Why We Do

Whenever anyone asked him "why?", my dad had a habit of responding with "why not?"
He may or may not realize how profoundly a statement like that can affect someone's life. It's a question I learned to ask in almost every situation I encountered, and I've gotten my share of looks over the years because I frequently do and say things that make absolutely no sense to other people. "Why not?" is not an apathetic response uttered because the speaker couldn't think of anything more clever to say to a potentially offensive question. Rather, it's an assertion of the idea that certain dichotomies like right/wrong, appropriate/inappropriate, masculine/feminine are ultimately arbitrary and subject to interpretation. In looking at the same situation, the two questions can be posed simultaneously. The key to making the best of a confrontation like this is simply (notice how I didn't say "easily") to understand what makes one person say "why?" while the other says "why not?"

Drag--or gender performance, I should say--is a subject that often enters into my first encounters with fans and friends-to-be. Many of my trans brothers and I are asked why we are not drag queens because drag is "supposed to" be dressing up as someone of the "opposite" gender. Some more traditional performers continue to criticize us for "cheating" with the use of hormones and surgery. But "why not?" is the response, explicitly a question itself highlighting the pure absurdity of the original interrogative, that seems to make my conversational counterparts pause, at least for a moment...

"You're a girl. Why would you want to play hockey?"
"You're a boy. Why would you want to wear a dress?"
"You're a butch. Why would you want to wear a dress?"
"You're a transman. Why would you want to do drag as a boy?"

Those who ask why we perform our chosen personae fall into the trap of using heteronormative assumptions to define a community of performers whose mission has always been to challenge those assumptions. All of the sentences above begin by affixing a label to the myriad factors, situations, and attributes that have interacted to develop the complex human being standing before you in the present moment. We are not--nobody is--as simple as the label you may want to attach to them.
We perform to tell the stories of our experiences, to make you keep questioning the boundaries between what is "real" and what is not, to introduce another small slice of the world to the idea that any BODY can be the vessel for any story, that any person has just as much right to that stage as the next...Just like any person has the right to love whomever s/he wants, just like any person has the right to be masculine, feminine, something in between, or neither one at all, whether on stage or off.
We take these challenges to the stage, sometimes making you laugh and sometimes making you cry. We keep putting ourselves out there, and everyone in the community knows our names. We take on the burden of showing you the truth as we and those we represent see it, regardless of its beauty or ugliness. We are the the most vituperated of villains among those who transgress gender barriers. Misplaced masculinity and its feminine counterpart are cited as reasons for physical and verbal assault, rape, and murder. We fight this battle every day, whether we are in transition or not, whether we are on the stage that day or not, because we believe that everyone-- from the straight guy down the road who loves romantic comedies to the over-the-top-fierce drag queen walking home alone on a Saturday night--deserves complete and total liberation in terms of gender expression.