Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - The History of Drag Queens

Episode Date: April 11, 2024

The word drag is synonymous with flamboyant, fun performances. But where does the term come from and what does it mean? This more modern story of playing with gender identity’s dates back to the 1870s, and it’s a history that takes in the wars, censorship and fears. Heaven forbid!Taking us through this fascinating history of drag as we know it today is Jacob Bloomfield, author of Drag: A British History. This episode was edited by Tom Delargy. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code BETWIXT sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Lovely betwixters, it's me, Kate Lister. I am here once more with the podcast, and I'm so pleased that you have been able to drop by. I do enjoy our little chats. And here is a chat. This chat is the fair do's warning.

This is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subject, and you should be an adult too. Well, I certainly feel safer. Do you feel safer? Good, on with the show! Grab a seat, betwixters, we do not have long before this show starts.

And what a show! It's even better than betwixt, so you're right to be excited. I am talking about La Rouge et Noir, the concert troupe of the First Army, who are here at the Savoy Theatre in 1919, to stage what will later be cited as one of the first drag shows to reach and thrill mainstream audiences. Shh! It's starting.

Let's enjoy the show. What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect confidence of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing the funny. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, for a beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Derry.

Hello, and welcome back to Betwixt the Shades, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. The history of drag is long and fascinating. It's a history that takes in wars, censorship, and of course, the constant fear that it could corrupt and encourage loose morals. Heaven for Fend. Taking us through the fascinating history of drag as we know it today is Jacob Bloomfield, author of Drag A British History. Stuckings at the ready, betwixters, I am ready if you are. Hello and welcome to betwixt the sheets.

It's only Jacob Bloomfield. How are you doing? doing wonderfully. Thanks and I'm very excited to be on. Thank you so much for having me. There's nobody else I'd rather be talking to about this because, well, your book on the history of drag came out only last year. So this is brand new research and information. And I'm so excited to talk to you about this. I suppose my first question has got to be, why the history of drag, what made you want to tell this history? What's your history? What's your history? historian origin story? My origin story as a historian, well, I did my undergrad and master's at the University of Edinburgh, and I did my PhD at the University of Manchester, both venerable institutions.

And I sort of got into drag history mostly through actually an article I read by Charles Upchurch about the Bolton and Park case. and we can maybe talk about the Bolton and Park case later or talk about it now, either one. Well, basically Bolton and Park were two female impersonators, as they would have been called. Then they were involved in amateur theatricals and drawing room, theatricals in people's homes. Bolton's drag in particular was praised by, you know, respectable people. Many, and he appeared in people's homes, as I said, et cetera. They were 19th century, weren't they? Yes, 19th century.

So in 1870, they were arrested while in drag, because not only were they dragged performers, but they also, they would perambulate around in drag, and they would also go to theatrical performances in drag, and often those theatrical performances would also involve drag. So there were many layers of drag happening, and they were arrested outside the Strand Theater in London, in 1870 for conspiracy to commit sodomy while they were in drag, and they were eventually

acquitted for that crime because the prosecution couldn't definitively prove that there was a connection between drag and cross-dressing in general and sodomimical acts. So I read this article by Charles Lutchurch on the Bolton and Park case. I got interested in drag history from there. I found that, you know, although a drag has been a subject of interest for scholars, in particular, since the 1970s when you have, for instance, Esther Newton's Mother Camp book, I noticed that there wasn't a whole lot on drag history. There are some very good books on drag history, such as Lawrence Sinellex, The Changing Room, but I thought it was still overall a pretty under-explored area. So that's how I got into it. And then I eventually did my PhD on the

history of British drag. And now I've written this book. That is a lot of drag history, isn't it, that you are covering there. And I suppose that your book focuses on the period of from 1870 through to 1970, so 100 years of glorious drag history. But I'm going to take a punt that the history of drag is so much longer than that. And if you're going back, you're looking at the Dame and Shakespeare and it's probably even older than that. So what was it that made you go? 1870, this is the period for me. What was happening in the culture of drag around that time to make you go? This is my starting point. So I could have started, for example, with the Elizabethan and Jacobian boy players, as many of your listeners might be aware of boys and adolescents. I think the oldest Elizabethan boy player,

