Drag Queens, Trans Kiddos, MAGAs, and Power

Why MAGA-captured states want to control our self-expression, sex lives, and reproduction.

https://transgenderlawcenter.org/equalitymap. Green states are highest in equality, and red states have a negative overall policy in equality.

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Indiana’s State Senate just passed a bill that curtails gender affirming care for any person under 18, the General Assembly is considering a Don’t Say Gay bill, and is requiring that teachers alert parents of students who want to go by a different name or pronouns. These aren’t the only anti-LGBTQ+ bills that Indiana itself is considering, and elsewhere in the United States, legislatures are considering 23 bills that target children in schools and school sports, is part of a stunning surge of more than 175 anti-LGBTQ bills in 32 states this year.¹

And in addition to these anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-trans specific bills, MAGA legislators across the country are targetting Drag Queens and other performers, trying to make it illegal for people to cross dress in the presence of children. Why are MAGAs so keen to harm LGBTQ+ folks as part of their #SlateOfHate nationwide?²

A quick autobiographical note: When I was just out of college, I lived in the Castro district in San Francisco, which is now, as it was back in the mid 1990s, the spiritual and geographic home of America’s LGBTQ+ community. I have attended all manner of drag shows, from Halloween extravaganzas to bougie supper clubs in San Francisco, Boston, and beyond. I confess I’ve never been to a drag queen story hour, but that might just be because my kid is too old for story hours these days.

In reality, which in general is the polar opposite of whatever MAGA is shouting, is that drag shows are all about spectacle, joy, entertainment, and self expression, and are just about as far from child sexual abuse as you can get. Certainly much farther than the sexual abuse that goes on in churches across the country or by some duly-elected public officials.³

Aside from the fact that every MAGA accusation is a confession, let’s break down the reasons that MAGA is targeting drag performers, trans children and adults, and the entire LGBTQ community. Let’s go even farther and ask why MAGA is targeting cis-women with abortion bans, forced pregnancy, and even banning websites giving information about abortion (Texas).⁴

1. General “othering” of transgender children and adults. MAGAs are following the fascist playbook (which incidentally followed the Jim Crow playbook) and is creating a divide between “regular” Americans and trans people. This divide is meant to form an “in” group and an “out” group so that MAGAs can show the base how they’re protecting “regular” Americans from trans people who they then accuse of harming MAGA kids. MAGAs find a way to weaponize difference, convincing their base that the other group is hell-bent on harming them and their children. And this isn’t limited to transgender people—they attempt to “other” anyone who isn’t a Christian, White, Cis, Heterosexual man.⁵

2. Fear-mongering. MAGA attempst to convince their base that non-christian, non-white, non-cis, non-straight people are going to hurt them and their kids. While using rhetoric of “parents rights,” MAGA is trying to convince followers that any American history that discusses race is CRT, that any reproductive freedom is murder, and that anyone outside the gender binary is dangerous. Tucker Carlson is at the head of the fear brigade, and he’s a tremendously powerful force that shapes opinion throughtout the United States.⁶

3. Backlash. This is a problematic lens through which to explain discrimination, because it ends up putting the onus on the victims of backlash, instead of on the White (Christian-Cis-Het) Supremacists who are lashing out. Many analysts believe that White Supremacy made a comeback as a backlash against Obama’s presidency. They call it white resentment, or white grievance and have dedicated miles of New York Times copy to “understanding” it. If we’re going to discuss this frame, we’ve got to be very careful about not blaming the victims of the White-Christian Nationalist violence.⁷

4. Common Denominator: Fixation on control of sexuality, self expression, family, and bodies. For all of the reasons I’ve just noted, MAGAs (and other far-right governments) are obsessed with controlling the public’s sexuality, fertility, bodies, genetalia, and private lives? There’s a very good (but really, really dangerous) reason for this. In the Atlantic, Chase Strangio tells us why:

   All of this can be understood in two fundamental ways. One is the simple political opportunism of trying to [mobilize] voters in the lead-up to the next presidential election by stoking a sense of fear, of unfamiliar change. The second is exactly what I mentioned: The more you can control people’s sense of possibility, of expansiveness and freedom, the more that governments can expand their authority over people’s lives in general. I think we’re seeing those things in dynamic interaction at this moment.⁸

So, as we watch all of the unspeakably cruel anti-trans legislation, forced pregnancy laws, bathroom laws, persecution of drag queens, and more, we must be cognizant of the fact this these bills that insert the government into the doctor’s office, the bedroom, and the clothes closet. MAGA is attempting to limit the hope and optimism of LGBTQ+ and trans people in particular, and the entire pro-democracy, pro-freedom movement in general. It’s a well-trodden path, and we are a fair way down the road to fascism, authoritarianism, un-freedom—whatever we call it.

How to talk about it on and off social media?

1. Please share this article widely

2. When talking to people we know, we’ve got to make sure that we lead with our values: Every single American, whatever their zip code, their color, their gender, or their sexuality, deserves the freedom to express themselves freely, marry whoever they love, dress in the way they feel free, and be their truest selves. While MAGAs are trying to deny that trans people exist and limit the self expression of so many, we will fight for everyone’s freedom to be who they are meant to be.

3. Keep talking about it to people you know….because even if everyone you know is straight, or cisgender, odds are that some of them have a child who is having a hard time. I pledge to be loving and available for everyone who needs an understanding and loving adult, and I want the same for my own teenager and yours.

1. https://www.hrc.org/resources/unprecedented-onslaught-of-state-legislation-targeting-transgender-american

2. https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/12/why-the-far-right-is-fixated-on-drag-queens/672410/?utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=true-anthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR27Vh2LCSPgkOcD3vkpKPt2G18vBGDCXeVDR-Yijl6NvD_MRksC7cEdupY

3. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/27/sex-trafficking-allegations-matt-gaetz/

4. The GOP is Undoing Democracy to Ban Abortion

5. https://humanrights.ca/story/us-vs-them-process-othering

6. https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2021/08/02/republican-party-fox-news-conspiracy-theories-steve-almond

7. https://www.naacpldf.org/woke-black-bad/

8. https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/12/why-the-far-right-is-fixated-on-drag-queens/672410/?utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=true-anthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR27Vh2LCSPgkOcD3vkpKPt2G18vBGDCXeVDR-Yijl6NvD_MRksC7cEdupY