ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the ideal of femininity that animates queening is more fixed and hegemonic than the ideal of masculinity produced by kinging. Drag queens rely on the invisibility of real-world social structures such as race, class, and sexuality to reinforce the illusion of their own celebrity. I conclude that while queening has long been identified with camp, which David Halperin describes as a performance of emotional inauthenticity that limits the damage to gay men’s self-image in the face of loss and oppression, kinging is characterized by earnestness—a (potentially feigned) performance of emotional authenticity that demonstrates the ease and naturalness with which seemingly entrenched attributes can be appropriated. Inasmuch as we might extend camp and earnestness to represent not only queening and kinging but also the genres of gay male and lesbian culture, respectively, I assert that we should understand them as opposite, but potentially compatible, modes of critique.
