Published June 25, 2024
You can also find this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, or anywhere you get your podcasts!
This podcast is funded by the New York City Council. It was developed by History UnErased and produced and edited by Dinah Mack; Kathleen Barker; and Deb Fowler.
TRANSCRIPT
Deb Fowler: Hello, and welcome to UnErasing LGBTQ History and Identities — A Podcast. I’m Deb Fowler, co-founder of History UnErased. When you think about the arts and their connection to the story of America, what comes to mind? Literature, music, poetry, theatrical productions? This episode unpacks an art form that deserves its rightful place in American culture and history. Take it away, Kathleen!
Kathleen Barker: This month we’re diving into a topic that's both timeless and timely: and that topic is Drag. Drag allows individuals from all walks of life to explore and express different facets of their identity. It provides a platform for self-discovery and the celebration of individuality, often transcending traditional gender roles and norms. In the midst of ongoing backlash, it's also important to remember that drag isn’t new. Drag has deep historical roots, and Drag artists have played a vital role in LGBTQ history and activism for centuries, from William Dorsey Swann in the 19th century, to the Stonewall Uprising in 1969, and twenty-first century Pride events.
Drag is also a vibrant art form that has been used to critique cultural, political, and social topics. The History UnErased staff had the opportunity to sit down with author and historian Elyssa Maxx Goodman to learn more about the history, significance, and evolution of drag, as well as its enduring impact on our culture. Keep listening to hear more about how you can support the Drag community.
KB: Welcome. We're pleased to have Melissa Max Goodman with us today to discuss their book, glitter and Concrete. Welcome, Melissa.
Elyssa Maxx Goodman: Oh, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. What a pleasure. I'm honored to be here. Thank you.
KB: Well, we are honored to have you and talk to you about your book, which is an amazing, detailed and thorough history of drag. So drag clearly has a long history in the United States. What were some of the stories from past centuries that surprised you or maybe one of your favorite stories?
EMG: There were many, of course. I think the thing that I learned that was most interesting and most surprising to me was the role that drag played in World War ii. I think to that point, I hadn't really clocked it as a, I don't know, as a significant marker or significant contributor to American history at that point. But it was, and the reason it was, was in part because the creation of the special services division in the military, which then hired all of these performing artists to create morale boosting shows for the soldiers, and drag was a part of that. And it wasn't that they were hiring drag artists necessarily because there were all these limitations placed on people who were queer, of course, like being thrown out of the army without benefits. There were no women for a very long time in the military, so men had to adopt all of the roles and the roles that they were adopting were also of women, so they were in drag.
And one of my favorite things that you talk about digging into the archives and things that you found that were really wonderful was I found a letter from the performer, Sterling Holloway, who later became the voice of Whitney the Pooh. He was in a performing troop called a Yardbird Review, which performed in Algiers, and he wrote home to his smother, I think. And this letter was published in the Camden, New Jersey newspaper. And he was talking about how Eisenhower wrote them a letter saying that their work is so valuable and they're doing a great job and all this kind of thing. And that was a troop that featured drag the Yardbird review. And in the same breath, soldiers are being dismissed from the army for being queer or being suspected of being queer or anything like that, or not even, there were special screenings against queerness that were rooted in horrifying stereotypes.
And here drag was an essential part of morale boosting during World War ii acknowledged by one of its primary leaders. So that was something that was really powerful to me. And then, so this was the program that I was talking about earlier. And then in the program there's a lot of what I've referred to as a buting, a language, if you will, where it says, this is a grand ancient tradition that dates back to the Greeks and the Romans and all this kind of thing. And then there's pictures of the Secretary of War and of course the commander in chief and just kind of placing everything that the soldiers are doing in this context of these are grand fighting traditions and they are, but the context was important at the time. So the soldiers weren't seen as just like these flaming queens, which they weren't allowed to be.
And I mean, of course also not everyone was, but it would've been in mainstream culture at the time, who this show was geared toward to be out. It would've or to be associated with what was seen at the time as unquote deviant in any way was. And then to have that sanctioned by the government, it just wouldn't have flown. So now we have drag that is an essential part of American history and was celebrated as such at the time, and it couldn't be trodden on because it, because they were situations that were created by the military. So it's all this sort of lots of overlap and lots of interesting things like that. And to me it's endlessly fascinating.
