Expression of Sexuality as a Tool Against Political Repression: Radical or Conservative? Emma Goldma

The first fundamental point of contention for many revolutionaries such as Luce Irigaray, Emma Goldman, and others, is the acknowledgement of the gender difference between man and woman, a chasm that has remained unabridged during centuries of social, political, economic, and ideological movements. In an uncanny sequence of events, one gender has become second, or different than the prevailing one: female has become a divergence from male, when in reality they stand as two options of equal probability. This male sexual hegemony has spilled over in matters of politics, economics, and society, subordinating the female sex and in its process objectifying female sexuality in a concerted effort to control the great unknown of the “other”. Therefore, by virtue of being other, female sexuality is naturally anarchic: its struggle is to be free of the patriarchal definition imposed upon it, to create an entirely different reality that has not been constructed yet. Thus, Emma Goldman, in the collection Anarchism and Other Essays, lays claims to female sexuality’s anarchic nature, by constantly contrasting it to the mainstream of Puritan America. According to Goldman, women live a precarious life, and their sexuality is in a state of perpetual and inescapable dichotomization: on one hand, sexuality is repressed in order to remain celibate until sacred marriage, on the other, the economic conditions imposed on poor women renders them impossible to remain chaste and therefore are lead to a path of prostitution. The entire apparatus of social and political oppression is for Goldman emboldened by America’s Puritan religious morality, and she alludes to an evident collusion between State, Law, and Church, to maintain the system of female sexual oppression.

According to Goldman, the first consideration must be to revolutionize the parameters in which the strife of female sexuality is described: from a form of victim-blaming that strives to assimilate, to identifying the subordination of women as a form of modern slavery. In order to comprehend the nature of Goldman’s critique, it is imperative that the proper framework she uses to describe the oppression of female sexuality is identified. The slavery of female sexuality is arguably more inherent and subtly persistent than any other historic form of slavery. This is because this type of subordination goes beyond race, and taps into the first, most original biological difference. Therefore, since it is not about race, the slavery of female sexuality is not just an American domestic issue, dominated by Puritan morality, but it is an international issue insofar that women are present to be subjugated. Moreover, she points out to America’s hypocrisy in the subject of female sexuality’s slavery, and says, “those who sit in a glass house do wrong to throw stones about them; besides, the American glass house is rather thin, it will break easily, and the interior is anything but a gainly sight.”[1] Furthermore, as insurrection, rebellion, and murders were at the heart of the slave experience, Goldman draws similarities between historical slavery and the slavery of the female body in order to draw claims regarding the anarchic nature of female bodies.

Throughout Anarchism and Other Essays, Goldman establishes that revolutions must impact every single aspect of social life—politics, culture, society, economics, etc. Yet, a resonating theme is that cultural revolutions must occur before the movement spills over in other categories as culture can be the most powerful resistance against fascist authority. It is thus unsurprising that Goldman’s criticizes modern culture as being collusive with it authority in an effort to maintaining a hierarchical status quo. In the United States, this status quo has been achieved through a process of “American purification.”[2] Puritanism, “repudiates, as something vile and sinful, our deepest feelings; but being absolutely ignorant as to the real functions of human emotions, Puritanism is itself the creator of the most unspeakable vices.”[3] Therefore, Emma Goldman’s claims regarding women and sexuality in Puritan America are founded in a strict male hegemony of morality, conduct, and religion, factors which inevitably spillover in the family and at work. However, Goldman establishes that Puritanism is not the fundamental truth of human life, as “[…] sincerity and reverence for what is natural in our impulses have been fairly bred out of us, with the result that there can be neither truth nor individuality in our art.”[4]

Anarchism being about personal liberty, it is evident that Goldman would attack the patriarchal society in America reinforced by Puritan religious morality in its subjugation of the female body. The female body, since it stands different to the normative, male body, is inherently rebellious and must be dominated since foreign. Its dominion and subjugation are conditioned by the collusion between church and state to maintain male-normative hegemonies. This control is maintained through the dichotomy of female behavior, socially reinforced by religious moral codes of conducts, upheld by the Law as well. Puritan morality signifies that a woman is either celibate, and treated as cattle to sell off to the richest contender, or stained by an exploration of her sexuality that in most experiences is not her own will. “To the moralist prostitution does not consist so much in the fact that the woman sells her body, but rather that she sells is out of wedlock”[5] asserts Goldman, who believes that this moralist “either/or” situation does not help women in any way, instead continuously conditions them into a path absent free will. A woman is subordinate either to her father and brothers, or to her husband, or to her client; yet, while seemingly at opposing poles, they share the fact that their sexuality is not their own, but of the male use, and that a form of transaction occurs, whether explicit or implicit.

