Bitchy History - Episode 11： Pride Special - The History of Drag in America

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Bitchy History, the American History podcast that would absolutely be banned by Moms 1.00

00:00:04.620 for Liberty, especially after today's episode. Here we are at episode 11 of Bitchy History,

00:00:14.960 and today is not only the second of two Pride episodes, but it's also a very special episode

00:00:19.500 because it's the first time we've had a guest on the show. Today we're joined by Amanda Tempson

00:00:23.300 from YesterQueers to talk specifically about the history of drag in the United States.

00:00:27.720 Amanda, I'll let you introduce yourself before we get started.

00:00:30.780 I didn't know I was going to be your first guest. That's so exciting.

00:00:34.360 Brand new. First one. Never done it before on this show.

00:00:37.420 Amazing. That explains a lot about all the things that just happened.

00:00:41.980 The homophobic recording video that we had to deal with today. Yeah.

00:00:45.940 Just a moderate amount of technical homophobia.

00:00:49.020 Anyway, my name is Amanda. I am a writer and a television producer and an avocational public historian.

00:00:56.060 of queer history, which means I don't have a degree in queer history, but I know a lot about

00:01:00.540 it and I spend a lot of time educating about it. Yeah. And you know what? You do not have to have

00:01:05.540 a degree in history. I do not gatekeep. I don't gatekeep. True. It's true. But you do have to know

00:01:11.140 how to do research and check your sources. Yes. You do need to do that and be able to accept

00:01:17.300 when you're wrong and somebody corrects you, which as we have found, avocational male historians on

00:01:24.060 tiktok can't do that they they have no interest in being corrected apparently but that's a story

00:01:28.320 for a different podcast i'm just glad the party city helmet is optional because i don't think i

00:01:32.840 would look good in that yeah i'm not sure i could pull that off i really don't i think so

00:01:36.960 so we're talking specifically about the history of drag in the united states it's not a art form

00:01:43.580 that is solely an american art form obviously but we do have a very strong presence of it in our

00:01:49.340 history and in our culture here in the United States, everything up from its origins to, you

00:01:55.180 know, RuPaul's Drag Race, right? It's a big thing here. And so what exactly is drag, if you could

00:02:01.760 explain it to us? So drag is both an art form and a political statement. It's the act of highlighting

00:02:09.700 or exaggerating traditionally feminine or masculine features as a means of both celebrating and

00:02:16.700 subverting gender expression it's not just men wearing dresses um it is in fact distinct from

00:02:23.640 cross-dressing mostly because of the community and performance components of drag cross-dressing

00:02:30.300 is usually something that's done um alone for an individual to sort of explore their gender

00:02:36.060 expression whereas drag is usually done as part of a community or part of a performance

00:02:41.140 right yeah there's it's obviously it's a big dramatic there's a lot of pageantry to drag

00:02:46.860 whereas if cross-dressing is done by yourself that's by yourself or if it's done to pass like

00:02:51.680 like a woman trying to to join the military by dressing up like a man or something it's a very

00:02:56.840 different thing you're you don't want to draw attention to the fact that you're not the the

00:03:00.960 right gender right yeah and cross-dressing is not um cross-dressing is not generally performative

00:03:08.040 You know, drag is done for the experience of other people as part of a community, as part of a performance for an audience or for other members of the community.

00:03:20.900 Whereas, you know, cross-dressing is an individual choice for a variety of reasons, which is a whole different episode that hopefully you'll invite me back for.

00:03:27.980 Yeah, I am. I have another set of notes set up for that.

00:03:30.940 So we'll do another episode on that maybe next month.

00:03:34.500 I don't know. We'll see.

00:03:35.380 We'll see how the recording goes on this one right now.

00:03:38.040 So I think I'll definitely bring you back.

00:03:40.540 I definitely bring you back.

00:03:42.220 So we've talked a lot about this already.

00:03:45.560 You know, we were meeting on Zoom about this episode.

00:03:48.880 And, you know, you were telling me some of the stuff I definitely did not know about the history of kind of the origins of drag, where it got its start here in the U.S.

00:03:57.040 So if you could kind of go into that a little bit, because this is definitely this is why I brought you on, because this is not my area at all, honestly.

00:04:03.020 So I love the history of drag is actually fascinating.

00:04:06.260 So, of course, it has its roots in theatrical traditions all around the world.

00:04:11.200 So ancient Greece, Shakespearean theater, kabuki theater, you see a lot of male performers playing female roles.

00:04:19.620 But drag in the U.S. actually has its roots in Washington, D.C. in the late 1800s with the first queen of drag,

00:04:27.420 who is a formerly enslaved man named William Dorsey Swan, who held parties that were then just called drags.

00:04:34.040 Now we would call them drag balls, which were like big, fancy parties where he and all of his friends, most of whom were also formerly enslaved men, would wear their finest women's clothes.

00:04:45.600 So it's really, you know, like almost everything that is awesome and amazing in culture in the U.S., it is rooted in the black experience in the United States and specifically in the experience of formerly enslaved men in the nation's capital right after the Civil War.

00:05:02.920 Yeah. And I think that's a really interesting thing that so many of the things that have caused these sort of culture freak outs, these these, you know, all this anger had always has been stuff that with its root in African-American culture, like the anger about jazz when it came out as you know, as devil music, the anger about rock and roll.

00:05:24.580 It was all related to this, you know, these tensions of race.

00:05:28.640 And so it's interesting that we're facing off against, you know, issues with drag now. 0.80

00:05:33.760 And it all dates back to the same stuff.

00:05:36.000 Everything is kind of wrapped up in this racial tension.

00:05:38.900 Yeah.

00:05:39.220 I mean, you know, there's just nothing new under the sun, I suppose.

00:05:42.760 Yeah.

00:05:43.300 And it just, yeah, it's the white supremacy of it all.

00:05:47.680 Yeah.

00:05:47.920 Not that I think that like the Tennessee drag ban or whatever, the people who wrote it have any idea what the history of drag is.

00:05:54.080 I don't think they've done any research on this. They just kind of instinctually hate it because

00:05:58.940 they hate everything fun. I mean, yeah, basically. Well, they hate everything fun and they hate

00:06:04.500 everything that is even a little bit subversive to this really rigid set of sort of, you know,

00:06:14.000 Christian American values of like, what is a man and what is a woman and how do those two things

00:06:19.420 or how did those two genders interact and like anything that doesn't fall into those neat little 0.91

00:06:24.320 boxes is like they can't make sense of it and they hate it and it is therefore must be perverse and 0.77

00:06:28.540 destroying all of our children so yeah exactly yeah and we have we've been dealing with this

00:06:33.080 for a long time there is this very strict enforcement through the law of these sort of

00:06:40.180 you know heteronormative standards uh in america for all that we'd like to talk about you know

00:06:45.180 america being about freedom it really has not been a huge for whom exactly freedom for who

00:06:52.920 exactly um well i made this point several times on the show in the last few episodes about the

00:06:58.100 puritans where the puritans were not here for freedom in a general sense they were here for

00:07:02.400 their freedom uh totally okay with creating a theocratic you know uh situation in government

00:07:09.600 as long as they were the ones creating the rules.

