Introduction

Though I am not from New Orleans, it doesn't take living here for years to know that this city feels like none other. It is the culture and flavor that flows through the streets that has made it unique since its inception. Though most come to know New Orleans as the city of music, food, and festivities, many don't realize the social infrastructure of LGBTQ+ presence that made this place one to flock to. Due to this lack of awareness, many turned a blind eye to those who made this city shine during the early days of the AIDS crisis. When AIDS hit in the early 1980s, many stood by as those who made this city shine quickly began to die off with no sign of stopping. Through this project, I will be examining the role of drag as gender, performance, and politics during the AIDS epidemic in New Orleans. The research and interviews I conducted gave a sense of the art of drag and the influence that the creative Mardi Gras culture had on it. For many, drag was both entertainment and a job which made it intertwine with the fabric of their everyday existence. The politics of AIDS impacted the daily lives of many in the LGBTQ+ community between 1983 and 1990, in part due to the Republican Presidency and the conservative mindset of the South. These systemic issues caused resistance in the community as they called for the right to prevention and education while seeing so many of those around them be wiped out en masse. Drag also has many places that are relevant to the experiences of those who were here during this time. Many found their daily need for things like hormones or other simple medications as well as access to testing for HIV/AIDS in medical facilities like clinics and pharmacies. In these settings, so many were directly confronted by the realities of those experiencing and treating others who contracted the disease. Though many think of locations that were directly impacted during the epidemic as sorrowful and intense scenes, drag as place also includes churches, offices, and family homes. Many were doing their best to live as normally as possible. My interviewees spoke to me with such clarity about the extremely abnormal period of 1983-1990 providing first hand insight into daily life during this time.

Throughout the duration of my project, I was able to interview four people who were a part of the drag community in the city during 1983-1990. I will be referring to them as interviewees throughout my project though I view their interview contributions as integral to this thesis in their providing of context to my further responsibility of research and writing. The first person I spoke to was Arthur Severio, a lovely man who has been doing drag for the last 15 years. He and his brother came to New Orleans in early 1984 when he was only 18, and described experiencing the night life of the city through the lens of someone who "lived [his] whole life to get here". My next interviewee was Stephanie Lee, a transgender woman and performer who is from Houston, Texas. She described numerous stories of excitement and hardship throughout her time in Louisiana during the early 1980s, as well as her experiences in New Orleans during the 1990s when she transitioned and began performing. Teryl Lynn Foxx, who was born and raised in New Orleans, was my third interviewee. She has a very sweet and joyful nature and opened up to me about coming into her identity as a transgender woman through performing at drag shows and "female impersonator bars". Facing the harsh reality of an unaccepting world with little resources, she volunteered much about how often trans women become sex workers and find community with those they work alongside. This was her experience of sex work in New Orleans from 1983 to 1986. This experience of sex work was true as well for my last interviewee, Lisa Altman from Denver, Colorado. She travelled around the country during this time period and before settling in San Francisco, California. She worked at a "female impersonator" bar as a barmaid during the height of the AIDS epidemic in 1987. She discussed how the network of knowledge in the trans community taught people ways to be safe and gain access to resources. This network was extremely important and like so much of the trans experience, widely unknown to the white CIS heterosexual society that enveloped this community.

When beginning to understand the scene of gender performance during AIDS in New Orleans, the role that the city played in setting the stage for the effect that the epidemic had can’t be overstated. New Orleans has been established for over 300 years, and the LGBTQ+ community helped mold it into the city it is today. In understanding the presence of this community here, the historian and author Frank Perez began my research providing great insights from both his books and the wonderful timeline of LGBT History in Louisiana. The main book used to research the years 1983-1990 for this project was In Exile (2012). In this book, Perez discusses the everyday experience of gay, mainly CIS-gendered*, men during the AIDS epidemic in New Orleans. Gay bars were a hub for the gay social scene in the city and Perez speaks about the oldest gay bar called LaFitte's in Exile, one of the main gay bars in the French Quarter.

Another resource I used to better understand the AIDS epidemic in New Orleans was a panel by the LBGT+ Archives Project of Louisiana that discusses the history of Pride in New Orleans. The panel participants speak about and criticize Pride for being white, gay, male centric. One participant, Michael Hickerson, explains that pride often left out the African American and Transgender communities. Dr. Catherine Roland, another panalist, describes how many issues facing the gay community during the AIDS epidemic were pushed to the forefront with much support from lesbians through persistant fundraising and campaigns to raise awareness. James Sears' Rebels, Rubyfruit, and Rhinestones (2001) helped to bring into perspective exactly how LGBTQ+ people worked the streets prior to the 1980s and how they were viewed in society. The excerpt that I read describes the hustle of transgender sex workers on Bourbon Street in the 1970s, and explains how they were often not accepted in gay or straight circles. Transgender activists were also shunned from Pride parades that specifically celebrated gay and lesbians. The transgender woman that Sears interviews in his book proposes that trans women played a large role in community organizing, but were often overlooked and undervalued by other members of the LGBTQ+ community at the time.