we have a record for was like 26 or something. Some of them were able to extend their twinketude for longer, but usually they were teenagers. And so I could have started there, but I started in 1870 because I think that's where our modern idea of drag starts to bubble up. So one of the ways in which that's true is that the term drag, meaning cross-dressing in this instance, first appears in a British newspaper in 1870. Wow. In reference to the Bolton and Park case, actually. So the wider British public is becoming aware of the term drag. First is sort of a subcultural term, but then in 1870, the wider public starts to become aware of it, and the term drag is printed in news.

newspapers, etc. There's cultural commentary on quote-unquote drag, and they are actually putting drag in quotes in these articles, which is kind of funny. So where does that word come from? Have you ever got a sense of that of like, why drag to describe what we now think of as female impersonators, male impersonators in a very vague sense? But why drag? It's an interesting word choice. Yeah, well, thankfully before me, people smarter than I have unearthed the, etymological origins of drag. So there's sort of a myth, for example, that drag comes from Elizabethan times, and it stands for dressed as a girl, and that's not true.

That's apocryphal. And oftentimes, I find with etymology, if there's a neat explanation, then that's a reason to be skeptical. So drag comes from, there was a term, if you put the break on a coach, it was called putting on the drag and that was related to the drag of a gown on the ground and to put on the drag or to go out on the drag often meant that you were going out in women's clothes to solicit sex from men and so it started out as a kind of queer subcultural term so the first time drag appears in a British newspaper, meaning cross-dressing, they're referring to letters and private correspondence relating to the Bolton and Park case. So I think it's Ernest Bolton who says we will go out

and drag or we will come in drag to some event. And so this instance of the term drag being printed in Reynolds's newspaper is kind of shining a light on these subcultural terms. Also, So interestingly, the term camp, as we think of it now, not to go camping in some wooded area, but camp Susan Sontag, meaning of the term, also comes from a case involving drag. There was a case where some people were going to a drag ball, and like Bolton and Park, they were arrested while in drag, and they had an invitation to the drag ball on them saying the queen of camp invites you to this drag ball. I believe that was in Salford. So both camp and drag become popularized through court cases involving drag in the 1870s.

Wow. I love that. To go out on the drag to drag the dress to drag go soliciting clients. That's absolutely fascinating. Yes. So drag, it was originally. connected to sex work and cruising, but then it became more of a general term for cross-dressing. So the 19th century, female and male impersonators were very popular on the stage. Was it Vesper Tilly? Who was the famous... Vesta Tilly. Yeah, the famous male impersonator. So you've got this kind of like safe space where it's confined on stage as a performance. And then you've got people like Bolton and who were arrested and scandalous and like, oh my God, like, it's all over the papers.

Everybody is really shocked by the actions of these two. Is there like a sense that these like on the stage and kind of on the street are related to one another? Or is there a sense that when people are on the stage, they're trying to sort of distance themselves from the kind of female impersonate, the kind of drag that Bolton and Park were doing? And this relates to your earlier question, which I realized it didn't answer fully. So I'll go back to your first question and try to also answer your second question, all into one.

So from the 18th century, people were aware that there was a subculture of men who were effeminate and dressed in women's clothing. This is often referred to as the Mali subculture. Yes. Yes. And so you might have heard of Mali houses where these Mollies congregated and partied and had. sex. Often these were public houses or private homes, these Mali houses. And they were police raids of the Mali houses. So the public could have become aware of the Mali subculture that way. People could see Mollies on the street. So they might have become aware of the Mali subculture that way. Also, there were these guidebooks, for instance, one was called Yokel's Perceptor, where the guidebook

