Mo Fischer a.k.a. Mo B. Dick

Mo Fischer a.k.a. Mo B. Dick is a drag king legend and performer as well as a co-founder of Drag King History, a website exploring drag king culture through the ages. Mo began performing in the East Village in 1995 as “Mo B. Dick,” where she also started the world’s first weekly drag king party, Club Casanova. From her work mentoring young drag kings to producing parties and showcases world-wide, Mo has held vital space for gender-play and transgression for women and queer folks. She was even cast in John Water’s 1998 film “Pecker.” This conversation was recorded on August 1, 2019, 12pm by phone from Brooklyn, NY to Los Angeles, CA.

Mo Fischer: One thing I want to say to begin is that I am not a lesbian. And because your project is focused on lesbian history I want to make sure…

Gwen Shockey: That’s fine!

MF: Ok! (Laughing) I’m married to a cis-gendered man. I’ve dated women and I still very much identify as queer. I’m definitely not a straight-straight! (Laughing)

GS: (Laughing) Yeah! That’s something I wanted to ask you about so maybe we can just jump right in?

MF: Ok! Yes!

GS: The first question I wanted to ask you was about your first memory of or first exposure to gender-bending maybe as a kid or a young person. Maybe the first thing you saw that might have clued you into the fact that this was a world: drag, gender-bending and stuff like that.

2001 by Jonathan Saunders. Image courtesy of Mo Fischer.

MF: That is a great question! I was reading on your website the first question you ask is about the first time going into a gay or lesbian bar and what was that experience like so I'll start with that. I was twenty-one and a gay friend of mine took me to a lesbian event in a predominantly gay bar in Philadelphia. I don’t remember the name of the bar, I could find out, I’m pretty certain that bar still exists and to get into the bar you had to go down an alley. It felt scary and secretive. I’m fifty-four now and that was when I was twenty-one… Oh my god I can’t believe how many years ago that was. (Laughing) So, that must have been 1986 and I think things were still precarious for queers. That same friend, Dante, who first took me there, went another time with several of his gay friends. When they were walking down the street he was gay-bashed! It was this very bizarre thing where someone just walked by and cold cocked him and kept walking - it was very surreal and we yelled: You just got hit! That guy just hit you! Cause Dante was in shock. It was just so odd! It was frightening and awful!

GS: Wow! That’s horrifying.

MF: Yeah! That was a few years after my first lesbian adventure so it was still in the ‘80s. Anyhow, in terms of gender-bending and seeing Drag Kings or women gender-bending I didn’t really come across that but drag queens are much more prevalent in gay and lesbian culture, scenes and clubs. It didn’t dawn on me as anything that was… gender-bending is terminology we use today but wasn’t something we would have utilized back then. It wasn’t common vernacular. But looking at cross-dressing… oh you know what? I know! I know the first time I saw a cross-dresser! I was working in retail in a clothing store and this man came in and he was looking around and we were chatting and I was curious what he was looking for and then he came in again in – I don’t want to say drag – but dressed as a woman! It wasn’t drag per se. Cross-dressing isn’t drag. Drag is an exaggerated, campy aesthetic. Cross-dressing to me is personifying the other gender not in a comedic way but in a more natural, realistic, passable way. So, he – well she, seemingly – came in and I was a little stunned and I was looking at her thinking: Oh my gosh, that was that guy! Ok! Now it makes sense! So, I was helping her and she bought some outfits and it was just something that was very curious to me. I just thought: Huh! That’s interesting! And then going out to nightclubs where people were experimenting. The nightclubs I would go to in Philadelphia were ambisexual. It was everybody. It wasn’t just predominantly queer, gay or lesbian. It was just a mixture of people enjoying punk. Punk in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s was just a whole mixture of people and nobody cared who you were screwing. (Laughing) You were just out having a good time. I didn’t think anything of it, people were just experimenting and having fun with gender expression. I saw more men adopting female personas or mixing in female clothing with their more avant-garde look. I didn’t come across too many women doing that. I don’t recall ever seeing a woman put on a male persona or adopting male clothing in the way men did with women’s clothing.

GS: Do you think it was specific to the punk scene?

God Shave the Queen 1998. Image courtesy of Mo Fischer.

