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writercole · 2 years ago

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Satin & Lace

Squares: Snowdropper @anyfandomdarkbingo // Escort AU @writing-in-the-dark-bingo // Escort AU Red Hood Mini Bingo // Fake Dating @supernatural-jackles Tell Me A Story Bingo Words: 2675 Warnings: Smut 18+, Male masturbation, dark elements, kidnapping, panty stealing A/N: Truly, I don't know where this came from but...I really enjoyed it. Jason Todd/Red Hood is my favorite Batman character, hell my favorite DC character. He's complex and flawed and deeply human. It's wonderful.

Jason Todd stared at the invitation left in his mailbox with distaste. Damian’s handwriting adorned the front, Jason’s name written in his tidy script. It was an invitation to the annual Wayne Foundation Gala, something that Jason had despised for years, even when he was Robin. But Damian must have wanted him to attend, otherwise why send the invitation?

It had to be Damian’s request. Bruce didn’t know he was still alive.

Damian was the annoying little brother he never wanted. He was Bruce’s blood, the result of a brief love affair with Talia Al Ghul. When Talia had revived Jason in the Lazarus Pit, he spent time at the compound with her, and in turn, with Damian. They weren’t close but Jason did care for the kid.

Maybe he could make an appearance at the gala. Since Damian requested his presence. It would definitely send a ripple through the family that Bruce Wayne claimed so much to care about.

But he couldn’t go alone.

A new request dinged in her inbox, a special notification set up for her work email. She yawned as she opened the message and skimmed through the details, the person requesting accompaniment to the Wayne Foundation Gala. Her eyes narrowed when she saw the signature.

“Jason Todd,’ she hummed, “that sounds familiar.”

She searched the name on the web, finding a lengthy obituary for a young man that had been Bruce Wayne’s ward. Several articles after mentioned that Mr. Wayne had become reclusive after the boy’s passing.

She quickly decided that it couldn’t be the same person.

She typed out her usual response with fees and boundaries, telling the man that she’d be sitting at a small coffee shop at 3 PM, the table in the back left corner under the Van Gogh print. If he showed, they’d talk over the expectations and get to know each other a bit.

If he didn’t, well, she got a good cup of coffee and a few minutes to relax.

Jason trudged through the streets of Gotham with his head hung low, his dark hair covered with the hood of his jacket. He was fairly sure he would be unrecognizable by nearly everyone in the city, but he couldn’t take the chance. Even Damian knowing he was alive was a risk.

He stood outside the café windows and scanned the room, finding the painting he was told about. His gaze wandered to the person occupying the booth, his eyebrows raising and his mouth falling open upon first glance.

She sat quietly in the back corner of her favorite coffee shop watching the interactions of the other patrons. There was a couple that looked like they were on their first date, awkward smiles and tentative glances being exchanged over their beverages. There was a pair of friends laughing and chatting as they caught up. An older couple sat near the door, snuggled together, just enjoying each other’s company.

Her eyes darted to the door when it opened, a young man in a hoodie stepping through. He kept his head down as he walked towards her table. She watched him as he maneuvered the area, appraising him as he approached.

He was tall, broad, muscular. He hunched forward with his head down as he zig zagged through the tables. It was obvious to her that he was trying to obscure his identity from someone.

He sat in the chair with a sigh of relief, relief that he’d made it without being recognized. His heart was still pounding but that had more to do with the beautiful woman sitting across from him than the paranoia of being seen.

“Jason?” she asked with a furrowed brow.

“Yeah. Jason Todd,” he replied, “nice to meet you.”

“That’s impossible,” she whispered as her eyes took in every inch of his face.

“What is?”

“I googled you. You’re supposed to be dead!” She kept her voice low in case anyone was too close or chose that moment to become invested in their conversation.

“Eh, semantics,” he said flippantly, waving his hand to dismiss the conversation. “I need someone to come with me to the foundation gala. The family won’t make a scene if I have someone with me.”

“The family? You’re…you’re worried about the family? What about the press?” She was starting to think she made a mistake when she answered the email. This had to be some kind of sick joke that one of the other escorts had planned.

“Bruce doesn’t allow press at these events and besides the family, no one else has any idea that I even existed. They’ve always been so far up their own asses that they didn’t remember me when I was alive,” Jason explained.

She pursed her lips and considered what he was saying. She had never seen pictures of the charity galas and dinners hosted by the Wayne Foundation. Sighing, she said, “what do you need me to do?”

After they discussed the details of the arrangement, they sat and talked, a little pre-event getting to know each other thing. It was something she insisted on, wanting to make it less obvious that she was a hired date. Jason agreed.

But there was a problem. As they talked, he could feel himself becoming infatuated with her. He knew this would be even more problematic when they spent the evening charming guests in formalwear.

As she threw her head back laughing at something he said, he knew that the part of his mind that fueled his rage and darkness would not rest until she was his.

Jason was restless. He paced his apartment, he patrolled as Red Hood. he tried to find something, anything to distract himself from what was coming but nothing helped, not even when he’d broken into her home trying to be close to her. He thought he had it under control until he opened the drawer containing her underwear - and her collection of sex toys.

He left her apartment after snatching a pair of black lace panties, tucking them inside the pocket of his brown jacket for safe keeping. They sat heavy against his chest the entire ride back to his place, occupying his thoughts as he navigated the motorcycle through the streets of Gotham.

