The Decibel - Why drag performers are the new focus of U.S. culture wars

Episode Date: April 19, 2023

Last month, Tennessee became the first state to pass-anti drag law and thirteen other U.S. states also have bills looking to ban or restrict drag performances. Over the past decade, drag has become more mainstream with the popularity of shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race, but this past year, drag shows have become the target of a U.S. political culture war.The Globe’s U.S. correspondent, Adrian Morrow is on the show to tell us what it is about this moment that has U.S. states targeting drag. Plus we’ll hear from Brian Hernandez, a performer in San Antonio Texas about their experience living in a state that’s trying to ban what they do for a living.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Drag really helped me come out of that really dark place that I was in, and it allowed me to be expressive of myself. It means everything to me, honestly. It's literally my livelihood. Brian Hernandez is a drag performer. I was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. My stage name is Miss Taint. I've been Miss Taint for about nine years performing at local bars, clubs, venues. My style is primarily like glamour and horror. Sometimes I'll go out and I'll put a whole prosthetic, really scary face, but then I'll be wearing like the most gorgeous ball gown that you've ever seen. But in Texas and in 13 other U.S. states, performers like Brian may soon be looking at fines or even jail time. This is because proposed anti-drag legislation would ban or restrict drag shows in the presence of minors. And Brian thinks that would have consequences that go beyond drag. You know, there's no tiptoeing around it.

They're trying to criminalize queer lives. There's a whole spectrum of drag. You know, of course you have your 18 and up adult show drag performers. And then you have your drag performers that read in libraries as the princesses and queens. There's camp, like really funny comedic performances. There's all types of drag. And at the end of the day, drag is expression.

It's queer expression. It's authenticity. And then also it's just honestly bringing happiness to people, you know, and we're not harming anyone. People look at us like we're these monsters. People look at us like we're these outcasts, like we're these freaks. But there's a beauty behind it because we all have a story. We'll hear more from Brian later in the show about what it's like for them as a drag performer in Texas right now. But first, The Globe's U.S. correspondent, Adrienne Morrow, is here to give us the political context about the concerns that led to this legislation,

and what it is about this moment that has states targeting drag and its performers. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Adrian, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me, Manika. So 14 states now in the U.S. have proposed anti-drag legislation. But I want to just establish what we're exactly talking about here when we say anti-drag legislation. Like what is being targeted? There are a few different things. So some of the legislation specifically relates to performances. And so it'll talk about not allowing people to perform dressing in a gender other than the one that they were assigned at birth. And it will put, you know, in some cases limits on those performances. So

we'll say things like these performances can only happen in adult facilities, you know, or facilities that have licenses as adult entertainment venues, which is the kind of license that a strip club would have, for instance. And then there's sort of specific rules around where those sorts of venues can be in terms of, you know, they have to be more than a thousand feet away from schools or public parks or other places where children are likely to be. So it, you know, imposes some burdens essentially on these places, you know, that to some people would be so onerous that you really couldn't actually have a drag show at all. The Tennessee legislation essentially specifies that you can have no public drag performances at all. The Tennessee legislation essentially specifies that you can have no public drag

performances at all, that there can be no drag done in any kind of public place, and that drag can't be done in any private location that would be within a thousand feet of a location where children are likely to be. Yeah. And you mentioned Tennessee specifically. Tennessee is actually the place where this legislation is actually law now. It's been proposed legislation in other states, but Tennessee, this is actually law. That's right. Tennessee is the first place to actually pass an anti-drag law. It passed last month and the legislation was signed into law by the governor. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has signed into law two bills that passed the state legislature last week. One restricting drag performances in public and the other banning

gender affirming health care for transgender youth. It's currently been enjoined by a judge there's a drag troop in Memphis that has challenged the law and so that that case is set to go to trial next month and in the interim the judge has basically frozen the law from coming into force so it hasn't actually taken effect pending the outcome of this legal case but that's that's one state where where it has passed and now it's going to be up to the courts, essentially, to decide. What about in other states, for example, in Texas? What's the state of things there?

