Throughout the world, countries and cultures are struggling with the idea of queer. The problem is that the United States and many countries live with the concept of patriarchy. Patriarchy is a social constructed structure to organize people to live in a gender binary society. The gender binary is the constructed gender roles that men and women are expected to do in which it affects the everyday lives of queers and it doesn’t allow them to freely express who they truly are. Historically, white heterosexual males and heterosexual families are the ideal model and are those in higher power.
The book Drag King Dreams, is a story of a group of queer friends in New York and the struggles they encounter for being queer. Leslie Feinberg starts the book with Max and Vickie encountering a fight at the train station with a guy who was harassing them. Max walks home while Vickie catches the train but the next morning Vickie is found dead. Vickie isn’t the only that has been murdered.
There have been several murders and people disappearing without any answers of as why. Hatem, Max’s Arabic friend is missing.Max and Hatem became friends because they have common struggles of being oppressed. The police don’t do anything to investigate any of these cases but instead harass people. Police throughout the book were agents of oppression. Along with Feingberg, Judith Halberstam in "Intriduction to Female Masculinity" talks about the numerous of obstacles queers encounter.
One of the obstacles Halberstam really focuses on is the "bathroom problem. " I found this part very interesting because I've never really thought about it.The bathroom problem flourishes these gender binary structure. Halberstam talks about several different awkward incidents that took place in public bathrooms.
She gives an example from Stone Butch Stones by Leslie Feinberg in which is a narrative of a he-she name Jess. Jess needs to use the public bathroom and doesn't want to but has to. While entering the ladies room, two women looked at over and said "is that a man or a woman? " to her friend as Jess passed and the other women said "this is the woman's bathroom" (22).According to Halberstam, the two women knew Jess was a woman because while they were leaving the bathroom they threaten to call security but they didn't which shows that the women were just punishing Jess for her improper self-presentation. As well as Jess' bathroom problem, Max from Drag King Dreams felt like she couldn't get a new job because she didn't want to go through the problem of having to figure out what bathroom she should use, "I don't even know what bathroom they'll make me use" (135).Among other things, the bathroom problem limit their ability to move around the public sphere.
The most interesting thing of Drag King Dreams was that Feinberg conceils their true identities with hir and ze, and he also didn't describe what they looked like very much. I found myself trying to figure who was what but Feinberg's purpose was that it didn't matter who they were or looked like for a various of reasons. I believe one of the reasons is to not label people.Gender education teaches women to be feminine and for men to be masculine but according to Feinberg, the reality is that there are a whole lot of ways that both women and women express who they are. My favorite part was when Victor's co-worker speaks in his funeral and talking about how he didn't know he was a cross-dresser.
The man was confused and scared to come but he really respected Victor and after talking to Estelle it made him understand more, "she wasn't trying to say that the killing of my brother and Victor were the same thing.But, she told me, 'They killed your brother for crosing the border that shouldn't be there. And they killed Victor for crossing a border that shouldn't be there'" (219). Both Victor and his brother were killed for gender-border crossing. Victor also known as Vickie went underground and passed as a women. In the article, "Transgender Liberation," Feinberg states that passing means invisible which many went under because of the oppression society brings "in order to escape the economic and social inequities of their oppression" (216).
But there were also consequences for passing. According to Feinberg, in the 17th century in England they were placed in stocks and dragged through the streets. Even worse in 1760, transvestites were burned to death. However, many men and women have passed for many years. Feinberg gives an example of Mrs. Nash who married twice to soldiers and after dying it was discovered that she was a man.
"This world is full of danger for me, Thor. And when it strikes, it aims between my legs. I'm barricaded for safety. It's not a choice.It's just the way it it" (187) Max says in Drag King Dreams.
Which is true because society is so invested genitals to determine if you are man or a woman. Everything we do, everything single we make is gendered so how do queers make their way throught a social world where everything is dangerous for them? Progressive politics need to work together among gender, sexuality, race, class, among other things and raise consciousness that there are many different identities and educate people about their struggles, in order to make change.