He rushed inside, locking the thick wooden door behind him. He threw down the helmet and ripped off his mask, anxious to get his bare hands on the fabric taunting him from his pocket. His gloves and jacket were tossed to the floor haphazardly, unimportant and unnecessary for what was coming.

As he rolled the black fabric in his hands, he felt his cock hardening in his tactical pants. He brought them up to his nose, hoping to get a whiff of her scent but all he smelled was laundry detergent. His cock was straining against the zipper, a not wholly unpleasant pressure against his crotch.

He palmed the bulge with his free hand, moaning into the delicate lace at the friction he was desperately craving. Unable to handle it any longer, he freed his throbbing member from its cloth prison, his hard length bobbing out of his pants. Spitting into his hand, he wrapped his fingers tightly around the swollen, red tip of his dick, stroking softly, whimpers escaping his mouth.

Jason spit down onto his cock again, using his thumb to spread his saliva down to his tip, mixing with the precum gathering. As he stroked, he took the lacy panties and wrapped them around his shaft with his other hand, gasping at the contrasting sensations, the roughness of the lace and the glide of his hand. His balls contracted as his breathing quickened, on the edge of release.

Jason called out her name as he came hard into the stolen panties, his release trickling through the lace, through his fingers, splashing on the floor next to his boots. He panted hard as he held his softening cock in his fist. As the blood began flowing to the rest of his body again, he felt a strange emotion flood his chest.

Where shame and embarrassment should reside, he felt peace and pride. The monster was silent for now.

The night of the gala arrived with haste. She slipped on the red satin dress that she kept in the closet for formal events, simple and plain aside from beading along the deep V of the halter neckline.

As she stepped into her shoes, her phone alerted her that a car was downstairs for her. She smiled at her reflection and headed down to meet her date. She was stunned when she stepped out of the elevator and spied Jason standing beside the car, a black tux clinging to his muscular body. She took a moment to compose herself before starting towards him. His eyes darted up quickly as she moved, widening as he let his gaze trail her body.

Jason swore he had never seen anything more beautiful than her walking towards him in that red dress. His heart stopped beating and he had to remind himself to breathe. Red. She chose to wear red, not knowing anything about his alter ego.

The monster felt her presence. It began shouting in Jason’s head, demanding to smell her, touch her. Taste her.

Jason struggled against it, determined to have a nice evening at the benefit. He smiled widely as she stepped out of the building, offering his hand to help her into the car. He took a deep breath as he walked around the vehicle, thankful for the time to get his cock to stand down.

As they stepped into the finely decorated banquet hall, Y/N slipped her hand through Jason’s arm and smiled up at him, slipping into the character of his adoring girlfriend. Jason was overjoyed at the way her hand felt wrapped around his bicep. He tried to keep himself calm as he approached the table that his family was seated at.

“Damian, Bruce. Dick,” he greeted. “How are you this evening?”

Bruce and Dick were stunned into silence as they looked up at the second Robin, the one that had been blown up in a warehouse, the one that should have been dead.

“Todd,” Damian greeted with a nod. “Pleased you could make it.”

“I appreciate the invitation. It has been quite some time since I’ve seen the family and this is a wonderful opportunity to introduce you all to my girlfriend, Y/N.”

She raised her hand timidly, slightly unnerved by the expressions on the faces of the family sitting at the table in front of her. Jason pulled a chair out and helped her in before sitting beside her, Dick on her other side.

Dick quickly snapped out of his shock and began small talk, learning about her and how she’d come to know Jason. Damian joined in the conversation from time to time as well, his eyes constantly darting around the room. The pair of them welcomed her warmly, treating her as a sister nearly instantly.

Bruce remained quiet and stoic the entire evening. The words that he did manage to speak to her were kind, making her feel like she was safe in their bubble. When she wasn’t looking, however, Bruce shot questioning glances at Jason, who pretended he didn’t see them.

The brothers had a unique relationship, constantly going between affectionate ribbing and hostile chatter. It was entertaining as she watched the banter, sipping on champagne as she watched the family.

Jason handed her a third glass of champagne almost absentmindedly as he chatted with Damian. After she had finished the glass, Jason stood and extended his hand to her, pulling her to the dance floor for a slow dance.

She began to yawn during the dance, his warmth and the gentle swaying relaxing her.

“Ready to head home?” he muttered in her ear as he continued to lead her on the dance floor.

“Yes, please,” she whispered.

Jason wrapped his arm around her waist as he led her out the door to the waiting car, settling her in her seat before making his way around to his side, a devious smile etched on his face.

Jason dismissed the driver as soon as they dropped her off. He ducked into the alley next to her building and retrieved the bag he’d stashed with his costume. He changed quickly and settled the helmet onto his head. She couldn’t know who was under the hood just yet.

He perched on her fire escape and watched as she let her dress fall to the floor. His cock twitched as she strode to her dresser in her red lacy panties, ones that matched the ones he had in his bed at home.

She slipped a shirt over her head and settled between the sheets, turning the lamp off as she settled into bed.

Red Hood - Jason - waited silently for an hour to ensure that she had fallen asleep before he picked the lock on her window and slipped inside. He scooped her up, thankful that she hadn’t questioned the last glass of champagne, the one he’d dropped a sleeping pill in. She didn’t stir as he carried her to the car he had waiting.

She woke slowly, fighting through the grogginess, her limbs heavy and her brain fuzzy. The room was dark when she opened her eyes, something she was intensely grateful for with the way her head throbbed.