Yeah, so Texas currently has, I think it's about six different anti-drag laws in front of its state legislature, and two of those have passed the state Senate and are currently moving forward. One of them would essentially ban anyone under the age of 18 from watching any performance in which a performer, quote unquote, exhibits a gender identity that is different than the performer's gender assigned at birth. And a second bill that has passed the Senate in Texas would cut funding to public libraries that host drag queen story hours. So essentially, the bills are kind of targeting two different aspects of drag. Yeah. Adrian, what's the timeframe like here? Like, when did these bills start popping up? Really just within the last year or so. And that's part of what's been a little bit surprising about this story is that, you know,

drag has obviously been around for a very long time, and it's been moving increasingly into the mainstream in recent decades. But it's only within the last, you know, year or two and it's been moving increasingly into the mainstream in recent decades. But it's only within the last year or two that it's kind of earned the ire of a certain subset of the U.S. right. And this proposed legislation that we're talking about in various states, do we expect them, first of all, to pass and become law? And do we know when? Certainly in Texas, it seems likely that it will pass. In Florida, there's anti-drag legislation that's in front of the legislature, and Florida has shown a propensity for kind of picking these kinds of culture war fights in recent years. You've got a governor there who's already signed legislation against discussion of

LGBTQ issues in schools, signed legislation against discussion of structural racism, systemic racism in schools and universities. So it seems likely that it'll move forward in some capacity in Florida. There are a handful of kind of states that have this legislation in front of their legislatures where, you know, you can expect a governor to veto it. And in Arizona, for instance, there's a Democratic governor. So it seems likely that she would probably block anything that comes out of the legislature there. But yeah, in other states, I think we certainly can expect it to move forward. And the argument from a lot of politicians here,

and this is right in the language of some of these bills, is that they're doing this to protect children. For example, I just want to read you part of the Senate bill from West Virginia here, Adrian. It says, quote, All minors in West Virginia are prohibited from being involved in drag shows for any reason. Additionally, drag shows may not be held in the presence of minors. And then it goes on to say any adult or parental guardian of a minor who violates this legislation may be required to complete parenting classes, substance abuse counseling, anger management counseling or other appropriate services or any combination thereof, end quote. So what is a bill like this trying to protect children from? Like, what is the fear here? I think that's really the question, because if you, you know, if you look at the language from the people proposing these kinds of bills, they'll talk about it as claiming

that they're protecting children from sexually explicit performances. But, you know, it's not correct necessarily that drag, you know, always has to be sexually explicit, you know, or that there's something about drag that inherently is not family friendly. And so what it really looks like is that in a lot of these cases, legislators, you know, just don't like the idea of children being exposed to anything that looks like LGBTQ culture, you know. the idea of children being exposed to anything that looks like LGBTQ culture. And there was a quote, in fact, from Chris Dodd, who's the Republican legislator in Tennessee, who sponsored Tennessee's drag ban, who complained that he felt that drag shows are trying to, quote, recruit children to this lifestyle.

And so it seems to indicate that for a lot of these legislators, you know, what their concern is, is that they don't like the idea of children, you know, seeing LGBTQ culture or interacting with openly LGBTQ individuals. And that, you know, in the case of Mr. Dodd and maybe some of these other people, they seem to believe somehow that by being around LGBTQ people, children are more likely themselves to somehow become LGBTQ. And so I think that's probably at least part of what's kind of driving that kind of language. You know, part of it kind of comes from these ugly old stereotypes and tropes that, you know, I think a lot of people thought were buried by the 70s and 80s of claiming that LGBTQ people are somehow child molesters or pedophiles or that sort of thing. I mean, this kind of goes back to these very ugly kind of bigoted stereotypes. But it also sounds a lot like QAnon talk, you know,

and the fact that in the last couple of years has been all this kind of talk in the culture on, you know, a subset of the US right about protecting children and specifically in QAnon, but protecting children from a child trafficking ring cabal of Donald Trump's enemies. I don't imagine that the vast majority of the legislators pushing this kind of stuff are adherents of QAnon. I mean, in fact, they probably aren't. I think that the language that they're using tries to pathologize the LGBTQ people as somehow being this and kind of plays into those stereotypes. And Adrian, you've been covering the states for quite some time. You're in the states now. And I guess I'm wondering about the climate there that's kind of, you know, causing these things to bubble

