COMEDY

70 GENDER AND SEXUALITYIf the anatomy of the performer is already distinct from thegender of the performer, and both of those are distinct from genderof the performance, then the performance suggests a dissonancenot only between sex and performance, but sex and gender andgender and performance.(Butler, 1990:137)This concept of drag is one in which the various categories that areconfused, mixed, and invoked in cross-dressing demonstrate thenonessential nature of gender:In imitating gender, drag implicitly reveals the imitative structureof gender itself—as well as its contingency . Indeed, part of thepleasure, the giddiness of the performance is in the recognition ofa radical contingency in the relation between sex and gender inthe face of cultural configurations of causal unities that areregularly assumed to be natural and necessary.(Butler, 1990:137–138, original emphasis)Drag may therefore be said to reveal that gendered social discourse hasno tenable foundation, even if the performer is unaware of the broaderimplications of their act. However, as Butler concludes, there is no simpletest or rubric that determines whether acts of gender parody aresubversive, or simply images that have been ‘domesticated andrecirculated as instruments of cultural hegemony’ (Butler, 1990:139).While the politicization of drag has not entered the world of comedyto the extent that it exists in the gay, lesbian, and transsexualcommunities, the themes of ‘imitative’ gender and gender contingencyhave been dealt with by performers like the US comedian SandraBernhard and the British comedian Eddie Izzard. Clearly neither ofthese performers wears drag in the conventional sense, but both usetheir performances to draw attention to the politics of sartorial choiceand the gendered assumptions of dress. Both resist the application ofprefabricated definitions to label their sexuality, preferring to use theircomedy as a means of questioning the validity of labels. Bernhard, whorefuses to allow either her performances or sexual orientation to beeasily categorized, has been described by Camille Paglia as a ‘dragqueen…[who] can defend herself without running to grievancecommittees. Whether lesbian or bisexual, she accepts and respects malelust without trying to censor it’ (Paglia, 1994:140). Izzard describeshimself as a ‘male lesbian transvestite’, a convolution consistent with