ABSTRACT
This chapter historicizes the defining gestures of kinging and queening. Sourcing archival photographs, video recordings, reviews, and personal accounts of drag shows from across the U.S., I locate the contemporary performances at Bounce within a lineage dating from the late nineteenth century. This genealogical evidence suggests that queens’ gestures and comportment are highly stylized and deliberately choreographed, whereas kings’ performances are intentionally constructed to appear more improvised, reflecting the parallel assumptions that femininity is put on while masculinity emanates unaffectedly from within. These patterns not only contextualize the development of kinging and queening as distinct performance practices but also foreground their respective roles in producing the particular, discrete, and relatively coherent cultural iterations we conventionally label “lesbian” and “gay male.” I read these gestural histories through the lens of interperformance in order to move queerness past the stultifying tendency to label some identity performances more real or authentic than others.
