “male gaze.” Women's clothes aren’t known for increasing mobility or providing storage for keys; they’re meant for adornment — ruffles, ribbons, curve-hugging seams. Why should adornment be a “woman” thing? I don’t identify with femininity; men are welcome to it. Arguably, it’s a load of frippery that deserves to be mocked.
The backlash is “not anything new,” Brian Belovitch, the celebrated New York scenester, actor, and author who performed drag in the 1980s, transitioned, then later returned to life as a gay man, told me. “In the early ‘70s,” he says, many people, “especially lesbian women,” found drag “very offensive.”
Performance artist Glenn Belverio, whose irreverent film Glennda and Camille Do Downtown gained international acclaim in 1994, told me he sees opposition to drag from within the community, too — in what he calls “the trans agenda.” Glenn recalled the carefree gender-bending of the ‘90s East Village scene, when he took alter ego Glennda Orgasm beyond traditional female impersonation, which was deemed “square”, toward a punk-influenced, postmodern drag that “[commented] on the art of drag itself.” But now, Glenn said, a certain contingent of the trans community wants to control the discourse on identity, bringing “everything under their umbrella,” including drag. They denounce what Glenn calls “one of the most important queer films ever made” — The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). Trans activists have even asked Glenn’s trans friend to disavow a history of performing drag in favor of the narrative “you've always been trans.”
Brian Belovitch (pictured left) and Glenn Belverio (pictured right).
I see these various objections, while wildly disparate, as springing from the same stultifying cultural well — one that seems hell-bent on decrying all that’s playful, beautiful, or fun.
It began percolating over a decade ago, when New York Times journalist Christy Wampole observed the “defensive” posture of hipsters, whose obsession with irony betrays “fear and pre-emptive shame”, “self-scrutiny”, and a “deep aversion to risk.” It’s informed by postmodern skepticism, which sees harmful power differentials everywhere, and the “mob justice” such inequities demand, from language policing to compelled “positivity” to cancel culture. It’s exacerbated by affluence and a too-online life, spread by social media, entrenched in ever-fragmented echo chambers. Even right-wing critics of “wokeness” now embody its methods, calling for the eradication of behavior that “triggers” them.
To all this I say: let people like things.
My drag friends from the bar loved to sew, style hair, and experiment with stage makeup. Their interest in art and fashion was longstanding, earnest, and wholehearted. As working-class guys, they didn’t go broke on ball gowns, boas, and opera gloves — or convert their home into a designer’s studio — because they wanted to mock women. Like most drag performers, they adored women. Certain women, to be sure. Actresses of the silver screen, vocalists, prima donnas, and divas like Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, and Lucille Ball.
Photo by Dave Soto.
Brian recalled bonding with his mom when he was in grade school over “MGM musicals, Betty Davis Marathons, Joan Crawford, Ava Gardner, Rita, all the old black and white movies.” Glenn named Dolly Parton among his favorites, as well as Madonna, Kate Bush, Courtney Love, Kathleen Hanna, and Siouxsie Sioux.
Most men who do drag were feminine boys. “I could never be like the men in my family,” Brian recalled thinking at a young age. Not only was he uninterested in sports, but felt he “could never be that crass, or rude, or insensitive, or macho.” He described his young self as “a feminine little boy” who was “misgendered” and bullied. When he began crossdressing at 16, he thought to himself: “Let me try this out, because this is what they're saying. They're always saying how pretty I am, [that] I should have been a girl.” Brian no longer does drag, but he grooms his eyebrows, paints his nails, and occasionally uses a little concealer. He also loves to wear pearls. Clearly, Brian isn’t emulating a woman. He’s being himself. One way to be a man is to be a feminine man.
“It was obvious that I was a fag,” Glenn said of his high school years. Among his youthful interests, he names theater, pop culture, art, and comedy — interests that foretold his later work as a fashion journalist, culture magazine editor, and Design Store manager at the Museum of Modern Art. He recalled watching the Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970–1977) as a child, fascinated by the women's outfits. “What a fashion show!” he exclaimed. I used to watch it too; Glenn and I are close in age. But I must admit I never noticed the fashion. Is femininity really my birthright, then, but not his?
“I don't know about anybody else,” Brian told me when I asked what men see in performing drag, “but for me it was always a celebration of everything that is feminine.” For someone who “grew up being ashamed and criticized”, it’s a way to “flip the narrative in your adult life and celebrate that part of you. Become celebratory rather than shameful.”
Then he added something rather insightful I’d never thought of.
A natural actor, Brian started in high school drama, which he described as “the most thrilling thing I could have done at the time." But he had trouble translating his talent to work in the real world. “It’s not like I was getting asked to do Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, or even a second banana friend.” Roles for people like him were “nonexistent.”
“In reality, no one was casting gender-nonconforming, queer, gay, feminine boys or men.” He notes that those few who made it onto the screen, like Charles Nelson Riley or Liberace, were "not exactly leading men types.” They were pigeonholed into a certain kind of role, “exploited for their zaniness.”
How could men like him find a place in “the world of theater, dance, music, film?” Brian asked. “Who was going to give us the opportunities to express our innate, strong desire to be creative, [whether] acting, singing, dancing, performing, or whatever? Where were those outlets?” Even as an experienced older actor, Brian encountered an agent who deemed him too “light in the loafers.” Drag shows provide an outlet for people like Brian to express their creative side.
Is that outlet misogynistic, though? Feminist author M.K. Fain notes that drag culture includes referring to women as “tuna”, language that betrays “disgust” with “female bodies.” Even Brian admits “there might be some aspect of that,” though “we can’t paint everyone with the same brush.” Certainly, misogyny can rear its head anywhere. But it isn’t inherent to the act of gussying up. And that bit of trash talk, frankly, makes sense to me. We women complain about men when we’re with our own. Shamelessly dismissing our charms probably holds a similar catharsis for men, especially those who’ve been shamed for lacking attraction to us.
In the end, I think of drag shows as entertainment by men, for men; kind of a little Michfest for gays, bi guys, and male gender-benders. They aren’t as protective of their borders, for obvious reasons. But we should be aware when we’re crashing someone else’s party. If we don’t like the cosmopolitans, it’s because they weren’t mixed for us.
I love Glenn’s description of drag: “It's playful. It's sensual. It's smart.”
“Do you like cats?” I asked him as we wrapped up our call. Mine had cuddled up next to me, and I thought I'd pan the camera so he could see.
“The musical?” he asked.
I rest my case.
Brian Belovitch is a mental health professional, author of Trans Figured, and the subject of an upcoming documentary. He was also profiled in this issue of Queer Majority. Glenn Belverio is a filmmaker, co-host of the Brenda and Glennda Show, and contributor to this issue of Queer Majority.
Published June 15, 2025
Published in Issue XIII: Heretic
