"I play men." "You see I have a moustache." "I play men but I also play women." "Taxi driver:" "Then you put a wig on?" "Bridge:" "Yeah." "TD:" "How do you like it when you play men?" "I like it a lot." "It's fun." "Driver:" "It is, right?" "It's fun because I'm not a man." "So it's fun to put on that other gender." "Driver:" "Did you ever think to be a man?" "No, it's more fun to be, to play than..." "I don't want to be a man." "No." "Interviewer:" "When you play man you play like husband role?" "Like husband role?" "I:" "Husband or boyfriend." "No." "Actually, I don't play husbands really." "Sometimes maybe when I play with a drag queen." "Some years ago" "I set out on this journey in search of women who live in between" "who also live the man within whatever that means be it for a night, be it for a lifetime." "The young King movement in New York City had just got on its feet." "Here I met Mo B. Dick and his friends." "Mo was co-initiator and moderator of Club Casanova, the first king meeting place." "Mo B. Dick:" "It was a variety, a total mixture of people that went." "You didn't know who's who, what sexuality anybody was." "Nobody cared." "Brothers and sisters, I'm Reverend Jimmy Johnson and I came here as a special messenger," "I came here as a special messenger to tell you to the people of New York city, that the drag kingdom has come." "Hallelujah!" "Hallelujah!" "Amen." "And on the 8th day the gods realised there must be a third sex." "[With the participation of]" "Oh drag kingdom come, drag will be done." "Brothers and sisters, I have many many people ask me:" ""Reverend Jimmy Johnson, what is a drag king?" "I wanna know."" "I'm here to tell you, brothers and sisters:" "A drag king is a person who wants gender euphoria." "A drag king is a person who has accepted their female masculinity." "Amen." "Bridge:" "I mean I just come from Berlin, and in Berlin, actually the last few weeks the weather has been like almost Hawaii, maybe St. Tropez or something like that." "So I really have to cover up so I don't get a cold or something." "I already feel it coming." "[Written and directed by]" "(German) I always had my eye on pinstriped suits." "I had my first one at 17... because I had seen David Bowie wearing them." "And then I also wanted to wear one." "I always wore androgynous and crossgender make-up." "And I have been collecting pinstriped suits for several years." "Hey Garland, this is Bridge." "I told you about this drag king night that we're doing on Tuesday the 23rd." "You know, there's going to be so many great drag kings in one show." "I hope you come." "Talk to you soon." "Bye." "Society is more aware of drag queens than they are of drag kings." "No one even really knew what a drag king was." "And so we really wanted to introduce that to the New York scene and we wanted people to see that gender is really undefined." "It's what you make of it." "It really helped us to sort of get full circle come from drag queens all the way around to drag kings." "(German) Biologically, I am a woman." "I don't want to change that, but the point is... that there are different forms of femininity." "And mine is definitely very androgynous." "I can be feeling bad." "I can be feeling like a nothing." "(German) I can be feeling bad." "I can be feeling like a nothing." "But then... when I put on these trousers." "(German) When I put on these trousers." "Particularly from a pinstriped suit." "(German) Particularly from a pinstriped suit." "And I put on a nice dress shirt." "(German) And I put on a nice dress shirt." "And I button it up slowly up to the collar." "(German) And I button it up slowly up to the collar" "And I tie the tie." "(German) And I tie the tie and I put on my jacket" "Every time I put on the suit jacket, I feel a little bit more powerful." "(German) I button my fly" "Every time I button my fly" "I touch myself a little bit to kinda stay hard." "And I put on a moustache." "(German) And I draw a moustache." "And I think... (German) and I think..." "I am fucking hot." "(German) I am fucking hot." "(German) Alter ego is that part of me that wants to scream out:" ""Here I am, the whole world belongs to me."" "And I can conquer any man or any woman I want to." "I also enjoy playing assholes, because then one can release these asshole qualities which every one of us has." "Hey, dig me!" "I can punch you in the nose and you can't do a damn thing about it." "[music]" "(German) Karl, for me, is a very positive figure." "He's a cuddly old man." "He couldn't hurt anyone." "He's very sweet and also helpless." "I created him after." "my father and my oncle." "They were both bald-headed, had a tonsure and were fat, ageing men." "But Karl is good natured compared to them." "And nicer." "He would never harm anybody." "He's a truly kind man." "The kindest man I play." "[opera music]" "(German) Ever since I've been bald," "I've noticed that female sexuality, for many men, surely not all of them, but many, is strongly linked with hair, and as soon as you shave your hair off, they think you deny your sexuality." "I feel it as a liberation." "[water running]" "[water running]" "For women... it's more natural for them that I am bald." "But I prefer men." "I fancy women, but men turn me on more." "[music]" "(German) I am a chameleon." "I am really Bridge." "(laughs)" "You could say I am at home on the bridge." "I live on the bridge." "Interestingly enough, the bridge is moving." "So I also go to wherever it's going... and then I'm back on the bridge." "Again, going wherever the bridge takes me." "But even if you say drag king some people don't know that." "They don't know what a drag king is." "When I say I teach drag king workshops." "They ask: "What are dry-cleaning workshops?"" "Dry cleaning is so fabulous." "They don't know any better." "I think the Gap and Calvin Klein and television, and everything that's around us in advertising and sitcoms and movies teaches us so much about wanting to be like everybody else, wanting to conform and to be the popular girl or the cool guy in school." "I think what they don't show is that it's all the geeks and nerds, the people that were rejected and that felt like shit in school who really try 200% more to make something of themselves." "The final step." "Well, I'd like to stay, hang out with the drag kings all night long, but I'm off to LA to see Hugh Hefner to be the first drag queen ever pictured in Playboy magazine." "But I wanna tell all those hot sexy studs tonight:" "Good luck, drag kings, you rock New York." "The hottest, the cutest, the finest boys in this room tonight." "The Backdoor Boys." "Please give a round of applause to Shelly Mars." "I've been doing drag for a long time, 20 years." "It's very erotic for me to be a guy." "My name is Damien