00:07:12.480 And so really, that's, honestly, it is very American, right?

00:07:16.380 That's a very American idea to control people and make them do what you want.

00:07:20.740 I want everyone to have the freedom to be exactly like me.

00:07:23.280 That word does not mean what you think it means.

00:07:25.860 Right. I don't think you understand the concept at all.

00:07:29.500 But sort of what's interesting about drag in the U.S.,

00:07:33.400 especially in the late 1800s, early 1900s.

00:07:36.120 So William Bercy Swan, you know, he was he was one of the first really like queer activists in the U.S.

00:07:46.560 and one of the first to really go up against the the police and the sort of like governing restrictions around men gathering.

00:07:59.840 And, you know, in his case, it was sort of like a two pronged problem. Right.

00:08:03.600 There was a bunch of black men gathering, which was, you know, frightening to people in Washington, D.C., and it was a bunch of black men gathering wearing dresses, which was the thing they just sort of couldn't get their heads around. 1.00

00:08:12.860 Yeah. You know, so he was really among the first who just kind of pressed those boundaries. 1.00

00:08:21.580 But what's interesting is that drag was not necessarily seen as a particularly perverse or weird thing up until like sort of right after World War One.

00:08:35.600 Like, certainly, like, there were, you know, laws that I know we're going to talk about, about, like, cross-dressing and stuff, and William Dorsey Swan ended up being arrested a couple of times for running a disorderly house, which is they thought he was running a brothel instead of throwing a party.

00:08:51.760 But before World War I, the highest paid actor in the country was a female impersonator, who we would now call a drag queen, named Julian L. Tinge, and he was a white man.

00:09:03.520 a white man no um or so you know but like female impersonation was very very popular um during the

00:09:14.620 height of vaudeville um you know drag kind of made its way like from washington dc up the eastern

00:09:20.180 seaboard into new york um it was a huge part of the harlem renaissance so like many things it you

00:09:28.280 know it wasn't it wasn't much of an issue until people started to decide that it was and then 1.00

00:09:33.680 suddenly it was this you know huge perverse oh my god the children problem of course yeah

00:09:39.840 familiar yeah sounds pretty familiar uh i just keep finding that nothing is new nothing is new

00:09:47.360 everything sounds uh you know like something that happened 100 years ago uh yeah which

00:09:53.140 which I find comforting because I can look back and be like okay we've been through this before

00:09:58.680 here's how we got through it so we can get through it but on the other hand I'm like

00:10:03.060 could we solve a new problem like still still not keep rehashing the same problem it would be nice

00:10:11.460 it would be uh theoretically nice if we could just move past this and move on to something else but

00:10:16.280 no no they're not going to let us do that until I guess enough people die off in the older

00:10:21.420 generations but even then that doesn't really stop it right i mean yeah you mentioned that 0.82

00:10:26.320 you were mentioning some of the the there was you know cross-dressing laws and like you said

00:10:31.540 they didn't really apply to drag to to drag performers uh in any real meaningful way because

00:10:37.040 when you're on stage right when you're doing something that is a performance it's different

00:10:42.080 than living your life wearing the wrong the wrong clothing uh for your you know quote unquote gender

00:10:48.440 yeah uh but they did have a lot of impact on you know on the queer community in a general sense

00:10:55.480 which of course the drag community was a big part of uh even even if you have you know straight drag

00:11:01.300 queens or or drag kings which does happen on occasion um and was much more prevalent at the

00:11:07.760 beginning of the century of course yeah you know there are there is this is my like forever pet

00:11:13.760 peeve there is a photo so if you google william dorsey swan you will get a photo that is attached

00:11:19.620 to every single article about him and it is not him it is a performer named um i think john brown

00:11:27.920 or i'm sorry john gregory or jack gregory anyway it's a performer in a vaudeville duo in paris and

00:11:34.760 there are like promo shots and not only is that performer not william dorsey swan he's straight

00:11:40.600 that is a straight man as far as we know he had a wife and there is no historical evidence that

00:11:47.840 he was anything other than straight um and so it's like it's sort of like a double um it's like

00:11:54.860 a double insult to call that william dorsey swan like right it's not him and the reason we know

00:12:00.120 it's not him is because after william dorsey swan died the um police in his town burned his house to

00:12:06.840 the ground burned every single thing he owned that tracks completely this is why we have no

00:12:14.360 photos of william dorsey swan uh also this man that they keep attaching to all of these stories

00:12:20.900 about him is a straight female impersonator in the vaudeville scene in the early 1900s

00:12:27.240 right yes it's kind of crazy there's a lot of insults going on there yeah yeah and that's why

00:12:32.900 just like this is the problem with google right where you google it and this picture comes up and

00:12:36.460 it's like right it's even attached to articles from like more reputable news sources and if you

00:12:42.020 read the teeny tiny caption of the photo it'll say something like you know vaudeville performer

00:12:46.540 in paris in 1903 but like if the article is about william dorsey swan and there's a picture of black

00:12:51.060 man in dress like people are going to make that assumption right and if somebody writes like a

00:12:55.040 blog post about him and they just pull that picture without doing any research because people do that

00:12:59.260 or make a tiktok or something like that the picture just you know it self-propagates the

00:13:04.000 the myth right weird little like i have a couple of those sticking points about queer history where

00:13:09.460 i'm just like oh it annoys me it's annoying it really is it's so annoying especially when

00:13:15.080 like you said the cops burned all the pictures and so we don't have any any real you know

00:13:19.780 evidence of his life which uh you know it's always a firm reminder for viewer for listeners uh this

00:13:26.420 this podcast very much does ascribe to a cap like it's just there's no there's no good things coming

00:13:31.720 out of that area of the world. I'm sorry. There is a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful scholar

00:13:38.360 named Channing Gerard Joseph, and he is the reason that we know as much as we do about William Dorsey

00:13:44.840 Swan. He has a book in the works called House of Swan that's supposed to come out, I think,

00:13:49.400 sometime soon that I cannot wait to get my paws on to read the whole thing. That would be amazing.

