Talk:Drag queen/Archive 5

Archiving was seriously messed up. The following steps have been taken:

• Archives 1, 2, and 3 were out of order; this has been repaired by two sets of round-robin moves.
• 'Counter' in the archive config was wrong, leading to discussions being moved to the wrong archive (2, instead of 3).
• Partly due to the counter, two archives had overlapping time periods; these were fixed by moving some discussions among archives after the moves were done.
• Archive_4 was created, to hold discussions from 2019, which were located in two different archives. Archive_4 is now 2019 only.
• Archive_5 was created as an empty stub, with a {{tan}} notice and hidden comment.
• The archive config |counter= has been reset to '5'.

Archiving should be fixed now, and good to go. Future bot edits should begin moving discussions from here, to Archive_5, when they satisfy the bot config. Mathglot (talk) 19:54, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

IP 47.152.48.31 (talk · contribs) made good faith addition to the Terminology section in this edit which were unsourced. This addition has been moved here for further work.

Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 20:09, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

There needs to be an addition for the viewpoint against things like Drag Story Time, etc. to go along with the sources that are proponents. The current status of the section is merely an editorial quote via one person. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.1.109.195 (talk) 22:22, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

I just created an article on Arthur Blake. I’m not sure where he would best fit in this article, but undoubtedly he was the first entertainer to perform in drag at the White House during F.D.R.’s presidency and was a seminal entertainer of the Post World War II era. Also, this reference not only has a lot on Blake but on historically important female impersonators and drag artists which could be used to improve this article. 4meter4 (talk) 16:29, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

I went ahead and added some content in the nightclub section. If anyone has a different idea, feel free to adjust.4meter4 (talk) 13:52, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

This edit request to Drag queen has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Remove the word "feminine" from this line:

"Drag queens tend to go for a more exaggerated look with a lot more makeup than a typical feminine woman would wear."

Make-up does not define femininity. "typical woman" is sufficient 51.37.190.58 (talk) 22:48, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

 Not done. This rests on the assumption that a "typical woman" wears a certain amount of makeup. Armadillopteryx 23:55, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

In 2018, drag queen Zuhal (Kawkab Zuhal) from Beirut released a video of her on Youtube explaining what drag is and the origin of the term “Drag” that was initiated during the Shakespearien times, and to stay true to the original meaning of the term, she launched the first arabic slang for a drag art that is a literal translation "فن الجر" (Fann El Jarr), people used to spell “drag” in arabic letters before the arabic term was launched. Now everyone uses the slang that Zuhal created. Kawkabzuhal (talk) 09:07, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

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Are crossplayers normally considered a subtype of drag queens? They are performance artists dressing up as the opposite sex, but I think they might not share enough common culture. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MaitreyaVaruna (talk • contribs) 19:58, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

My friend who is a gender studies grad student says they are not because crossplaying is about a specific character from media, while drag queens have their own persona they have created with exaggerated feminine characteristics. MaitreyaVaruna (talk) 02:43, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

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Recent bold changes to the lead paragraph by Arunr28 were undone as WP:OR, and for other reasons (detail at your Talk page). Valiant attempts to find compromise wording in the lead by User:Ulis255 are appreciated, and discussion here may, in the end, result in your wording or something like it being adopted.

Nevertheless, I've rolled the article back to the previous stable version before the recent flurry of changes to the WP:LEAD. This is partly because of WP:LEADFOLLOWSBODY, but mostly because this is a 20-year old article with 1,500 editors, because it is in a sensitive and controversial topic area which is subject to ArbCom discretionary sanctions, and because the stable wording in the lead took shape after significant and sometimes difficult discussions by many editors to achieve consensus. While bold editing is encouraged, that has been tried already; WP:CONSENSUS is core policy. Consensus can change, and this is the appropriate place to find out if it has. Please discuss proposed changes to the lead here, before making any further changes to it in the article. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 20:32, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Since 1972 I have quite a bit of experience on the subject of drag and drag queens. Have been following Wikipedia info about the subject(s) since 2008. I am still confused about some of the things I've seen in recent years. Here are some questions:

• What is meant by the idiom women who are drag queens?
• What is the difference between a wonderfully flamboyant, heavily made up, extravagant and entertaining woman and a woman who is a drag queen?
• Is a women who is in drag queen disguised as a drag queen with her biological gender a secret?
• How do we identify a woman as a drag queen?

