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170-644: A drag queen is a person, usually male, who uses drag clothing and makeup to imitate and often exaggerate female gender signifiers and gender roles for entertainment purposes. Historically, drag queens have usually been gay men , and have been a part of gay culture . People do drag for reasons ranging from self-expression to mainstream performance. Drag shows frequently include lip-syncing , live singing, and dancing. They typically occur at LGBTQ pride parades , drag pageants , cabarets , carnivals , and nightclubs . Drag queens vary by type, culture, and dedication, from professionals who star in films and spend

340-480: A college textbook , although many of Money's ideas have since been challenged. In the late 1980s, gender studies scholar Judith Butler began lecturing regularly on the topic of gender identity, and in 1990, they published Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity , introducing the concept of gender performativity . Butler argues that the traditional view of gender is limiting in that it adheres to

510-648: A gender binary to which most people adhere and which includes expectations of masculinity and femininity in all aspects of sex and gender : biological sex , gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation. Some people do not identify with some, or all, of the aspects of gender associated with their biological sex; some of those people are transgender , non-binary, or genderqueer . Some societies have third gender categories. The 2012 book Introduction to Behavioral Science in Medicine says that with exceptions, "Gender identity develops surprisingly rapidly in

680-453: A guru . These communities have consisted over generations of those who are in abject poverty or who have been rejected by or fled their family of origin. Many work as sex workers for survival. The word "hijra" is a Hindustani word. It has traditionally been translated into English as "eunuch" or " hermaphrodite ", where "the irregularity of the male genitalia is central to the definition". However, in general hijras are born male, only

850-464: A merkin . Within the conceit of the sketch/film, they are actually women: it is the audience who are in on the joke. Monty Python women, whom the troupe called pepperpots , are random middle-aged working/lower middle class typically wearing long brown coats that were common in the 1960s. Save for a few characters played by Eric Idle , they looked and sounded very little like actual women with their caricatural outfits and shrill falsettos. However, when

1020-539: A "dislike and sometimes incapacity for needlework". During the mid-1900s, doctors pushed for corrective therapy on such women and children, which meant that gender behaviors that were not part of the norm would be punished and changed. The aim of this therapy was to push children back to their "correct" gender roles and thereby limit the number of children who became transgender. In 1905, Sigmund Freud presented his theory of psychosexual development in Three Essays on

1190-481: A "growing chorus of voices contesting the pathologization of transgender lives and the dominance of medical-scientific narratives about trans experience." As such, in 2019, the World Health Organization removed gender dysphoria from the mental illness chapter and moved it instead to the sexual health chapter, changing the term "Gender Dysphoria" to "Gender Incongruence," thereby removing gender dysphoria as

1360-627: A 'cure'." The "Yogyakarta Principles in Action" says "it is important to note that while 'sexual orientation' has been declassified as a mental illness in many countries, 'gender identity' or 'gender identity disorder' often remains in consideration." These Principles influenced the UN declaration on sexual orientation and gender identity . In 2015, gender identity was part of the United States Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges in which marriage

1530-502: A 2005 academic paper questioned the classification of gender identity problems as a mental disorder , speculating that certain DSM revisions may have been made on a tit-for-tat basis when certain groups were pushing for the removal of homosexuality as a disorder. This remains controversial, although the vast majority of today's mental health professionals follow and agree with the current DSM classifications. In recent years, however, there has been

1700-454: A 2018 article, Psychology Today stated that drag queens are "most typically gay cisgender men (though there are many drag queens of varying sexual orientations and gender identities)". Examples of trans-feminine drag queens, sometimes called trans queens , include Monica Beverly Hillz and Peppermint . Cisgender female drag queens are sometimes called faux queens or bioqueens , though critics of this practice assert that faux carries

1870-500: A Drag , launched on CBC Gem in 2018, has profiled various Canadian drag performers, inclusive of all genders, over three seasons to date. Canada's Drag Race , a Canadian spinoff of the American RuPaul's Drag Race franchise, was launched in 2020 on Crave . The same year also saw the release of Phil Connell's film Jump, Darling , centred on a young aspiring drag queen, and Thom Fitzgerald 's film Stage Mother , about

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2040-618: A Girl (1935) in the United States. That same year, Katharine Hepburn played a character who dressed as a male in Sylvia Scarlett . In 1959, drag made a big Hollywood splash in Some Like It Hot (1959). In the 1960s, Andy Warhol and his Factory scene included superstar drag queens, such as Candy Darling and Holly Woodlawn , both immortalized in the Lou Reed song " Walk on

2210-568: A campaign for presidency in 1992 under the slogan "Lick Bush in '92!" and documented in the 1993 video of the same name. Smith also ran for president in 1996 with the slogan "Lick Slick Willie in '96!" In each of these campaigns Smith ran on the Queer Nation Party ticket. In June 2019, a play based on Smith's 1992 presidential campaign, titled Ms. Blakk for President, written by Tarell Alvin McCraney and Tina Landau and starring McCraney in

2380-473: A child's attitude on gender. A mother's behavior was especially influential on a child's assumptions of the child's own gender. For example, mothers who practiced more traditional behaviors around their children resulted in the son displaying fewer stereotypes of male roles while the daughter displayed more stereotypes of female roles. No correlation was found between a father's behavior and his children's knowledge of stereotypes of their own gender. Fathers who held

2550-430: A child's life. The social learning theory posits that children furthermore develop their gender identity through observing and imitating gender-linked behaviors, and then being rewarded or punished for behaving that way, thus being shaped by the people surrounding them through trying to imitate and follow them. Large-scale twin studies suggest that the development of both transgender and cisgender gender identities

2720-435: A clear separation between these two terms. She defined drag as an art form associated with queer identity whereas female impersonation comes from a wide a range of gender identity paradigms, including heteronormativity . Additionally, many drag artists view drag as a lived form of self-expression or creativity, and perceive drag as something that is not limited to the stage or to performance. In contrast, female impersonation

2890-757: A decline in vaudeville entertainment, but drag culture began to grow in nightclubs and bars, such as Finnochio's Club and Black Cat Bar in San Francisco . During this period, Hollywood films included examples of drag. While drag was often used as a last-resort tactic in situational farce (its only permissible format at the time), some films provided a more empathetic lens than others. In 1919, Bothwell Browne appeared in Yankee Doodle in Berlin . In 1933, Viktor und Viktoria came out in Germany, which later inspired First

3060-501: A diagnosis of gender identity disorder can be made, and the disorder is further subdivided into specific diagnoses based on age, for example gender identity disorder in children (for children who experience gender dysphoria). The concept of gender identity appeared in the third edition of the DSM, DSM-III (1980), in the form of two psychiatric diagnoses of gender dysphoria: gender identity disorder of childhood (GIDC), and transsexualism (for adolescents and adults). The 1987 revision of

3230-509: A drag-aissance. Before being colonized by Spain in the mid-1500s, it was a national custom for men to dress in women's clothing. However, when the Spaniards arrived, they not only outlawed homosexuality but executed men that appeared to be homosexual. Spain cast a culture of Machismo onto the Philippines, causing any kind of queerness and queer culture to be heavily suppressed. Nonetheless, in

3400-454: A dramatic device. Set in a men's prison, the film centres on a play within a play staged by one of the prisoners; however, as the roles in the play are performed by fellow prisoners, even the female characters within it are played by men, and the film blends scenes in which they are clearly depicted as men performing in their own clothes in the prison chapel with scenes in which they are performing in drag in more "realistic" settings. It became

3570-475: A durable biological element underlying gender identity. Individuals may make choices due to other factors in their lives, but there do not seem to be external forces that genuinely cause individuals to change gender identity. Some studies have investigated whether there is a link between biological variables and transgender or transsexual identity. Several studies have shown that sexually dimorphic brain structures in transsexuals are shifted away from what

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3740-407: A few applications outside of performance. The origin of the term drag is uncertain. The first recorded use of drag in reference to actors dressed in women's clothing is from 1870. It may have been based on the term "grand rag" which was historically used for a masquerade ball . The term female impersonation refers to a type of theatrical performance where a man dresses in women's clothing for