Moreover, morality is embedded in the far from secular rules of the State apparatus, and the government, having dominion over conduct—as Goldman asserts throughout her essays—reinforces this systemic slavery. “Puritanism is entrenched behind the State and the Law”[6], and “in regard to the woman, [it] has condemned her to celibacy, or to the indiscriminate breeding of a diseased race, or to prostitution,”[7] asserts Goldman. Again, a woman can either be a prostitute or a wife; and while there are seemingly stark differences between the two categories, they are more similar than different. However, wives tend to guard their moral high ground against the libertine ways of prostitutes, yet again reinforcing patriarchal control of their sexuality and assimilating in a culture of oppression, rather than siding with the real victims of it, their sisters. According to Goldman, “moralists are ever ready to sacrifice one-half of the human race for the sake of some miserable institution which they cannot outgrow”[8], and in the process, wives-slaves become one with the system that oppresses them too, unable to recognize that they are more similar to prostitutes than to their husbands. As a matter of fact, it is precisely their husbands that are dichotomizing the female sexual experience by being both husbands and clients of prostitutes. Goldman points out that “prostitution, although hounded, imprisoned and chained, is nevertheless the greatest triumph of Puritanism”[9], as it maintains the women monolith in a state of perennial division, while benefitting from this division. On one side, the expression of sexual desires through the thorough use of the prostitute’s body, and the utter unleash of the inner id, while on the other, the social recognition that comes from being married to a celibate wife. The latter definition in and of itself is utterly contradicting, as part of being wife is to be a mother, a process that requires a woman to lose her celibacy. Hence, this begs the question: how are wives then different from prostitutes?

In this, Goldman asserts that Puritan morality “has so perverted the human mind that it has lost the power to appreciate the beauty of nudity, forcing us to hide the natural form under the plea of chastity, [which is] an artificial imposition upon nature, expressive of a false shame of the human form.”[10] Not only is the idea of a chaste mother/wife irreconcilable, it is also one that implies the lack of agency of women in the contract of marriage. Goldman, throughout Anarchism and Other Essays, perpetrates the idea that women should be free to engage in free, willing love. This is revolutionary in and of itself, as it resonates that women do have natural free will, but it is a power taken away by men who control their very actions. For Goldman, prostitutes, although living in constant immorality according to the moral Puritan sanctions of American morality, are at least freer to choose to have sex, while wives are not because trapped in the contract of marriage. “Also it will do the maintainers of purity and morality good to learn that out of two thousand cases [of prostitution], 490 were married women, women who lived with their husbands. Evidently there was not much of a guaranty for their ‘safety and purity’ in the sanctity of marriage”[11], asserts Goldman.

Of the condition of the contract of marriage and its sanctity, anarchism affirms that marriage cannot exist in a reality that holds no possessions. Similar to the idealism of Rousseau’s natural state, the institution of families creates the first hierarchies, and imply the first act towards material possession. A woman, whether a prostitute or a wife, is a material commodity, and by base definition the same since a transaction has to take place for either a marriage contract or the exploration of base desires are to materialize. Goldman thus reflects: “marriage for monetary considerations is perfectly legitimate, sanctified by law and public opinion, while any other union is condemned and repudiated.”[12] Clearly, the codes of social morality are in the hands of men, who subjugate women at the cost of their sexuality, yet men have no repercussions in this as they are the ones who establish what is right and what is wrong when it pertains to the female body.

In a phenomenon of flipped liberalism, the use or not of sexuality is the coin of exchange for a woman: she is commended for being celibate yet rebuked for being libertine, all the while diminishing a woman’s body to its sexual functions in a process of objectification that gratifies only the male body. Hence, it is socially regulated moral conduct to define a woman’s worth only her sexual experience, nothing more, nothing less, essentially reducing her to her sex.

