Serving Face, Not Body
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: “Moandays” and “Hoelidays” pop up as announcements on my phone—alerting me that a drag queen has begun a live stream. These catchy titles do not indicate the content of the stream but rather are puns that remind me of reading, shade, tea, and other queer, drag queen lingo that often involves some sort of sexual innuendo. I open the stream to find an animated drag queen dancing to background music—Stream Starting Soon. This waiting room environment feels very reminiscent of when a club kicks people off the dance floor and announces the drag show will begin shortly. Instead of being sidelined with a drink, making small talk with my friends over the loud music and breathing in the fog machines, I am at home, watching this on a tiny phone screen in the middle of the afternoon. How can this be considered a drag show when it is not live in bodily co-presence? How can this be considered nightlife when it is not technically nighttime? This article will explore the nature of a drag queen Twitch stream as one that mirrors a queer community nightlife space; instead of alcohol-infused gay bars of the past, a drag stream may be a more accessible interaction ritual to join. The Future of Drag Is Online The success of RuPaul’s Drag Race and mainstreaming of drag culture cannot be overstated (Crookston; DeAnda), which has arguably led to an increased visibility for drag queens everywhere. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and bars closed their doors, however, many drag queens moved their content online (Crookston; Persaud and Perks). Persaud notes that streamed shows like Black Girl Magic started up as a way to keep the drag community alive during the pandemic, and also to support drag queens financially during economic upheaval. In their study of early-pandemic drag queen streams, Crookston suggests that the online era of drag performances was merely a continuum awaiting the return of live, in-person shows—asserting that we may emerge from the pandemic with “a renewed appreciation for the importance of liveness and copresence” (145). I argue that the shift to online not only maintained the same level of liveness (as asserted by Persaud and Perks and their theory of queer mediated liveness) but also maintained and arguably expanded the notion of co-presence. While Persaud and Perks’s article covers the intersection of Twitch, games, and drag queens, I deviate from their study to more deeply engage with the ideas of co-presence and subculture and nightlife, which to date have not been explored thoroughly in the (online) Twitch environment. Offline, the drag queen subculture was born at night and in bars and clubs (Crookston; Bailey); however, these spaces mostly birthed liberation for only White gay men, while often excluding other queer people who face multiple forms of marginalisation (Bailey; Ghaziani; Meek). As well, since queer spaces (such as bars) often carry the connotation of alcohol and substance use (Tutenges and Bøhling), which has been noted to disproportionately negatively affect marginalised communities, specifically the LGBTQ community (Akre et al.; Caba et al.; Meads et al.), the queer community needs access to more third spaces away from the places targeted by alcohol advertisements (Whiteley et al.). For the purposes of this article, I encourage borrowing from Ghazini who suggests a terminological move away “from gay bars to queer nightlife” (Ghaziani 23, emphasis in original), which highlights all of the queer possibilities the night has to offer. Johnson notes that the reasons for going live on stream range from financial motivations of opportunity to happenstance of timeslots and other pragmatics in between (13). Using moore’s engagement with Halberstam to question the temporal and special location of the nightlife space, this article speaks to the notion of how queer temporality changes this notion of queer nightlife spaces on Twitch. Specifically, this article picks up where Persaud and Perks leave off—discussing the nightlife aspects of drag queens on Twitch. Especially important to this discussion is how Twitch allows the queer community to happen at any time of the day, and without the need to go to a bar. In society today, particularly in the United States, drag queens and gay bars have come under fire, targeted by those with conservative agendas. Even daytime events for drag queens, such as children’s storybook hour, are subject to protest and harassment. In addition to positing that drag queen streams on Twitch represent a third space for nightlife away from the typical gay bars associated with the LGBTQ community, I argue, in conjunction with Jodén and Strandell, that Twitch therefore is an interaction ritual (Collins). I also assert that queer and/or drag queen nightlife spaces on Twitch enable interaction rituals to occur in a more opportune and inclusive way. For example, sober, neurodivergent, or rural queer folks now have a space to join in queer nightlife that may not be otherwise accessible to them. The lack of bodily co-presence in a Twitch environment