3910-407: A girl than Reimer's, and who remained a woman into adulthood. She reported that she had been somewhat tomboyish during childhood, enjoying stereotypically masculine childhood toys and interests, although her childhood friends were girls. While she was bisexual , having had relationships with both men and women, she found women more sexually attractive and they featured more in her fantasies. Her job at

4080-508: A girl. Reimer underwent sex reassignment surgery at seventeen months and grew up as a girl, dressing in girl clothes and surrounded by girl toys. In the early 1970s, Money reported that Reimer's sex reassignment to female was a success, influencing the academic consensus toward the nurture hypothesis, and for the following 30 years, it became standard medical practice to reassign intersex infants and male infants with micropenises to female. After Reimer tried to commit suicide at age 13, he

4250-444: A heightened or exaggerated gender presentation. In the 1940s John Herbert , who sometimes competed in drag pageants, was the victim of an attempted robbery while he was dressed as a woman. His assailants falsely claimed that Herbert had solicited them for sex, and Herbert was accused and convicted of indecency under Canada's same-sex sexual activity law (which was not repealed until 1969). After being convicted, Herbert served time in

4420-482: A lesser extent into the new series This Hour Has 22 Minutes in the 1990s; although cross-gender performance is not as central to 22 Minutes as it was in CODCO , Cathy Jones and Mary Walsh , the two cast members common to both series, both continued to play selected male characters. The Canadian film Lilies , directed by John Greyson and adapted from a theatrical play by Michel Marc Bouchard , made use of drag as

4590-622: A line differentiating amateurs performing in drag for fun from professional female impersonators who made a living performing in drag. The second original meaning of drag queen was applied to men who chose to wear women's clothing on the streets, an act which was at that time illegal in New York City. Of this latter type two additional slang terms were applied: square drag queens which meant "boys who looked like girls but who you knew were boys" and street queens who were queer male sex workers, often homeless, that dressed as women. This second use of

4760-581: A longstanding tradition in LGBT communities, and racial minorities, where chosen families of friends live in households together, forming relationships and community to replace families of origin from which they may be estranged. Ball culture first gained exposure to a mainstream audience in 1990 when its voguing dance style was featured in Madonna 's song " Vogue ", and in Jennie Livingston 's documentary Paris

4930-418: A lot of their time in their drag personas, to people who do drag only occasionally. Women who dress as men and entertain by imitating them are called drag kings . Those who do occasional drag may be from other backgrounds than the LGBT community. There is a long history of folkloric and theatrical crossdressing that involves people of all orientations. Not everyone who does drag at some point in their lives

5100-441: A major role in the behavior of different sexes. The researchers in the lab would inject the pregnant rat with testosterone, which would then find its way to the baby's bloodstream. The females that were born had genitalia that looked like male genitalia. The females in the litter also behaved like male rats and would even try to mount other female rats, proving that biology played a major role in animal behavior. One criticism of

5270-403: A man in drag and the principal boy , such as Prince Charming or Dick Whittington , is played by a girl or young woman, as well as in comedy troupes such as Monty Python's Flying Circus (formed in the early 1970s). Within the dramatic fiction, a double standard historically affected the uses of drag. In male-dominated societies where active roles were reserved to men, a woman might dress as

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5440-440: A man under the pressures of her dramatic predicament. In these societies a man's position was above a woman's, causing a rising action that suited itself to tragedy, sentimental melodrama and comedies of manners that involved confused identities. A man dressed as a woman was thought to be a falling action only suited to broad low comedy and burlesque. Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo are an all-male ballet troupe where much of

5610-408: A manner that distances the sons from femininity, with Kane stating that "the parental boundary maintenance work evident for sons represents a crucial obstacle limiting boys' options, separating boys from girls, devaluing activities marked as feminine for both boys and girls, and thus bolstering gender inequality and heteronormativity." Many parents form gendered expectations for their child before it

5780-626: A pathological mental illness. The Yogyakarta Principles , a document on the application of international human rights law , provide in the preamble a definition of gender identity as each person's deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may not correspond with the sex assigned at birth, including the person's sense of the body (which may involve, if freely chosen, modification of bodily appearance or function by medical, surgical or other means) and other experience of gender, including dress, speech and mannerism. Principle 3 states that "Each person's self-defined [...] gender identity

5950-937: A person's gender identity is inconsistent with their biological sex characteristics (genitals and secondary sex characteristics ), resulting in individuals dressing and/or behaving in a way which is perceived by others as outside cultural gender norms. These gender expressions may be described as gender variant , transgender, or genderqueer (or non-binary ) (there is an emerging vocabulary for those who defy traditional gender identity), and people who have such expressions may experience gender dysphoria (traditionally called gender identity disorder or GID). Transgender individuals are often greatly affected by language and gender pronouns before, during, and after their transition . In recent decades it has become possible to provide sex reassignment surgery . Some people who experience gender dysphoria seek such medical intervention to have their physiological sex match their gender identity; others retain

6120-501: A production partner in some programs filmed in the United States, including The Boulet Brothers' Dragula and Hey Qween! . The world of popular music has a venerable history of drag. Marlene Dietrich was a popular actress and singer who sometimes performed dressed as a man, such as in the films Blue Angel and Morocco . In the glam rock era many male performers (such as David Bowie and The New York Dolls ) donned partial or full drag. This tradition waned somewhat in

6290-554: A religious woman who inherits her son's drag club after his death, as well as the comedy web series Queens , starring several real Toronto-area drag queens. 2023 saw the release of the films Enter the Drag Dragon , Solo , Gamodi and Queen Tut . OutTV , a Canadian television channel devoted to LGBTQ programming, has aired the documentary series Drag Heals and the reality competition shows Call Me Mother and Sew Fierce . It has also been directly involved as

6460-432: A result of the new understanding of gender, academic usage of the term sex began to be more restricted to biological aspects, and associated with the choices male and female , while the term gender was associated initially with man or boy , girl or woman . While academic usage of terms man and woman began to diverge at the same time, and become more restricted to concepts related to gender, this distinction

6630-631: A sketch called for a "real" woman, the Pythons almost always called on Carol Cleveland . The joke is reversed in the Python film Life of Brian where "they" are pretending to be men, including obviously false beards, so that they can go to the stoning. When someone throws the first stone too early the Pharisee asks "who threw that", and they answer "she did, she did,..." in high voices. "Are there any women here today?" he says, "No no no" they say in gruff voices. In

6800-544: A theatrical play by Michel Tremblay . The 1977 film Outrageous! , starring Canadian drag queen Craig Russell as a fictionalized version of himself, was an important milestone in Canadian film, as one of the first gay-themed films ever to receive widespread theatrical distribution in North America. A sequel film, Too Outrageous! , was released in 1987. In the 1980s, the sketch comedy series CODCO and The Kids in

6970-706: A third gender. They are anatomically male but dress and behave in a manner considered typically feminine. According to Tamasailau Sua'ali'i ( see references ), fa'afafine in Samoa at least are often physiologically unable to reproduce. Fa'afafine are accepted as a natural gender, and neither looked down upon nor discriminated against. Fa'afafine also reinforce their femininity with the fact that they are only attracted to and receive sexual attention from straight masculine men. They have been and generally still are initially identified in terms of labour preferences, as they perform typically feminine household tasks. The Samoan Prime Minister

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7140-664: A tradition, when pantomimes became a popular form of entertainment in Europe during the late 1800s to the mid-1900s. The dame became a stock character with a range of attitudes from " charwoman " to " grande dame " who was mainly used for improvisation. A notable, and highly successful, pantomime dame from this period was Dan Leno . Beyond theatre, in the 1800s, Molly houses became a place for gay men to meet, often dressed in drag. Despite homosexuality being outlawed, men would dress in women's clothing and attend these taverns and coffee houses to congregate and meet other, mostly gay, men. By