writer would say look out for these mollies. They were referred to as quote-unquote monsters in the shape of men. But these guidebooks are interesting because they would say beware of the mollies, but they would also... But also this is where they live. This is where they are. Right, exactly. So I guess a warning to people who would be put off, but a way to find them if you are curious. And then one of the reasons why I start the book in 1870 is because the late 1860s and early 1870s represents a cultural moment in the history of gender variants and drag and cross-dressing, whereby you have sexual theorists and medical experts saying that if you see a man wearing a dress, it's not just merely a man wearing a dress, but man wearing a dress kind of represents something about this person's persona and sexual habits, etc. So there's this idea in the air, at least from the early 18th century, and then it becomes kind of solidified in the 1870s that cross-dressing is representative of someone's kind of persona and

sexual habits, et cetera. And what the book argues is this wasn't completely clear to everyone. So, for instance, in the Bolton and Park case, the prosecution couldn't. proved definitively that there was a link between female impersonation and cross-dressing in general, between that and sodomy. So Bolton and Park were ultimately acquitted. And so throughout the period I discuss in the book, my argument is yes, some people associated drag with sexuality. And some people didn't like that. For some people, that was an attraction for both, you know, so-called straight audiences and queer audiences. That was an attraction of drag that it was associated with sexuality.

And then there were some people for whom drag just represented a fun night at the theater. They didn't think about the off-stage lives of the performers. Some performers would maybe not go out of their way, but they would do things to maybe distance themselves from sexual immorality, so-called sexual immorality, or they would do things to put the audiences at ease. So, for instance, I talk about these drag shows involving ex-servicemen, which we can talk about a bit later. And for instance, one of these troops, these ex-serviceman's drag troops, had a film, or they've made several films. One of the films is called Splinters.

And you would see backstage glimpses of the performers where they'd take off their wigs, they'd take off their frocks, and they'd be back. you know, smoking pipes and being more normatively masculine. So there were some things like that. And one of the reviews I read for this ex-serviceman's drag show said to the reader, don't worry, this performer doesn't indicate the quote-unquote Nancy type. So sometimes you'd read reviews saying, It's not gay to go and watch this. Yeah, fellas, is it gay to see some ex-serviceman drag performers?

No, they would say, so sometimes you would read reviews saying, hey, I know what some of you are thinking, but don't worry, this is fine. So my overall argument is, yes, there was this idea in the air that drag was indicative of sexuality. Drag was connected to sexuality and homosexuality, but this wasn't a ubiquitous view culturally. and some people might think some drag shows are dirty, but they would be fine with other drag shows. And then, as I said, some people connected drag with sexuality, but that was an attraction for them. So we shouldn't just think that everyone who associated drag with sexuality

thought that that was a negative association. Is there a class element to this? Or was there a class element to this in the 19th century? I mean, I don't know, it sounds very crude, but did you get posh drag artists? Did class play into this, or is drag something that has always been able sort of break down those boundaries and work across them?

So in the 19th century, especially in the period I discussed from the 1870s, there's an effort to make musical, for example, to broaden the audience of musical to include middle class people and more women, for example, because previously the musical had been associated usually with younger male, working class audiences. So my overall argument in the book is that drag. appealed to people of all sorts of different classes. Drag has been a mass cultural form. So people from all different parts of Britain were seeing drag,

people from all different walks of life. We're seeing drag. People who had all sorts of different cultural tastes, including more progressive and more conservative-minded people. We're seeing drag. So it's truly a mass cultural form, particularly between 1870 and 1970. I talk about multiple examples where

drag artists are performing for royalty, for instance, in Windsor Castle. That's as kind of upper crust as one could get. But drag did have particular appeal for working class audiences. I talk about, for instance, a drag performer named Arthur Lucan. We're going now into the 20th century here with Arthur Lucan. But Arthur Lucan had a Dame character called Old Mother Riley. Good name. Yes, great name. and Old Mother Riley was this kind of feisty, wiry, old washerwoman. Arthur Luchin's wife played Old Mother Riley's daughter in the act, and that was the least weird part of their relationship. They had quite a tempestuous offstage relationship.