KB: Alright, we'll move forward a little bit in the 20th century post-World War ii and thinking about activism, what role did drag artists play during Stonewall and other uprisings? And how are drag artists involved in the fight for equality today?
EMG: The way that drag artists played a role in Stonewall gay clubs at the time, or gay bars at the time, I should say rather were predominantly owned by the mafia, and Stonewall was one of the few clubs where people in drag were actually allowed in. And part of that had to do with the, I don't want to say optics, although I'm sure that's part of it. Part of that had to do with the fact that there were planned police raids. And at the time there was something that was called the three-piece rule, but interestingly was never actually on the books where you were walking down on the street, you had to be wearing at least three items of the clothing that would be appropriate for the gender you were assigned at birth or for the sex you were assigned at birth. And if you weren't wearing that, you could be arrested.
But it was never an actual law on the books. It was kind of just like a shorthand that cops would use to arrest people and that queer people use to keep themselves safe. So another factor to note here is that the way that we think about a person in drag now is very different in some ways than the way we thought about it in the past. So there was a hierarchy, and the hierarchy was that there would be a female impersonator, and that was the person who was paid to be as the line and the producers goes a gorgeous showgirl and gooey gowns. And then you had people who kind of just went out in drag on Halloween or on New Year's, and it was a designation of Amateurishness, and that was a person who was a drag queen. And it could be, it was also a slur and it was a slur leveled at transgender women, transgender sex workers.
And it was a designation not just of amateurishness, but of cheapness of low quality in some way. Some people embraced it and other people just had this phrase put on them. And then there were also people who were called street queens who may or may not have been transgender but were sex workers and would appear in feminine attire on the street to obtain clients. And so the Stonewall was a bar that was frequented by drag queens and street queens - in the parlance of the time. And it was also a bar that was predominantly, certainly attended by people of color. And the way that the gay bars worked at the time was that everyone got paid off constantly. And there were often raids, but there were raids that essentially the management knew about. But this time it was one that they didn't know about. It was an especially hot summer and it was just one too many police raids and people fought back this time.
And the people who were in the club fighting back at this time were queer people of all stripes probably. And of course people in drag, transgender women of color, street queens, drag queens. It was one of the few places that people, like I said earlier, people at drag were actually allowed to go. And even then it was in the bouncer would not let everyone in. There would be sort of a cap on how many people in drag of some kind that they would let in. But in the crowd that night, these were the people who were in attendance and these are the people fighting back alongside everyone else who was in there. So another essential part of American history was made by drag, at least in some way, people in drag and transgender women of color.
KB: That's an amazing history. And I think for a lot of the educators that we work with who teach Stonewall, there are just so many details that they never learned that they don't know to pass on to their students. So Stonewall becomes this flashpoint, but they don't understand all that rich context that you shared. So
EMG: Sure, I mean, I remember when I was in school, I don't know if we even made it to the end of studying World War ii, maybe we got to the Civil Rights Movement, but the beginning of the civil rights movement, so you don't really get to the end and you don't really get to learn about all of these pivotal movements that took place, not just within queer history, but in the quest for civil rights overall. I remember I wrote for the Stonewall 50th anniversary in 2019, I interviewed several people who had been there for an article that I wrote for Conde Nast Them. And my mother had never heard of Stonewall until I wrote that piece. And I think that's something that happens a lot. And I wouldn't say it would've been through any fault of her own after certain point. I think it happens to a lot of people. And I'm glad that the history and a race is doing the work to combat that.
KB: And speaking of all of our collective efforts on unerasing this history, as you know, when you were writing this book, and even as we're talking today, discriminatory laws and policies have been introduced in many too many state legislatures. Did that impact you and your authorship in any way? How did it impact you?
EMG: What I think was interesting is that, and very naively, as I was finishing the book, I was working on the last chapter and that's when all of this sort of national new national backlash happened with drag. And I was sitting there having now written 160 years of history being like, I thought we were out of the woods. How is this possible? And then I was just like, how can you say that there have been instances of this in pretty much 10 to 15 year cycles, if not for the last 160 years, probably more than that. This has been happening throughout drag's history for not just 160 years, but for thousands of years since it's been an art part of the art form of theater, which has been the entire time. There were some times, there were a couple things that were happening in real time that I then had to go back and edit in my second pass when you're not supposed to edit anything and they get very upset with you. And I was like, I'm sorry, history changed.