Corson." "I'm an independent digital filmmaker." "He's a young guy, he's into film and poetry and it's like very now, the dotcom film digital guys." "Film." "I'm making a film." "I'm making an independent film." "I'm a filmmaker." "I'm writing a film." "I'm writing an independent film." "Read my script you idiots." "I think I started out in a political way but not consciously "I'm being political"." "Any artist that breaks boundaries it's a political thing." "It's saying like why not?" "Why can't I do this?" "This is actually one of the first times I ever did him as Martin in this act." "People either were screaming,:" ""Oh my god, this is fabulous, I love him", or were like "Get off the stage, booh", basically throwing tomatoes at me." "I think some women really have the biology to be like totally female and some don't." "And it's the ones that don't that are made to be like" ""I'm supposed to be a girl" that have the problems." "Same with guys." "Everyone is a little different with what's comfortable for them." "What we or our society just doesn't allow more than... either you're a blond nice girl or you're a guy like that." "I mean there are many degrees in between, and that's what we don't allow and that's the problem." "Yeah you look good." "You look good babe." "Her name is Bridge Markland." "All the way from Berlin, darling." "There she is!" "Oh, my god!" "Ladies and gentlemen:" "Bridge Markland." "(German) It makes me happy to be on stage, where everything just flows, where I am at home, within myself and I can draw creatively from my own energy." "[music]" "Basically, when I deconstruct this sex bomb, Angela, she's called Angela, and approach the audience, androgynous, sexy, self-confident, half-naked..." "I choose my own sexual objects." "Sometimes, I have the urge to shake people up, to get very close to them and say:" ""Here I am, and you can't avoid me." "And I stick my tongue out at you, as if you were my father." "You can't escape." "Maybe you're being filmed or watched." "You can't get away, you're here and you have to look at me." "I really enjoyed her performance because it was Weimar Germany, kind of Bertold Brecht, kind of feeling to it." "And I'm glad I got to do the little tongue dance with her." "That was really fun." "(Knocking on the door)" "Philly:" "Hello?" "Hey it's me." "Hi babe." "Come on in." "Are you coming down?" "I identify with Brandon a lot, because Brandon was stuck in that small town insane mentality and that's really really scary." "Brandon Teena, born as Teena Brandon was killed in Nebraska, 1993," "for living as a man." "Well I went back down to South Jersey where I lived and when I was like 16 I went to my brother's wedding and I got beat up by 7 guys on the board walk in New Jersey." "They started beating up my friend calling him a faggot and I jumped in and I was pulling people off him and they started like punching me, I got punched in the face." "The cops weren't doing anything either, and this Italian woman from behind the sausage stand jumped out and just ran over and grabbed me and ran me off the board walk." "but it was like an angry mob mentality." "It was really scary." "I've always been gay and I've always been butch or transgender even, you know what I mean." "Growing up I identified as a little boy." "I liked girls but I was really happy that..." "I didn't want a dick, you know what I mean." "And I remember my brother teasing me saying:" ""Oh, we're gonna send you to Denmark"." "when I was little because I was such a boy." "They don't want women looking like men." "That's the crossover." "Because I think it makes them feel that they might be queer if they like a butch version." "I would say that my male is all drag queen and my female is all amazon." "You know it's an everyday thing for me." "When I take this off I don't assume a different role." "It's very hard to find anyone here who will identify with the term butch." "Whereas in London, a lot of people would say that one of the reasons they are interested in dressing up in drag is because they are butch, and they love... this is just part of what they love to do." "What is then butch exactly for you?" " What is it?" " Yeah, for you." "Butch is masculinity as an identity in women." "I'm not butch or femme." "I'm just whatever I'm feeling." "I can be one way one day and another way the other." "I can't put myself in a category." "So you would sleep with a woman in drag and you do drag." "I would sleep in drag with a woman." "Well you're just very versatile." "But for me it's not whatever I'm feeling." "For you it's different." "I would never wear a dress." "I only go out with feminine women." "I consider myself butch, I can't change it." "I admire that you can do that, Dréd." "But for me I can't." "I can't switch today and tomorrow I'll be something different." "You gotta be yourself." "And it's this very strict thing." "[rap music]" "I was inspired by seeing a bunch of drag kings." "I thought it was very empowering." "And it made me wanna do the drag." "I was like, I wanna give this a try." "The transformation was definitely amazing." "And surprising." "I was like wow, I look like a man." "A good looking one too." "I feel so natural that one time I said that in my past life..." "I definitely felt like I've lived as a man before." "I've lived it in previous life times." "I believe in all that stuff." "I definitely feel like I was a ladies man, definitely." "I'm not sure exactly how it was." "But, you know, sometimes having all the women and all that stuff in line waiting, but it's..." "I'm not really like that." "Not in this lifetime anyway, I'm not like that." "When I was growing up I was very, very feminine." "I had big hair and red red lipstick and all that stuff." "A lot of people think that Dréd have all the women every night a woman and all that, but it's not even like that." "I'm very shy and Dréd is shy too." "But Dréd is very respectful I feel, like I perform and the ladies are all screaming, sometimes they throw heir bras at me and stuff." "But that's as far as it goes pretty much at the shows." "This one is real." "Time to get dressed." "I love shoes." "Like the drag queens oh my god, you see the shoes that Luscious wears?" "Oh they are so sexy and I like the pretty toes and the nail polish and the long heels..." "It turns me on." "It's very exciting and sexual for me." "Ladies and gentlemen, it's a pleasure to bring out an old time friend." "Ladies and gentlemen:" "Dréd and Luscious!" "[music]" "I feel everybody has a male, a masculine and feminine side." "But not everybody chooses to explore the other side." "Stay just like that." "We met on Christopher Street, which is in the west village in NY where a lot of gay people are up in the area, specially men." "I was walking and in front of me there was this beautiful ass" "Beautiful butt hanging out of these really tight white shorts." "So she's like "Excuse me"." "I was like "Yes?"