You lost me at "two-spirit." That, too, is an artifact of recolonization rooted in questionable anthropology, white hippie woo and the myth of the noble savage.
I view drag queens as histrionic barflies who suck all of the oxygen out of the room with their incessant demands for attention. It's their party and then can drag if they want to, but I'll be damned if I will call them all artists or imbue their costume shows with special cultural significance. Drag is a tired holdover from the pre-Stonewall era when gay people sought identity and protection by developing a subculture that included camp and drag as unifying features. Drag is about as culturally relevant today as Liberace.
Having spent time around the drag "courts" in Portland, Oregon in the early 80s, I came away with the impression that they were a way for lower middle class gay people to find community. In a different time and place they might have been Shriners.
I agree that the phrase "two-spirit" is yet another recolonization as an introduced phrase, and that third gender traditions do not exist in all tribes, just the ones that relegate certain domestic tasks to one sex or the other. But drag is a gender non-conforming tradition of homosexual culture as well as variety shows in England back in the day. It is perhaps low-brow as you say, but it is still a big part of current third gender cultures in Asia as in the example of the ladyboys of my home country of Thailand who dominate the variety shows at Pattaya beach cabarets.
You lost me at "two-spirit." That, too, is an artifact of recolonization rooted in questionable anthropology, white hippie woo and the myth of the noble savage.
I view drag queens as histrionic barflies who suck all of the oxygen out of the room with their incessant demands for attention. It's their party and then can drag if they want to, but I'll be damned if I will call them all artists or imbue their costume shows with special cultural significance. Drag is a tired holdover from the pre-Stonewall era when gay people sought identity and protection by developing a subculture that included camp and drag as unifying features. Drag is about as culturally relevant today as Liberace.
Having spent time around the drag "courts" in Portland, Oregon in the early 80s, I came away with the impression that they were a way for lower middle class gay people to find community. In a different time and place they might have been Shriners.
I agree that the phrase "two-spirit" is yet another recolonization as an introduced phrase, and that third gender traditions do not exist in all tribes, just the ones that relegate certain domestic tasks to one sex or the other. But drag is a gender non-conforming tradition of homosexual culture as well as variety shows in England back in the day. It is perhaps low-brow as you say, but it is still a big part of current third gender cultures in Asia as in the example of the ladyboys of my home country of Thailand who dominate the variety shows at Pattaya beach cabarets.