Make it weird : "How are class, race & religion performed & subverted in drag?"

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Make It Weird:

“How are class, race & religion performed & subverted in

drag?”

Reece John Boulton

Master Thesis Project

Graduate School of Social Sciences

Sociology:

Gender, Sexuality & Society

Supervisor: Dr. Margriet van Heesch

Second Reader:

Dr.

Paul Mepschen

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Word of Thanks

I would like to thank every person who has been able to help me during the research process of my master thesis project. I would also like to note the assistance that my supervisor, Dr Margriet van Heesch, has been able to provide for me, giving me advice, support and critiques since my project’s inception, and would not have been able to complete my work. I would also like to thank my other supervisor, Dr Paul Mepschen, for his advice and guidance at the inception and review of my research project. Without either of my supervisor’s sociological knowledge and direction in conducting my research, I would not have been able to complete my work.

I also want to express my gratitude to the participants of my study. Without the various performers and fans of drag within the queer community, my research would not be as strong as it is now. Thanks to the shared knowledge, experiences and opinions of my research participants, the interviewees have allowed my project to flourish. Additionally, I would also like the mention the many drag performers of Amsterdam for allowing this project to exist and for the performers' wonderful acts they share within local queer spaces.

Lastly, I want to thank all my friends for their academic and emotional support throughout my master project. Without their votes of confidence and help in editing, proofreading and discussing the most complex of concepts within my research, I would not have been able to finish my project. For this, and a lot more, I would like to thank all my friends scattered across the globe for their invaluable support and patience.

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Abstract

Drag, as a cultural phenomenon, has received much analytical and academic attention, especially since the rise of its popularity through the acclaimed television programme, RuPaul’s Drag Race. However, research has often failed to account for the interlocked performative acts of gender to include images of race, class and religion as well. In understanding that gender is not enacted as a singularity, my research attempts to analyse the performative nature of class, race and religion within the context of drag performances. Using the research question, “How are class, race and

religion performed and subverted in drag?”, I have analysed the ways in which drag performers within

local contexts conform to and deviate from normative ideologies of femininity involving class, race and religion. Through the use of images, symbols and aesthetics that can be considered paradoxical, drag queens were able to queer audiences’ understandings of class, race and religion, as well as gender, through complimentary and conflating images of these cultural identities through performativity.

To conduct this research, I interviewed 7 drag queens and fans within the local drag scene. Using these open-ended, in-depth, qualitative interviews in conjunction with my analysis of recorded drag performances and participant observations of live shows, I collected a sufficient amount of data to analyse drag within the local scene. My data collection and analysis revealed that drag queens within the local scene were able to use performative acts to reveal the nature of cultural identities beyond gender, including class, race and religion. Additionally, some drag queens acted in a manner that conformed to white, ruling-class understandings of femininity whilst others subverted and deviated from normative ideologies of femininity, class, race and religion. Furthermore, in comparing my data of local drag acts to that of drag in mainstream media, it seemed that the local scene was influenced by Drag Race in a way that created a normative standard for performers in the area that reflected mainstream hierarchies of race, class and religion. However, drag queens within my data all possessed the ability to queer and create ambivalence around the cultural identities of class, race and religion. Through drag, the performers used images of these identities to question and performatively reveal the illusionary nature of these identities similarly to what drag does with gender performances. Despite the conformist or subversive aesthetics and acts of different drag performers, their ability to perform and act in drag queered any presentations of cultural identities.

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Chapter 1: Questioning the Queer

1.1: Making Drag Weird

Amsterdam’s queer nightlife is rife with entertainment, from ‘regular’ gay bars to queer techno parties, and even the subversively named Club Church, which hosts sex parties, fundraisers and drag shows. Ariel is a resident performer at Club Church, presenting feminine acts like wearing ‘women’s’ sequined, floor-length dresses, high heels, and using make-up to feminise her face whilst she lip-syncs and vogues incredulously for crowds. It is hard not to find joy in her act, and even harder to deny her use of the performative nature of gender to channel the opulence and illusions of drag as an act that queers our understanding of gender (Butler 1, 1998: 519). Through transforming her appearance and the use of feminine acts, Ariel’s uses drag to convince audiences she is an authentic woman. Ariel demonstrates the thrill and intrigue that drag performances have in queering understandings of gender through the performative masculine and feminine acts she employs to deconstruct normative ideologies of gender to audiences. She deconstructs gender through the confusion, contradiction and exploitation of femininity and masculinity within her drag. Audience’s perceptions of gender as biological are queered and disrupted by Ariel’s performative acts that demonstrate that whilst she may not identify as a woman, she can convincingly become one through performative acts. But Ariel is not just a man dragging up as a woman. Known as Gary out of drag, he is a Christian Jamaican gay black man who now lives in The Netherlands. Gary’s cultural background has had a huge influence on Gary/Ariel’s signature look, which is a headwrap of high-quality and dazzling fabrics (Image 1). Ariel’s styling pays homage to her cultural background as her headwrap comes from women’s traditional outfits worn at religious events in Jamaica. Thus, Ariel isn’t just performing gender, but a specific articulation of gender which involves race, class and religion. Through the glamour, magic, and illusions of drag, Gary retains a degree of cultural authenticity as Ariel, whilst still queering ideologies of gender, class, race and religion through performativity.

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Image 1: Ariel In Club, 2019, Gary Foster

As drag reveals the performative nature of gender (Butler, 1993: 125), I observed it does the same for racialised, religious and classed aspects of femininity and masculinity as well. As gender is an act with no ‘substance’, drag queens use the performative nature of gender to use both masculine and feminine acts to show audiences the false reality and malleability of gender. American queer philosopher Judith Butler discusses that due to the historically created meaning of gender, and its discontinuous performative nature, drag performers take culturally gendered scripts and re-articulate them into subversive bodily surfaced acts (Butler, 1986: 36). Additionally, through drag performers repetition of ‘heterosexist’ acts, performers can exert power in resisting heteronormative ideologies of being, and parody the notion of gender as an essential, binarized identity (Butler, 1993: 140).

