The following was submitted as a letter to the editor for the Hampshire Gazette .
The Gazette recently published a piece by JM Sorrell that misrepresents drag queens as misogynists who ridicule women for sport. The piece fundamentally misinterprets drag, feminist thinking on drag, and conflates sex and gender into essentialist categories. Sorrell claims support from “younger feminists,” but recent reports by the Pew Research Center note that Gen Y and Millennials increasingly reject essentialist notions of sex, gender, and sexuality.
Sorrell wrongly assumes that all drag is misogynistic and mocks femininity, and then uses this assumption to claim that drag performers at Pride were ridiculing women. While it’s true that some drag performers do engage in misogynistic ridicule of women, to paint all drag with such a broad brush is an egregious error. It is a disservice to the many local, hard-working kings and queens who performed at Pride without any evidence apart from the author’s personal belief that drag is inherently a misogynistic a