Drag, Interperformance, and the Trouble with Queerness

135 Pages·2020·8.011 MB·English

by  Katie Horowitz

Drag, Interperformance, and the
Trouble with Queerness
This story of drag kings and queens at Cleveland, Ohio’s most popular gay
bar reveals that these genres have little in common and introduces interper-
formance, a framework for identity formation and coalition building that pro-
vides strategies for repairing longstanding rifts in the lesbian, gay, bisexual,
and transgender (LGBT) community.
Drag, Interperformance, and the Trouble with Queerness is the first book cen-
tered on queer life in this growing midwestern hub and the first to focus
simultaneously on kinging and queening. It shows that despite the shared
heading of drag, these iconically queer institutions diverge in terms of au-
dience, movement vocabulary, stage persona, and treatment of gender, class,
race, and sexuality. Horowitz argues that the radical (in)difference between
kings and queens provides a window into the perennial rift between lesbians
and gay men and challenges the assumption that all identities subsumed under
the queer umbrella ought to have anything in common culturally, politically,
or otherwise. Drawing on performer interviews about the purpose of drag,
contestations over space, and the eventual shuttering of the bar they called
home, Horowitz offers a new way of thinking about identity as a product
of relations and argues that relationality is our best hope for building queer
communities across lines of difference.
The book will be key reading for students and faculty in the interdisci-
plinary fields of feminist, gender, and sexuality studies; performance stud-
ies; American studies; cultural studies; ethnography; and rhetoric. It will be
useful to graduate students and faculty interested in queer culture, gender
performance, and transgender studies. At the same time, the clear and relat-
able writing style will make it accessible to undergraduates and well suited
to upper-level courses in queer theory, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender
and queer (LGBTQ) identities, performance studies, and qualitative research
methods.
Katie Horowitz is Assistant Professor of Gender & Sexuality Studies and
Writing at Davidson College, where she writes and teaches about inter-
sectional queer, feminist, and transgender theories, body politics, and rad-
ical social movements. Her work has appeared in Signs, Porn Studies, and
CrossCurrents.
Interdisciplinary Research in Gender
Feminism, Republicanism, Egalitarianism, Environmentalism
Bill of Rights and Gendered Sustainable Initiatives
Yulia Maleta
Ungendering Technology
Women Retooling the Masculine Sphere
Carol J. Haddad
Ageing and Contemporary Female Musicians
Abigail Gardner
Sexual Violence and Humiliation
A Foucauldian-Feminist Perspective
Dianna Taylor
Gender, Sexuality and the Cultural Politics of Men’s
Identity in the New Millennium
Literacies of Masculinity
Robert Mundy and Harry Denny
Drag, Interperformance, and the Trouble with Queerness
Katie Horowitz
Re-writing Women as Victims
From Theory to Practice
Maria José Gámez Fuentes, Sonia Núñez Puente and Emma Gómez Nicolau
https://www.routledge.com/Interdisciplinary-Research-in-Gender/
book-series/IRG
Drag, Interperformance, and
the Trouble with Queerness
Katie Horowitz
First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 Katie Horowitz
The right of Katie Horowitz to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Horowitz, Katie, 1981– author.
Title: Drag, interperformance, and the trouble with queerness /
Katie Horowitz.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2020. |
Series: Interdisciplinary research in gender | Includes bibliographical
references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2019028168 (print) | LCCN 2019028169 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781138327344 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429449314 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780429830310 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9780429830297 (mobi) |
ISBN 9780429830303 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Male impersonators—Ohio—Cleveland. |
Female impersonators—Ohio—Cleveland. | Queer theory.
Classification: LCC HQ76.25 .H685 2020 (print) |
LCC HQ76.25 (ebook) | DDC 306.760109771/32—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019028168
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019028169
ISBN: 978-1-138-32734-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-44931-4 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by codeMantra
Contents
List of figures vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: “radically different agendas” 1
1 Kinging 21
2 Queening 47
3 Gesturing back: a genealogy of drag genders 62
4 Gesturing forward: drag spaces and solidarities 86
Conclusion: is drag still queer? 102
Index 119

Figures
3.1 William Horace Lingard, ca. 1870. Portrait File of the
Bancroft Library, Lingard, William—POR 1. Courtesy of
The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley 70
3.2 William Stewart Kugler as Jean La Monte, ca. 1940. Box
1, Folder 5, Maurice and La Monte Papers, Coll2008–033.
Courtesy of ONE Archives at the USC Libraries 72
3.3 Shari Turner, 2010. Photograph by Abe Robinson. Courtesy
of Blind 7 Photography 73
3.4 Julian Eltinge as the Gibson Girl, 1913. From Julian Eltinge
Magazine, Photographs and Printed Materials, Ralph W.
Judd Collection on Cross-Dressing in the Performing Arts,
Coll2007–020. Courtesy of ONE Archives at the USC Libraries 74
3.5 The Tuxedoed Gentleman: Alex et Demary, Danseuses
Cosmopolites, ca. 1905. Box 1, Folder 1, Schwartz Collection
on Cross-Dressing, Coll2008–060. Courtesy of ONE
Archives at the USC Libraries 75
3.6 The Dapper Dandy: Kitty Doner, 1921. Photograph
by Strauss Peyton. Charles “Tiny” Burnett Photograph
Collection, PH Coll 569.61. Courtesy of University of
Washington Libraries, Special Collections, UW39993 76
3.7 Travis McNasty and Donnie Waste, 2010. Photograph by
Abe Robinson. Courtesy of Blind 7 Photography 78

Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible without the love and support; the
investment—temporal, intellectual, and financial; the friendship, mentorship,
dedication, knowledge, confidence, influence, and advice of more people
than I could reasonably thank in this space. But here is a start:
To my first professor of queer theory, Henry Abelove, for teaching me to
think and setting me on my life’s course,
To everyone at the 2009 University of California Multi-Campus Research
Group in International Performance Culture who read my earliest musings
on this topic and affirmed that this work was worth doing, and especially to
Leo Cabranes-Grant for encouraging me to think dangerously,
To the dedicated librarians at the Bancroft Library, the San Francisco
GLBT Historical Society, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives, UNLV
Special Collections, and Tulane Special Collections, for their careful assis-
tance through the alternately maddening and exhilarating process of archival
research, and to the friends and relatives who generously opened their homes
to me while I did that research,
To the grad school friends who challenged me, commiserated with me,
suggested readings to me, and read drafts of this project when it was still a
baby dissertation, Chris Atwood, Marc Boucai, Liz Mesok, Iván Ramos,
April Sizemore-Barber, Sri Devi Thakkilapati, Damon Young, and especially
Radhika Natarajan, who suggested I start writing about drag in the first place,
To my advisers at UC Berkeley, Judith Butler, for her critical insights and
inspiration; Catherine Cole, for introducing me to performance studies and
taking even my wildest ideas seriously; and Linda Williams, for taking a gen-
uine interest in me early on, going to bat for me time and again, and mode-
ling how to be a scholar, teacher, mother, and life-loving person all at once,
To Laura Horak and Eliza Steinbock, for their careful feedback on the
introduction,
To Suzanne Churchill, for suggesting the inter- in interperformance,
To my gender and sexuality studies colleagues at Davidson—truly the most
supportive, scrappy, hilarious band of feminist killjoys one could ever hope to
work with—and especially to Alison Bory, Patricio Boyer, Sarah Luna, Laura
Sockol, Rose Stremlau, Trish Tilburg, Roman Utkin, and Sarah Waheed for