Lady Bunny's Take: Drag, Politics, and Queer Resistance

Creative spaces for artistic and self-expression have always been a central part of queer culture. Historically, these spaces have also been safe havens for gender diverse people to express themselves. From William Dorsey Swann, a formerly enslaved African American who held drag gatherings in 1880’s Washington D.C., to the South Side of Chicago’s racially-inclusive and gender-expansive drag balls of the 1920’s through 1950’s.

In this tradition, Wigstock, hosted by co-creator Lady Bunny, was an outdoor drag festival in New York City’s Tompkins Square public park which started in 1984. What began as spill-over from nearby Pyramid Club and a handful of drag performers grew over the next twenty years to become a highly-visible celebration of LGBTQ+ people, as well as neighborhood allies in downtown Manhattan who enjoyed the festival’s diverse range of performers.

Never heard of it? You most likely have seen it before. If you’ve watched viral online footage of RuPaul performing on an outdoor stage in the 1990’s, it is likely at Wigstock. Other iconic performers to take the Wigstock stage have been Amanda Lepore, Kevin Aviance, Debbie Harry, Boy George, Neil Patrick Harris and John Cameron Mitchel (both as Hedwig from the Broadway show Hedwig and the Angry Inch).

Lady Bunny has remained an icon of the drag community, performing as a DJ, a sharp-witted and brash comedian, and a nightlife legend. Her one-woman shows have brought international acclaim, and her songwriting chops have led to her solo dance single “Take Me Up High” as well as two duets with RuPaul.

Now, as Lady Bunny embarks on touring with her latest show, “Don’t Bring The Kids,” which is coming to Phoenix on Feb. 24th, America is facing a cultural moment where drag and creative spaces for queer, trans and non-binary people are under imminent threat.

LOOKOUT writer Royal Young got a chance to talk to Lady Bunny over the phone, and spoke about the origins of Wigstock, the importance of queer visibility, how Lady Bunny became politically aware, her take on trans rights, and how we can move forward as a country, as well as her perspective on how gender and drag have changed over the decades.

This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.

Royal Young (LOOKOUT): I saw Wigstock as a little non-binary baby growing up in downtown Manhattan. For me, seeing that space of joy and celebration, and seeing people on a gender spectrum was really powerful in such a positive way.

Lady Bunny: I came here as a go-go dancer on the bar of the Pyramid Club, so it wasn’t like I was a gentrifier driving up prices, I was probably driving them down.

RY: They weren’t opening any Whole Foods because of you.

LB: No, but my hole may have become food for several lucky homeless men in Tompkins Square Park.

RY: And that’s how Wigstock began.

LB: [laughs] Right.

RY: But in seriousness, what do you think allowed a cultural event like that to happen and could it happen today?

LB: I think it could definitely happen today. But in New York, there’s no way to get a space for it, it would cost a fortune. When we started, we were producing it in Tompkins Square Park and all we needed was to rent a sound system and pay a $50 admission fee to the City to apply for a park’s permit.

RY: I remember Tompkins Square as a place where we had the anti-police riots, also as my elementary school playground and a very creative hub. Let’s talk about the cultural backdrop where Wigstock was happening.

LB: Wigstock was an offshoot of the Pyramid Club, which was pretty much caddy corner to Tompkins Square Park. It was very gritty, this was 1983 and 1984, so you had everything from skinheads and punks, to this being a Polish, Jewish and Puerto Rican neighborhood. Wigstock kind of just took over the neighborhood on Labor Day weekend. You always had a different crowd, there would be homeless people dancing. You mentioned the riots, that year they didn’t let us do it because they thought we would whip up a homeless right. I was like no honey, I might be homely but we’re just trying to put on a drag show.

Image by Steven Menendez, courtesy of Lady Bunny

RY: Well you were that energizing, they thought I don’t know this drag music could lead to another revolt.

LB: [laughs] The other thing that made Wigstock unique, was the Pyramid was a rock club. So I wanted to showcase the wonderful acts there, I thought we could attract a bigger audience. The reason I thought that was that I loved drag in Atlanta, drag was very serious with rules. I got to the Pyramid and I would impersonate rarefied 1950’s diva Yma Sumac. Or there was literally a junkie named Baby Gregor who didn’t really do drag much, but he had a character called Jelly Joplin who looked and sang exactly like Janis Joplin. It was not the pageant scene, we didn’t take ourselves very seriously, and we were mixed in with the rock bands.

My personal taste was the incredible House music I hadn’t heard much until I moved to New York. That was the soundtrack to our lives, CeCe Peniston, Crystal Waters, Barbara Tucker, these were the hit records playing all over the world and the DJs who produced them like Little Louie Vega and Frankie Knuckles, they were actually playing at the clubs we went to. New York and music and drag and pop culture was having a moment.

RY: It was such a beautiful wild west in New York City at that time, because downtown was largely neglected by officials, which allowed for so much creative growth. You also had Ballroom culture in there.