She struggled to remember if she had drunk enough to have a hangover. All she remembered having was three glasses of champagne. She definitely shouldn’t be hung over.

She tried to swing her legs over the edge of the bed but was stopped by a tug on her ankles. Moving her legs, she heard the distinctive sound of chains rattling.

Her breathing quickened and her heart started beating erratically. She tugged on both chains, pulled with all her strength, but nothing budged. Her hands flew to her mouth and she screamed into her palms as tears started flowing down her cheeks.

A sliver of light began to move across the room, widening until the silhouette of a tall, broad man blocked it. Her eyes fixed on the doorway that had appeared as she tried to process what was happening.

The human figure stepped further into the dark room and Y/N was able to identify who was walking into the darkness.

“Jason,” she shrieked, “Jason, I need help. I don’t know where I am.”

A wicked smile crossed his face, the shadows in the room increasing the iciness of his glare.

“Oh, you’re right where you’re needed,” he said as he stepped to the side of the bed, setting a sandwich and bottle of water on a nightstand.

He sat next to her and took her hand in his, his thumb rubbing up her left ring finger, bumping into something hard and cold. She looked down at their entwined hands and gasped as her stomach threatened to spill its contents.

On her left ring finger was a diamond wedding set. And Jason wore a matching band.

“Beautiful, aren’t they?” he asked. “I knew that you were meant to be mine the first time we met. The way my family treated you at the gala confirmed it. We made it official this morning.”

“No,” she whispered as she tried to pull her hand away.

“Don’t worry, baby,” he cooed as he reached for her cheek. “You’re my wife, for better or worse. And it can’t really get any worse.”

Her eyes were wide with fear and her face paled as she gazed at the cold, blue eyes that held a strange combination of adoration and insanity. She just wanted to wake up from this nightmare.

“You’re not dreaming,” he stated plainly, as if he could read her thoughts. “You’ll learn to love me. I’ll treat you like the queen you are and you’ll never want for anything. Just wait, baby. You’ll see.”

Everything: @thelastpyle @deangirl93 @downanddirtydean @katelyn--renee @fictional-affairs @lassie-bird @paintlavillered @buckys-zomdoll @polireader @b3autyfuldisast3r @welcometothefandommultiverse @mlovesstories

#writercole #jason todd #red hood #afdarkbingo #writing in the dark bingo #tell me a story bingo #custom bingo card #batverse #dark fic #spicy pepper

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themovieblogonline · 2 years ago

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#DavidZaslav #DCStudios #JamesGunn #PeterSafran #WalterHamada #WarnerBros.Discovery

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tessatechaitea · 5 years ago

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Teen Titans Spotlight #12: Wonder Girl

All Donna has to do is pretend that her grip slip and she's done with this jerk!

Like I'm going to believe Terry Long has any friends!

Look how excited Terry is to show Donna proof that he has a friend! What a sad sack of potatoes! He's worse than Ross from Friends! Donna reads the letter and is all, "This sure looks like your handwriting, Terry." And Terry is all, "As Icki Mudd, I had to learn to write like Captain Midnight! For secret missions!" Donna fingers her lasso of truth while I get distracted from writing this dialogue because I used the verb fingered so here's there actual conversation which is practically the one I was going to write anyway.

Shit is going down!

This is really good Terry Long fan-fiction. Everybody reading comic books forever has always known that Terry Long is a piece of shit. But he's almost constantly written by Marv Wolfman, the one guy who thinks Terry Long is a fucking catch (if I don't say this in a parenthetical reference, somebody else will say it in the comments so "because Terry Long is totally Marv Wolfman"). Moench even makes a point of having Terry Long mention the book he's never going to finish because he keeps expecting Donna to help him with her knowledge of the ancient characters gained through personal relationships. I believe he even loses his professorship due to never finishing the book. And this is why! Because he was just using the idea of it as an excuse to go get drunk with an old friend and maybe jerk each other off like old times.

Arguments Over Breakfast Starring Donna and Terry. I could read an entire series of just this. It's delicious.

Donna walks over to Titans Tower to smash things in the Smash Things Simulator while thinking, "If this man I thought was a sensitive feminist is actually a fucking loser boy in a squishy man's body, what if all men are just as terrible?!" If Donna were a video game character, she would level up five times from this realization. Everybody is selfish but somehow men manage to be even more selfish than women. It's a pretty good feat and I don't know how they accomplish it. Being raised under the Patriarchy, I guess? "But not all men," think the men who are only thinking about themselves and how not selfish they are. The problem is that Terry and Donna can spend a week fucking any time! But when is Terry going to get to fuck his old friend from childhood?! Practically never, that's when! How can Donna blame him for not wanting to miss this opportunity? Would she expect Terry to understand if she had to interrupt a blow job to go save the multiverse?! I don't know if the comparisons track logically but I don't have time to consider my words. Let's move on! While Donna is away, Terry rushes off to El Salvador. I don't know how long Donna is working out her frustrations before she gets back home but it seems to already be too late. Somehow in that time, he's phoned a travel agent, purchased tickets, hailed a cab, got to the airport, waltzed through 1987 security, waited for the flight, boarded, waited on the tarmac due to engine trouble, had to deplane, boarded a new plane, and took off to El Salvador! Donna did have to spend a little time realizing there was a secret Captain Midnight message encoded in the letter that said, "Hey! Fuck up! Stop thinking about jerking me off, you gay! I've been kidnapped by drug lords! Send the Justice League!" but since she thinks, "Bingo! On the first try," after decoding it, I think she could have caught up with Terry at the airport. Don't cancel me over the "you gay" bit in the message from Terry's friend. Remember that they were best friends and this is 1987. We're lucky the entire letter wasn't homosexual references! Once Terry gets to El Salvador, he finds out that his friend, Dennis Heiman, hasn't been in his hotel for a week. So being the great explorer he totally knows he is, Terry marches off into the jungle to find his friend.

