TS Baby Nightshade recalls a crowd of teenagers cheering along while she lip-synced and danced to Lizzo’s “Like a Girl” during Renton Library’s Teen Pride event in June 2019. As a transgender drag queen, she saw the performance as a chance for LGBTQ+ youth “to see queer adults thriving and see this could be them.”
What she didn’t see was that members of a local anti-drag group, 500 Mom Strong, had filmed her outfit reveal onstage. Within days of the performance, TS Baby Nightshade, also known as Violet Prentice, said the video was on a Fox News segment accusing her of “‘stripping for children.'”
“This is something we do that brings joy to people. Something that we love. And for it to be misconstrued as this awful, vile thing is just so sad,” she said.
Amid a national increase in anti-drag rhetoric and transphobic legislation, drag entertainers say they continue to fight for the craft because it offers young people a sense of hope and belonging in the LGBTQ+ community, while shining a light on current social injustices. In honor of Transgender Day of Visibility on March 31, a day celebrating transgender people and condemning discrimination against them, trans drag artists say they are fighting for the art form to remain accessible for young queer people, despite transphobic harassment and threats.
“Regardless if you live in a cosmopolitan city like Seattle, to somewhere more rural in the middle of Washington, you have to have that identity within another person or group of people to feel safe to come out,” said GS Matencio, also known as Gaysha Starr, a longtime LGBTQ+ advocate and trans drag performer in Seattle.
Drag is a performance art highlighting forms of gender expression in which entertainers often dance, lip-sync and sing to music while dressed in exaggerated clothing, makeup and hairstyles. While many drag artists don’t identify as trans, the art form gives all performers the space to explore and defy gender norms and stereotypes.
Some of the drag performers said they and their peers experienced direct harassment, including anti-drag protests and threats from national extremist groups like the Proud Boys. Venues hosting drag events have been targeted, too. In 2022, The Brewmaster’s Taproom in Renton was shot at with a BB gun after receiving threats ahead of its Drag Queen Story Time. The Renton Police Department investigated the incident as a potential hate crime, but no suspect was found, a police spokesperson confirmed to The Seattle Times.
The rise in threats has made drag performers hypervigilant about their safety. Dean Dreakford, a trans man and drag performer known as D’Mon at “Sissy Butch,” a transmasculine showcase hosted by Killer Bunny, said some artists are taking extra safety measures such as using ride-hailing services instead of public transportation to travel to performances, as well as traveling in groups after shows. He said he also is wary of accepting bookings or gigs from people he is not familiar with.
“These days, we don’t leave gigs alone,” D’Mon said. “I’ll call an Uber or Lyft even if it’s expensive because I don’t want to worry about getting into any physical altercations on my way to gigs.”
Earlier on in his transition, D’Mon said he focused on being as “stealth as possible to avoid suspicion.” But now, as an openly trans drag performer, he has access to a trans family that gave him the space to embrace his “feminine side in a way that wasn’t dysphoric or didn’t make me feel ashamed.”
D’Mon is not alone. Drag has long been used as a tool to strengthen identity.
Several local trans drag artists told The Seattle Times that, when they were growing up, drag became a safe outlet to explore their gender identity and expression. Other artists explained that through drag they had the freedom to play with the fluidity of gender without feeling hyperexposed to the threats of patriarchy and transphobic discrimination.
Today, those opposed to drag often protest all-ages shows, an action that LGBTQ+ advocates say can make it harder for young people to identify queer and trans role models in their communities.
“If you don’t have anybody that you know or that you see, you’re going to have a hard time feeling confident and feeling comfortable,” Matencio added.
As a makeup-obsessed theater kid, Solana Solstice, a transgender drag queen, said drag became an especially useful space for exploring her identity at a time when she lacked access to queer and trans influences.
“I started drag because I was a young trans kid who couldn’t necessarily live authentically as myself,” said Solstice. “Drag for me, like many people, was a gateway to seeing myself as a woman.”
“Disconnection from reality”
The fight to remain visible for LGBTQ+ youth in public venues comes amid a national rise in anti-drag rhetoric and legislation targeting trans and nonbinary youth in health care and sports. This month, Tennessee became the first state in the U.S. to ban public drag performances after at least nine states proposed similar restrictions. In Washington, Republican lawmakers sponsored two bills this year that would limit the rights of LGBTQ+ community members if passed. Senate Bill 5653 seeks to ban discussions of “sexual orientation including gender expression or identity” in kindergarten through third grade classrooms, and House Bill 1233 could require incarcerated trans people to be housed according to their sex assigned at birth.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has previously doubled down on protections for queer and trans people. In 2022, the state’s Gender Affirming Treatment Act went into effect, banning health insurance exclusions for gender-affirming care in Washington. In 2018, Inslee signed a law banning conversion therapy and, a year later, he denounced then-President Donald Trump’s proposal to reverse health protections for transgender patients.
Many members of the right-wing media and Republican legislators have claimed their opposition to drag is about protecting youth. This builds on a history of homophobic and transphobic stereotypes that accuse drag queens and LGBTQ+ community members of “sexualizing” young children.
Solstice believes seeing performances like drag queen story time is a boon to kids because it normalizes gender diversity and creates acceptance for gender-nonconforming people. She is especially worried for young LGBTQ+ people who will be hurt the most by rhetoric that villainizes drag performers.
“We’re losing the opportunity to positively influence the next generation of queer people,” Solstice said.
These latest legislative threats and protests against drag performers are part of broader backlash to the LGBTQ+ rights movement, said Amasai Jeke, a regional community organizer for UTOPIA Washington, a grassroots LGBTQ+ advocacy organization for South King County’s Pacific Islander community.
“Those that do this art are expressing themselves in a way that is about protecting young LGBTQIA children,” said Jeke, a trans woman and LGBTQ+ rights advocate. “There is a huge disconnection from reality.”
“To see the smile on children’s faces, to see the drag queens tell them stories, to see how kids are amazed by the work of art,” she added. “It’s sad that cis, very conservative people don’t get to understand the beauty of art that comes in different forms.”
Solstice called the most recent efforts to restrict drag performances in public spaces “scary and very discouraging for a lot of entertainers who have worked so hard to create safe spaces for people.”
As a young trans kid, Solstice recalls that doing drag helped her envision a future for herself as a woman.
In middle school, Solstice said “RuPaul’s Drag Race” stars like Raja Gemini and Roxxxy Andrews were some of her earliest memories of queer people who were out, proud and confident — reinforcing her desire to hit the stage.
She says that taking away these role models will force young people to figure out their trans or queer identity on their own. But, with support from the drag and broader LGBTQ+ communities, she said they will know they can live a happy life without hiding who they are.
“There are humans behind all of this makeup and hair,” Solstice said. “It’s not about teaching them to be queer. It’s letting them know, ‘Hey, there are good people out here in the world that are just a little different … but that doesn’t make them bad.’”
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