Drag is many things, but one of the most important elements of this gender-bending concept is that it says a lot about how society constructs, thinks about, performs, reacts to, and challenges both gender and sexuality. Most drag queens are biological males who identify as gay, but many are queer and trans individuals “at various stages of transition” who perform as women, while drag kings are most often biological females who identify as lesbian, butch, masculine femme, and more.
To non-LGBTQ audiences, drag may appear to be solely performative or outrageous, but individuals in the drag world use this “costuming” to form or affirm their identity, or help them to express their internal sense of self (drag queens express their inner femininity), among other reasons. But drag queens also serve the greater LGBTQ+ community in helping to deconstruct and dismantle the concepts of sexuality, gender, race, and class by doing such things as critiquing heteronormativity, race, and class structures via performance, decoding femininity through placing hegemonic feminine characteristics onto masculine bodies, and emphasizing the fluidity of identity categories through behavior and creation of personas (Horowitz, 2013; Taylor & Rupp, 2004; Moncrieff & Lienard, 2017).