Is Gay Culture Dead?

A Word of Warning from a Onetime Drag Diva

A fitter, younger me, at Pride celebration in 2008

I’m just gonna say it. Pride has become a sh*tshow. And it’s not about who marches or not, or how diverse the parade looks—because it will be more diverse than ever this year, and that’s always a good thing—even when the more outré elements grab all the camera time and the fascination (or revulsion) of the public at large. I haven’t marched in a Pride parade in many a moon. To everything there is a season, and I think younger generations need to make their own Pride celebrations. What I personally loathe is the corporatization, commercial exploitation, and ill-considered marketing schemes which seem to all end up reflecting badly on the gay community and which, I assert, cannot have been conceived by LGBT+ people—they reek of the machinations of a certain ideological movement. Yeah, I’ll say it: there’s some heinous cultural appropriation going on. I mean, what self respecting gay would go near the tacky, fire-retardant Pride Collection at Target? And what of all the stunning and talented trans stars we now have in films, on TV and Broadway, who were passed over so that insipid Dylan Mulvaney can rake in the millions in endorsements and get a trip to the White House for good measure? Oh yes—and the controversy still sashay shantes around the perilously tone deaf disaster that is Drag Queen Story Hour. More on that epic cringe anon.

Gay culture is a thing, you know? Like, a couple hundred glorious years of it. The sacred and the profane, the camp and the tragic. All of us in the gutter, but many of us looking at the stars. I got to experience a year of true NYC club life in the ‘80s, and lots of circuit parties in the ‘90s. I was an actor and a female impersonator in the flourishing gay theatre and cabaret scene during what I call the “gay nineties.” I came to New York in the summer of ‘93 with my first drag act, an imaginary nightclub evening with tone deaf, two-time Tony winner and Hollywood legend, Lauren Bacall. It was a ballsy move for an aspiring 20-something actor, but it got me noticed. The creative team for Howard Crabtree’s Whoop-Dee-Doo!, a gay musical revue in Greenwich Village, offered me my first paid job in the city, as general understudy for all nine guys in the show.

As Lauren Bacall, mid-90s

At that time, everything on and off Broadway was gay themed; a cultural reaction, I believe, to the national trauma of the AIDS epidemic. Broadway had Angels in America, Love! Valour! Compassion! and Kiss of the Spiderwoman running simultaneously. Off-Broadway, we had Pageant, Jeffrey, Party, and lowbrow offerings like Cute Boys in Their Underpants. The drag scene was exploding! The numerous cabarets and clubs presented all the many expressions of drag: from the artistes who channeled great divas, like myself, with my three solo shows as Marlene Dietrich; to the one of a kind drag personalities like brilliant monologist Miss Coco Peru, the wacky Varla Jean Merman, the iconic Lypsinka, and of course, the grand dame of the queer stage, Charles Busch. The bars, drag clubs and discos were reigned over by divas like Joey Arias, Ruby Rims, Kevin Aviance, The Lady Bunny, Candis Cayne, and of course, a glamazon named RuPaul.

As Marlene Dietrich, 1998 (photo: Stephen Mosher)

My partner at the time was a company member with the all male ballet troupe, Les Ballets Trockaderos de Monte Carlo, dancing en pointe across the globe. Throughout the decade, I would play some of the greatest drag roles in the repertoire: Albin in La Cage Aux Folles, Solange in The Maids, Madeleine Astarte in Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, and Lady Enid in Charles Ludlam’s quick change extravaganza The Mystery of Irma Vep. I brought my Marlene Dietrich shows to New Orleans, San Francisco, and all the way to Berlin, where I saw in the year 2000 performing at the legendary BKA cabaret, just a stone’s throw away from where Marlene grew up. I was featured in a Biography documentary about the great star. I was flown to Munich to perform at a fashion event promoting a new German biopic of Dietrich, and posed for photo ops with star Katja Flint. Filmmaker Rick McKay featured me behind the scenes making up and transforming into Marlene in the short film, Illusions. You can see it, and many more videos and images from my drag days on my YouTube channel and my website, jamesbeaman.com.

As Marlene, with film star Katja Flint, Munich, 2000

All this self-aggrandizement has a purpose, I swear. In a time when one must present the proper cultural credentials in order to be “entitled” to speak, the above receipts prove that I’m versed in the rich history of gay culture, and the indelible imprint we’ve made on mainstream culture. The art of drag first made its presence known to mainstream America at least a century ago, eventually sweeping onto Broadway, headlining top nightclubs, and insinuating itself into film and television . In the late 20th century, musical groups and pop stars, boldly embodying queer culture, from Sylvester, to the Village People, to Culture Club topped the charts. Fashion moved where gay designers moved it. The hot clubs and nightspots were where the queer people danced and where the next musical craze originated. We created our own worlds—because we had to. The discrimination and marginalization we experienced—far from defeating us—spurred us to greater and greater heights of creative expression and influence.

