Reboot: Q is for Queening - a podcast by Dr. Lori Beth Bisbey - A to Z of Sex

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Q is for Queen (and queening)
Hi everyone!  Welcome to the A to Z of Sex.  I’m Dr Lori Beth and I am your host.  We are working our way through the erotic alphabet one letter at a time.  Just a reminder this podcast deals with adult content, so if you don’t have total privacy, you might want to put on your headphones. Today the letter is Q and Q is for Queen (and also queening!).
Queen as a nickname can be short for drag queen or can refer to a woman who is dominant.  Today, I’ll talk about both uses of the term and also cover the activity queening.  I’ve had a couple of questions about drag queens and transvestites and I’ll answer these as well.
Drag is traditionally not just about enjoyment and sexiness.  There has always been a challenging element of drag that is about the gender fuck.  Particularly the queens who do not look feminine and do not try to look feminine.   Drag highlights rebellion and nonconformity.  Today, even traditional drag attracts audiences of all genders and is often seen as highlighting a person’s struggle to define identity and style and willingness to be an individual, not conforming to social beauty standards.    There is an increasing young female audience that sees drag as empowering them to discover and be who they are.
Drag queens don’t usually dress in women’s fashion for the purpose of sexual excitement and enjoyment.  They do so for the purposes of self-expression and entertainment.  Drag queens are not transvestites as they do not fetishize the female clothing and accessories. Many drag artists are very talented performers and popularity has continued to increase, especially since Ru Paul’s successful reality show Drag Race. 
People of all genders choose to dress in drag though drag queens are the most well-known.  There has been a growing body of fans for drag kings and drag king shows as well.
Many people believe the history of drag in Europe began in the 1800’s with the pantomime.  In the United States, some people trace the history of drag back to minstrel shows which originally had performers in black face parodying black men and then had performers begin to parody black women.  These were not positive performances.  They were used to mock black people. 
Whereas drag in the gay community was used to celebrate and seen as progressive.  Drag continued with vaudeville where female impersonators became very popular.  The most famous female impersonator was Julian Eltinge who performed on Broadway as a woman.  During these times, female impersonators were seen to be white straight men.  This art form declined as a connection with sex work and homosexuality was made more often.
In the earlier 1900’s, drag moved into night clubs and began to be associated as entertainment within the LGBT community.  Since being gay was criminal at the time, it became riskier.  People would go to nightclubs to experiment with boundaries between gender and sexuality and drag queens became extremely popular.
Drag queens often participate in pageantry – prominent in Pride parades though this has often been controversial as many people express concern over the image of homosexuality this presents.    
Many millennials are exploring gender through drag.  Pecs is a group of performers in the UK who explore gender through drag.    The performers are all CIS women at the moment.  They say ‘Unless you fuck in a vacuum, sex is a gendered experience.’  As a result, they use drag and performance to explore further.    
Rob wrote in to ask ‘I love watching the drag queens. I go to a show most weeks.  I find them really sexy.  Does this mean I am gay?’  Rob this doesn’t mean you are gay or even bisexual, though you could be either.  It simply means you find them sexy.  We find many things sexy that we don’t want to act on in reality.  Relax and enjoy the shows.
In kink circles, a queen can also be a dominant woman.  Some cultures use the term queen to refer to any woman and...

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