00:13:55.180 yeah he he is the man who really did this deep dive and found out so much of this information

00:14:01.720 to be able to sort of place him in drag history and really not just in drag history but at the

00:14:07.040 at the beginning he is our our very first queen of drag that's amazing that's amazing i'm excited

00:14:13.400 to read that too i'll definitely uh put up a link to it when it comes out on my website so people

00:14:17.960 can uh people can think it got delayed by the pandemic it was supposed to come out a couple

00:14:21.220 years ago and every so often i'm just like is that out yet the pandemic was hard you're trying

00:14:25.580 to work on a book and then you get stuck in your house and you just don't want to work on your book

00:14:29.420 then right now now because you have all this time you don't want to get it done yeah i don't know

00:14:33.860 anything about that meredith no idea i've never i've never done that before my master's thesis

00:14:38.820 wasn't like that at all that never happened uh but yeah so i just wanted to get i want to talk

00:14:44.540 a little bit about cross-dressing laws specifically because of how it affected the queer community in

00:14:48.640 this and just because you know there's a lot of similarities what's going on today with anti-drag

00:14:55.240 bills and things like that there's a lot of similarities even though they weren't specifically

00:14:58.280 targeting drag queens then they're being used now for the same purpose so yeah cross-dressing has a

00:15:03.560 very long history in american america as well we're definitely going to be doing an episode on

00:15:07.440 that uh in the future because there's just so many cool stories about cross-dressing in american

00:15:12.700 history um but the laws that governed crossdressing had this huge impact on everyone uh the oldest one

00:15:20.100 that we have in america was a uh something called a masquerade law which was passed in 1845 in new

00:15:25.380 york it specifically said that it was a crime to have your face painted discolored covered or

00:15:31.200 concealed or be otherwise disguised while in a road or public highway that was that was what it

00:15:36.640 was which is a very weird law um the state is bizarrely specific it is right so the state

00:15:42.900 originally intended the law only to punish rural farmers because they had taken to dressing up as

00:15:48.060 native americans to fight tax collectors uh so there's a lot to unpack with that law a lot

00:15:54.420 not the least of which is the fact that the most recent usage of this law

00:16:00.140 uh was in 2011 they actually used it to arrest occupy wall street uh protesters who were masks

00:16:07.860 yeah they were still using it uh it was i think that all of those arrests got overturned by the

00:16:14.400 judge the judge was like are you freaking kidding me no we're not using this um so yeah but then

00:16:20.060 then in 1848 ohio columbus ohio specifically passes another one which is a law forbidding

00:16:25.700 a person from appearing in public in a dress not belonging to his or her sex. So that kind of

00:16:31.800 starts this watershed moment in America, where suddenly throughout the 1850s, we start to see

00:16:37.940 just a wave of these laws being passed. And there's a Susan Stryker, who's an associate

00:16:44.360 professor of gender and women's studies at the University of Arizona, wrote about this,

00:16:48.880 has written about this extensively. And she said that these laws represented a new development 0.96

00:16:53.620 specific to gender presentation so it was this issue that comes up where uh people are angry

00:17:01.000 that things aren't heteronormative right this is what is it what does it you say uh that i said

00:17:05.660 oh the heteros are upseteros yeah exactly that needs to be on a shirt it does uh they were very

00:17:10.800 it's gotta be a shirt anyway and then there's another book which i recommend which is arresting

00:17:18.740 dressed by claire sears and she writes about all of these cross-dressing laws in there and i think

00:17:24.360 one of the most interesting things she says is that it's not really about clothing that it's

00:17:29.620 being passed to police indecency it's a morality law and has these these wide impacts she says the

00:17:37.140 law made anyone who didn't fit into the narrow definitions of what a man or woman should look

00:17:41.500 like they had to be extra vigilant uh she notes even one time where a someone was arrested because

00:17:47.980 they were suspected as being a male cross-dresser they were taken into police custody and they were

00:17:53.340 uh basically strip searched they were you know stripped off uh and then they realized that this

00:17:58.360 was in fact a biological woman and you dropped the charges um they sent her home with a certificate

00:18:04.840 verifying her sex so she could show her papers for her arrest what's you're too many you know

00:18:12.420 What is absolutely hilarious is, like, nothing about that even is new to the end of the 19th century. Like, the very first case of people in authority not knowing what to do about gender nonconformity comes from the Virginia colony in the 1600s, the middle of the 1600s.

00:18:30.000 there's a person in the virginia colony named both thomas and thomasine hall who dressed

00:18:35.920 alternately in men's clothes and women's clothes alternately did the work of men and women

00:18:39.620 nobody could figure out thomas slash thomasine's gender including thomasine themselves like

00:18:48.220 they did not have a strong position on what their gender was and the first envy i love it

00:18:55.680 Well, it's now, so they were hauled in, same thing, to be, like, examined by a panel of people to figure out what gender this person was.

00:19:03.960 We now understand that this person was probably intersex because they exhibited the physical sexual characteristics of both genders.

00:19:13.300 But they could not figure out what to do with this person. 0.72

00:19:16.720 So what they finally decided was that Thomas slash Thomasine had to wear the clothing of both genders all the time.

00:19:23.520 so like a skirt and a shirt or whatever like had to wear like a dress but like a men's hat

00:19:29.220 like because they just couldn't figure out what to do and the and they had no way to um to parse

00:19:37.180 this person who didn't really fit in either box because of how gender at all the like

00:19:42.080 laws and like work and everything so they don't know what they were like you just always have

00:19:46.400 to dress as both genders all the time just so you don't confuse people i feel like it's more

00:19:52.100 confusing but that that's you know that's a very very strict heteronormative gender-based roles

00:19:58.480 during that period of time and it causes a lot of problems for somebody to to go against those

00:20:03.480 uh at all you know it's it's going to cause a major problem and of course like everything else

00:20:09.260 in the u.s the reason this whole thing came to a head is because um thomas slash thomasine was

00:20:14.960 working on under an indentured contract and the person who owned the plantation she was indentured

00:20:21.940 to wanted to sell their contract um but the person buying the contract would not complete the

00:20:28.560 transaction until they were certain of the gender of the indentured indentured servant they were

00:20:36.220 purchasing essentially i have questions that are bad questions that i'm not going to ask about why

00:20:41.880 cared so much but i'm just gonna ostensibly i mean not to give white men any quarter here but

00:20:49.020 But ostensibly, the reason it was important is because they wanted to know which set of jobs to assign this indentured servant to.

00:20:56.660 Like, is this a field person or like a housework person?

00:21:00.760 God forbid they just figure out what job they're good at and let them do it.

00:21:04.380 That's right.

00:21:05.500 We couldn't possibly.

00:21:07.960 Obviously, whatever physical characteristics you were born with determines what you're good at.

00:21:12.560 Right. Of course. That's exactly how it works. Always.

00:21:14.980 anyway so all that to say people in authority have never had a clue how people who are gender

00:21:24.040 non-conforming right and it's instead of just letting them be and let people you know live

00:21:29.160 the way they want to live dress the way they want to dress they have to get themselves involved they

00:21:32.720 always do it's just you know if it doesn't fit my narrow worldview of what society should look like

00:21:38.720 then you know just you're gonna have to be forced into the into this narrow worldview

00:21:44.300 uh or we're gonna send you to jail it was one of the one of the stories of a woman who was

00:21:49.080 arrested multiple times that claire sears talks to talks about with cross-dressing she was uh in

00:21:54.980 in the 1870s she's arrested more than 20 times for wearing male attire uh and they you know keep

00:22:00.840 sending her to jail keep sending her to court all of this stuff and one time when she's in court she

00:22:05.120 just says you can send me to jail as often as you please but you can never make me wear women's

00:22:09.160 clothing again which i you know i love that for her i love that she's like no we're not doing this

00:22:13.900 uh but again they just went after her continuously trying to make sure that she would not be uh you

00:22:20.400 know allowed to live her life the way she wanted to live it which is there's a there's a long

