Date of Award
Spring 2021
Degree Type
Honors Project
School
College of Liberal Arts
First Advisor
Susie Steinbach
Abstract
This research aims to understand the trans/drag community and its relationship to political activism and the lesbian and gay community in the 1970s and early 1980s. I aim to answer the following questions: How did Drag perceive the relationship between the gay/lesbian community and the trans/drag community? How did Drag function in the trans/drag community? How did Drag benefit its readers? Transgender individuals and drag queens were at the forefront of activism in the1960s during the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot and the Stonewall Inn Riots. Recently, there has been more attention to the critical transgender activism by Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. Still, there is little academic research on other drag queen activism historically between Stonewall and the start of the AIDS epidemic. I conducted archival research at the Tretter Collection at the University of Minnesota. To conduct my research on trans/drag activism, I examined the magazine Drag. In my research, I found that Drag played an important role in the building of a trans/drag community. During the 1970s, the trans/drag community was met with hostility from the gay and lesbian community, who often ostracized them from their activism. Drag created an expansive drag community that encompassed a wide spectrum of transfeminine/drag identities and provided support to that community.
Recommended Citation
Austin, Olivia, "Drag Magazine: A Study of Community" (2021). Departmental Honors Projects. 95.
https://digitalcommons.hamline.edu/dhp/95
dc_type
text
dc_publisher
DigitalCommons@Hamline
dc_format
application/pdf
dc_source
Departmental Honors Projects
Included in
Gender and Sexuality Commons, History of Gender Commons, Other History Commons, Social History Commons, United States History Commons