"Sure, it's almost certainly a path created by a dangerous creature or armed drug lords but on the super off-chance it is Denny's path, won't he be fucking surprised!"

Terry Long gets caught by some drug lords and now Donna has to save him. Oh man is she going to have some great ammunition for their next fight over breakfast!

Wait. Do they have a running argument about which one of them is most like Tarzan? I just learned more than I wanted about their sex life.

Terry runs for his life while Donna deflects bullets. She doesn't strategically let one that will hit him in the ass get by because she's a better spouse than I would be. But Terry still pays for his matrimonial crimes when he falls in a pit. The good guys with guns who are only running drugs and making their community a dangerous hellhole because they live in poverty run away when they realize that their guns aren't killing Wonder Girl like they're supposed to. What good is a gun if it can't kill the person who should keep minding their own business instead of ruining your livelihood?! Stupid assault rifles! Now that all the people who love guns more than anything aren't reading this because I used the term "assault rifle," it's time for cupcakes! I wish I could pass out cupcakes online. Nothing would bring me more joy than denying people I don't agree with cupcakes. Oh, except maybe the cupcake! Donna follows Terry down the hole and thinks, "Why is this pit here? Oh, I bet it was a secret passageway Mayan priests used to reach the temples and make their 'magical' appearances." So she already knows more about Mayans than Terry does. She realized Terry isn't going to be able to finish the book no matter what the subject is so she's already begun research on the new project he just proposed over that morning's breakfast. But what she finds at the other end of the tunnel is disturbing (but for Marv Wolfman only).

Is this what people online call "fan service"?

I just tore out the last eight pages of the comic book. Does that make the death of Terry Long canon? Teen Titans Spotlight #12: Wonder Girl: A+! I can't believe it! The death of Terry Long! What a bold move to place in an ancillary Teen Titans series! This issue must be worth five figures! Mostly because I have the only copy. It really does read better if you stop at page fourteen. Because who wants to read page fifteen where Terry has to explain to Donna why he hid in the Mayan Beheaded Magic Trick Box? I mean Illusion Box. I bet he was thinking, "Just wait until Donna sees me dead! Then she'll be sorry for getting upset with my misogyny over breakfast! That'll show her! Man, I'm really hard right now!"

Notice how Donna destroys the guns after saying, "Murderers." Checkmate people who say guns don't kill people, people kill people.

Donna might also have killed the guys holding the guns. It's hard to tell because the coloring of the dimly lit cave might just be obscuring the blood and brains that are almost certainly leaking from their bodies. Maybe Batman couldn't kill Joker even after Joker killed Robin but Donna's no Batman. Of course, Terry Long is no Robin (even a Jason Todd Robin). So is he worth Donna killing for? It's a philosophical conundrum that most people will conclude "no" is the proper answer almost immediately. So I might have used the word "conundrum" too rashly. Terry accidentally became trapped in the Mayan Illusion so I guess Donna can't be too angry at him.

Okay, now she can be mad at him.

It looks like Donna's flashing Terry in the above image and he totally frightened by what he's seeing. It is now canon that Wonder Girl's lady parts have blistered tentacles and maybe a small beak. I don't understand Terry's line about girls wearing girdles. Is it a feminist saying? Maybe he just made it up in his terror at seeing her squawking nether regions? The drama isn't finished even though I finished my review a few paragraphs ago. When it becomes so intense that Terry and Donna believe their lives might actually be in danger, the story gets really fucking disgusting.

Oh god. I did not need the image of Terry's boner rubbing against Donna's thighs as he smears his filthy facial hair all over her iron face.

I was being less disgusting than the actual panel by suggesting he was just rubbing his cock against her through their clothing. Upon rereading those narration boxes, I think they actually just fucked. "No time for tenderness" has to be code for a quickie, right? I think the next page is proof of that theory:

Terry puts his dick away as Donna thanks him for the "we almost died" sex. Of special note: Terry thinks you can start a campfire with a condom.

Donna kills a bunch of drug lords in a fiery explosion but she says "They probably all got knocked out by the shockwave!" to assuage her guilty conscience. She's definitely read Batman's best selling book, One Thousand Ways to Convince Yourself and Others That You've Never Killed Anybody. While a lot of the reasons are "If doctors didn't stop the internal bleeding in time, maybe the violent thug should have purchased better insurance that allowed for a better hospital with a more competent staff" and "Dying of complications from losing a spleen to a batarang are completely the fault of the person who didn't take the proper care for a person who is living without a spleen," quite a few of the reasons boil down to "Did you see anybody dead that couldn't have more probably been unconscious when you left the scene? Because I sure didn't and I have bat eyes!" Batman then had to release a follow-up novel due to the reaction of his book on Twitter. He called it, Contrary to Popular and Stupid Opinions, Bats Actually Have Great Eyesight. Anyway, they save Terry's best friend who isn't imaginary at all.