00:22:25.580 history um especially of butch lesbians and trans women in this same situation being arrested 0.78

00:22:32.560 multiple times and they're just like cool keep arresting me i don't care and again the authorities 0.97

00:22:37.460 have no idea what to do because like that's their one go-to move is we're going to arrest you and 0.68

00:22:41.460 fine you and or imprison you and they're like great cool sure I think with women and during 1.00

00:22:47.960 that time period it's a uniquely bad opportunity bad attempt to stop them because women's lives 1.00

00:22:53.240 already sucked so like what are you gonna do make it worse by sending me to jail where I don't have 1.00

00:22:59.120 to like see my husband or deal with men like you're gonna send me to a woman's workhouse 0.99

00:23:04.180 okay like about that but yeah probably not the women's work houses were awful like they were 0.98

00:23:13.500 terrible places but my point being like if your life already sucks then you might as it's like

00:23:18.640 well whatever sure yeah it's also it's it reminds me a little bit of the and again this was like 0.93

00:23:23.880 clearly a position of privilege like were you in a position where you could repeatedly be arrested

00:23:27.640 and imprisoned for a few days and that wouldn't you know destroy your life um but it reminds me

00:23:32.580 a little bit of like sumptuary laws during, um, uh, in Elizabethan England, like there's a giant

00:23:39.520 fine for wearing purple velvet, but people who are rich enough still just paid the fine, you know?

00:23:44.240 Well, I remember somebody saying once, you know, that, uh, when the punishment for a crime is,

00:23:49.820 is paying a fine, then really it's just a, it's just a punishment for poor people, right? It's

00:23:53.680 only poor people from doing it. Uh, you know, if you, if you, you know, have to pay a ticket for

00:23:58.440 double parking, well, okay, I can, I can afford the ticket. It doesn't bother me. So I'm just

00:24:03.640 going to call. I live in Los Angeles and I have definitely on occasion been like,

00:24:08.200 is it worth it to me to maybe get a ticket for parking here? Is that like, is that a reasonable

00:24:14.520 potential expense as opposed to circling for 20 more minutes to find a place to park?

00:24:19.040 What's my, what's, how much is my time worth? Let's see. Like, we'll see if I've got a good

00:24:24.580 podcast on or a good, uh, or a good audio book, then I'll just keep circling. It's fine. Yeah.

00:24:30.740 Also helps that I, I, I physically cannot, uh, parallel park. So I'm, I'm a stereotype. I can't

00:24:37.600 parallel park at all. So if I can't find a parking spot that will allow me to pull in,

00:24:43.460 I just don't park. I just leave. It's amazing. I have in fact stood up someone on a date once

00:24:50.680 simply because the place she invited me to only had parallel parking possibly the most femme thing 0.86

00:24:57.060 you've ever done i'm just gonna put that i was like it's all parallel parking i can't i didn't

00:25:02.260 really stand her up i did text her why i left but still anyway you had mentioned earlier that swan

00:25:10.060 got uh arrested a couple times for running a disorderly house right yes uh so what what is

00:25:16.160 that exactly? So running a disorderly house was the, you know, sort of 19th, early 20th century

00:25:23.040 way of saying being a madam or running a brothel. And so the thing that was sort of interesting

00:25:28.960 about Swan in particular is that what he was doing in holding these drag balls really kind of

00:25:37.920 walked a line in terms of legality. Like it was not legal for this many men to wear dresses and

00:25:44.260 be social. But there also weren't really great laws around it. You know, it's sort of a little

00:25:52.000 bit difficult to prosecute. So they decided that charging Swan with running a disorderly house

00:25:59.780 would like get him out of the business essentially of throwing these drags. You know, and it did

00:26:06.480 because this is the American justice system at work, folks, by the way. So he was arrested early

00:26:12.960 in the morning on january 1st i think 1896 because he had had a new year's eve drag his trial

00:26:20.800 was on january 3rd and it only lasted a few hours because by the end of january 3rd he had been

00:26:28.100 convicted and sentenced to 300 days in jail wow yeah uh and the and i had to look up this quote

00:26:36.580 from the judge because it just the I think the naked hatred that the judge exhibited during his

00:26:45.780 trial is very applicable to the naked hatred that we're seeing now against drag performers all over

00:26:53.800 the country because when he was sentenced the judge said to him I would like to send you where

00:26:59.020 you would never again see a man's face and would then like to rid the city of other disreputable 1.00

00:27:03.480 persons of the same kind you know what it sounds like that judge sounds like he would have gotten 1.00

00:27:09.360 along really well with michael knowles you know they would have they would have they would have

00:27:13.520 had drinks they would have loved each other uh yeah in a gay way i don't know um and the thing

00:27:20.280 that's sort of interesting about swan too is he served three months and then he started petitioning

00:27:25.660 the president, Grover Cleveland at the time for clemency. And he was the first American ever to

00:27:35.680 take specific legal steps to try to defend his right to gather with other queer people. Like he

00:27:45.000 was the first one to fall into the system and then fight back against the idea of suppression and

00:27:53.160 police violence and all of that and he had a remarkably um a remarkably big support network

00:28:01.840 in washington dc um right i mean it didn't work the like the the president never even saw it and

00:28:11.820 the u.s attorney um referred to swan as having been convicted of the most horrible and disgusting

00:28:20.020 offenses known to law so disgusting that it could not be named um so like sounds about right it

00:28:27.400 didn't work um you know so cleveland was like due to the character of your friends we think we're

00:28:32.840 gonna leave you in jail um but he tried like he was the first one to really like raise public

00:28:39.760 awareness and really try to fight back against this system and that you know that's like the

00:28:47.380 thing that's interesting about drag is that like yes it's a performance and it's fun and it's campy

00:28:54.380 but it also has an enormous political element because of this claiming of space and claiming

00:29:02.100 of community um you know as we move into um the 20th century in particular um especially as we

00:29:11.220 move like into the like the post-World War II years um when people are sort of trying to

00:29:18.980 queer people are sort of trying to figure out new ways to be in community um actually especially

00:29:23.760 men returning from the war who had all of these intense experiences while they were overseas both 0.91

00:29:30.220 with their fellow soldiers or with um you know sex workers in Europe and they're just men queer men 0.66

00:29:36.840 learned a lot about themselves during World War II and then they came back to the states and sort

00:29:40.640 have had to try and figure out how to be in community again, um, or new ways to be in

00:29:44.800 community, I guess I should say that wasn't just being in the closet again. Right. And, you know,

00:29:50.620 so as, as drag rose up, you know, through the fifties and sixties, um, I feel like we have to

00:29:58.300 do a whole other episode on like, like drag houses and how that whole culture evolved.

00:30:04.640 Yeah. But it really became this place that was both art and performance and entertainment and community and political activism and this, you know, subversion of norms and this really powerful way to say this is who we are and we're not going anywhere.

00:30:27.880 Yeah. And because it is such an inherently public performative, you know, form of art, right? For a very long time, you know, queer people were in the closet, even if they, you know, had, you know, Boston marriages or things like that, where you had two women living together or two men, you know, living together, they kept it to themselves.