Sincerely confused, --SergeWoodzing (talk) 02:04, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Hi Serge, can you please copy your question to the WP:Reference desk? It's not appropriate here, per WP:NOTFORUM. I'm sure you'll get a lot of good responses there. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 09:49, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Thank you! I felt it was relevant here because of efforts to have this article include, albeit somewhat vaguely, that enough women are drag queens for them to be alluded to here in article text.

To take your advice I spent about 10 minutes trying to figure out how to add my questions to the Reference Desk and came up with nothing. Are you aware of how complicated that is/looks? Time is valuable to me. I am over 70, but not completely gaga yet. Please give me a link, if you know of one, to a Reference Desk page where one actually can add a question. Or/and perhaps I should pose the questions at the rather confusing article Female queen (drag)? Your advice is appreciated. Thanx again! --SergeWoodzing (talk) 19:22, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

@SergeWoodzing:, sure, just go to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities, scroll down a bit, and click the big blue button. Mathglot (talk) 12:31, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanx.  Done --SergeWoodzing (talk) 23:25, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

Objectivity is important. This article needs to discuss the ways that drag in general makes open jokes at cis women's expense and plight ("Anna Bortion," "Anna Rexic" - RuPaul's derogatory comments against cis women - the list goes on). 75.130.201.33 (talk) 14:39, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

Sources? --SergeWoodzing (talk) 19:42, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

I agree there should be a section on feminist critiques of drag, if not a broader survey of criticism more generally. Here are some possible sources: Beginning on page 34, the master's thesis of Kevin D. Nixon reviews some of the relevant literature in a section titled "Drag as Misogynistic/Anti feminist". In the abstract to "Hegemonic 'Realness'? An Intersectional Feminist Analysis of RuPaul's Drag Race", author Sarah Jenkins says:

The show works to promote messages of self-love and acceptance ; however, it also promotes many problematic and damaging stereotypes. This thesis conducts a feminist analysis in order to answer the question: How does RuPaul's Drag Race relate to hegemonic and oppressive stereotypes and roles associated with gender identity, sexual orientation, size, class, race and ethnicity? Does it challenge or reinforce such hegemonies? In order to answer these questions, this thesis examines visual imagery, narrative, and dialogue in the show, utilizes theories from cultural and women's studies, English and communications. It concludes that although Drag Race does engage in some subversive behavior, it ultimately reinforces harmful hegemonic stereotypes.

A relevant section in Jenkins' thesis is titled "Pseudo-Feminism and the Masking of Misogyny" and she cites her sources. Meghan Murphy wrote an article titled "Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community?". I realize Murphy is controversial but this particular article has been cited in Female Masculinities and the Gender Wars: The Politics of Sex by Finn Mackay (Bloomsbury, 2021). Murphy is a reliable source to express her personal views as a self-described socialist feminist. Whether you agree with it or not, there is a body of relevant literature that would seem to warrant some treatment in the entry. --Mox La Push (talk) 07:13, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

I have added some relevant material citing Deborah Rudacille as the source. --Mox La Push (talk) 06:21, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Objectivity requires acknowledging Deut. 22:5. 2600:1702:1DC1:7120:B15C:389D:FDFC:4343 (talk) 02:13, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

If and when laughter-creating satire is acceptable, and any object of such satire is acceptable, then the obvious satire, often sharp, even cruel, on what many people have considered exaggerated female vulgarity, which exists in the characters of some women and in the fantasies of many men, must be accepted on an equal footing. I would support the addition/admission of what's condescending and mean toward women in most drag acts, camouflaged by hilarity, as long as the aspect of the creative license inherent in regular satire is included. --SergeWoodzing (talk) 18:28, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

As noted, ancient theater, and up through Shakespeare and until modern times, there were no women in theater, and female characters were played by men dressed as women; theater existed mostly as a way to tell stories more visually than epic poems. Now, social media wants to tell us actors dressed as women is the same as drag, even though this article notes that drag queens tend to go for a more exaggerated look with a lot more makeup than a typical woman would wear. Drag is vaudeville or burlesque, not King Lear. I'm hunting for sources, but no one seemed to need the distinction until a year ago. DeknMike (talk) 20:17, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Video from a North Carolina public high school shows a drag queen rubbing their crotch against a student's crotch. This was a school sanctioned event. As this happens, the adults in the room cheer. None of them try to protect the student. This article is from Fox News.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/nc-public-school-says-looking-161425523.html

SquirrelHill1971 (talk) 22:13, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia isn't the place for your culture war drivel (and Fox News is not a reliable source for anything more than the weather)

Try 8chan or conservapedia instead. Dricoust (talk) 09:11, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

I do not agree with this revert. The person depicted is not notable. Their nationality is no reason on its own to add a photo of them. Hundreds of non-notable images could be added if we start this. Will remove it again, unless someone here can come up with a good not to. --SergeWoodzing (talk) 11:11, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

"Paris is burning", realness and ballroom culture don't get any attention on the page?

