Reclaiming the F-Word: ‘Drag Race’ Cast Breaks Down Using Queer Slurs
Things are coming down to the wire on RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 8, which means that the workroom is becoming more spacious, and the producers are looking for ways to fill an entire hour of television. On Drag Race, that typically means a dreaded makeover challenge, where the remaining cast of queens will have to drag up a set of random people with a defining shared trait, roped in from some bar somewhere in the San Fernando Valley. Not literally, of course, but judging by how haphazardly these groups of makeover participants are picked, it does feel as though a producer stumbled into some watering hole and asked, “Who wants $1,000 and a free lunch?”
This season’s makeover subjects are—drumroll please—lesbians. To which you might ask, “…Lesbians?” Yes, just good old-fashioned lesbians. Hell, they’ve done army vets; they’ve dragged up underappreciated school teachers; they’ve even touched up the cast of Little Women LA. All that’s left is lesbians!
Explaining their choice, host RuPaul said, “From the early days of the gay liberation movement, to the AIDS crisis, to today, our queer sisters have always shown up when the LGBTQ community needed them the most.” That’s very true, but it was a statement that left me scratching my head. Ru makes it sound as if the lesbians were showing up at these moments in queer history just to support the Gs, but the Ls in LGBTQ were just as impacted at those times, too. Ru did, however, mention that lesbians often remain the silent heroes supporting their entire community, so this week was the show’s tribute to those champions.
Makeover episodes used to present a more formidable challenge. Contestants had to doll up a participant who was completely unfamiliar with the art of drag, and didn’t know where to begin helping the queens they were paired with. Now, everyone who walks onto the set of Drag Race knows exactly what they’re getting into, which is both an advantage to the queens, and a slight disadvantage to the show. These makeovers are less of a challenge of finding the right comfort level, and more about perfecting a drag family resemblance when all is said, done, padded, and beaten with a makeup brush.
RuPaul Stages a Shocking Intervention on ‘Drag Race All Stars’
That said, the makeovers function better when the contestants performing them feel safer. In Drag Race Season 6, the queens had to makeover straight men who were on the show at the behest of their spouses and girlfriends, leaving both the queens and the straight men uncomfortable. With the lesbians present, none of the remaining queens have to spend their time gauging their level of safety, which is a nice function of these later-season makeover challenges. Yet, they still only present a few kernels of interesting conversation.
This week, that came from the queens—all gay men—chatting with their lesbian family about the complicated subject of reclaiming certain slurs. One of the lesbians, Amanda, told contestant Jimbo that she refers to herself as a “sissy dyke,” prompting fellow contestant Jessica Wild to ask about their relationships to the word.
“For me, ‘dyke’ is a reclamation of a word that was used to hurt us, but it really means being powerful in your queer, woman-loving self,” another one of the lesbians being made over, Angie, said.
“There’s an added political connotation,” Amanda chimed in. “‘Dyke’ is just an encapsulation of my politics, just like ‘queer.’” The third lesbian in the room, Lisa, mentioned that it took much longer for her to become okay with using the word. “It was a term that was used against me when I was bullied. But recently, me and my motorcycle friends, we did the Queers on Gears/Dykes on Bikes, so it was really nice to reclaim the word with a bunch of other queer women.”
Then, Amanda posed an interesting question, which remains a hot-button issue within queer circles (and in the Drag Race fandom itself): “Do you guys think that lesbians can say ‘fag’ and that gay guys can say ‘dyke,’ or that it should only be kept within those groups to say?” Kandy Muse mentioned that her own mother is a butch lesbian, whom she refers to as a dyke, but also completely understands why lesbians would not want a gay man to say it. The gay experience and the lesbian experience—though intrinsically linked by queerness—are inherently different. Jimbo agreed with Kandy, adding, “I think it’s about intention, does it intend to hurt me, does it intend to be funny?”
There’s one thing that’s for sure: If you’re reading this, and you’re not a part of either of these communities, you shouldn’t be saying it all! But even if you’re not allowed to say it, you can still learn something from it. That’s the beauty of Drag Race amassing such a large straight audience.
These types of conversations are much more interesting than the ones that were afforded to us on previous makeover challenges. We used to have to watch queens beat the face of a stranger while answering the same old questions about their history with drag and how much their families do or do not accept them. It got tiring! Like so many aspects of Drag Race over the years, the makeover challenge needed a makeover itself. The makeovers might be on their last legs, but there is still some value left in the discussions that they generate—even if RuPaul probably did just spin a big wheel that landed on “Lesbians.”
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