." "I had my moustache so I didn't want her to see my face." "So she's like: "Excuse me", I say: "Yes?"" "She said: "Oh, how you doing?"" "You know, cause she sees that I'm a man." "Looking still good." "Still... she played herself." "No I didn't play myself, I still liked how he looked." "You know how the queens are, you know what I'm saying." "She still spoke to me but then again  still I wanted the digits." "She still didn't want me to know that she knows I am man." "Real honey, real." "Jiggle baby jiggle." "Well, she's so nasty." "But doesn't it look real?" "Yes, I like it." "Gay mean happy." "As long as you don't bother nobody." "Do what you want." "You wanna go to town now...." "Well, got the pussy boots on." "The kings are coming along." "Dréd she's the powerful one." "She keeps me on my feet, you know." "Oh we're good good friends, really good friends." "She thought she could be my girlfriend, unfortunately I was a man," "I definitely wanna be a household name." "Dréd or Mildred." "But it'd be nice to be more well known." "But it's a step by step process and I'm working on it." "So it doesn't happen over night." "When I was going to the gym before work, I would get up at 5:30 or 6, go to the gym, tak a shower, go to work, go to class after long very long days," "and this drag thing, in the beginning," "I was always performing like 3, 4 times a week, just to get my name out there." "I have a full-time job working on computers, doing data processing and creating computerized questionnaires for a research institute in Manhattan." "My dream one day is to just make a living of my creativity." "She's always been the same person." "I think that's what's so great about her." "It's like Dréd and Mildred are two different people because when you're watching her perform she's like uninhibited, she entertains you, she's great." "But when you're just with Mildred she's a very shy person, very sweet, soft spoken and everything." "So it's like she's two different people." "I don't think she's changed at all." "It's definitely helped me to be more expressive." "Dréd has helped me to open another sides of myself that I didn't know I had." "It has also helped me to feel that it's okay to try new things, to be different." "It's so different from when I was growing up." "I was very shy, I was teased a lot and I was very sad." "I believed people said you're ugly and all that stuff, little kids could be so cruel." "And I believed them, I didn't know how to deal with it." "I didn't tell anybody." "I kept very quiet, I didn't really have any friends." "And so now it's kind of totally opposite" "I feel I've bloomed and I can look at myself and say yes you're beautiful, you're strong" "and you gotta do your thing." "And it's hard sometimes, it takes time to heal from those wounds." "I feel I have my angels, my guarding angels," "I am not really alone." "This is like my family portion of this whole wall." "Because I have my family I'm born with and I have my drag family, so I mixed the pictures together." "And that's me." "I'm so short compared to all the queens." "They're like towering over me." "I have a lot of friends, my family is very lovable... and supportive." "That's me as a little girl." "I think I was in junior high school then." "That's me and my mummy again." "I love my mummy." "I would like to have a relationship and a serious one." "I hope one day to have one, but that takes time." "[door bell]" "[knocking]" "Hi there!" "How are you doing?" " Good, and you?" " I'm good." "Come on." " Did you bring that book?" " Yes, I did." "All right, come on." "I was walking down a block and you said good evening and first I wasn't sure." "I didn't say good evening, I said:" ""Good evening"." "Well, I'm sorry I didn't get your fabulous voice and all." "It's different." "Good evening." "[laughter]" "I turned back and saw you and said "Is that a man or a woman?"" "Because if I thought it was a man," "I would be like "please"." "[laughter]" "No offense to men and all that." "We dated for a little bit, but we're definitely better as friends." "Sisters." "We're family." "You meet your family and sometimes you're confused at first, you think it's your lover, but it's your cousin or in Mildred's case, she's my granny." "And you're my grandson." "Now that we know who each other is we get on much better." "When we were trying to date we fought a lot." "Oh god, I don't even know how stupid was." "You was trying to be the man." "Oh no, you know that's not true." "You'd better take that back." "So you have [incomprehensible] [chatting]" "Let's see." "And you got here." "On the side it looks kind of cute." "I have a large head and a lot of hair." "You're just wrong." "Need any assistance?" "Let me see here." "Let me go back." "I'm right here, granny." "right here for you." "I'll fix that tag." "Come here, come here." "Let me come out." "I feel in some way it's different... for black or white kings, because a lot I know don't like to show their womanhood." "They stay in male drag during the whole show and I like to mix it up." "I like to do a little stripping and I show cleavage and stuff." "You know Dréd's not here." "Dréd would be feeling it more, because I got the make up on and all that stuff." "Bring out your inner Dréd." "[music]" "Storme:" "This is one of my favourite songs in the world." "In some ways most of us we all kind of make fun of the characters we're doing but also I'm paying tribute to the music, our music." "It's music I always loved growing up and listening to." "A lot of this seventies stuff, Isaac Hayes, and... the Commodores or..." "I've even done Little Richard before." "Isaac Hayes, he's the man, he's the legend." "A friend of a friend of mine gave me a poster cause he said we look alike" "And when I met him I had some of my breasts showing and he didn't know what was going on." "The first time Dréd was, I was trying to catch a cab, it was night time... and just waiting for a cab, it took like a good hour before I caught the cab." "They would slow down and then run off." "This white woman comes in front of me and is trying to catch a cab," "I'm like "You don't see I'm trying to catch a cab"." "She's like "Oh I'm sorry man"." "And then she walked away." "But it's just very frustrating." "So that felt really bad when I realised... the stereotypes they have in their heads of black men." "Like they won't pay, they'll rob them or something alike which is really stupid." "Sometimes it's really hard for me, for Dréd to catch a cab and even as a woman I experience that too at times." "You do have to be ready to carry something when