Drag (noun)

In the broadest sense, drag is a performance of gender and physicality. Gender is brought forth in interaction with others, drawing on a range of cues: Names, pronouns, clothing, voice pitch, gestures, facial expressions, postures, and behaviors are gender cues that are rehearsed through socialization. Drag artists are aware of this process of interactive gender production and use various gender-coded cues - e.g. beards, clothes, makeup, etc. - to produce and portray a particular drag character in whose role they slip. Drag queens, for example, perform or parody femininity. They are mostly people who were assigned male at birth. Drag Kings, on the other hand, represent or parody masculinity. Drag Kings are mostly, but not exclusively, people who were assigned female at birth.

In addition to the classic drag kings and drag queens, drag can also go beyond the staging of gender and sometimes includes bizarre body shapes that are not limited to the human species. By blurring the boundaries between human bodies, technology, animals, plants, or fictional species, body performances allow for breaches with the familiar. Exemplary of this are artistic forms such as alien drag, cyber drag, and xeno drag.

Although drag has a subversive potential, it does not necessarily have to be subversive.

On the one hand, drag was a space where gender norms could be challenged and the cultural construction of gender could be exposed by playing with gender codes, long before contemporary feminist movements. On the other hand, despite all political claims, drag is not free of power structures and can reproduce normative forms of gender or appropriate racist and sexist forms. Drag scenes are not always inclusive. For example, it has been suggested from Black and white feminist perspectives that a parodied performance of femininity by drag queens may not at always represent an act of identification and solidarity with women, but can be accompanied by policing and evaluating of femininity.

Drag goes back to a long, global history. In countries of the global north such as the United States and Germany, drag is inextricably linked to the resistant history of lsbtq* communities of color, travesty, ballroom culture, Trümmer- und Polittunten, lesbian bar scenes, and queer human rights movements in particular. 

• Allure. "RuPaul's 'Drag Race' Cast Explains The History of Drag Culture." Youtube, 08.02.2018. Last accessed on 22.05.2020.

• Butler, Judith. "Chapter 4: Gender Is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion". In: Bodies of Weight - The Discursive Limits of Gender. Suhrkamp, 1997.

• Deron, Bernadette. "The Evolution Of The Art Of Drag in 33 Stunning, Historical Images". Dec. 15, 2018, all that's interesting. Last accessed on 22.05.2020.

• Frye, Marilyn. The Politics of Reality. Crossing Press, 1983. quoted in bell hooks: Black Looks - Race and Representation, p. 148.

• Hark, Sabine & Hanna Meißner. "Gender relations and the (im)possibility of gender diversity". In: Dossier Gender Diversity - trans*, Federal Agency for Civic Education, 08.08.2018. Last call 22.05.2020.

• hooks, bell. "Chapter 9: Is Paris Burning?" In: Black Looks - Race and Representation. South End Press, Boston, MA, 1992.

• Mize (abbreviation). "138 years of drag history". Queer.de, 19.04.2018. Last accessed on 22.05.2020.

• Sauer, Arn. "Drag King"/"Drag Queen". LSBTIQ-Lexikon - Completely revised licensed edition of the glossary of the Trans*Inter*Sektionalität network, 2018, Federal Agency for Civic Education, Bonn. Last call on 22.05.2020.

• Schröder, Frank. "In the future, beauty is gender-neutral - an interview with drag artist HUNGRY". Qiio Magazine, March 13, 2018. Last call on 22.05.2020.

• Travesty for Germany. Campaigns. Last call on 22.05.2020.