MF: I mean there was always someone dressed like that. The groups were always so diverse that there was usually someone dressing up. There was this one person who worked at the Philadelphia Mint, processing and making money by day, and at night he would come in drag or cross-dress. I don’t know if he was straight or gay, I don’t remember, but he had this persona and it was just a gas! We would have fun and whoop it up! So, in terms of how common it was, it wasn’t every day.

GS: It sounds like you felt free in your community, at least in Philly, to express your gender in interesting ways. It seems like you were in an expressive community as a young person.

MF: Absolutely. Absolutely yes – expression in terms of gender, performance art, or having an idea and making it happen. One night I went out to go-go dance in a club and a friend brought all of these art supplies with him so I asked him to use the body paint on me ala Laugh-In and, well, it ended up being this whole interactive art show where people just stood and watched us. I secured this space where I was go-go dancing and first he painted me with a brush then he used his hands and smeared it all over my body then he blew a tornado of glitter onto me… so it was multiple layers and became this insane performance that was very spontaneous. It was more being a part of a community with free artistic expression.

GS: Did you grow up in Philly?

MF: Yeah, the suburbs of Philly.

GS: How long did you stay there?

MF: Well, I left when I was eighteen to go to college then I dropped out and came back when I was twenty-one and then at twenty-five I moved to India and worked for Habitat for Humanity. That was pretty cool. Somewhere in there I lived in San Francisco for eight months. When I came back from India I moved to New York City. That was January of ’93. I was in Philly for just short stints, a few years here, 6 months there. I moved to New York City in 2003 when I was twenty-eight.

GS: Why did you decide to move to New York?

MF: I went to the New School for Social Research. When I got back to Philly after being in India it seemed so under-populated to me and I couldn’t figure out where everyone was, so moving to New York felt like a fun progression and more exciting in a way. Philly is a cool town though and very under-rated. It’s under the radar because it’s between Washington and New York. It really is a cool town and artists can prosper there.

GS: So, it seems like when you lived in Philly and then moved to New York you were involved in not only a really artistic community but a pretty sex-positive community? How did being involved in these communities affect or foster your inclination to become a performer?

MF: Oh, it was a direct affect. Absolutely. Having the freedom to express myself was the direct correlation. I experienced freedom of expression through sexuality and through art as going hand-in-hand. There was no judgement.

GS: I know you mentioned that you don’t identify as a lesbian but I’m curious if you experienced a relationship between your performances of drag and your sexuality at all? Or was drag really separate from sexuality for you?

MF: You know, I would always get questioned that during interviews: “Are you a lesbian?” And it would always strike me as curious because I didn’t understand what that had to do with performing. It seemed odd to me and at the time I did identify as a lesbian and I was dating women yet I always had in the back of mind the possibility of being with men too. I didn’t have the courage to say that I was bisexual because that was a dirty word in the lesbian community. You were considered a traitor or not enough and it was really frowned upon.

GS: It still feels like that sometimes.

MF: Really?

GS: Yeah I mean most people I know now either identify as queer or lesbian but bisexual always seems to be this kind of fraught term.

MF: Mhm! Wishy washy, make up your mind, and just not well regarded nor well respected. I really am remiss that I didn’t have the courage to be open and honest about that. I really regret that. I mean, there was a time when I questioned myself and did think I was a lesbian but I didn’t give myself the space to think in terms that weren’t black and white. I didn’t give myself the space to be in that grey matter of maybe this or maybe that! Now, when I say I’m queer it is that grey space. I never liked being definitive in my sexuality but I did that to myself out of fear of being ostracized.

Leather Daddy’s 3 1996 by Efrain Gonzalez. Image courtesy of Mo Fischer.

Leather Daddy’s 5 1996 by Efrain Gonzalez. Image courtesy of Mo Fischer.

GS: That fear is really real.

MF: I didn’t identify as bisexual because of the backlash and because of the demeaning things I heard around me. People identifying as gay or lesbian around me was totally fine but for me I couldn’t really be honest simply because of the disparaging things people were saying about bisexuals.

GS: I guess it goes to show you how many internal stigmas there were and still are within the LGBTQAI community.

MF: Yeah! And it’s seemingly an inclusive community but not always.

