Photo: John Amis/AP
Across the United States, Republican lawmakers are intensifying their ongoing, all-out assault on trans existence. More than 300 anti-LGBTQ+ bills were either passed or introduced in 2022, the majority taking aim at trans youth through health care bans, sports team restrictions, and bathroom bills, and removing Medicaid coverage for trans adults’ health care too.
Meanwhile, drag performances, particularly family-friendly drag brunches and drag queen story hours at libraries, have become a focal point of histrionic Republican rhetoric and far-right militia attacks.
With obsessive ferocity, the right is attempting to criminalize, harass, and legislate gender nonconformity out of existence. Tennessee has taken a step forward in this goal with the recent passage of companion bills targeting drag shows, which, contrary to most media reports, do not actually ban anything that wasn’t already illegal.
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The anti-drag law still serves a profoundly sinister political purpose: inviting further law enforcement and public harassment of drag performers and trans people more broadly. This is a real, material threat that must not be underestimated. Yet reporting that the law newly criminalizes drag performances overlooks the ways that certain trans and other gender-nonconforming people are already policed and treated as criminal without the need for new laws.
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