In a profile interview with The Guardian, RuPaul, host of VH1’s RuPaul’s Drag Race, was asked whether he would accept a post-transition transgender contestant on the show.
Calling transgender drag an “interesting area,” RuPaul explained why he probably would not accept a post-transition contestant on the show.
“Probably not,” RuPaul said. “You can identify as a woman and say you’re transitioning, but it changes once you start changing your body.”
“It takes on a different thing; it changes the whole concept of what we’re doing. We’ve had some girls who’ve had some injections in the face and maybe a little bit in the butt here and there, but they haven’t transitioned.”
“It takes on a different thing; it changes the whole concept of what we’re doing. We’ve had some girls who’ve had some injections in the face and maybe a little bit in the butt here and there, but they haven’t transitioned.”
“At the core [drag is] a social statement and a big fuck you to male-dominated culture. So for men to do it, it’s really punk rock, because it’s a real rejection of masculinity. You can identify as a woman and say you’re transitioning, but it changes once you start changing your body.” RuPaul added.
Of course this statement caused some social justice warriors heads to explode and none no more than that of Rose Dommu the infamous clickbait POPNOGRAPHY “writer” at OUT.com.
Dommu writes:
These statements go to show how antiquated RuPaul’s conceptions of trans identity and the queering of gender really are. For someone who is deservedly lauded as an icon of genderfuckery, the fact that RuPaul still sees drag as a boys’ club is disappointing, not to mention the fact that he reduces trans identity to whether or not a person has had surgery. The notion that the only true power to be found in an art form that has expanded so much since RuPaul came up seems insulting in the face of the incredible female artists — both cisgender and trans — who are doing drag today, largely thanks to the influence of Drag Race.”
Dommu who does absolutely no research on what she writes and lets her Social Justice Warrior privilege dictate her posts refuses to understand that drag queens (first use in print, 1941) are stereotypically viewed to be gay men that dress in drag, either as part of a performance or for personal fulfillment. The term drag queen distinguishes them from transvestites, transsexuals or transgender people. Doing drag here often includes wearing dramatically heavy makeup, wigs and prosthetic devices as part of the costume.
Drag performance and cross dressing also has a very long history as performance art, actors in Shakespearean plays, and all Elizabethan theatre, were all male; female parts were played by young men in drag. Shakespeare used the conventions to enrich the gender confusions of As You Like It, and Ben Jonson manipulated the same conventions in Epicœne, or The Silent Woman, (1609)
Among contemporary drag performers, the theatrical drag queen or street queen may at times be seen less as a “female impersonator” per se, but simply as a drag queen, and the role of the queen existing as an identity based in neither mainstream male nor mainstream female conventions. Examples include The Cockettes or Danny La Rue.
Bottom line. Transitioning women ARE women.. Meaning they aren’t a drag queen.. When you start transitioning and transform your body into who it truly is then you aren’t exhibiting the art of the transformation. So I for one say THANK YOU to RuPaul for keeping the performance essence and history of drag intact.
As for Rose Dommu she should keep her blatant homophobia and dragphobia to herself and OUT.com should have fired her privileged Social Justice Warrior ass after her infamous Dear Gay Men, Stop Telling Women They Can’t Be in Gay Bars post last year.
Out.com must really need the clicks.
“Don’t take life so seriously… Everybody’s offended by something. And it really goes back to the ego — egoic mind and the ego-based world that we live in, where everybody is, their identify is everything. And this is what drag is about — you are not who you think are, you’re born naked, and the rest is drag. It’s all a facade — you’re much more than what you think you are. So this idea of people feeling they’re not being represented — I remember on [the ’70s sitcom] “Good Times,” when black activists got upset with the fact that J.J., the lead character, didn’t represent what young black men in our culture — in fact the two leads of the TV show quit the show because they felt J.J., the Jimmy Walker character, didn’t represent. Well, the truth is, kids, this is a sitcom, this is a comedy — sitcom. If you want representation, you do it yourself. It starts on a personal level. If you want to change the world, change your mind. Your mind. Not anyone else’s mind. Your mind.