Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central. Wow, Wow, blow, no idea,
Speaker 1: this is so this is so lovely. I didn't know
Speaker 1: the audience was going to go so crazy. I didn't
Speaker 1: know what would happen after Lindsey Graham. Before we get
Speaker 1: into these anti drag bills that are popping up around
Speaker 1: the country, I think there are a lot of people,
Speaker 1: uh objecting to drag without even having any idea what
Speaker 1: it is. And I know I've never I've ever gone
Speaker 1: to a drag show. And can you explain, Drett? Absolutely, Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: somebody just was shocked that you've never been to a
Speaker 1: drag show. You I'm embarrassed. No, no, no, it's not
Speaker 1: shocking that you've never been to a show that you
Speaker 1: would think of as a drag show. But you've probably
Speaker 1: seen Missus Doubt Fire or Tutsie or any of those,
Speaker 1: you know things that we have. I didn't realize they
Speaker 1: were in drag. Well that's some very convincing costuming, you know.
Speaker 1: So drag is something that's been part of the culture
Speaker 1: for a very long time in a lot of different ways,
Speaker 1: and so there's many types of it that we've sort
Speaker 1: of been accepting in contemporary culture, like those examples, but
Speaker 1: you know, it's something that hearkens back to. We see
Speaker 1: it in Shakespeare, we see it in kabuki theater, across cultures.
Speaker 1: It's something that has just been a neat and unquestioned
Speaker 1: for a long time. But within American history, I mean,
Speaker 1: drag is something that has uplifted and protected and fought
Speaker 1: for the queer community. Pre stone Wall, I mean, pre
Speaker 1: pre Stonewall era, queer people had to congregate in clubs
Speaker 1: and bars. That was the one place that they could
Speaker 1: sort of find community and find togetherness and feel safe
Speaker 1: even though there were constantly police raids on those places.
Speaker 1: And drag queens, transwomen were the entertainers, were the matriarchs,
Speaker 1: were the people who fostered this community and went Stonewall,
Speaker 1: which was the alleged beginning of the gay rights movement
Speaker 1: when it rolled around, they were the folks who really
Speaker 1: started the riot. Yeah, on drag race, you sing, you
Speaker 1: work the runway, you create and perform your own variety show.
Speaker 1: It's just all the things that I do except them
Speaker 1: on way and the singing, Well, you're in good company
Speaker 1: with drag queens not being especially good singers. So that's
Speaker 1: and you and I can work on your runway. So
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you, and you you direct and you
Speaker 1: write and produce a seventy minute show. Drag shows right,
Speaker 1: different ones, right, Yeah, what are those shows about? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So I do a lot of different stuff that's more
Speaker 1: in the theatrical realm. So some of them are evening
Speaker 1: length plays as you would more traditionally know. Some of
Speaker 1: them are cabarets with through lines. And that's another thing
Speaker 1: about drag is that it's so many things. A lot
Speaker 1: of people think of it as what we know it
Speaker 1: as from reality TV right now, which is largely lip
Speaker 1: syncing and big dance movements, which is really exciting, but
Speaker 1: there's also a full history of of theater and a
Speaker 1: lot of other disciplines. So my shows are shows that
Speaker 1: are essentially a love letter to the queer community, to
Speaker 1: folks who need to feel a sense of hope and
Speaker 1: sense of generosity. Specifically, I do a holiday show with
Speaker 1: my good friend jinc' monsoon, right, and we've been touring
Speaker 1: that for this will be our sixth year. I'm not
Speaker 1: announcing it, but it's our sixth year coming up, and
Speaker 1: that show is very much rooted in the idea of
Speaker 1: that Christmas show. It's a Christmas show, yes, so we
Speaker 1: do it every November and December. And that came about
Speaker 1: because of just really seeing the need among queer young
Speaker 1: people and queer adults to feel a sense of family
Speaker 1: and homecoming at a time of year where can have
Speaker 1: a lot of messaging that we don't feel included in.
Speaker 1: There's many people who have strained relationships with their families,
Speaker 1: and so this show is a message of and you know,
Speaker 1: and it's body and it's funny and there's big, sparkly dances,
Speaker 1: but it's got its heart about about coming together and
Speaker 1: making people realize that that your future can be whatever
Speaker 1: you want it to be. Your traditions can be what
Speaker 1: they want what you want them to be, and you
Speaker 1: can be who you want to be. Well yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: thinking about being who you want to be. Ablet's talk
Speaker 1: about Tennessee. It's the first I've stayed, i think to
Speaker 1: explicitly ban it's first place that it passed. Yes yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh in public places where miners are or something
Speaker 1: like that. Once you're um, but now it's happening all
Speaker 1: over the place, right, Um, this is some new thing
Speaker 1: they've invented. I'm sure that most of the Republicans who
Speaker 1: are they find stuff every once in a while to
Speaker 1: go after or they and I bet you most of
Speaker 1: them don't know what this is about at all. Have
Speaker 1: any idea. There's things I don't you know, I don't
Speaker 1: actually I've never gone in Nascar. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: know what it's about. There's a lot of stuff I
Speaker 1: don't go to. So, but what is this about? What
Speaker 1: is their thing about? Yeah, I mean, what is this about?
Speaker 1: Is kind of the biggest question because it's all so vague.