When the push for Marriage Equality was gaining momentum, I was somewhat unpopular at dinner parties. I had been in a sixteen-year relationship with my ex-partner, with all the legal documents and protections available to us—and of course I’ve always believed legal marriage should be possible to all couples who wish to make the commitment. My contrarian query, however, was this: if Marriage Equality, based on a heterosexual model of marriage, is the deciding victory that symbolizes our acceptance in American society, the thing that finally makes us equal…what if I don’t get married? Am I less equal than those who do? I feared the inevitable: that the more integrated, the more “normalized” gay people became in the mainstream, the more our rich gay subculture would evaporate…and our special art forms rendered “user friendly” for the masses. Enterprising visionaries like RuPaul, Ryan Murphy, Janet Mock and others have performed an alchemy, turning queer culture into mainstream gold. And bravo/brava to them—they’ve done us proud.

However….back to the sh*tshow: the impetus for this sprawling encapsulation of my gay life in the arts.

The DEI industrial complex has tried to impose the Antiracist paradigm of social justice onto the LGBTQIA+ community, lumping all these very different identities and cultures into one “oppressed” group. This has proven extremely divisive and ironically, it’s begun to marginalize gay men and lesbians, who are seen as the new binaries. The focus of DEI has been the pushing of gender ideology and trans rights activism, with the introduction of new language and sensitivity protocols; see: preferred pronouns. As with all DEI programs for social change, the usage of accepted terms and definitions by “the privileged” must be demonstrated to signal assent—and just as we’re adjusting to the concept of non-binary, and getting used to they/them pronouns…DEI, like Lucy Van Pelt, moves the football. Pronouns can now be exchanged like fashion accessories, combined in ever more mystifying ways depending on one’s mood. Then, pronouns give way to neopronouns and—roll up, roll up!—the circus has come to town.

Somehow, somewhere along the way, the non-binary/gender fluid folks demanded to be acknowledged as trans. I suspect this was to move what I’ve taken to be creative gender expression, and something of a punk activism intent on breaking stereotypes of gender, to something less nurture, more nature—not a choice, or passing fashion. The result? Division. Hostility toward transgender or transsexual (as trans icon and queer elder Buck Angel self describes) people, who, as the result of gender dysphoria, have fully transitioned—making medical and physical alterations to their bodies, and living life as the sex they feel they are—not the biological sex of their birth. Gender dysphoria’s a well established mental disorder, and transition is a binary choice. Well, we know how the social justice movement feels about binaries. Male and female, of the “cis” variety, are the oppressors—even when male and female are gay and lesbian.

What fresh hell is this? More and more fracturing of “the community;” bickering and cancellation; the derision toward prominent trans people who seek to educate from their experiences of the medical and mental health realities, and seek to protect children from premature and potentially irreversible medical decisions. Such leaders as Buck, trans influencer Blaire White, and others, are shouted down, ludicrously labeled as transphobes; their platforms under constant threat of being cancelled. And who’s engineering all this? Woke corporate interests and the DEI machine. And why? Because if there’s no conflict being stirred up between identity groups, the DEI folks can’t maintain their lucrative jobs; their consulting firms and tenured institutional positions. They’re not looking to create a harmonious culture of coexistence; the conflict is the objective. Power games are their raison d’etre.

Why else would these people resurrect and disseminate old, ugly tropes about suicidal gender dysphoric youth, and vulnerable transgender victims being sexually violated, brutalized and killed? Why else would they put into the screaming mouths of their pink haired acolytes the hideous lie of a trans genocide in America? Of course the voices of those like Buck and Blaire, who have the lived experience that could educate and assist parents and kids, must be silenced. As the genderqueer punks get louder and more extreme, we gays, lesbians, transgender people—who fought our entire adult lives to achieve acceptance and legal equality for ourselves and for them, against incredible opposition—paid for in lives lost to AIDS, homophobic violence and cruelty…we recoil from them. The “community” becomes divided and hostile, and who are the drivers of all that unnecessary strife? DEI operatives, profiting off the ignorance and misplaced passions of young, confused people, and the implacable hunger of their parents to be on the right side of it all. Meanwhile, people like myself and others—who took the beatings, assumed the risks, fought tooth and nail for the freedoms these young people enjoy today…they howl us down. The wisdom and truth our lives have won for us all? Dismissed.

