Kings, Queens, and In-Betweens - In this "Judy Blume meets RuPaul's Drag Race" teen novel, Nima Discovers the Magic of Drag and of Being (And Loving) Your Truest Self

Kings, Queens, and In-Betweens by Tanya Boteju

Perpetually awkward Nima Kumara-Clark is bored with her insular community of Bridgeton, in love with her straight girlfriend, and trying to move past her mother’s unexpected departure. After a bewildering encounter at a local festival, Nima finds herself suddenly immersed in the drag scene on the other side of town.

Macho drag kings, magical queens, new love interests, and surprising allies propel Nima both painfully and hilariously closer to a self she never knew she could be—one that can confidently express and accept love. But she’ll have to learn to accept lost love to get there.

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Gender 101, episode #15 Redux: transsexual, transgender and drag queen/drag king

In episode #15, Lucy defines and distinguishes between the terms "Transsexual," "Transgender," "Drag King" and "Drag Queen."



The movie Lucy mentions is "Paris Is Burning" - I watched it years ago, and remember it being fascinating and really entertaining.

As always with these discussions, I learned so much. And I'm delighted to share these videos with all of you.

Namaste,
Lee

The original post had this anonymous comment:


Anonymous said...
I currently self identify as a drag king. To me, that means that I mainly identify as female, and normally am on the slightly butcher side of the female spectrum. However, I have a masculine facet to my identity that is expressed when I do drag. I use the term drag king because I am much more outgoing in drag and see myself getting into some type of drag performance when I'm older, but I'm not currently involved in any kid of drag performance, except for the occasional male role in the school play. I also sometimes will describe myself as a cross dresser, but that doesn't seem as applicable to my identity as drag king. Sometimes I'll also use the term gender fluid, because there are some days where I feel more feminine and others where I feel more androgynous or masculine. Another term I use a lot for my gender is just queer or queer femme, because I'm mostly female identified, but there are other aspects to my gender identity, and queer is the easiest way to explain both that and my orientation. I feel like drag king also covers how my masculine side is a facet of my identity, but isn't necessarily how I present myself on a day to day basis. With all that being said, I am fairly young, and I'm still on the journey of really finding what feels right to me gender wise.
Also thank you for mentioning drag kings. I feel like a lot of the time people only think about drag as being men dressing as women, whereas there's us women dressing as men, too.
June 20, 2012 at 10:40 PM