International Drag Day: Drag and the Fight for LGBTQ+ Rights

International Drag Day: Drag and the Fight for LGBTQ+ Rights

This International Drag Day, GLAD is celebrating the history of drag performers and their role in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights.

Drag, or the art of theatrical exaggeration of gender, has been happening since antiquity, but our modern understanding of drag began in earnest in the 19th century. William Dorsey Swann, a formerly enslaved Black man, began hosting private balls in his home called "drags," where he would perform in elegant feminine attire. These balls were mostly attended by fellow formerly enslaved people. Swann was arrested several times throughout his life for charges like female impersonation and "keeping a disorderly house," which was a euphemism for running a brothel. After being charged with keeping a disorderly house in 1896 and being sentenced to ten months in jail, he asked for a presidential pardon from President Grover Cleveland. While the president denied Swann's request, this was the first time on record of an American seeking legal or political action to defend the LGBTQ+ community, and the community formed within his balls is considered the first LGBTQ+ resistance group.

Drag performers from early 20th century

Balls like Swann's persisted into the 20th century, especially in New York City. The Harlem Renaissance, a period of immense growth in Black artistry, hosted many queer Black artists who took part in and attended extravagant drag balls. Across the country and abroad, vaudeville acts included female impersonators at the beginning of the century. At that same time, people performing exaggerated masculinity started to push into the performance scene. These performers were the start of the modern drag king. Drag acts persisted, sometimes even in the mainstream, even while society was not kind to queer people. Drag performance over time has never been restricted to performing exaggerated forms of binary genders, but also includes exploring expressions of gender between or separated entirely from that binary.

Drag balls were also a space for competition. Ball competitions and pageant circuits came into popularity in the 1960s. This surge in the presence of drag artists, mostly queens, was dampened both by police raids of venues hosting balls and by racism within these competitions. In response to discrimination experienced within drag pageants and the larger drag scene, Crystal and Lottie LaBeija founded the House of LaBeija, the first major drag House, and began hosting balls to create a space for drag performers and queer people of color to thrive. The concept of the drag House grew from that point, becoming a feature of the scene, and often becoming real families for young queer people. While Houses were not formalized aid organizations, queer youth who ended up on the street for their identity were often taken in by heads of Houses, given a place to sleep, food to eat, and mentors to care for and help them.

Stormé DeLarverie

Police frequently raided queer spaces through the mid-20th century, targeting drag queens, trans women, and people who defied gender norms with especially brutal treatment. Bars in New York and across the country were not allowed to serve "known homosexuals" and banned crossdressing, or wearing the clothes typically associated with the opposite sex. Despite these laws and the violent policing of gay bars, LGBTQ+ people continued to gather in these community spaces.

In June 1969, police famously raided the Stonewall Inn in the West Village, NY. This time, the patrons fought back. For days, members of New York's LGBTQ+ community protested, refusing to be intimidated and attacked for living authentically. One of the leaders of the Stonewall Uprising was Stormé DeLarverie, a drag king and activist within the Gay Liberation movement.

These protests marked the beginning of the modern gay rights movements, which included the formation of several activist organizations by drag queens in New York, like the Queens Liberation Front (QLF) and Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (STAR). STAR was founded by Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, two drag queens and trans women at the forefront of the Stonewall Uprising. Johnson and Rivera built STAR based on how drag houses served the community, providing homes and aid for homeless queer youth and sex workers. STAR and the QLF were involved in protests, sit-ins, pushes for anti-discrimination laws, and pride demonstrations.

Boston Sisters of Perpetual
Indulgence at GLAD's 2023 Summer Party

Drag performers taking part in activism was never exclusive to New York. In San Francisco, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence dressed in nun-themed drag while working to provide AIDS and safe-sex education and protest for protections, along with raising money to serve local queer communities. In the 90s, Chicago-based drag queen Joan Jett Blakk ran for mayor, and then for president, on the Queer Nation Party ticket. The goal of their campaigns we not to win political office but rather to increase the visibility of queer issues, especially the ongoing AIDS crisis at the time, as Blakk was an advocate with the national organization Act Up.

Since the turn of the 21st century, drag has made its way into the mainstream. Competition shows, especially RuPaul's Drag Race, have thrust drag queens into the spotlight. Many have used this new platform to advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. Bob the Drag Queen talked about his experience being arrested at a 2011 protest for marriage equality and getting thrown in jail while in full drag. Queens across the country use their voices to push for queer rights, whether that be through major mainstream spaces like Drag Race or within their own community.

Drag queen story hour. Photo credit: Jonathan Moore

In recent years, drag has been targeted by discriminatory laws in many states. Tennessee proposed a law banning any performance involving male or female impersonation from public spaces or in front of children. Other states have introduced similar bills, but legal challenges have so far kept states from enforcing them.All these bans target drag under claims of it being dangerous to children, which is patently untrue. Drag performers have done family-appropriate performances, brunches, and storybook readings for years, but under these bans, those would be considered exposing children to adult content and be punishable by law.

For over a century, drag and those who perform it have been at the forefront of queer organizing and activism. Drag is an inherently transgressive act, defined by resistance to traditional ideas of gender. That visible resistance has made drag performers targets of political attacks and suppression but has also allowed drag performers to push for a better world for the LGBTQ+ community. GLAD will continue to defend the rights of all people to express themselves authentically and without discrimination.

Celebrate the legacy of drag at GLAD's 43rd Annual Summer Party on July 27, 2024 in Provincetown, MA. This year's honoree is drag icon and LGBTQ+ activist Varla Jean Merman.

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