Halloween has come and gone once again and with it, like always, brought awkward conversations about political correctness, cultural appropriation and what it means to perform or parade as any kind of person, being or entity other than human.

It is an interesting cultural phenomenon that one single night of the year allows individuals to explore the spaces and skins inhabited by other kinds of beings, whether it’s a spider, an alien, a robot or a distasteful take on a Native American or ‘Oriental’ traditional costume – (I feel the need to say right now how proud I am that I’ve never seen anyone in Australia dressed up as an Indigenous Australian person on Halloween before and I hope that continues for the rest of my life). Perusing more than one musty smelling outlet for the perfect costume really got me thinking about the fascination with the Other and the absolute eroticisation of the Other than occurs when privileged, or powered bodies are allowed to explore what it means to be the Other.

A friend of mine considered dressing in drag for Halloween and his suggestion was met with mixed responses from the group. He is a straight, white man who I believe has never engaged with Drag performance or culture and I could not decide why I felt so uneasy with his enthusiasm about using Drag culture to be amusing when at it’s heart Drag is about entertainment, parody and being absolutely over-the-top. I felt that in some way he was trivialising and belittling the struggle of LGBTQI people, and also belittling feminine gender roles which many women either happily, or unhappily but without jest interact with or are forced into every day. As a counter culture that is inclusive of females and the LGBTQI community, it felt that he as a privileged hetero male was not entitled to this safe space of identity exploration that those with more regulated, politicised and Othered bodies have carved out for themselves.