Drag Gender: Experiences of Gender for Gay and Queer Men who Perform Drag

The present study explored the experience and understanding of gender for gay and queer men who perform drag. It is part of a 20-year program of research focused on how LGBTQ gender identities arise, why they coalesce, and how they are enacted within their social contexts. Interviewers on this topic...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sex roles 2018-03, Vol.78 (5-6), p.367-384
Main Authors: Levitt, Heidi M., Surace, Francisco I., Wheeler, Emily E., Maki, Erik, Alcántara, Darcy, Cadet, Melanie, Cullipher, Steven, Desai, Sheila, Sada, Gabriel Garza, Hite, John, Kosterina, Elena, Krill, Sarah, Lui, Charles, Manove, Emily, Martin, Ryan J., Ngai, Courtney
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Audiences
Behavioral Science and Psychology
Communication
Drag (Performance)
Femininity
Gays & lesbians
Gender
Gender Discrimination
Gender Studies
Grounded Theory
Heterosexism
Homosexuality
LGBTQ people
Males
Medicine/Public Health
Men
Original Article
Performing arts
Psychology
Sex differences
Sex roles
Sexism
Sexuality
Social power
Sociology
Transgender persons
Transsexuality
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The present study explored the experience and understanding of gender for gay and queer men who perform drag. It is part of a 20-year program of research focused on how LGBTQ gender identities arise, why they coalesce, and how they are enacted within their social contexts. Interviewers on this topic involving 18 participants were subjected to a grounded theory analysis. Drag genders were tied to common experiences of overcoming social messages that maligned femininity within men, an appreciation of performance arts, and a desire to use social power to confront issues of sexism, genderism, and/or heterosexism. At the same time, participants reported differences in experiencing gender as binary or fluid and in whether they experienced their gender as shifting when engaged in performance. The study contributes to the program of research on LGBTQ genders by examining how drag gender is both essential and constructed, and how it resist sets of oppressive values and is eroticized. It examines how gendered communication functions when performed for audiences and how the social position of these men is both elevated and stigmatized within LGBTQ community. Drag gender’s multiple meanings are credited to its position between gay and transgender politics within this socially transformative moment in time.
ISSN:0360-0025
1573-2762
DOI:10.1007/s11199-017-0802-7