Puritanism in America has conditioned the development of laws that punish women for being in a position systemically imposed on them. In fact, “society has not a word of condemnation for the man, while no law is too monstrous to be set in motion against the helpless victim.”[13] While Goldman victim-shames the proletariat’s ignorance and lethargy in the face of inaction, she blames the system for victimizing women. “The arbitrary and pernicious dictum of total continence probably also explains the mental inequality of the sexes. [The] intellectual inferiority of so many women is due to the inhibition of thought imposed on them for the purpose of sexual repression.”[14] Essentially, the apparatus of social and political oppression that women are forced to live in, is backed by moral rules of conduct so entrenched in governance, that in America it is undeniably tied to religion and capitalism. The trinity that forces women into a state of repression are state, religion, and capitalism, all three backed by two factors: Puritan morals, and men.

At the bases of a society that evolves from Puritan religious morals, is the consideration that “the sex experiences of a man [are] attributes of his general development, while similar experiences in the life of a woman are looked upon as a terrible calamity.”[15] This is because of Christian Puritanism, which by definition of being a religion, Goldman considers having dominion over the mind, therefore having sufficient force to convince even the most literate masses of its bigotry. In religion, women experience this dichotomy more amplified: “[…] It is the criminal fault of our moralists, who condemn a girl for all eternity, because she has gone from the ‘path of virtue’; that is, because her first sex experience has taken place without the sanction of the Church.”[16] As marriage is sanctified within the bounds of religious holiness it is performed in, it implies a sort of understanding of the woman’s sexual tasks as wife are also holy insofar that they are geared towards childbearing. Thus, sexual experiences outside of the confines of this definition and limited towards sexual pleasure itself are unholy and publicly shunned. Yet, Goldman points out that the history of religion is much more tainted, having turned girls into “compulsory vestals”, horizontally across different religions at different times and spaces. Goldman maintains that “prostitution is of religious origin, maintained and fostered for many centuries, not as a shame, but as a virtue”[17]. A double edged sword, prostitution is a “virtue” if it is described as an act of piety to serve a God, or many gods, yet again sinful if limited in scope to the expression of sexual climax.

In a brief history of religious acceptance of prostitution, Goldman points out that the very first instances of recorded prostitution (without modern negative connotations) occurred under “Herodotus, in the fifth century before Christ, at the temple of Mylitta, the Babylonian Venus, where every woman, once in her life, had to come and give herself to the first stranger who threw coin in her lap, to worship the goddess.”[18] The undertone of religious piety seems to justify that prostitution had a larger purpose to worship a higher entity and therefore was not an excuse for the expression of base desires. In fact, Goldman proceeds to assert that “the leading fathers of the Church tolerated prostitution”[19]—a claim which resounds with the basic fact that religious history was written by men, for men, of men’s actions. It would be unsurprising that they tolerated prostitution as perhaps they themselves were clients. In any case, it is a history written by men, who have had historically complete agency over women’s bodies and therefore have the ability to choose whether to give prostitution positive, even holy, or negative connotations. The utility of prostitution is in fact not limited to the sexual act, it is a political and social tool that moralists use to their advantage—whether it be campaigning electorally, etc.—yet do not care for it. Goldman states that “it is much more profitable to play the Pharisee, to pretend outraged morality, than to go to the bottom of things.”[20] The religious figure of the Pharisee evokes an individual who pretends religious moralism and piety but is hypocritical and individualistic. Similarly, men who engage in sexual acts with prostitutes, yet are husbands and religious moralists are Pharisees.

If religious backing were not enough to uphold Puritan conditions as Law of the State, the economic system fails to give an opportunity to women to change their situation; instead, capitalist ventures become the Petri dish for the evolution of prostitution. Throughout Anarchism and Other Essays, Goldman proposes that the production of property dominates human needs. If this concept were translated onto the claims she makes regarding women and sexuality in Puritan America, one would suggest how apt it is. Goldman describes the experience of being woman in economic terms of production of a good and contemporarily service. Women cannot escape the definition of commodity precisely because of their social standing as slaves to the system and victims of oppression. Since childhood, “woman is being reared as a sex commodity”[21] to be used for the gratification of men, whether sanctioned by the Church or not. Women, especially working-class girls, “become an easy prey to prostitution, or to any other form of a relationship which degrades [them] to the position of an object for mere sex gratification”[22], as the capitalist system forces them into degrading work conditions, under the supervision and in close proximity of, men.