Old Mother Riley mainly appealed to working class audiences. Arthur Lucan developed this whole sort of media empire based on Old Mother Riley. there were over 10 Old Mother Riley films in the film series. I've never heard of Old Mother Riley. Oh, well, now your life is complete. Absolutely. I'm going to absolutely look this up. This sounds fabulous.

There was a whole film series, and often the Old Mother Riley stage shows would usually come to working class towns and industrial cities and provinces. even the films until much later in the film series, even the films wouldn't get West End releases because it was thought that hoity-toity West End audiences wouldn't see these Old Mother Riley films. So it was a very kind of working class industrial thing.

Old Mother Riley had a radio show. We don't often think about drag on the radio. We think of drag as a visual medium, but I talk about drag on the radio. Old Mother Riley had gramophone record. and as I said, films and stage shows, you know, there's this view then and now that working class people are only interested in sort of mindless escapism, and there was obviously an element of these Old Mother Riley shows. You know, there was a lot of slapstick comedy,

etc. But the Old Mother Riley films, radio shows, stage shows, et cetera, spoke to real working class concerns. For instance, there was a film. called Old Mother Riley MP, where Old Mother Riley gets fired from her job and then runs to be an MP against her former boss. And her former boss is also a property baron. So double enemy of the working class. And Old Mother Riley runs on a platform of, for instance, universal employment. I'd totally vote for Old Mother Riley. So would I, yes. And she becomes a minister for strange affairs. So she gets a ministry position. She's not just a backbencher when she's elected.

So there were a serious working class concerns that were addressed in Old Mother Riley media. It wasn't just, you know, dumb escapism. I'll be back with Jacob after this short break. One of the things that I thought was really interesting about your book, and I'd never considered it much beyond that Blackadder episode, Blackadder goes forth where Bob, the female impersonator, it's an absolutely fantastic episode and I love it

and that's all about the performance of drag and I remember quite clearly the argument that there has to be a drag performer there's always a drag performer in the soldiers show but that's actually true and I hadn't realized that and your book really goes into this

so talk to me a little bit about what was the importance and the significance of drag in World War I and World War II? Yeah that sort of speaks to a theme in the book because there's sort of this paradoxical narrative whereby there's like a stereotype about British culture

that British people love nothing more than seeing a guy put on a dress or something, right? It's kind of true. Yes, exactly. And there's also this narrative that, oh, drag is this, you know, hidden art form and spoken about in push tones, etc. And so with my book, I'm sort of going back to that first concept. I don't think the second concept is necessarily untrue in some cases,

but I'm going back to that first concept and say, yeah, actually, British people do love seeing a guy in a frock, you know? So Black Adder is correct, and I'm sure that's not the only case in which Black Adder is correct. Drag shows were an important part of the First World War and Second World War. The troops would put on these things you might have heard of called concert parties, and often these concert parties would involve servicemen putting on drag shows for their fellow servicemen. There's this idea that in the First and Second World Wars, that these drag shows were kind of a means of sexual release. You know, they didn't have quote-unquote real women, so man in a frock was the next best thing.

But that wasn't necessarily the case, you know, you had some of the concert party drag involved maternal femininity, you know, a domestic scene with a serviceman playing a mother figure. So it wasn't all just them trying to be sexy. They would represent all different forms of femininity and often representing the kinds of femininity that the servicemen were missing while they were on the front lines. One thing that I discuss in the book, I do discuss concert party drag in the war, but something I found interesting that hasn't been covered quite as much as that is this concept of ex-servicemen who had done these drag shows during the war and then took these drag shows and performed them for the general public after the first and second World War. So for instance, there was a troop, which I mentioned earlier, called La Rouge at Noir.

And during the interwar period, they traveled all over Britain performing these drag shows and the general British public. First of all, they were supported by higher-ups in the war office, for example. One of their first shows was at Windsor Castle. So they had lots of institutional backing. And people were interested in the shows because it was a way to engage. with servicemen's experiences during the war. People were interested in what servicemen had gotten up to and they had heard about these concert parties.