GS: So tell my how you first started doing drag! Was it in New York?

MF: I used to love playing dress-up as a kid and I would create male characters. I loved being Uncle Fester for Halloween, that was one of my favorite costumes. But as far as being a Drag King goes, the answer would be yes, I first started in New York City in November 1995. Now how I started, and there’s a route to it (laughing) a traveling route. I spent the summer in Provincetown to get out of the heat of New York City. That was the summer of ’95. That’s where I came across Drag Kings Buster Hymen and Julie Wheeler. I was dancing around town as Mo-a-Go-Go. I would get women’s onesie bathing suits with panties attached so it'd become a short dress for me and I’d wear them with go-go boots for a ‘60s aesthetic. I would go-go dance for the different parties; we had a great time and it was a gas. Someone asked if I’d ever do drag and I thought: No, I’m too girlie… But then I traveled on Amtrak cause they had this deal for three hundred dollars unlimited stops all over America so I thought: Oh! I’m going to tour the country! Jumped on Amtrak, visited friends and family all over the country. When I was in San Francisco I hung out with my friend Windy and it was absolute kismet. She said, “I don’t know why I saved this for you I just thought you’d find it interesting!” It was article from the San Francisco Weekly about Drag Kings! And I thought: Huh! I just met Drag Kings in Provincetown! And that was the turning point for me because in the article there was a bisexual woman, married to a man, secretary by day and Drag King by night! I realized you didn’t have to be butch to begin with, you don’t have to be a lesbian, you can do it for fun! So, when I got back to New York City I went thrift shopping and bought a pair of baggy jeans and a shirt. It was a bowling shirt and it said “Dick” on it and I thought: Mo B. Dick! And I just thought: Oh my god! That’s my name! Mo B. Dick! I had just gotten my hair cut and I went to drag queen Mistress Formika’s house and all she had was eyelash glue. She helped me put on my facial hair and mustache. I wore a ski cap and stuffed socks in my underpants and walked down the street and there was a group of men – this was Avenue D mind you, in 1995 when the East Village was still a little bit scary and so walking down the street seeing that group of guys, I was like: Oh, fuck… And they just said, “Hey.” And I said: Hey. As soon as I turned the corner I freaked out: OH MY GOD I passed! I couldn’t believe it. Then it dawned on me - there is this international men’s club that women know nothing about. If had I walked down the street as a woman I would have gotten catcalled and verbally accosted but seemingly as a man I was a part of their club.

GS: So interesting.

MF: Super interesting. I thought: Wow! So, then I went to Meow Mix and it was a Saturday night and there were the Drag Kings that I met in Provincetown, Julie Wheeler and Buster Hymen, and nobody recognized me! I said: It’s Mo! And they just kept looking at me and I said again: It’s Mo! I had to explain who I was! They were floored. I remember Julie Wheeler and I were on the dance floor and I was trying to figure out how men danced. (Laughing) So, then I started adopting this persona and developing the character. I tried on different personas before I honed in on Mo B. Dick. I would be a drunken sailor one night and go into Jackie 60, I was an East Village rocker boy… but what really clicked was this rockabilly rebel, mob, wise guy.

GS: How did you do research to develop these different personas?

MF: I didn’t research, it was just very spontaneous! I would go into the thrift store and go: Ah! There’s a sailor suit! I’m going to be a sailor tonight! Literally just like that, mimicking them as best I could! These weren’t performances, just kind of one-offs going out to the clubs dressed as these different personas.

GS: Were you ever nervous when you first started going out in drag?

MF: The first time, but after that no.

GS: What did it feel like when people didn’t recognize you?

MF: It felt like protection. I felt like I was protected. It felt like I could maneuver in the world freely and do whatever the fuck I wanted and nobody would know the truth. (Laughing)

GS: That’s powerful!

MF: Super powerful!

GS: Did you find yourself observing men’s behavior more once you started dressing in drag?

Subway by Stef 1996. Image courtesy of Mo Fischer.

