Rupaul's Drag Race: Gender Stereotypes

A common misconception is that LGBTQ+ people and their allies cannot be discriminatory towards each other. Namely, that gay people cannot be homophobic or transgender people cannot be transphobic, or that, in the context of this essay, feminists cannot be either. But this is not the case, for discrimination lies not in your identity or your intent, but in what you say and how you treat others. As such, it is not hard to find transphobia within the LGBTQ+ community. Take, for instance, a recent controversy on the popular reality show RuPaul’s Drag Race. One of the show’s weekly episodes in the sixth season, which aired in 2014, featured a mini-challenge titled “Female or She-male” in which the contestants had to discern from a photo of a body

First off, not all “transsexuals” identify as women. The term “transgender” simply means not cis-gender, and so male-to-female people, female-to-male people, genderqueer people, agender people, gender non-binary people, and so on, all fall under this idea of being uncomfortable in the sex-gender-birth complex. While Raymond’s 1979 The Transsexual Empire came before the publicity of these gender variant identities, trans-exclusive feminist theory continues to follow the same path since the text was written. One reason why trans-exclusive feminists might fail to acknowledge these other gender variant identities is because such identities could dismantle the already shaky argument supporting trans-exclusivity. If a transwoman “turns [her] whole body and behavior into a phallus that can rape…feminist identities,” then what about the transman, who could be said to do the same in the realms of masculinity and patriarchy (Raymond 112)? What of those who reject the gender binary all together? Can they not be said to destroy the entire institution of gender? And what about transgender people of other cultures and races and religions? Do they not engage with social constructs invisible to the white trans-exclusive feminist? Recognizing the

In his book An Introduction to Female Masculinity, trans-activist and author Jack Halberstam acknowledges “the transvestite and transsexual to show the obvious flaws and gaps in a binary gender system; the transvestite, as an interloper, creates a third space of possibility within which all binaries become unstable” (26). Halberstam presents this argument in his other works too. In The Queer Art of Failure, he discusses that “failure recognizes that alternatives are embedded in the dominant and that power is never total or consistent” (88). Here, he defines the term, “failure” as pertaining to those who exist and identify outside normative boundaries. Though Halberstam admits the binary structure to be too culturally embedded to be brought down simply by the existence of transgender people, the mere challenge posed by the trans* community refutes the argument of trans-exclusive