So this was seen as a way to connect with the wartime concert party experience. But the main draw of the show was actually just that the guys were considered sexy. What I was looking at, at reviews of the shows in the papers, you know, yes, the critics would talk about how they had respect for the content. these servicemen made to the war effort, but then they would go off into gushing terms about how

hot these guys were. One review, for instance, went into one of the performers' white powdered arms and beautiful, manicured fingernails and perfectly pretty affects of femininity. So they'd really go into gushing detail about how sexy they thought these people were. And LaRouche de Noir, again, they were on radio. They made three films. and one of those films was one of the first British made talkie films, and they were the stars of this film as well. It's called Splendors.

You can watch it on BFI player, but they were deemed so important that they were the stars of one of the first British made talkie films, so quite significant and unfortunately ignored by historians until now. We're mostly ignored. There were celebrities then, really. Do we know much about who? the artists in this troop were? Yeah. So honestly, probably one of the most difficult parts of my

research was finding out biographical information on these individuals. I would maybe like to do some follow-up research, but yeah, I was able to track down some biographical information on the performers. For instance, I saw one article about this performance. former Jack Richards, who was a female impersonator in the LaRouge at Noir shows. There was an article about him in a Canadian newspaper, I think, in the 80s because he had moved to Canada, and this article was reminiscing on his time with these shows. One of the lead female impersonators in the La Rouge at Noir shows was named Redstone. He was deemed to be the sexiest one, basically.

And unfortunately, I think he passed away. not too long after the heyday of LaRouche, but I haven't been able to find a whole lot more information on him. So if anyone out there is related to Jack Richards or Redstone or any of the people I discuss, please let me know. Because, yeah, biographical information was sometimes hard to come by unless these people did interviews later in life or maybe they had an obituary in the papers or something.

but I would like to do some more follow-up on biographical information. Listening to you talk about this, and certainly you make the case in your book that drag has always been at least circling mainstream culture. It's a lot more accepted than we thought, perhaps it might have been, and a very, very long history to it. But it's certainly not all plain sailing,

because there have been efforts at suppression, that there are right now going on today, of course, there are, but there were efforts at censorship around these drag shows, weren't they? Tell me a little bit about that. Between 1737 and 1968, all new plays or new additions to old plays were subject to censorship by the Lord Chamberlain's office. It's sort of a weird situation because the Lord Chamberlain's office is still around. They no longer censor plays, but they mostly back then and now their job involved organizing state dinners. So they're sort of a glorified party planner.

I hope no one in the Lord Chamberlain's offices listening to be described them as such. Party planning and vetoing drag shows. Those are the two main roles within this department. Yes. And you can see why, I mean, the system of theater censorship lasted for a long time, but your criticism is apt and that was something that was brought up. You know, why is this glorified party planner? censoring plays. It sort of makes sense if you consider that in 1737, when this

system of theater censorship was set up, it was mostly to protect the crown from ridicule or criticism. So it sort of makes sense in that context. But especially as the years went on, people were wondering, why was this glorified party planner running the censorship of place? So yes, the Lord Chamberlain's office would censor drag shows. I talk about times when drag shows ran afoul of the Lord Chamberlain's office. So, for instance, there was one show in 1939 called Cosmopolitan Mary Go Round. There was a scene where there's a female impersonator in the description, the Lord Chamberlain's office makes it sound like this was like sexy. But really, I think it was mostly a comedy bit, basically.

Basically, there's this dance and this female impersonator eventually sheds their clothes because, you know, all their clothes fall off due to some kind of mishap sort of like a Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake at the Super Bowl sort of thing, a wardrobe malfunction. Yeah, so the gist of this act is this female impersonator has a wardrobe malfunction, and so their clothes fall off and they cover up their breasts in embarrassment, etc. And the Lord Chamberlain's office, interestingly, their issue with this scene wasn't that this was a man stripping on stage, but they said people who weren't sitting at the front might think that this is a woman stripping on stage, or they might think that this was a female nudity. So interestingly, they didn't frame it in terms of male nudity. They framed it in terms of female nudity, but eventually the producers of the show, as well as the drag before. former in question, Gerald DeVier, were let off because the magistrate in all his wisdom said, well, the script the Lord Chamberlain approved said, this is a dance by Gerald DeVier, assisted by two girls. The Lord Chamberlain's office didn't ask for any clarification on the dance, so Gerald DeVier could do whatever dance he wanted, case dismissed. So...