Similar to the excerpt by Sears about street life for trans women in New Orleans, Susan Stryker’s book Transgender History (2008) talks in depth about the conditions the systems of governing have put in place to force those who do not conform to society to be pushed to the lowest social standing. Doing this included housing and employment discrimination for those whose social gender did not match the one assigned at birth on their identification card. This forced many into low income vice districts of cities, living in cheap residential hotels and working on the streets. Those known as “street queens” are described in the book Mother Camp (1972) by Esther Newton as those who “are never off stage...Their way of life is collective, illegal, and immediate (present oriented)” (8). This book was the definitive look into drag culture during the 1960s and does a great job describing the lives of those in this community in a context that applies well to the foundations of drag anywhere in the country. She speaks of “female impersonators” as being professional performers who live constantly performing who they are to the world. This is the way of life for many, and such performance of gender is most prominently discussed by Judith Butler in one of her books, Gender Trouble (1990). Her idea of gender performativity explores the way that every person repeats certain acts that form their gender. The expectation of society is that these acts are aligned with the script for your sex assigned at birth. Butler describes the way that our culture has forced sex to be linked with gender but says that it is not always completely clear which actions are meant for one gender and not another. Defying this script could include actions of females doing tasks traditionally thought of as being for males, or dressing in a masculine fashion. When individuals perform the other sex's script it refutes the idea that gender only has two options of man or woman. Those who’s gender doesn’t align with their sex assigned at birth is a great example of this lack of binary and the reality for many transgender people. The act of drag itself -- in this case, as masculine people performing femininity as a characterization of femininity -- directly acts against the script of gender roles for people of a certain sex to follow. These resources informed the way that I thought about gender and the role of presentation to society especially in the years of 1983-1990 during AIDS in New Orleans. Though much research centers around northern and often more liberal cities like San Francisco and New York during this time period, the experiences of those in the LGBTQ+ community that live in the south are unique because of the conservative values and standards that persist in this part of the country.

The article “United We Stand, Divided We Fall: AIDS, Armorettes, and the Tactical Repertoires of Drag” (2009) by Jefferey Bennett and Isaac West gives an in depth look at how the South has been affected by AIDS as well as the work of one drag troupe’s activism. In this piece, there are staggering numbers that communicate the lack of support for those with AIDS in the South compared to northern states. He cites that as a region the South has the most new HIV cases and ranks last in funding to prevent and help those who have contracted it. The essay goes on to describe a troupe of drag queens who used the power of entertainment in combination with politics to bring awareness and fundraising to the AIDS epidemic. In America, but especially the South, the view during this time towards those with AIDS was so different in comparison to other epidemics that we have seen in the past. Many who were homophobic viewed those who contracted HIV/AIDS as those who were being punished by God. Many others thought AIDS was not their problem since they didn’t feel it affected them and their circles. In the Masters thesis by Robert D. Byrd Jr. called “When the Pretending’ Stopped?: AIDS Coverage in New Orleans’ Mainstream, Gay, and Alternative Presses from 1981-1991” (2011), Byrd provides an abundance of information concerning the way the media presented the narrative of AIDS to the "everyday" person. He spoke of how the straight world didn't see AIDS as a threat. This all changed for everyone in the country after the death of actor Rock Hudson. When the disease began affecting those who they welcomed into their homes and watched on TV daily, the threat became real. Unfortunately too many gay people had to die of AIDS before this realization struck. Closer to home, those in Southern homophobic households were often more likely to contract this disease and go untreated, which made the threat of contracting this disease and treating it even more difficult. In reading chapters from the book North Carolina and the Problem of AIDS: Advocacy, Politics, and Race in the South (2011) by Stephen Inrig, I learned that the attitudes of many in the South and the conservative hyper-masculine male public image creates a closeted and often dangerous situation surrounding sexually contracted diseases. Inrig also touches on the importance of acknowledging that many of the strategies that are utilized in AIDS prevention were created by white gays males, with very little resources to address the unique ways that minority groups continue to be affected by the disease. The book also talks about the issues with contact tracing for those with AIDS. Voluntary and involuntary contacting of past partners can cause a lot of problems for those who receive a call to their homes and are forced to come out while also possibly being positive. The information covered in this text shed light on very important cultural realities that make the South so much different from the rest of the country when dealing with this disease.

Though the majority of research concerning the LGBTQ+ community in New Orleans is well done, there remains a severe lack of researchers willing to devote time to the topic. This leaves holes when assembling a comprehensive story of the community. Though there is work that touches on drag culture in New Orleans and the AIDS era, there are seldom works that address these topics together and include the trans experience in a way that is both accurate and meaningful. Through constructing this project, I learned about a history that has not been told. This experience drove me to propose that my research and the stories of my interviewees should become part of the recognized history of New Orleans.

*CIS - aligning with the gender assigned at birth