In the reading, Judith Butler describes the performance of sexualtiy and gender. She proposes that although gender is a recognizable act - straight and queer masculinity and femininity - these acts are not natural to anybody. A drag queen is no more of an imitator of femininity than a woman- although obviously these two takes on femininity are performed differently and for different reasons.
I personally appreciated Butler's musings on the song by Arithra Franklin since that song was related to my first experience seeing drag. I was a camper at a log cabin summer camp in northern Washington. In the middle of a dull account of the camps history, the song came on a boom box. The councilor stopped speaking and started stripping, revealing a red dress underneath. Dancing and lipsinking to Arithra, he made we two dozen pubesent boys gasp, blush, and laugh.
Later, when meeting for he firsr time in a year, after their coming out as gender-queer, I felt the same kind of shock.
When gender performance falls out of your expectation of the norm, it can be shocking. But, like Butler explains. Nobody owns gender exclusively.
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