Previous literature has also delved deeper into the way that drag performers regularly interchange masculine and feminine acts, their fluidity and recontextualization of gendered acts critiques normative ideologies surrounding gender identity, making gender weird and unrecognisable for audiences. Through other processes, like disidentification, as described by Cuban-American queer theorist Jose Munoz (1999), explains how drag queens who are not white are able to take the normative ideologies of femininity as unmarkedly white and middle-class to rearticulate gender, race and class. As drag performers of colour face discrimination and oppression based on sexuality, race and sometimes class, they are able to use their social standpoint to understand and subvert the common discourse of femininity as white and middle-class, using drag as a tool to queer these cultural identity categories. Other studies have noted the

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way in which queer people deconstruct cultural identities through their ‘contradictory’ identifications, such as with religion. Rahman’s (2016) research discusses how queer Muslims inhabit a ‘paradox’ as gay people who are part of a ‘homophobic’ religion and also as a deviant within queer communities as Islamic and not white. However, in existing within these ‘contradictions’ of identity, queer Muslim people are able to deconstruct normative views surrounding sexuality, race and religion.

In discussing the queer communities and performers within relation to social identity categories like gender, class, race and religion, it is important to highlight why I focus my research around queerness and queer theory rather than intersectionality (Crenshaw, et al., 2013). Intersectionality, referring to the methodological and analytical approach in understandings that certain social groups, like black women, do not experience racism and sexism additively, but as a simultaneous, unique form of oppression contingent on their race and gender (ibid.: 787). However, due to the socially constructed nature of class, race and religion, these are identity categories I do not wish to discursively re-essentialise through my project, but the fact that this terminology is used in social discourses cannot be ignored (Mepschen, et al., 2016: 98). As such, I appreciate some of the helpfulness in using social categories of distinction and take them as a topic of analysis for this project. However, I take a ‘queer’ approach to the analysis of class, race, religion and gender in drag as to avoid a reification of these identities as inherent and account for the ‘contradictions’ within social identities, such as homosexual Muslim men in Western cultures, to be a process of queering identity through their ‘unviability’ (Rahman, 2016: 952) Consequently, this highlights the importance of analysing drag performances not just through gender, but through class and race as well, and leads to the main research interest for my project. As drag performers use the contingent relation of their bodily sex and gender identity, they reveal, imitate and subvert the false ontology of gender, my research analyses the performances of race, class and religion as well (Butler, 1999, 1992).

Therefore, the over-arching research question for my project is “How are class, race and religion

performed and subverted in drag?”. This question specifies the cultural categories I consider in my

research in relation to their performative nature and manners of subversion within drag performances. I used three further sub-questions to give analytical attention towards drags potential to queer, or conform to, images of racial, class and religious identities:

1. How does drag queer class?

2. How does drag queer race?

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Using each of these sub-questions, I analysed the three main issues of religion, race and class as performative acts through drag. Additionally, I have analysed the manner in which drag performers are able to queer understandings of religion, race and class through performative acts. I also will use previous research to support my project to encapsulate the power drag has to subvert and conform to marginalising ideologies surrounding the cultural identities of class, race and religion.

The relevance to studying drag as an area of sociological inquiry is not only due to drag’s ability to deconstruct gender and other cultural identities, but also through the rise of drag’s presence within mainstream culture, namely RuPaul’s Drag Race. Hosted by celebrity drag performer RuPaul, the reality television series has several drag performers compete for the title of America’s Next Drag Superstar and a cash prize. Through various challenges, usually involving media or products created by RuPaul, and lip-sync ‘battles’, a winner of each season is crowned, and as each season went on, the show became more popular (Daggett, 2017; Vesey, 2016).

However, RuPaul’s show concerns itself with more than just performing gender, including race, class and religion. RuPaul himself presents forms of white, upper-class femininity in his drag (Vesey, 2016: 591) through his couture, designer and expensive clothing, as well as blonde hair and continuous references to Christianity. For example, every episode is ended with the phrase ‘Can I get an Amen?”. Consequently, as Drag Race has grown into a consumerist part of mainstream culture, demonstrating a clear example of the performative aspects of cultural identities beyond gender, I intend to analyse drag performers iterations of class, race and religion outside of a capitalist mainstream context (ibid.: 593).

Whilst previous research has investigated how drag uses gender performativity to subvert traditional gender roles or reify them (Butler, 1993: 125), I will research how identities like class, race and religion are also performative and articulated within local drag shows. Since drag has the potential to question societal power hierarchies (Seidman, 2005: 169), it is relevant to investigate how queer performers transgress normative ideologies beyond the scope of gender, and potentially queer other cultural identities through performative acts. In analysing drag within a context less constrained by mainstream ideologies and values, I have collected data on local drag performers subversion, performance and appropriation of racial, religious and class identities through performativity. In conducting a queer reading and content analysis (Stone, 2015; Pascale, 2008), I will analyse the performativity and queering of race, religion and class within drag. Therefore, this chapter will introduce the topics of my research, background discussions, my methods of collecting and analysing data, my theoretical framework and, finally, the overview of the ensuing chapters.

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1.2: Previous Research

As I investigate drags performative presentation of class, race and gender, I must clarify my understanding of these social categories as a topic of analysis for performativity. Race, and ethnicity, can be understood as socially and historically constructed identities associated with certain and different physical characteristics and geographic location. These definitions and understandings of different ‘racial groups’ vary over time and space but are associated with certain ideologies that become essentialised through stereotypes, restricting the privileges of different racial groups social positions (Strings & Bui, 2013: 824; Loveman, 1999: 896). Similarly, social class systems place different groups, like lower-, middle-, and upper-classes in Western contexts, based on economic income. Additionally, cultural capital is also important in class distinctions, as aesthetics, norms and social-knowledge vary between the class divisions (Schacht, 2000: 154). It is important to note that my interviewees and previous studies have discussed how within the Netherlands, markers of class divides are often racialised to different ethnic and racial groups who are not white, like Moroccans and Turkish people (Bonjour & Duyvendak, 2016: 886). Lastly, religion can be understood as a group phenomenon including practices and ideologies around morality and worshipping a deity (Johnstone, 2007: 8). Interestingly, previous research into Dutch nativism and the configurations of race also influence configurations of religion as well, with Mepschen et al’s (2016) work discussing how religion within Dutch cultures is seen as an archaic and non-white quality, often with Islamic identities articulated as homophobic and a threat to white Dutch nationality.

