👗The War on Drag

Fabulous Resources from the Clayman Institute

Last week, I attended an incredible webinar The War on Drag, hosted by the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University. The line up of transgender experts included Marquis Bey, Jack Halberstam, Mark Joseph Stern, and Susan Stryker. Moira Donegan moderated.

Unsurprisingly, the war on trans people extends to laws limiting or banning drag. In early March, Tennessee enacted the first absurd anti-drag bill in the US, though a federal judge temporarily blocked it. At least 9 other states plan to enact similar bans.

It’s critical that we increase our understanding of how anti-drag and anti-trans legislation negatively impact our communities. The War on Drag speakers deftly connect history, gender, sexuality, abolition, race, and power.

You can watch The War on Drag webinar here:

The Clayman Institute sent out a list of resources for the event, and I’m passing them along to you.

Resources discussed during the event:

• Arresting Dress: Cross-Dressing, Law, and Fascination in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco (2014) by Clare Sears

• Unwarranted and Invasive Scrutiny: Caster Semenya, Sex-Gender Testing and the Production of Woman in ‘Women’s’ Track and Field (2019) by Aaren Pastor

• Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America (1979) by Esther Newton

Resources written/edited by or featuring event speakers:

• Black Trans Feminism (2022) by Marquis Bey

• Cistem Failure: Essays on Blackness and Cisgender (2022) by Marquis Bey

• Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters (1995) by Jack Halberstam

• Female Masculinity (1998) by Jack Halberstam

• In a Queer Time and Place (2005) by Jack Halberstam

• The Queer Art of Failure (2011) by Jack Halberstam

• Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal (2012) by Jack Halberstam

• Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variance (2018) by Jack Halberstam

• Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire (2020) by Jack Halberstam

• “So We Moved” by Adam Pendleton

• American Justice 2019: The Roberts Court Arrives (2019) by Mark Joseph Stern

• Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution (2017) by Susan Stryker

• The Transgender Studies Reader (2006, 2013) edited by Susan Stryker, Stephen Whittle

• The Transgender Studies Reader Remix (2022) edited by Susan Stryker, Dylan McCarthy Blackston

• Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria by Susan Stryker

I hope you enjoy this webinar and resources! Please share it with your friends.

Be well, be brave, be bold,

Alyssa ❤️