Speaker 1: These bills are terrifying because the language is so open ended,
Speaker 1: and they are and a lot of enduring also exactly
Speaker 1: right that a lot of these people don't really understand
Speaker 1: what drag shows are and they don't have to because
Speaker 1: this is all sort of coded language for an attack
Speaker 1: on the LGBTQIA plus community. And the wording of this
Speaker 1: bill talks about drag as adult entertainment, which is insidious
Speaker 1: within itself to say that someone dressing this way is
Speaker 1: only appropriate for adults when they're not doing anything that's
Speaker 1: adult oriented. And it also talks about them not being
Speaker 1: able to do it within range where a minor could see, right,
Speaker 1: which means no pride parades, no outdoor pride events, but
Speaker 1: it also means things like what if the window is
Speaker 1: viewable from the sidewalk in a drag bar. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's all so subjective and it's also open to interpretation
Speaker 1: that they can really kind of go wherever they want
Speaker 1: with it. Not to mention the fact that the bill
Speaker 1: defines this as this adult entertainment or adult cabaret, as
Speaker 1: men or women dressing as the doing male or female impersonation,
Speaker 1: and that within itself is also something that who is
Speaker 1: interpreting this bill? Lee who gets to decide whether he
Speaker 1: in a cheerleader sco skirt counts or not, you know
Speaker 1: who's bills. So he is the he's the one who
Speaker 1: the governor, who the photo surfacet of now he's the
Speaker 1: one who was passing and the photosurfast of him in
Speaker 1: high school dressed as a cheerleader at some sort of
Speaker 1: high school events. And everyone started pointing this out and
Speaker 1: saying this is pretty hypocritical, and he said, no, no, no no,
Speaker 1: that doesn't count. That is not of a Korean nature,
Speaker 1: that is not lewd this other And so he has
Speaker 1: decided that he is the person who gets to decide
Speaker 1: these things. Oh, non cheerleader outfits have never been considered
Speaker 1: like sexual at all, but now, but by that definition,
Speaker 1: even though most of us in twenty twenty three understand
Speaker 1: that trans women are women and trans men are men,
Speaker 1: they're This bill can be interpreted any number of ways.
Speaker 1: And so if someone is enforcing us who doesn't believe that,
Speaker 1: who is to say that that trends person walking down
Speaker 1: the street in public, if I view them as a
Speaker 1: male or female impersonator and they're within the eyesight of
Speaker 1: a child, well, and they're bringing the law by walking
Speaker 1: to the grocery store, that's terrifying. When I was and
Speaker 1: we talked about this a little bit when I was
Speaker 1: in the Senate. We we were reforming No Child Left Behind,
Speaker 1: which didn't work very well. And I had a piece
Speaker 1: in it called pseudo discrimination that that would protect LGBT
Speaker 1: kids Q plus kids, who would give them the same
Speaker 1: rights as were given to other kids, h you know,
Speaker 1: race and gender. And I went to a colleague, a
Speaker 1: Republican colleague who was a friend of mine, and asked
Speaker 1: him to sponsor this. And what you could do is
Speaker 1: if a kid was being bullied for being LGBTQ, they
Speaker 1: could go to the principal, go to the supertendent of schools,
Speaker 1: and if they didn't get any that they could sue,
Speaker 1: they could sue us like the other kids I was
Speaker 1: talking about. And and this senator said to me, oh,
Speaker 1: if they could do that, yeah, they'll just act more gay.
Speaker 1: Well first of all, all right, and I said, I said,
Speaker 1: I said no, no, no, I don't want to say
Speaker 1: his name. I said no, And he goes, oh, you watch. Well,
Speaker 1: I hope he's watching right now and knows that I
Speaker 1: am acting this gay no matter what happens around. But well, well,
Speaker 1: kids in school, LGBT kids in school, I have great
Speaker 1: absolutee There's all kinds of bullying obviously, and this is
Speaker 1: would this would really have helped kids? No, absolutely, I
Speaker 1: can from my personal experience. I grew up in a
Speaker 1: small town in Connecticut. I was very very flamboyant and
Speaker 1: myself from a very young age, and I was identified
Speaker 1: by other people as queer before I even understood how
Speaker 1: to do that myself. And I was mercilessly bullied in
Speaker 1: school and I went to my vice principal who told
Speaker 1: me that I should probably tone it down a little.
Speaker 1: So thank you for working on that. It's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's I but it was terribly frustrating. And the idea
Speaker 1: that children are somehow going to be made more queer
Speaker 1: by access to queer culture. I mean I was very
Speaker 1: queer without any access. And when I finally found Drag,
Speaker 1: which is where it, you know, it was not like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's a cool job, I want to do that when
Speaker 1: I grow up. It was there's a container for who
Speaker 1: I am. There's something out there for me, and that
Speaker 1: saved my life. I mean, suicide rates among queer kids
Speaker 1: and suicidal ideation is more than half of trans and
Speaker 1: non binary kids of suicidal ideation, which when I heard
Speaker 1: that statistic, I was like, that seems low because every
Speaker 1: queer person I know has thought about suicide in their youth.
Speaker 1: And I barely made it out of my childhood. But
Speaker 1: I did because I had a little bit of access
Speaker 1: to this glimpse of a world outside that would accept
Speaker 1: me for who I am, and not just in spite
Speaker 1: of who I am, but because of who I am.
Speaker 1: I here, Hi here, and I'm going to call I'm
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