Hello everyone, my name is Laverne Cox
and I am so excited to be with you today.
I'm being joined by Peppermint and Juku,
and today we're going to be talking about the legacy
of transgender women in drag.
Peppermint, can we start with you,
I mean, 'cause you competed
obviously on RuPaul's Drag Race,
and you're an openly trans woman,
you came out on the show,
and stayed on the show.
Can you talk a little bit about your relationship
to being a woman, a trans woman,
and also being a drag queen?
There's often confusion around "drag" versus "trans."
"Is drag an identity, is it an expression, is it a career?"
And I guess the short answer is, it's all of those things.
The identity of being a trans woman crosses paths
with the opportunity to do drag or perform in drag.
Especially given that many trans people,
especially historically, haven't had the opportunity
to safely transition in their own spaces,
doing drag is that safe space to experiment with gender,
express what you want with gender.
And so it kind of becomes this safe room
where everything goes and some people leave that space,
just kind of with the conclusion
that they're just a performer.
And some people leave that space with a heightened
knowledge or awareness that they are also trans.
And some folks move on from,
leave drag, kind of behind
and say, "That helped me, it was a stepping stone
to get to where I am."
And some of us continue to do drag
because it earns some coin.
I started doing drag before I came into realization.
If you were to look at my timeline,
it's as if I was fully realized
before I started doing drag
because as a child, as a teenager,
I didn't know what trans was necessarily yet.
This was maybe, and I know you guys are gonna kill me,
but this was like maybe like 2013, '14.
Do you disclose your age, Juku?
- I'm 21. - Work.
I'm like, I don't wanna be that girl right now,
but I'm that girl.
- Own it honey. - Be that girl,
be that girl, 'cause you won't be that girl forever, honey.
I know, you're right! You're right.
But my freshman and sophomore year I really started
tapping into my femininity.
I was that like bandy ass bitch that was just like,
roaming the halls with my fucking boobs,
just like killing it.
But I didn't know that there was an essence there
and there was an energy in me that
later, in seven years time, I would realize meant
that I was a woman.
I also do just wanna say that I'm honored
to be in the presence of both of you because
I've been freaking out all day
and I love Peppermint so much and seeing her on TV
as a trans woman a couple of years ago was just
all the things that I needed so, thank you Peppermint,
and thank you Laverne, for
doing what you do and continuing to do the damn thing.
We're doing this in conjunction
with the film Disclosure.
The documentary that I executive produced
that looks at the history of trans representation on screen.
And there is a film called Queen
from the late 1960s with Mother Flawless Sabrina.
That is a drag pageant, a female impersonation pageant,
is the language they used at the time,
and we know now that Crystal Labeija,
from that famous scene at the end of the film,
indeed identified as a trans woman.
She won't make money off of my name, darling.
She can make it off of Harlow and all the rest
of the fools that will flock to her.
But not Crystal, darling.
Peppermint, can you talk to us a little bit about Queen,
when you first saw it, and what that film means to you
as a trans woman, at the intersection of being trans
and also a drag performer?
I really, honestly, didn't know that much about
the movie Queen until I was already steeped
pretty deep in the drag lifestyle.
Of course the quotes for me, the quotes,
preceded the film.
Which quote did you hear?
Do you remember which quotes you heard?
Oh, "Look at her makeup, it's terrible,"
all of those.
She better get the hell back to Philadelphia
because she's one of the worst.
Where's Miss Sabrina 'cause I'll sue the bitch.
- Did you sign a release? - No, I didn't sign a release.
And if she releases any picture of me, I will sue the fool.
So I guess that language was really already a part
of sort of my vocabulary and lexicon
before I even knew that I had been working
with Mother Flawless Sabrina at The Tunnel for years.
And this was someone who I knew, I didn't even know
that these were the two, the same two people,
that this person was the same person.
Miss Crystal, ladies and gentlemen.
Let's hear it for the third runner up
of the 1967 Nationals.
To know that someone who became
such a part of bringing Crystal Labeija to us,
in the way that we're able to receive Crystal
by the way of this, the drag pageant,
or the female impersonation pageant,
or drag balls that they were calling them,
I was really happy and pleased to see
that I had a connection to the film past
just kiking about the quotes.
Juku, do you know Queen, have you seen Queen?
Yes, I've seen The Queen once.
I find it quite interesting that
in the movie, the men that do drag in that film,
are very like,
"Oh, we are not women."
Like, "I don't want the surgery, I don't... "
But baby, we know now that that doesn't make you a woman.
So it's kind of really interesting to see how far
- the language has come. - Yeah.
And being that not all women need to have the surgery
to be women.
It's also interesting that just watching some
of those conversations, when they're in the room
getting ready, that some of those conversations are
- the same exact conversations - Right!
that we're having,
- either in the drag circles, - Right.
or the trans drag circles,
or the trans specific circles.
Many of them are the same conversations,
maybe with updated language.
What's fascinating to me is that
there would even be a conversation that like,
in the late 1960s, that if you are a drag performer,
that the question of the surgery will come up.
And so their focus was sort of on surgery,
and to surge or not to surge if you will.
And that was deeply fascinating to me.
We know now, I think Harlow,
who did win the pageant,
that she came out as trans just a few years after
the pageant, so it wasn't just Crystal
and so again, the intersections of so many,
and just my own history of
drag, it's really weird 'cause,
for when I worked at Lucky Cheng's,
I never called myself a drag queen,
I called myself a trans woman working in a context of drag.
'Cause I was clear that I wasn't really doing drag,
I was a performer.
Years ago, people would ask me, and I really wanted
to sort of make a distinction between being
a drag queen and then just working at a drag bar
or being a performer.
And so in that conversation I remember
trying to distinguish, "I am a performer,"
and even more than that, I remember it was so
sort of crucial for me to establish my look as looking
natural and real and passable.
That was really important for me.
I would've never worn like, blue hair, or like,
brightly colored makeup or anything like that,
I wanted to be just as natural as possible.
It was probably a little bit after Drag Race, honestly,
where I was able to kind of establish
myself solidly in both spaces that,
that I suddenly was like, "Okay, I have to come
to terms with this, I'm a woman no matter what.
No matter how I look, whether people read me as
a woman or not, whether I have brown, natural hair
or blue rainbow hair, I'm a woman.
And if I'm doing drag, standing up next
to a bunch of cis men who do drag, I'm still a woman."
And that took a lot for me to kind of work through.
And I did.
I mean this entire conversation is about trans women
and the impact that they've had in the drag community.
The most impactful performers that I've seen
in my life, the performers that have
driven me to become who I am today in terms of
who I am on stage are specifically trans women
and there are so many inspiring trans women
that I think people should go on YouTube
and maybe check out.
Like Tandi Andrews, Erica Andrews,
Shantell D'Marco, Dena Cass.
If anyone out there is watching this
continue to support trans performers.
The talent is there, we are here,
and we're not going anywhere.
Thank you everyone for watching.
Thank you so much Peppermint, thank you Juku.
- Thank you. - This has been so wonderful.