Let’s Talk about Sexuality The Identity of a “Drag King”
Appearance in a fashion film by Team Abnormal [of Konkuk University’s Department of Fashion Design] ©Photo by Yoon Hee-ji    
Editor’s note: The “Let’s Talk about Sexuality” series explores the diverse values and experiences that women in their twenties have with regards to sex, bodies, and relationships. Through it, Ilda hopes to create a new, feminist sexual discourse. The series is funded by the Korea Foundation for Women’s Gender Equal Social Development Project.
 
What Drag Means to Me
 
For those who are unfamiliar with the term ‘drag’, I’ll begin by explaining how I define it. I think of drag as an act that expresses one’s resistance to the gender norms expected of individuals in society in accordance with their biological sex and that takes a form that can arrest the attention of many unspecified people.
 
Drag today is different from what it was when its sole means of expression was for a specific community to rent an exclusive space for performances. Drag performances were even included [in 2008] in the election campaign of Korea’s first out lesbian candidate for the National Assembly, Choi Hyeon-sook, and many drag performers now not only create and participate in shows but also post photos and videos of themselves on social media.
 
To me, what is important about drag is the intention, imbued with ‘political significance,’ to disclose one’s character and personal idea of beauty to the masses. Therefore, I personally don’t see cross dressing, which is based on the desire to wear the clothes of another gender, personal acts of dressing oneself in another gender’s clothing, cosplay, or butch lesbian preferences for men’s clothing as ‘drag performance’.
 
I think many people are familiar with drag queens but not with drag kings. Even those who are familiar with drag queens most often think of cisgender gay queens on a gay club stage. Therefore, when thinking of drag queens one might imagine a compendium of characteristics deemed feminine in society taken to the extreme by a male performer. However, drag is not a reversal of sexes.
 
Women are not the only ones who can become drag kings, just as men are not the only ones who can become drag queens. Drag queens who do not show an extreme embodiment of socially feminine characteristics exist, as do drag kings who do not demonstrate hypermasculinity. There are queens who are muscular or have mustaches, and kings who wear women’s lingerie and show their curves, just to give a few examples of the diversity among drag performers. I think that the appearances of these queens and kings are very different from what society deems feminine or masculine.
 
My First Drag Performance—for My Grandmother?
 
I was born as the youngest child of a family with three daughters. I am 8 years younger than my oldest sister, and 7 years younger than my other sister. It’s difficult to find other families around me who have three daughters. Not only is the presence of three children quite rare, but if a family has two daughters and chooses to have a third kid because they are well off enough to be able to, it’s common wisdom that the youngest should be a son. When the third child is shown to be another daughter during pregnancy, she is often aborted; I was also supposed to meet that fate. However, when my father asked about my gender in April of 1994, the ob-gyn supposedly gave the following ambiguous reply: “I think it’s a son… I’m not sure.”
Women are not the only ones who can become drag kings, just as men are not the only ones who can become drag queens. A screenshot from the video “Meet London’s Female Queens”. http://bit.ly/2hNPYAZ  ©Source: broadly.vice.com    
 
From as far back as I can remember, I’ve listened to stories about how I was able to safely arrive into this world. My father has emphasized countless times that I should feel grateful to my parents for not choosing abortion despite “the nagging ambiguity,” while adding qualifiers such as “we had you because we wanted a son”, “the youngest should have been a son”.
 
My father and maternal grandmother, who I spent most of my time with prior to entering elementary school, worshipped at the altar of the small, uncircumcised penis. They would melt at the sight of neighbors holding baby boys in their arms. “He looks so smart and handsome,” they would exclaim. This is how obsessed they were with the myth and potential of the penis—to the extent of piling such praise on a baby swaddled in a blanket who could not even control his arms and legs.
 
As a child, I wasn’t entirely oblivious to such social cues. So I shouted in front of my grandmother, “I want to be a boy”. I would stuff the front of my underwear with a steamed sweet potato or soap, and walk with a wide-legged gait. When my grandmother burst into laughter, I even shook my pelvis and danced. Perhaps one could say that this was my first act of (drag) kinging?
 