Firstly, it is ascertained that “the economic and social inferiority of woman is responsible for prostitution”[23] as working-class women are forced to go into factory work, and are not afforded the choice to marry, as would perhaps be for middle and upper class girls. Therefore, already the system represses their choices and paves the way towards a factory work from a young age. “Girls, mere children, work in crowded, over-heated rooms ten to twelve hours daily at a machine, which tends to keep them in a constant over-excited sex state”[24], explains Goldman, explaining how the factory is the first place where sexual experiences occur—most of them unwillingly. Girls cannot be responsible for experiencing sex at a young age because they are thrown into a situation which considers young girls, adults precisely because they have a factory job, just like most adult women in their same class. In the Biographical Sketch of Anarchism and Other Essays, the conditions of the working-class girl are explained as such: “the exploitation of the girls was not only economic; the poor wage workers were looked upon by their foremen and bosses as sexual commodities. If a girl resented the advances of her superiors, she would speedily find herself on the street as an undesirable element in the factory. There was never a lack of willing victims: the supply always exceeded the demand.”[25] The unwillingness of women to find themselves on the street without the support of society nor their family—as they had been forcibly stained by being raped in their factory supervisors—led to desperate measures.

Therefore, the next step is intrinsically to resort to prostitution: if a body is all that the male gaze is gratified from and the definition of womanhood resides in its sexuality, then it is a woman’s last resort. “Exploitation, of course; […] fattens on underpaid labor, thus driving thousands of women and girls into prostitution”[26]: not only were the girls underpaid and preyed upon, some of their reputations became stained, and were forced to resort to the streets.

However, the economic conditions that Goldman eloquently explains are not limited to the capitalist apparatus of the factory only—they extend to the frenzy of consumerism in society that is coupled with capitalistic ventures. Goldman asserts that the working-class women were also “driven into prostitution by American conditions, by the thoroughly American custom for excessive display of finery and clothes, which, of course, necessitates money—money that cannot be earned in shops or factories.”[27] The use of sex in exchange for pecuniary compensation to buy “stuff” is, according to Goldman, “the result of the spirit of our commercial age.”[28] Consumerism is a byproduct of capitalism and at the same time a worthy reason to enter the world of prostitution: if I do not have a husband to buy what I want, I will do it myself. In a sense, the justification of consumerism as an excuse to become a prostitute is the most politically subversive reason Goldman explains. It is the means through which a woman is able to spin the system on its head and reverse the utilitarian relationship between a man and a prostitute. The man becomes the tool through which a woman can become owner of her own things. In a sense, it reverses the dependence a woman has on the economic and social system that oppresses her.

Role reversal is a radical political expression in the confines of the society it occurs in. Jennie Livingstone’s filmographic documentary, Paris is Burning aims at capturing a form of radical political expression of the subculture of Drag among black and Latino drag queens in New York, circa the end of the 1980s and beginning of 1990s. Black and Latino drag queens take center stage not only in the struggle of reconciling drag subculture with New York’s white and upper middle class soul, but especially in the struggle of reconciling their own sexual and racial identity. The drag culture itself blurs the strict, safe, categorizations of sexuality and gender, by redefining these concepts and challenging their legitimacy founded on the basis of heteronormative social constructs. Moreover, drag culture exists beneath and in stark opposition to “normative” cultures present in New York; however, by virtue of its separation from the paradigms of this culture, the drag subculture redefines parameters of operation and identity for individuals living in drag communities. Within these parameters, individuals, or drag queens, are compelled to express their innermost repressed essence, and in doing so challenge the notions of gender, sexuality, and race. Nevertheless, while some have praised Livingstone’s intricate piece as an important stepping stone to help disseminate alternative perspectives and new points of view by opening the world to the institution of Drag Balls, the expression of Drag is far from a radical political expression. In fact, while it is a political expression, it is limited to itself and does not resonate with the complete cultural, social, and political upheaval Emma Goldman would have deemed necessary for a revolution. There is nothing revolutionary about drag culture, except for the ability to propose different parameters for the definition of heteronormative concepts, yet limited to drag queens.