Drag has received much attention in terms of research before Drag Race premiered (Mock, 2003; Nixon, 2009; Brown, 2001; Rupp & Taylor, 2004, 2005). However, as Drag Race has become culturally significant, specific research has gone into analysing drag within a mainstream cultural context. Brennan and Gudelunas’ (2017) comprehensive collected works include multiple studies investigating how Drag Race has influenced mainstream audiences’ understandings of gender and sexuality through the ‘queer lens’ of drag performances. Totalling 18 individual articles, the book celebrates and criticises the show concerning issues including articulations and configurations of race and ethnicity, reality television as a platform, geographic contexts of representing drag, body images, and the discourses and narratives of self-love present within Drag Race. However, only the pertinent projects in this book will be discussed within Chapter 2. Other works, like Edgar’s (2011) study praises how Drag Race performers demonstrate to mainstream audiences how gender is performative and queered. Edgar discusses that through the performers ability to reference stereotypical images of femininity, contrasted against their

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‘authentically queer’ to audiences (ibid.: 142).

Moving towards other studies that have investigated the neoliberal and capitalist context Drag Race resides in, Puar’s (2007) concept of homonationalism, in which homosexuality is incorporated into nationalist rhetoric’s in the U.S., is useful to understand how queer culture can become a consumable product. Ferrante (2017) expands on Puar’s concept specifically explaining RuPaul’s own decision of who represents ‘good’ and ‘bad’ drag through the competition show, places value in those who embody neoliberal attitudes of individualism and hard work. Competitors within the show are exemplified as ‘good homosexuals’ through the drag queen’s integration of their success within the shows challenges relating to national ideologies of ‘acceptable’ homosexual lifestyles. For example, in Drag Race, the majority of winners are white or white-passing, and the show has often incorporated challenges involving military organisations, like the U.S. Army and veterans. This, in turn, articulates American nationality as white, liberal towards homosexual groups, and more ‘advanced’ compared to ‘less developed’ Islamic countries who are considered homophobic and conservative. This in turn marginalises queer Muslim’s due to their ‘contradictory’ identities (Rahman, 2016; Puar, 2007), which has also been researched within the Dutch context in understanding how issues surrounding race, religion and nationality are configured and divided within Dutch social issues and discourse (Mepschen, et al., 2016).

Previous research has also discussed the shows uses of drag as a parody of mainstream, normative media narratives within Drag Race to deconstruct gender within capitalist frameworks (Daggett, 2017). Vesey (2016) specifically looks at the way the show uses ‘pop-star’ aesthetics and music careers to legitimise and professionalise RuPaul and Drag Race competitors as successful performers, to the benefit of white or lighter-skinned contestants. These collective research papers into the neoliberal and capitalist frameworks of RuPaul’s Drag Race allow for a comparative analysis of drag within local and mainstream contexts and the performance of class, race and religion.

Earlier studies have explored the ways in which Drag Race performers subvert and re-marginalise racial stereotypes through performativity. Strings and Bui’s (2013) research into the gender and racial authenticity of competitors within Drag Race is key, discussing how white femininity praised in the show reflects mainstream hierarchies of racial identities. In turn, this presents non-white drag performers as de-essentialising gender through their essentialisation of race by employing racialised feminine acts. Similarly, Tucker Jenkins (2017) demonstrates how black and Latinx drag queens within Drag Race are marginalised into presenting stereotypical, racialised images of femininity to appear successful. Lastly, Rhyne’s (2008) analysis into

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whiteness as the unmarked category within drag develops understandings of racialised masculinities and femininities bring reproduced within drag communities. These projects create a foundation to investigate how local drag performers subvert or reify pre-existing stereotypes of femininity that are racialised comparative to Drag Race.

Research concerning articulations of class within drag performances, Collins (2015) discusses how as Drag Race generates exposure for the show’s performers, and how they use their popularity post-show to gain revenue, through touring, merchandise, meeting fanbases and ‘spin-off’ media. As Drag Race queens use their revenue to create notoriety, and drag queens within local contexts do not receive this same income, there is a different economic context between local and mainstream drag (Alexander, 2017). Similarly, Schacht (2000) discusses the way in which the 1990 underground drag-ball documentary Paris is Burning, which serves as inspiration for Drag Race and is often referenced within the show (Edgar, 2011: 136), demonstrates to audiences the ability that drag has to performatively deconstruct class through white and upper-class coded acts and aesthetics that the lower-upper-class, black drag queens perform.

Rhyne’s (2008) study also discusses how ‘camp’ acts of drag queens subvert dominant understandings of white, upper-class identities for audiences of drag shows. Through extravagant costuming and aesthetics to signify queerness, drag queens use ‘camp’ as a performative act that relates to upper-class ideologies of wealth, expense and extravagance whilst queering these class ideologies through over-the-top, outlandish costuming. Berkowitz and Belgrave’s (2010) study into the contradictory status of local drag performers as celebrities in queer communities and marginalised members of society discusses how drag queens emulate celebrity status and are ‘famous’ in their queer community, but still face wider social marginalisation for their sexuality. This highlights the importance of my analysis of drag as a form of performative politics to challenge and queer normative understandings of class, as well as race and religion.

Finally, there are limited previous studies into the relationship between drag and religious identities, such as Hodes and Sandoval’s (2018) paper discussing how drag performers reconcile their religious, gender and ‘drag’ identity through naturalizing discourses. Similarly, Rahman’s (2016) study the contradictory lived experience of queer Muslim individuals at the intersections of racial, religious, sexual and ethnic oppression. I intend to build on these works observing how drag performers articulate religion and attitudes towards these organisations within drag. I will discuss in my next section how, from my background research, I conducted my data collecting and analysis for my project.

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1.3: Methodology of Gathering Data & Data Analysis

To gain my background and theoretical data, I researched articles, papers and studies in academic journals, as well as ‘classic’ frameworks surrounding gender performativity and drag, like Butler’s works (Butler, 1986, 1993, 1999). Additionally, I studied previous works around drag and its intersections with class, race and religion, although, studies into religion and drag were scarce, so projects concerning religion and the wider queer and LGBT+ communities were collected. To gather my primary data, I employed several qualitative methods including interviews and participant observations (Marvasti, 2004). In using a multi-methodological approach, I was able to be flexible in analysing the many different configurations of class, race and religion in drag performances, and am therefore using a queer methodology (Halberstam, 2004: 941) Having already being a fan of Drag Race, I have been able to use my prior knowledge of the show and past research to understand drag, race, class and religion within this specific mainstream cultural context.

Using open-ended, in-depth qualitative interviews, I spoke to 7 drag performers and fans of local drag within the Netherlands. To find participants for my research, both purposeful and snowball sampling techniques were used. Using the former, I contacted drag performers and their fans who would be knowledgeable around the topic of drag at live drag shows or through online queer platforms (Palinkas & Horwitz, 2015). The latter sampling method followed from the first to contact other knowledgeable respondents whom I could not communicate with directly (Marshall, 1996; 523). The interviewees were from diverse backgrounds in terms of ethnicity, race, age and class, although most identified as gay men except for one gender-queer respondent. The respondents were from different countries as well, including Brazil, India, The Netherlands, U.K., Curacao, Jamaica and France. Most of the respondents did not identify with any particular religion, apart from two performers who were Christian.

