Drag Queen Shows: The New Blackface

[First of all, let me mention that we are back home in northeast Florida. Let it suffice to say that Arizona did not work out for us. Who knew that an elevation of 5,000 feet can wreak havoc with us high-blood-pressure people? Or that they often let forest fires burn in the Arizona mountains, blanketing little towns with particulate that can revive a person's asthma after 40 years of dormancy? Ah, the things you don't know until you actually move all your kit and caboodle to some exotic place.]

Okay--Naples, Florida. Just the other day the city won a case brought against them by the never-resting ACLU on behalf of the group Naples Pride. As part of "Pride Month," these people wanted to entertain their town with a drag queen show outside in a public park. The City of Naples said no; as in past years, you'll have to do that show indoors and restrict it to adults. Now this makes some sense, especially given the overt sexuality displayed in a modern drag queen routine. 

But I see another towering problem with such performances. For what is a drag performance but an outlandish mockery of women? A person who is a man pretends to be something he certainly is not (a woman) with the help of heavy makeup, wigs, and harlot-style clothing; he then "entertains" the audience with an absurd impersonation of something approximating a female that is at best laughable but in fact disturbing and offensive.

Compare this to the now universally banned blackface routine. In a blackface show, a white person pretends to be of a race he is not (that is, black) by smearing his face and all visible skin with heavy black makeup, outlining his grinning mouth in bold white paint and donning a curly wig. He then struts or dances about the stage in grotesque imitation of some type of black person that simply does not exist--just as the bizarre rendering of a woman portrayed in drag queen shows is a complete mockery of real women.

I hear no one expressing outrage at these degrading caricatures of women. It is about time we did. I have written about this before but people don't seem to be catching on. Women are very special and complex creations. We come loaded with a challenging biology that demands extra attention each month and also makes us the bearers and caretakers of children to keep this race going. We are by nature teachers and nurses and the ones who keep track of birthdays and dreams and unspoken needs. These great and arduous tasks deserve honor and respect rather than the derision of a carnival side show. 

For a man--who labors under none of a woman's constraints and responsibilities--to play exaggerated dress-up and pretend to be a woman in the most sex-saturated and nonsensical way possible is a deep insult to all women. Permitting such shows makes women again the butt of the joke and denies them the respect that they richly deserve. It is time to shut down such public mockery, just as we did long ago with blackface. Who's with me?