Under New Ban, Drag Performers In Texas Assess Risks

May May Graves is a Dallas-area drag queen whose primary performance style centers on classic Hollywood and horror films. Like most drag performers and comedians, she has an all-ages set she can pull out of her back pocket if asked to perform at a venue expecting children, but not every producer makes it clear whether minors will be present. Well-meaning, even supportive parents and promoters seem oblivious to how the stakes have changed. 

“Whenever the Trump Administration started in 2017, I was already mentally preparing, and within that time, I felt like I was going crazy because like so many just people who weren’t paying attention or did not think about the safety of performers,” she said in a Zoom interview. “I would be doing a brunch and then last minute I find out that it’s an all-ages show, and they didn’t think to warn the performers. I walked out on stage about to do a striptease, and then I saw a whole bunch of 14-year-olds in the audience and I was furious.”

Texas Senate Bill 12 passed in 2023 after several sessions of back and forth by a Texas Legislature increasingly hostile to LGBT residents. It went into effect last month. The law isn’t a total ban on drag, per se. Instead, it prohibits sexually oriented performances around children. However, a one definition of that in the bill’s text is “a male performer exhibiting as a female, or a female performer exhibiting as a male, who uses clothing, makeup, or other similar physical markers and who sings, lip syncs, dances, or otherwise performs before an audience; and appeals to the prurient interest in sex.”

The ACLU of Texas is currently suing the state over the law, saying that it enables state harassment of LGBT people. The way the text is framed could mean that anyone anywhere dressed in an insufficiently gendered way around children could be arrested and fined. 

Buck Wylde (also known as Trigger Mortis) is another North Texas drag performer. By any reasonable definition, he is fully covered when in costume, including custom chest pieces that simulate a burly, masculine figure. Yet Buck won’t step outside in the get-up anymore. He gets dressed and undressed at venues just in case someone in a drive-thru decides he is going to bust out a sexually explicit musical number in front of kids out at a Whataburger at 2 a.m.

“If you want to experience hell, go to the gas station and get gas in drag,” he said in a Zoom interview. “Are there going to be kids around? I try to get out of drag before I leave just because I don’t want to deal with it.” 

The passage of SB 12 came after years of dedicated propaganda targeted at LGBT people, particularly trans people. A friend of Graves’s who was invited to read to children at a California library is the lead image in hundreds of social media posts about sinister influences on children, despite it being simply a fully grown person in a Halloween costume reading a picture book.  

Drag performances became a favorite target of anti-LGBT content creators. Find a show that has a kid in it, take a picture, and frame it as a grooming ritual even if the performers were not aware the child was even present.

“There was a time at one of my shows that I had to be an asshole because I was walking around taking tips and the spotlight was in my face,” said Graves. “The spotlight moved the moment that I started walking towards someone holding out some money, and it was a child, probably six or seven years old. If I end up in a picture taking a tip from a child? We’re already being crucified for being in the same city as a child out in the open.”

Neither Graves nor Wylde dislike children or even performing for them. Drag queen story hours are popular across the nation because they are exuberant and fabulous. Drag has been a part of family entertainment for centuries, from Shakespeare to Bugs Bunny. There’s nothing inherently sinister or sexual about the concept. Like all forms of entertainment, some of it is all ages and some of it is not. The law falsely frames drag as inherently sexual by its nature.

Unfortunately, drag is often the tip of the spear in rolling back rights for LGBT people to exist. A child at a show means the drag performer is risking a $10,000 fine even if they were unaware the child was there or had explicitly planned for an adult-only show. Performers like Wylde now fear for their safety even if they aren’t performing but are still wearing their costumes after a show.

It’s understandable that some people want to show their support by bringing their children to drag performers, but since Senate Bill 12 went into effect, it has become a major liability to the drag community. They just want to do a show, and careless parents don’t seem to get how precarious every drag performer’s existence is right now.

“Don’t bring your children into the clubs, please,” said Wylde. “And make good decisions. Make very good decisions. Don’t put it all on us to parent your children.”