In conducting my ethnographic fieldwork, I attended around 10 live drag performances to gain first-hand data on drag performances of class, race and religion (Marvasti, 2004, p. 51). The observed shows took place in ‘gay bars’ within Amsterdam, varying from popular touristic clubs, small staged bars, drag queen bingo, and the weekly drag nights held at a gay sex club. Additionally, I also analysed video content of major drag performances within the Netherlands that I could not attend personally. This included club performances and two ‘major’ queer events, the queer dance Milkshake Festival, and the Superball 2019, a drag ball competition between international drag houses hosted in Amsterdam.

Using queer readings and content analysis methodologies to analyse my data, I transcribed my interviews and examined my fieldwork notes to study the data. I conducted a queer reading of my transcripts and analysed the content of the recorded performances to

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observe the configurations of religion, race, and class in relation to drag (Pascale, 2008: 725; Stone, 2015: 165). For example, my interview with Ariel included discussions about her ‘ladylike’ behaviour utilised to distance herself from hypersexualised stereotypes of blackness. However, upon analysis of the interview, her behaviour in drag also related to her aesthetics of ‘real’ women within her drag, which implicated essentialist, white and upper-class understandings of femininity from Ariel’s drag (Fuller, 2004: 18).

Reflecting upon my methods of data collection and analysis, there are some areas that would have improved the quality of this research. Unfortunately, there was difficulty in gaining access to informants who did not identify as gay men, which may be due to myself being in contact with this group at drag performances. As such, women were not present in the collected data, which again, may be due to my position as a man or possibly a smaller minority of women attending local drag shows. Additionally, there were few drag kings, who are women who do masculine drag, within the Amsterdam scene, and none who were available for participation. It would be key to gain a perspective from women who either do or enjoy drag, as I hope my study would benefit comparatively to drag as mainstream culture in the form of Drag Race, as the show has yet to include any drag king performers. However, Drag Race has allowed several trans-women drag performers within the show, which is another lost perspective within my research. Having these perspectives would allow my study to be informed by other communities who are outside of ‘drag representation’ in mainstream drag entertainment, expanding the epistemological standpoints within my research (Harding, 1986). Upon this reflection, my next section will discuss the theoretical framework in which I position this research in.

1.4: Queer Theory - A Theoretical Framework

Using Butlers concept of gender performativity, I position myself within a queer theoretical framework. Queer theory is a tool to conduct post-structuralist critiques towards gender and sexual identities, deconstruct normative values of these social categories, and foster social equality (Seidman, 2005: 162). My approach towards the understanding of gender, and other cultural identities like class, race, and religion, lend themselves within a queer theoretical framework due to the positioning of queer theories articulation of gender as performative, and drag as having the capability to deconstruct gender through performativity (Butler, 1988: 528).

As my research is positioned within a queer performative theoretical framework, it is important to define ‘performance’ and ‘performativity’ in lieu of my research question; “How are

class, race and religion performed and subverted in drag?”. As discussed within this section,

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to refer to the act itself, the dramaturgical doing of an action that also requires an actor to perform and an audience to ‘consume’ the act. Butler (2016) discusses that performances are acts that gives subjects validity as they rely on a network of other actors to consume and understand the meanings of acts and reference a common social background through performances of gender. Performance, therefore, is a signifier that relies on social structures and other actors that allows acts to be understood as gendered, whereas gender performativity is the signified, the act that has no interior substance (Butler, 1986: 48).

As gender is performative, drag performers use gender to subvert norms and genders supposed biological determinism. (Butler, 1986: 47). Butler shows that gender is something that one does, and not something one ‘is’, and due to perceived biological sex by other social actors, it is inescapably enforced onto us. As ‘biological sex’ is gendered, with a penis signifying ‘man’ and a vagina signifying ‘woman’, people are assigned the ‘appropriate’ gender category and raised with the respective norms of ‘man’ or ‘woman’ within a binarised system of gender (Kosofsky Sedgwick, 2004: 915). However, as gender is cultural, the meanings of masculinity/men and femininity/women differ over time and space. Yet, the effect of gender is created through labelling acts as either feminine or masculine and incorrect or correct based on bodily sex (Butler, 1988: 520). The ability to label acts as appropriate derives from cultural gendered scripts that have been historically established to naturalise gender identities. Whilst individuals do have choices in how they performatively enact gender, social sanctions exist that constrain and deter from straying too far from gender norms (Butler, 1993: 122). Ultimately, due to cultural punishments, enforced repetition and historical scripts, gender is usually understood as ontological and continuous, instead of performative, and the labelling of gendered acts are thought to reflect meaning as opposed to creating a gendered meaning (Halberstam, 2004: 952).

As gender is performative, drag queens are able to performatively utilise gender to subvert understandings of gender identity as stable and interior (Butler, 1988: 526). As gender has no interiority and therefore is neither true or false, drag queens use performativity of gender to ‘parody’ the idea of gender as a binary, interior, and continuous identity through using ‘incorrect’ acts (Butler, 1999; Munoz, 1999). For instance, drag queens use clothing, wigs, and makeup to present as ‘female’ (woman) convincingly, but also deconstruct gender in front of audiences by revealing their ‘biologically male’ body. Through these choices in presentation, ‘men’ can be understood as ‘women’ through performativity, destabilising the audiences understanding of gender as one continuous identity. As such, drag queens are able to use cultural notions and ideas of femininity in tandem with their own ‘masculine’ body to subvert and re-signify pre-existing notions of both gender norms and as ontological (Butler, 1993: 125).

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Performativity in drag is key for the foundation of my analysis into understanding that, as gender is ultimately a performative act subverted through drag, how are other identities performative? As different acts, aesthetics and desires are coded as masculine or feminine, and incorrect or correct to perceived gender identity, how are these same acts racialised, classed or associated to certain denominations of faith? And, if drag uses gender performativity that involves our racialised, classed and religious understandings of masculinity and femininity, how are the traditional ideologies of the aforementioned identities subverted or conformed to?

