TransPersonal #6

When Sex Is A Drag, Part 1

When Sex Is A Drag
Part 1: Performing Gender
Originally published in Scarlet Letters, September 2003. (Part 1 of this 2-part article will be focusing on the sexualities of gender performers - drag kings and queens - and Part 2 will concentrate on the cross-dressing phenomenon.)

In "To Wong Foo", American viewers were treated to a small gang of drag queens who were lovingly adopted by a wholesome Middle-America village and defended from homophobic police. It was intended to be a film that would humanize drag queens, making them into something a little more cute and cuddly and socially acceptable. Of course, part of this euphemizing process meant that their sex lives were completely invisible. One is shown flirting with a straight boy who thinks she's an ordinary girl, but then she is diverted by her companions before a "Crying Game"-type scene can ruin the comedy.

A friend who watched the film - a straight but open-minded man who had never actually met a drag queen in his life - drew this discrepancy to my attention. He said, "They're very sympathetic, but you can't help but sit there and wonder what they do in bed. Do they act like women in bed, or men, or what? The more the movie skirts around it, the more you wonder." For him, and for others, the attempts to desexualize the queens actually called attention to their mysterious sex lives. Even when the media plays down the steamy aspect, we as a society can't seem to keep our minds off it. What do they do? And how do they think of themselves when they do it?

Drag kings and queens are not a monolithic whole, and they define themselves differently. Some are simply men or women who enjoy performing an opposite-sex character as a dramatic art form once in a while, and their performance never even sideswipes their personal lives; others are only a few steps away from being transsexuals, and their cross-gender identity may be more important and vibrant than their mundane "work gender". This is reflected in their preferred treatment while in drag. Some, like D.C. area performer Jymmie James, will calmly announce onstage that he is a gay man, and this is part of his gender expression. Others are militant about being called by their drag name and pronoun from the second that their costume or makeup goes on, and become irate when people slip up.

Similarly, their sexual preferences in and out of drag are equally varied. There's an assumption that drag queens, in general, ought probably to prefer to have sex as women, or porn- style "she-males". After all, people reason, since gender is all tied up with sex, then cross-gender dressing must be sexual in nature, so why dress up like that unless you wanted to be the opposite sex in bed? Of course, in real life, it's never that simple.

One gay drag queen that I spoke to strongly refuted this idea. "When I'm Stefani," s/he stressed, "it's a performance. It's not about wanting to be a woman. It's not even about being gay, except that gay men are the only ones given permission to perform female roles. It's not sexual; I never have sex as Stefani. When I want to fuck, I take off the clothes and the makeup and fuck with men, as Steve." S/he admits, however, that being Stefani periodically does affect hir love life: "Some men won't approach me because they assume that I'll want to be Stefani in bed, and they prefer men, not trannies; others approach me hoping that they can lift my skirt and screw me, and I'll just be a chick-with-a-dick for them. They're usually disappointed."

Another drag queen had a different take on the matter. "I wanted to experiment with having sex as Gabrielle," s/he reported, "so I found a guy who was bisexual and married, a big ex-Marine; I figured that was as close to straight as I could get with someone who'd still have sex with me. He was very cool, and agreed to do this experiment with me. First I had sex with him as Gabrielle, and then he sat in a chair as I removed each piece of Gabrielle's accoutrements - the wig, the dress, the makeup, the fingernails - and I had him report how his attraction to me changed at every step. Then, when I was stripped, we had sex with me as Darin. It was incredibly affirming."

Shayla, a gay drag queen, has "separate sex lives for both sides of myself. With my long- term partner, I'm Kirk; but Shayla has her own lovers, and yes, we fuck in drag." Kirk/Shayla found that his sexual tastes are split along gendered lines: "It's interesting because Kirk and Shayla have entirely different sexual patterns. It's not as simple as ‘Kirk likes to fuck, and Shayla likes to be fucked'. As Kirk, I'm sensitive to my partner's needs, and we communicate a lot; it's much more loving. When I'm Shayla, all I want to do is get done the way I want to get done. I'm an absolute slut, and I insist on getting my needs met. My female side isn't a traditionally feminine doormat, she's more like a bitchy dragon lady. And, of course, Kirk and Shayla attract entirely different types of men."

Jasmine/Jon, another drag queen, agrees. "Jon wouldn't touch anyone who wasn't a fag, but Jasmine tends to get turned on to straight guys. This probably would have gotten me killed already if I didn't restrain myself. When I'm Jasmine for several hours, I can get so deeply into the illusion that I forget what's under my skirts, and for about a minute, I think to myself, ‘Why can't I hit on that nice straight man over there?' Then I come to my senses and slap myself around mentally. Yet I don't really want a sex change.....because it's easier to live as Jon, and he's really better at coping with everyday life. And I like being Jon, too; I don't want to have to give that up."

Thistle, a bisexual man who does "hootchie drag", finds it "somewhat sordid in one way and incredibly liberating in another, because men don't get much chance to be viewed as a beautiful mysterious sex object." He says that, "when I'm in drag I can flirt shamelessly....I know how to attract men much better as a girl than a guy....When I'm with a woman, I feel most comfortable and free and honest expressing myself....talking about fashion, surfaces, gossip, being sensitive and vulnerable.... However, sadly, I find that only a certain small group of bisexual women are attracted to this sort of thing, and even fewer feminine men, which is the main reason I am re-exploring my masculine side."