Firstly, the institution of the Ball is at the heart of any drag expression. The Ball sees different Houses compete in different categories to crown the house that best replicates caricatures in the heteronormative world: business executives, models, military cadets, etc. These categories aim at mocking in a sense the strict characteristics of a prevailing culture’s life. The parameter that contestants are measure in is the “Realness” scale. It is not a satire, rather a personification of a male social role by a man who is transgender and is therefore a socially constructed woman who plays a man. However, in order to be the “realest”, everything on the outside must be erased to create a perfect illusion: a drag queen must reconcile their own sex and gender in order to perfectly mock the social role she is impersonating. In one of the first scenes showing a ball in which drag queens are personifying rich Upper East Side, fur-wearing, white women, Junior LaBeija of House LaBeija tells Jennie Livingston: “Come on now, it is a known fact that a woman do carry an evening bag at dinner time. There’s no getting around that! You see it on channel seven, between ‘All My Children’ and ‘Jeopardy’, ‘Another World’, ‘Dallas’, and the whole bit. An evening bag is a must! You have to carry something! No lady is sure at night.”[29] Although these seem harmless comments coming from a sexual and ethnic oppressed minority group, they deepen the chasm between men and women, as well as culturally appropriating the semblance of femininity without feeling the systemic oppression of being a woman.

In fact, Dorian Corey, speaking to Livingston remarks that drag queens like Venus Xtravaganza, are “undetectable and they can walk out of that ballroom into the sunlight and onto the subway and get home, and still have all their clothes and no blood running off their bodies—those are the femme realness queens.”[30] “Femme realness” seems almost a mock of the female experience without intending to be. Venus Xtravaganza, for instance, is absorbed in her ambition of becoming like a “rich white girl” because her skin is fair, her hair is blonde and long, she is skinny and petite, her voice is raspy, and does not look nor feel like a man. However, the female experience is not only exterior looks: if anything it is the constant struggle to prove oneself in a society that considers the female body limited in scope to its sexuality and visual male gratification. The acceptance by the male gaze as a woman is Venus Xtravaganza’s main goal. This materializes in the form of escort business for many drag queens and especially “femme realness”, young queens. In stark contrast to Goldman’s analysis of prostitution for self-emancipation through acquisition power, prostitution here becomes a way to be accepted and approved as a woman, by a society that previously had rejected them. That is, as a man becoming a woman, one is rejected by mainstream society, while if the man is convincingly a woman, then she seeks acceptance exactly by exploiting the male consideration of the female body as sexual object. When talking to Jennie Livingston about a dinner with a recurring “john” happening later that night, she says, “he'll give me some money just for me to maybe buy some shoes and a nice dress, so that the next time he sees me, he'll see me looking more and more beautiful, the way he wants to see me”[31].

In this, Venus is clearly portraying an image of womanhood that is scaled on exterior appearance, as if femininity rested on beauty alone. Moreover, she is clearly looking for the acceptance of a member of a society that had once rejected her; she thus proves as clear example that being a drag queen is not a radical political expression, it is an effort of assimilating in a society that rejects you and oppresses you. The portrayal of femininity through drag balls or “looking beautiful” insults the female experience and furthermore makes a caricature of women that is based off of stereotypes created by men and for the gratification of men. Seeking acceptance is an experience that femme realist queens experience across the board. Octavia St. Laurent, of the St. Laurent House, is perhaps the femme realist queen that looks and moves the most like a woman and is essentially in touch with her femininity the way that many women are, without creating a caricature of women. Nevertheless, she still seeks to be assimilated through her exterior beauty. She recalls through private moments with Livingston, that she goes to modeling castings and events in order to become a model in the heteronormative sense of the world. She wants to be a model as a woman, not a transgender woman. Therefore, her experience in becoming assimilated forsakes her experience as a transgender because as the latter she is rejected and treated badly because she does not fit into stereotypical gender norms; yet, since she successfully looks like a woman, she hopes to be assimilated as one. The culmination of the process of assimilation is the ambition of having gender reassignment surgery in order to have the anatomical sexual features of a woman. While not every drag queen aspires to this, the femme realists do. In doing so they mistake the female experience as having solely to do with exterior appearance, and demonstrate their lack of understanding that women exist in a system that oppresses them differently—yet with same intensity—than transgender people.