While hanging out with Terry, Donna often entertains herself by thinking stupid jokes.

Teen Titans Spotlight #12: Wonder Girl Rating: F! Terry didn't die after all! Poop!

#Teen Titans #Teen Titans Spotlight #DC #DC Comics #Wonder Girl

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theconservativebrief · 6 years ago

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Earlier this year, influential drag performer RuPaul sat down for a political conversation with New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow during the fourth annual RuPaul’s DragCon in New York. After their discussion — which covered President Donald Trump, youth voting, and other issues — an attendee asked RuPaul about drag’s connection to the #MeToo movement. RuPaul said that both have a rebellious spirit.

“We’re saying to the structures of society, ‘Fuck you!’” RuPaul said. “In that regard, I think we’re well aligned with the movement.”

Although DragCon is a convention where drag queens can meet their fans, both the convention and the reality TV show that spawned it have become increasingly political over time and increasingly popular with teenagers, preteens, and younger kids who ask their parents to take them to the convention.

A mother and her preteen daughters pose for a picture with drag queens during RuPaul’s DragCon at the Los Angeles Convention Center, May 7, 2016, in Los Angeles, California. David McNew/AFP/Getty Images

Recent seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race have featured House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi as a guest; contestants discussing conversion therapy while applying their makeup; and one performer, Bob the Drag Queen, describing his arrest during a 2011 marriage equality protest.

Similarly, previous DragCons in New York and Los Angeles have featured panels like “Drag In Trump’s America,” “The Art of Resistance” and “Liberty and Justice for All,” in which presenters from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) showed everyday citizens different ways to become politically active.

At another panel, drag nuns from the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence shared their group’s 39-year history of activism. Meanwhile, in the exhibition hall, groups like the Human Rights Campaign and Swing Left, an organization focused on congressional races in US swing districts, educated attendees about policy issues and the importance of voter registration.

“DragCon has never been a bubble in denial about reality,” said Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, co-founders World of Wonder and DragCon and executive producers of RuPaul’s Drag Race, in a statement to Vox. “It’s a celebration of life through difference and diversity, and it’s about planting that flag in the ground and claiming our place in this world.”

Nonetheless, classifying drag only as a guilty pleasure underestimates its power, Bailey and Barbato say.

“Because as playful and as fun as drag can and will always be, it can also be serious fun, by playing with society’s norms in a very profound way. And drag only becomes more pointedly political in an environment where an illegitimate regime seeks — picking just one example — to impose reductive and cruel ideas about gender that fly in the face of gender’s proven complexity.”

While the US Supreme Court justices hear arguments surrounding the same-sex marriage ban, Proposition 8, A man dressed in drag known as “Queen,” from Florida, dances in front of the Court on March 26, 2013, in Washington, DC. Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images

In the modern age, drag queens have risen from obscure gay-bar performers to celebrities with an ever-expanding social media reach. As entertainers who straddle the gender divide and are known for their irreverent outspokenness, they may seem to be in a particularly unique position at this exact political moment to address the Republican pushback on the #MeToo movement and transgender rights.

But a closer look reveals a hazy view of the political change drag queens can actually create, a view that has some social conservatives alarmed nonetheless.

Drag queens as we know them in America really developed from vaudeville acts in the early 1900s that caricatured feminine stock characters like “the wench,” “the damsel” and “the prima donna,” according to Roger Baker, author of Drag: A History of Female Impersonation in the Performing Arts.

Since then, drag queens and impersonators of women have gone from kitschy 1930s comedy acts enjoyed by everyone alike to gay club acts where publicity would risk criminal charges, including transvestitism, prostitution, sodomy, and other “lewd and lascivious” acts that officers generally considered offensive, until around the 1970s.

But Chris Mitchell, a doctoral lecturer of gender and sexuality studies at Hunter College, told Vox that the current generation of politically active drag queens found early incubation in the Cockettes, a 1970s San Francisco queer performance troupe. Their ragtag shows lampooned highbrow theater musicals and satirized political events — for instance, their staging of the wedding of Richard Nixon’s daughter Tricia ended in an LSD-fueled orgy. While their performances failed to attain a national following, their free-spirited satirical irreverence arguably planted a seed that would later sprout around 1980 with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

The Sisters reportedly formed as an antidote to the boring conformity its founders saw occurring in San Francisco’s gay Castro District. So they donned nun’s habits, painted their faces in white and glittery makeup, and began different spectacles of public activism.

In 1980, they held a public “Rosary in Time of Nuclear Peril” to protest the 1979 nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island, chased anti-gay Christian protesters out of the Castro and Polk neighborhoods, and raised money for Cuban refugees in a combination bingo game and disco.

Over the next two years, they’d host the first-known HIV fundraiser and support Sister Boom Boom’s campaign to unseat then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein, now a US senator. (Sister Boom Boom lost.)

Sister Missionary Position, a member of the activist group the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, holds gold-wrapped condoms they will distribute during Mardi Gras in New Orleans in 1987. Bettmann via Getty Images

The Sisters’ unique brand of community activism has continued into the present day as a global nonprofit organization with more than 1,000 nuns of every race, gender, and sexual orientation currently serving in 42 states, nine countries, and four continents.

Since then, Sister Roma from San Francisco has emerged as the organization’s most outspoken and visible member. Serving since 1987, she joined the San Francisco order when HIV and internal divisions had reduced its ranks to just five sisters.