Using Butler’s own concept of performativity as my theoretical framework and understanding that cultural identities beyond gender are performative, I have investigated the subversion and performance of class, race and religion within the local level context of drag performances. As performative acts enable a deconstruction of identity or conform to pre-existing stereotypes (Butler, 1993: 125), I examined how drag performances take on images of other identity categories of race, religion and class within their shows. Just as gender is denoted through masculine or feminine labelling of acts, so is our understandings of other cultural identities, like class, race and religion. This is to say that whilst performative acts are binarised into notions of appropriately masculine or feminine behaviours, so are our interwoven understandings of racial, classed and even religious acts within the performances of gender (Strings, 2013; Collins, 2015; Garner & Selod, 2014). Taking the performative nature of identities beyond the scope of gender, and conducting analysis into drag performances within the local-context and interviewing both drag performances and their audience members, Butler’s concept of gender performativity as a theoretical framework allows for an investigation into the deconstruction and ‘queering’ of class, race and religion in drag. Ultimately, using a performative theoretical framework is essential for my study to understand how drag performers simultaneously re-marginalise, subvert and queer perceptions of class, race and religion (Butler, 1988; Strings, 2013).

1.5: Chapter Overview

Having introduced the topic of my research concerning how drag queens subvert, conform, perform, and queer different cultural identities through performative acts, in which my guiding research question is “How are class, race and religion performed and subverted in drag?”, I will now give an overview of ensuing chapters.

Within Chapter 2 I will further detail the performative theoretical framework utilised to position my analysis of data, in regards to class, race and religion being able to be deconstructed or ‘queered’ through drag (Strings & Bui, 2013; Schacht, 2000; Butler, 1993). Additionally, this

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neoliberalism capitalism, class, race and ethnicity, and religion, and what research gaps this study will address. Chapter 3, 4 and 5, will present, analyse and discuss my collected data and the ways in which drag performers perform class, race and religion respectively. Lastly, I will conclude with Chapter 6 on the performative nature of the analysed cultural identities and how drag performers are able to queer audience understandings of class, race and religion through their subversions, conformities and contradictions.

Finally, to reiterate the relevance of this research, drags growth and popularity within mainstream culture, it is important to understand how the local, non-neoliberal and capitalist context of drag perform and portray cultural identities in their deconstruction of gender (Ferrante, 2017: 164). As gender is something that cannot be separated from our understandings of class and race, it is all pertinent to consider these social categories within analysis of the deconstruction of identity (Lock Swarr, 2008: 75). Additionally, in analysing queer communities, religion is a topic of interest due to the religious narratives that are often used to marginalise these communities (Whitehead & Baker, 2012: 17). Consequently, it is key to observe the narratives from queer groups towards religious groups, and vice versa.

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Chapter 2: Documenting Queerness

2.1: Framing Theory, Reviewing Literature

This chapter will outline the theoretical framework of performativity used to analyse the performances and subversions of class, race and religion present within drag. Framing my study within a queer, performative theoretical framework as articulated by queer theorist Judith Butler (1986, 1988), I will discuss how this framework will answer my answer my research question, “How are class, race and religion performed and subverted in drag?”. Additionally, I will review how my theoretical data was collected for this research process.

Next, I will discuss previous literature’s discussion of drag and its intersections with topics important to the study. Firstly, observing the rise of popularity of drag in the form of

RuPaul’s Drag Race, I will discuss the shows intersections with neoliberal and capitalist ideologies

(Ferrante, 2017). Secondly, I will relate my study to previous research investigating race and class within drag performances (Schacht, 2000). However, due to limited research into the specific intersection of drag and religion, I will discuss my investigation into this relationship between these two cultural communities and the restricted previous literature (Rahman, 2016; Sullivan-Blum, 2004).

Finally, gaps within the previous studies and discuss how my project will tackle these issues. Consequently, I will conclude the chapter with an overview of the topics discussed so far and an introduction to the analytical chapters of this project.

2.2: Queer Theory: A Conceptual Framework

Positioning my study within a queer theoretical framework, I will analytically deconstruct uses of cultural identities within drag performances through performative acts concerning race, class and religion (Butler, 1993: 26). I acquired my theoretical framework through both online and physical sociological papers, paying attention to gain more recent discussions of queer theoretical discussions. This post-structuralist framework was formulated and is still used by queer scholars to question the normative assumption of heterosexuality, and challenge binarised dualisms of sexual and gender identity (Taylor, 2009: 199). Queer theories questioning of social norms and distributions of power is a key part of my own research approach within the drag world (Butler, 1993: 17). As Drag Race has risen to mainstream popularity, it is important to question the ‘normative’ aspects of queer communities, especially as queers’ ‘challenge’ mainstream notions of binarised gender and sexuality (Butler, 1993: 24; Kosofsky Sedgwick, 2004: 915).

Whilst drag performers are often understood as transcending gender through transgressive gendered acts (Hodes & Sandoval, 2018: 160), drag performers are not actually able

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to act in a way that does connote gender, as they are not ‘outside’ of gendered understandings of acts. However, through their transgressive acts of using ‘inappropriate’ gendered acts that disrupts or contradicts their feminine or womanly appearance, drag performers use performativity to subvert ideologies of gender as an interior, unchanging identity (Butler, 1993: 28; Taylor, 2009: 212). Additionally, due to the imprecise nature of what constitutes a person’s gender and their actions, as the vast majority of people never fully reach all the standards of masculinity or femininity (Halberstam, 2004), drag queens can use the ambiguity of gender categories to ‘bend’ the boundaries of gender (Halberstam, 2004: 948). As such, drag is an interesting study area to understand how gender, race, class and religion can become queered through analysing the way in which drag performers use symbols, acts and images of these social identities that can be ideologically normative, subversive, or both. Using a queer framework, I have analysed both the categories of identity that are present within drag performances along with masculinity and femininity (Petzen, 2012: 291).

However, queer theories and studies tend to ‘white-wash’ issues surrounding racial and queer identities through a sole research focus around gender and sexuality, so other influencing factors on queer people’s experiences become invisible within processes of analysis (Rahman, 2016: 954; Seidman, 2005: 170). However, I use a queer theoretical framework to analyse how drag queens performatively utilise images and symbols of class, race and religion to subvert or conform to normative stereotypes surrounding these cultural identities. In using this queer theoretical approach, my analysis appreciates the multi-faceted performances and articulations of gender, race, religion and class through drag within mainstream Western cultural contexts. 2.3: Performatively Performing Queerness

In using a queer theoretical framework to focus my research on drag performances, I will apply Butler’s concept of performativity to analyse the categories, performances and subversion of class, race and religion. Butler critiques the idea of a universal, essential gender identity due to the performative nature of gender and the ways in which men and women are articulated in social settings varies over time and space. (Butler, 1986: 45). Through analysing the performative nature of drag, I have been able to observe and critique the normative and subversive acts of class, race and religion in (Seidman, 2005: 172; Butler, 1993: 133).