Natasha, who is "mostly Nathan, but still Natasha on occasion", reports that she "got burnt out on sex as Natasha after being a sex worker for two years. All the guys wanted to do was bend me over a table and fuck me. At first it was great, because I had wanted that, but eventually I couldn't take it that no one was willing to see me as the whole person I am, and want Nathan as well as Natasha. After I quit the sex bars, I didn't do Natasha for three years. Now I can do drag again, I can even have sex as Natasha again, but only with someone who was lovers with me as Nathan first, who I can trust to love both parts of me."

Others find that their drag persona, not their everyday persona, is the sticking point with lovers. Drake Blackstone, a drag king with the Imperial Court and the American Boyz Drag King Liaison, says: "Putting on boy stuff is always sexually charged, but it doesn't make me jerk off and come. So in that aspect it's not a fetishization. When I'm in drag in public, I'm hypervigilant, paying attention to all my mannerisms, so of course everything is very intense. There's a very exhibitionistic side to this - why else would you spend all that time and money on costume to perform for three minutes! Talk about a quick whack-off! And then you sit in the glow for days.......When it comes to the bedroom, drag performing must have a sexual aspect to it, only logically. Performing is sexually charged for me, but that's similar to what musicians express about the performance high. It's similar to if not better than orgasm. I'm sexually charged, even horny, after a performance. I've never had sex in full drag, though, because I like to be naked when I'm having sex - skin contact is very important - and drag is restrictive in that way."

He points out the ambivalent boundary between the identity of the drag performer and the identity of the persona: "Drake Blackstone is my performance name, to make it easier for people to visualize who they are talking to when it comes to gender. They're really talking, of course, to the same person. When I'm performing, I'm more conscious of my moves and manners and speech, but Drake is about putting forth the male in me, because in truth I am not so much a drag performer as a wereguy. During certain cycles of the year, I feel more masculine in presentation than feminine, and my drag persona is a healthy and safe venue for this."

As a member of the Imperial Court, Drake calls himself "a king among queens. The politics of drag queens are entirely different from the politics of drag kings; most kings come out of the lesbian community, and they consider themselves dykes. Some are butch, and have sex the way butches have sex - which spans a broad spectrum from dysphoric ‘stone' to ordinary ‘lesbian sex as a woman with women' to ‘practically an FTM transsexual'. Others don't see themselves as butch at all, just as women who perform, and their sexuality happens when the clothes come off. And then there are drag kings like me who aren't lesbian - I'm bisexual and I've never been part of the women's community - whose sexuality is much less lesbian-identified and much more fluid."

At IDKE (the International Drag King Extravaganza) it was pointed out that drag kings fill an important function for lesbians, who may feel too bound up with political correctness and female programming to be entirely comfortable with the free and unexamined flow of sexuality: drag kings provide a safe way to sexually objectify both women and masculinity, without either offending women or involving oneself with actual men.

Of course, there are a certain number of drag performers who do eventually cross the boundary into transsexualism, starting to take hormones and transition. In some drag communities, they are allowed to keep performing; in others, they are pressured to retire, as they aren't "really" drag performers any more. Drag queens tend to be more lenient about this sort of thing than kings, probably because the changes wrought by testosterone are so dramatic. One individual laughingly referred to drag as his "gateway drug". Although drag performers in general seem reluctant to talk about drag in relation to their sexuality, there does seem to be a widespread suspicion that the ones who tend to have sex more often as their personas than as their ordinary selves - and prefer it that way - are the ones who are more "at risk" for suddenly deciding to get sex changes. A kinder way to put it was that these are the ones whose drag is a coping mechanism for real dysphoria, not just a fun performance of gender, and eventually they decide it isn't enough and more extreme measures are needed.

Some of these folks do leave the drag community entirely when they transition; others find unique ways to remain in it. One famous drag king transitioned to male and then retired as a drag performer, but still emcees for occasional shows. Another heterosexual female drag king transitioned to become a gay male, and then decided that he ought to be allowed to be a gay drag queen, and came back into the community in that capacity.

Drag is an ambivalent balance beam of genderplay. Some see it as a highly political act - challenging and reframing what gender roles are supposed to be. Others, doing it more for deeply personal reasons of identity (or as just plain fun), are confused by this politicization and would prefer to be seen as unique performers rather then as part of a "movement". There is a lot of unrest between these camps, and sexual tension is part of that. There's a great deal of effort gone to by those who would politicize drag to separate it entirely from the phenomenon of fetishistic cross-dressing (dealt with in the next TransPersonal column), as they fear that would demean and belittle the socially challenging aspects, getting it merely thrown into an inconsequential category of "more weird stuff those queer sexual perverts are doing". Of course, the fact that drag is still so strongly identified with the gay and/or lesbian communities doesn't help, as those communities are still seen by the outside world as being defined by the sort of sex people are having (or at least who they're having it with), despite all efforts to make it less about sex and more about "lifestyle".

However, it's also slowly becoming more mainstream, which may create not only a greater audience but a greater variety of performers, including their range of sexual expression. There is a new phenomenon of "bioqueens"; biological women who dress as drag queens (such as the infamous Princesses of Porn) and perform alongside drag kings. There are "transkings" and "transqueens"; post-transition transsexuals who are demanding their right to keep performing in their communities of origin. There are more heterosexual and bisexual drag performers demanding to be heard.

Can we imagine a world where any dramatic or performance piece could be played by anyone who could manage the makeup and a realistic appearance, regardless of their actual gender? With modern special-effects cosmetics, it's not hard to transform people into the other gender - witness "Mrs. Doubtfire" and other cross-dressing movies. What would it be like if the only barrier to any person playing any part wasn't their looks or bodies, but the quality of their makeup? If actors had separate "drag personas" to play cross-gender parts in movies and TV? Think about it. Someday, the future may look a lot like that.