you decide to define yourself." "When you decide to be different than what the mainstream society says is normal." "You may have to fight." "I think we're very much in the tradition too because in African societies and in Native American societies there were always crossdressers, and there were always people who played both roles, both gender roles." "A lot of times... they were the spiritual people, the medicine people, the healers." "And somehow I think by demonstrating this comfortableness within ourselves" "with both aspects of our gender identity, that's something healing for people in general to see." "(singing poem) I'm a stranger here, Lord," "I'm a stranger everywhere." "I think I just realised this year that I'm transgender." "[background singing]" "Without intending to I find that I live my life as a passing woman and that I'm very often perceived as a man." "Very often." "And it's interesting." "I'm not flat chested." "This is only natural." "When I was in my twenties, there was maybe one." "I'm 40 now." "And it's just growing, I don't know." "I think it's interesting because it's different." "That's why I like it." "Because you don't think a woman should have it." "Before they didn't think we should have trousers, before they didn't think we should drive cars." "They didn't think so." "I think that the world is changing." "That's me and my mum." "This believe it or not is my father." "There's my father after he joined the navy." "(poem) A slash of brilliant tropical color" "I was very fortunate to grow up in a queer environment." "My mother is a lesbian, my father was bisexual." "So I remember when I was a child and I saw a man and woman kissing in a movie it seemed so strange and unnatural for me." "Because what I knew was lesbians and gay men, relating with each other." "I think that it was challenging, but I do think that it was a blessing." "Because I came into the earth on so many margins, because already my mother's family is Alaskan Indian and European, my father's family is African and Choctaw." "So there was already such difference within my mother's family," "I'm the only black child." "My mother's a lesbian, we were quite poor." "I've always been on the margins... of race, of gender, of sex, of class," "I think it gave me a lot of strength." "Because I had to become aware of how to move in each world." "While at the same time realising I didn't really belong into any of them." "My father died of... carbon monoxide poisoning" "He was in a car and he was cold, he turned on the engine to be warm and he fell asleep." "And he never woke." "He was 45." "(poem) I understand some things." "Like how life hurts sometimes every moment and how wearisome it gets always trying to numb ragged feelings." "I don't know any of his dreams." "I know that he ached inside sometimes and sometimes he sent that anguish outward just like a real man." "I know everybody wanted him that green eyed sexy smile somebody." "I know that filled a lot of hours but in the end made nothing better." "(singing) If you ever... change your mind... about leaving me behind... bring it to me bring your sweet loving... bring it all home to me." "Hey, sailor." "There he is once again, ladies and gentleman:" "Storme Webber!" "[singing]" "... like a chain, like a chain..." "I'm always intrigued in any form of art with the concept of negative space, the concept of what is around a thing which defines that thing." "So with masculinity it's the same." "It's what's around it." "It's always the dichotomy." "Moving forward and holding back, being strong and being vulnerable." "And this is what is interesting," "What makes any performance good is... passion." "(singing) ..." "like a train..." "Masculine, I don't know what masculine means." "That's the thing." "Yes, what does masculine mean?" "What is femenine?" "One of my dolls she's matching me today, we're wearing green today." "This beautiful feminine doll." "A spiritual thing of my people, gave her a little bell." "It's hard." "I can't really define what's a man and what's a woman, who's a man and who's a woman." "And I don't wanna define it." "I think it's great to just express it and be what you wanna be and be seen how you wanna be seen." "God have mercy if I ran into my mum right now." "I share you with nobody." "First of all, what do you think makes a good man?" "When somebody is just there for you." "One is gonna hold you through the thick and the thin." "Someone who is on your side." "It doesn't matter for sake." "Somebody is gonna be there for you." "Accept you for who you are, no matter what." "Would you think I was a man or a woman if you saw me walking down the street?" "I definitely think you're a man." "Definitely, definitely." "That's what I look like." "[incomprehensible]" "First she has to become a lady." "And present herself right to other people." "A lot of things make a good woman." "What does make a good man?" " Treating a woman right." " All right." "If he treats a woman right he's a good man." "And if he believes in God, too." "We were just talking about that." "God comes first is the only judge." "What makes a good woman and a good man?" "The thing for me is not what's defining that but what's defining the shifts of mind involved in that." "So whether you're defining yourself sexually as female or not, it's what happens with expectations in people's minds." "Once I knew you're a woman... [music]" "[song] Are you a boy or a girl?" "The moto that I always have said is:" "Instead of being an angry woman I became a funny man." "A drag king is camp." "There's a whole camp aesthetic." "So there's parody." "Mo B. Dick as John Sex and his beautiful sidekick Bob." "[music]" "Camp is hard to define." "But generally, it has a kind of kitschy element to it, and also a certain amount of foolishness." "Camp is a way to subvert sorrow also." "Diane Torr begat..." "Buster Hyman..." "Pretty much, yeah." "...and Johnny Science." "I first heard of the drag king workshop when I was in Boston." "And I did the workshop and it changed my life." "I got so high off it." "On the trail with Diane Torr from Zurich to Hamburg to New York, 1997." "I enjoy the experience of being a man." "People would step aside when I walk down the street." "It felt different." "Very different." "I could at last get my share of the seat on the subway." "Even learned to pee in a urinal." "I have these three separate identities:" "wife, mother and man." "But my husband and children couldn't embrace my fantasies, and so I had to leave." "I was interested in exploring what it would be like to live as a man." "And find another territory for myself." "There are times when I go out as Danny King or Jack Sprat or Charles Beresford, who's my gay man," "and I really get a vacation from