7310-552: A trend towards less well-defined gender roles and identities, as studies of the parental association ("coding") of toys as masculine, feminine, or neutral indicate that parents increasingly code kitchens and in some cases dolls as neutral rather than exclusively feminine. However, Emily Kane found that many parents still showed negative responses to items, activities, or attributes that were considered feminine, such as domestic skills, nurturance, and empathy. Research has indicated that many parents attempt to define gender for their sons in

7480-433: A widespread and longstanding cultural phenomena. The ancient Roman playwright Plautus ' ( c.  254 – 184 BCE) Menaechmi includes a scene in which Menaechmus I puts on his wife's dress, then wears a cloak over it, intending to remove the dress from the house and deliver it to his mistress. Menaechmus says: "Look at me. Do I look the part?" [ Age me aspice. ecquid adsimulo similiter? ] Peniculus responds: "What in

7650-408: A woman; I dress like a drag queen!" The meaning of the term drag queen has changed across time. The term first emerged in New York City in the 1950s, and initially had two meanings. The first meaning referred to an amateur performer who did not make a living in drag but may have participated in amateur public performances such as those held at a drag ball or a drag pageant . This was meant to draw

7820-586: A youth reformatory in Guelph, Ontario . Herbert later served another sentence for indecency at reformatory in Mimico . Herbert wrote Fortune and Men's Eyes in 1964 based on his time behind bars. He included the character of Queenie as an authorial self-insertion . In 1973 the first Canadian play about and starring a drag queen, Hosanna by Michel Tremblay , was performed at Théâtre de Quat'Sous in Montreal . In 1977

7990-520: Is Burning the same year. Voguing is a highly stylized type of modern house dance that emerged in the 1980s and evolved out of 1960s ball culture in Harlem , New York. In 2018, the American television series Pose showcased Harlem's ball culture scene of the 1980s and was nominated for numerous awards. In Baroque opera, where soprano roles for men were sung by castrati , Handel 's heroine Bradamante, in

8160-536: Is a drag queen or a drag king. The term "drag" has evolved over time. Traditional definitions of the term drag utilized a gender binary which used a sex-based definition of drag where a person would be considered "in drag" if they were wearing the clothes of the opposite sex for the purposes of entertainment. However, with new paradigms of gender identity and the embrace of non-binary gender , newer definitions of drag have abandoned this binary framework in favor of defining drag as an art form of gender performance which

8330-488: Is a special case, unusually subtle and evocative of its 18th-century setting, and should be discussed in detail at Der Rosenkavalier . The self-consciously risqué bourgeois high jinks of Brandon Thomas's Charley's Aunt (London, 1892) were still viable theatre material in La Cage aux Folles (1978), which was remade, as The Birdcage , as late as 1996. Dame Edna , the drag persona of Australian actor Barry Humphries ,

8500-433: Is an ongoing debate about whether transgender drag queens are actually considered "drag queens". Some argue that, because a drag queen is defined as a man portraying a woman, transgender women cannot be drag queens. Drag kings are women who assume a masculine aesthetic, but this is not always the case, because there are also biokings, bioqueens, and female queens , which are people who perform their own biological sex through

8670-422: Is associated with their birth sex and towards what is associated with their preferred sex. The volume of the central subdivision of the bed nucleus of a stria terminalis or BSTc (a constituent of the basal ganglia of the brain which is affected by prenatal androgens ) of transsexual women has been suggested to be similar to women's and unlike men's, but the relationship between BSTc volume and gender identity

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8840-431: Is due to genetic factors, with a small potential influence of unique environmental factors. John Money was instrumental in the early research of gender identity, though he used the term gender role . He disagreed with the previous school of thought that gender was determined solely by biology. He argued that infants are born a blank slate and a parent could be able to decide their babies' gender. In Money's opinion, if

9010-435: Is even born, after determining the child's sex through technology such as ultrasound . The child thus is born to a gender-specific name, games, and even ambitions. Once the child's sex is determined, most children are raised to in accordance with it, fitting a male or female gender role defined partly by the parents. When considering the parents' social class, lower-class families typically hold traditional gender roles, where

9180-514: Is exclusive to humans. In a position statement, the Endocrine Society stated: The medical consensus in the late 20th century was that transgender and gender incongruent individuals suffered a mental health disorder termed "gender identity disorder." Gender identity was considered malleable and subject to external influences. Today, however, this attitude is no longer considered valid. Considerable scientific evidence has emerged demonstrating

9350-506: Is extremely difficult to change gender identity. Martin and Ruble conceptualize this process of development as three stages: (1) as toddlers and pre-schoolers, children learn about defined characteristics, which are socialized aspects of gender; (2) around the ages of five to seven years, identity is consolidated and becomes rigid; (3) after this "peak of rigidity", fluidity returns and socially defined gender roles relax somewhat. Barbara Newmann breaks it down into four parts: (1) understanding

9520-562: Is integral to their personality and is one of the most basic aspects of self-determination, dignity and freedom. No one shall be forced to undergo medical procedures, including sex reassignment surgery, sterilisation or hormonal therapy, as a requirement for legal recognition of their gender identity." Principle 18 states that "Notwithstanding any classifications to the contrary, a person's sexual orientation and gender identity are not, in and of themselves, medical conditions and are not to be treated, cured or suppressed." Relating to this principle,

9690-417: Is neither determined entirely by childhood rearing nor entirely by biological factors. Several prenatal biological factors, including genes and hormones, may affect gender identity. It has been suggested that gender identity is controlled by prenatal sex steroids , but this is hard to test because there is no way to study gender identity in animals. According to biologist Michael J. Ryan , gender identity

9860-448: Is not always the case. While a person may express behaviors, attitudes, and appearances consistent with a particular gender role , such expression may not necessarily reflect their gender identity. The term gender identity was coined by psychiatry professor Robert J. Stoller in 1964 and popularized by psychologist John Money . In most societies, there is a basic division between gender attributes associated with males and females,

10030-473: Is not limited to a binary framework but which must engage with and critique conceptions of gender in some fashion. This could include explorations with heightened forms of masculinity or femininity, as well as playing with other forms of gender identity. Unlike female impersonation , the term drag is closely associated with queer identity . This close association between the term drag and the LGBTQ community began in

10200-594: Is patron of the Samoa Fa'afafine Association . Translated literally, fa'afafine means "in the manner of a woman." Hijras are officially recognized as third gender in the Indian subcontinent, being considered neither completely male nor female. Hijras have a recorded history in the Indian subcontinent since antiquity, as suggested by the Kama Sutra . Many hijras live in well-defined and organised all-hijra communities, led by

10370-585: Is played by a man, and the Maid Marians referred to in old documents as having taken part in May Games and other festivals with Morris dancers would most probably also have been men. The "consort" of the Castleton Garland King was traditionally a man (until 1956, when a woman took over the role) and was originally simply referred to as "The Woman". Cross-dressing elements of performance traditions are

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10540-438: Is specifically limited to performance and may or may not involve an LGBTQI point of view. Female impersonation can be traced back at least as far as ancient Greece. There was little to no gender equity then and women held a lower social status. This meant male actors would play female roles during theatrical performances. This tradition continued for centuries but began to be less prevalent as motion pictures became popular. During

10710-481: Is still unclear. Similar brain structure differences have been noted between gay and heterosexual men, and between lesbian and heterosexual women. Transsexuality has a genetic component. Research suggests that the same hormones that promote the differentiation of sex organs in utero also elicit puberty and influence the development of gender identity. Different amounts of these male or female sex hormones can result in behavior and external genitalia that do not match

10880-662: Is the only country in the Arab world with an increasingly visible drag scene. Drag culture has existed in Lebanon for several decades but gained popularity with the astronomical rise of Bassem Feghali , who came to prominence in the 1990s, becoming a household name for his impersonation of Lebanese female singers. Due to the global success of Rupaul's Drag Race , Beirut's drag scene has adopted various influences that blend American drag culture with local, unique cultural elements. The drag scene has grown so much that in 2019 Vogue magazine declared it