During her service, she has helped fundraise more than $1 million for various LGBTQ charities and served as an emcee for numerous local non-LGBTQ related events and fundraisers, like Outward Bound and the Boys and Girls Club.

“We always believe that we should follow our hearts to the voting booth and remember that we’re voting for the future, we’re voting for the planet, we’re voting for our friends, our family, our community, equality, women, people of color, LGBTQ, all of that, all the good stuff,” Roma told Vox.

As a nonprofit, the Sisters cannot endorse any political candidates, but Roma says the San Francisco Sisters are pushing for Proposition C, a measure that would tax certain businesses to fund housing and homelessness services.

By simply going out in public, Roma tells Vox that her appearance as a drag nun immediately brings different layers of social activism like homophobia, misogyny, and religious oppression.

Sister Dana Van Iquity, a member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, serves dessert to John McKay at a community Thanksgiving meal organized by a gay church and a Catholic church in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood on Thursday, November 25, 1999. Dan Krauss/AP

“I really do enjoy the power of the drag and the way that you see different people’s reaction to it,” Sister Roma says. She says when she’s in drag, people feel more inclined to donate money or speak personally to her. But naturally, some people find Roma and the Sisters off-putting because of their clownish makeup or the perception that their work mocks religion.

Sister Roma adds, “The Sisters quite often say, and I believe it’s 100 percent true, is that we are mirrors — really a reflection of the people who look at us. I can walk down the street from one corner to the next and get the entire gamut of reactions,” from people complimenting her makeup or asking to take pictures with her to people making snarky comments or calling her homophobic slurs. “I learned pretty early on is that people’s reactions to me say a lot more about them than they do about me.”

During her activism, Roma crossed paths with another drag queen called Lil’ Miss Hot Mess. The two worked together on the #MyNameIs campaign opposing Facebook’s 2014 “Real Names” policy that temporarily forced users to only create profiles based on the names on their government-issued ID.

Roma, Hot Mess, and other activists successfully argued that the policy unfairly targeted trans people, Native American people, well-known performers, and survivors of abuse who each use non-government-issued names for different legitimate purposes.

Drag queens Lil’ Miss Hot Mess (left) and Sister Roma (Center) and others walk to a news conference after meeting with San Francisco city officials to discuss Facebook’s name policy on September 17, 2014. Eric Risberg/AP

But since that battle, Hot Mess has gone on to become a board member of Drag Queen Story Hour, a different sort of community group that has recently gained the ire of social conservatives.

Drag Queen Story Hour was started in 2015 by Michelle Tea, an author and queer San Francisco parent who wanted more programs for LGBTQ parents and their kids.

The program is exactly what it sounds like: Drag performers wear extravagant makeup and age-appropriate outfits and read books to children for an hour. Though the queens sometimes read books with themes of diversity and inclusion, like And Tango Makes Three or Princess Boy, Lil’ Miss Hot Mess, a board member of Drag Queen Story Time, tells Vox that libraries and individual organizers choose what to read, sometimes choosing titles that fit seasonal themes.

It’s now a national nonprofit organization whose program has been replicated in public libraries in 27 states.

Lil’ Miss Hot Mess reads to a group of young children during Drag Queen Story Hour at the Brooklyn Public Library in Park Slope on May 13, 2017. Mary Altaffer/AP

A group of anti-gay activists in Houston filed a federal lawsuit against the mayor and the head of the municipal library system for allowing Drag Queen Story Hour to happen at a local library. The Campaign for Houston PAC helped file a lawsuit stating their opposition to “taxpayer dollars [being] used for a drag queen to come in and indoctrinate our young kids.”

The group that filed the lawsuit became known among LGBTQ activists around 2015 when they successfully overturned the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance preventing any forms of discrimination against transgender people.

Hot Mess told Vox that Drag Queen Story Hour operates without taxpayer funds — all a library needs to host one is a children’s book and a drag queen willing to volunteer. Chief US District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal denied the lawsuit a hearing four days after it was filed, stating, “There is no basis to support the requested relief.”

Nonetheless, Campaign for Houston PAC attorney and spokesperson Jared Woodfill says his group will spend $500,000 on mailers and TV ads to oppose the program and shut it down. The group has already started running campaign ads and postcards (with images of drag queens reading to kids) to urge voter to choose Republican candidates.

“In some ways it feels like a backlash,” Hot Mess says, “but I think the reality is that this is exactly the kind of hate that’s been going on for a long time, that queer people have been fighting for a long time. It’s really just the bias of conservative and right-wing people who think we shouldn’t exist at all.”

Protesters of the Drag Queen Story Hour hold a cross outside of the Mobile Public Library in Alabama on September 8, 2018. Dan Anderson/AP

Meanwhile, in the face of mounting political opposition, Drag Queen Story Hour is currently crowdfunding $10,000 to offer support to current and future programs across the US. This support will include a database of drag queens and public libraries interested in participating; a guide to putting on these events; and suggested reading and conversation guides for librarians, teachers, and parents to foster larger conversations about diversity and acceptance.

Hot Mess says many children’s books, from Harry Potter to The Hunger Games, tell stories about kids standing up to authority and resisting unfair social standards, fighting evil, and working together to build a better world.