00:30:50.400 it was within between their relationship maybe their family maybe their friends but they were

00:30:54.780 not making a spectacle of it because they there were laws and and there were social problems that

00:31:01.380 would come with that uh and so you know you have you know historians who are like oh they were

00:31:05.720 best friends you know they lived together their whole lives and they were best friends i'm like

00:31:12.200 their dog was named sappho buddy they weren't best friends uh but uh you know this is a situation

00:31:18.480 Right. So they have been hiding themselves, hiding their identity for so long in order to get by.

00:31:24.080 And then you just have, you know, late 1800s, you just have these people who are like, hmm, we're just going to be very publicly queer and very publicly go against, you know, gender roles and and completely throw the system into into disarray and chaos.

00:31:41.900 and, you know, we're going to be public about it, which is going to change everything about how the

00:31:48.500 queer community, you know, live their lives at that point, basically. Yeah. And, you know, drag, 0.87

00:31:54.360 drag also is a thing that sort of, you know, it's, it started among formerly enslaved Black men in

00:32:03.200 the U.S. It moved through the Harlem Renaissance, you know, and by the time you get to like the

00:32:08.000 60s it had really been co-opted by largely white gay men because drag kings are obviously a thing

00:32:16.400 but they didn't really start to rise to prominence as far as i understand it until like the 80s is

00:32:21.260 when you start to really see drag kings so largely we're talking about white men um and the like the

00:32:27.940 whole system of you know drag houses and all of that came out of the racism of drag balls in the

00:32:34.620 sixties in New York city because there was drag queen named Crystal LaBeja who was, um, you know,

00:32:40.640 at the time drag was not as, um, exaggerated as it is now. Like now when you think of drag queens,

00:32:46.940 you think of like divine and you think of like, you know, big hair and lots of glitter and, you

00:32:52.240 know, colorful eye makeup and eyelashes for days and all of that. Drag was not like that in the 0.93

00:32:57.320 sixties. It was much more about, it was much more like a, like a, like a Miss America pageant.

00:33:02.520 so it was a little bit more about passing although I'm hesitant to say that because

00:33:08.780 none like they weren't trying to be women but the beauty standards they were trying to meet

00:33:13.360 in these pageants were the beauty standards applied to white cisgendered women so less 0.98

00:33:19.180 exaggerated they weren't trying to over exaggerate the the yeah they were I mean the 60s were an

00:33:24.400 exaggerated time like we've all seen beehives so like you know they were that exaggerated yeah

00:33:29.020 Um, but they were incredibly racist. A lot of them were being judged by very white beauty standards, um, which gave drag queens, uh, black drag queens and drag queens of color, um, pretty much no shot. Um, and Crystal LaBeja was, um, a Latina drag queen who had actually managed to make it pretty deep into the, um, mostly white, um, you know, drag competition space. 1.00

00:33:55.220 and um you know there she was in this competition and there's a great documentary about it and and

00:34:03.020 like she came in fourth and a woman who was still in the top three or a drag queen i should say who

00:34:08.740 was still in the top three like hadn't even bothered to wear a wig and like like it's perfectly 1.00

00:34:13.660 made a perfectly pretty woman but like no like just not even on crystal's level at all she just 0.98

00:34:20.320 snapped she walked right off the stage and and just and like and it's amazing because there was

00:34:25.340 a documentary crew there at the time um and captured her whole like she is the reason that

00:34:31.000 drag queens read people now like anytime you see a drag queen read someone that is all inspired by

00:34:36.920 crystal labaja um yeah but the roasting of people i mean just i mean it just it's amazing uh but

00:34:46.140 she founded the first drag house with, um, you know, with another friend, she became the first

00:34:51.940 drag mother. And it was sort of a, the drag houses serve two purposes. One was to reclaim drag from

00:34:58.640 the white people who were destroying it. Honestly was to bring drag back to, they called it uptown 0.93

00:35:03.840 drag. So back up to Harlem and to those neighborhoods that were largely populated by

00:35:08.800 black people and other people of color. Um, and it was also to form families, right? Like they're

00:35:15.100 literally drag families and the drag mothers were um were there to be mentors not just in the art

00:35:21.160 of drag but you know every lost queer kid who showed up and you know had been um either kicked

00:35:28.420 out of or had chosen to leave their family of origin you know whatever um and it became this

00:35:34.520 really really powerful social network um that all sprung out of the drag community yeah to have

00:35:41.440 these people who have a space to go when you've been kicked out or a space to go where you can

00:35:46.560 express yourself and not feel you know feel like a like a freak or feel you know bad about who you

00:35:53.340 are uh that's again a huge powerful thing in the organizing of the queer community in into you know

00:36:01.040 the the queer civil rights movement of the you know the 70s and 80s uh it's a major major player

00:36:07.580 in that really we have uh we have drag queens to thank for a lot of you know the advancements in

00:36:14.140 uh in queer culture yeah i mean and just in culture in general so the other thing that

00:36:18.500 happened with the formation of um drag houses is it really changed like a quote-unquote uptown drag

00:36:25.560 really changed the face of drag because that's when you start to see all of these drag balls

00:36:30.700 that have all kinds of wild categories right you know like formerly they were again very much like

00:36:37.400 Miss America you know pageants so they had like a limited number of categories um but once they 0.81

00:36:42.880 start dividing themselves up into drag houses and doing these like sort of huge and elaborate balls

00:36:47.640 um it really upped the performance aspect of drag because it was no longer just

00:36:54.460 walking across the stage you know like certainly there was walking up and down a an aisle but there

00:36:59.940 was also um all kinds of elaborate you know performance that got added to it and pretty

00:37:07.000 much everything that was cool in the 80s or 90s started in drag houses like i have i'm doing an

00:37:13.420 episode on yester queers next week about willie ninja and the house of ninja who's the reason we

00:37:17.300 have voguing like he is the father of voguing um so all of that is yeah is all tied into this

00:37:25.400 definitely it's not just uh one second there's a train going by so i have to cut this part of

00:37:33.720 the audio so you know uh yeah so uh yeah i mean we're yeah there's a lot to thank them for a lot

00:37:40.060 too and it's one of the big reasons why i mean not just for civil rights reasons but it's one

00:37:44.800 of the reasons why we need to be you know organizing behind these movements now to keep

00:37:50.460 you know keep drag queens safe keep trans people safe all of these people have had such a huge

00:37:55.880 impact on our society uh not the drag and trans same thing but there is like a certain element

00:38:02.360 of this of of both that are coming into what's going on with the culture war right now but

00:38:07.140 I mean drag the history of drag in a lot of ways is the history of or at least the foundation of

00:38:15.660 queer culture in the United States like you cannot separate those two things no you know

00:38:21.820 certainly queer culture is much you know wider and broader and more complex than just drag

00:38:28.560 but it is one of the cornerstones of everything that makes up American queer culture today in

00:38:37.020 2023. And I think it's easy for people even in the queer community to dismiss it as just sort of