11050-509: Is the television play (1968) and film (1973) The Best Pair of Legs in the Business . In the film version Reg Varney plays a holiday camp comedian and drag artist whose marriage is failing. Early representations of drag in Canadian film included the 1971 film Fortune and Men's Eyes , adapted from a theatrical play by John Herbert , and the 1974 film Once Upon a Time in the East , adapted from

11220-450: Is thus distinct from gender identity in that it is the external expression of gender but may not necessarily portray a person's gender identity and may vary "according to racial/ethnic background, socio-economic status and place of residence." In late-19th-century medical literature, women who chose not to conform to their expected gender roles were called "inverts", and they were portrayed as having an interest in knowledge and learning, and

11390-478: Is used to refer to them. RuPaul has said, "You can call me he. You can call me she. You can call me Regis and Kathie Lee ; I don't care! Just so long as you call me." Drag queens are sometimes called transvestites , although that term also has many other connotations than the term drag queen and is not much favored by many drag queens themselves. The term tranny, an abbreviation of the term transvestite, has been adopted by some drag performers, notably RuPaul, and

11560-402: Is widely agreed that core gender identity is firmly formed by age 3. At this point, children can make firm statements about their gender and tend to choose activities and toys which are considered appropriate for their gender (such as dolls and painting for girls, and tools and rough-housing for boys), although they do not yet fully understand the implications of gender. After age three, it

11730-523: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or DSM) is the formal diagnosis of people who experience significant dysphoria (discontent) with the sex they were assigned at birth and/or the gender roles associated with that sex: "In gender identity disorder, there is discordance between the natal sex of one's external genitalia and the brain coding of one's gender as masculine or feminine." The DSM (302.85) has five criteria that must be met before

11900-513: The LGBTQ community . Attendees dance, vogue , walk, pose, and support one another in one or more of the numerous drag and performance competition categories. Categories are designed to simultaneously epitomize and satirize various genders, social classes and archetypes in society, while also offering an escape from reality. The culture extends beyond the extravagant formal events as many participants in ball culture also belong to groups known as " houses ",

12070-460: The San Francisco Board of Supervisors , becoming the first openly gay candidate for public office in the United States. In 1991, drag queen Terence Alan Smith, as Joan Jett Blakk , ran against Richard M. Daley for the office of mayor of Chicago, Illinois. The campaign was chronicled in the 1991 video Drag in for Votes . After qualifying for presidency on his 35th birthday, Smith announced

12240-629: The Stonewall riots , a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations by members of the LGBT community against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of 28 June 1969, at the Stonewall Inn , located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan , New York City. The riots are widely considered to be the catalyst for the gay liberation movement and the modern fight for LGBT rights in

12410-673: The UCLA Medical Center for the study of intersex and transsexual individuals. Psychoanalyst Robert Stoller generalized many of the findings of the project in his book Sex and Gender: On the Development of Masculinity and Femininity (1968). He is also credited with introducing the term gender identity to the International Psychoanalytic Congress in Stockholm, Sweden , in 1963. Behavioral psychologist John Money

12580-636: The can-can in Bowery dives like The Slide. Drag shows were popular night club entertainment in New York in the 1920s, then were forced underground, until the " Jewel Box Revue " played Harlem's Apollo Theater in the 1950s with their show, "49 Men and a Girl". For most of the performance, the "girls" were men in glamorous drag. At the end, the "one girl" was revealed to be the dashing young "man" in dinner clothes— Stormé DeLarverie —the MC who had been introducing each of

12750-614: The visual kei scene, such as Mana ( Moi dix Mois and Malice Mizer ), Kaya ( Schwarz Stein ), Hizaki and Jasmine You (both Versailles ), who always or usually appear in full or semi-drag. A drag queen (first use in print, 1941) is a person, usually a man, that dresses in drag, either as part of a performance or for personal fulfillment. The term "drag queen" distinguishes such men from transvestites , transsexuals or transgender people. Those who "perform drag" as comedy do so while wearing dramatically heavy and often elaborate makeup, wigs, and prosthetic devices (breasts) as part of

12920-425: The § 1950s and 1960s , the term gender was used exclusively as a grammatical category . The terms male and man , or female and woman , were used more or less interchangeably when referring to people of one sex or the other. As the term gender took on new meaning following the work of John Money , Robert Stoller , and others, a distinction began to be drawn between the terms sex and gender . As

13090-499: The "Jurisprudential Annotations to the Yogyakarta Principles" observed that "Gender identity differing from that assigned at birth, or socially rejected gender expression , have been treated as a form of mental illness . The pathologization of difference has led to gender-transgressive children and adolescents being confined in psychiatric institutions, and subjected to aversion techniques – including electroshock therapy – as

13260-467: The "St Trinians" films, the plot involved a man having to dress as a woman. David Walliams and (especially) Matt Lucas often play female roles in the television comedy Little Britain ; Walliams plays Emily Howard—a "rubbish transvestite", who makes an unconvincing woman. In the UK, non-comedic representations of drag acts are less common, and usually a subsidiary feature of another story. A rare exception

13430-485: The 1880s, he was organizing and hosting drag balls in Washington, D.C. The balls included folk dances, such as the cakewalk , and the male guests often dressed in female clothing. In the early 20th century, drag—as an art form and culture—began to flourish with minstrel shows and vaudeville . Performers such as Julian Eltinge and Bothwell Browne were drag queens and vaudeville performers. The Progressive Era brought

13600-478: The 1960s. In 1971, an article in Lee Brewster 's Drag Queens magazine described a drag queen as a "homosexual transvestite " who is hyperfeminine, flamboyant, and militant. Drag queens were further described as having an attitude of superiority, and commonly courted by heterosexual men who would "not ordinarily participate in homosexual relationships". While the term drag queen implied "homosexual transvestite",

13770-442: The 1960s. To this day they are usually used in that sense, though a few scholars additionally use the term to refer to the sexual orientation and sexual identity categories gay , lesbian and bisexual . Gender expression is distinct from gender identity in that gender expression is how one chooses to outwardly express their gender through one's "name, pronouns, clothing, hair style, behavior, voice or body features." It

13940-495: The 1970s the most familiar drag artist on British television was Danny La Rue . La Rue's act was essentially a music hall one, following on from a much older, and less sexualised tradition of drag. His appearances were often in variety shows such as The Good Old Days (itself a pastiche of music hall) and Sunday Night at the London Palladium . Such was his popularity that he made a film, Our Miss Fred (1972). Unlike

14110-472: The 1990s sometimes performed wearing deliberately ugly drag—that is, wearing dresses but making no attempt to look feminine, not wearing makeup and often not even shaving their beards. ( Nirvana did this several times, notably in the " In Bloom " video.) However, possibly the most famous drag artist in music in the 1990s was RuPaul . Maximilliana worked with RuPaul in the Nash Bridges episode "Cuda Grace" and

14280-560: The 19th century, followed by female impersonators working in vaudeville, burlesque, and the legitimate theatre in the late 19th century and early 20th century. The Pansy Craze was a period of increased LGBT visibility in American popular culture from the late-1920s until the mid-1930s; during the " craze ," drag queens — known as "pansy performers" — experienced a surge in underground popularity, especially in New York City , Chicago , Los Angeles , and San Francisco . The exact dates of

14450-421: The 2018 film A Star is Born ). Gender identity Gender identity is the personal sense of one's own gender . Gender identity can correlate with a person's assigned sex or can differ from it. In most individuals, the various biological determinants of sex are congruent, and consistent with the individual's gender identity. Gender expression typically reflects a person's gender identity, but this

14620-590: The Affordable Care Act and extends to "regulations pertaining to access to health insurance." This rule "is one of the many rules and regulations put forward by the Trump administration that defines "sex discrimination" as only applying when someone faces discrimination for being male or female, and does not protect people from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity." Gender dysphoria (previously called "gender identity disorder" or GID in

14790-626: The Canadian film Outrageous! , starring drag queen Craig Russell , became one of the first gay-themed films to break out into mainstream theatrical release. In September 2018, the Supreme Court of India ruled that the application of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code to consensual homosexual sex between adults was unconstitutional, "irrational, indefensible and manifestly arbitrary". Since then, drag culture in India has been growing and becoming

