ORIGINAL ARTICLE Drag Gender: Experiences of Gender for Gay and Queer Men who Perform Drag Heidi M. Levitt 1 & Francisco I. Surace 1 & Emily E. Wheeler 2 & Erik Maki 2 & Darcy Alcántara 1 & Melanie Cadet 2 & Steven Cullipher 3 & Sheila Desai 2 & Gabriel Garza Sada 1 & John Hite 2 & Elena Kosterina 2 & Sarah Krill 1 & Charles Lui 1 & Emily Manove 1 & Ryan J. Martin 2 & Courtney Ngai 3 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2017 Abstract The present study explored the experience and un- derstanding of gender for gay and queer men who perform drag. It is part of a 20-year program of research focused on how LGBTQ gender identities arise, why they coalesce, and how they are enacted within their social contexts. Interviewers on this topic involving 18 participants were subjected to a grounded theory analysis. Drag genders were tied to common experiences of overcoming social messages that maligned femininity within men, an appreciation of performance arts, and a desire to use social power to confront issues of sexism, genderism, and/or heterosexism. At the same time, partici- pants reported differences in experiencing gender as binary or fluid and in whether they experienced their gender as shifting when engaged in performance. The study contributes to the program of research on LGBTQ genders by examining how drag gender is both essential and constructed, and how it resist sets of oppressive values and is eroticized. It examines how gendered communication functions when performed for audiences and how the social position of these men is both elevated and stigmatized within LGBTQ community. Drag gender’ s multiple meanings are credited to its position be- tween gay and transgender politics within this socially trans- formative moment in time. Keywords Drag . Gender . Gay . Crossdressing . Queer . Transgender The aim of the current study is to develop a theory of how gay, bisexual, and queer men who perform drag by expressing femininity experience their gender—both personally and in relation to others across their social contexts. This approach is in line with a tradition of queer theory and research (Butler 1993; Halberstam 2005; Levitt and Ippolito 2014a) that ac- cords drag status as a form of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgen- der, or queer (LGBTQ) gender and investigates its meaning, enactment, and functionality. Our philosophical approach to the study of LGBTQ gender falls within a phenomenological tradition in which the holistic and subjective experience of actors as they understand their gender is our concern (Giorgi 2009). That is, in the present paper, we are interested in the way these men experience their gender, which is necessarily influenced by their personal development, sense of self, and sense of themselves within their social environment and inter- actions. As a result, we are interested in gender enactments, such as drag performance, but not for their own sake. Rather, we are interested in the meanings that they might hold for an individual when making sense of his gender. The paper exam- ines drag performances within a U.S. context, with the under- standing that the meanings associated with cross-dressing per- formances can be quite varied across countries and cultures (Bakshi 2004; Swarr 2004). History and Evolution of Drag Drag has been performed across many different contexts and geographical locations (e.g., Senelick 2000). An understand- ing of this history can assist in contextualizing the meanings * Heidi M. Levitt heidi.levitt@umb.edu 1 Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts Boston, 100 Morrissey Blvd, Boston, MA 02125, USA 2 Counseling and School Psychology Department, University of Massachusetts Boston, 100 Morrissey Blvd, Boston, MA 02125, USA 3 Chemistry Department, University of Massachusetts Boston, 100 Morrissey Blvd, Boston, MA 02125, USA Sex Roles DOI 10.1007/s11199-017-0802-7