The organization GLAAD found 141 anti-LGBTQ incidents targeting drag events specifically, eight of which were in Illinois.
People cheer while Rachel Slurrz performs during the second annual Drag March for Change in June 2021 along North Halsted Street in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood.
The majority took place during Pride Month in June and in the fall, with incidents and rhetoric surrounding them becoming increasingly violent as the year went on, according to the report.Waylon Werner-Bassen, who also goes by Mrs. Yuka as a performer and is co-producer of the Chicago chapter of children’s literacy nonprofit Drag Story Hour, said he believes much of the pushback is rooted in a lack of understanding and people unable to separate gender and sexuality.
Ginger Forest reads “Going Places” at a story time with drag queens during brunch at Jerry's Sandwiches on Sept. 18, 2022, in Lincoln Square in Chicago. Jacob Welch is drag queen Ginger Forest and performed with his daughter Summer, aka Candi Forest. The event is family-friendly. TJ Billard is an assistant professor at Northwestern University’s school of communication and executive director of the Center for Applied Transgender Studies, a Chicago-based independent nonprofit research organization. Billard, who uses the pronouns they/them, said a possible explanation why Illinois ranks so high is because of the high concentration of LGBTQ people in the area.
According to the GLAAD report, many of the drag events that were threatened with protests or violence were first targeted by right-leaning groups, media outlets and social media accounts. A number of the incidents in Illinois have, in part, been sparked by social media campaigns from, a group rooted in the suburbs that formed through the anti-mask, anti-vaccine fervor amid the COVID-19 pandemic and has since been criticized for inflammatory anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.
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