14960-564: The Edna character was played by a man. The furor surrounding Dame Edna's "advice" column in Vanity Fair magazine suggests that one of her harshest critics, actress Salma Hayek , was unaware Dame Edna was a female character played by a man. In 2009, RuPaul's Drag Race first premiered as a television show in the United States. The show has gained mainstream and global appeal, and it has exposed multiple generations of audiences to drag culture. In

15130-577: The Hall both made prominent use of drag performance. The Kids in the Hall consisted of five men, while CODCO consisted of three men and two women; however, all ten performers, regardless of their own gender, performed both male and female characters. Notably, both troupes also had openly gay members, with Scott Thompson of The Kids in the Hall and Greg Malone and Tommy Sexton of CODCO being important pioneers of gay representation on Canadian TV in their era. The use of drag in CODCO also transitioned to

15300-568: The Reimer case is that Reimer lost his penis at the age of eight months and underwent sex reassignment surgery at seventeen months, which possibly meant that Reimer had already been influenced by his socialization as a boy. Bradley et al. (1998) report the contrasting case of a 26-year-old woman with XY chromosomes whose penis was lost and who underwent sex reassignment surgery between two and seven months of age (substantially earlier than Reimer), whose parents were also more committed to raising their child as

15470-564: The Theory of Sexuality , giving evidence that in the pregenital phase children do not distinguish between sexes, but assume both parents have the same genitalia and reproductive powers. On this basis, he argued that bisexuality was the original sexual orientation and that heterosexuality was resultant of repression during the phallic stage , at which point gender identity became ascertainable. According to Freud, during this stage, children developed an Oedipus complex where they had sexual fantasies for

15640-527: The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights , "do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies". An intersex variation may complicate initial sex assignment and that assignment may not be consistent with the child's future gender identity. Reinforcing sex assignments through surgical and hormonal means may violate the individual's rights . A 2005 study on

15810-658: The United States . During the summer of 1976, a restaurant in Fire Island Pines , New York , denied entry to a visitor in drag named Terry Warren. When Warren's friends in Cherry Grove heard what had happened, they dressed up in drag, and, on 4 July 1976 , sailed to the Pines by water taxi . This turned into a yearly event where drag queens go to the Pines, called the Invasion of the Pines . In 1961, drag queen José Sarria ran for

15980-657: The United States in the 1920s with the Pansy Craze when the first gay bars in America were established by the mafia during the Prohibition Era and drag entertainers became a popular form of entertainment at these underground gay speakeasies . Before this point, the term drag was not necessarily associated with gay culture, but after this point forward drag became "inextricably tied to the queer community". Traditionally, drag involves cross-dressing and transforming ones sex through

16150-482: The United States, early examples of drag clothing can be found in gold rush saloons of California . The Barbary Coast district of San Francisco was known for certain saloons, such as Dash, which attracted female impersonator patrons and workers. William Dorsey Swann was the first person to call himself "queen of drag". He was a former slave , who was freed after the American Civil War , from Maryland. By

16320-577: The United States, the Affordable Care Act provided that health insurance exchanges would have the ability to collect demographic information on gender identity and sexual identity through optional questions, to help policymakers better recognize the needs of the LGBTQ community. In 2020, however, the Trump administration finalized a rule that "would remove nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people when it comes to health care and health insurance" in

16490-823: The Wild Side ". By the early 1970s, drag was influenced by the psychedelic rock and hippie culture of the era. A San Francisco drag troupe, The Cockettes (1970–1972), performed with glitter eyeshadow and gilded mustaches and beards. The troupe also coined the term " genderfuck ". Drag broke out from underground theatre in the persona of Divine in John Waters ' Pink Flamingos (1972): see also Charles Pierce . The cult hit movie musical The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) inspired several generations of young people to attend performances in drag, although many of these fans would not call themselves drag queens or transvestites. For many decades, American network television , only

16660-446: The actor's true gender is made. However, Miss Fritton is quite non-feminine in her pursuits of betting, drinking and smoking. The gag is that whilst her school sends out girls into a merciless world, it is the world that need beware. Despite this, or perhaps because of Sim's portrayal, subsequent films in the series went on to use actresses in the headmistress role ( Dora Bryan and Sheila Hancock respectively). The 21st century re-boot of

16830-486: The actor-playwright-screenwriter-producer Tyler Perry has included his drag character of Madea in some of his most noted productions, such as the stage play Diary of a Mad Black Woman and the feature film he based upon it . Maximilliana and RuPaul co-star together in the TV show Nash Bridges starring Don Johnson and Cheech Marin during the two-part episode "'Cuda Grace". Maximilliana, looking passable , leads one of

17000-616: The beginning of transgender activism in San Francisco. On 17 March 1968, in Los Angeles, to protest entrapment and harassment by the Los Angeles Police Department , two drag queens known as "The Princess" and "The Duchess" held a St. Patrick's Day party at Griffith Park , a popular cruising spot and a frequent target of police activity. More than 200 gay men socialized through the day. Drag queens were also involved in

17170-443: The belief of equality between the sexes had children, especially sons, who displayed fewer preconceptions of their opposite gender. Estimates of the number of people who are intersex range from 0.018% to 1.7%, depending on which conditions are counted as intersex. An intersex person is one possessing any of several variations in sex characteristics including chromosomes , gonads , sex hormones , or genitals that, according to

17340-529: The boundaries of gender and sexuality and it became a place for the LGBT community, especially gay men, to feel accepted. As LGBT culture has slowly become more accepted in American society, drag has also become more, though not totally, acceptable in today's society. In the 1940s and 1950s, Arthur Blake was one of the few female impersonators to be successful in both gay and mainstream entertainment, becoming famous for his impersonations of Bette Davis , Carmen Miranda , and Eleanor Roosevelt in night clubs. At

17510-524: The broadest slapstick drag tradition was generally represented. Few American TV comedians consistently used drag as a comedy device, among them Milton Berle , Flip Wilson , and Martin Lawrence , although drag characters have occasionally been popular on sketch TV shows like In Living Color (with Jim Carrey 's grotesque female bodybuilder) and Saturday Night Live (with the Gap Girls , among others). On

17680-571: The characters of some regional variants of the traditional mummers' play , which were traditionally always performed by men, include Besom Bet(ty); numerous variations on Bessy or Betsy; Bucksome Nell; Mrs Clagdarse; Dame Dolly; Dame Dorothy; Mrs Finney; Mrs Frail; and many others. The variant performed around Plough Monday in Eastern England is known as the Plough Play (also Wooing Play or Bridal Play) and usually involves two female characters,

17850-563: The concept of gender, (2) learning gender role standards and stereotypes, (3) identifying with parents, and (4) forming gender preference. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) comprehensive sexuality education should raise awareness of topics such as gender and gender identity. Although the formation of gender identity is not completely understood, many factors have been suggested as influencing its development. In particular,

18020-584: The connotation that the drag is fake, and that the use of bioqueen exclusively for cisgender females is a misnomer since trans-feminine queens exhibit gynomorphic features. Drag queens' counterparts are drag kings : performers, usually women, who dress in exaggeratedly masculine clothing. Examples of drag kings include Landon Cider . Trans men who dress like drag kings are sometimes termed trans kings. Some drag queens may prefer to be referred to as " she " while in drag and desire to stay completely in character. Other drag performers are indifferent to which pronoun

18190-478: The dominant societal constraints that label gender as binary. In scrutinizing gender, Butler introduces a nuanced perception in which they unite the concepts of performativity and gender. Transgender people sometimes wish to undergo physical surgery to refashion their primary sexual characteristics , secondary characteristics, or both, because they feel they will be more comfortable with different genitalia. This may involve removal of penis, testicles or breasts, or

18360-662: The early 1900s drag started to reappear in the media. Drag became a key element of national pantomime theatre and as time went on, drag queens appeared in other forms of theatre and in movies. Drag in South Africa emerged in the 1950s in major cities such as Johannesburg and Cape Town . It started in the form of underground pageants which created a safe space for members of the LGBTQ+ community in Apartheid South Africa, where people could be punished by law for being gay. Being gay

