A drag show at Three Links Deep Ellum titled “Living Dead Queers” drew in a crowd of more than 20 people Sunday afternoon.
The show included three different performers dressed in drag who sang and danced to various hit songs. They were wearing Halloween-inspired outfits. Such shows have become a major topic of discussion in recent years, with some claiming drag is disrespectful to women.
West Texas A&M University President Walter Wendler, for instance, expressed such a belief when he canceled a campus drag show in March due to concerns that such shows are “derisive, divisive and demoralizing” to women.
“Drag shows stereotype women in cartoon-like extremes for the amusement of others and discriminate against womanhood,” Wendler wrote in an email to the school community, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Still, not everyone feels the same way.
Katie Urdiales attended an Oak Lawn drag brunch in September and told The Dallas Express that the performers are paying homage to women by “loving the energy and the power that those women bring.”
“I think it is oftentimes showing the power of these women and the power of their music,” she said to The Dallas Express.
Another attendee from the Oaklawn show expressed a similar viewpoint, with Haley Carruthers arguing that “femininity can be expressed in a lot of different ways.”
“Whether that is by a woman or not by a woman, or someone in between, it’s still embodying what femininity is,” she claimed.
Drag has also been in the news lately as a result of SB 12, which states, “A person who controls the premises of a commercial enterprise may not allow a sexually oriented performance to be presented on the premises in the presence of an individual younger than 18 years of age.”
The law was going to be enacted on September 1, but a federal judge issued a temporary injunction, stopping it from going into effect.
SB 12 has proven controversial to some, like Austin-based drag performer Brigitte Bandit, who believe the motivation behind the bill is “to push drag and queer artistry out of public spaces,” according to The Texas Tribune.
However, activists like Kelly Neidert of Protect Texas Kids claim that anyone who supports children attending such shows is “okay with children being sexualized … and exposing children to extremely sexual content.”
“I truly don’t understand how anyone should be okay with that,” Neidert previously told The Dallas Express.
