Today—Sunday, July 16th—is National Corn Fritter Day. It’s also Artificial Intelligence Appreciation Day, International Fresh Spinach Day, and World Snake Day. Sure, artificial intelligence is kinda suspicious these days, but corn fritters, snakes, and spinach are all super cool. Even with these delightful occasions on the calendar for today, though, I’d have to recommend directing your attention elsewhere. I mean, go ahead, munch on some spinach, snack on some fritters, pet a snake—but you know what you should really focus on doing on today? You should celebrate a drag queen—or king, or alien or monster or performer of any sort. Why? The answer is simple: because today is International Drag Day!
Founded by Adam Stewart in 2009 and described as “a day where all around the world on every gay scene we take this opportunity to celebrate and thank the drag artists that add so much to gay life and culture,” International Drag Day is needed now perhaps more than ever. Amongst the current onslaught of anti-LGBTQIA+ bills are numerous attempts to restrict or ban drag performances, often invoking highly artificial (and out-of-touch) definitions of “drag” that would more often than not, if adopted into law, codify gendered norms of dress into law. If this reminds you of the anti-crossdressing laws that contributed to the collective tensions that sparked the Stonewall uprising in 1969, well….that makes sense, because it should remind you of that. (Remembering the uprising, too, might give you some ideas of what a fitting response to such legislative attempts could look like.)
Why all this pushback against something that is, at its heart, just an art form? To answer that, we should take a look at what drag is. Of course, there are probably as many characterizations of the art of drag as there are drag performers, but one potentially illuminating lens through which to understand the tradition is as the art of gender expression. Whereas gender identity refers to the deeply felt, internal, existential sense of how we relate to ourselves and the world around us in terms of gender, gender expression is something like the culturally situated language through which we publicly communicate, display, and perform our gender. The complex vocabulary of the language of gender expression includes clothing and adornment such as make-up and jewelry, as well as other aspects of presentation such as posture, speech, and perhaps even identifiers such as names and pronouns.
As I was growing up, my gender expression was closely monitored. Perhaps you can relate: there were rules about how I could keep my hair, what clothing I could wear, and even how I was permitted to physically look at my finger nails. (Always with fingers bent into a fist, never by looking over the back of the hand.) In a way, this experience was more than somewhat like that of having a strict grammar forced onto my speech, being told that there is a very specific and proper way to form my sentences and certain words that I should just not use in virtue of those words being improper or otherwise unfitting. Later in life, however, I realized just how silly all of this policing—of gender expression and of grammar and vocabulary—really was. Speakers who are genuinely comfortable with a language almost never speak that language “perfectly,” instead opting for slang, metaphor, and other tricks like sarcasm or even—for those creative and skilled enough—poetry.
We can make use of these ideas to help us understand and appreciate drag. Thinking of drag as the art of gender expression, we can see drag performers as taking the “vocabulary” and “grammar” of this culturally situated language of gender expression and exaggerating it, twisting it, elevating it, and reclaiming it. Kings, queens, and other performers are enacting gender slang, gender metaphor, gender sarcasm—we might even think of them as engaging in an embodied form of gender poetry.
It’s no surprise that such an art form arose within the gay community, given the myriad and complex connections among sexual identity, gender identity, and gender expression. Creative innovation of gender expression—including subversion of received norms and expectations—is a component of liberation from gender-based oppression, itself a goal intertwined with—even inseparable from—sexual liberation. It makes sense then, that those who cling to (and profit off of) a sex-negative, cisheternormative status quo would find themselves afraid of the big scary drag queens. Forget the myths about child grooming and other nonsense allegations that reveal more about the projections of the accuser than the activities of the accused: the culture of drag threatens to further undermine the regressive gender ideology and oppressive sexual politics of those who would see the world march further and further into Gilead.
So, how can you help out? Support local drag. Attend shows—and tip the performers! Check out a local drag story hour, and maybe even volunteer. Learn more about the history and nuances of the art form that go beyond just what you might see on some reality television franchise owned by an historically problematic fracking baron. Keep an eye on your local school board, representatives, and other policy-makers. And perhaps most importantly: when you hear someone scapegoating drag performers as a way to spread queerphobic, homophobic, or transphobic rhetoric, speak up.
Today’s a big day, so live it up. Fry up and chow down on some spinach corn fritters while spending some quality time with your favorite snake friend—maybe while giving some serious side-eye to the rising tide of generative AI. Amid all of that, however, be sure to make some time to celebrate the drag performers in your neighborhood and everywhere else beyond. On International Drag Day and every other day, let’s join together to push back against the regressive, poke incessantly at the oppressive, and support the fabulous art of gender expression in all of its stunning, glamorous, and positively sickening forms.
Written by Ley David Elliette Cray, PhD, CSC, ABS (she/they), LGBTQIA+ Curriculum Coordinator for the Sexual Health Alliance and founder of Transentience Coaching.