Judith Halberstam’s writing in “Drag Kings” was an enlightening read for me both in the detailing of the history of modern drag, which I had not fully known or appreciated, and in the ways it sought to expose the performativity of many diverse types of gender expression. The notion that cis female androgyny or simply not being hyper feminine is read as masculinity – or in other words the idea that norm and baseline gender is inherently masculine has frustrated and confused me for some time. Halberstam’s point that mainstream male masculinity is read as nonperfomative or ‘natural’ struck me as similar to critiques of how Enlightenment philosophy constructed white, Western, heteropartriachal, upper class men as having so normative a subject position as to make it ‘objective’.

The contrasting point, that femininity ‘reeks of the artificial’ and that ‘mature masculinity remains authentic property of adult male bodies while all other gender roles are available for interpretation’ made me think of how it is femme attributes that are time and again ridiculed and scrutinized in a patriarchal society (233). The idea that femininity is a guise that is maliciously deceitful and dishonest permeates many of our cultural narratives in ways that continually put anyone who is not a cis heterosexual hyper masculine man in harms way. Famous literary works, such as The Lady’s Dressing Room by Jonathan Swift paint disparaging misognyistic portraits of feminine attire, hygiene, and beauty routines. Similarly, sensationalized social media trends showing women with and without makeup alongside comments from domineering, aggressive men stating ‘this is why I have trust issues‘ showcases a cultural fixation on femininity as a grand, carefully manipulated performance that no one can ever perfect.The idea that at anytime femme markers could be forcibly removed and the conniving, distasteful creature ‘unmasked’ from their femininity is present in the use of gay or trans panic ‘defenses’ to justify, excuse, and rationalize horrendous rates of misogynistic and transmisogynistic violence.