Drag king days

… at Stanford. Now playing:

The book: Diane Torr & Stephen Bottoms, Sex, Drag, and Male Roles (Michigan, 2010). And on the back cover, the copy asks:

Why would women want to perform as men?

When I quote this to my women friends, they mostly reply, “Duh.”

(The book has extensive bibliography on drag. Missing one of my favorites:

Leila Rupp & Verta Taylor, Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret (Chicago, 2003).

In the book, Leila and Verta (once OSU academic colleagues of mine — they’re at UC Santa Barbara now — and colleagues in LGBT politics) take a turn as drag kings.)

Drag king on this blog:

in January of this year, a reference to a paper on drag king names:

If hyperfeminity was the drag queens’ goal, drag kings work equally hard to come up with deeply masculine markers. (Drag kings are women performing as men, often, like drag queens, to music.) Sample names: Moby Dick, Pat Riarch, Jacques Strap and Miles Long.

in April, a digression on drag compounds, with material from the OED:

drag king; OED2 draft additions of Dec. 2006 has:

[after drag queen n. at Compounds 2] slang (orig. in gay and lesbian usage) a woman who dresses up as a man; a male impersonator. [cites from 1972 – Bruce Rodgers – on]

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