LB: Oh yes, I just died seeing Dorian Corey perform at Wigstock, Octavia St. Laurent performed and she sang beautifully. Willie Ninja always came out, and even after so many years when he had difficulty walking. I don’t want to be shady, but not everyone in the Ballroom culture was as sweet as Willie. We were friends. And I wanted to mix.

RY: Let’s talk about the culture wars in the 90’s and I can’t believe we’re still talking about Neil Giuliani. But you had a bubble and this amazing moment of inclusion in the neighborhood. Wigstock was celebrated, I was an elementary school kid playing in that same park and there was no fear that the drag queens were bad for the children. For me, that was a very positive example.

Democrats had both houses of congress from 2020 to 2022 and the White House, they did not pass the Equality Act which would guard against discrimination in schools, in housing, in employment. They did not do that, yet gays religiously give them their vote, because Republicans are worse on gay stuff. But at the same time, I am not in sync with what the Human Rights Campaign and GLAAD are pushing at all.
-Lady Bunny

LB: Well, Tompkins Square had heavy metal bands that would play all day long on the weekends and the whole neighborhood could hear it. To me, that music was dreadful. I just thought, I could do something better than this. I’ve always been that person that as a child, taped a sheet between two trees and put on some dumb show. I’m so glad we didn’t have cell phones back then.

I only became politically aware after 9/11. I really just went along with the Democrats and did the gay marriage benefits, but I didn’t feel I had anything serious to offer because I was a clown. We needed the clowns at a time when our friends were dropping dead from AIDS. I just thought it would be easy to give in to total grief, so the Wigstock festival had a Mardi Gras feeling. People were encouraged to come in costumes, so maybe you’re a bodybuilder who put on a wig and no make-up, or people would put wigs on their dogs. It became something silly to do and participatory.

The audience felt safe to be in whatever form of drag. So there really weren’t too many incidents. This was happening at the time Giuliani was in office and he was cracking down on gay clubs using an archaic cabaret law rule which specified that unless a venue had been grandfathered in with a cabaret license, you could shut their dancing down. I’m no fan of Giuliani then or now, but I always wondered why people weren’t trying to get rid of that old law.

RY: Coming from that in our last century, let’s talk about where we are now. You’re still bringing audiences together and performing but the world you’re doing that in has changed a lot.

LB: Well, how do you think it has changed a lot? From where I’m standing the Republicans and Democrats are two sides of the same coin.

RY: Yeah, two sides of the same coin of power. When I say change I mean more in terms of we have the internet, technologically. In terms of who holds power—no I don’t think it’s changed that much. In terms of othering communities—no I don't think it’s changed that much. I think prejudice is much more out in the open now. In the era we’re talking about, specifically New York City, which is not America, it was so diverse in a way that was accepting but also acknowledging people's differences. It doesn’t feel that way to me today.

LB: Well listen, if younger people in the last ten or fifteen years want more diversity and have included different people who have never been included, that’s wonderful. For myself, I was inspired to do what I do because of a trans woman of color Natasha Khan in Chattanooga Tennessee, and you never had to tell me to go run and find the trans women or the people of color, because I was always with them. So I'm glad others caught up, but I didn’t need to try to be inclusive because I just naturally was.

For example: Nex Benedict. Democrats had both houses of congress from 2020 to 2022 and the White House, they did not pass the Equality Act which would guard against discrimination in schools, in housing, in employment. They did not do that, yet gays religiously give them their vote, because Republicans are worse on gay stuff.

But at the same time, I am not in sync with what the Human Rights Campaign and GLAAD are pushing at all. I consider myself very, very lucky to both take an interest in trans people—mostly women—but of all ages, and so glad they have welcomed me into their lives, treat me like a sister and talk to me. So I would never say anything like this unless I had conferred with dozens of trans friends. But when you were growing up in New York, if you met a trans woman at a party or a premiere and she was dressed up you would never ask her pronouns. And a trans woman would knock you for that, because it suggests you don’t know what look she’s doing for.

An NPR interviewer asked me this when I was doing a show in Chicago. He thought we needed to heat up his piece with more issues, so he called me back and asked, “What do you think about the violence against trans women of color?” I said, saying the names is a wonderful part of the grieving process, but you don’t get brownie points from me as a politician for saying the names once a year. What they need to do is put their money where their mouth is, and I’m not a detective, but ask, who is killing trans women and under what circumstances?

"If there are some parents who are wary of talking about transgender issues that’s okay. Trans people make up about 1% of the population, so I wish we could talk about them in the percentage there are and not use them as wedge issues, which both the Left and the Right do."
- Lady Bunny

The gay community accepts crumbs, they are like “Omg Joe Biden said trans!” So? That is a virtue signalling nothing. Put that money you spent killing Gazans, and give it to the trans community. They say some of these trans women are being murdered while doing legalized sex work. I saw a group say don’t just legalize it, decriminalize it. I don’t know what that means, but I’m all for it. Is Joe Biden? No. Is Kamala Harris? No. None of the conservative Democratic leadership is.

