This organization is one that has served the LGBTQ+ community and their heterosexual counterparts for years. It is an international one and survived the AIDs epidemic, while supporting those who could not support themselves, and served their local and national communities. It is the Imperial Court System that was created by Mama Jose.
This was created when she returned to San Francisco after serving her country in World War 2. She saw the divide that formed within the LGBT community. The fights that happened between men and women, white and black, and heterosexual and homosexual. She stepped up to create a space and organization that would allow all people to come together in a court to give direction to their activities. She made the Imperial Court System to bring different people together and give them titles to encourage cooperation and foster long-lasting relationships through outreach and bettering their lives by engaging their communities. She knew that activism needed a strong backing to show that even if they were different, that they could still provide benefits to their community and contribute in a positive manner. It also provided a place for everyone to come to and find a new family in place of the ones that had turned their backs on so many of us.
There is so much history here that we could, and most likely will, delve into. But those are for another time. You can see the Imperial Court’s page here. There are chapters all over the US, Canada, and Mexico, including Hawaii and Alaska. If you are interested in participating in your local court, you can search for it here. This organization has raised millions of dollars to help everyone. They are one of the best examples of drag as a positive influence on society.
It all started with a cake; how did
it end up like this? It was only a cake. It was only a cake.
That is
what people repeat when defending the rights of people to refuse their services
to those of us in the LGBTQ+ community based on their religious freedoms. Those
of us paying attention to things outside of ourselves knew that it would start
like that, but end up being more than just photography, flowers, cakes, and
wedding sites. Other states followed suit and added more to their discriminatory
practices, rolling back the protections we fought so hard to get, that were not
special rights, but those that everyone else enjoys just by being heterosexual;
the right to buy and live without impediments. Now, the threat of being turned
away from medical services has expanded, and it isn’t an unfounded fear, but a reality.
A
federal judge unraveled the protections for Trans people to receive medical
care that the Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare, provided. That
meant that any medical facility that accepted federal money had to treat any Trans
person who came in for treatment. They don’t have to follow that at this point
anymore. Someone said that it was illegal to refuse to treat people, but it isn’t,
and some states have had this in place for a while that they could just refuse
to treat the patient. We’ve also talked with people who tried to justify the behavior
of doctors to refuse to treat people, saying things like, “well, my doctor
ended our treatment relationship because I wasn’t following their treatment plan.”
That isn’t the same as just being refused care because someone doesn’t
understand or agree with a person’s gender, sexuality, or other reasons. These
were the same things that happened to people of color and even women and still
do. These are dangerous ideas and have no basis in society because they spread
fear and hated and will kill people.
A drag
queen recently opened up about a surgery they had to treat a severe staph infection.
They were afraid to go to a doctor about the problem when the pain started, and
they knew something was wrong. That fear was from having to find a doctor who
wouldn’t judge them for being non-conforming, a drag queen, and understand what
they needed to do to be a drag queen. This was in New York City, which is more
progressive than many places, but there are still problems with seeking medical
care. People push the idea that their religion is more important than other
peoples’ lives because setting that aside to do a job is detrimental. But religion
is a choice. Needing medical help is usually not a choice.
No one should
have to worry about whether they will be treated that day when they go into a
hospital or clinic. There is more to that than what we’re talking about, but
that’s another thing altogether. Fearing the judgment of doctors, having them spew
hate and malice, or just refusing to care for someone and the possibility of
death is just horrendous. This decision has far more implications than just shopping
around or having to Google more people to find a place that’s open-minded. This
is messing with the ability to live. Actually live and not die.
But remember,
we’re just entitled brats who want to enslave everyone to serve us, even though
it was never about the cake.
You can read about some of the decision here and the drag queen’s story here.
