If you feel like drag queens are ubiquitous these days, you aren’t wrong.
Whether it’s public libraries, advertisements or award shows, it seems like the gender-bending performers, once relegated to mature adult spaces, are suddenly impossible to avoid.
They’re practically everywhere — except perhaps the campus of West Texas A&M University in Canyon. Late last month, university President Walter Wendler, canceled a student-run drag show.
It was intended to be a charity event, raising funds for the Trevor Project, a nonprofit organization that focuses on suicide prevention in the LGBTQ community.
In a blog post published March 21, Wendler called the organization’s goal a “noble cause.” He added: “Any person considering self-harm for any reason is tragic.”
His objection to the event was instead based on his assertion that “drag shows stereotype women in cartoon-like extremes for the amusement of others and discriminate against womanhood.”
I wouldn’t say he’s entirely wrong about that.
While apologists might say that drag is an “expressive art form” that celebrates individualism and challenges gender stereotypes, many people find the caricaturing and hyper-sexualization of women, so often a feature and not a bug in drag performances, to be degrading and offensive.
(And, yes, I’m sure there are women who don’t particularly care one way or another.)
But even if drag shows were deemed universally objectionable, it’s worth asking if Wendler had the authority — in the legal sense — to cancel a show on his public university’s campus based solely on his assessment that any and all drag performances cause harm.
The folks at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, don’t think so.
Following Wendler’s action, they filed a complaint on behalf of the student group Spectrum WT (which had sponsored the drag show fundraiser) and two of its student leaders. It alleges that in canceling the performance, Wendler’s “unlawful censorship” violated the students’ First Amendment rights.
They further assert that Wendler was afoul of a Texas law passed in 2019 that affirms student free speech on public university campuses.
That law declares that “an institution of higher education may not take action against a student organization or deny the organization any benefit generally available to other student organizations … on the basis of a political, religious, philosophical, ideological, or academic viewpoint expressed by the organization or of any expressive activities of the organization.”
For its part, FIRE — which made its name largely by defending conservatives on college campuses — was generally complimentary of the new law.
Republicans in the Legislature widely supported the law, arguing persuasively that conservative viewpoints and speakers were being targeted and censored on progressive university campuses.
Even four years ago, those incidences were not infrequent in institutions of higher learning, and they’ve only grown in number and intensity since.
It was only last month that students at Stanford Law School shouted down Judge Kyle Duncan, of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. They claimed that his decisions on the bench made his presence on campus a threat to students and staff.
That argument was echoed by a school administrator who took over the podium and validated student sentiments by asking the judge if his presence on campus was worth the “harm,” “pain” and disruption it caused her community.
Almost ironically, that’s effectively the same argument Wendler is making by deplatforming the student drag show.
His rationale for denying a student group the space to perform its drag show is to prevent the harm it would cause. To wit, his blog post announcing the show’s cancellation was titled, “A Harmless Drag Show? No Such Thing.”
In fairness to Wendler, his reasoning at least was thought-provoking.
“I would not support “blackface” performances on our campus, even if told the performance is a form of free speech or intended as humor,” he explained for the very same reason. “It is wrong,” he added.
Whether the two are analogous I don’t know, but it’s something worth consideration.
While I am sympathetic to Wendler’s argument about the nature of drag shows and their degradation of women, his decision to cancel the show on those grounds makes me squeamish.
In this way, it’s almost fitting that a Texas free speech law championed by conservatives is integral to the case against Wendler.
And it’s a reminder to conservatives (not that they need one) that shouting down, or in this case, shutting down speech we don’t like — even when offensive and degrading and morally wrong — ultimately threatens our rights as well.