But there were a couple things that happened that stayed in the book too. There were protests for drag queen story hour against drag queen, story hour rather that were happening in, I think it must've been December of 2022. And the city council person, Eric Cher here in New York had the outside of his apartment building defamed because of this. And that's in the book that happened in December of that year. And it's in the book. And I think the important thing for that too is that especially in New York or in our lovely coastal cities, we do tend to live in a bubble. And that was a place, and that was a time when we weren't living in one anymore. These things that we often dismiss as like, well, that's from this part of it, that's whatever. No, it was happening in New York City, one of the most liberal cities in the country, if not the world. It was important to me to make sure that that was in there because it was happening and it's a true part of this experience and of this history.
KB: So you mentioned this maybe fear or backlash happens in cycles, right? Does this particular moment feel different from moments in the past? Why do you think there's such a fear of drag artists in this moment?
EMG: Well, I will say first that it does feel different in the past, but it feels different for reasons that are on the right side of history that are on the good side, which is that at this current moment, I think it's fair to say that drag has arguably the most support it's ever had. I mean, historically drag was also not supported by the queer community. That was something that started to change around the time of the AIDS crisis and didn't universal for even after it started to change after the AIDS crisis or in its different continuing format, shall we say. Now, drag also has incredible allies and an incredible allyship base in heterosexuals amongst the heterosexual, heterosexual community. I don't know amongst mainstream straight audiences, shall we say. And that is as unusual as it is for drag to be received by the queer community is even more unusual for it to be received positively by mainstream straight audiences.
Because it's passed with popularity in that space has been a trend. And now with RuPaul's Drag Race, it's made it not a trend. The allyship base now is the biggest it's ever been, I would say, which means that all of the backlash that drag receives, no one is allowing it to happen, which is very, very important because that didn't always happen in the past. There was a law in the 19th century that protected against masquerading because people had been using Native American attire to evade paying their taxes in upstate New York, the Catskills anti rent law. And so laws against masquerading were imposed at this time, and they were on the books until March of 2020. People hadn't been using them until Stonewall pretty much after Stonewall, but it's not a hundred percent. It would still be used against people, but not as much as it had been before Stonewall.
But it was on the books until 2020 when people needed to physically wear masks in public to protect themselves with those laws against masquerade only being lifted now or in the last four years, that legally opens up the spaces that could technically have a crackdown of some kind in the past. I think the other thing that's really important is that a lot of these legislators who are ruling in favor of drag, even if they are people who are strict constitutionalists like this is freedom of expression. Like - if you don't like it you don't have to look!
KB: Well, speaking of allyship, we were all wondering how all of us, collectively, can support drag and the drag artist community.
EMG: That's a great question and I love that question. Well, the first is to go and see drag. The second is to give them all your money. Hire drag artists to perform or emcee. And if you are working on projects that require their expertise, hire them as consultants. And if there's not drag near you, engage with their social media, engage with their Patreons, pay them that way. Buy their merch to take your friends to see drag, inform yourself on the history of drag so that you can stand up for people as well in the same way that you might educate yourself on civil rights history of people of color here in the us. Why not do it about other people whose civil rights are being compromised at the moment as well? So the more you learn, the more you can stand up for people. And I think the important thing that I look to emphasize quite often is that drag is an art form. It's an art form with thousands of years of history. And I think it's important that we engage with drag in that way as well. So if there are local theaters or cabarets that are putting on drag, it's important to go see them in those spaces too.
KB: What do you hope the impact of your book will be?
EMG: I guess I've always believed that knowledge is power. And when we were talking before about how can you stand up for drag and one of the ways is to understand its impact yourself, and you can do that by reading my book and also the book of many other people. And so that's books of many other people, I should say. And so in the back of my book, I have a giant section that's just suggestions for further reading because I'm not interested in gatekeeping this information. If you want to know it, here it is. Here's the place you can read more. Here are all the places you can read more. Here are the documentaries, here are the TV shows, here are the Instagram accounts, here are all the digital media you can engage with to deepen your history beyond potentially what's even here. So that's something that I hope that the book does.