does not deter people from experiencing and joining in online queer drag queen nightlife spaces. Instead, Twitch allows for these spaces commonly associated with interaction rituals (bars, clubs, concerts, etc.) to be moved into the online space, joinable at any time of the day. I hypothesise that the joinability of the space lies in the anonymous approach afforded by Twitch, which allows for people who cannot join a public queer space safely to be able to experience and participate in queer nightlife culture. In other words, I argue it is possible to engage in interaction ritual chains when identifying traits are anonymised and copresence is virtual, and therefore safer for participants to be their authentic selves. Briefly, I will review Twitch and Queer Theory to set up the discussion that will be framed out with drag queen specific examples of this nightlife phenomenon. What Is Twitch? Twitch is an online streaming platform, mainly focussed around streaming videogame play (Johnson; Taylor). Scholars have defined Twitch as facilitating a “socially enjoyable experience” with an “easily joinable community” (Wulf et al. 341). On Twitch, people can join anonymously—not only are faces not streamed, but people can join with pseudonymised names and handles. DeVito et al. note that self-presentation goals (i.e. out of the closet) can be somewhat limited on sites that are not based on privacy and anonymity. Paradoxically, the anonymity and privacy allows for LGBTQ individuals to be more out in a space they deem safe, afforded by such privacy and anonymity. Anonymity is important for LGBTQ community members who are not out, or are exploring their sexuality and gender identities, explaining the prevalence of semi-anonymous hook-up apps (Ahlm). Hartal notes that anonymity is one important aspect of creating queer safe spaces (1067); and Fox and Ralston note that LGBTQ community formed more easily when participants joined together and answered questions anonymously (641). These anonymous communities support particularly Fox and Ralston’s anonymous question answering, a prime feature of gay Twitch streamers (Munnelly). Twitch, whether chatting or gaming, can be considered a third space, or an informal hangout spot like a coffee shop (Munnelly; Hamilton et al.). Johnson pushes the third space metaphor further to describe Twitch as an agora (one person talking and many people watching and listening). Despite this attention and power, these microcelebrities (Uttarapong et al.; Chan and Grey; Lee et al.; Persaud and Perks) experience an unequal distribution of money (Houssard et al.), which is particularly apparent among marginalised streamers, who are also subject to harassment (Uttarapong, Cai, and Wohn). Twitch has also been shown to strengthen offline friendships (Sheng and Kairam), support users going through a difficult time (De Wit et al.), and affect the discussion of mental health in a stream (LaMastra et al.). Notably, Twitch has been labelled a form of “Performance Play”, which describes the phenomenon of streaming one’s gameplay while building community (Pellicone and Ahn 4865). The performance could, and should, be read as an authentic persona, which Lam and Raphael note must remain truly authentic if fans are to buy in to the celebrity portrayed on screen. If the persona fails, or feels inauthentic, this could lead to a drop in fans. This performance for drag queens is what Persaud and Perks note as queer mediated liveness—or the complex (possibly impossible) navigation queer drag streamers must navigate to be all at once knowledgeable and approachable and funny and entertaining. Streamers who promote their own constructed self, versus putting out a fake persona, strengthened the interaction between streamer and viewer, and thus the community as a whole (Freeman and Wohn). Further research on community found that people engage in streaming content because “they are drawn to the unique content of a particular stream, and they like being interacted with and participating in that stream’s community” (Hamilton et al. 1315). Thus, in general, these forms of Twitch streams can support communities even when there is a high linguistic barrier to accessing a queer space in a Twitch stream (Munnelly). This complex navigation between linguistics and identities and communities can be seen throughout queer history and queer theory more broadly. Queer Theory Queer theory is a weighty and complex topic well beyond the scope of this article; however, a few key notions are important to exploring Twitch and drag queens. In addition to Ghaziani’s expanded definition of queer nightlife, madison moore offers a highly useful term for considering queer nightlife spaces. Following in same vein as Munoz’s ephemera, moore theorises that ‘the sleaze’—or the remains of the dancefloor (cups, spilled drink, confetti, glitter, etc.)—is a way of making queer spaces a
Source: M/C Journal
DOI: 10.5204/mcj.3208
Author: Patrick Munnelly
Institution: Community College of Aurora
Language: English
Topic: Night-time city culture
Subfield: Urban Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4416715075