Drag Ball is Another Culture Co-Opted by Whites

To the Editor:

Drag balls originated in Harlem in the early 1900s as the queer alternative to debutante balls. Debutante balls where young girls were, and still are, dressed up as objects to “come out as women” which signifies that they can now be married, which is to say sold to the man who is the highest bidder. Drag balls were the alternative ceremony wherein gay men “came out” as gay to the gay community. Only today does coming out mean coming out to a bunch of straight people, foremost your parents, in this terrible mock-confessional.
Most straight people just don’t get it. They do not come to Drag Ball in drag. A guy who puts on his girlfriend’s dress, flits around occasionally for a cheap laugh and still dances with his arm firmly around her, grinding his dick into her is not in drag. 
Drag Ball: The Spectacle. I think that says it all. Drag Ball has been called the culmination of Transgender Awareness Week. A culmination which provides a mockery to transgendered people’s everyday experiences. A party which, if anything, has served to reinforce the binary system of gender. It is a spectacle, entertainment, so that the straight, white students can laugh at the Lady Chablis, oblivious to the fact that they are the ones she is teasing. Last time I checked, a bunch of white straight girls getting off on screaming bitch at a black man in drag is not challenging gender, race, class or sexuality. I wonder if anyone in the audience has critiqued the fact that Drag Balls have been co-opted and marketed to provide entertainment for rich white families. Perhaps your family stops in Provincetown before heading out to Martha’s Vineyard for a little R&R. Oberlin College is perpetuating this marketing. Remember those catalogues, college books? Drag Ball, Drag Ball, Drag Ball, come to Oberlin, we love queer people remember? 
Drag Ball is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to cultural appropriation and appropriation of poverty on this campus. And yes an “alternative” rich white student in Harkness with Native American prints, Tibetan prayer flags, a Bob Marley poster and an African drum is appropriating a whole lot of culture. So are two kids from affluent suburbs, wearing “white trash” apparel and calling themselves “Billy Bob and Sue Ann” in the runway competition. 
Straight people are ruining Drag Ball. By straight people, I mean people who come to reinforce the same misogynist, racist, classist, sexist, homophobic bullshit as the rest of the world. Queer is not a label for who you fuck, but how you fuck and the cultural norms you fuck with. Which is not to say queer people aren’t guilty of sexism, classism and racism, but that fighting against these institutions requires constant re-evaluation and critique of oneself and others. The event was even mostly policed by straight men. Because only large straight men can do security, right? A true Drag Ball would have drag kings in such roles. Why did the committee not choose a drag king MC? Most likely because of the idea that drag kings are not as entertaining. Which brings us back to audience; drag kings are not as “entertaining” in this context because they are not considered as much of a “spectacle” to rich, white, straight people. Drag Kings often challenge masculinity, and that is the sole reason they are seen as threatening and not entertaining. 
Drag Ball is treated as a party, not a political event. Where are the priorities of a committee that spends most of its budget on lighting and sound for an event to make it as large as possible while giving so little money to Trans Awareness Week itself, of which Drag Ball is supposed to be a culmination? With such radical roots, how has this event become so apolitical? Why have we failed to critique our own place in perpetuating this appropriation of culture? And how can we make such an event political again?

–Alison Cotterill
College junior