Is this on purpose? because it seems like a giant oversight and an extremely thematic one at that.

(ballroom culture is in the "see also", but that seems way too little) 85.147.66.47 (talk) 19:56, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

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Since we are apparently a society of full inclusion, no matter what, I would like to ask that the term cisgender be removed from the article and replaced with heterosexual or straight as I find the above term non inclusive of the rights of heterosexual people. Thank you. 31.126.66.175 (talk) 16:15, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Heterosexual refers to sexual orientation, whereas cisgender refers to gender identity, i.e., same gender identity as your assigned gender at birth. The article should not be updated with the proposed change because these words have different meanings, and we need to follow common usage. Hist9600 (talk) 13:04, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

This is most likely a red herring, but in case anyone feels like investigating further: one of the words for 'a costume' or 'an outfit' in Norwegian, Danish and Swedish is

• Norwegian: en drakt
• Danish: en dragt
• Swedish: en dräkt

—suggesting a connection with being 'in costume'.

(Links go to dictionary entries in those languages.)

In German, I think it's Tracht. Not sure about Dutch.

It's perfectly possible,though, that being in drag is unrelated to these. The OED don't mention anything along those lines, for example. (When learning Norwegian, I assumed the words were related, and remembered drakt that way.) Musiconeologist (talk) 16:50, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Interesting theory. Needs a reliable source here. Scottish? --SergeWoodzing (talk) 07:47, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

You should point out that trans men can also be drag queens (and not only drag kings) as a performance like the famous Gottmik. 2A01:E0A:5DA:C520:C076:CBBE:592B:1EBF (talk) 15:11, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Isn't it obvouls that this whole section belongs in the arcticle Drag (entertainment), not here? SergeWoodzing (talk) 14:36, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

I rolled back 2 edits where an image had been added here as a separate section, but with no explaiation or request, SergeWoodzing (talk) 08:38, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

I understand that while most drag queens throughout history have been gay men, many have also been gender-nonconforming or trans women. One only has to visit a drag show or look at the list of queens who have appeared on Rupaul's Drag Race (at least 20) to see this is the case today, and there are many famous historical drag queens who can be understood as trans women such as Marsha P. Jonson and Crystal LaBeija. I don't disagree with the word "usually" but a more accurate and useful sentence for readers unfamiliar with this topic might be "Historically, drag queens have usually been gay men or trans women, although in recent years feminine drag has grown in popularity among performers of other genders, including trans men (who historically often performed as drag kings)." Rynd (talk) 00:50, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

I don’t think that’s factually accurate. The open acceptance and inclusion of trans women in the drag scene is a relatively recent thing (as in only the last seven years or so). Prior to 2017, drag queens went out of their way to differentiate themselves from transgender women; partly because LGBTQ culture for a long time associated the trans community closely with sex work and drag artists felt a need to protect their image and dissociate themselves from the trans community for this reason. (There’s academic research on this.) That’s not to say that there weren’t some trans women working as drag queens but many were not free to be open because of transphobia in the drag community.

There was controversy surrounding early trans performers on Drag Race and some of the transphobic comments were made by RuPaul and other members of the show’s production team. RuPaul even argued they shouldn’t be allowed to compete because they weren’t drag queens. (This was very much how things were until RuPaul's Drag Race season 9 when Peppermint (entertainer) became the first openly trans woman allowed to enter the competition; a decision which was not widely approved of at the time. It was controversial). Additionally, terms like non-binary or gender non-conforming are relatively new paradigms. We need to be careful to not superimpose 21st century worldviews and constructs onto the past when such ideas were not articulated or understood the way they are today. All of this to say, I don’t think it would be accurate to include trans women as holding a prominent place among drag queens historically because they were systematically marginalized and excluded from the drag community until very recently. A drag queen who was openly trans was practically unheard of prior to the 21st century; although trans women commonly competed in the ball scene in their own separate categories which is a different thing all together. It was a gay men only club for the longest time in terms of drag shows and pageants. 4meter4 (talk) 01:49, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

The origin of drag queens doesn't seem to be covered explicitly. It sounds as if it began with or after the Pansy craze in the US.

