‘Drag is everywhere': Artist network Qommittee is sashaying to stay

Yahoo

4 days ago

A year after launching, Qommittee, a national network of drag artists, says it's just getting started.
The group's latest project, issued ahead of Pride, is a 43-page manual called the Drag Defense Handbook, documenting how drag performers, organizers and attorneys across the country have fought state bans and threats of violence and harassment — and won.
The guidebook is divided into six sections: crisis response, digital security, First Amendment protections, violent threat response, defamation defense and mental health resources.
'There are drag artists in every single corner of the country, from big cities to small towns. Drag is everywhere, and many artists face terrible challenges like bomb threats and harassment,' said Julian Applebaum, a community organizer in Washington who was part of the team that put the handbook together. 'A common thing that we hear is that they feel like they're going through it alone and that they don't know where to turn or where to look for resources and support.'
The document, he said, 'is made by and for the community, so that the next drag artist who gets threatened isn't starting from scratch to figure out how to defend themselves.'
In 2023, advocacy organization GLAAD said it recorded more than 160 anti-LGBTQ protests and threats targeting drag events over the past year, including bomb threats and demonstrations led by members of extremist groups.
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a nonprofit researching extremism and disinformation, tracked more than 200 instances of anti-drag hate from 2022 to 2023, led by 'growing numbers' of individuals affiliated with white supremacist, parents' rights and Christian nationalist organizations.
Freddie Hercury, a drag king in Buffalo, N.Y., and a peer support organizer with Qommittee (pronounced 'committee'), said they found the group last June after receiving a bomb threat on Facebook ahead of a performance in nearby Niagara Falls.
'I was really, like, unsure how to react to it, and I felt very much like I didn't want to overblow it,' Hercury said.
'Qommittee had just launched, and I had just recently seen their posts on Instagram, and I was like, you know, I'm just gonna give this a try. It couldn't hurt, and maybe they'll help me through this,' they said. 'And they were infinitely more helpful than I could have ever imagined they would be.'
Organizers with the group, which has dozens of volunteers nationwide, called Hercury almost immediately.
'They were truly validating to me. Their main focus was really just making me feel like I was doing what I needed to do to be safe,' they said.
After Qommittee members walked Hercury through their options, they reported the threat to the FBI, and their gig went off without a hitch. Now, they help other performers navigate similar situations.
Jack King Goff, another peer support organizer and drag artist performing predominantly in the Seattle area, said they were harassed online and forced to leave their job as a high school English teacher last year after a student scrolled through more than 10 years of tagged photos on Goff's personal Instagram page and uploaded pictures of them in drag to a cyberbullying account.
The photos caught the attention of a local Moms for Liberty chapter member and a conservative podcast host, and the widespread attention on their personal life gave way to death threats and targeted harassment, even from students, Goff said.
The Washington state teachers' union eventually told Goff it couldn't guarantee their physical safety, and it may be time to reconsider their career.
'That really sucked,' Goff said in a recent interview. 'I doubt I'll ever be hired by a public school ever again because I'm too controversial as a candidate.'
Now living with their parents in their native Los Angeles, Goff is working on developing their drag career. They're also volunteering with Qommittee, with whom they were in touch when the backlash against their drag king persona first started.
'The biggest part of it is helping people realize that they are not alone,' they said. 'And it's important that people know work is happening.'
The current political climate around LGBTQ Americans, particularly transgender rights, makes that work all the more critical, Goff said.
President Trump and administration officials have called trans and gender-nonconforming identities 'falsehoods' and equated them with deception and lies. During his first hours back in office, Trump signed an executive order proclaiming the U.S. recognizes only two sexes, male and female, and broadly restricting federal support for 'gender ideology.'
He's also signed orders to bar transgender people from serving in the military, ban trans girls from competing in girls' sports, slash funding for LGBTQ health research and end federal support for gender-affirming care for minors, treatment the administration has described with inflammatory rhetoric such as 'castration' and 'mutilation.'
He's also taken explicit aim at drag. In announcing his decision to take over the Kennedy Center in February, Trump wrote on Truth Social that drag performances at the cultural center, particularly those targeted at young audiences, 'will stop.'
'NO MORE DRAG SHOWS, OR OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA — ONLY THE BEST,' he wrote in another post announcing Ric Grenell as the institution's interim executive director.
In February, two days after Trump said he would install himself as chair, a petition launched by Qommittee called on the Kennedy Center's donors to suspend funding and reroute support to 'banned or censored artists,' including drag performers. Roughly 55,000 people signed on, said Blaq Dynamite, a Washington-based drag king and Qommittee's president.
'That kind of response kind of tells us that we're going in the right direction,' he said.
For Dynamite, living and performing in Trump's backyard is something he and other members of Washington's LGBTQ community are aware of daily.
'Hairs are definitely standing up a little more,' he said. 'We're definitely aware of the shadow that we work in, that we operate in.'
'Things that are going on in the White House are so sporadic that we just don't know what's going to happen week to week,' he added. 'But we, the queer community, especially the drag community, are prepared to do what we have to do.'
Dynamite said his vision for Qommittee is to grow the organization 'organically' through mutual aid efforts that foster community building.
'I don't want this to seem commercial, you know, like a Sally Struthers kind of thing — 'for just five cents a day, you, too, can sponsor a drag queen,'' he said. 'I want this to be something that is steered by the people that it helps.'
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