I always read the small print. Yes, exactly. That's the... So next time you're signing your phone contract, thank you. of Daryl DeVier, I guess. But, you know, I talk about in the book how actually, although drag got in trouble with the Lord Chamberlain's office several times regularly, over the years, it's interesting how even the Lord Chamberlain's office, and when you have this image of a theater sensor, you think this must be the most prudish person in the world.

But even the Lord Chamberlain's office was capable of being tolerant towards drag and So I opened the book with this anecdote about a drag show called We Are No Ladies from the 1950s, and people are sending letters to the Lord Chamberlain's office saying this drag show is, quote, unquote, homosexual filth, you should ban it, etc. And the Lord Chamberlain's office said, well, you know, maybe it's not to our taste exactly, but drag is this venerable theatrical institution. It's part of theatrical heritage. So we can't just ban drag from the stage. So even though we're, we don't like it so much, this show should just continue existing despite the criticism. So the Lord Chamberlain's office, even though they were prudes in many senses and drag did sometimes run afoul of censorship rules, the Lord Chamberlain's office could be tolerant of drag and they often did let drag persevere. Going back to what we were talking about earlier about how drag in the theatre creates a sort of a more comfortable space for people to engage with this, when you're aware of

from the theatre and you're talking about just people dragging up or cross-dressing like Bolton and Park were doing, was the censorship there more aggressive? I know it was in America that you could actually be arrested for not wearing gender-specific clothing or some weird phrasing. Were they doing that over here as well? So in the United States, different cities and states had their own laws with regard to cross-dressing or just not wearing clothes that they would associate with your perceived sex. So I think you might be referring to this idea of the three-piece rule, for instance, which was this famous thing in New York, where it wasn't actually part of the legislation, but it was seen as sort of a rule of thumb that police and also others, civilians

would go by whereby they would say, if you're wearing three pieces of clothing not associated with your perceived sex or sex as assigned at birth, then you could be arrested. But that wasn't actually part of the legislation in New York. But anyway, in the British context, cross-dressing was not illegal specifically. But what they might do is if you were, say, a man in drag and you were perambulating around the streets. I might set a record in this podcast for use of the word perambulating, maybe. It's an awesome word. I'm not sure it's ever been used on the podcast before, so you go for it.

If you take nothing else away from this experience. It should be that. So if you were a man in drag and you were perambulating the streets, then you could be taken in for, you know, a public order offense, or they might suspect that you were a sex worker, for example. So even though cross-dressing itself wasn't illegal, they might still get you on a public order offense or they might accuse you of soliciting sex from men, et cetera. And this is, you know, in the Bolton Park case, they were arrested for a conspiracy to commit sodomy, which I love.

It's like the sodomy wasn't actually happening, but they were planning on it. But yeah, cross-dressing itself was not illegal. But you're right that, yes, cross-dressing in the street was considered more controversial than drag on stage. So for instance, take now we're getting into more recent times, but there is often this sense of cognitive dissonance around drag. So, for instance, I think somebody who might watch a David Bowie concert in the mid-1970s might think David Bowie is awesome. But then if they see someone dressed like David Bowie on the tube, they'll think, I'm going to beat that guy up, right?