MF: All the time. Especially in subways. First and foremost how men sit. I’d notice their gestures, their walk and their stance. When I first started Club Casanova we had it at Pyramid and somebody would film us and I would watch it and think: Oh my god look at my girlie gestures! That’s how you learn, when you can watch your performance and self-critique it. So, I realized I needed to work on having more succinct and clearly defined gestures and not be so fluid. Women seem to have more fluid, expressive gestures whereas I wanted to have more authoritative, stronger and defined gestures. Keep in mind this is all very stereotypical.

GS: When was the first time you performed as Mo B. Dick?

MF: The first time was the end of ’95. There was a Drag King contest. Also Buster Hymen had this event called the Drag King Dating Game where a bunch of us started gathering. And there was a bar on 4th Street called The Boiler Room where they hosted a monthly Drag King show. The Drag Kings started forming a community by meeting up at different events and doing various things together and like I said Buster Hymen had this event called The Drag King Dating Game and we had a Drag King contest at Global 33, that was a gas. Mistress Formika and I hosted the party on Sunday nights at Global 33 and called it Hippie Chicks Gallery. I still have the flyer! It was the first time I had presented this drag character so I wore a tuxedo and hosted this contest. It was really fun.

GS: At that time were there other Drag Kings or women impersonating men?

MF: There was Buster Hymen, Julie Wheeler, Shelley Mars, Nicole Zaray, Diane Torr and then a whole gamut of others! It’s interesting though because some of these performers were using their female names. Like Julie, Diane, Shelley and Nicole all kept their names. They would have drag characters but would use their own names, which is synonymous with how it was in the 1800s and early 1900s. Vesta Tilley, well-known male impersonator, always used the name Vesta Tilley and didn’t create a different character using a different name or moniker. There were male impersonators in New York who worked in mob boss Anna Genovese’s clubs like Blackie Dennis and Tommy Williams and they would always say their names as “Miss Tommy Williams” “Miss Blackie Dennis”. There was also Miss Beverly Shaw at Mona’s in San Francisco and she had a club here in LA. She wore skirts, a jacket and a bowtie and she was a singer. They were male impersonators in some form or fashion wearing tuxedos performing in the gay and lesbian cabaret circuit so it was interesting to me. Then there was Buster Hymen in the mid '90's NYC where people started using fictitious and drag names.

GS: Why do you think that change happened?

MF: I think because that was part of building this whole character. You’re creating a person that’s other than you. The essence of drag is really from an exaggerated perspective. Some of us would use parts of our names. For instance Dred’s first name was Mildred and so she just shortened her first name from Mildred to Dred which references dreadlocks since she was African-American. So it was really clever. Clever uses of language.

GS: Did choosing the name Mo B. Dick help you create the character?

MF: Well, it was on an absolute fluke! I couldn’t use Moby because of copyright infringement. My name did later inform my character. My motto was instead of being an angry woman, I became a funny man. The very first time I dressed in drag and didn’t get catcalled or harassed or verbally accosted it was just amazing! A woman cannot walk freely down the street without fear and repercussions.

GS: Did performing as Mo. B Dick affect how you would navigate through the world when you dressed as yourself, as a woman?

MF: Yeah, I had more confidence and I knew it was all a ruse, you know what I mean? Then I would take all that angst and put it into my character and behave like them and release that anger in a comedic way. Some Drag Kings today call that toxic masculinity and they don’t welcome that into their performance and go so far as to poopoo it. They just think its wrongful behavior to express but not seeing that when I do it as a performance it takes the piss out of it. Simon Doonan makes that case in his latest book Drag: The Complete Story. He did a terrific job. Do you know he stopped the press to include me in that? How wonderful is that. So, so sweet.

GS: Tell me about starting Club Casanova!

Club Casanova February 1997. Image courtesy of Mo Fischer.