Furthermore, parallel to Emma Goldman’s analysis of the similarities between prostitutes and married women, drag queens recognize that a woman’s only means of transaction is her body and essentially her sex. Venus Xtravaganza, in talking to Jennie Livingston about her life as a transvestite escort, is able to very clearly point out this element of the female experience. In a scene in which she explains the anticipation she feels of a client taking her out for dinner, she asserts that she does not have to go to bed with her john, yet it is an acceptable and normal transaction. She says: “I don't have to go to bed with him, or anything like that. At times they do expect sexual favors […] 99 percent of the time they don't. 95 percent of the time they don't.”[32] In her apologetic and almost defensive tone, Venus is protecting not only her john, but herself as a femme realist queen. Since she looks, feels and is a woman then she defends to Livingston that she is not like a common transvestite escort because she has the power of substituting the pecuniary transaction of sexual or social favors, with her good looks and charm. She parallels her experience to that of a suburban wife: “A woman, in the suburbs, a regular woman, if you want your husband to buy a washer and dryer set, I'm sure she'd have to go to bed with him, to give him something he wants, to get what she wants. So, in the long run, it all ends up the same way.”[33] This last assertion, that “everything ends up the same way”, resonates with Goldman’s own understanding of the similarities between prostitutes and married women. In the end, marriage is a contract in which the woman’s leverage is her sexuality in the form of celibacy and chastity—the more chaste, the worthier a match. Essentially, throughout the marital contract, sex and money or favors are exchanged continuously, such that if taken out of context, it strikingly resembles the unspoken contract between prostitutes and johns.

The process of assimilation is the point of contention against those who would argue that drag balls are a form of radical political expression. Throughout the drag ball scenario, the categories that drag queens compete in mimic the contra dictions of white society. Nevertheless, while mimicking might seem a political expression in and of itself since it implies a level of distancing oneself from the object one is trying to mimic, the willingness to be accepted creeps up regardless. One of the categories that the drag queens seem keenest to confront is the American Dream: they mock how “very American” the achievement—or ambition—of fame and money are. At the same time however, they celebrate those drag queens that achieve a level of success because it empowers all drag queens when a drag queen succeeds in the society that once rejected them. Dorian Corey explains to Livingston the contradicting feelings that drag queens have towards success, by telling her: “I always had hopes of being a big star. But as you get older, you aim a little lower. Everybody wants to make an impression, some mark upon the world. Then you think, you've made a mark on the world if you just get through it, and a few people remember your name. Then you've left a mark. You don't have to bend the whole world. I think it's better to just enjoy it. Pay your dues, and just enjoy it. If you shoot a arrow and it goes real high, hooray for you.”[34] In fact, the Ballroom tells the queens that they are somebody, it is up to them to believe they are somebody outside the Ballroom.

The aspiration of being integrated into “White America” is for the drag queens an experience that occurs through becoming richer. They aspire to be integrated, be quintessentially American (according to their view that white America is rich), as Junior LaBeija explains to Livingston. According to her, it is every minority’s ambition to have what white people do: the money, the potential to acquire money, and the shot at social mobility. Junior LaBeija, in soliciting one of the competing drag queens to look more like a white, fur-coated American lady, urges her to believe in, “O-P-U-L-E-N-C-E: Opulence! You own everything. Everything is yours.”[35] Moreover, Pepper LaBeija, the mother of House LaBeija, explains to Livingston drag attitude towards integration by rationalizing their experience as a sexual and racial minority. She explains, “that is everybody’s dream and ambition as a minority – to live and look as well as a white person.”[36] In the ballroom categories drag queens compete in, they mock white American life, yet aspire to be integrated in it—there is no radical political expression that is not limited to the individual competing in the category.

The system that oppresses them becomes the illusion of an aspiration. Pepper LaBeija rationalizes these contradicting feelings to Jennie Livingston: “this is white America. Any other nationality that is not of the white set, knows this and accepts this till the day they die. It is pictured as being in America. Every media you have from TV to magazines, to movies, to films… Everybody has a million-dollar bracket. When they showing you [commercials]… Everybody’s in their own home. The little kids for Fisher Price toys: they’re not in no concrete playground. They’re riding around the lawn. The pool is in the back. This is white America.”[37] Drag queens, as well as any other individual in America, are subjected to constant bombardment of traditional norms that define the “moral” way to live and prosper. Any divergence from the paved path is shunned, oppressed, rejected, and directed violence towards. Perhaps for this latter reason that Pepper LaBeija exclaims that “especially black – we as people, for the past 400 years – is the greatest example of behavior modification in the history of civilization.”[38] Being a drag minority is reconciling being homosexual, transgender, a racial minority, and poor. Pepper explains: “we have had everything taken away from us, and yet we have all learned how to survive. That is why, in the ballroom circuit, it is so obvious that is you have captured the great white way of living, or looking, or dressing, or speaking – you is a marvel.”[39] This marvel however, is not a radical form of political expression. If it were a radical form of political expression, then the institution of drag would not have to trample on the concept of femininity to be able to emancipate itself. Given that womanhood is made into caricature and reduced to exterior appearance and sexuality, coupled with wealth, drag queens are not radical as Emma Goldman would define the term, because they do not imagine a complete overhaul of the system that oppresses them, but instead a power reversal and their own place in society.

