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Chapter 8 Turnabout Gay Drag Queens and the Masculine Embodiment of the Feminine s t e v e n p . s c h a c h t With an effervescent tone in her voice, the co-mistress of ceremonies, JackE (Empress V, X, XV of Reno, Nevada), reads from Eunice’s cue card: Shane and Zenith, I would like to congratulate you both on a great year . . . [for] the personal problems you both have had to endure, I commend both of you. Shane, thank you for learning how to sew. I wish you all the best in California, and remember, your mother is just a phone call away. Shane, I love you very much. Zenith, girl, hasn’t this been a fanfare. My applause to you for sticking with it, and keep on going. Raymond is here. I am also a phone call away. I love you. . . . Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome my co-emcee, and one of the best emcees on the circuit, Her Most Imperial Majesty, Empress Sixteen, the fabulous Eunice Kennady Smith. Her introduction delivered, the focused light from a single spotlight appears on two large, side-by-side doors in an otherwise dimly lit ballroom. This prompts Eunice’s entrance and the beginning of her Emcee Performance /Ball Chair Presentation dedicated to the Snow Leopard Emperor XIX, Shane Kennady Smith, and Empress XXIII, Zenith Rockafeller, who are stepping down this evening from their reign. While a steady parade of people will be honored during tonight’s event, ‘‘Coronation ’95, An Evening in the Ice Palace: A Tribute to the Great Musicals of All Time,’’ none is more venerated, powerful, or held in higher regard in this setting than Eunice. Not only is she Empress XVI of the Imperial Sovereign Court of Spokane (ISCS), but she is also the founding Queen Mother and the one and only Empress of the Imperial Sovereign Court of the State of Montana. Moreover, Eunice organizes almost every important event sponsored by the ISCS and many of the shows staged by the Montana court, and serves as a quite entertaining emcee for court happenings throughout the region. Further illustrating her ubiquitous influence , she has over 120 children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren (predominantly other past and present empresses, emperors, princesses, 156 / Steven P. Schacht and princes) residing all over the West Coast and inland Northwest. To be a member of Eunice’s esteemed family, denoted by the Kennady Smith last name, is both a tribute to and an indication of one’s standing in the regional court community. And yet, Eunice is not really the biological matriarch of a long lineage of royal family members. She is a gay man and a female impersonator who, within a socially disparaged community, has created her own kindred dynasty of sorts.1 Eunice’s lofty station, like that of other drag queens in this setting, is predicated upon her successful presentation and promotion of idealized images of traditional feminine beauty—seemingly being the operational ‘‘other’’—in such a relational manner that it situationally affords her masculine power and authority. The dominant culture most typically views the feminine, especially its extreme manifestations, as the stigmatized other, a burden, a handicap, harmful, and providing the basis for discrimination and a subordinate status.2 In direct contrast, gay men within this drag community commandeer many of these same cultural notions of feminine embodiment and use them as the basis of personal prestige and power. In fact, as this chapter demonstrates, drag queens within this context who most successfully present traditional images of the hyper-feminine come to embody a dominant status in the group. Conversely, that which is most symbolically associated with masculine appearance is rendered subordinate to the seeming omnipotence of those most convincingly doing the feminine; masculine-appearing men and lesbians (those most embodying traditional images of masculinity), instead of women, are the relational signifiers of those holding power in this hyper-gendered setting.3 This essay considers my ethnographic experiences in a drag community . Instead of viewing female impersonators as stigmatized, peripheral individuals in our society or the gay community, as some previous researchers have, this study examines a locale where such individuals are the most esteemed and sovereign.4 While still locating the transgendered at the cultural margins, other gender theorists and writers have argued that since drag queens demonstrate ‘‘female’’ and ‘‘male’’ to be nothing more than imitative performances and states of being, they contest present gender regimes by example.5 My...

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