00:38:43.880 like silly and frivolous, you know, just sort of like fun. And sure, it's all of those things, 0.76

00:38:51.220 but also um it is connected to this very um this very deep and important part of our history

00:39:01.580 you know and there's also like there just isn't one there's just not one kind of drag or like one

00:39:06.940 way to do drag you know there's like there's drag story hours there's the sisters of perpetual

00:39:12.220 indulgence who are the drag nuns who do enormous amounts of good works they do and they're

00:39:19.120 absolutely just hysterical and the nicest people you'll ever meet every time i've ever had any 1.00

00:39:23.860 interaction with them i'm like they're just so nice piss off the catholic church so you know 0.56

00:39:29.300 all good i love that you know there's just lots there's lots of ways to do drag and be drag and

00:39:35.460 understand drag and i think one of the things that frustrates me the most about you know the way

00:39:43.240 conservatives and you know Christo fascists in this country fascists talk about drag like it's

00:39:52.060 clear that they just don't have a clue what it is at all and I'm not sure they would care if they

00:39:57.400 did but like could you at least try try maybe go to a performance I don't know just at least watch

00:40:06.420 the birdcage for god's sakes yes just try one thing just try one thing oh yeah we were talking

00:40:12.100 a little bit about like the post-World War II period earlier before we got like we kind of

00:40:15.880 skipped forward into the 60s and 70s which is totally not a problem uh we just you know we

00:40:20.480 backtracked to go back into things but yeah uh I think it's really because you said that you know

00:40:25.940 after World War II we start to get more people who are experimenting with drag but also because

00:40:30.660 it is the post-war period there's even more pushback against people uh you know experimenting

00:40:36.740 with anything that's not a strictly you know white Anglo-Saxon Protestant you know

00:40:41.640 wasp family unit right and so we start to see a lot more i i would i hesitate to say a lot more 0.91

00:40:49.620 violence against the drag queens and queer community because there certainly was violence

00:40:54.540 before but it is more focused i think after after world war ii uh this particular uh rusty brown

00:41:02.200 as a a woman who was interviewed for a uh for a project on queer history and she was talking about

00:41:08.740 the fact that uh she originally started dressing as a man uh because she lost her job at during

00:41:14.780 world war ii uh at the end of the war she lost her position as a machinist and so she began

00:41:19.980 disguising herself as a man so that she could get a job again uh and then after that she does go on 0.92

00:41:25.580 to become a drag king this is you know she's one of the earliest drag drag kings of that era and 0.98

00:41:30.840 and she mentioned in her interview where she talks about what they call the three article rule 1.00

00:41:35.980 which was that people were arrested for not wearing at least three pieces of of gender

00:41:43.140 appropriate attire basically uh this was not a rule that actually existed there's no law on the

00:41:49.180 books about it uh seems like it maybe it was more of a term that was used by the gay community as

00:41:53.720 sort of a a general warning like oh don't you know don't break the three article rule um but this

00:42:00.760 becomes a major problem right so it's it's not at this point now it's not just about people who

00:42:07.020 are cross-dressing not just about drag queens uh it's about anybody who chooses to dress

00:42:11.420 any differently than what their gender is expected to dress as and i just think like i don't wear

00:42:17.120 skirts i don't wear dresses i would have done very poorly in this this time period uh and i

00:42:22.300 mentioned earlier about the woman who had to have her papers right she had to have this report from

00:42:26.500 the police and a very similar thing happened in 1968 this man martin boyce is on his way to a

00:42:32.580 halloween party uh and he's dressed as oscar wilde which okay cool it's a cool outfit i love it it's

00:42:38.340 great but cop famously a man oscar wilde right it's great great choice but a cop actually collars

00:42:44.580 him and says hey your costume is too feminine which first of all it's oscar wilde i don't

00:42:49.180 understand but whatever whatever i don't know what the costume looked like boyce has an argument

00:42:55.540 with the cop and he again it's a papers thing right he pulls out the receipt he's carrying the

00:43:00.760 receipt for the costume from a unisex store uh basically to prove that he is not wearing

00:43:06.920 something that doesn't fit his gender and it's crazy that he had to have papers for this uh but

00:43:13.240 the thing that really gets me about it is that the police officer then turns to a gang of angry young

00:43:19.880 men and says he's all yours and the cop leaves because he legally can't do anything about it

00:43:26.180 but he's going to allow a gang to beat this man up luckily apparently the gang was not very invested

00:43:32.460 in uh like in queer bashing that particular night uh and they let voice go but it was a very common

00:43:39.520 thing during this period of time which is of course what's going to lead us to you know the

00:43:43.340 stonewall uprising uh this harassment over gender norms and things like that and voice actually was

00:43:48.800 at stonewall as well so it's kind of a neat you know full store full circle story for him where

00:43:54.520 he had this harassment happen and then he's there at the moment uh which you know kind of explodes 0.88

00:44:00.120 into the into the gay rights movement uh but it is just such a dangerous thing and honestly we 0.53

00:44:08.540 have seen discussions about carrying your papers right we've seen discussions about this uh going 0.91

00:44:15.020 on with you know current drag bands current uh current you know transgender bands things like

00:44:21.760 that in america where they're talking about like oh well you know you just carry proof that you've

00:44:25.660 had your surgery why should i have to carry proof i shouldn't have to give you my papers

00:44:30.760 what kind of fascist state is this i think that's so fascinating and i think there's a lot of

00:44:37.400 parallels between america after world war ii and where america is right now because basically what

00:44:43.300 happened after world war ii is um you know we had a several year span where most of the men in the

00:44:51.240 country were someplace else um and a lot of them who were in europe were either having experiences

00:44:57.720 with their fellow soldiers because that's what happens when you're lonely and think you're going

00:45:01.640 to die every other minute or they were having um experiences with european sex workers they were

00:45:08.280 being exposed to European ideas about sex and sexuality. So you have all a huge chunk of

00:45:15.380 American men overseas somewhere fighting a war, but also learning a lot about themselves and

00:45:20.800 their likes and then desires and like the world, you know, at large. And then you have a bunch of

00:45:27.060 women and girls who are suddenly pulled out of their sort of like support positions and put into

00:45:33.560 jobs as, you know, factory workers and machinists and car mechanics and all kinds of things. So

00:45:39.160 they are suddenly, um, you know, pulled out of this stereotypical behavior pattern. And then

00:45:47.440 the war ends and, you know, everyone who wasn't killed comes home and all the women are expected 0.83

00:45:52.580 to go back into the kitchen or back to being, you know, secretaries or, you know, nurses or 0.96

00:45:57.100 whatever and so it wasn't just the queer community I think that they were trying to um reign in it 0.96

00:46:03.680 was everybody it was like all right we have those weird four years and I'm glad everyone did what 1.00

00:46:07.720 they had to do but like okay women back in the kitchen men back to stoicism you know and back to 0.89

00:46:13.000 the normal you know day to day of what things are supposed to be like yeah it's like it all just got

00:46:18.680 a little too crazy let's just dial it back um and in some ways I think that is very parallel to

00:46:25.280 what's going on now. Um, you know, like I'm Gen X, I am, you know, almost 46 years old. So I,

00:46:32.860 um, I watched the generations coming up behind me who have a very different understanding of

00:46:38.960 gender and sexuality and, you know, the ways in which people interact, which I think is wonderful. 0.59

00:46:45.300 Um, but it is terrifying to people who want this country to run on the, you know, straight, narrow Christian tracks that they've been trying to keep, quote unquote, keep it on, um, you know, for decades.

