this is a bad, racist argument & feminists need to stop making it. criticise drag all you want, I’m no great fan, but the comparison to blackface glosses over the historical meaning of minstrelsy in a way that equivocates rather than illuminates. /1
https://twitter.com/BraddockBessie/status/1581956204955594752
minstrelsy was historically created to parody the immutable characteristics of enslaved afro americans. Its primary purpose was to entertain working class whites with subhuman depictions of black slaves in order to reproduce their complacency toward ancestral chattel slavery. /2
drag was created to engage in absurdist appropriation of arbitrary fashion conventions of gender but only incidental simulation of immutable sex characteristics of women as a subversion of the gender norms that dehumanize gay men for their insufficiently masculine sexuality. /3
Ignoring this crucial distinction in the lazy equivocal critique of so-called #WomanFace as analogous to #BlackFace minstrelsy implies the power dynamics & parodic tropes are also equivalent. That minimizes the violent purpose of minstrelsy & that makes it racist.
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