Holding onto the Brink of Self-Expression: Drag community and their sense of self

The struggle to fight for one's rights and modes of self-expression is endless and will continue until humanity's doom. One such fight, with remarkable similarities all across the global societies, is that of the members of the queer community and women for their social acceptance. As Ken Booth contextualizes in his essay, in real life, oftentimes, an aspect of a person's inner personality collides with another aspect of his/her societal identity. Some of these characteristics might conflict with the traditional and majoritarian notions of the said society. Consequently, the person enriched with all those so-called preposterous characteristics is subjected to discrimination. There is no denying that a queer person from the racially uplifted (white) community will be, in a broad sense, provided with better and relatively easier opportunities for self-expression than a possibly similar queer person from the racially "inferior" (black) community.

The concept of role playing in Ken Booth’s essay was deeply illuminating and further spiraled a dialogue within me about how he defines role playing and how the drag community perceives it. Drag is a gender-bending art form in which a performer dresses and makes up to exaggerate a specific gender identity, usually of the opposite sex. It is not only a form of art and culture but performance, labour, activism, resistance and the self expression of a queer identity. I was fifteen when I was first exposed to the supposed “glamorous” world of drag queens through Saturday afternoons on TLC with my elder sister. Looking back, one of the reasons why the world of drag was so captivating and appealing to me was the admiration I had for their sense of self and expression. Self expression or a sense of self was extremely stagnant for me at that point in time, navigating through society being a member of the queer community and exposing myself to the subsequent insecurities seemed exteremely harrowing. Yet those forty five minutes in front of the TV, looking at people being so unapologetically themselves made stepping into a new unfamiliar curvature of societal hierarchies worth it. 

Power circulates in society, and when it comes to free and fair opportunities of self-expression, it follows a fixed hierarchical flow, constructed rigidly out of the patriarchal gender conceptions prevailing in that particular region and the ideals of what “normality” is and how it subsequently restricts autonomy. The continued misconceptions of using the terms ‘gender’ and ‘sex’ interchangebly while discussing a person’s physiology and identity further contribut to this rigid dichotimized hierarchical construction. For example, homosexual practices (to this date) are taboo globally. Thus, following this power flow, any cis-gendered individual will have a better stand in the society than a person who does not conform to the heteronormative, child-centric ideals of the global culture. Furthermore, even in this hierarchical flow of power, queer women are far more marginalised within the already marginalized queer community. Although it won't be wrong to draw another parallel that a cis gendered women would be placed above a queer women in the societal hierarchies. Drag however obscures this gender construct. The fluidity of gender allows one to explore and define their own identity and drag allows one to blur these dichotomized boundaries. 

However, the absence of women and queer people within the discourse surrounding securitization has been extremely appaling. Reading through the Copenhagen School’s categorization of gender (sexuality as a factor not even being acknowledged) based violence under social security and not national security as well as the ‘speech act’ further problematizes the issue of locating women and queer people in security studies. Lene Hansen, although provides a much more inclusive view of securitization by introducing the concepts of ‘security as silence’ and ‘subsuming security’. The whole concept of the speech act collapses when it comes to the queer community because voicing out thier insecurities will susbequently giver rise to far more insecurities which in itself is damaging to their existence. Most queer people tend to remain closeted due to this very exposure to threats. As a result, instead of giving refuge, queer sexualities and non-normative gender expression women's worries are heightened. This emphasizes the importance of an intersectional approach, which can be used to recognise how a person's various social identities contribute to their increased risk of violence. Interactions between race, ethnicity, social class or wealth, religion, disability, gender and sexuality, and heteronormativity and cisprivilege.

I would also like to delve deeper into the economic insecurities of the members of the queer community, in general, and trans community, in specific. Rampant discrimination and virtual banishment from society's regular spheres make it cumbersome for them to take up jobs. Thus, financial instability becomes a big part of their lives. Such situations force them to indulge in criminal practices as a last resort. "Some kind of work, you need to do in New York City to sustain yourself, to remain alive, legal or otherwise." The situation is no better in our home country India, as visible by just a glance into the life of the hijra community. Many of these members, thus, often find themselves participating in escort services and prostitution. However, even professions like these are highly dependent on how feminine or submissive the person's body looks. Naturally, the majority of trans and gay community members might not conform to these characteristics. 

A considerable majority of members of the community are brutally murdered and are subjected to physical atrocities, the sole reason of which is that they do not conform to the binary gender practices, as deemed fit by the society. They lose their life for openly expressing who they are, and the unfortunate reality is that many of them have accepted this to be their fate. These atrocities however have become a part and parcel of this community’s existence. 

References 

1. Hansen, L. (2000). The Little Mermaid's silent security dilemma and the absence of gender in the Copenhagen School. Millennium, 29(2), 285-306.https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/03058298000290020501 
2. Booth, K. (1994). Security and Self reflections of a fallen realist. https://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/xmlui/handle/10315/1414 
3. JAMIE J. HAGEN, Queering women, peace and security, International Affairs, Volume 92, Issue 2, March 2016, Pages 313–332, https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2346.12551
4. Livingston Jennie, director. Paris Is Burning. Off White Productions, Inc., 1990.