Sunday’s Drag March attracted upwards of 2,500 people. It was a great event with people from all walks of life supporting freedom of expression. The Drag March and the fuel that fired it came after Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed a bill banning drag shows in public spaces, a measure that will likely force drag shows underground in Tennessee. The move comes after many other anti-LGBTQ bills, more than 400 of them, moved their way through state legislatures around the country.
There are major differences between Drag and Trans. It’s an insult to call a transgendered person a drag queen – it’s not a costume. And it is also an insult to assume a drag queen or king to be transgendered. The problems with conflating trans and drag is that one is an art form while the other is a lived experience.
“To muddle the two erases the inherently personal nature of being transgender,” RuPaul says. “Drag is really making fun of identity. We are shapeshifters. We’re like ‘okay, today I’m this, now I’m a cowboy, now I’m this’….transgender people take identity very seriously – their identity is who they are.”
According to GLAAD, “transgender women are not cross-dressers or drag queens. Drag queens are men, typically gay men, who dress like women for the purpose of entertainment. Be aware of the differences between transgender women, cross-dressers, and drag queens. Use the term preferred by the individual.”
German Lopez wrote in VOX that: “Being trans isn’t a matter of dressing up in different clothes. It’s a permanent identity that follows people throughout their entire lives. And while some trans people enjoy dressing up in exotic outfits to entertain others, the act of dressing up in clothes that match one’s gender identity reflects only one part of what it means to be trans. Similarly, being a cross-dresser or drag queen or king doesn’t mean that people identify with a gender different from the one they were assigned at birth. Some drag queens or kings may even be straight and cisgender — meaning they identify with the gender assigned to them at birth — and are only dressing up for entertainment. What cross-dressing means can vary a lot from individual to individual.”
Sunday’s event went smooth except for one minor outburst. Following Marianna Marroquin, a speaker from the Trans Wellness Center, there was loud shouting at the stage.
“What about trans men?” an angry voice shouted toward the speakers. “Abortion rights are being attacked and there’s not a single transgender man represented on that stage. I’m disappointed in all of you. Transgender men matter too.”
Shane Ivan Nash, a member of the Transgender Advisory Board and close Shyne ally was not happy.
The commotion caused a stir. The ginger haired man next to me asked what was happening. He had come with his friends to celebrate the art form and his right to dress up.
But it was the man’s words that struck me. “I appreciate fun loving drag performers. They are entertainers. That is what we are fighting for, our First Amendment rights — but I am not transgender.”
In West Hollywood, a large percentage of our local Drag Queens and Kings also identify as transgendered or non-binary. Drag provides a safe working environment no matter where one falls on the spectrum. Laws that unfairly target drag, unfairly target those livelihoods. WEHOville is going to introduce you to a few local queens in the coming weeks.
It’s important to educate people, particularly at a time when strictures of the past are being challenged and there’s a hopeful sign of acceptance accelerating in open minded communities. It will take time for the less educated to catch up but conversations are taking place and should continue so that everyone can “live and let live” in an inclusive environment. WeHo has a brand new role in leading those conversations.
A distinction with no difference. Nothing good comes from this.
Hello, I sent this article to my parents who do not understand my personality. I’m not transgendered just a fun loving masculine guy with a hairy chest and big boobs. The ignorance in the world is universal and thank you for explaining to the ignorants.
Good point.
This is basic public education that our national LGBT organizations are dramatically failing at. The right wing deliberately misinforms their fans in order to arouse rage and violence, while our side does absolutely nothing to counter it by educating the public on basic terminology. It is a pathetic, dismal failure of our extremely well-funded LGBT organizations who do nothing but masturbatorily bathe in money with no effectiveness to curb the social, political, and physical violence our community endures, especially against trans women and drag queens. They need to do better for all of their obscene millions in funding.
As a straight man I’m glad you clarified the difference.
Thank you LB for going into this explanation as well as Tim’s comment below. These are 3 separate groups that the ignorant, woke progressives want to plunk them all into one group for power. Because they know no other way, the average straight person DOES put them all in one group because that’s what we are told to do by the media & so-called experts! As it is, we are walking on egg shells trying to make sure that we use the proper label, proper pronouns, & the latest, proper group affiliation that the identity politics, (created by the left)… Read more »
You poor, downtrodden thing. Perhaps you need to have an advocacy group of your own. Like Fox News, perhaps.
Unfortunately the kooks on the right don’t know or don’t care about the difference between the letters in GLBT, they just want them gone. And if they can’t legislate them out of existence they aren’t averse to just killing us.
Yep. That’s what I always hear around town – don’t put us all together in the same pile.
Just clarifying, Shane Ivan Nash was the one with the outburst? Why so many names?
And Gay is not Trans or Drag.
True. It’s not a crime to be a masculine gay man, yet sometimes lately it sure seems like it.
A lot of you calling yourselves “masculine” need a reality check.
Well, you certainly do. Are you sure you’re not John Erickson?
Gurl, you sound envious. (I said that in a voice like Clint Eastwood.)
Word, brother.
I anticipate a lot of venom headed the way of the author, but this important op-ed does a great service in asking questions and it highlights the inherent difficulties in forcing multiple identities to seek shelter under one umbrella. We all have the individual choice to be sincere allies in a world devoid of forced-teaming. Isn’t individual choice what we’ve all been fighting for on many fronts for many decades? Just as one person yelled their way through an unrelated demonstration, his appointer, Sepi Shyne, took the stage and started her remarks by making it all about women in Iran.… Read more »
These kinds of campaigns are too easily co-opted and inevitably fail due to the singular focus on a Party approves message in the face of many complex identities and experiences. It’s clear that a radically less partisan approach is needed to have any hope of solving these communities’ fundamental needs.