Feminists
and drag queens didn’t always walk hand-in-hand, but let’s face it, there’s a
stereotype that gay men and women are BFFs for a reason. We like to look at
men, in the male-gaze type of way, though less predatory and more, wouldn’t
kick him out of bed for eating crackers kind of way. But it’s always been a
rocky road, and let’s face it, feminists can by kind of wacky, more so when
religion enters the mix or gender identity. Those TERF peeps are wacked, and
it’s not in a good way.
Feminism is a broad area and has roots leading back to the women’s suffragette movement, but the OWL At Purdue, which is a credible source since the twits are trying to troll literary theory, says that it’s, “the ways in which literature (and other cultural productions) reinforce or undermine the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women,” based on Tyson’s explanation. She also continues with a list that states (the full page is here),
Women are oppressed by patriarchy economically, politically, socially, and psychologically; patriarchal ideology is the primary means by which women are oppressed.
In every domain where patriarchy reigns, woman is other: she is marginalized, defined only by her difference from male norms and values.
All of Western (Anglo-European) civilization is deeply rooted in patriarchal ideology, for example, in the Biblical portrayal of Eve as the origin of sin and death in the world.
While biology determines our sex (male or female), culture determines our gender (scales of masculine and feminine).
All feminist activity, including feminist theory and literary criticism, has as its ultimate goal to change the world by prompting gender equality.
Gender issues play a part in every aspect of human production and experience, including the production and experience of literature, whether we are consciously aware of these issues or not.
The primary goal of feminism is to promote gender equality
and to expose the oppression of women. As much as these people would like to
say that drag is oppression, it isn’t. Many queens model themselves after
strong, independent women who have dominated their areas, like Beyonce, Brittney
Spears, Cher, Dolly Pardon, and more. Other things drag queens have done to
promote equality and to lift women up is Drag Queen University, which was
produced by RuPaul and helped women by putting them into drag and helping them
find their inner queen. They boosted their confidence and helped them to take
time out for themselves and really listen to these women. We do this on a
regular basis and try to help everyone we come into contact with. We offer
makeup tips, outfit advice, life advice, and often we’re the shoulder to cry on
or someone to just listen to them.
Other
feminists, like Rose McGowen, have asked gay men to step up and do more for
women in our quest for equality. Yet, there are feminists who insist that men
are not allowed to say anything on the subject, yet want us to do things to
help with it, but only if it’s on specific terms that fit their narrowed
interpretation of feminism, that only includes specific women, but not the
slutty ones who look like they’re on meth (the slanderbatch’s words, not ours).
So, which is it? Are men allowed to be feminists or not? Is the point of
feminism equality, or is it limited to the point that only specific women are
allowed in, but not the ones who might not be godly women? Are trans people
allowed? Do their voices matter when they transition from women to men or men
to women? Where does that line end?
To address
the blackface and womenface crap, because that’s what it is. Blackface was a
way to humiliate and make black people unable to have a place in theater,
movies, and TV. Its only purpose was to keep black people down and to not allow
them visibility in the world because they were viewed as less than. Drag may
have started out like that, but it has evolved since then, and we can all agree
that oppressing people is bad, unless they’re gay, trans, or not godly, in some
people’s opinion. Blackface was exiled to the history books because it’s
racist. The idea of womanface is just stupid. Drag isn’t there to oppress
women. It doesn’t take jobs away from them. It doesn’t take away from their
ability to work, be visible, or live at all. It isn’t making fun of women, as
much as these people would have others believe. It does allow biological women
to be included in the cannon of drag, and there are women who are drag kings.
These women dress as men and perform. So, does that mean that they should have
men standing outside of those places with signs saying take off the manface? Or
is that the ultimate form of feminism by taking down the patriarchy through a new
version of being men? Though, I would think that most of us in the LGBTQ+
community understand the actual point of feminism and know that it’s about
equality and that drag is just an expression and an art form that allows people
to live authentically.