18530-514: The early childhood years, and in the majority of instances appears to become at least partially irreversible by the age of 3 or 4". The Endocrine Society has stated "Considerable scientific evidence has emerged demonstrating a durable biological element underlying gender identity. Individuals may make choices due to other factors in their lives, but there do not seem to be external forces that genuinely cause individuals to change gender identity." Social constructivists argue that gender identity, or

18700-434: The effect of social factors on gender identity formation. In the 1960s and 1970s, factors such as the absence of a father, a mother's wish for a daughter, or parental reinforcement patterns were suggested as influences; more recent theories suggesting that parental psychopathology might partly influence gender identity formation have received only minimal empirical evidence, with a 2004 article noting that "solid evidence for

18870-470: The era of vaudeville it was considered immodest for women to appear on stage. Due to that circumstance, some men became famous as "female impersonators", the most notable being Julian Eltinge . At the peak of his career he was one of the most sought after and highest paid actors in the world. Andrew Tribble was another early female impersonator who gained fame on Broadway and in Black Vaudeville . In

19040-629: The evening's acts. The plot device of the film Shakespeare in Love (1998) turns upon the Elizabethan convention of the Shakespearean originals and the changes that came with women being allowed on stage during the reign of Charles II. However, drag remains a strong tradition in British comedy . This is seen in current-day British pantomime , where traditional roles such as the pantomime dame are played by

19210-572: The extent to which it is determined by nurture (social environmental factors) versus biological factors (which may include non-social environmental factors) is an ongoing debate in psychology, known as " nature versus nurture ". There is increasing evidence that the brain is effected by the organizational role of hormones in utero, circulating sex hormones and the expression of certain genes. Social factors which may influence gender identity include ideas regarding gender roles conveyed by family, authority figures, mass media, and other influential people in

19380-596: The faithful wife of Florestan, disguises herself as a man to save her husband. Romantic opera continued the convention: there are trouser roles for women in drag in Rossini's Semiramide (Arsace), Donizetti's Rosamonda d'Inghilterra and Anna Bolena, Berlioz 's Benvenuto Cellini, and even a page in Verdi's Don Carlo. The convention was beginning to die out with Siebel, the ingenuous youth in Charles Gounod 's Faust (1859) and

19550-471: The fashioning of a penis, vagina or breasts. In the past, sex assignment surgery has been performed on infants who are born with ambiguous genitalia. However, current medical opinion is strongly against this procedure on infants, and recommends that the procedure be only conducted when medically necessary. Today, gender-affirming surgery is performed on people who choose to transition so that their external sexual organs will match their gender identity. In

19720-490: The father works and the mother, who may only work out of financial necessity, still takes care of the household. However, middle-class "professional" couples typically negotiate the division of labor and hold an egalitarian ideology. These different views on gender can shape the child's understanding of gender as well as the child's development of gender. A study conducted by Hillary Halpern demonstrated that parental gender behaviors, rather than beliefs, are better predictors of

19890-626: The first cabaret. However, drag in Thailand was actually heavily influenced by drag queens from the Philippines as the first drag show started after the owner of a gay club saw drag queens from the Philippines perform in Bangkok . Therefore, drag shows started in Thailand in the mid-1970s and have become increasingly popular over time, especially in major cities like Bangkok. In Renaissance England , women were forbidden from performing on stage, so female roles were played by men or boys. The practice continued, as

20060-554: The first gay-themed film ever to win the Genie Award for Best Picture . The short-lived French-language sitcom Cover Girl , aired in 2005 on Télévision de Radio-Canada , centred on three drag queens sharing ownership of a drag cabaret in Montreal . In 2017 Ici ARTV aired Ils de jour, elles de nuit , a documentary series profiling Montreal drag queens Rita Baga , Barbada de Barbades , Gaby, Lady Boom Boom , Lady Pounana and Tracy Trash . The documentary web series Canada's

20230-430: The gay male community in the United States, but it is considered offensive to most transgender and transsexual people. Many drag performers refer to themselves as drag artists, as opposed to drag queens, as some contemporary forms of drag have become nonbinary . In Brazil, androgynous drag performers are sometimes called drag queer , as a form of gender neutrality . Among drag queens and their contacts today, there

20400-553: The gender confusions of As You Like It , and Ben Jonson manipulated the same conventions in Epicœne, or The Silent Woman (1609). During the reign of Charles II of England (latter 1600s) the rules were relaxed to allow women to play female roles on the London stage, reflecting the French fashion, and the convention of men routinely playing female roles consequently disappeared. In the 1890s

20570-519: The gender identity outcomes of female-raised 46,XY persons with penile agenesis , cloacal exstrophy of the bladder, or penile ablation , found that 78% of the study subjects were living as female, as opposed to 22% who decided to initiate a sex change to male in line with their genetic sex. The study concludes: "The findings clearly indicate an increased risk of later patient-initiated gender re-assignment to male after female assignment in infancy or early childhood, but are nevertheless incompatible with

20740-399: The genitalia they were born with (see transsexual for some of the possible reasons) but adopt a gender role that is consistent with their gender identity. Within recent years modern society has made strides towards the acknowledgement and destigmatization of those who identify as non-binary or a gender variant, with sex reassignment surgery expected to grow by an annual rate of about 11% from

20910-653: The gypsy boy Beppe in Mascagni's L'Amico Fritz, so that Offenbach gave the role of Cupid to a real boy in Orphée aux Enfers. But Sarah Bernhardt played Hamlet in tights, giving French audiences a glimpse of Leg (the other in fact being a prosthesis) and Prince Orlovsky, who gives the ball in Die Fledermaus , is a mezzo-soprano , to somewhat androgynous effect. The use of travesti in Richard Strauss 's Rosenkavalier (1912)

21080-435: The humor is in seeing male dancers en travesti ; performing roles usually reserved to females, wearing tutus and dancing en pointe with considerable technical skill. These conventions of male-dominated societies were largely unbroken before the 20th century, when rigid gender roles were undermined and began to dissolve. This evolution changed drag in the last decades of the 20th century. Among contemporary drag performers,

21250-493: The idea of gender identity as being biologically rooted, as they do not identify with their anatomical sex despite being raised and their behaviour reinforced according to their anatomical sex. One study by Reiner et al. looked at fourteen genetic males who had suffered cloacal exstrophy and were thus raised as girls. Six of them changed their gender identity to male, five remained female and three had ambiguous gender identities (though two of them had declared they were male). All

21420-531: The importance of postnatal social factors is lacking." A 2008 study found that the parents of gender-dysphoric children showed no signs of psychopathological issues aside from mild depression in the mothers. It has also been suggested that the attitudes of the child's parents may affect the child's gender identity, although evidence is minimal. Parents who do not support gender nonconformity are more likely to have children with firmer and stricter views on gender identity and gender roles. Recent literature suggests

21590-523: The investigators to believe he is "real" and sexually advances only to learn that he is, in fact, male, much to his chagrin. In the United Kingdom, drag has been more common in comedy, on both film and television. Alastair Sim plays the headmistress Miss Millicent Fritton in The Belles of St Trinian's (1954) and Blue Murder at St Trinian's (1957). He played the role straight; no direct joke about

21760-650: The invitation of the Roosevelts, he performed his impersonation of Eleanor at the White House . He impersonated Davis and Miranda in the 1952 film Diplomatic Courier . The Cooper Donuts Riot was a May 1959 incident in Los Angeles in which drag queens, lesbians, transgender women, and gay men rioted; it was one of the first LGBT protests in the United States. The Compton's Cafeteria riot , which involved drag queens and others, occurred in San Francisco in 1966. It marked

21930-443: The late 1970s but was revived in the synth-pop era of the 1980s, as pop singers Boy George (of Culture Club ), Pete Burns (of Dead or Alive ), and Philip Oakey (of The Human League ), frequently appeared in a sort of semi-drag, while female musicians of the era dabbled in their own form of androgyny , with performers like Annie Lennox , Phranc and The Bloods sometimes performing as drag kings. The male grunge musicians of