Moreover, of the ballroom experience, Dorian Corey does not make it more than it is: the drag ball is not a place for radical political expression because what occurs within the ball, remains in it, and although Livingston opened this institution to the mainstream public, the ball itself is not radical. Dorian Corey explains to Livingston that “in a ballroom you can be anything you want. You're not really an executive but you're looking like an executive. You're showing the straight world that I can be an executive if I had the opportunity because can look like one, and that is like a fulfillment.”[40] The opportunity to be an executive is taken from the drag queens, yet by showing that they can act and look like one, they are demonstrating the capability of being integrate in a world that typically oppresses them. “In real life you can't get a job as an executive unless you have the educational background and the opportunity. Now, the fact that you are not an executive is merely because of the social standing of life. Black people have a hard time getting anywhere and those that do are usually straight”[41], laments Dorian Corey. Yet, he is uncovering that there is a desire and aspiration to be integrated into the society that set in motion systemic oppression so that they could never obtain a certain social standing in life that would have allowed them to become executives.

With Paris is Burning, Jennie Livingston has helped to disseminate alternative perspectives and new points of view regarding drag culture—however, the greatest achievement of this filmographic piece is having given drag queens dimension beyond the fun, entertaining and stereotypical façade they mostly are considered as. While many would argue that it is important for minorities to have their own safe, exclusive space to digest and assimilate the oppression from the outside world—and I would agree—this is not enough to say that she has ruined the institution of the drag ball. Ruining the drag ball would mean that the commercialization of TV shows such as RuPaul’s drag race—which depict drag queens competing in a format similar to the ball categories—would be replacing completely the institution of the drag ball, or going against the interests of the drag queens themselves. Yet, it is clear that the popular sentiment of assimilation, coupled with the ambitions of “making it” in the white world despite the disadvantage, would indicate that the interests of the drag institution are not to hinder the “making it” of other drag queens such as RuPaul. Becoming recognized and part of mainstream media could actually have the beneficial effect of humanizing the drag experience to those ignorant about the topic. It could perhaps stop the transphobic murders like Venus Xtravaganza’s who was discovered bloody beneath a motel room’s bed.

****

Bibliography

Goldman, Emma. Anarchism and Other Essays. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1969

Livingston, Jennie. Paris is Burning. Film. Directed by Jennie Livingston. 1990. New York: Miramar Films, 1990. Web.

Footnotes

[1] Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1969), 192

[2] Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays., 168

[3] Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays., 170

[4] Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays., 167

[5] Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays., 185

[6] Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays., 174

[7] Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays., 171

[8] Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays., 188

[9] Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays., 173

[10] Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays., 171

[11] Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays., 180

[12] Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays., 185

[13] Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays., 188

[14] Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays., 172

[15] Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays., 185

[16] Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays., 186

[17] Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays., 182

[18] Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays., 182

[19] Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays., 183

[20] Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays., 178

[21] Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays., 184

[22] Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays., 184

[23] Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays., 179

[24] Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays., 186

[25] Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays., 10

[26] Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays., 178

[27] Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays., 189

[28] Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays., 193

[29] Junior LaBeija, Paris is Burning. Directed by Jennie Livingston. (1990. New York: Miramax Films, 1990.)

[30] Dorian Corey, Paris is Burning. Directed by Jennie Livingston.

[31] Venus Xtravaganza, Paris is Burning. Directed by Jennie Livingston.

[32] Venus Xtravaganza, Paris is Burning. Directed by Jennie Livingston.

[33] Venus Xtravaganza, Paris is Burning. Directed by Jennie Livingston.

[34] Dorian Corey, Paris is Burning. Directed by Jennie Livingston.

[35] Junior LaBeija, Paris is Burning. Directed by Jennie Livingston.

[36] Pepper LaBeija, Paris is Burning. Directed by Jennie Livingston.

[37] Pepper LaBeija, Paris is Burning. Directed by Jennie Livingston.

[38] Pepper LaBeija, Paris is Burning. Directed by Jennie Livingston.

[39] Pepper LaBeija, Paris is Burning. Directed by Jennie Livingston

[40] Dorian Corey, Paris is Burning. Directed by Jennie Livingston.

[41] Dorian Corey, Paris is Burning. Directed by Jennie Livingston.