My grandmother and I grew apart when I was 5, which was when my mother quit her job and our family moved to Songpa-gu. Whenever my father reproached me for not being a son, my mother would loudly protest by saying, “Why do you say that to a child?”, though I myself didn’t show any negative reaction. A few years later, my mother discovered that my father was having an affair. Paradoxically, my father became angry at my mother: “In the old days, it would be normal for a man to set up a second family if his first wife couldn’t even give him a son”. I saw my mother, who had lost her economic independence, collapse without being able to say a word or take any action.
 
But this did not mean that I really wanted to become a man. Perhaps things would have been different if there were positive role models around me, but the men I encountered were often rude, practically devoid of human rights awareness, self-aggrandizing, and unhygienic. I did not want to try to pass as that kind of person. I wanted my parents to eventually realize that men were overrated.
 
However, life as a woman wasn’t satisfying, either. I have never felt that I am the kind of woman demanded by social expectations, nor have I wanted to become her. I was confused because I didn’t know which category I should belong to.
 
My Debut as Drag King Azangman
 
As soon as I returned to Korea after studying abroad, my family began to correct every aspect of my behavior. During our car ride home, they explained to me what kind of clothing and makeup a young woman in Korea needed to wear, what kind of gaze, way of speech, and smile befit a woman in her 20s. After that, as I spent about a year as the meek woman who conformed to societal expectations, I quickly learned how women were treated in Korea.
 
Too many women were dying, with their deaths sometimes becoming fodder for mass entertainment. I was plagued by despair. First of all, I didn’t like bras that imprisoned my body. It was incredibly stressful to me that showing the curvature of one’s breasts had sexual significance. Though I was aware of the dangers, I relieved this stress by going topless in public spaces.
 
During that time, my girlfriend told me that a feminist event group called “The Monstrous Feminine” was looking for a drag king performer, and suggested that I perform for them. I therefore employed my first drag king performance as a means to express my support for the ‘free nipples movement’. The event took place on October 31st, 2017. Bare-chested, I danced to a fast beat and lip synced. It was clear that no one in the audience felt my exposed chest expressed sexual undertones.
 
From the first performance of The Monstrous Feminine. Lip syncing to “That Laughing Track”. ©photo by Deo-Deok    
Drag Makeup is Far Different from Conventional Beauty Ideals
 
In the past, when I left the house in heavy makeup, my friends would criticize me in a sarcastic tone, saying, “You’re practically wearing a disguise”. To them, makeup was something women put on because they wanted to be desired, or in order to be perceived as beautiful. So my overdone makeup, no longer beautiful according to societal standards, had become a strange ‘disguise’.
 
One of my reasons for beginning drag was that it let me escape the worship of conventional beauty and the biases women who wear makeup face in society. Drag categorizes the beautiful, ugly, and vulgar as ‘personal’ ideas. Drag makeup is not makeup that seeks to fit into normative society. Therefore, through the process of disclosing different kinds of beauty and ugliness, it can give people who worship conventional beauty the opportunity to explore their personal tastes.
 
Currently, when you ask women to think of a woman who has put effort into her appearance, most would think of ‘lively’, ‘sexy’, ‘innocent’, ‘cute’ women that fit the societal (men’s) standards of women’s beauty. The desire to adorn one’s body can arise naturally, but the modern cosmetics industry forces women to simply fit themselves to an external standard, so makeup becomes a form of labor for them and something that is oppressive. But wouldn’t the act of going public with a self that is decorated in accordance with very personal standards allow us to recognize the agency in self-adornment?
 
Might it not prevent someone’s exposed body, makeup, or clothes from being read as ‘the expression of the desire to be sexually desired by others’? Could it not provide a way to undermine sentiments supporting perpetrators of sexual violence, such as “how could she wear such revealing clothing”, “she must be a promiscuous woman”, “she deserved it”, or “she wanted it”?   
 