00:47:05.640 And so I think we're in a similar place now where it's like,

00:47:08.620 this is all getting a little crazy.

00:47:10.540 So we just got to really, you know, reel it back in.

00:47:13.920 And it's like, it's not, you can't, you can't put toothpaste back in a tube.

00:47:17.540 That's not, it's not, it's not going to happen.

00:47:19.400 We're not going to suddenly stop living our lives or stop doing the thing,

00:47:23.000 you know, stop expressing ourselves or things like that. Yeah.

00:47:25.760 And trans people and drag queens are two such obvious targets because like a 0.97

00:47:32.120 drag queen, you can spot a drag queen at 50 yards, right? 0.95

00:47:35.240 like big hair big boobs glitter drag queen yeah um you know and i don't think that that's true of 0.88

00:47:41.060 trans people although people always like to say well i can tell no you can't you really can't 0.96

00:47:45.340 literally cannot um but they feel like an obvious target well yeah and that's a really unfortunate

00:47:52.180 thing which i'm gonna have to do a whole episode at some point on just trans trans issues at some

00:47:56.500 point uh not that it's really my area to talk about but trans history would be a really interesting

00:48:00.620 bring another guest that also is not my area yeah we'll find somebody somebody else um somebody

00:48:07.120 will be somebody will be available for it at some point uh but yeah it's a very unfortunate thing

00:48:13.900 especially since there are elements of the queer community which are not supportive of transgender

00:48:19.760 people which i i don't understand turfy lgb people like i don't get it doesn't make any sense to me

00:48:27.380 again like whole other episode i understand how and why turfs came to be i do not understand how

00:48:35.240 they continue to proliferate here in 2023 yeah and i it's very difficult for me to understand

00:48:40.280 specifically turfs who are also queer like it just seems so counter to the idea of like look

00:48:46.060 you're you've been oppressed you know what this is like why would you perpetuate that uh but

00:48:51.960 There's lots of people who, you know, have been, who have multiple intersecting identities. And, you know, it's this like, it's this pernicious desire to be as close as possible to like, the ruling majority intersection of identities, right? Like to be as close as possible in this country to being a straight, white, cisgendered man, you know? 0.71

00:49:15.420 Um, so that it's just, it's, oh, it's just pernicious, but yeah, it's the, uh, as much 0.99

00:49:22.940 as we have to, you know, offload in order to maintain our proximity to, you know, what

00:49:29.320 we view to be like the ultimate power, um, power dynamic in this country, which is, it's

00:49:38.900 exhausting.

00:49:40.680 It's very exhausting as, you know, like you're just, uh, you have to be constantly fighting

00:49:45.100 all the time which is the thing that is great the thing that's so tough about um you know what's

00:49:53.160 going on in drag right now is that or with drag not in drag drag queens are fine it's things

00:49:58.540 happening to drag queens drag queens will always be fine drag queen community is doing great it's

00:50:05.160 just the outside of yeah it's just everybody else everybody else um is it's just like you know

00:50:13.120 there's that famous poem and the poet's name is escaping me right now,

00:50:17.040 but that was written, you know, uh, after world war two of the first,

00:50:20.400 they came, you know, it's like, look,

00:50:22.120 they're going to take drag Queens first. 0.96

00:50:24.700 And then they're going to take as many transgender people as they can find. 0.98

00:50:28.200 But like, they're coming for all the rest of us next. 0.98

00:50:31.360 All the rest of us who are not straight white, cisgendered men.

00:50:35.440 We're all next. 1.00

00:50:36.360 so there is no amount of tossing your fellow members of the queer community under the tracks 1.00

00:50:44.900 that is or under the bus that is going to save you when it's your turn to lay down on those tracks 1.00

00:50:49.780 it's just right they'll come for you if you don't fall in line they will come for you it's going to

00:50:55.160 be you know trans people it'll be drag queens it'll be the queer community it'll be feminists 0.99

00:51:00.780 whatever they will come after you and try to you know try to restrict your rights try to

00:51:05.700 i mean we're seeing that you're kind of converging on it from multiple sides but that's again another

00:51:10.060 episode i've already done an episode on the no fault divorce thing and things like that

00:51:13.480 um we could talk about this back to so many episodes uh yeah no so there's a lot there's

00:51:21.700 a lot going on here and a lot of it ties into just this general idea of people who don't want

00:51:28.020 anything outside the heteronormative you know way they grew up and they want it to stay they also

00:51:33.720 want like they want these things but they want them to stay contained right like i know you and

00:51:38.100 i talked about drag um in like movies and um you know other sort of forms of modern entertainment

00:51:45.360 like if you look at you know tango and cash uh to wong fu any of that those are all fine you know

00:51:53.340 it's mostly straight actors playing drag queens which at the time they were cast was not as much

00:52:00.000 of a thing as i think it would be now yeah um but like that's fine they just want it to stay like

00:52:05.660 on the screen self-contained they want it to stay as like in the way that we find palatable and

00:52:10.600 entertaining you know they just they want to they want this one little piece of it but not the whole

00:52:16.060 um not the the whole history and majesty majesty of what drag is in this existence of human beings

00:52:24.200 that have it yeah i you know it's like love the sinner hate the sin thing kind of like right or

00:52:29.980 you know as long as it's a punch line as long as it's something you can kind of giggle about

00:52:33.860 in a in a movie or whatever then it's okay it's fine but if it's goes further than that of somebody

00:52:41.240 willing to be taken seriously and actually want to you know subvert uh that becomes an issue right

00:52:47.680 so that they'll watch rupaul's drag race man which and no shade to drag race i think that

00:52:52.980 show is amazing and i think it has done amazing things for putting drag into the american um

00:52:59.980 popular conscience yeah definitely it has but yeah it's it's still one of those things where

00:53:06.080 it's like oh it's okay to watch rupaul's drag race but we still you know but that's just it's

00:53:10.340 like fiction it's just in the tv so it's not real yeah kind of goes into that so i'm sure we could

00:53:15.440 go on and on about this but i uh i'm not even sure how long we've been recording for so i'm not sure

00:53:21.080 how long the episode's gonna be i wasn't keeping a clock on it uh that's okay uh uh but yeah there's

00:53:29.760 there's a lot of good examples of you know of handling of drag and handling of gender non-conformity

00:53:37.540 in hollywood there are good examples i've mentioned the birdcage earlier uh you know

00:53:42.460 the the 1982 remake of victor victoria is a really really neat look at you know subverting

00:53:48.660 expectations and and and uh gender roles and of course you know being a drag king right that's a