Oh, and
something these women also forget, is that their religions typically are the
most misogynistic religions they could be part of, since that list shows that
that Eve was the first to sin and all that; and since women can’t ever hold
positions of power in most of those religions, but hey, let’s worry about drag
queens reading to children because it’s womanface…
Also, a
point of clarification since these people like to say things that aren’t true.
We aren’t attacking anyone for being white, cis-gendered, women, or Christian.
We’re confronting the lies that these people hand out without thinking. They
know they’re lying and continue to do so because it gives them a platform, and
the uninformed and ignorant eat it up. They know that people won’t do any of
their own research, and when these people are confronted with actual research,
they resort to ad hominem attacks (like calling women sluts or drag queens
perverts and pedophiles), or playing the victim saying that they’re being
silenced (when people are literally telling them that they’re lying), or ignore
the question and redirect it to their narrative (like when they’re asked about
their church leaders being convicted murders and actual pedophiles and child
molesters and what they’re going to do about them), or straight up block
people. They aren’t informed, or they’re purposefully ignorant. We don’t care
that they’re women or white or Christian. What we do care about is that they
are lying and the bullshit that they try to push as truth. We’re correcting
that and will be there standing up to it all the way.
We
started this blog with the intent to correct the propaganda that comes from Christian
Extremists and Terrorists who still have their sights aimed at the LGBTQ+
community. Specifically, gay men and trans people, though there are some cis-gendered
drag queens. We did see some of the responses that were posted on the first blog
post, and we thank you for your encouragement, but we would like to address the
other responses about feeding the Slanderbatch and the trolls. We aren’t. We
are correcting their lies and spreading the truth about drag and what it is,
and most importantly, what it isn’t. The other reason we are doing this is that
they will spread like STIs in the red-light districts of ye olden times if they
are left unattended. They breed in the dark and only scatter when light is
shined on them. And yes, they are just as bad, if not worse than an infestation
of cockroaches. The reason people like Trump, Hitler, and so many other vile
people have the power they do is that people keep using the idea that if we
ignore them, that they’ll go away. That isn’t true. Yaniputzalitz, or whatever
her name is, only got pushed off the stage because people finally said they had
enough and met her head-on, and she was banned from so many places and
countries because of the filth she peddled. Silence doesn’t work in the way
people think it does, and ignoring things is the same as agreeing to them and
allowing them to happen.
Another way
to look at this is like this: a fight breaks out on a bus after people shouted slurs
at another person. You stare out the window and pretend like nothing is
happening, just like everyone else on the bus. The person dies, and people walk
off the bus, and the bus driver slides them onto the street, sprays the blood
out with a hose, and continues on their route. Nothing changes, and people got
away with a hate-crime and murder. Things like this still happen. People still
have the mentality that if it isn’t happening to them, then it doesn’t matter.
The problem with that is that many Jewish people felt the same way until the German
army came to their town to force them into the Ghettos. It doesn’t happen quickly,
and it’s a slow shuffle until you are the group that is targeted. The same
happened in America, with so many groups and still do. Rights and views of people
are swayed by what we ignore and remain silent to.
The other
side is that we, as LGBTQ+ people, tried the nice and silent types of protest
and to change peoples’ minds. It didn’t work, and we were the ones who were
ignored. It wasn’t until a bunch of queens, trans people, and people of color
fucked shit up and got LOUD, that shit changed. Silence is not the answer and never
has been. Their sides are not silent and peddle propaganda like it’s normal.
Why shouldn’t we speak the truth just as loud, if not louder? Why should we be
the people who have to turn the other cheek and wait for the backhand that is always
going to hit us? We are not here to tolerate intolerance, because all that allows
for is fascism to fester, and then we have Christian Extremist and Terrorist
filling the streets instead of being put in the places where they belong, which
is the pages of history books as a blip. We can’t wait for them to become as
powerful as Islamic Extremist and Terrorist groups, and they are slowly getting
there again. They’re eroding the rights we have by passing more laws, filling more
seats in political positions, and winning cases by swaying the higher courts
with people who are sympathetic to their causes.