MF: It came out of the Hippie Chick’s Gallery party at Global 33 that I started with Mistress Formika and the Drag King contest we did there. The successful contest grew into the idea for Club Casanova. Mistress Formika and Mario Diaz who were already club promoters were my mentors and initial collaborators and then I took it over and it was my baby for two years. It was remarkable because it started out at Pyramid and then moved to Coney Island High and then landed at Cake which was at 99 Avenue D. It migrated until finding its home because the party was Sunday night and the show started at 1 o’clock in the morning. At Pyramid it didn’t garner the public attention that we needed and wanted for it to be successful, it felt like a cavernous room. So we only had it there for three weeks before moving it to Coney Island High which was even bigger and even harder to get people in. Cake with its proximity, its size and location despite it being a block and a half over from Pyramid, well, it just clicked at this location for whatever reason, maybe because it was a lot smaller, it felt more community oriented and the stage was 4 inches high so I was immersed in the crowd and the performers were immersed in the crowd. It became this really cohesive community. You walked in, there was a Drag King at the door collecting money and you’d look over and see a Drag King deejay, there were Drag King go-go dancers, Drag Kings milling about in the crowd and then a Drag King show. It was never the Mo B. Dick show as my intention was to put Drag Kings on the map and I knew in order to do that you had to have as much Drag King exposure as possible. It garnered a lot of public interest and attention in terms of media. I was really lucky.

GS: Was Club Casanova the only thing of its kind at the time?

Club Casanova 1 year anniversary flyer front. Image courtesy of Mo Fischer.

MF: Oh yeah! It was the first ever weekly Drag King show! There were monthly Drag King shows around the world but there was never a weekly Drag King show. It was the first of its kind in the world which was remarkable. At the time I didn’t realize it! To be honest at the time I was just thinking that I’d rather do that than waitress! (Laughing) It was a lot of fun!

GS: You didn’t know you were making history!

MF: No! I didn’t. And then I became a spokesperson for a community that I didn’t know that much about. I didn’t really know much about drag or male impersonation and all the performers. I had to learn and study up on the communities around the world, specifically London and San Francisco, which were the larger communities. I wasn’t aware of smaller communities that were doing this at that time in the late ‘90s. I was going to bookstores and libraries and all of that to try and get to know the history.

GS: Was there a core group of performers at Club Casanova?

MF: Yup! And always encouraging new blood! I would encourage someone who was seemingly butch or someone who was theatrical or someone who had interest… really I’d encourage anybody! Anybody who had any inkling of interest I’d encourage to try it. Try out for a contest or just show up in drag and see how it feels! Create a character, have fun! I’d give tips on what helped me and how I created my character and I was always encouraging people to try it just for fun’s sake.

GS: So you became kind of a mentor to burgeoning Drag Kings?

MF: Yup!

GS: Club Casanova lasted for two years, right?

New Yorker’s for Cultural Freedom Flyer 1997. Image courtesy of Mo Fischer.

MF: Yep. The reason I ended it was because of Rudy Giuliani. Rudy Giuliani, for whatever reason, brought back these antiquated laws from the 1920s called the Cabaret Laws which prohibited dancing in clubs. It made no sense to any of us. If you were x-amount of distance from say, a school you couldn’t have a party or show like ours. So there were all of these old, old laws that he dug up and he just did not want New York City nightlife to thrive! To me it was just a crime because at the time in the late ‘90s every night of the week there was a different event happening, people were starting different parties, we would go from one bar or club to the next, there were so many performers supporting each other. Laverne Cox was a part of that with her twin! They would do punk opera, people were go-go dancing, people were making money to put themselves through school and to thrive in New York City. Very experimental expressions were happening and it was just a wild, fun time! It was really, really great! But then fire marshals would come in, in full regalia – head to toe – turn on all the lights and check to see if people were dancing. You could be sitting there smoking a joint or snorting lines and they didn’t care, they weren’t going to bust you on that only if were you dancing?! It was just absurd! Then everybody would be like, fuck I’m out of here! You know? They would leave and the next week word would get out on the street and nobody would come out of fear of what was happening! Then you’d have to scramble to get everybody back in. It became exhausting. I said forget it! I can’t fight City Hall on this one. I ended it and took the show on the road. Spring of ’98 I did the first ever Drag King tour of the U.S. and Canada! It was an 18-city tour, which was a gas! That’s when people started inquiring on a national level, “Huh? Drag Kings?” The next tour we did was in 2001 and we met Drag King troupes all over the country as a result of two things: the tour we did in ’98 and The Drag King Book with photographs by Del LaGrace Volcano. The Drag King Book garnered a ton of interest throughout the world. I say throughout the world because that book inspired a drag king community to emerge in Australia and I was flown down in 2000 to be a part of the Midsumma Festival in Melbourne.

