Drag Queens

I know many, many drag queens and have attended their fundraisers, they have raised thousands and thousands of dollars for charities and almost all them are so congenial and always have a warm smile and kind words.

I'm I'm A Drag Queen Who Reads To Kids. Haters Call It 'Indoctrination' — Here's What They're Really Learning.
"When I enter the room with my big hair, big shoes, and lots and lots of sequins, children quickly prove to be a generous and curious audience."
HuffPost
By Lil Miss Hot Mess
July 7, 2022


For more than five years, I’ve been reading to children in libraries, bookstores, and beyond as part of Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH), a unique organization that promotes reading through the magic of drag.

I love that this program taps into the creativity and imagination that is already present in the lives of children and drag performers. When I enter the room with my big hair, big shoes, and lots and lots of sequins, children quickly prove to be a generous and curious audience.

They often have lots and lots of questions — are you really a queen? how do you get the glitter to stick to your face? have you ever met a dragon? — but they immediately understand the playful possibilities without being weighed down by social norms and cultural baggage.

Still, as one of DQSH’s organizers, it’s hard to ignore the drama that some members of society stir up. While we have faced backlash from the beginning, in recent months, we’ve seen an uptick in organized opposition. Personally, as the author of two children’s books, my work has faced book bans and challenges, including from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) who parroted false far-right rhetoric accusing me of creating “sexually charged content.” I also regularly receive hate mail calling me horrific names and threatening my safety.

You have understand where the conservatives are coming from. First in their warped sense of reality they think that being LGBTQ+ is a choice. Second they think we are like rabbits, humping anything that moves. Third they hate anyone and anything that’s different. And that lack of understand or even trying to understand causes the violence.

Moreover, this Pride month, multiple drag performances were disrupted by alleged members of the domestic terrorist group the Proud Boys, including library events in San Lorenzo, California, and Sparks, Nevada.

[…]

While it can be hard to stand strong against such blatant hatred and political distractions, drag performers are a particularly resilient force: We’ve been training our entire careers to ensure the show must go on and to spread joy during challenging times.

In fact, that legacy is part of what makes us such powerful role models for children: Ultimately, drag can teach us all to be caring citizens by embracing complexity, doubling down on our imaginations, and standing up for what we believe in.

It is not like we tie them down and give them Electroconvulsive therapy to make them gay, that is what they do to us to make us straight.

As Lil Miss Hot Mess said this is nothing new, we have faced violence thought out history.

Throughout the 20th century and beyond, drag queen activists have channeled a similar spirit of playful resistance to lead calls for justice. Take, for example, San Francisco’s José Sarria, credited as the first out gay American to run for public office in 1961 (16 years before Harvey Milk was elected). Or we might also think of queer and trans people of color activists like Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera and Stormé DeLarverie, who helped catalyze the infamous Stonewall rebellion in New York City. Or today’s up-and-coming drag activists-turned-politicians like Honey Mahogany, Maebe A. Girl and Marti Gould Cummings.

I also bet that you didn’t know that one of our “Founding Fathers” defended a trans person?

John Quincy Adams was an attorney for a trans person who was hit over the head with a cane in the case of “Gray vs. Pitts. Assault and Battery”  in 1771.

I end with the lyrics from “A Touch of Grey”

I will get by
I will get by
I will get by
I will survive