Acting in drag is a British tradition though it seems to make Americans uncomfortable. The Monty Python troupe often did routines in drag, but I wouldn't consider them drag queens. They are intentionally poor impersonators, so perhaps they fit in the pantomime category. More recently, Hugh Laurie was an excellent performer in drag (and out of it). I don't consider him a drag queen. The 2000 film The Last of the Blonde Bombshells includes a man who impersonated a woman in an "all-girl" band; that's a bit different too.

Then there is the French play and the musical La Cage aux Folles. A character performs as a drag queen, but also impersonates a woman. Then other characters impersonate drag queens. Hey, it's a farce.

So:

1. Is there a spectrum of roles with drag queens at the extreme?

2. What about the many instances of women "in drag" in armies?

3. Is this article US-centric in focussing on drag queens rather than drag in general?

4. As I commented earlier, should the title be simply Drag?

I hope I don't offend anyone. It's a complicate subject and my knowledge is limited.

Humpster (talk) 08:26, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

See Drag (entertainment).

SergeWoodzing (talk) 17:20, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. It was Francis Renault that brought me to this page.

Nevertheless, the definition at Drag (entertainment), ("Drag is a performance of exaggerated femininity, masculinity, or other forms of gender expression...") doesn't fit. I can only judge by photographs but I wouldn't call it exaggerated. Nor does crossdressing fit. So I have linked Renault to female impersonation. That would fit for the fictional character in Victor, Victoria but doesn't work for the masher of "Tipping the Velvet". Crossdressing isn't quite right for women (or men) who disguise themselves of necessity. Perhaps there is a need for an article of definitions!

Humpster (talk) 06:03, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

@Humphrey Tribble You've hit on one of the challenges of editing in this area as there are multiple terms that overlap, and they are terms that have not been consistently defined over time and which have taken on different cultural and political meanings within different contexts. "Drag" as a term comes from English Renaissance theatre where it was simply the term used for men dressed as women because there costumes would drag across the floor. Women were barred by law from appearing on the stage so men had to play the female characters. There wasn't a queer/LGBTQIA+ context though to the performance in the way that we understand today as that kind of thinking didn't exist then (ie gender theory or even a concept of sexuality wasn't in the language). Undoubtedly there were actors who were gay who were playing those parts (we know that based on letters and other primary documents on specific actors which indicate they were having same sex relationships), or perhaps people that today we would consider trans or non-binary, but again that society had no conception of gender theory or gender dysphoria. Regardless the term was more in line originally with the later term female impersonation.

The term female impersonator became widely used in the 19th century; originally in the context of the American minstrel show in the 1830s. It extended into variety theatre like vaudeville and then into legitimate theatre, and the Brits adopted the term within the music hall traditon which spawned in the 1850s. It was seen as different than drag which was then associated with specific types of female characters portrayed by men in the British theatre tradition which was adopted in 19th century American theatre. In this 19th century context there still was no attachment between LGBTQIA+ identity and drag/female impersonation. The men in these roles were perceived as straight.

The term drag didn't take on a gay/queer context until the 1920s when the Pansy craze started the beginnings of where we are today. Female impersonators would perform at these clubs wearing drag (although the term drag queen was still not used). However, the formation of a gay club/bar culture in this period is what led to the development of the modern "drag queen". Yet female impersonators were still a popular form of entertainment in straight nightclubs as well, and were not openly gay/queer. It's during this period that amateur drag performers in gay bar culture began to emerge and its this type of amateur gay bar performer that most closely resembles the modern drag queen because it was the first entertainment made explicitly for a gay audience (in this case a gay male audience). Undoubtedly, the professional female impersonator's bag of tricks/skill-sets impacted the bar culture so a clear separation is impossible. Not to be forgotten is the ball culture of the non-white gay culture which is a tradition dating to the 19th century in African-American and Hispanic-American communities, and Cross-dressing balls in general. Many of the drag queen traditions today originally came out of the ball sub-culture, which was an amateur movement and a pre-cursor to drag pageantry.