up at this point. Because it does feel like in the past few years, especially with the popularity of shows like RuPaul's Drag Race and things, you know, drag has become more mainstream. So what is going on here? Like, why are we all of a sudden seeing this anti-drag legislation being proposed in such a wide number of states? I think it has to be understood in the context of the larger culture war, where I think within, you know, within US politics for a long time, there's been this sort of heavy cultural component. And I think during the Donald Trump era, that's kind of become the glue that's held the Republican Party together, where the kind of Reaganomic, you know, sort of pro-business, free market thread that kind of connected Republicans for several decades. I

think a lot of that frayed under Trump, because there are a lot of Trump supporters who, you know, may or may not really agree with that sort of Republican orthodoxy. And so one of the things that kind of holds a lot of these people together, sort of holds the Trump base and now the Republican constituency together, are these kind of escalating culture wars. You know, for a long time, culture war tended to mean abortion and same-sex marriage. But I think that's really broadened in the last few years, you know, to include everything from people sort of pushing back against discussions of institutional racism and structural racism to any kind of discussion of LGBTQ issues and particularly trans issues. And I think that in a lot of cases, these legislators are essentially conflating,

you know, trans people and trans rights with drag. And so I think that that sort of helps explain why drag specifically has become the target. Because, you know, you've already seen in the last few years, legislators in Texas and other places propose bathroom bills, basically, you know, saying that you can't, you know, trans people don't have the right to use the bathroom that conforms with their gender identity or their gender expression. You know, you've got across the U.S. a lot of attempts to ban trans people from taking part in sports. And so I think that the sort of anti-drag push has grown out of that kind of push against trans rights. I know you were recently in Texas interviewing drag performers and experts there, too. Can you just tell me what was the atmosphere like there? Mostly surprise. I mean, despite Texas being, you know, historically very socially conservative, major cities like San Antonio, which is where I was, I've always been sort of very diverse, you know, relatively accepting places. And that's what people there told me. These drag performers said that, you know, they'd never sort of had a problem in San Antonio doing

drag until just the last six months. You know, I met, you know, drag performers who were hired to do, you know, baby showers and corporate events and things like that, that are very, very mainstream. And so to them, it was actually extremely surprising that just within the last year, they suddenly started getting this pushback. Adrian, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. Yeah, thanks for having me. After the break, Brian Hernandez tells us about their experience as a drag performer in Texas. Brian, thank you so much for being here today.

Yeah, thank you for having me. Even before this new legislation was introduced in Texas this spring, even before that, though, there was introduced in Texas this spring, even before that, though, there was tension in your city around drag performances. I know you hosted an All Ages event back in December of 2022. Can you briefly tell me what that event was? So basically, we held an All Ages event at the Starlighter. It's our home venue. It's located in the Historic Arts District in San Antonio. And we had been doing all ages drag shows for about a year before we got attacked. It was December 2nd where we showed Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer at 8 o'clock.

And then at 9.30, we started the drag show. Essentially, it was a toy drive. We raised over like 55 toys, I believe. Yeah, that was the event itself, right? It was a toy drive. That was the main purpose of the event, yeah. Yeah, So we had this event and I was the host of it. So I noticed when I got there to the event around 730 or so, I went and usually I'll give a hug to the to the owner and I'll say thank you know, thank you for having us and so on. She looked at me and she was really

scared. And I go, is everything at me and she was really scared. And I go, is everything okay? And she was just like, no, no. I don't know what's going on, but there's people outside with signs. And they're like, look. The sign said, protect our children. They were saying, drag queens are groomers. And then there was one that said, pedophiles.

And I'm just like, whoa, like never in my nine years of doing drag have I ever seen anything like that. You know, as far as anybody like personally attacking any one of our shows, I had never seen it before. So I was just like, whoa, Kayla, like, what do we do? And she was just like, I don't know, like, I don't want to give in to them or let them scare us. So, you know, should we continue? And she was just like, well, we're doing this for the kids. We're not doing anything wrong you know we decided to continue the show and and then and then what happened okay and then so we had some new faces in the crowd honestly like and and honestly like i felt weird vibes like and so we noticed that these two men and they basically uh sat down They were enjoying the show.

