International Drag Day was celebrated Wednesday night at the World of Wonder Gallery in Hollywood.
As guests enjoyed the festivities, which featured cupcakes as well as “RuPaul’s Drag Race” merch and cocktails, the evening’s performers — Jiggly Caliente, Pangina Heals and Nicky Doll — addressed political attacks against drag performers.
On Monday, Ohio representatives Josh Williams (R-Sylvania) and Angela King (R-Celina) introduced a bill at their statehouse that would ban “adult cabaret performances” that showcase “entertainers who exhibit a gender identity that is different from the performers’ or entertainers’ gender assigned at birth” in all locations outside of nightclubs or bars. The bill is the latest anti-drag motion to follow after Tennessee’s anti-drag show law, which was deemed unconstitutional by a federal judge in June. Measures have also been filed, with varying levels of success, in Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, and Idaho.
“These attacks on drag are just a cover up, honestly, to save the assets they want to protect, like the gun laws. I don’t think there’s ever been a shooting at any drag show. No drag queen has blown up places,” Jiggly told PvNew. “Y’all need to figure out how to keep the guns and the military grade assault weapons out of the hands of these crazy people. That’s what you need to worry about — not drag shows.”
She added, “We’re not grooming kids. Drag is just a safe way for children to see that there is more than just A or B. It is also self expression. What is so wrong with self expressing? There’s nothing wrong with that, because drag isn’t just for gay boys. This is for everyone and what you can do with it is your own art. You can cultivate it, you can curate it to what your art is, not what anyone says your art should be.”
The sentiment was reflected by “Drag Race Thailand” judge Pangina Heals. “They change targets every year, I would say, that someone ends up being this target of political conversation and it’s usually minorities. This year just happens to be drag queens and I pity whoever is going to be selected as victims next because as you can see, it repeats itself,” Pangina said. “This cycle of hate keeps repeating itself. It just jumps from one group of people to the other and it’s never ending. We just have to stand together and say, ‘This is fucked up.'”
Doll said the drag community needs more allies to speak up: “What history has showed us that without allyship, no communities can succeed, whether it’s women’s rights, whether it’s trans rights, drag queens rights, we need to come together because we have common sense. Whether you’re a drag queen, whether you are part of the queer community, whether you’re a straight woman, a straight man, if you feel like a group of people has been under attack for no reason, it is incredibly important that we all come together because it is sending the right message on how to be a good fucking person, period,” she said.