“I think that what drag queens are doing, hopefully or ideally, isn’t really all that different,” she says. “I think the only thing that we’re ‘indoctrinating’ are values of acceptance and diversity and letting people express themselves and be who they are. It’s shameful to me that those kinds of values are things that people want to protest.”

In the April 26, 2018, episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race, then 22-year-old performer Blair St. Clair unexpectedly became the face of #MeToo in drag when she explained that her delicate, feminine aesthetic stems from experiencing a sexual assault earlier in her life.

She tells Vox she hadn’t planned on discussing it beforehand and shared viewers’ surprise at the sudden admission. But by uttering it, she has become the only queen among the show’s 126 competitors over 10 seasons to ever discuss sexual assault on the show.

“I’m overwhelmed in a positive way at how many people — gay men and queens especially — have opened up to me privately,” St. Clair tells Vox. “I never expected to be that voice or that face. It has been incredible … I always needed someone to look up to. If I can be that person for those people, then I feel like I’ve done some justice.”

Blair St. Clair poses for a photograph at RuPaul’s DragCon at the Los Angeles Convention Center on May 12, 2018. Chelsea Guglielmino/Getty Images

It’s important to assess the impact of St. Clair’s story on the show’s small but fiercely devoted viewership.

St. Clair’s admission compelled various LGBTQ and mainstream websites to publish articles about sexual assault in the gay community, a topic that rarely, if ever, gets mentioned at gay bars where alcohol and cruising add to the atmosphere.

A 2015 report from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center said that 40.2 percent of gay men and 47.4 percent of bisexual men experience sexual assault; 63 percent of assaults go unreported, partly because of social expectations that men should always enjoy sex or be “strong” enough to fend off an attack.

In subsequent interviews, St. Clair stressed the importance of speaking openly about sexual assault and alluded to her long, personal healing process. And yet she told Vox that she’s saddened by the fact that other sexual assault survivors often face accusations of being calculating or fabricating their stories.

“It’s so ridiculous that people have to live in fear now of telling their stories … [and] in fear of setting themselves free because they’re afraid of what other people are going to think,” St. Clair says.

It’s also important to emphasize how radically RuPaul’s Drag Race has changed the popularity of drag performers in America. The show snagged six Emmy Awards this year, including the award for Outstanding Reality-Competition Program, beating out shows with much larger viewerships like The Amazing Race and The Voice.

Past and present Drag Race competitors can brag upward of a million social media followers — and the show’s young viewership will happily shell out serious cash to see their favorite performers at a local venue or a DragCon event.

RuPaul (center) during the ceremonial ribbon cutting at DragCon NYC 2018. Santiago Felipe/Getty Images

But not all Drag Race contestants speak out politically in fear of alienating fans — something that irritates longtime drag performer Jackie Beat. In July 2018, Beat criticized former Drag Race competitors via Twitter for not using their social media followings to speak out more forcefully against Trump. She tweeted:

“It’s 2018. Our country is going to Hell in a designer handbag. If you’re a drag queen, ESPECIALLY ONE WHO WAS ON THAT TV SHOW THAT INSTANTLY AFFORDS ONE RECOGNITION & FAME AMONG YOUNG PEOPLE, & you refuse to ‘get political’ — FUCK YOU. I’m not asking you to march or give lengthy speeches… Just sit on your padded ass & tweet ANYTHING. Make a point, take a stand. Stop playing it down the middle, bitch. LET YOUR FANS KNOW EXACTLY WHO YOU ARE. And more importantly, WHO YOU AREN’T.”

Beat is a Los Angeles-based drag performer who has performed in numerous benefits for all sorts of causes: AIDS/HIV awareness, animal rights, reproductive justice, immigration, and various legislation. To her, drag queens can be superheroes whose superpower is simply telling the truth, albeit in comedic or entertaining ways.

Beat tells Vox that any drag queen who meets with parents and children at DragCon or a touring drag show should remind them that “beneath the clown everyone is laughing at is either a gay man or a trans person who is directly in the crosshairs of the Trump administration’s rifle.”

“If you have been granted a certain amount of mainstream fame,” she tells Vox, “It’s your duty to speak out about things that threaten and/or violate the very rights that allow you to do what you do.”

She continues, “It’s vital for young people to know that what is happening is not right. It’s crucial that people with a strong social media presence remind their many fans that this is not normal. Otherwise, we all just treat it like it’s a crazy reality show. And it’s not. It’s really life. And it’s getting real ugly. I see a lot of queens finally speaking up for our trans brothers and sisters, and it makes me so happy. I’m just saying that if you are worried about losing, alienating or boring your fans then, in my opinion, you’re doing drag for all the wrong reasons. Be a person first and a clown second.”

But if St. Clair now demurs about discussing politics, other former competitors, like season five winner Jinkx Monsoon and season 10 competitor the Vixen, use their fame to encourage fans to vote or to join campaigns against homophobia.

Among the show’s most outspoken and politically engaged winners is Bob the Drag Queen, the season eight champion.

During Bob’s season, the performer mentioned a personal tagline, “Bob the Drag Queen: A Queen for the People,” and discussed his arrest by New York City Police for blocking a roadway with a giant banner during a 2011 marriage equality protest.

“They fucking threw my ass in jail, in full drag, girl.”

Discussing the importance of political involvement, the queen told viewers, “You don’t have to go get arrested. Just [do] something. Something as simple as voting.”