Do Drag Kings Glorify Men?
 
Sometimes, people say that drag kings glorify men and reinforce the gender binary. For example, I’ve had someone say that the fact that I am able to expose my nipples while in men’s clothing though I cannot do it when I am a woman emphasizes male authority or the self-autonomy of male bodies.
 
Even when I’m not in drag, I sometimes intentionally or accidentally expose my nipples in public. And each time this happens, I directly experience the objectification of nipples that are seen as belonging to someone who passes as a woman. There are people who linger far too long with their gaze, those who try to touch me. My actions are interpreted in ways that are entirely different from my intentions. There have been many people who seemed to forget that I have something called my own will.
 
For people who have lived their whole lives objectifying women as their breasts and genitals, curved breasts and nipples are so important that the moment those nipples are exposed I as a person become forgotten. Only my nipples seem to receive the unnecessary attention. But when I perform as a man, what people focus on are not my nipples. I hope that the audience recognizes such differences. I don’t hide the parts of my body that are considered feminine. My short stature, thin arms and legs, and the swell of my breasts—I show these parts of myself. Whoever is watching the performance will be aware that this is a woman’s body. But the moment the audience perceives me as male, it isn’t my body that changes—their gazes do.
 
I perform men who are fearsome and repulsive to me. I become a wealthy, severe-looking Western man, a conservative elderly one, a violent artist. I overcome my fear through this process. I especially like to express men whose personalities contain an undercurrent of insanity. To create this look, I hide my original skin color under a base layer of pale white, and paint on high eyebrows, creating the discomforting impression of a smile stretched over bubbling rage.
Performance at Club Rabbithole. I wore my father’s suit. ©robert micheal evans    
 
I believe insanity is connected to genius. But this type of genius and insanity is considered the sole property of men. Even if he has a character flaw, is violent, or has a promiscuous private life, a man is remembered as a genius if he has talent, while a woman in the same position dies trapped inside a hospital ward or within her home. I have felt discomfort and fear about men who enjoy these privileges without recognizing them as such, or men who take for granted that they belong to a privileged class.
 
Though I still have that fear, I no longer feel so afraid that my day-to-day is affected since I developed an alter ego for my performances called Azangman. By mimicking and caricaturing the men I fear, I laugh at them with the audience. I gain the composure necessary to ridicule them. When I become Azangman, I feel like I become a true “subject”.
 
For my third performance as Azangman, I secretly put on my father’s suit. This was a cherished suit from the days when he was much younger and had just begun his business, a time when he was more violent than he is now. As I rolled on the floor and sullied this stolen suit, I was able to overcome at least part of my fear and loathing of my father.
 
The Limitations Female Drag Kings Face
 
I was lucky to have debuted through The Monstrous Feminine. Most of the audience members at the event were feminists, so I did not feel like I was in danger when I exposed my skin, and there was no sexual harassment or assault, nor unauthorized filming.
 
Right after I debuted through The Monstrous Feminine, I was asked to perform at a club that specializes in drag events. At first, I was glad, but the club gave me restrictions based on my biological sex on how much skin I could expose, regardless of the gender I would perform as. Therefore, I was prohibited from exposing my nipples. I may be small in build, but I am adept at expressing the confidence that society has endowed men with. I chose to express masculinity through expression of the confidence manifest in the male body (lack of hesitance in revealing body hair, chest, and fat), but I was constrained from this mode of expression.
 
On the other hand, drag queens were allowed to expose their nipples despite performing as women, because they were male performers. Drag is the expression of the performer’s character and conception of beauty with the intention of expressing one’s political resistance to the gender binary. But if female performers are constrained because they are women, can any female performer put on their show with confidence?
 
The club would have been concerned about the sexual harassment or assault that a female performer might experience from members of an unknown audience. Of course, I understand their position, and am aware of the risk I face. But I decided that worrying about the misogynistic gaze (slut shaming) and accepting a restriction founded in misogyny would lie in opposition to the reason I began drag.
 