Silence is what kills us. Speaking up will keep us alive.
I’m going to lay out just some of my background quickly. I
have two graduate degrees. My first is an MA in English and Creative Writing,
the second is an MFA in Creative Writing. I also have a BA in English and
Creative Writing with an Institutional Certificate in Professional and
Technical Writing. I have work published in both poetry and flash fiction, and
a few commissioned pieces that are more academic. In other words, I know my
shit and am familiar, entirely, with literary theories, unlike some people who
think they know what they’re talking about because they went to the school of
Google and read a Wiki or a summary of one. Oh, and I’m a drag queen too.
Anyway, this is in response to some woman’s blog, which the
grammar was, lacking, to say the least, and the accuracy was worse. Basically,
she has no understanding of anything to do with my field or what Marxist and
Queer theory is or what they are used for, specifically in English. But it’s
full of venom, hyperbole, and red herrings, strawman, and basically the entire
cast of The Wizard of Oz. But at least one of those characters gets and
brain in the end. I doubt she ever will, or that blonde crackpot of a social
media star wannabe, she calls a “friend”.
Let’s start with the reality of Queer Theory. The is and is
not of Queer Theory, which also includes gender studies, which means it
includes women’s literature as an other or marginalized group. That, right away,
takes away from most of what this woman tries to imply through her thinly veiled
knowledge of something she clearly didn’t study. She is almost as bad as
Professor Umbridge, but at least Umbridge put effort into her evil, whereas
this woman mainly relies on insults and silencing the opposition through bluffs
and threats, and blocking anyone from posing an opposing view on anything
because she can’t handle being wrong.
Anyway, Queer Theory. Purdue states that “Gender studies and
queer theory explore issues of sexuality, power, and marginalized populations
(woman and [people with disabilities] as other)] in literature and culture.
Much of the work in gender studies and queer theory, while influenced by
feminist criticism, emerges from post-structural interest in fragmented,
de-centered knowledge building (Nietzsche, Derrida, Foucault), language (the
breakdown of sign-signifier), and psychoanalysis (Lacan).”
What that means is that it deals with the otherness of text
and literature. It includes women because women have not been allowed to be
included in the canon of literature, historically. Men have, and still do,
dominate the field of English and publishing. Others that are included in the
otherness are the disabled, LGBTQ+, and many minorities, which can include
religious minorities. But she wouldn’t bring that up because it would, again,
defeat her narrative of LGBTQ+ people taking over the world, which we definitely
aren’t. And when it was brought to her attention that people with disabilities and
women are part of queer theory, she removed the comments. Kind of shady and
ignoring her child, who fits into both of those categories. Shame on her for
ignoring that piece of information. But it defeats the narrative she’s trying
to craft with her insane crusade of predatory queens out to corrupt the world.
Though, I’m sure the men in dresses that run her Catholic church have already done
that.
As for Marxist theory, I don’t think she knows what she’s
talking about. Purdue states that it is, “Based on the theories of Karl Marx
(and so influenced by philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel), this school
concerns itself with class differences, economic and otherwise, as well as the
implications and complications of the capitalist system: “Marxism attempts
to reveal the ways in which our socioeconomic system is the ultimate source of
our experience.” People or, “Theorists working in the Marxist tradition,
therefore, are interested in answering the overarching question, whom does it
[the work, the effort, the policy, the road, etc.]
benefit? The elite? The
middle class? Marxist critics are also interested in how the lower or working classes
are oppressed – in everyday life and in literature.”
If she’s talking about how we’re oppressed and that we’re
opening the dialogue for that oppression, both sexual and gender-related,
because we in fact are. Her post specifically shows just how far we still have
to go because the irony is that she is oppressing us further based on her
status as a heterosexual, white, cis-gendered woman, who is also part of the
largest Christian religion in the world, Catholic (more on that later). But it
isn’t that we use Marxism to oppress other people, because that would defeat
the Marxist principle of exploring how oppression is experienced.