Diane." "You have a lot more credibility as a man... in the world." "It's just the way it is." "You walk into the room as a man and people immediately pay you attention." "You walk into a room as a woman and they check you out if you're sexy." "That's the first thing." "Men and women, and if you're a certain age, once you're over 40 or 35, forget it." "Unless you're particularly elegant looking woman and then people could be curious." "Mum." "What?" "What?" "[music]" "That could work." "[music]" "Oh my god, I used to gogo dance to this song." "[city noises]" "I came to this Aikido Dojo in 1977." "I have a third degree black belt." "Aikido has been a way for me to think about an ungendered situation." "It's really about energy, redirecting that negative energy into a place where it's not causing you any harm." "Thank you." "A lot of Aikido is about being able to extend, not to withdraw." "Once you withdraw it's over." "You have no more power." "So when I walk," "I have a sense of ownership, a sense of belonging." "So that with each foot that I take, you have a sense that I could own that piece of floor," "for the minute that my foot rests there." "I have this 360 degree boundary around myself." "Something that I learned in Aikido that you need to stand very solidly on the ground, on the earth." "Tony, Eric and Larry, let's see you occupy the space" "let's see how you can own... the floor." "You're a bit of a loss aren't you?" " As a human being." " Yeah." "I'm just very like..." "It's all right Larry, you can hide behind that hair." "You have to remember that boys grew up in playgrounds where they always had to defend themselves." "So you need to develop more armour actually in your physicality." "How would this guy protect himself?" "Every 3 minutes a woman is being abused in America, something like that." "If you think about that, that's astronomic." "As a woman I'm really communicating and my gaze is on the edge, is on the surface of my eyeball." "I'm like looking out into the world with a lot of curiosity and a desire to communicate." "As a man, as this man, I'm a lot more reserved." "I expect the world to come to me." "So I'm much more withdrawn." " You've got some hair." " Mhm." "So do you have an idea of who this man could be?" "Do you think an Argentinean man for instance?" "Cause you're Argentinean." "Do you think they're very different from American men?" "The way that they behave, their gestures?" "Yeah, it will make a difference." "Men in Argentina I think they have a lot of style." "They pay attention to the way they look a lot." "[tango music]" "(Spanish) Se cabreó el varoncito." "[tango music continues]" "There are many ways to construct a penis." "When you fill it up with cotton wool, then you have your penis." "That's one way you can do it." "You can imagine the rest." "This is another method that you can use." "I don't work with dildos necessarily." "We just use this sausage, that's kinda like the fake penis and it's really just for packing, for you to have this kind of lump in your pants." "This is something that you can use and when you use it you say "I'm packing"." " It's cold I know." " It's clammy." "It's clammy but it's got a nice sticky quality to it." "It looks good." "Do that again." "It's stuck to my pants." "It wants you..." "The penis wants you." "It stretches." "The arousing reconstructions." "That was the first time I was in drag." "We also developed this androgynous movement vocabulary." "It was 1981, and nobody was really investigating these ideas in performance." "This is me as the Jean Paul Belmondo character." "Now she only almost exclusively does male characters." "She got a bit more fanatic and hooked into it." "It fits her change in the physique that she had over the years." "She used to be a little boy and now she looks like... a stubby man." "I lived in Amsterdam for a couple of years and that's where I met the father of Martina, my daughter." "This is during the birth, where I screamed at Marcel:" ""You did this!" "I hate you!" "You did this!"" "I was so angry." "You have all this extra emotion." "I asked her." "I thought she could never get pregnant." "When she told me three weeks later, she was surprised and I was surprised she was." "It was a bit confusing because I didn't know her at all." "So it wasn't really very planned." "Sorry Tinkiu." "Martina was totally demanding." "It was very easy to be involved with her." "It creates beautiful children, if you're involved throughout." "He's been very, very supportive." "He's a very special, wonderful man and I know that I will know him all my life." "We're parents to Martina." "But in terms of our relationship... we've reached an impasse." "I went to Manchester in 1996 and I taught a workshop there and that's where I met Jane." "And Jane became my lover." "I was having this relationship with her in Europe and having this other kind of relationship here, which is as a mother to Martina, and living along side Marcel." "Eventually, these things are very hard to sustain and Jane decided that she couldn't deal with this anymore." "And I feel heart broken." "Each of the characters I create are composites." "They're not just one person." "Like Danny King is a composite of... a number of ghastly men" "I've seen and known from a young age." "I grew up in Aberdeen in Scotland and I had these uncles who were towering above you and you're so impressed by them." "They jingle change in their pockets." "And you think:" ""Oh my god they're rich"." "But of course it's just coins." "But you're 5 or 6 years old and you're so impressed by all this malebehaviour." "Good evening, gentlemen." "Welcome to the American society of men." "I am here tonight to train you how to gain and retain respect... as a man." "I'm much more controlled." "My shoulders become more rounded and so the breathing is deeper." "Rule number 2:" "Stop smiling!" "It's very nice when women smile, it's very appealing, very unthreatening." "Makes them very friendly." "But when a man smiles that could be conceived as a conceding ground." "Allowing you a possibility to be exploited." "Rule number 3:" "Stop apologizing!" "Cause as a man in a man's world you are right." "And even if you're not." "Who goes around saying "I'm sorry!" all the time?" "As women it's like we're open for access 24 hours a day." "People have to like us." "That's like the ruling thing in our psyches." "What does it mean to be a woman?" "What kind of a woman am I?" "I want you... to like me." "I want you... to hold me." "I want you... to fulfil my dreams." "[sound of kisses]" "I want... to be part... of you." "I created this character who starts off being someone who pleases everybody but then have her transform." "I don't particularly like Danny King." "It's more dealing with a