When I first came to New York, LGBT culture was a hierarchy of little tribes, with the “Chelsea Boys,” the buff, worked out, “straight acting” (odious term we are well rid of) at the top of the pyramid. I called them The Mean Girls: they were exclusive, elitist, and shady, many of them. They made unwelcome whole swaths of the community: bears, queens, the queer elders, and quite often, transgender people. These groups were forced to find their own spaces. Lesbians kept to themselves, cultivating their own bars and social circles. The Leather community pursued its exclusive dens and activities. Drag clubs did drag. We would all come together each year for Pride and group march behind our individual banners, and while we didn’t always find agreement about how best to represent ourselves, we were united in affirmation of our right to be here—in all our diversity.

Over time, we’ve become more inclusive and have embraced each other’s differences, which is why it’s so disheartening to me to see the kind of tension and hostility being whipped up between gays, lesbians, and transsexual people on the one hand, and the trans, queer and gender non-conforming activists on the other. I firmly believe this has happened because of an obstinate incuriosity and ignorance on the part of young queer people to learn our history, and the story of our civil rights struggle…and the exploitation of their ignorance by DEI activists operating within colleges and universities, at work in the public schools, and busy inside bureaucracies and corporations throughout our society. It’s due to the hijacking of our own culture by reckless ideologues that we’re again having to worry about public perception, and the potential upending of our hard won acceptance and the coexistence we’ve achieved.

Which brings us to—Drag Queen Story Hour. Why on earth would drag performers bring the acts they do for adult gay audiences into children’s libraries and pre-schools? Why, indeed. Drag Queen Story Hour was the brainchild of one Michelle Tea, a very Woke, white 50-something woman who identifies (according to her website) as “lesbian-ish.” Tea’s an author who writes on queer themes, and who, after becoming a mother, conceived Drag Queen Story Hour to expose kids to LGBT+ culture at an early age. Only someone like Ms. Tea would appropriate a performance tradition of gay men, and place it inappropriately amidst children, with no thought at all to the hard fight gay men had to wage for decades against the Right’s insinuations of indoctrination and pedophilia. I don’t blame the drag queens—good taste isn’t always their forte, and after all, a girl’s gotta make a buck. But Ms. Tea and her Woke Mommy and Me followers exceed bad taste, displaying total disregard for the potential consequences to the communities they profess to be in such support of. Thanks ladies—it’s the 1960s all over again. Add to this the much more serious trend of imposing adult concepts of sexuality and gender on small kids; rushing some of them toward irreversible medical and physical alterations out of a misguided desire to affirm a gender identity that the child may not even possess. How can this not have repercussions for everybody under the progressive Pride banner?

Michelle Tea, creator of Drag Queen Story Hour

I’ve spent much of my artistic career celebrating gay culture and its traditions, and I’m proud to be a part of the history of the art of drag. While we find amusement and entertainment in some of the “real housewife” style machinations of the Drag Race contestants, my experience of the drag culture was very different. When I was coming up as an impersonator, I learned that the established queens were tough cookies, but if you had your own thing and you did it brilliantly, they were incredibly generous and welcoming. My biggest supporter and teacher in those early days was the late, great Randy Allen, whose brilliant show P.S. Bette Davis brought him national attention and opportunities to appear on mainstream television. I was doing a first Provincetown run of my Bacall show, and was taken to see Randy at the Crown and Anchor. His acting, uncanny mimicry, and makeup artistry were inspired.

After seeing my fledgling effort, Randy invited me to visit him backstage between his performances the next day. He sat me down and gave me intelligent and generous feedback on my performance, and a lesson in makeup techniques that I still use today. A few years later, Randy called me. He was soon to open Off-Broadway in a two person play written for him in his “post-stroke” Bette Davis characterization, Me and Jezebel. Randy had full-blown AIDS and he was uncertain if he’d be well enough to do the eight shows a week. He asked me if I’d audition for his producers to be his understudy, so that they’d allow the production to go forward. I did a crash course in Bette Davis and painted my face using the skills Randy had taught me. I auditioned and was offered the job…but before I could even begin rehearsals, just days before previews were to begin, Randy passed away. He was thirty-eight. Like so many, gone too soon. He bequeathed to me not only generous tips and secrets of the trade, but a sense of pride in carrying on a gay artistic tradition. Our culture belongs to us, and our “community” is what we make of it. Our place in this society is ours to lose—and I believe it’s the responsibility of us queer elders to pass along the Pride to the next generations, as Randy did for me. If only they’ll stop screaming long enough to listen.