Tennessee is poised to be the first state to restrict drag performances
Changing the face of drag performances: a case study of Williams’ bar, Club Temptation, a strip club in Cookeville, Tenn.
Wendy Williams has owned her bar, Club Temptation, in Cookeville, Tenn., for six years. drag performances can be held in her space, such as drag brunches and bingo. Williams also does drag.
Restaurants, bars and nightclubs that host drag shows, like Williams’ Club Temptation, would have to be recategorized as sexually oriented enterprises under many of these legislative proposals, ACLU attorney Sykes said. He said that this would cause businesses to pay some fees and get certain permits in order to stay open.
Williams’ bar doesn’t allow entry to minors, so a child wouldn’t be able to see any of the shows her establishment puts on anyway, she said. She is starting to wonder if her bar will need to be re-categorise as a strip club due to the bill’s wording.
Lawmakers and critics said that this session seems different. Legislators from other states have similar proposals to those in Tennessee and North Dakota. They’ve popped up in Texas, West Virginia, Nebraska and South Carolina, to name a few. Many of the bills are also broad in scope and would effectively restrict drag show performances.
As transgender issues and drag culture are increasingly becoming more mainstream, such shows – which often feature men dressing as women in exaggerated makeup while singing or entertaining a crowd, though some shows feature bawdier content – have occasionally been the target of attacks, and LGBTQ advocates say the bills under consideration add to a heightened state of alarm for the community.
Drag, a mainstay in LGBTQ nightlife, is considered performance art that celebrates gender fluidity, self expression and self acceptance. Performers often impersonate both men and women. In recent years, it’s grown in mainstream popularity, as drag brunches and story hours have popped up throughout the country.
At least-10-state-legislatures-trying-restrict-criminalize-drag-shows: a catagorization of pedophilia
He said that the bills threaten businesses, libraries, performers and the people who they serve by giving politicians the power to decide what is appropriate. “To be honest, we expect these to sail through many legislatures.”
“This year, we are seeing the most, by far, pieces of anti-transgender legislation that we’ve ever seen in a single year,” Erin Reed, an independent legislative researcher and activist, said.
Drag bans, a subset of these kinds of bills, are essentially lawmakers’ answer to drag queen story hours, Reed said. The events, during which a drag queen reads books to kids, have popped up around the country. They have become a subject of vitriol for the far-right, with some events becoming targets for opponents.
In Cookeville, where Williams is from, a group of far-right protesters have demonstrated in front of drag shows. Recently, this happened at an 18-and-up drag brunch in town, where protestors held up a Nazi flag and yelled from across the street of the event.
In an interview with NPR, he said that children witnessing drag shows was a “slippery slope” to legalization of pedophilia.
He, as well as others, noted that under this categorization, Shakespearean productions — for example, As You Like It (which involves a cross-dressing heroine) — could be in violation of the law.
“What they deem appropriate that day is totally up to the discretion of the officials to decide whether this runs afoul of whatever they think is ‘decent,'” Sykes said.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/08/1151731736/at-least-10-state-legislatures-trying-restrict-criminalize-drag-shows
At least-10-state-legislations-trying-restrict-criminalize-drag-shows: Miss Arkansas canceled after Senate Bill 43
The language in the initial version of the bill was too broad, according to the South Carolina state lawmaker. He plans to make changes to the policy that will make it easier for other Republicans to understand the impact of business regulations. Beach said that support is high.
bipartisan criticism of the bill’s breadth prompted Arkansas lawmakers to change their proposal. Those changes effectively gutted the bill of language specifically targeting drag shows, the ACLU of Arkansas said.
The Miss Gay America event was going to continue in Little Rock but it fell apart after the introduction of Senate Bill 43. That’s according to Michael Dutzer, the CEO and executive producer of Mad Angel Entertainment, which owns the pageant.
He said that despite the threats and derogatory comments sent to the organization, it doesn’t appear possible for the Miss Arkansas to continue in Little Rock.
