GLAAD report: Drag shows targeted by right-wing every 2.5 days

Data released by GLAAD the past week shows that every 2.5 days or 38% of this year there have been attacks on drag performances and shows across the United States. Many of these attacks escalated into violence including the mass-shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs last month.

The data shows that 2022 news reports cited incidents targeting drag events in 47 U.S. states, with the exclusion of South Dakota, Rhode Island, West Virginia and Washington, D.C. GLAAD did note that it is possible that incidents did occur in those areas but they did not receive media coverage.

The states with the highest number of drag events targeted by protests and threats in 2022 were Texas, with 20 incidents; North Carolina, with 10; Illinois, with eight; Tennessee and California, with six each; and Florida and Georgia, with five each.

While many of the incidents were reported in smaller cities and towns in the South and Midwest, a number also took place in areas with higher LGBTQ populations and LGBTQ-inclusive communities.

New York saw four protest incidents, three of which took place in New York City. Some of the more violent or threatening incidents took place in Eugene, Oregon, San Francisco suburbs and Oklahoma’s capital, Tulsa. Events were also targeted in larger cities including Philadelphia, Memphis, Dallas, Cleveland, Las Vegas and Phoenix.

A number of the drag events targeted by threats and protests in person were first targeted by right-wing media outlets like Fox News and the Daily Wire, and social media accounts like Libs Of TikTok. These right-wing media outlets and accounts often misrepresented what would occur at upcoming drag events, spinning them as harmful to children, and protests or threats would follow.

A Media Matters report from June found that Fox News had devoted more hours to targeting drag queens and transgender people than to coverage of the Jan. 6 insurrection hearings.

A Media Matters analysis in November found that disturbing misinformation about drag had ramped up on Fox News and the Daily Wire in the weeks before the Tulsa firebombing, with Tucker Carlson falsely claiming that drag queens “want to sexualize children,” and the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh calling on police to “break down the doors” of LGBTQ clubs and arrest drag queens.

Sometimes the targeting came full-circle, with right-wing media hyping up negative attention ahead of an event and continuing afterward. In June, Libs Of TikTok targeted the Couer D’Alene, Idaho “Pride In The Park” — where 31 anti-LGBTQ protesters were arrested — ahead of the event, saying that a “family friendly drag dance party” was being promoted by the Idaho Satanic Temple.

Afterward, the account shared a doctored video of a drag performer that spread misinformation and falsely alleged indecent exposure during the performance, which led the drag performer to file a lawsuit in September.

The Libs Of TikTok account was briefly suspended by Twitter in September after news reports connected its posts to bomb threats made against children’s hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to transgender youth, but the account was reinstated.

A number of incidents involved violence or weapons. Extremist groups like the Proud Boys, Patriot Front and local white supremacist chapters were involved in several incidents.

GLAAD reviewed legislative proposals in six states that aim to restrict or ban drag. In most cases, extremist politicians pointed to local drag events as the motivation for new legislation that would ban public drag performances such as those that take place at Pride festivals, or ban minors from observing drag performers, including library events such as Drag Queen Story Hour.

Dragphobia is on the Rise

“There is clear and present danger against our community and threats … we really haven’t seen it at this level in over a decade, if ever,” GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said on the “Takeaway” podcast this week.

Drag artist @dix_naomi and @glaad‘s President & CEO @sarahkateellis
discuss the #MooreCounty power grid attack and the rise of #dragphobia in 2022.

LISTEN & DOWNLOAD 🔽 https://t.co/K4tTDZZ6jT

— The Takeaway 🎙 (@TheTakeaway) December 12, 2022

“Wanting to shield children from sexual adult entertainment, whose stated goal is to encourage queerness, is now called ‘dragphobia,’” anti-LGBTQ Libs of TikTok posted. “They can make up whatever terms they want and call us all kinds of names but that doesn’t change the fact that drag isn’t appropriate for kids.”

Wanting to shield children from sexual adult entertainment, whose stated goal is to encourage queerness, is now called “dragphobia”

They can make up whatever terms they want and call us all kinds of names but that doesn’t change the fact that drag isn’t appropriate for kids. https://t.co/C83bFtZ3Ko

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) December 16, 2022

In Canada there has also been a sharp uptick in protests and threats of violence targeting drag shows and performances. The most recent in Kelowna, British Columbia, in early December where a drag event at The DunnEnzies Pizza Lower Mission location was targeted with protestors telling one of the owners of the restaurant that they were a “sick bunch of pedophiles” and “parasites” and told they should hang from the gallows.