Activism, Uncensored: Drag Event Protests in 2022
Activism, Uncensored: Drag Event Protests in 2022
Ford Fischer's News2Share crew, with a sharp eye and careful detachment, captures a long year of Americans arguing furiously
“You got a fat head!” screams a anti-drag activist in Jackson Heights in New York. “You got an Italian meatball with a fuckin’ piece of proscuitto on your face!”
Ford Fischer’s News2Share crew assembles a montage of 2022 drag protests, which were many, varied, usually provocative, sometimes violent, and often incoherent. The News2Share cameras take no position on events and in fact appear to be taken as antagonists by both sides at times. Protesters offer Nazi salutes but also threaten to shove pride flags “up your fuckin’ ass, bitch boy.” Police in each jurisdiction seem to have trouble deciding which group of protesters they dislike more. It’s a compelling portrait of America during a particularly confused period of its history, when furious arguments are the norm and dialogue is nearly non-existent.
A former version of this piece incorrectly identified the first activist as pro-drag. He was on the other side.
The identification of citizens standing up for children as "right wing" is simply wrong-headed in every respect. Children should be shielded from adult themed entertainment. If you took a child to a strip club, not many people would defend that and child services would view it dimly. Can the drag performers elicit the purpose of exposing children to drag show entertainment?
Drag is a perverted attack on women, full stop. Women's stereotypic characteristics and manners are satirized in drag, in a cruel and vicious manner. Some like it, mostly perverts. What is unacceptable, completely, is allowing children under the age of 21 into the events. Pictures of 6 YO girls putting money into the underwear of adult men with fake breasts should lead to arrest and conviction for sexual contact, not the celebration of Democratic alphabet activists.