To Bob, Trump is merely a symptom or a reflection of longer ongoing issues in America like racism, sexism, misogyny, transphobia, and homophobia. Whenever the queen sees white fans publicly declare, “These are the darkest times we’ve ever had,” Bob told Vox that it feels like a slap in the face of enslaved people, prisoners, and other people of color who have faced far darker times.

Bob the Drag Queen performs at New York City Pride on June 24, 2016. Monica Schipper/Getty Images

Bob agrees that drag has a definitely unique vantage point in the world of gender politics, but, “The more I travel, the more I realize that maybe it’s not as unique … because drag is basically just performing femininity or … toying with sex outside of the assigned gender you were given at birth,” something that the performer sees people doing all over the world, especially young people.

When Bob first started performing in drag, the audience consisted mainly of other gay men. These days, Bob’s touring audiences consist largely of preteen girls.

“Many of those girls would’ve never had an experience talking about gender or gender issues, or even race issues,” Bob says. YEt the performer hears people in the younger generation saying things like “gender is a construct,” after overhearing their favorite drag queen saying it. These teens don’t emptily parrot these sentiments, Bob says, but start exploring and researching it in their own lives.

Like Roma, Bob doesn’t begrudge drag queens who don’t use their fame to address politics, but they also don’t think that conservatives and Republicans will find a place on the drag runway.

Consider the case of Elaine Lancaster, the South Florida drag performer who, in October 2017, was removed as the emcee of a drag brunch at Señor Frogs after posting a tweet that used the hashtag #JewishCollusion when linking to a story about Facebook’s CEO supposedly meeting with Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta before the 2016 election.

At the time, Lancaster claimed she quit the drag brunch gig to travel the world with right-wing author Milo Yiannopoulos. But three months earlier on CNN, she lamented being professionally “blackballed” from her decades-long drag career after coming out as a Trump supporter.

“I come from a community that touts that we are so inclusive, we are so embracing of what’s different, all we ask for is tolerance and equality,” she told the Miami Herald after her CNN appearance. “I make a living as a female impersonator in the state of Florida. I have hosted all the major events — White Party for 19 years. When I came out as a supporter of Trump … I was thrown off the [White Party] committee. I couldn’t be the emcee anymore. I got death threats. I have lawsuits pending against people.”

Lancaster did not respond to a request for comment from Vox.

Roma says she had known Lancaster for years as a friendly acquaintance, never realizing her far-right political views. “I wonder if she thinks she’s going to be the first drag queen in the White House,” Roma says.

“I don’t know why you’d want to go out and support a candidate, and a political party, that would just as soon throw you in prison or strip you of your human rights or watch you die in the streets … she tried to explain to me that she wants to have a place at the table. I’m like, ‘Girl, they wouldn’t let you anywhere near the table.’”

Miami-based drag queen Elaine Lancasters waits for President Donald Trump to speak at a rally in Estero, Florida, on October 31, 2018. Susan Walsh/AP

Roma says she admires Lancaster somewhat for facing online harassment and career hardships while voicing her political views, but adds that it has been difficult to watch Lancaster go through it.

Bob, however, supposes, “If you’re a Trump supporter, no other drag queens are going to support you. You’re gonna have a bunch of crunchy, raggedy-ass drag queens who are supporting you, but outside of the community, you will get nothing. … If you vote against the right of your community, you do not deserve asylum from your community … or you [may] deserve it, but you won’t get it.”

Perhaps they feel this way because contemporary politics under Trump seem so antithetical to the gender playfulness and LGBTQ community so closely associated to drag queens.

An aerial view of the convention floor at RuPaul’s DragCon NYC 2017. Santiago Felipe/Getty Images

But even on the left side of the political spectrum, Mitchell from Hunter College thinks drag can only do so much. Mainly because while America’s LGBTQ people have long huddled in gay bars as one of their community’s only safe places, it was more out of necessity rather than commonality, Mitchell says.

Mitchell tells Vox that while drag incorporates cultural aspects from each of the LGBTQ community’s individual segments — with some women performing as drag kings and other trans, queer, and nonbinary performers working as drag queens too — the art form can’t be expected to express the complicated class, racial, and gender divisions experienced by distinct queer groups. This is especially true of drag since it remains largely a cisgender male pursuit whose professional echelons requires lots of free time and money.

Even shows like Drag Race still operate with certain ideas of what constitutes praiseworthy drag, and their acting challenges often rely on clichéd caricatures of histrionic women using their sexuality and feminine wiles to catfight one another.

RuPaul’s comments earlier this year comparing hormone replacement therapy and gender-affirming surgeries to “performance enhancing drugs” in her reality TV competition showed that even the torch bearer of inclusive queer entertainment still knew little about the number of transgender people already performing in drag.

So while drag queens may find themselves increasingly in a position to sway fans and younger generations about gender expression and political involvement, Mitchell thinks the inherent contradictions of drag performance and LGBTQ politics ultimately limits their power to dramatically shape the political landscape.

”To me, there’s not just one drag, and it is a little bit of a Rorschach test,” Mitchell says. “When you ask different kinds of queers what they see when they look at drag, you’re going to get really different kinds of answers. And a lot of times it’s going to tell you about the identity of the person who’s talking more than it’s going to tell you about drag.”

Lil’ Miss Hot Mess put on the final touches of an outfit before going to reading to children for Drag Queen Story Hour at the Brooklyn Public Library. Mary Altaffer/AP

Original Source -> Drag queens are more political than ever. Can they lead a movement?

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