Even squares are used to drag queens by now. Watching men packed into satin dresses slithering across a stage was a favored way to spend an evening as far back as World War II in San Francisco, when servicemen used to take their dates to the drag shows at Finocchio's for a laugh.
Erin O'Neill
ConFab producer Fudgie Frottage, reigning
S.F. Drag King Rusty Hips, and Tyrone T.
Bone.
Details
SomArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan
(at Eighth Street), S.F.
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Drag kinging, now, that's something new. Lesbian subcultures have always had a few cross-dressing "drag butches" or "stone butches," but the community often scorned gender fakery as sexist and silly. That is, until the lesbian sex wars of the 1980s, when anti-porn and anti-BD/SM lesbi-feminists clashed with dykes demanding their right to freewheeling smut. Suddenly, fitting into the lesbian world no longer meant cultivating an androgynous look, living on a separatist commune, and discussing gender politics; the new strain of sex-positive queer girls was too busy getting laid to care. This crew tarted itself up in fetish fashions, high-femme gear, punk rock duds, and even boy-wear: zoot suits, shirts and ties, pants tight enough to show off the condom filled with hair gel packed into their tighty-whities.
Girls with biceps to die for were no longer politically incorrect oddballs. Instead drag kings were hot, particularly in our open-minded neck of the woods. You couldn't swing a whip in an S.F. lesbian club in the 1990s without hitting a girly-boy with bound breasts and glued-on facial hair. And starting in 1994, those boychix gained official bragging rights with the first San Francisco Drag King contest. That inaugural event was a tiny party at the Eagle Tavern in SOMA. But just as little seeds grow into big trees, so has the annual Drag King Contest & ConFabbecome a full-blown daylong extravaganza expected to draw 1,000 kings and their fans. It's a long, long way from 1994, says ConFab co-producer Anders (formerly known as Annie) Toone, aka Frankie Tenderloin.
"In San Francisco, where modern kinging began," crows Toone, "we are so pomo-homo, post-genderatti/cliteratti for days that we have faux kings -- kings trapped in real boy bodies -- femme kings, trans-kings -- of which I am one -- and, most recently, an MTF [male-to-female] drag king. The binary has busted wide open, and anyone can be king."
At least for a day. Those who have already created drag king personas strut their stuff onstage and off at the ConFab. Those who haven't can get up to speed at the ConFab's workshops on drag king costuming and performing. Workshops are followed by a panel on drag king culture featuring Judith Halberstam, author of The Drag King Book and Female Masculinity. Post-panel dykes out for a stroll can indulge in a king makeover, check out an exhibit of drag king portraits, or watch performances by hunky drag stars like the Woodyz, Fudgie Frottage, and Frankie Tenderloin. The contest begins at 8:15 p.m. and lasts as long as the cavalcade of competitive kings holds out.
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