Simone de Beauvoir states that one is not born their gender, but one becomes their gender (Butler, 1986). Biological sex is commonly understood to determine gender, male indicating man and female as woman, but these binarised categories are cultural and ultimately unrelated in essence (ibid.: 39). Butler argues that sex is always gendered, so the distinction

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between gender and sex is futile given that former is the cultural interpretation of the body, and can be articulated differently geographically and historically.

As such, gender is the constant interpretation of culturally defined acts within social interactions (Butler, 1986: 45). Butler argues genders cultural construction based on ‘natural’ bodies, meaning that to ‘become’ a man or a woman is to use ‘appropriate’ acts to signify one’s gender identity. Consequently, as gender is constituted through repetitive bodily acts, it is not an internal identity, and is merely sustained by performative acts (Butler, 1999: 180). Furthermore, the illusion of gender as biologically innate is also sustained through social policing and sanctions against those who transgress gender boundaries. Consequently, gender is performative as it only creates the effect of a gender identity, and is not actually expressive of an internal identity.

Whilst gender is constituted through acts, the performativity of gender is constrained and cannot be dramatically changed with ease (Butler, 1986: 180). Ideologies of the ‘coital imperative’ have led to the enforcement of binary gender/sex identities that has been sedimented as natural over time, to support human reproduction under the guise of biological, sexed bodies and heterosexuality (Butler, 1988: 524). Similarly, acts that are deemed appropriately masculine or feminine have been sedimented historically, so gender as an act is the reinterpretation and repetition of certain ‘stylised acts’, or gendered ‘scripts’ (Butler, 1986: 48). Consequently, genders historical context means it is also a collective action in which social actors both display and interpret gendered acts. Consequently, these gendered scripts are present before we are born, and therefore, inescapable (ibid.: 40).

Gendered acts are self-policed, and by others, to enforce social sanctions that deter deviation from essentialist gender ideologies and ensure compliance to compulsory heterosexuality . These sanctions range from emotional distress to violence and murder of non-heteronormative individuals (Butler, 1988: 125). For example, trans-identifying people ‘embody’ the differences between sex and gender as a naturally-occurring identity, implicating the performative nature of gender (ibid.). However, through social and physical violence towards transgender communities, heteronormative ideologies are consolidated against the subversive acts of ‘the other’ to maintain social regulation and oppression of queers (Butler, 1999: 163).

Additionally, western society deems the ‘idealised’ form of hegemonic masculinity with values of white, cisgender, heterosexual, middle/upper-class men, which in turn, marginalises men outside of these definitions of masculinity (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005: 831, (Halberstam, 2004: 936). Whilst hegemonic masculinity upholds patriarchal power structures, and marginalises non-hegemonic groups of ‘men’ through its specificity and unattainability, femininity is also structurally hierarchal. Emphasised femininity, as defined by Paechter (2006), is

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the idealised form of femininity, perpetuated through media, which complies to hegemonic ideologies of how women should act, namely, through serving and validating male attention and needs, and a reliance on masculinity. However, whilst emphasised femininity is hierarchal and the dominant form of femininity perpetuated in media, it cannot be hegemonic as it is not ‘above’ hegemonic masculinity and merely serves it.

Butler also discusses how drag takes on racialised and classed modes of gender within performative acts through resignification (Butler, 1993: 231). Drag queens, especially those who are oppressed in multiplicity due to their race, class, gender or sexual identity, can rearticulate the meanings of gender, race and class to exert resistance against heteronormative culture (Munoz, 1999). However, Butler warns that drag is not inherently a subversive, resistive acts, as performers can reinscribe normative notions of masculinity and femininity through performative acts (Butler, 1993: 131). Consequently, I will analyse how drag performers performatively deconstruct and articulate class, race and religion in both subversive and remarginalizing manners. Ultimately, I argue that gender, racial, religious and classed identities are “put on, invariably, under constraint, daily and incessantly” (Butler, 1988: 531) due to the social boundaries of assumed bodily identities, and thee transgression of borders through drag performances. Analysing drag spaces performatively will allow for an understanding of the power drag has in queering class, race and religion and answer my research question.

Ultimately, gender is performative, and its reality only extends to the point of performance. Consequently, I use Butler’s concept of performativity to argue that even racial, classed and religious identities are performative in nature. Thus, I have investigated how and argue that drag queens perform class, race and religion to audiences through the subversion and re-inscription of normative images and symbols concerning class, race and religion performatively. Through contradictory acts, such as a performer revealing her ‘masculine’ body, drag queens can performatively deconstruct understandings of gender (Butler, 1993: 125). As cultural identities are historically and temporally constituted, drag performers can rearticulate scripts of class, race and religion as well, as they are all ‘intersecting’ within performative femininity (Kosofsky Sedgwick, 2004: 917), ultimately queering audiences’ understandings of these identities similarly like drag does with gender.

2.4: RuPaul’s Drag Race: From Rags to Riches

The rise of RuPaul’s Drag Race in mainstream media has exposed a plethora of queer-identifying drag queens, pushing ‘queer representation’ into mainstream culture. Drag Race is a ‘reality’ show, it’s choice of ‘representing’ the queer competitors is expressed as more ‘accurate’ than that of scripted medias (Gamson, 2013: 52). Taken the fact the show is presented as the

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‘truth’ of drag queens experiences and it shows the ‘diversity’ of all queer performances, it is important to understand how queer people of different genders, races, classes and religions are shown within mainstream culture phenomenon.

Drag Race uses methods of appropriation, mimicry, and parody, drag within popular

culture to become relevant to mainstream audiences as it creates common-ground references through parody (Vesey, 2016: 592). Consequently, RuPaul and his show has become a product and a brand that is consumable for audiences to generate revenue for RuPaul and his contestants (Daggett, 2017: 273). As such, Drag Race queens can continue a marketable career under the authentic, professional ‘RuPaul brand’. Through touring, meet-and-greets, and merchandise, RuPaul and his competitors generate income for themselves (Dearbail, 2018) and increase their own popularity. Subsequently, queer drag performers become valued for their ‘surface-level’ aesthetics and ideologies to become normatively articulated as a ‘material’ product which makes mainstream inclusions of drag as complacent to patriarchal, capitalist social systems (Ferrante, 2017: 153).