They were recording all the performers. They even took pictures with the performers afterwards. And the performers actually thought that we had new fans. Well, overnight we wake up, you know, the night passes. We wake up early in the morning to a smear campaign on one of their Instagrams that tagged all of us and was saying that, you know, this satanic drag show was grooming children by showing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer trying to lure children in and then showing that inappropriate content. And so the only child in the venue was the little girl. And the little girl was was the little girl and the little

girl was like the staff was taking care of her the queens were watching over her she was in a safe space what was the drag show brian the drag show was basically like performers do it dressing up as christmas trees dressing up as rudolph the red-nosed reindeer dressing up as Frosty the Snowman. The one performance, and it was to Lady Gaga's Christmas tree. And she came out as a full Christmas tree. And then she did a reveal, as most drag performers do, into another costume underneath. Yes, it could be misconstrued

because, you know, she did a reveal into a bra and an undergarment. But the bra was a Christmas tree. an undergarment but the bra was a christmas tree the undergarment was a christmas tree and this isn't stuff that you'd see anything different than at a movie at the beach even like with the way people dress out in public like it's nothing new so it's just because a drag queen did it so So they were they ended up doing this smear campaign video and it went from like 20,000 views to like more right wing news sources that had like two million followers. died down because then we started getting death threats. They were posting gifs and pictures of guns saying we need to get rid of them already. They are not wanted in our country. The Star Lighter venue was getting threats of being burned down. And you had to cancel shows after that.

Yeah, we had to cancel like three or four shows after that that were already planned. And for most of us, this is our livelihood. This is our main source of income. It affected a lot of a lot of us that have day jobs as well. Some of us in my group were really terrified that it was going to leak back to their their management and that they were going to get fired. You know, it affected a lot. And then it even affected us being scared about doing 18 and up shows after that because we thought these people were going to follow us. So let me let me ask you about, I guess, the current situation now, Brian. So in Texas, there's two bills targeting drag performances in the presence of children. Yes. They passed the Senate earlier this month. They're being sent to the House. What happens if these bills become law? Like what kind of consequences could you face for doing drag? A criminal offense.

Like you can get fined and you can get a Class A misdemeanor for doing a sexually charged performance, which is what they're trying to classify all drag as, as sexual performances. And when you say Class A misdemeanor, that could lead up to a year in jail and a $4,000 fine. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, and that also just affects like how we're able to even find work after that, you know, that goes on our background, all for what? For dressing up and going and being liberated. And I really feel like what this agenda is, is trying to get America back into this binary system where you have to wear a uniform. If you were born a man, you have to present as a man your entire life. If you were born as a woman, you have to present as a woman your entire life. You know, I myself, I'm non-binary. So I go and live my life however I

want to present that day. You know, sometimes I go out to eat with my friends where I'm dressed as a woman and where I feel as a woman. And then sometimes I live my life where I look like this. Brian, why do you think these bills and these protests are happening now? Like why this particular moment? Because it's a distraction. They're just they're distracting from the actual issues of what's really harming children. You know, how many school shootings do we have like every month? You know, we're talking about anti-drag legislation, but, you know, we're saying this is actually it's a much broader way to target trans people. Why do you think politicians are targeting trans and queer people in this way? Because they don't want us to live.

You know, even in Florida, this news thing just came out where in Florida there was a lawmaker that literally said they wanted to eradicate the LGBT community. Well, if it means erasing a community because you have to target children, then damn right we ought to do it. You know, they don't want to see us anymore. That's point blank, period. They don't want us to live. Like, they're trying to go back into the society where there is no more gay people.

There is no more LGBT community. And that's why I'm saying, like, they're trying to take away our pride. They're trying to put us back in the closet where we've we've spent decades, you know, fighting to get out of fighting to be seen, fighting to be treated equal. And, you know, they're placing all these laws generalizing drag. But in reality, it affects more than just drag performers. They're they're they're trying to target the entire community as a whole. Brian, thank you so much for taking all the time to speak with us today. Yeah, of course. Thank you so much

for actually caring and trying to listen to queer struggles around the world right now. That's it for today. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show.

Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.