I hope that it functions in the same way that any other book does, but I think this field is extremely limited comparatively. If you say you're a drag historian, you probably know at least a couple of other people who also do that because it's not the same as studying, I don't know, the 19th century or studying the Revolutionary War, all these other aspects of history that have these broad swaths of historians attached to them. My hope is that the book provides knowledge, and of course knowledge is power. And my hope for the book is also that the people who are seeking roots are able to find them. And that's an extremely important part of it for me, is that I kept thinking about the queer teen in the Midwest, maybe who doesn't have access to a drag brunch down the street the way that a teen in New York might.
And I just, for anyone who is in drag who is seeking to, I think it's so powerful to know that you have roots. And I think that having access to your history should be a right and not a privilege for anyone who is creating drag art today. To know that you come from a lineage and that this is a, and it's not just 160 years of history, but it's thousands of years of history that cannot and have not been repressed. So whatever is attacking drag now is unfortunately not new, but it also means that it will go away at some point or it'll take a different form, but it's nothing that drag can't handle because it's been around for thousands of years thus far. So those are the things that I think about. I think about people educating themselves. I think about young people looking for roots and a sense of belonging. And I think of drag artists looking for roots and a sense of belonging in a way to deal with the negativity that has presented itself now because those people, the negativity, the people who are seeking to oppress drag, that is the trend. Drag is not the trend.
KB: Is there anything that we haven't asked you that you would like to share?
EMG: Sure. Yeah. I think a question I get a lot and with reason is, what is my relationship to drag? How did I land here? Drag has been a part of my life for almost 30 years. I was a young person who saw drag, and all it did was fill me with so much joy and appreciation. I wrote a whole book about it. All it did, that's all it did. So I am one of these young people who had their lives changed by drag, and this is what it looks like for me. Yeah. I saw drag when I was maybe seven or eight years old, and it was in the film too, on fu Thanks for everything, Julie Newmar. And it was Patrick Swayze, Wesley Snipes, and John Leguizamo in drag, and they became my Disney princesses. They were just just these swirling curves of color, and they were beautiful and they were smart and they had passion, and they didn't let all of this negativity get them down, and they didn't let it change who they were. And I think I saw that. I don't know if I would've, I don't think I would've had the words for it at the time, but I think I saw that as more powerful than a made up fairy princess. These were, of course, it's a narrative film is fiction, but these are people who are drag queens exist and drag kings exist. And as the phrase is lovingly used, dread things exist.
It was like happening in real life. And that was so much more powerful to me, and it inspired me then, and it inspires me now. It's the art form that taught me how to love myself. So I want everyone to know about it, and I'll talk about it forever if they let me.
KB: You can't ask for a better ending than that.
EMG: Thank you. Thank you for letting me talk about it.
KB: Well, thank you for sharing all of your hard work and your own personal connections. We really appreciate it.
EMG: Oh, it's absolutely my pleasure. Thank you for having me. And thank you for all the work that you do as well.
KB: Drag is an art form that can be appreciated by anyone! On June 1, 2024, drag queens read to 263 children and adults at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. The event, hosted by Philadelphia Gay News and sponsored by Visit Philadelphia, set a new record for the largest attendance at a drag queen story hour. Perhaps you can help set a record in your own community by organizing and attending a drag story hour, or find another way to celebrate the rich history and art form of drag.
DF: Kathleen Barker is History UnErased’s program director and is a library and information specialist and public historian with more than 20 years of experience as a museum and library educator.
This podcast is funded by the New York City Council. It was developed by History UnErased and produced and edited by Dinah Mack, our youth equity program director and podcaster.
Special thanks to Elyssa Maxx Goodman for taking the time to meet with us and most especially for educating, and entertaining, all of us about drag - an art form shaping US history.
Our theme music is “1986” by BrothaD via Tribe of Noise.
Please rate this podcast, follow, and share! And visit UnErased.org to learn how History UnErased is putting LGBTQ history in its rightful place - the classroom.
I’m Deb Fowler. Thanks for listening!
##
Glitter and Concrete: A Cultural History of Drag in New York City is a STONEWALL AWARD HONOR BOOK, The Millions Most Anticipated List of 2023, and a Vogue Best LGBTQ+ Book of 2023. Order your copy from an independent bookstore near you!