Stone butches and drag queens

I've heard that the stone butch phenomena originated as a self-preservation tactic i.e., lesbians could appear in public with their fem gf's and be perceived as men, thus escaping physical harm from haters. Is that also how drag queens originated, to "pass" as female on the streets?

Tia Maria
• [quote]Is that also how drag queens originated, to "pass" as female on the streets? No. Drag queens are flamboyant attention seekers.

• No. Drag queens came about in the late 70's when ugly mousy chubby men who could not get attention in the sex fueled atmosphere found they could get attention by being annoying.

• R2 fails at life. Drag queens were around for a long time, and were in fact an important element of Stonewall in 1969 - far earlier than the "late 70s" the fuckwit at R2 cites. But no, OP, I don't think many drag queens were blending in or being passable. A transgendered person, maybe. But drag queens (who vary in size, and are not all 'mousy chubby men') were (early on) much more about being radical and giving the establishment a big middle finger. "Blending in" wasn't anyone's end goal.

• One of my favorite Dharma and Greg episodes was the one where the (usually drunk) WASP father in law returned to his sales roots to help the drag queens market their wares.

• Yeah! The drag queen riot in SF predated Stonewall by a couple of years! They kicked serious ass!

• "Drag queens" always have been with us. I have a photo of my great grandmother's brother in full drag with a bustle and fan from 1898, in Berlin. "He vass an entertainer," she and my grandmother would say, with pride. And diesels predate diesel.

• R3 believes the Sylvia Rivera history re-write. There was a drag queen riot in SF, drag at the time was more gender fuck than what we now thingk of as drag.

• Hello?

  http://cdn04.cdn.justjared.com/wp-content/uploads/headlines/2010/01/anne-hathaway-hasty-pudding-parade.jpg

  Hasty%20Pudding--Dragging%20since%201795

• I have been asked to clarify: The one in the middle is NOT a drag queen. It's just Anne Hathaway. Understandable confusion.

  R8

• Taking Woodstock Wigstock

• Drag queens are generally lame pastiches of female gender stereotypes.