This document summarizes research on drag as a black queer space. It discusses how drag can both uphold and resist oppressive structures through hyper-racialization of black queer subjects in drag performance and assertion of freedom through subversive gender expression. The spatial and legislative policing of black queer bodies is also examined alongside resistance through drag. Key sources on RuPaul's Drag Race and black queer contingency and disruption are referenced.

1. by Loanni Del Monte
Class of 2021
Major in Africana Studies
Drag: Limitations &
Potential of Black
Queer Space

2. Thesis:
● Drag as a black queer space has the potential to both uphold and
resist oppressive structures of white supremacy and homonormative
queerness.
● This can be seen in the ways drag performance can expose the black
queer subject to hyper-racialization and spatial and legislative control,
as well as assert the freedom, control and movement of black queer
bodies by way of subversive gender expression.

3. Symone: RPDR Season 13 Winner
Image by Symone via @the_symone
Image by The House of Avalon via Allure

4. Symone: RPDR Season 13 Winner
Image by The House of Avalon via Vogue Image by @fie1ds via Dazed Image by Kaio Cesar via Vogue

5. Hyper-racialization
of the queer black subject in drag
01

6. Hyper-racialization of the black queer subject in drag
● “Spicy. Exotic. Creature. Representations of Racial and Ethnic Minorities on RuPaul’s
Drag Race” by Sarah Tucker Jenkins
● Drag as black queer space can support the systemic oppression of black sexual
minorities by perpetuating negative black stereotypes.
○ Cameroonian contestant and winner of RPDR season one, BeBe Zahara, was
made the ‘cultural Other’, constantly reminded of her exotic identity by Ru Paul
and the other judges. Her national identity was generalized and obscured as she
represented as “an ambassador to the entire continent of Africa” (79).
○ ‘BeBe’s choice to identify herself as only “African” serves to solidify the concept
of the monolithic third world and furthers the stereotype of Africa as
homogenous and stagnant’ (80).

7. ● ‘“She is not acting, she is”: The conflict between gender and racial realness on RuPaul’s
Drag’ by Race Sabrina Strings and Long T. Bui
● Drag can operate as a space where problematic racialized gender archetypes are
replicated at the same time that fluid gender expression is emphasized (828).
● Examining RuPaul’s Drag Race season one, they note that “race for the black/brown
participants is viewed as fixed and embodied” so that an aggressively stereotypical racial
expression is essential to both an “authentic” drag persona and their success on the
show (831).
Hyper-racialization of the black queer subject in drag

8. ● “Queering 'Queer' Toronto Space: Transgressive QTBIPoC Drag Artists and Disrupting
Homonormativity” by Ryan Persadie
● Persadie demonstrates how drag can be an oppressive black queer space that reinforces
a “homonormative” queer culture and politics, “hold[ing] sexual difference as the central
framing of all queer life and marginality, while simultaneously dividing sexuality and
queerness from other vectors of experience and oppression such as race, ability, [and]
class” (22).
● The result is a space that values white, male, cis-gender drag performers that are silent
concerning state injustice - ‘liberal good gay[s]’; and marginalizes QTBIPoC that
particpate in any radical political criticism of the state - ‘radical bad queers’ (ibid).
Hyper-racialization of the black queer subject in drag

9. Spatial &
legislative policing
of the black queer body and its resistance
02

10. ● “Uncertain Freedom: RuPaul, Sylvester, and Black Queer Contingency” by Gershun
Avilez
● Avilez demonstrates the potential for both vulnerability and empowerment for black
queer men in drag using what he terms “queer contingency”:
○ “a constant state of uncertainty that derives from the transgression of the
protocols of gender expression” (50). It simultaneously acknowledges the agency
and limitation of “feminine-aligned masculinity” (62), thereby “recognizing the
complexity of Black queer existence in general” (51).
● Avilez argues drag and its “performance of femininity” allows for the assertion of
freedom, control and movement of the black queer body over its spatial and legislative
control (58).
Spatial/legislative policing of the black queer body and its resistance

11. ● Drag performance allowed for RuPaul
an “illusion” of womanhood that aptly
communicates his female-aligned
masculinity outside of drag, enabling
a “shuttle between masculinity and
femininity, embodying a male body
and having it appear through
femininity and refusing to rest in one
way of being” (58).
Spatial/legislative policing of the black queer body and its resistance
Image via Reddit
Image via Twitter

12. Connections to class
literature
The black queer body and its subversive threat
2.5

13. ● “Interanimating Black sexualities and the geography classroom” by LaToya E. Eaves
● The empowerment of drag performance for black queer subjects is refuting a history of
spatial and legislative attempts at policing their bodies.
● Eaves states “the use of the term [“Black sexualities”] can be characterized by examining
a body of knowledge that draws attention to the interlocking systems of oppression
perpetrated onto Black sites and bodies” (219), including “outsider perspectives of Black
sexualities [that] have often been produced from a space of pathologizing, been largely
rendered deviant and non-normative” (221).
The black queer body and its subversive threat

14. The black queer body and its subversive threat
● “Bounce to the Chocolate City Future” in Chocolate Cities: The Black Map of American
Life by Marcus Anthony Hunter and Zandria F. Robinson
● Hunter and Robinson similarly argue “a Black queer disruption” of space “with the
body...allows us to explore how chocolate maps often speak from the margins of
Blackness to center the lives of the most vulnerable” (112), refuting the state-sanctioned
policing of black queer bodies.

15. ● A New Orleans Baby Doll organization and a
staple of the city’s Mardi Gras culture, the
Million Dollar Baby Dolls, subverted “hetero,
male-centered, and capitalist norms” (114) of
gender and racial expression by dressing in
men’s clothing (drag kings), ‘playing with
conventional, paradoxical notions of gender’
(113).
The black queer body and its subversive threat
Image by SCOTT THRELKELD via Nola

16. CONCLUSION
03

17. ● In conclusion, my research has shown that drag as a black queer space has the potential to both
reinforce and resist oppressive structures of white supremacy and homonormative queerness.
● This can be seen in the ways drag performance can expose the black queer subject to hyper-
racialization and spatial and legislative control, as well as assert the freedom, control and
movement of black queer bodies by way of subversive gender expression.
Conclusion:

18. ● For future research, I’d like to learn more about drag as black queer space in non-american
contexts to explore how black queer space-making practices/realities abroad might differ from
local ones. I would also be interested in researching fatphobia and the idealized female form in
drag.
Next Steps

19. ● Rupaul's Drag Race and the Shifting Visibility of Drag Culture : The Boundaries of Reality Tv by Niall Brennan and
David Gudelunas
● “Uncertain Freedom: RuPaul, Sylvester, and Black Queer Contingency” by Gershun Avilez
● “Spicy. Exotic. Creature. Representations of Racial and Ethnic Minorities on RuPaul’s Drag Race” by Sarah Tucker
Jenkins
● ‘“SHE IS NOT ACTING, SHE IS”: The conflict between gender and racial realness on RuPaul’s Drag’ by Race Sabrina
Strings and Long T. Bui
● “Queering 'Queer' Toronto Space: Transgressive QTBIPoC Drag Artists and Disrupting Homonormativity” by Ryan
Persadie
Key Sources