In a political climate increasingly hostile to studying gender and Black history, the remarkable life of 1920s drag performer Gladys Bentley is an inspiration.
The clubs Bentley performed in offered a form of liberation, but they weren’t entirely free of the oppression of 1920s America. Many of the clubs, like the Cotton Club and the Ubangi Club, had names that smacked of primitivism. Some white liberals in the Jim Crow era believed that Black people were closer to and more in touch with nature, and this desire for authenticity led white “slummers” to visit Harlem dives and seek out blues performances.
The visibility of overtly queer figures such as Bentley to the white slumming crowd was an embarrassment to the Black middle class. Critics like W.E.B. Du Bois were concerned that their neighborhoods were being used by white visitors like a trip to the zoo or the circus. He wrote in 1927 that Harlem was “.” Some feared that unconventional figures like Bentley were misrepresenting the race, doing a disservice to the cause of racial uplift and to the dignity of the Black community.
Nevertheless, Bentley became so popular during Prohibition that by the early 1930s, her act headed to Midtown, where her toned-down but still raunchy performances were soon discovered not only by journalists, but by the police as well.
These ambiguously worded laws that police queer people’s autonomy have returned with a vengeance in the last few years. I’m currently writing this from Tennessee, where public drag performances have just been banned. This wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation is instilling fear not just in drag performers, but in trans and gender-nonconforming people just trying to live their lives.
Bentley’s open queerness in the 1920s and ’30s offers us a model of daring resistance that can inspire us today as we enter a new era of backlash against queer and trans visibility in American society. The most visible members of the queer community have always been on the forefront of the movement and have also received the most vitriol.
日本 最新ニュース, 日本 見出し
Similar News:他のニュース ソースから収集した、これに似たニュース記事を読むこともできます。
Gladys Knight's Husband Says Biden Told Them Meeting On PPE Company Won't HappenGladys Knight's husband says Biden told them straight up he wouldn't be meeting with them over her PPE company.
続きを読む »
Free McLaren or Bentley: Sellers get creative to close deals before ‘mansion tax’ kicks inAs L.A.'s new 'mansion tax' looms, sellers are trying anything to close deals before the April 1 deadline to avoid paying the tax.
続きを読む »
How women are fighting back against the gender wage gapIn any business, there are barriers— some movable, some solid as a brick. Sometimes the trick is determining which is which.
続きを読む »
Beshear offers rare buck of bans on gender-affirming care for minors amid nationwide sweepKentucky Gov. Andy Beshear's veto of a bill aimed at transgender health care puts the state in the middle of a national fight, but with more immediate consequen
続きを読む »
LGBTQ people have 'been around for forever,' historians say'There is no historically universal way that societies have sorted biologically different people into personhood categories in the way that we do it now.'
続きを読む »
Gender Gap Widens For Young Single Women Looking To Buy A HomeAfter growing to 28.6% by 2021, the homeownership rate for single women dropped to 24.5% last year, wiping out almost half the gains made since 2016.
続きを読む »