reality of how most men are." "It is a kind of a parody but people have told me that he's real." "And I know he is, unfortunately." "What I'm saying is that if I can do this, from this female who's like the woman who lives next door," "and I can become this man who's Mr Macho, then anybody can do it." "And if that's the case then so much for masculinity being sacred." "We can have a penis any time we want, any size and any shape or form." "I actually think that it's men who have penis envy of other men." "A particular favourite of the housewives, the women who stay at home and all they have for company is their dishwasher, their vacuum cleaner and I call this one vacuum gigantum." "You can think of them as props, not necessarily as phalluses." "I don't think there's anything wrong with something looking like a phallus anyway." "Because who is the person who's handling it." "You don't need to have a man attached to it." "It's just there, it's available, why not use it." "And you wanna maintain the impregnability at all costs." "Keep your movements... minimal, guarded, repetitive." "I would always use my father as an image of like my male in my life." "And he is so gentle and kind and he's really sweet." "He's so different from Danny King." "I'd always say to her:" ""Mum, you're totally stereotyping." "I don't want the whole world to think that you think this is the only type of guy or this is the real kind of guy"." "A pleasure, My name is Jack Sprat." "It's really great to see you all here tonight to come see me perform." "I know it's a lot of other people but it's really nice you can see me perform." "[music and singing]" "I know I'm somebody who has been doing this a long time." "So obviously I have a certain amount of authority." "I know they think of me as a daddy drag king." "[harmonica playing]" "It's much easier to be a powerful woman behind the mask of a man." "And it's much more socially acceptable to express anger when you're a man, and the aggressive behaviour as a man." "As a woman people go:" ""Ah bitch!" "What's the matter with you?"" "That's exactly true because" "I was always punished in a female form because I was too aggressive." "Now I have permission." "People just see me." "I don't perceive myself as a man, nor as a woman for that matter but people perceive me as a man." "I can be invisible as a man, whereas for some reason as a female I never was." "No, it really is a subliminal absence of hostility." "Men relate to me as a man and they are not guarding themselves." "Men look after men, I'm telling you." "See how that works." "You want me to look right into the lens?" "Yeah." "Let's rehearse that." "Give me that look." "Yeah that's it." "There was so much great discussion last night." "I felt like I wanted to talk more." "Should I try the other side?" "What happened was, I was doing drag so much like 4 and 5 times a night." "And people always were:" "oh Mo." "B. Dick, Mo." "B. Dick." "And then Mo Fisher's getting lost." "I felt my inner man overtook my inner woman." "As a result I lost sight of my female self." "(singing) Are you a boy or a girl?" "What I did was, it's difficult to explain, but so it's like I said:" "that is my male side, now what's my female side?" "I became confused and I said:" ""Wait a minute." "I am a very aggressive woman and I will remain an aggressive woman."" "What is interesting is that they say, spiritually your left side is your female side and your right side is your male side." "And I'm reversed in the outfit." "[jiggling]" "That's it." "I have to change film." "That's interesting because... it was my left side that overdeveloped as female in the chest and my right breast didn't develop at all." "These are photographs of Mo that I took in New York." "When Mo was wearing the fabulous half man, half woman costume." "[water dripping]" "I think gender is performance and I think gender is more than performance." "I think that people subconsciously perform whatever gender role they've been assigned, but people might subvert that." "Generally people conform, generally men don't go around wearing make up and dresses and generally women don't go around... scratching their balls." "We don't as individuals reinvent the meaning of gender." "Each person individually, one person at a time." "We come into genders that have already been constructed for us." "within political, economic, social, cultural contexts." "So what we do when we're in a gender is perform an already socially constructed script." "A medically accepted clitoris is between 0 and 1 cm, and a medically acceptable penis has to be between 2,5 and 4,5 cm." "If you fall in between the 1 and the 2,5, they usually cut it off because they deem it would be very very bad for a man to have a penis that was too small or for a woman to have a clitoris that was too large." "So generally they just whack it off and give no thought to the sexual pleasure of the child when they become an adult." "They still do that?" "Yeah, they still do that." "In my everyday life" "I'm probably perceived as a man." "It's fine for people to perceive me as a man." "Photo exhibition for The Drag King book premiere by Del LaGrace Volcano" "That doesn't mean that's how I perceive myself." "I perceive myself in the same way that I always have, which is something that is a combination of both." "Sometimes maybe more female than male, sometimes maybe more male than female." "I know five men personally that also have vaginas," "I know lots of men that also have breasts." "And I know lots of women who have beards." "Accompanying Del LaGrace to a Drag King performance in Cologne, 1997." "Being a drag king for me was a way to begin this journey." "But it isn't necessarily." "It's not like you go:" "I'm gonna be a cross-dresser, then I become a drag king then I become a transsexual." "No." "No." "No." "That's what people are afraid of and for maybe some of us, yes." "Meine Damen-Herren, Herren-Damen." "Ich bin Herr Doctor Delman." "Now most of you here are what I call monogendered," "some are bigendered, and some are omnigendered." "Myself I'm transgendered." "This is me with my family." "Can you show a little bit of your stomach?" "When I was born I was assigned to the female gender." "My first conscious realisation that I didn't quite fit as a girl came when I was about 5 years old." "I never behaved appropriate for a female." "But I really didn't see myself as anything other than a girl until puberty." "I always thought I was ugly." "This was..." "This one here was me right before I had my hair cut." "I guess I was about 22 there." "I have a silicon implant that I never wanted." "I too always wanted a flat chest." "Being female is what I construct." "Naturally if you have a default, my default is masculine." "Being a