Venus Boyz (review)

This documentary, filmed in New York and London, focuses on drag kings and on women who, for a variety of reasons, explore aspects of masculinity through performance and in real life. The narrative features a number of the drag kings active in the New York scene during the mid- to late 1990s, including Diane Torr, Shelly Mars, Dred Gerestant, Mo Fischer, and Stormé Webber, as well as the German performer Bridge Markland and transgender photographer and performer (as both a king and a queen) Del LaGrace Volcano. It also includes interviews with the scholar and author of the book Female Masculinity, Judith Halberstam. In a series of interlocking segments that include performance footage and interviews Bauer explores the many reasons women choose to enact masculinity. The reasons articulated by her protagonists vary from the feminist desire to expose the constructedness of gender—both male and female—to an exploration of masculine alter egos or an innate sense of masculinity. In some cases, women come to an understanding of a transsexual identity through performance, while others view their onstage personas as assumed characters distinct from their own identity.

The first performer introduced in the film is Bridge Markland, a German drag king. In an extended sequence that begins with her arrival in New York City for a performance, Markland ponders the pleasure she finds in blurring the lines between genders. For Markland, drag performance allows for the exploration of territory that she feels is off limits to her as a woman. For example, she enjoys performing characters who are "assholes," a quality she finds antithetical to her true self. In an effort to permanently stake out territory that is "in between" Markland has chosen to shave her head, which she sees as a refusal to be and an escape from being the focus of male sexual attention, and her name, Bridge (something in transition, going from one place to another), also indicates this state. In this section of the interview Markland seems almost wistful as she notes that while women prefer her shaved head, her own sexual pleasure is found with men.

Markland's act, which involves her onstage transformation from an excessively feminine woman to a bald businessman in a pin-striped suit (with a dildo rather prominently displayed in his breast pocket), draws mainly from the German cabaret tradition. This act, which includes a parody strip and a dewigging that exposes Markland's bald head and brings her female identity into question, elicits screams and applause from her largely female audience. The culmination of her act is a tongue dance performed with a butch woman in the audience. As the two women's tongues tease and circle each other but never touch, Markland appears to enjoy the moment, but she seems to enjoy teasing the woman more, turning away from her before they can kiss. Markland's performance relies heavily on sexuality, and in her interview she includes a brief piece of performance art in both German and English that meditates on her sexual pleasure in donning a pin-striped suit. Markland takes obvious pleasure in investing everyday objects with sexuality, transforming them into fetish objects in her act. She states that her aim in performance is to force her audience to look at her, and she finds the power she has over them intensely erotic.

Another drag king who views herself as occupying shifting ground between the genders is Mildred "Dred" Gerestant, the only African American king featured in this documentary. Dred is also the only king who discusses her life outside the scene, and much of the section of the documentary dedicated to Dred explores the contrast between her day job as a shy and reserved data processor and the various personas she inhabits in her act. Dred is depicted as being as concerned with the details of costuming as Markland, but she invests less sexual energy in the act of assuming male costume. Instead, she delights in exploiting the disjuncture between her male outer appearance and the female body underneath the clothing. Dred...