Drag Visits Forest Grove

Drag queens are performance artists, typically men, that dress as women and act with mostly, exaggerated femininity.  Drag queens are heavily associated with gay men and gay culture but can vary in sexuality and gender, they can even vary in age, race, culture, and dedication.  Doing drag is just a form of self-expression. Drag queens entertain people much like stage and street performers. This may include dancing, lip-syncing, and participating in other events like the gay pride parades, and drag pageants.  

On Monday, March 4th, a drag queen, Bolivia Carmichaels, and a transgender man, Leo Bancroft, visited Forest Grove High School to share what they’ve got to say about their identities. They talked about themselves and answered questions that people asked.  

Bolivia explained that in her everyday life, she identifies as a gay man but while she is performing, she goes by she/her. Leo, on the other hand, was assigned female at birth but now identifies as male.  Bolivia came out to her friends and family at the age of 18. She couldn’t come out to anyone until after school because it wasn’t really safe for her to. When she was around 16 she said “I did a lot of praying that my God would ‘please make me straight’ and ‘make me like the girls’, ‘take these feelings away from me’,” and other things relating to her identifying as a young gay male.  While she was about 17, she said her god “answered her prayers” and said that there was nothing wrong with her. She was perfectly fine as she was.

Leo did not know that he was bisexual in high school.  He didn’t even know that he was a male yet. He lived as a cisgendered (when one’s gender corresponds with their birth sex)  straight woman for 37 years of his life. He explained, “Once I came out, I came out as a gay trans man, but then realized that I like women too so then I came out as bisexual”.  

Bolivia talks about one of the biggest misconceptions of all drag queens which is, that they want to be women.  She explains that this is not her case and that she is happy with everything that she has been given. She also said that there are a lot of heterosexual, and bisexual men that do drag.  There are also drag kings, where women will dress as men, just like drag queens.

A few questions that were asked are:

“How often do you find trans people within the drag queen community?”

To answer this, Bolivia explained that there were a lot of trans people in the drag community, majority of them being trans women.  Leo said that it could help kind of experiment with how they feel when they do present as a female or a male, this could help with a lot of dysphoria trans people feel when not presenting as the gender they feel. They say that communities are usually more accepting of drag queens and so transgenders that cannot come out because of safety issues.  

“How did you come out?”

Bolivia came out to her parents as gay after high school.  Her family was accepting of her identity and who she was as a human.  Her mom was just a little worried about how people would treat her. Leo’s mother kind of grieved when he first told her but is very supportive of him.   

Finally, someone asked, “What would you say for those that it is not safe to come out to their family?”

They both said that the best thing would be to just be safe.  They said to put your safety before anything. You should come out at a safer point in your life in a way that will be personal to yourself.

A person that attended the “performance” during 4th block said that she felt very accepted and comfortable when both Bolivia and Leo visited.  She says that she felt like she could express herself without feeling horrible for it. She recommends people go see a drag performance live just to experience it and take it all in.  “It can be a really great thing for you, it can open your eyes,” she explained.