"The most profoundly revolutionary act a homosexual can engage in": drag and the politics of gender presentation in the San Francisco Gay Liberation Movement, 1964-1972.

Abstract

in J u n e 1968 T h e Q u e e n wa s released in major cities across the United States. A behind-the-scenes documentary of a drag queen beauty contest in New york City, the film was hailed by the New York Times as “an extraordinary” depiction of the art of female impersonation that also managed to humanize the men behind the performance. “One grows fond of all of them,” the reviewer remarked. On the West Coast, however, a member of the Society for individual rights (Sir), which was quickly becoming the largest gay organization in the nation, took a different stand. “This film does more harm than good in furthering an understanding between the straight and gay world,” argued the reviewer in Vector, the monthly magazine published by Sir. “The fact that these are not actors playing roles, but rather people playing themselves only helps perpetuate the myth that all homosexuals are nelly drag queens.” The wide distribution of the film particularly worried the reviewer, who feared that uneducated viewers would learn unfair stereotypes of homosexuality from the film; “it isn’t all feathers and wigs in the gay life,” he protested. The social and cultural events publicized in the pages of Vector, however, might have suggested otherwise. Six months earlier the magazine had

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