This is my previous post on the subject, and this post will be slightly different but also similar.
I’m a gothic/gothabilly-looking bio-female genderqueer femme drag queen.
You may notice that I have added a couple new identity markers to my identity than my previous post about this, both bio-female and genderqueer. I may even add “high” to femme, but I’m still debating this.
I consider gothic/gothabilly-looking to be part of my gender identity because it effects how I express my genderqueer femme drag queen self. If I wore other types of clothing I would express my femmeness or my drag queenness or my genderqueerity in different ways, but as it is I express it through a gothic/gothabilly type of dress. I don’t really consider myself goth or gothic, and I don’t consider any labels to really define me perfectly (part of the reason why my gender identity is so long), but I do think that identities are useful as ways in which to express something about yourself to others, but know that I mean them as temporary describers to express my current relation with my gender identity (as in this case) or anything.
Bio-female is pretty self-explanatory, standing for “biologically female” and basically meaning that I was born with primary sex characteristics of a female and my body has developed secondary sex characteristics as well. My body has developed into a female on its own accord, and without any suppliments or help from outside sources. Although I don’t really “feel” female, but I think that is my not feeling like a conventional woman more than not feeling “female” because sex identity (male/female) and gender identity (man/woman) are so closely intwined and hard to seperate.
Genderqueer femme drag queen all goes together, but can be picked apart as well. Genderqueer is basically my way of saying that I don’t quite feel that I fit into the conventional ideas of man and woman as genders (as opposed to male and female as biological sex as described above), although I adopt other remarkably feminine identities in femme and drag queen they are not the same as a bio-female woman, in my opinion.
Femme is more of a visual identity for me, it is my distinction between femininity and femme-ininty, basically that femme is my conscious decision to wear makeup and skirts and to appear in a feminine manner. Drag queen is more of an internal identity. I feel more closely associated with a the feminintiy presented by drag queens than the femininity presented by contemporary ideas of woman, that is, camp femininity. My femininity is exaggerated and over the top and comes from a place of realized unnaturalness.
I embrace the idea that all gender is drag, that there is no “original” gender, there is nothing which is innate in us towards the things which make up a gender, that does not mean that we aren’t drawn to certain activities or other, but, take for example gendered things throughout the years and in different cultures. In some cultures, such as many Native American cultures, long hair is a symbol of strength and masculinity, in some, such as our current culture, it is considered feminine. Some cultures have men wearing skirts, such as in Scotland, in our culture that is considered feminine. Men used to wear what we would consider tights in high English society, or lace or velvet, and all three of those are considered connected with the feminine.
I don’t mean that we aren’t pulled to certain things or others, which I think we are, and there is a mixture of psychological and sociological factors that lead to things like gender, and so on. However, what we decide makes up “masculine” and “feminine” traits are not normative, they are not natural or innate nor is there only one way to do them. This can be shown, too, just in the last 50 or so years. In the 1950s it was scandalous for women to wear pants, it was considered butch and masculine, but now most women often wear pants more than they wear skirts.
So, “drag queen” in my identity is related to this notion of performativity, that gender is not natural and is performed, and it is also tied in with me embracing a femininity which is not associated with women, but associated with men. Males can express a very different type of femininity than females can, and I try to bridge that gap, although I don’t think it is often shown to others, that is why this is more of an internal identity, as mentioned before. I love campy femininity, that femininity which is over the top, and most often associated with gay males rather than females. It is that which exposes femininity as a pose, a performance, and that is what I embrace.
Hopefully that all makes sense. Feel free to ask questions, I won’t be offended.
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