drag king, once I was performing as a man that did not feel as a performance, that just felt pretty natural." "It wasn't as much fun and it still isn't." "I still far prefer to be a drag queen than a drag king." "Right now I'm in the process of trying to get my gender amended on my American passport to 'O' designation." "They have male, female and since the beginning of this year in the software you can be 'O' for other or it could change to 'I' for intersex." "Right now on my passport it says female." "I had to pluck my beard out every morning from late teenagehood." "And it was so cute, the natural one was just these two little horns coming out of the side of the chin." "And some moustache as well." "Basically she told me:" ""If you don't stop plucking your eyebrows," "I don't think I'm gonna be able to go out with you." "I couldn't stand it." "It was like such a relief." "I didn't have to pluck my eyebrows," "I didn't have to wear make up or skirts." "I didn't have to perform as a female anymore." "I came to get my prescription." "I do testosterone injections." "It's a deep muscle injection." "... for the other two." " Tomorrow." "Give it to me, give it to me." "Your voice lowers, your period stops, fat redistribution," "clitoral enlargement." "They say those are irreversible." "We don't know what the long-term consequences are of a female born person taking male hormones over a long period of time." "You have to bear in mind that there could be health risks that you're not aware of or that haven't been recognized yet." "Finding Simo for me was so amazing because she was the first woman I had been with who had a really positive, healthy attitude towards men." "She wasn't anti men at all and we were both attracted to the masculinity of each other." "We've been together and not together for about 6 years." "I said: "Would you like to come home with me tonight or would you like to wait for a proper date?"" "And I was very impressed by that." "I've never been asked that way before." "It has always been:" ""Would you like to come home with me tonight?"" "or something like that." "Never giving me a choice like that." "I was so impressed that..." "You said: "Can I think about it?"." "I did say:" ""I have to think about it first"." "I think our relationship is really a lot in some ways like some successful gay male relationship." "They're together, they're devoted." "Yet they know that after a while the sex with only one person gets boring." "And I'm not threatened by Simo going and having sex with other people." "I totally understand that." "I would like to have still a more masculine body." "I'm waiting for a chest operation and I think that once I have that I'll feel much better in my body." "I feel that I'm less aggressive now than I was before I started using testosterone, because I no longer have to be as aggressive to get what I want." "Because people perceive me as a man, they're more likely to give me what I want without a fight." "It was only when people started seeing me as a guy that I realized how much of a man's world it really is." "Because, I am treated with more respect." "It's amazing how friends of mine, who I'm sure are not aware of it, but that have known me before and know me now, just because it's like women are trained and totally socialised to look after men." "And I'm telling you it's so amazing how they do it." "And men talk to each other different than they talk to women." "We all know these things, but actually experiencing it can be really sad." "It can be really really sad to see how great the sex war is between men and women." "How much fear and anger and hostility there really is." "The one thing that I have lost is..." "I can't indiscriminately flirt with anybody." "I used to flirt with people, mainly to get a discount." "And I would flirt even as an obvious dyke," "I would flirt with straight guys and I would usually get a discount, just by being funny or flirtatious." "If a man looks too long at a man, he's probably gay or trying to pick that guy up." "So that's what happened to me in Austria." "I was just looking at this guy thinking how beautiful he was... for too long." "And he came up with his fist saying:" ""What the fuck are you looking at me for, faggot?"" "I said: "Excuse me," "I thought you were gay."" "And then I really got in trouble, but never mind." "I've always been since I was 16 open to all sexual possibilities." "I wouldn't say I'm a Casanova, but I have had a lot of sexual adventures." "The film is called Pansexual Public Porn, also known as The adventures of Hans and Del" "Pansexual is how I describe my sexuality and how Hans describes his sexuality, in that we don't discriminate on the basis of gender." "We don't choose our sexual relationships depending on if they're male, female or other." "Usually this is called bisexuality, but to me to say bisexual reinforces the binary idea that there is only male and female." "We had planned to do something like that together for ages." "I was just being a model which was great." "It was just getting stoned and... having sex with these people in the woods." "It's very difficult for each one of us to understand that other people have such a different life." "That seeing a film like Pansexual Public Porn is very strange for them." "But to me this is actually my everyday life." "To experiment, to have different projects." "That summer the project was to see if we could have gay men having sex with us." "And it was very very exciting." "Because we didn't know if we would be accepted or rejected, and mostly we were accepted, which was really cool." "[background music]" "You can't look at this with your perfectionist eye for now." "Ok." "I'm really changing everyday so much that the moment you tell someone" ""this is how it is, this is how it was before", the next day that's not true... so you fictionalise all the time." "I've lived as a so-called woman for 40 years so if I'm lucky and I live until 80," "I can live the rest of my life as a man." "It's a balancing act." "In these times I don't go out a lot to have sex, because I'm painting now." "I'm so into the painting." "I'm more interested in general about transformation." "How can we learn to have a non-discriminatory mind, or how can we learn to use our discriminatory mind for practical things, but not to judge people or to judge ourselves." "Whatever I am, I am." "I try to be as much myself as I can, negotiate with life and with other people so that's possible, to live as lively as possible." "[laughing]" "With all the flaws that one has... and the cruelties and... difficulties." "I wouldn't describe it as a dream coming true." "In a way it's living the reality." "It's living a reality of more completeness." "[bar noises]" "[peeing sound]" "If