22100-567: The mainstream art culture. The hotel chain of Lalit Groups spaced a franchise of clubs where drag performances are hosted in major cities of India such as Mumbai , Delhi , and Bangalore . Maya the Drag Queen , Rani Kohinoor ( Sushant Divgikar ), Lush Monsoon, Betta Naan Stop , Tropical Marca, Zeeshan Ali, and Patruni Sastry are some examples of Indian drag artists. In 2018, Hyderabad had its first drag convention. In 2020, India's first drag specific magazine Dragvanti began publication. Lebanon

22270-446: The males raised as male switched their gender identity. Those still living as females still showed marked masculinisation of gender role behaviour and those old enough reported sexual attraction to women. The study's authors caution drawing any strong conclusions from it due to numerous methodological caveats which were a severe problem in studies of this nature. Rebelo et al. argue that the evidence in totality suggests that gender identity

22440-453: The manual, DSM-III-R , added a third diagnosis: gender identity disorder of adolescence and adulthood, nontranssexual type. This latter diagnosis was removed in the subsequent revision, DSM-IV (1994), which also collapsed GIDC and transsexualism into a new diagnosis of gender identity disorder. In 2013, the DSM-5 renamed the diagnosis gender dysphoria and revised its definition. The authors of

22610-453: The mid-1900s, pantomime, and the use of pantomime dames, had declined, although it remains a popular Christmas tradition. The role of the dame, however, evolved to become more about the individual performer. Many female impersonators built up their own fan bases, and began performing outside of their traditional pantomime roles. Drag performance in the United States had its roots in the female impersonations of performers in minstrel shows of

22780-512: The movement are debated, with a range from the late 1920s until 1935. The term "pansy craze" was first coined by the historian George Chauncey in his 1994 book Gay New York . The first person known to describe himself as "the queen of drag" was William Dorsey Swann , born enslaved in Hancock, Maryland , who in the 1880s started hosting drag balls in Washington, DC attended by other men who were formerly enslaved. The balls were often raided by

22950-418: The norm of their sex assigned at birth, and in acting and looking like their identified gender. Social scientists tend to assume that gender identities arise from social factors. In 1955, John Money proposed that gender identity was malleable and determined by whether a child was raised as male or female in early childhood. Money's hypothesis has since been discredited, but scholars have continued to study

23120-520: The notion of a full determination of core gender identity by prenatal androgens." A 2012 clinical review paper found that between 8.5% and 20% of people with intersex variations experienced gender dysphoria . Sociological research in Australia, a country with a third 'X' sex classification, shows that 19% of people born with atypical sex characteristics selected an "X" or "other" option, while 52% are women, 23% men, and 6% unsure. At birth, 52% of persons in

23290-554: The opera Alcina , disguises herself as a man to save her lover, played by a male soprano; contemporary audiences were not the least confused. In Romantic opera , certain roles of young boys were written for alto and soprano voices and acted by women en travestie (in English, in " trouser roles "). The most familiar trouser role in pre-Romantic opera is Cherubino in Mozart 's Marriage of Figaro (1786). In Beethoven's opera Fidelio Leonore,

23460-490: The origin of psychic life, and that Freud did not give adequate description to the female child (Freud rejected this suggestion). During the 1950s and '60s, psychologists began studying gender development in young children, partially in an effort to understand the origins of homosexuality (which was viewed as a mental disorder at the time). In 1958, the Gender Identity Research Project was established at

23630-487: The parent ascribed the opposite gender and hatred for the parent ascribed the same gender, and this hatred transformed into (unconscious) transference and (conscious) identification with the hated parent who both exemplified a model to appease sexual impulses and threatened to castrate the child's power to appease sexual impulses. In 1913, Carl Jung proposed the Electra complex as he both believed that bisexuality did not lie at

23800-484: The parent confidently raised their child as the opposite sex from earlier than age two, the child would believe that they were born that sex and act accordingly. Money believed that nurture could override nature. A well-known example in the nature-versus-nurture debate is the case of David Reimer , born in 1965, otherwise known as "John/Joan". As a baby, Reimer went through a faulty circumcision, losing his male genitalia. John Money advised Reimer's parents to raise him as

23970-489: The performance costume. Women who dress as men and perform as hypermasculine men are sometimes called drag kings ; however, drag king also has a much wider range of meanings. It is currently most often used to describe entertainment (singing or lip-synching) in which there is no necessarily firm correlation between a performer's deliberately macho onstage persona and offstage gender identity or sexual orientation, just as individuals assigned male at birth who do female drag for

24140-491: The performers were in fact cisgender heterosexual men and women, but others were closeted LGBTQI individuals due to the politics and social environment of the period. It was criminal in many American cities to be homosexual, or for LGBTQI people to congregate, and it was therefore necessary for female and male impersonators to distance themselves from identifying as queer publicly in order to avoid criminal charges and loss of career. The need to hide and dissociate from queer identity

24310-794: The police, as documented in the newspapers. In 1896, Swann was convicted and sentenced to 10 months in jail on the false charge of "keeping a disorderly house" (a euphemism for running a brothel ). He requested a pardon from President Grover Cleveland , but was denied. In the early to mid-1900s, female impersonation had become tied to the LGBT community and thus criminality, so it had to change forms and locations. It moved from being popular mainstream entertainment to something done only at night in disreputable areas, such as San Francisco's Tenderloin . Here female impersonation started to evolve into what we today know as drag and drag queens. Drag queens such as José Sarria first came to prominence in these clubs. People went to these nightclubs to play with

24480-422: The popular 1960s military sitcom, McHale's Navy , Ensign Parker ( Tim Conway ) sometimes had to dress in drag (often with hilarious results) whenever McHale and/or his crew had to disguise themselves in order to carry out their elaborate schemes. Gilligan's Island occasionally features men dressing in women's clothes, though this was not considered drag since it was not for a performance. On stage and screen,

24650-448: The series however reverted to drag, with Rupert Everett in the role. On television, Benny Hill portrayed several female characters. The Monty Python troupe and The League of Gentlemen often played female parts in their skits. The League of Gentlemen are also credited with the first ever portrayal of "nude drag", where a man playing a female character is shown naked but still with the appropriate female anatomy, like fake breasts and

24820-585: The slapstick drag traditions of undergraduate productions (notably Hasty Pudding Theatricals at Harvard College , annually since 1891, and at other Ivy League schools like Princeton University 's Triangle Club or the University of Pennsylvania 's Mask and Wig Club), and many other universities in which women were not permitted admission, were permissible fare to the same upper-class American audiences that were scandalized to hear that in New York City , rouged young men in skirts were standing on tables to dance

24990-445: The sole purpose of entertaining an audience. The term female impersonator is sometimes used interchangeably with drag queen, although they are not the same. For example, in 1972, Esther Newton described a female impersonator as a "professional drag queen". She considered the term female impersonator to be the one that was (then) widely understood by heterosexual audiences. However, feminist and queer studies scholar Sarah French defined

25160-420: The stage may or may not identify as being either gay or female in their real-life personal identities. A bio queen , or female-bodied queen, on the other hand, is usually a cisgender woman performing in the same context as traditional (men-as-women) drag and displaying such features as exaggerated hair and makeup (as an example, the performance of the actress and singer Lady Gaga during her first appearance in

25330-432: The study were assigned female, and 41% were assigned male. A study by Reiner & Gearhart provides some insight into what can happen when genetically male children with cloacal exstrophy are sexually assigned female and raised as girls, according to an 'optimal gender policy' developed by John Money : in a sample of 14 children, follow-up between the ages of 5 and 12 showed that 8 of them identified as boys, and all of

25500-810: The subjects had at least moderately male-typical attitudes and interests, providing support for the argument that genetic variables affect gender identity and behavior independent of socialization. Gender identity can lead to societal security issues among individuals that do not fit on a binary scale. As of 2022, only 23 states plus Washington D.C. currently have state laws that explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Moreover, only "53% of [the] LGBTQ population live in states prohibiting housing discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity", while "17% of [the] LGBTQ population lives in states explicitly interpreting existing prohibition on sex discrimination to include sexual orientation and/or gender identity". In some cases,