Additionally, drag has become a consumable product for its mainstream demographic, namely, heterosexual, white, middle-class women (O'Keeffe, 2018) through RuPaul’s show, youth, glamour, whiteness and sexualised images of femininity have become valued and policed within the performances of drag. Thus, non-white drag performers are marginalised to enacting stereotypical racialised femininities (Tucker Jenkins, 2017: 86), and there is a deterrent to masculine performances, evident in the fact the show has never included a drag king. As such,

Drag Race has marketed itself as a process of professionalising drag performers. The standards of

drag in Drag Race has affected drag on the local-levels in terms of how audiences and performers judge, enjoy and enact local drag performances and compare them to the institutionalised, capitalist context of the show, as opposed to viewing drag as a queer performance of self-expression (Alexander, 2017: 265).

Ultimately, drags rise in popularity through mainstream culture has depoliticised the queer potential of queer drag to an extent, and shown to be influential in standardising local drag performances (Alexander, 2017). As such, it is imperative to analyse drag within the local contexts in lieu of Drag Race’s influence and notoriety within mainstream Western culture. In doing so, my analysis has investigated the performances of queer communities in a local versus a mainstream, capitalist and neoliberal context.

2.4: Commodified Queerness

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against local-contexts of drag performances. As such, this section discusses the previous research associated with the capitalist, consumerist qualities of RuPaul’s Drag Race. This is important within my own research as it allows for a contextualisation and comparison between the mainstream iterations of drag, and drag within local spaces.

Daggett’s (2017) study positively discusses how the show parodies traditional gender ideologies and the format of reality television. Whilst drag performers deconstruct gender on

Drag Race, RuPaul uses shameless product placement to generate revenue whilst simultaneously

parodying other reality shows product sponsorship. However, Daggett discusses how even in this parody, RuPaul and his show become a consumerist brand. Drag Race co-opts drag queens ‘queerness’ to brand sponsorships and generate revenue for themselves and the show, whilst also marketing other material products as ‘queer-friendly’. Whilst Daggett praises the neo-liberal attitudes of the show, and teaching queer histories to mainstream audiences, I contest this analysis, arguing that Drag Race’s neoliberal ideologies undercuts the potential of the show to ‘queer’ audiences’ understandings of gender, race, class and religion due to the shows politically homonationalist values (Ferrante, 2017).

Similarly, Vesey (2016) reports on how Drag Race performers often generate revenue post-show by releasing music under conventional female popstar aesthetics, building upon neoliberalist ideologies of contemporary music industries to style drag queen singers as individualistic pop stars. Unlike Daggett (2017), Vesey is critical that this opportunity for notoriety is bias towards white and light-skinned drag performers, as their unmarked racial identity allows them to be relatable to white, mainstream audiences whilst still working legitimately under the authentic RuPaul brand. Vesey concludes that whilst drag queens are able to break into mainstream culture with music careers and benefit from a capitalist market, thus becoming consumable products, this is only for white or light-skinned performers. However, non-white drag queens are not given the same opportunities for success due to the reflection the show takes in branding the drag queens to the mainstream music industries articulations of femininity and racial hierarchies. Consequently, Vesey is critical in her understanding of how

Drag Race and its white drag performers inhibit neoliberal and capitalist culture to become

consumable for mass audiences, and ultimately generate revenue.

Lastly, Hodes and Sandoval (2018) discuss how the show operationalises its power to commodify drag performers in their acts of gender subversion. Through Drag Race’s neoliberal values of individuality and competitiveness, and the researcher’s observations of race, class and gender in the show, Hodes and Sandoval demonstrate how RuPaul commodifies drag queens through the shows challenges that promote and include RuPaul’s products and product

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placement for sponsorships. Additionally, as the show is a competition and critiques the presentation of drag, the performers become commodified through their subjectification in lieu of the standard of white, middle-class femininity in Drag Race. Hodes and Sandoval are critical towards the shows commodification of drag queens to this white, ‘ruling-class’ standard of femininity, which is comparable to that of emphasised femininity (Connell, 1987: 848). This femininity inhibits notions of normative whiteness and a reliance of femininity to be complacent, consumed and materially dependent on white, upper-class masculinity (Hodes & Sandoval, 2018: 157). As this form of femininity is expressed and celebrated within Drag Race, RuPaul generates revenue by being relatable to the mass white, feminine mainstream audiences that relate to this form of femininity. These audiences are targeted, which misses the shows opportunity to ‘queer’ traditional understandings of gender, race and even class, which depoliticises some of the power drag has in Drag Race.

Understanding how mainstream expressions of drag inhibit ideologies of neoliberalism to commodify contestants in a manner that is relatable for mainstream, hegemonic audiences, it thus becomes important to analyse the articulations and ‘consumption’ of drag within the local context. Drag Race also uses neoliberalist rhetoric’s to inhibit homonationalism. Jasbir Puar’s (2007) concept of homonationalism details the manner in which American discourses of nationalism incorporate white, middle-class, patriotic gay men into its nationalist identity. This primarily originates from the notion of the U.S. as an LGBT+ ‘safe haven’ and liberally progressive country, which is an ideology placed against that of ‘homophobic’ and ‘less developed’ Islamic nations, who are also enemies to queer communities and Americans. Consequently, communities like gay Muslims are marginalised due to their ‘contradictory’ identities, for their religious and ethnic identity in American communities and for their sexuality in Islamic communities.

Ferrante (2017) utilises homonationalism in her analysis of Drag Race to understand how the show becomes a consumerist product for mainstream audiences. Through the neoliberal ideologies expressed in the show, such as individualism and competitiveness between the performers, RuPaul turns competitors into neoliberal subjects to create a homonormative regime. By praising ‘successful’ drag queens, who are usually white or light-skinned, conventionally feminine and express neoliberalist qualities of hard work and self-determinism, and elimination of performers who do not inhibit these qualities, a ‘standard’ of drag is created. Moreover, Ferrante discusses how drag competitors’ express pride in their nationality as opposed to their oppressed queer identity to remain identifiable with mainstream heteronormative audiences. Consequently, non-white performers are often shown as unable to inhibit neoliberal

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qualities as they do not conform to homonational imageries of queer people, something that also seems prevalent for queer communities in the Netherlands (Mepschen, et al., 2016: 106).