The lack of diversity among drag kings, female drag performers, and other drag performers and our limited visibility is due to how drag has been established in Korea as a facet of cisgender gay male culture. It has been promoted as ‘drag queen’ culture as opposed to drag culture, so that even performers who do not label their drag as ‘queens’ are introduced as such for convenience and promotional purposes.
 
Promotional photograph for the second The Monstrous Feminine event on Christmas. An image of myself when not in drag. ©Photo by gara docu    
For example, one genre of drag that is not very well known in Korea is club kid drag.[
A genre of drag fashion that began in the 1980s in underground queer clubs with artists and queer fashion influencers such as Michael Alig and James St. James. This genre involves avant-garde fashion and looks that are flamboyant as well as gender neutral, leaving the viewer guessing.
] It is uncommon for artists of this genre to label themselves ‘queen’ or ‘king’.
 
Korean club kid performers such as Nix or Hoso Hailey Sodomite do not label themselves in terms of gender categories; instead, they focus more on the visual effects of drag. But when performing at clubs, they are told to “put on more feminine makeup” or “tuck”[
The act of taping one’s penis and testes back so that they are less noticeable
], and forced to perform as queens, in addition to being introduced as ‘drag queens’.
 
For drag performers who are not cisgender male queens, spaces where one can perform are also limited. When I recently got in contact with drag king and burlesque performer Sapphire Rain in preparation for the drag king contest I am organizing, she told me that there hadn’t been any spaces or events where she could put on the kind of drag king performance that she wanted to carry out. She said that most clubs seek sexy burlesque or drag queen performances.
 
Perhaps due to the unrivaled visibility of queen performances by cisgender gay men who parody voluptuous, sexy women, criticism of drag based on the idea that it is ‘men pretending to be women’ or ‘misogynistic’ abound. I think that all drag contributes to subverting the gender binary and the performance of gender. But in order to remove the misguided connotation that drag=dressing up as a woman, I think many different kinds of drag performers need to be made visible.
 
Preparing for the Drag King Contest
 
The drag king contest All Hail, scheduled to be held on October 9th, is an event I came to organize with a few friends because I wanted to make drag king culture and queer women’s culture visible. I want to share the sense of liberation I felt at my first performance with the countless other women who want to show their true selves but hesitate because they fear the misogynistic gaze. I want them to be able to be honest in a safe space with people who have experienced the same pain, and to receive recognition for who they are.
 
Of course, I know from experience that it’s not easy for a woman to find a safe space. Even at events hosted by feminists where my partner and I felt safe because we did not sense any threatening individuals, we have often ended up suffering sexual harassment and assault. We were not able to handle these situations adequately, and no one tried to help us. No matter how thorough the preparations, a perpetrator and a victim can emerge in any space where people gather.
 
But at the drag king contest, we will strictly define sexual harassment and assault from the perspective of the victim. And we will address the incident regardless of the perpetrator’s age, sex, or status. We will cooperate with the victim unconditionally, and attempt to offer consolation, even if minimal, by making an effort to separate the perpetrator from the community. I hope that this event will be a place where ideals manifest in actions. In a society where women are made to endure injustices, I think it is important for women to experience a situation in which they are not threatened for disclosing who they are.
 
I have encountered people who criticize women (including me) who have lived through countless acts of violence by asking them why they are not confident about themselves or in society. I have also seen people cast judgmental gazes on others who do not conform to their idea of the ‘perfect body’ but still choose to show skin, with comments that describe these people as being “really (over)confident”. However, confidence is not something one develops on one’s own. It comes into being when one has been exposed for a long period of time to situations in which one is accepted as is. (Look at how countless Korean men have become confident subjects through the years of trust and love they have been awarded for having a penis.) I hope that the drag king contest will be a space where women can feel safe and at ease. [Published September 18, 2018. Translated by Hoyoung Moon]
 
*Original Article: https://ildaro.com/8310 To see more English-language articles from Ilda, visit our English blog(https://ildaro.blogspot.com.