My friend Elena and I were having a minor argument about the
appropriateness of drag queens at Pride events.
As Elena is transgender, she’s sometimes feels uncomfortable with this
presentation of self as she thinks it makes fun of her existence. I understand.
I feel the same way about so-called freak shows or at least I used
to.
Then I learned the remarkable story of Millie and Christine
McKoy who were conjoined twins who performed musical and dancing acts under the
name Millie-Christine. The girls were
born in slavery in North Carolina. Their first owner sold them for $1,000 and
the girls changed hands several times – their price increasing each time until
it reached approximately $40,000 the last time they were sold.
The twins apparently settled with the kind owner, named
Joseph Smith, and in 1856 he traced their whereabouts to London where they were reclaimed from the
person who stole them. I’m not saying
that life in a sideshow or life as a slave was ideal in any way, but these two
girls took advantage and used their disability to better themselves and their
family. In fact, they had the power to
too some degree regulate what happened to them.
For example, Mr. Smith purchased their entire family – parents and seven
siblings just to make them happier. They
were taught to read and write which was illegal for slaves to learn at the
time, particularly in the deep south, and they also forbade doctors from
performing intimate exams on them, which they had been previously subjected to
in order to prove their condition was real, when they became teenagers.
After 1863, when the Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery
the twins continued to appear in sideshows, but now they earned $600.00 a week
in real money given to them rather than their owner. They gave some of the money they earned to
their father who bought a farm. In the
1880’s, the twins worked with famous circus master P.T. Barnum. At the end of the decade, they had to retire
because one of them had tuberculosis and they continued using their wealth to
assist African Americans schools and churches in the South. Sadly, they died within hours of each
other. Although, there had been discussion of the
possibility of separating them post-mortem, it was decided that instead of
doing this doctors would merely inject Christine (the healthy twin) with
morphine to speed her death after her sister died. She died approximately seventeen hours after
her sister did.
My point is that you can’t judge anyone for the ways in
which they get what they need. I don’t
judge Millie and Christine for making the best of their situation. During slavery, many disabled people were
murdered because they weren’t perceived as being able to work. If I had been in their situation I might have
joined the sideshow myself.
Given these events, I think that perhaps Elena is a little
too judgmental when it comes to her dismissal of the importance of drag culture
within the queer community. Look at
Sylvia Rivera, the drag queen who helped start the Stonewall Riots (the first,
recorder public act of defiance in which GLBT people stood up for themselves
against homophobic police repression).
If that action had not taken place many LGBT people would not have the
rights we enjoy today. I think many
people dismiss drag queens and think I would never do that, but given the
choice of putting on a dress and earning money to eat that night by performing
in a bar or often for LGBT charities as many queens do these days what would
you choose?
Nowadays Sylvia
Rivera is famous and revered in the LGBT community. There is a street named after her in New York City and the Sylvia
Rivera law project is, “to guarantee that all people are free to self-determine
gender identity and expression, regardless of income or race, and without
facing harassment, discrimination, or violence”. As the LGBT community becomes more and more
assimilation minded, people like Sylvia who laid the groundwork for modern day
LGBT liberation are often forgotten and trivialized. Elena didn’t even know who she was. I am her senior by almost a decade and much
more interested in politics than she is, but still I was very surprised by
this. It’s a sorry day in the world when
we don’t remember our ancestors, particularly our heroic ones.