25670-505: The subjects had moderate to marked interests and attitudes consistent with that of biological males. Another study, using data from a variety of cases from the 1970s to the early 2000s (including Reiner et al.), looked at males raised as females due to a variety of developmental disorders ( penile agenesis , cloacal exstrophy or penile ablation). It found that 78% of those males raised as females were living as females. A minority of those raised as female later switched to male. However, none of

25840-424: The term drag carried no such connotations. In the 1970s, drag queen was continually defined as a "homosexual transvestite". Drag was parsed as changing one's clothes to those of a different sex, while queen was said to refer to a homosexual man. For much of history, drag queens were men, but in more modern times, cisgender and trans women , as well as non-binary people, also perform as drag queens. In

26010-401: The term was also layered with transphobic subtext and the term drag queen was again meant to protect the professional female impersonator by allowing them to dissociate themselves from both aspects of queer culture and from sex workers in order to maintain respectability among the predominantly heteronormative audiences who employed them. This understanding of the term drag queen persisted through

26180-519: The theatrical drag queen or street queen may at times be seen less as a " female impersonator " per se, but simply as a drag queen . Examples include The Cockettes , Danny La Rue or RuPaul . Ballroom culture (also known as "ball culture", and other names) is an underground LGBT subculture that originated in 1920s New York in which people "walk" (i.e., compete) for trophies , prizes, and glory at events known as balls. Ball participants are mainly young African-American and Latin American members of

26350-437: The time of the study was a blue-collar occupation that was practiced almost exclusively by men. Griet Vandermassen argues that since these are the only two cases being documented in scientific literature, this makes it difficult to draw any firm conclusions from them about the origins of gender identity, particularly given the two cases reached different conclusions. However, Vandermassen also argued that transgender people support

26520-563: The title role, opened at Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago. Drag (entertainment) The use of drag in this sense appeared in print as early as 1870 but its origin is uncertain. One suggested etymological root is 19th-century theatre slang, from the sensation of long skirts trailing on the floor. It may have been based on the term grand rag which was historically used for a masquerade ball . Men dressed as women have been featured in certain traditional customs for centuries. For example,

26690-411: The twentieth century some gender impersonators, both female and male, in the United States became highly successful performing artists in non-LGBTQ nightclubs and theaters. There was a concerted effort by these working female and male impersonators in America, to separate the art of gender impersonation from queer identity with an overt representation of working gender impersonators as heterosexual. Some of

26860-505: The use of makeup and other costume devices. However, under newer conceptions of drag, conceivably performing an exaggerated and heightened form of one's own gender could be considered a drag performance. While drag is often viewed as a performance based art form and a type of entertainment, it is possible to engage with drag as an art form outside of performance or for purposes other than entertainment. Drag has been used within studio art such as photography, political activism, and fashion to name

27030-709: The way it is expressed , are socially constructed , determined by cultural and social influences. Constructivism of this type is not necessarily incompatible with the existence of an innate gender identity, since it may be the expression of that gender that varies by culture. There are several theories about how and when gender identity forms, and studying the subject is difficult because children's immature language acquisition requires researchers to make assumptions from indirect evidence. John Money suggested children might have awareness of and attach some significance to gender as early as 18 months to 2 years; Lawrence Kohlberg argued that gender identity does not form until age 3. It

27200-455: The world have you got on?!" [ Quis istest ornatus tuos? ] Menaechmus says: "Tell me I am gorgeous." [ Dic hominem lepidissimum esse me. ] In England, actors in Shakespearean plays , and all Elizabethan theatre (in the 1500s and 1600s), were all male; female parts were played by young men in drag because women were banned from performing publicly. Shakespeare used the conventions to enrich

27370-527: The years 2022 to 2030. Although sex reassignment surgery is expected to become more popular, the surgery is still not destigmatized in a lot of countries, including the United States. Such stigmatization has been shown to have adverse health effects on LGBTQ+ individuals, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The terms gender identity and core gender identity were first used with their current meaning—one's personal experience of one's own gender —sometime in

27540-532: The young "Lady Bright and Gay" and "Old Dame Jane" and a dispute about a bastard child. A character called Bessy also accompanied the Plough Jags (also known as Plough Jacks, Plough Stots, Plough Bullocks, etc.) even in places where no play was performed: "she" was a man dressed in women's clothes, who carried a collecting box for money and other largesse. "Maid Marian" of the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance

27710-821: Was a regular at the now defunct Queen Mary Show Lounge in Studio City, California until the very end. Max (short for Maximilliana) is most well known for her performance as Charlie/Claire in Ringmaster: the Jerry Springer Movie . Max has also appeared in other movies including Shoot or Be Shot and 10 Attitudes as well as on television shows including Nash Bridges as mentioned above, Clueless , Gilmore Girls , The Tonight Show with Jay Leno , Mas Vale Tarde with Alex Cambert , MadTV , The Tyra Banks Show , The Tom Joyner Show , America's Got Talent , and many others. In Japan there are several musicians in

27880-406: Was also instrumental in the development of early theories of gender identity. His work at Johns Hopkins Medical School 's Gender Identity Clinic (established in 1965) popularized an interactionist theory of gender identity, suggesting that, up to a certain age, gender identity is relatively fluid and subject to constant negotiation. His book Man and Woman, Boy and Girl (1972) became widely used as

28050-562: Was no longer legally restricted to be only between man and woman. No objective measurement or imaging of the human body exists for gender identity, as it is part of one's subjective experience. Numerous clinical measurements for assessing gender identity exist, including questionnaire-based, interview-based and task-based assessments. These have varying effect sizes among a number of specific sub-populations. Gender identity measures have been applied in clinical assessment studies of people with gender dysphoria or intersex conditions. Before

28220-562: Was not legalized in South Africa until 1998, so pageants, such as the famous Miss Gay Western Cape, did not become official until the late 1990s. Discrimination against drag is widespread in South Africa, and drag queens face the threat of violence by being openly gay. Furthermore, there is not language to explore queerness in Xhosa , one of the indigenous languages of South Africa. After homosexual acts were decriminalized in Thailand in 1956, gay clubs and other queer spaces began opening which lead to

28390-592: Was not universal (and still is not) even in academic usage, and even less so in more informal writing or in speech, which often conflate the two. Some people, and some societies, do not construct gender as a binary in which everyone is either a boy or a girl, or a man or a woman. Those who exist outside the binary fall under the umbrella terms non-binary or genderqueer . Some cultures have specific gender roles that are distinct from "man" and "woman." These are often referred to as third genders . In Samoan culture , or Faʻa Samoa , fa'afafine are considered to be

28560-557: Was prevalent among gender impersonators working in non-LGBTQ nightclubs before heteronormative audiences as late as the 1970s. Female impersonation has been and continues to be illegal in some places, which inspired the drag queen José Sarria to hand out labels to his friends reading, "I am a boy", so they could not be accused of female impersonation. American drag queen RuPaul once said, "I do not impersonate females! How many women do you know who wear seven-inch heels, four-foot wigs, and skintight dresses?" He also said, "I don't dress like

28730-453: Was the host of several specials, including The Dame Edna Experience. Dame Edna also toured internationally, playing to sell-out crowds, and appeared on TV's Ally McBeal . Dame Edna represented an anomalous example of the drag concept. Her earliest incarnation was unmistakably a man dressed (badly) as a suburban housewife. Edna's manner and appearance became so feminised and glamorised that even some of her TV show guests appear not to see that

28900-506: Was told that he had been born with male genitalia. Reimer stopped seeing Money, and underwent surgery to remove his breasts and reconstruct his genitals. In 1997, sexologist Milton Diamond published a follow-up, revealing that Reimer had rejected his female reassignment, and arguing against the blank slate hypothesis and infant sex reassignment in general. Diamond was a longtime opponent of Money's theories. Diamond had contributed to research involving pregnant rats that showed hormones played

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