RY: Absolutely. And I think really scarlily, we’re seeing that with people falling in line so fast with these illegitimate Executive Orders about trans and non-binary people. It feels like they couldn’t wait to drop pronouns.

LB: Okay, but I have to just say–

RY: You don’t like pronouns?

LB: No, no, I’m just confused by the pronouns. I did a movie and everyone on set was they/them. I went out with one of the actors after, and they asked me my pronouns. I said I guess she, because I’m in drag and asked their pronouns and they said, “she/they.” Okay, so told them I’m older and not really into pronouns but they didn’t get offended, and when they told me their pronouns I didn’t say, “What the fuck does that mean?” I called a friend of mine who is trans and feels the same way, that pronouns have less to do with actual trans people who transition than it does for people on the gender spectrum.

I’m part of that gender spectrum too, I just don’t feel that way. People everywhere are not going to care about your pronouns. So for my trans friends, if you need and want to use them in your own circles, I certainly have no idea of stopping anyone from going by what they want. I’m a 62 year-old fat man who goes by Lady Bunny. But I feel in most cases, just get your bus pass stamped and it doesn’t matter your gender binaries. They don’t need to know that and they don’t need to pick a fight with that. You’re asking strangers to talk about something that doesn’t make any sense to them at all.

My allegiance is to the trans community, but I’m a drag queen, my wig comes off at night and I go do my errands as a male. Would it be nice if everyone got your pronouns right wherever you went if you had a beard and eye make-up on? I guess so, I just don’t think that’s going to happen. If politicians want to feign support for gay, trans and non-binary people because they are marginalized, then let’s unite the country. Because everybody, all the voters want affordable insurance, housing, jobs that pay a livable wage and school that is affordable. So when you lift up everybody, you lift up the marginalized and they become less marginalized.

RY: We’re past the point of performative bullshit.

LB: Well so much of what we see online is performative. The other thing I talk about in my show is I have no interest in performing for kids. I cut my teeth performing for drunk and high people in clubs. So I was encouraged to be as sick, and wild and raunchy. Children could never see what I do, they couldn’t even get into the bar. So of course, Republicans are lying when they say that drag queens story hours are used to sexually groomed children. I mean, I know some dumb drag queens but none dumb enough to think yeah, I want to groom some kids in a fluorescent lit public library at noon with their parents right there.

RY: Absolutely absurd.

LB: Absolutely. But the other part of this, by the other part of this that the left doesn’t want to talk about is that some of these queens are reading books like The Drag Queen Goes Swish Swish and I Have Two Daddies. So, I don’t have children, I think it would be nice to have a drag queen come read a story to me, because I am a drag queen. And as a kid, that would have made me feel less twisted. Like if this person could come to my school where I was getting so much negativity from classmates, that would have made me feel like, wow there’s a future for me. But since I don’t have kids, or create a curriculum, I do not know or claim to know if maybe we should wait to read them books like that till they are older and maybe thinking more about their identity.

RY: Transition is not an easy or overnight decision for anyone, so no one is just rushing out to transition or push that on other people. It should be okay for an individual to explore their own gender and journey, it’s okay to go through different phases of that, or for that to look different for different people. We should be able to accept whoever they are.

LB: Listen, I grew up with people who were afraid you would turn gay if you played with Barbies. I’ve been mixing my own eyeshadow since I was eight years-old. I’m not saying for people to not be who they are. I was that and I became that. But if there are some parents who are wary of talking about transgender issues that’s okay. Trans people make up about 1% of the population, so I wish we could talk about them in the percentage there are and not use them as wedge issues, which both the Left and the Right do.

Another one is the bathrooms. Honey, there is a solution, no one wants to talk about, single occupancy bathrooms. Big enough for a wheelchair, there’s a bar for an old drag queen to lower herself down on the toilet and get back up, there’s condoms, tampax and hormones, a baby-changing table, you go in there do your business and no one is wiser.

There are many people on the Left and maybe even on the Right who support trans’ peoples right to exist, and transition, but they feel differently about the grey areas.

RY: Let’s talk about your new show and how your life experiences and your unique perspective on the current moment play into your show.

LB: I do a song about drag queen story hours, and I do a bit about the state of Montana, which was trying to ban hormones for adult trans people. But there’s also filthy songs, one-liners, RuPauls’ Drag Race reads, I do the worst Cher impersonation in the world, it’s very high energy. Some people tell me, my god! You have so much energy for your age. I mean I gotta work to get a standing ovation, I’m not RuPaul. I can’t just walk out on stage and mumble a few words. I gotta get up there and make it good, because I don’t have any income from fracking.

Lady Bunny performs her "Don't Bring the Kids!" show at the Desert Ridge Improv on Feb. 23, 2025 at 3 p.m. $30-$55. 21+. Tickets available here.

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