As such, previous literature has investigated how Drag Race as a mainstream representation of drag loses its ‘political edge as it panders to the mainstream, consumerist audiences. This in turn subjugates queer people of colour and lower classes, or those who do not fit the standards of Drag Race. Consequently, I will focus on analysing the ways in which different racial, class and religious identities are presented within drag outside of the mainstream, capitalist culture and observe the influences of Drag Race in this context.

2.5: Classy, Constructed Queens: Performative Socio-Economic Identities

In analysing the performance of gender and race within drag, it is key to note how class is also embodied as well. As discussed in the previous section, drag performances show the performative nature of class identity through ‘camp’ tactics (Rhyne, 2008: 183). However, Schacht’s (2000) empirical research discussing how the drag ball documentary Paris Is Burning can teach audiences to critique and recognise the performative acts and ontology of gender, racial and class identities.

Using their students essays as data, Schacht discusses the importance of class to drag queens within Paris is Burning, based on the lack of social opportunities they have due to their oppressed racial, gender/sexual and class position. However, the stratification experienced by queer drag performers of colour allow them to emulate identities they do not inhibit, such as middle-class aesthetics through ball competition categories like ‘Executive Realness’. This is a ‘theme’ in which performers must emulate a convincing business, upper-class aesthetic, which relies both on the acts and styles of the classes and whiteness due to the coding of upper-class as exclusively white. Schacht continues that as non-white drag queens are able to convincingly present as a privileged, upper-class, ‘white’ individuals forces audiences to question their own ‘innate’ socio-economic status. Schacht also implicates the consequences of transgressive drag acts for marginalised communities, as whilst these drag queens are able to show that class, gender and race are constituted performatively, they are still socially oppressed despite their deconstructive acts, mirrored in the documentary through the murder of one Latina transgender performer, Venus Xtravaganza.

Schacht concludes that whilst performative identities of race, class and gender are tied to one another in drag, drag also mirrors individuals positions within social hierarchies of power as they attempt to transgress identity boundaries. Collectively however, these papers are helpful in my analysis of the performative aspects of class within drag and contextualise the manner in which gender, race and religion are performed through drag.

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2.6: Drag’s Race - Configurations of Racial & Ethnic Identities

Turning to previous research into the relationship of drag performers and articulations of race, Strings and Bui’s (2013) work on gender and racial authenticity within Drag Race is of key interest. The researchers report that racial identity is policed for drag performers of colour, but not for white drag queens. They note that whilst the show easily subverts and reifies normative gender ideologies, non-white drag performers, with the exception of East-Asian identifying queens, were praised successful only when enacting ‘authentic’ racialised feminine stereotypes. This led to an inscription of race as an essential part of non-white performers identity, whereas white and East Asian drag queen’s racial identity went unmarked, allowing them to have more success and flexibility in their performative acts of race and gender. The researchers concluded that through the praising of racialised performances of femininity, non-white drag performers became marginalised as ‘the other’, and race was seen as a key constituent of their identity, whilst white performers go racially unmarked, reflecting larger Western hierarchies of race.

Similarly, Tucker Jenkins (2017) uses Drag Race as a case study to analyse configurations of race and ethnicity. Her research demonstrates how non-white drag performers are usually praised on their performances when using stereotypical, racialised feminine imageries of women. She uses many examples, including some black contestants becoming homogenised as ‘African queens’ and Latino performers as ‘exotic’ and sexy, with strong accents and limited fluency in English. Tucker Jenkins explains how these racialised feminine performances marginalises and homogenises both competitors and queer people of colour. Tucker Jenkins work is important to note, given the show’s influence on queer and non-queer communities’ perceptions of racialised groups, and Drag Race’s marginalisation of non-white performers to pre-existing racialised stereotypes.

Likewise, Lock Swarr’s (2008) ethnographic research into local South African drag scenes analyses the racialised performances of femininity. She notes the physical racial divisions of drag performances, as white performers were often hired regularly at clubs for paying audiences, whereas black queens were relegated into competitive pageant scenes which required paid entry to compete. Additionally, Lock Swarr discusses how white drag performers performatively enact race, as one performer was considered an ‘authentic’ impersonator of the black American singer Tina Turner. She demonstrates that race is just as performative as gender within drag, and drag performances include a performance of race as well as gender. Her research also discusses how white performers often articulate their whiteness as different and superior to blackness, as black drag performers often rely on humorous stereotypes of black femininity to appease audiences.

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As such, Lock Swarr brings to light the racialised aspects of gender performance within drag that reveals races performative nature, but also marginalises black drag performers.

Lastly, as the previous research recognise the unmarked category of whiteness in drag, which is often linked to images of wealth and higher classes (Strings & Bui, 2013: 823), Rhyne’s (2008) work expands on analysing performative whiteness in drag. Rhyne theorises that as drag enacts race and gender simultaneously, performers can deconstruct race and gender as a form of performative politics. Rhyne focuses on black drag queen’s presentation of femininity, especially in how their acts transgress ideologies of gender, race and sexuality for black masculinities, and subvert and critique contemporary Western hierarchies of race, sexuality and gender. Additionally, Rhyne details the way in which ‘camp’ as a performative technique of classed identities allowed queer people to render racial and classed identities visible, as drag performers use hyperbolised looks and commodities to perform femininity and ‘queer’ consumerist, capitalist culture. Collectively, these research papers are useful in understandings how racial identities are used performatively by drag queens. Through these previous studies, I can contextualise how race is performed and performative within drag, and compare the way in which drag queens perform, subvert and appropriate racialised images in mainstream and local contexts.

2.7: Higher the Hair, the Closer to God - Religion in Drag

Lastly, I will discuss previous studies into the relationship between religious organisations and drag performers. However, as there is limited research between these two groups, I will review the few specific works of drag and religion, but there is wider literature that analyses how queer communities intersect with various religious institutes, including Christianity (Bystryn & Greenberg, 1982; Ford, et al., 2009), Judaism (Coyle & Rafalin, 2000; Schnoor, 2006) and Islam (Siraj, 2006; Shah, 2018).

Rahman (2016) studies gay Muslim communities as being both intersectional and queer. They argue how those who are at the intersections of multiple oppressions, like homophobia and Islamophobia, reside as theoretically queer due to their ‘unviability’ as gay Muslim men, as ‘gay’ is formulated as ‘white’ and ‘Muslim’ as homophobic. Through this impossibility, queer Muslims can exert resistance to oppression from homosexual and Islamic communities. I plan to use Rahman’s configuration of unviable intersectional identities as ‘queer’ within my research to analyse how drag performers subvert and deconstruct normative understandings of class, race and religion.