If you like drag race, I dont think you're a bad person. It's not only so ubiquitous that it's impossible to avoid, but it's culturally acceptable. It's billed as inclusive. It's hella entertaining! Why should anyone care?

The problem is that it turns womanhood into a performance, by adult cis men, that paints a very specific picture of what it means to be a woman!

Imagine a trans woman in your head. A "generic" trans lady.

Let me ask you, when most people think of trans women do you think they first thought of Michelle Hendley:

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/transpedia/images/f/f5/MichelleHendley.JPG

or Willam Belli:

http://www.dragofficial.com/uploads/1/9/3/9/19395567/961716933.jpg

Hmm?

They don't think of the culturally "pretty" one, do they? With the jaw? Mmaybe an dam's apple? That's called bias. And, fun fact: a lot of us /do/ look like Belli, but feel on the inside like we're Hendley. Some of us look like Hendley but express ourselves like Belli. But don't you see that drag performers, who set the bar, are the ones setting the fucking bar? Shouldn't women be the ones guiding the idea of what women are? I don't want to have to feel like I'm competing with a man whose entire livelihood is built of scandalising my identity or the identity of all the women I know.

It puts us all into a box that's shaken up because cis people don't *have* to understand gender politics. To most people, trans women initially strike them as "men pretending to be a woman". Because drag performers muddy the water. Hell, nobody could tell if Conchita Wurst was trans or not, because the (cis male) actor capitalised on this exact issue. My mum told me she thought it was so cool that a trans woman won eurovision. "Conchita" is a drag performer. In that moment, I felt like a cartoon. It wasn't mum's fault, either. It was people like RuPaul using women as a diving platform from which to make money.

The thing all cis drag performers have in common is that their "identity" is simply a performance. They can get offstage at any point. They can turn it off. I can't.


I eat, sleep, and breathe Kaolin Cash. I'm a fucking gi- no, I'm a fucking lady. I'm not some privileged man in makeup using some concept as a caricature, as a performance. I'm better than that, I'm a full person who isn't 'performing' at all, and I value my personhood to the point that I'm willing to wear it on my sleeve and show to the world that I'm a proud trans lady with a strong identity. I will not let a bunch of dudes who can turn it off at the gate diminish that.

Many decades ago, drag was how trans women were able to express themselves in a "socially acceptable" manner (in underground clubs) without being *literally murdered*. Now, though, drag is dominated by cis men co-opting my pain for their personal entertainment at the expense of all women.

No. Fucking. Thanks.

I am not a caricature.