What these do not include is bestiality, pedophilia, or
other nonsense buzzwords to stir the religious into thinking that all we are is
sexual freaks who do nothing but have orgies. Some of us do, most of us don’t,
but the same is true, in higher numbers, for heterosexual people. And honestly,
pedophilia is mostly a heterosexual, cis-gendered, white man’s problem, not a
gay or queer problem. The statistics are not there. Professor Herek’s blog
states that,
A second
problem is that the terminology used in this area is often confusing and can
even be misleading. We can begin to address that problem by defining some basic
terms.
Pedophilia and child molestation are used in different ways,
even by professionals. Pedophilia usually refers to an adult psychological
disorder characterized by a preference for prepubescent children as sexual
partners; this preference may or may not be acted upon.
He also continues by quoting Groth,
Are homosexual adults in general sexually attracted to
children and are preadolescent children at greater risk of molestation from
homosexual adults than from heterosexual adults? There is no reason to believe
so. The research to date all points to there being no significant relationship
between a homosexual lifestyle and child molestation. There appears to be
practically no reportage of sexual molestation of girls by lesbian adults, and
the adult male who sexually molests young boys is not likely to be homosexual.
That’s why there hasn’t been research on the topic, because
it isn’t there. LGBTQ+ people aren’t the problem in this area. The people who
are the problem are priests, preachers, and other men who have access to
children, and I mean actual children, for which the term pedophile actually
refers to. They are the people who are actually grooming children for sex, in
their secret places that they take their victims to and tell them not to tell
anyone about. That’s what grooming is. It’s not drag queens allowing children
to sit on their laps as they take pictures and read them stories, in public. It
isn’t LGBTQ+ people being visible and showing diversity. Grooming is a process
that is conducted in secret with the intent to have sex with a victim.
Promoting literacy and diversity is not grooming, and it’s disgusting that
someone would try implying that is what libraries are doing just because they
harbor hatred for LGBTQ+ people.
Now let’s take on misogyny of drag. Yes, there were some
aspects that were misogynistic, like back in ye olden days when women were not
allowed to perform in plays and men played all of the parts, which is where
drag came from, but that’s not what the lazy person is talking about. She’s
implying that drag, these days, is misogyny because we’re portraying women in a
false and misogynistic way. That we’re oversexualizing women and so on. Well,
we do sexualize aspects of women, but it’s more of femininity and the power
that women should have to have control over themselves and their bodies, which
she does not support because someone’s anti-choice (see how that works
Professor Bandersnatch of Umbridge). I won’t lie and say that there aren’t gay
men who are misogynistic because there are, but so is this woman, and the woman
who reposted her garbage message. Drag isn’t anymore. It’s the idea of
empowering people to be who they are, to make art, to show that there isn’t
anything wrong with being fabulous and taking up space and being loud. Drag is
freedom from oppression and pushing against the constraints of an oppressive
religious world that she and others like her are trying to enforce on us.
They’re trying to point the finger at us but are really Christian Terrorists
who have the same goals as the Islamic Terrorists.
They’re influencing laws, protesting Planned Parenthood and
other clinics, bombing, shooting, and spewing propaganda. They operate with
less force than their Middle Eastern counterparts, but they are growing in
power and have a following that doesn’t know how to think for themselves or to
check facts. They simply believe and don’t care for facts that contradict their
core beliefs that LGBTQ+ people are bad, and that “leftists” are assaulting the
values of this country. We’re not, we’re just tired of lies told by Christian
Terrorists that haven’t evolved since the Dark Ages. But we wouldn’t expect
less from people who cherry-pick their belief systems and brainwash children to
do the same. Their children will become hateful in a house of lies, and they
will have to deal with the sins of the father, and in these cases, the mothers’.