00:53:53.860 that's that that's kind of one of the early uh pieces of media about drag kings since it is a

00:53:58.640 remake of an older film uh you know yeah so there are a lot of good representations that are very

00:54:03.520 serious and respectful of the art form in a general sense uh so at least it's not always

00:54:09.320 just a punchline like it is taken yeah and even in some films yeah yeah and especially sort of

00:54:16.780 like drag in particular in films like even when there is a punch line it's still treated seriously

00:54:21.840 like the bird cage is a really good example of that the one with ron williams um where like that

00:54:27.600 is a funny movie and the drag queens are very often punch lines but they are not the butt of

00:54:33.360 the joke right they don't exist yeah they don't exist just to be the punch line and i think that's

00:54:39.680 the important thing like it's a story about them and it's a story about like they are real human

00:54:44.660 beings in the movie and so it it has a different vibe to it like it's definitely comedy but that

00:54:50.080 doesn't mean it doesn't treat it seriously and about nathan lane you know being himself

00:54:56.260 you know being in drag as his most authentic self and trying to navigate this very difficult

00:55:03.560 oh my gosh i love that movie i need to re-watch it soon i haven't watched it in a while i definitely

00:55:09.960 need to watch it again soon yeah but yeah i mean the drag band thing has been in the news almost

00:55:16.960 constantly uh i would say it is probably one of the biggest issues on the docket right now um

00:55:24.300 obviously alongside other things like transgender issues like uh like abortion like uh you know

00:55:30.880 school shootings right those are like the four main things that are in the news consistently

00:55:35.180 and what does that tell us about our society right like don't like that so much uh i know that uh i

00:55:43.560 think the the last time i looked at it the american civil liberties union is tracking

00:55:47.340 nearly 500 anti-lgbtq bills in the u.s right now um they had to categorize they're categorizing

00:55:55.960 them as a malicious attempt to remove lgbtq people from public life and a big part of that is the

00:56:01.480 drag bands. They just don't want us to be there. They don't want us to be visible, right? Just go 0.98

00:56:08.480 back in the closet, stay in there. Yeah, don't want us to be visible, don't want us to live

00:56:12.120 authentically. You know, I had a moment the other night where I was just sort of overwhelmed by the

00:56:20.560 human cost of all of this. The queer community specifically and majority, Black members of the 0.97

00:56:32.560 queer community, Indigenous members of the queer community, other queer people of color, have been

00:56:37.400 paying this human cost for decades, literal decades. We lost an entire generation to a plague 0.63

00:56:45.040 that nobody cared about for much too long um and every so often i am just so overwhelmed by just 0.96

00:56:54.960 the just the naked cruelty of it all you know because it's i feel like you know that irish

00:57:01.400 sort of blessing slash curse of may you live in interesting times like you read about this stuff

00:57:06.820 in history books and you're like um you know god that must have been awful what was that like and

00:57:11.520 it's just sometimes it's overwhelming sometimes I still have to pay the power bill like it's just

00:57:16.540 we're in such a very strange time um and I think it is so is more important now than ever I always

00:57:23.960 think queer history is important but now more than ever for our community to understand

00:57:31.440 the roots of where we've been what battles we have already fought and won and lost um and what

00:57:38.420 that means about where we are now. Yeah. I think that's very true. And I also think that's a great

00:57:44.400 spot to kind of end us on today. I think it's a, it's a good, you know, good message to end on

00:57:50.720 today. So yeah, I'm definitely going to have you back though. Cause this is great. It's like having

00:57:55.260 a conversation with a friend and then recording it. So I have, I can just put it out there and

00:57:58.800 not have to write a whole script or anything. It's wonderful. I love doing podcasts. So I am

00:58:04.580 always happy to come back. All right. I'll let you know. I'll let you send you the notes on the

00:58:08.180 next one on cross-dressing i can we can work on that one next uh yeah so i get to talk about my

00:58:13.840 very favorite thing which is the american frontier at the end of the 1800s i love that period too

00:58:19.260 it's fantastic getting to talk about that like talking about women who like you know cut their

00:58:23.460 skirts off and just wore their bloomers i think it's hilarious it's wonderful i want to definitely

00:58:27.560 want to talk about that uh yeah all right so uh thank you thank you everybody for tuning in to

00:58:33.660 hear both of us bitch about history today not just one person this time um if you're listening

00:58:38.100 you probably already know where to find me online uh but in case you don't you can find all the links 0.73

00:58:42.520 to my socials on bitchyhistory.com so it's all the links you can possibly want uh and you can 1.00

00:58:47.500 also find a bio for amanda with links to her socials as well uh but let them know where they 0.66

00:58:52.240 can find you online here you can find me on instagram and tiktok as yesterqueers easy enough

00:58:58.120 easy to find right it's easier than spelling my first name which you know trying to tell people

00:59:02.920 find me as professor meredith they're like i don't know how to spell meredith i i don't know 0.66

00:59:06.780 what you mean that's a thing yeah well yes or queers there you go and there'll be a link on

00:59:12.500 the website which bitchy histories that's not bitchy history.com isn't hard to type in that 0.68

00:59:16.640 one's fine professor bitchy history from now on yeah i'll just do that that's wonderful that'll

00:59:21.480 work fine yeah until my students actually start calling me that at the college and then it won't

00:59:26.320 be fine well they already call you that meredith probably do so as a brief reminder bitchy history 1.00

00:59:32.580 is going to be transitioning to one episode a week from July 3rd onward. I mentioned this on 1.00

00:59:38.240 Monday's episode. The two episode week has just been a lot of work to keep up with, especially

00:59:43.800 when still running my research consulting business. And unfortunately, that work is the

00:59:48.100 more important one since it's the one that, you know, pays for the podcast, pays to keep my lights

00:59:52.400 on, pays for my car, pays for my food. Those seem to be important things. So the show will still be

00:59:58.160 out on Mondays at 8 a.m. Eastern, but there will not be a Thursday episode. So we're just going to

01:00:02.300 go to one episode a week uh and as a final reminder tomorrow june 23rd i'm going to be

01:00:07.460 hosting a tiktok live with several uh historians archaeologists mother humanities experts including

01:00:13.400 amanda most likely if you're going to be there i will be there be there uh at 8 30 p.m eastern

01:00:18.640 which uh the event is called history and drinks and the joke right now is that we're doing drunk

01:00:23.660 history the right way uh that you know the show drunk history uh so we're doing it the way it

01:00:29.220 should be done so put that in your calendar and come over to my tiktok for that it'll be hosted 0.99

01:00:34.220 on my page so all right and bitchy history will be back on monday we're going to be exploring what 1.00

01:00:40.220 life was like in the colonial american period in the early 1700s uh we're inching in on finally

01:00:46.840 getting to you know the american revolution we've only got 70 more or seven more decades left to

01:00:51.520 cover uh before we get there we'll get there sometime in july maybe i don't know we'll see

01:00:58.680 uh yeah and i'll see you back here on monday

Bitchy History - June 22, 2023

Episode 11： Pride Special - The History of Drag in America

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