MAGA Republicans are obsessed with harassing drag shows -- here's why

[Nevilledog]

https://www.salon.com/2022/12/09/maga-are-obsessed-with-harassing-drag-shows--heres-why/

"I woke up like this." So sayeth the 2013 Beyoncé anthem "Flawless," a song that also features a speech by feminist writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. When it was released, the lyric caused some grumbling among feminists who took it literally, but in my experience, fans understand it how Beyoncé almost certainly meant it, as an ironic joke. We do not wake up like this. Feminine presentation, in particular, can be a lot of work, with heavy investment in hair, makeup and clothes. Plenty of folks feel like genderless puffbags when they wake up, until they groom and doll themselves up.

In other words, Beyoncé boiled down reams of Judith Butler-style feminist theory for the masses: Gender is a performance. It's an idea that caused much angsty academic debate for years. But when you put it like Beyoncé does, it starts to sound more like common sense.

"Flawless" has been rattling around in my head for months now, drawn out of my subconscious as reaction to months of growing right-wing attacks on drag shows. Just a couple of weeks ago, there was a mass shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs that left five people dead and 22 injured, on a night in which a drag show was scheduled. The alleged shooter has been charged with hate crimes. Groups like the Proud Boys have only escalated the harassment since then, successfully terrorizing some performers into canceling shows. CNN reports that investigators are exploring the theory that right-wing terrorists vandalized a power system in North Carolina, wiping out electricity for thousands of people, in an effort to shut down a drag show.

Why the sudden right-wing obsession with drag shows? The simplest explanation is it's part of a deliberate increase in anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and action from the MAGA movement in the wake of Donald Trump's 2020 election loss. Conservative media now regularly flings false accusations that LGBTQ people and allies are "grooming" children for sexual abuse. Books that feature queer characters are being banned from schools and libraries. Florida passed the infamous "don't say gay" law that is scaring teachers and students back into the closet. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott directed Child Protective Services to "investigate" families for accepting trans children. Republicans are attacking the right of trans people, especially kids, to play sports or receive gender-affirming care.

*snip*

[Ocelot II]

1. Here it is, in a nutshell:

"Drag exposes how much of femininity — and how much of gender overall, masculinity included — is socially constructed. Fascists hate that, since they need to believe gender is a biological imperative." That, exactly. RW men perform their masculinity, or what they think passes for it, with their strutting around with their guns and camo and body armor, just as much as drag performers perform femininity - except that drag performers know that they're performing.

[Hekate]

4. This. And the pathetic RW "conservative" creatures hate women who won't submit 100% to them...

Hence bans on women’s health care.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. Interesting read.

[GenThePerservering]

3. "we're born naked and the rest is drag."

RuPaul.

[Initech]

5. I also think Tucker Carlson has a lot to do with it.

[jmowreader]

6. There's another and simpler reason

Really hardcore conservatives don't like anyone to be different from them.

"I don't want to smoke marijuana so no one should be allowed to."
"I don't want to live in a big city so no one else should be allowed to."
"I am a man and I don't want to wear lipstick, so no man should be allowed to wear it."
"I am a woman and I hate combat boots on ladies, so no woman should be allowed to wear them."
"I am a man married to a woman, so no man should be allowed to be married to anyone who isn't a woman."
"I like guns, so everyone should have to own guns."

Drag demonstrates that every person should be able to live according to his own beliefs. If I want to go out wearing a dress, six-inch heels and a full face of makeup, I should be able to do that. Conversely, if I want to go out dressed like the construction worker character from The Village People, I should be able to do that too. It certainly harms no one for me to dress either way...well, unless I buy the last package of a color someone needs for her wedding eyes, but that's a different issue. According to The Hard Right, dressing in clothes they don't like shouldn't be allowed at all.

The whole "groomer" thing is an attempt to bring the rest of society into their way of thinking. "Shun that person. He or she isn't like me."

[Delmette2.0]

8. I am starting to think the groomer issue is self hatred

The RW hates liberals. The RW hates "groomers" of anything thing gender related. So the problem can't be in their ranks. It must be the liberals.

[crickets]

7. Great read. K&R