The fact is that, while drag as performance might stem from, or represent, an expression of an inner identity or subculture (and, for this reason, drag will mean something quite different to a transgender woman than a cisgender man – gay or straight), unknowing audiences in a bar or club will, for the most part, remain blithe to the gender identity or sexuality of the performer lying behind the makeup or lip-sync. More recently, the second season of Dragula – the competition searching for the world’s next “drag supermonster” – featured Disasterina, who, out of drag, is a straight married man. Most famously, Dame Edna Everage has been, since 1955, the drag persona of the prolifically heterosexual actor Barry Humphries (who has married four different women throughout his career). “We ought to feel buoyed by the increasing willingness of these men to experiment with and transgress the limits of ‘normal’ gender” While drag performance has its roots amongst the transgender and gay communities – for whom the art is both affirming and life-enhancing – straight, cisgender men have been performing in drag long before Morphosis’ inclusion in the Drag Race canon, and sometimes to great significance.
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Yet, while there are founded concerns about the failure to represent the full spectrum of the drag scene on Drag Race, some criticisms of Morphosis’ casting entirely miss the mark - specifically, those that see Morphosis’ very existence as a straight, cisgender male drag performer as a form of co-optation akin to cultural appropriation. What a shame, then, that both the emphasis given to this announcement and its hostile reception has eclipsed news of the inclusion of two Black, transgender women – Kerri Colby and Kornbread “The Snack” Jeté – in the cast.
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Perhaps this is why promotional material for the 14th season has made such point of Maddy Morphosis’ casting: as yet another in a series of trailblazing ‘firsts’. The cast of the 13th season of the show included Gottmik, the first transgender man to compete, and, more recently, Drag Race’s UK spin-off introduced Victoria Scone, the first cisgender woman to be included in the franchise. Since 2018, Drag Race’s production team has worked hard to diversify its participant base. RuPaul’s comments, for which he has since apologised, flew in the face of women’s - especially trans women’s - important contributions to both the past and present of drag (contributions that both RuPaul and the producers of Drag Race are aware of, since the show frequently makes reference to Paris Is Burning – the 1990 documentary that depicts, among other things, the presence of transgender performers like Venus Xtravaganza within the underground ball scene of 80s New York City).
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In 2018, RuPaul was criticised for comments made in an interview with The Guardian, in which he expressed his distaste for women doing drag because “ loses its sense of danger and its sense of irony once it’s not men doing it” and stated that he would not cast a trans woman who had received gender affirming surgery because “it changes the whole concept of what we’re doing.” Drag Race has come under fire in the past for its less-than-inclusive and exclusionary approach to casting. “It’s happening in our clubs,” wrote one Twitter user, “and now our shows.” Similarly, others complained that Morphosis’ inclusion represented an opportunity stolen from a queer competitor - from, for instance, drag kings who have otherwise gone underrepresented in the show’s history. Some viewers regarded the news as another form of unwelcome invasion by outsiders into otherwise exclusively queer spaces. The casting decision has been met with backlash from the show’s expansive LGBTQ+ fanbase.