In response to the new gay bar/club sub culture that started in the 1920s and grew in the succeeding decades, the term "drag queen" was born as a pejorative term in New York City in the 1950s used by professional female impersonators who wanted to differentiate themselves from both amateur gay subculture performers (which threatened their respectability and employment in straight entertainment venues) and from cross-dressers and transexuals (the terms of that period). The latter two terms were associated with sexual fetish/deviancy and with a type of street prostitute. From the 1950s-1970s there was this divide where there were respectable highly paid not openly queer female impersonator professionals that worked outside of the gay club/bar culture in straight venues (such as Dame Edna), and "disreputable" drag queens who were amateurs performing in gay clubs/bars for tips. This latter amateur movement spawned the hall marks of the lip synch and many of the terms and words associated with drag queens.

Starting in the 1980s but increasingly so in the 1990s, the term female impersonator was out of fashion in the United States and drag queen became the more widely recognized term for men performing as women in America thanks in large part to talk shows of the period and performers like RuPaul. The term was also exclusively identified with queer culture/identity, and Americans began to forget the long history of straight men performing for straight audiences in drag under the term female impersonator. The term "drag queen" began to spread outside of the United States as American cultural artifacts like popular film and music using the term spread around the globe. Obviously, Britain and Australia and other parts of the world had gay entertainment subcultures of their own which involved cross-gender performance/entertainment. However, these cultures didn't use the word/term "drag queen" which was birthed specifically as a term in the gay subculture of New York City of the 1950s. I can't really speak to how the term was assimilated everywhere. Many places weren't even familiar with the term until Drag Race came along within their particular country. Other places, like the UK, were familiar with the term long before Drag Race came along, and drag/gay bar culture obviously had some international inter-linking before Drag Race. All of this to say, the American gay club/bar culture "drag queen" became an internationally recognized entertainment through RuPaul's Drag Race which was then globally assimilated into cultures internationally; many of which had their own distinct and unique histories of cross-gender performance within various theatre traditions, and which had their own unique gay nightlife scenes which had had their own histories and traditions involving cross-gender performance entertainment.

Today all of these have sort been lumped in collectively together under the terms "drag" or "cross-gender" performance. This makes writing on drag complex, because the term drag is now being retroactively placed into historical cultures (such as Ancient Greek drama or Kabuki) which didn't use the term drag in some publications. I personally disagree with this approach because the blending of unrelated cultures and only loosely connected theatre traditions into a "history of drag" makes an actual understanding of where the term came from and how it was used during history and understood by people across time muddled. To make matters more confusing, we now have people arguing that drag is a construct involving a heightened construction of gender; meaning that anyone expressing a hyper form of gender expression other than their own natural gender presentation is "in drag". This has led to the so-called "bio queen" (ie a cisgender woman can be a drag queen if she makes herself much more feminine than she is naturally or if she puts on the trappings of the visual aesthetic of the drag queen from the gay subculture). As the inclusivity movement surrounding developments in gender studies/Gender identity/gender expression impacts our world, the term drag is increasingly becoming undefinable, and in many respects is erasing past meanings and understandings of the word to the point that the term's origins in gay male nightlife/sub-culture is being erased in a way that I think is doing harm to the gay community. If a biological straight woman can dress as a woman and be a drag queen as some people now argue, what is a drag queen and what is drag? If drag queens developed with gay male subculture in New York specifically as a means of gay men surviving in a repressive hetero-normative society, is it right to take their artform and cultural tradition and have it appropriated by other people? That's where we are today in a world where gender binary is being deconstructed and anybody can be a drag queen.4meter4 (talk) 21:14, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