I always had to use the cubical," "I'd often have to wait a long time and hang out in the main men's toilet while everyone else is using the urinal and that can be a bit weird." "But because I have my prosthesis then I just get on with it." "They're not as clean as the female toilets, generally speaking." "It's a prosthesis and it's actually a device for people with female genitals to piss standing up." "So it's a sort of a funnel and it's called a pisser-packer because it's nice and soft silicon so you can actually put it in your underpants and keep it there for when you need to go." "Just start the game." "I think it's Orlan who says "My body is my software"." "I would say that mine is actually my hardware." "It is like a complete reprogramming." "I'm a sculptor so I'm used to transforming matter but of course my own human body is another matter, entirely." "I have a cyborg identity." "I will consider myself a cyborg but as I am a human being..." "I mean there are so many plurals of identity." "A cyborg is somebody who's... using that sort of the consciousness of machines and prosthetics, using machines as a prosthetic as well." "Just their identity isn't confined to their own human body." "It's something to do with a broader consciousness of the self." "Am I just a cyborg when I'm online?" "If I'm gardening, am I a cyborg?" "Would you do a phalloplastic?" "If you would have a functioning cock." "What would you do with your cunt?" "Oh, I'd leave the cunt." "Definitely." "I don't know what I'd do with my breasts though." "No, I know." "I would change them a little bit." "I would become a hermaphrodite." "You can actually grow from a cell of your body, you can grow a dick." "Maybe not nowadays, but soon, very soon." "Yeah." "I mean I don't know." "I always wanted the genitals I have now, so I'm quite happy." "You're quite happy." "I think it would be wrong to assume that it's like a group of people all shooting up testosterone together." "That's a kind of... tabloid fear mongering way of putting it, because we all did come to our individual decisions." "And we all were going through the experience alone." "[chattering]" "Somehow we are a bit of family in that sense, an alternative family." "People who are around if you really have a problem, you know you can call them." "[chattering]" "Happy birthday to me and everybody else." "[eastern music]" "I had a dream about me in a sari." "[eastern music]" "In a sari it's good to have a bit of flesh." "Right, that's considered sexy." "I've always wanted a sari and I like to do female drag so I thought I'd work on a few different outfits." "If you don't mind, if you're patient with me," "I'm gonna try and see if I can remember what you told me and you're helping me." "Just put it on heavy." "Pour it on, be a bit exaggerated." "You're being a bit too subtle, give it to me." "I'm relying on your skill." "[laughing]" "I'm putting more eyeliner on." "I'll do the mascara, ok?" "It'll be quicker." "Hey, you look cute." "So do you." "I thought you didn't like me as a girl." "Well, I do." "Ok." "For a change." "Turn." "Turn." "Put your arms up." "Brixton, doesn't that hurt?" "Yes, it hurts, that's why I didn't wanna do it... today." "It does hurt." "Ok now." "Do you need any help?" "That looks good." "It looks good." "Yeah." "Check out these muscles." "(shouting) It's coming." "We're never gonna get it." "Yes, we will." "Come on." "[underground noise]" "Look." "No fingernail polish." "Happy Birthday!" "What are you doing?" "Just checking." "Don't mess up my make up." "I'll keep my eyes closed." " Keep your eyes closed." "Ok?" " Yes, ok." "Keep your eyes closed." "What's going oooooooon?" "Make a wish, make a wish!" "[clapping]" "(someone) Yeah!" "Everybody did it." "[music]" "Yeeha!" "[breaking waves]" "The reason I became a photographer is I never ever saw my world, my reality reflected in an accurate and beautiful way." "This picture is a wider shot." "This was the centre piece of the grid of nine and it's called Hermaphrodite torso." "When I take a picture of someone it's almost as if they become part of me." "I don't consider that I have a clitoris anymore." "I call it a 'dick clit'." "A cross between a dick and a clit." "So it is a 'dick clit', because it is small." "But that is exactly what I wanted." "Women were raised to feel ashamed of their bodies." "Particularly, their genitals." "Women don't have a lot of pride in their genitals." "Probably because of the way in which they have been portrayed in pornography," "in very invasive, intrusive, ugly ways." "So I wanted to make my genitals and other people's genitals look good." "This is another one..." "I think some people might think that it's quite shocking." "I find them really stunningly beautiful." "But I'm the first to admit" "I'm out of touch with what the person on the street might think or feel." "I'm not so worried about what people think of me and because I'm surrounded by people that I respect and admire who I hope respect and admire me," "I'm really... that birthday thing." "I'm gonna start crying again, cause the birthday thing was just..." "Having felt so unpopular in junior high school." "And feeling like people really didn't like me and then to have all my friends get me that beautiful bicycle." "It just made me feel so good and so loved." "I'm really, really lucky to have that." "Anyway." "Mo B. Dick:" "Tonight is a legendary night." "Not all these drag kings have been on the same stage all at once," "This fellow came all the way from London." "All right." "Yeah, ok." "Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm round of applause for Del LaGrace Volcano." "[music]" "I like myself and having come from really hating myself and having a really bad self-image, it's important to me now to have a good self-image and I guess in a way to show people that you can make that transition." "[music]" "Be what you gotta be, be who you wanna be, you can't let what people are gonna say, what people are gonna think about you, get in the way, you just gotta live it." "[music]" "[cheering]" "Ladies and gentlemen:" "Dréd and Luscious." "Luscious get out here." "Hooooooly shit." "Oh my god, Luscious and Dréd." "Oh shit!" "[music]" "[Song] ["This is a Man's Man's Man's World"]" "[big cheering] [lyrics:" "This is a man's world...] [...but it would be nothing...] [...without a woman.]" "[clapping]" "Drag kingdom has come." "Can I hear an amen?" "Reverend Jimmy Johnson, I'm a heterosexual and I wanna be a part of your drag kingdom," "and what do you think I say?" "I say amen to heterosexuals," "I say amen to homosexuals," "I say amen to bisexuals," "I say amen to transsexuals." "I say amen to anybody's sexual." "[cheering and clapping]" "[English subtitles thanks to Amaranta Heredia Jaén]"