And there's this cognitive dissonance involved where they accept gender variance in one context and don't accept it in another context. And I do see that in my research, even when it comes to specific drag shows, some people might decry one type of drag, but then say, oh, this type of drag is fine. And you even see that with the current anti-drag protesters, they'll, you know, if you bring up, for instance, Panto dames or something, they'll say, oh, that's fine. I just don't like these people getting naked in front of kids, which is just not happening. So the thing they're against, they've sort of made up in their head. But even the current anti-drag cadre, I guess you could call them, still thinks some forms of

drag are okay versus the evil sorts of drag shows that they've made up in their heads. But yes, you do have this cognitive dissonance, and I think someone could easily historically, they could have easily seen a drag show on stage and loved it, and then they might see someone walking around in drag on the street and think, you know. Final question. When you study the history of drag and the culture around it, it's really sad, but it's interesting that we are now seeing, as you mentioned,

there in some sectors, a real hostility and a backlash towards drag performers. Do you see anything cyclical in your? research? Like, is this the kind of thing that comes up and then goes away and comes up and goes away? Because I've researched the history of sex work a lot, and I see there's a cycle definitely in that that moves from toleration to aggression to persecution to hostility, tolerance, and then back again. Do you notice any kind of cyclical attitudes towards drag? Yeah. Well, there's a few ways of answering that. First of all, and I'm not a political science. but just in terms of political observations, I find that social conservatives throughout history

will often glom on to a certain set of issues. So, for instance, in one generation, social conservatives might get really worked up about reproductive rights, for example, or, you know, being against reproductive rights. And then in the next generation, they'll move on to something else, for instance, drag shows. So, you know, I think what we're witnessing now is social conservatives have just gravitated towards being anti-trans, anti-drag, etc. And then maybe in another 25 years, they'll find a new pet hate. So, and, you know, you see this, for instance, 25 years ago, social conservatives might have been really against equal marriage, right? And now they're not so worked up about that. They've moved on to, for instance, being anti-trans and being anti-drag.

And so I think social conservatives throughout time just always have these pet hates and the pet hates sort of change every 25 years or so. In terms of drag and how it's thought of, one interesting phenomenon I found is that there always seemed to be this cultural amnesia around drag. I kept on finding articles saying, hey, drag is suddenly popular now. For instance, in 1870, when the term drag first starts to become popularized, a lot of the articles say, hey, this is a new fad. Sometimes it was just reported neutrally. Sometimes they would be decrying the new fad. But these commentators would observe, what's up with this drag thing? It's a new fad then 10 years later. Drag is suddenly popular. Another 10 years. Drag is suddenly popular. And so,

At the very end of the chronology I consider, or the period I consider, 1970, you have these articles saying, oh, Britain is experiencing a quote-unquote drag boom, you know, and then, more recently with RuPaul's drag race, you have the same sort of commentary, oh, drag is newly popular. So you have sort of this cultural amnesia every few years, people suddenly proclaiming that drag is newly popular when it has been popular historically for a long time. And that also happened, going back to the Elizabethan boy players, there's this interesting phenomenon in the 19th century where people suddenly turn around and they say, did you know that we used to have boys playing

like Cleopatra and stuff? And, you know, they sort of thought of teenage boys like we think of, or like we might think of teenage boys now that these are like loudish, dirty. kids who spit on the street and stuff. Like, no way could they ever represent the grace of Shakespeare's leading ladies. But nonetheless, that was, you know, what happened. So I guess that's a long way of answering your question. But I hope it helped. It helped enormously.

Jacob, you have been wonderful to talk to today. Thank you so much. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? You can find me on Twitter. for example, at J. underscore Blumph. I'm also on LinkedIn. And I also have scrawled my number in the toilet stalls up and down the globe. You can always look out for that.

Yeah, thank you very much for having me. It's been wonderful. And you're the perfect post-valentine's day date, if I might say so. Jacob, you have been wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening. and thank you so much to Jacob for joining me. And if you like what you heard, do not forget to like, review, and follow along whatever it is that you get your podcasts.

It really does help us out. And if you'd like us to explore a subject, or maybe you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at betwixt at historyhit.com. We've got episodes on everything from the history of fetishware to sex in the Aztec Empire all marching your way. Don't want to miss them. This podcast was edited by Tom Delagi and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex Scandal in Society,

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