Dutzer said it would be a loss for Arkansas. The event brought a lot of people to the area and they spent money at local restaurants and hotels. The production spent around $70,000 to put the pageant on.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/08/1151731736/at-least-10-state-legislatures-trying-restrict-criminalize-drag-shows
Why does Bill Lee dress in drag? A critical criticism of the Tennessee House and Senate Education Against Sexualized Entertainment in the Interest of Children’s Health
“You don’t know what’s going to happen. Is it worth continuing running a bar after six years? I put the bar up for sale, so I might as well use it for something else. Not because I’m scared, but just cause is it worth the hassle and the headache of dealing with it?,” she said. I am not sure if it is worth it to tell you the truth.
A photo of a future governor dressed up in women clothing and a wig was posted on the internet by an user, who accused Lee of hypocrisy.
At a news conference on Monday, Lee ignored a question about whether he had once dressed in drag but rejected any comparisons between the purported image and the drag show legislation.
Lee said that the topic of sexualized entertainment in front of children is very serious.
Lee’s staff elaborated to the Daily Beast that the bill is for protecting children from sexualized entertainment and any attempt to make fun of it is disrespectful to Tennessee families.
Lee signed the bill shortly after the measure passed in the Senate. In the same sitting, he signed a ban on gender-affirming health care for youth in the state.
“It’s absurd for Bill Lee to say that he had a good time when he did it,” says Skeleton. Straight men are fine when they dress badly in drag. But when gay and queer and trans people do it, that’s not OK.”
The Tennessee State House Protects Transgender Lives with a Proposal for a New Drag Queen-Specific Bus and Other Public Transportation Facilities
Republican State Rep. Jack Johnson co-sponsored the bill. He says, “We’re protecting kids and families and parents who want to be able to take their kids to public places. We aren’t attacking anyone or targeting anyone.
The ban could also have a chilling effect on Pride festivals. Outdoor drag is a staple in the Tennessee summer heat. A bill was quietly amended in January to take effect April 1 ahead of Pride, which takes place in June.
He says that his generation of queer people owe a lot to drag queens, and that they’re under threat now.
We are concerned that government officials could easily abuse this law to censor people based on their own subjective views of what is appropriate.
Nashville’s economy will be negatively impacted by the ban on drag. Music City has a drag queen-specific bus that is part of its notorious fleet of party vehicles.
This legislative session is the third year in a row that the statehouse has peeled back the rights of transgender Tennesseans. It has many trans people and families of trans kids wondering whether staying in the state is worth the fight.
Many people who grew up here have roots here. Hella Skeleton, drag performer, says that being faced with that choice of either staying here and suffering or leaving is brutal. “So, yeah, it’s a really tough choice.”
Sexuality, Status Offences, and GLBTQ: An Interview with Jules Gill-Peterson at NPR’s Ari Shapiro
Jules Gill-Peterson studies the history of sexuality and how it relates to gender identity. She spoke with NPR’s Ari Shapiro to highlight the history behind these types of laws.
They were used to threaten and harass, but also to silence the LGBT community for many decades. The way these laws were written made it so easy for someone to be arrested and have a criminal record. It can ruin your employment chances and it’s possible to do so to everyone.
In 1863, San Francisco was the first place to ban someone from wearing costume clothing that did not correspond to their legal sex or assigned sex in public. And those kinds of laws really took off in the late 19th century.
I don’t know, it was never really settled under the law. In some ways, the question with these sorts of status offenses, or these laws that target how people appear or what they wear, is that they’re so vaguely worded, that so much comes down to how they’re implemented. It’s a matter of policing, not the letter of the law.
The question is, what is going to be the biggest challenge that people are going to face at Pride? I think that just goes to show how far the reach and the scope of some of these laws really can be that they’re reaching into, and allowing the government to exercise a really powerful degree of authority in determining what you’re allowed to wear, where you’re allowed to be in public, and frankly, how you’re allowed to exist when you’re walking down the street.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/06/1161452175/anti-drag-show-bill-tennessee-trans-rights-minor-care-anti-lgbtq-laws
Is Tennessee’s law forbidding the action of the police in a state with a strangeness in its equivalence?
This kind of uncertainty is what these laws are written for. Some of the laws being considered in other states would allow the police to take that action even if Tennessee’s law does not allow it.