@SergeWoodzing I just created a quick article on Female impersonation (needs expanding) which makes an important separation from drag (entertainment), although it might be better to move it to gender impersonation. In general, I think we need to do a better job differentiating between gender impersonation and drag because they aren't exactly the same thing. This book makes a compelling distinction where drag is defined as different than female impersonation because of its specifically queer identity: French, Sarah. Staging Queer Feminism. Palgrave Macmillan UK. p. 94. ISBN 9781137465436. We need to recognize that much of what is being presented here as "drag history" isn't exactly drag history but the history of female impersonation which for the majority of history looked nothing like the drag queens of LGBTQ culture. For one thing, female impersonators were predominantly cisgender heterosexual men (at least as far as the public knew) through most of history, and they were taking on female characters in plays and comedy sketches performed for heteronormative audiences as opposed to adopting/developing a drag persona and identity for a queer audience. They also were predominantly performing in works with little to no queer subtext, and in fact there was a concerted effort to deliberately dissociate from queer identity in most cases. Minstrel shows, vaudeville, burlesque, early films for the most part were presenting female impersonators as heteronormative, although undoubtedly some of the performances were queer coded and performed by queer artist who were closeted in some instances. (and those are exactly the types of examples we should be highlighting when looking at drag's roots within the broader subject of female impersonation) In short, I think we should move much of this history to the female impersonation article, and really focus in on the queer identity aspect of drag within this article . 4meter4 (talk) 05:40, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

I do not undertand the use of the word queer in these contexts and decided years ago not to try to figure it out. I have had a number of drag queens as friends and in shows I worked on. Some of them are against the use of that word, others are not. So, proceed and do what you feel is good for Wikipedia, and we'll let others weigh in! All I ask is that you proceed with caution. It's still a controversial word, believe it or not. Best wishes, --SergeWoodzing (talk) 21:06, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

@SergeWoodzing I hear you, but I think its equally controversial to tie up all female impersonation up into drag. Dame Edna Everage for example really shouldn't be in the drag (entertainment) article because Barry Humphries insisted he did not do drag and was not a drag queen and was merely an actor performing a character. When we get down to it, drag queens are an intimate part of and are inextricably linked to LGBTQ culture, and they perform a unique social/cultural role in the LGBTQ community. Drag queens work in gay bars and in nightclubs, and the ball and pageant systems were built around a gay and transgender sub-culture. Drag queens also have their own subculture not shared with female impersonators with words unique to their world (see Drag Race terminology). The drag queen is a performer attached to a certain socio-cultural and even political setting (the gay rights movement was influenced by drag queen activists). Drag queens are involved in pride parades, and LGBTQ rights protests. That's very different than the long history of female impersonators working in minstrel shows, vaudeville, burlesque, plays, musical theatre etc. for predominantly straight audiences, and by mainly straight men who never performed in gay clubs, participated in the ball or pageant drag scene, or engaged with drag queen culture (ie. the ball scene, the LGBTQ nightlife scene, the linguistics/language of drag, etc.). Female impersonation is not attached to a particular socio-cultural group, whereas drag is. That said, there is always going to be some overlap between the two, and there will inevitably be certain performers that do not fit neatly anywhere or bridge the divide. It's a very difficult thing to concretely define. Best.4meter4 (talk) 22:06, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

I feel like your argument here is that drag, by being necessarily associated with the LGBTQ community, thus is driven by a sexual aspect (at its core what else defines LGBT and Q?). Is that really the point you want to make?9 2001:56A:F387:E300:9D5A:2905:7FBB:2CF3 (talk) 22:12, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

It's not "my argument". It is what's reflected in the literature. Female impersonation has a long history of performance to predominantly straight/cis audiences and by straight/cis performers going back to hundreds of years. The term female impersonator emerged in the 19th century among straight male performers working in theaters for straight audiences. Drag queens on the other hand were born in the NYC gay nightlife scene (literally the term "drag queen" comes from gay subculture specific to NYC where it first emerged in the 1950s among gay men).4meter4 (talk) 02:46, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

I was very surprised that a link to "female impersonator" brought me to this article. I don't understand the nuances, but I thought they were different. If they are in the same article, perhaps it should be entitled Drag. Humpster (talk) 07:34, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

I was about to delete the entire "Drag" seection, which belongs in the linked article Drag (entertainment), but stopped myself in case anyone can come up with a good reason for us to duplicate the exact same info here and there. I can only thank an editor who just added such a duplication to both articles. Will delete here unless convinced not to. SergeWoodzing (talk) 12:31, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with summarizing material from another article to give context to this one. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 14:12, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

This section is about duplication, not summarizing. And about the quality of this encyclopedia which should not include obvious duplication. --SergeWoodzing (talk) 22:35, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Hit CTRL-F for "thos". 63.155.61.134 (talk) 00:01, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Feel free to fix it yourself! You can mark the edit as minor since it's just a typographical correction. Welcome to Wikipedia! Anerdw (talk) 00:03, 5 April 2025 (UTC)