While I understand and appreciate your points and (vitally) your personal reaction, I don't think most people view drag as analogous to clown art. Drag is rather more usually characterized as low camp, which is more a self-effacing sort of humor based on exaggeration.
Camp is not solely the province of gay men, of course, but it's been popularized by gay men, often out of self defense.
Camp began during a time when same-sex orientation was a strict social taboo that could only be referred to in passing or via code. Both high and low camp used to give gay men the chance to break free of social constraints via art.
Drag, a classic sort of low camp, was born in the days when women were prohibited from public performances, as in Shakespeare's day when his women characters were usually played by young men or boys.
Gay men have traditionally found a refuge in the theater world, so it's not surprising that drag began in that milieu. What may be less obvious is the gender rebellion context. Nobody is sure why, but there is a significant correlation between gay men and non-traditional gender performance.
In other words, a lot of gay men are seen as (and feel) traditionally effeminate. This isn't an indication of gender identity, but rather a manifestation of a sort of rejection of mandatory gender expression. Much drag originated in the soil of that rejection.
Drag art is rebellion, but it's also often self deprecation. It's not so much parody in a disrespectful way of women as a class of people, but a tacit acknowledgement that the drag artist is (or glories in) that which society rejects in "real" men.
In that sense, it differs from circus clown art in that clowns mostly earn their laughs from pratfalls and broad physical humor, similar to say, The Three Stooges, who are much clownier than campy.
This is not to say that drag is never clownish, sometimes it is. But I think that's more the exception.
And I hope it would go without saying that none of this is meant to invalidate your personal perceptions, which matter.
Jim