GS: Amazing! Do you feel like that book was the first time that Drag Kings were visually featured so prominently?

MF: Yes, like I said we had a lot of media representation and attention but this brought it to an international level because the book was published and distributed all over the world. It represented the Drag Kings in San Francisco, London and New York City.

GS: It must have been amazing to travel around and to meet other communities like the one you formed in New York and to have that national comradery.

MF: It was super cool. Kind of what’s missing in the drag community today because there are isolated kings in a sea of queens and they don’t have support for themselves. They’ll get some support but not all of them do so they’re isolated individuals roughing it alone.

GS: Why do you think it is that Drag Queen culture is so much more predominant than Drag King culture?

MF: You know, I don’t have a succinct answer to that one. That is something I am asked all the time. I think it’s a combination of things. I think it’s easier for men because they know how to take up space. Women aren’t taught to take up space. Anatomically men sit differently and end up taking up more space, you know? So, there’s that and they’re taught they can run the world whereas women are taught to be quiet, to sit down, stay at home – that’s the message we were given for centuries! Historically there have been laws and regulations that forbade women from being in public. Still today women are not permitted to be in public in some cultures and societies around the world. And now look at how the laws here in America, specifically the abortion issue, are targeting women! Doesn’t say anything about a guy putting his sperm in you! You know? They have no responsibility. The onus is on women. So, laws are regulating women’s bodies and keeping women poor. If a poor woman gets pregnant she’s going to become poorer trying to raise her child, you know? She could very well become homeless. The economics are unjust. In terms of Drag King culture, men make more money than women, so women don’t have the means to go out to nightclubs all the time, they don’t have the disposable income.

GS: Was your fanbase mostly women?

MF: It was a mixture! An absolute mixture. We were very blessed for that. Every week there would be a different crowd and the fanbase would be totally different. It was cool! I’m very, very grateful for that. We were warmly welcomed by all people.

GS: Can you tell me what it was like to work with John Waters?

“Me and John [Waters].” Image courtesy of Mo Fischer.

MF: Oh my gosh! What a dream come true. It was an absolute privilege and what a fantastic person. I had his picture on my altar… I wanted to be in a John Water’s film. He was following me in the media and then he made inquiries about me, found out I wasn’t a drug addict or a raging alcoholic and that I had my shit together. (Laughing) So, he interviewed me for a literary journal called Grand Street edited by Edith Stein and then he handed me the script for Pecker (1998) and said he thought I would be perfect for the part of T-Bone the stripper. That’s how I got it! I didn’t audition or anything like that. T-Bone was a lesbian stripper who would bark at people. T-Bone was mimicking an actual stripper by the name of Zorro who was in Baltimore and was the antithesis of how a stripper typically behaves, which was hysterical!

GS: Wow. That’s so amazing! So, was the last time you performed Mo B. Dick in the San Francisco Drag King contest in 2015?

MF: No. The last time was in June of this year and this coming week I’ll be in Pennsylvania for the Milton Fringe Festival. I hosted a Drag King show – well actually it wasn’t just a Drag King show – it was a Drag King collective called Man Candy here in Los Angeles and the show was phenomenal! It was a great mixture of performers and it was off the charts fantastic! I’m hosting another show October 30th and then I’ll be at the Milton Fringe Festival teaching a kundalini yoga class (laughing) I’ve been practicing that for twenty years. Started on 19th and Broadway at the center there: Kundalini Yoga East. I’ll host the drag show on Friday night and on Saturday I'm teaching a Drag King history workshop.

GS: Will you do anything like that in New York anytime soon?

MF: Not anytime soon, I don’t have plans but I’ve only done this presentation twice and so my goal for 2020 is to hone it and work on it and do kind of a tour if you will? I have a longstanding invitation from Joe E. Jeffreys to teach it at NYU. I just started using Prezi, which is this really hip, super cool software that you can create presentations with. It’s like a fun PowerPoint! If you ever decide to present your project you should use it. I think academia would like what you’re doing. It’s really valuable.

GS: Aw thank you Mo. Could you talk a little bit about how you started dragkinghistory.com?

MF: What inspired it is really how isolated individual Drag Kings seem to be today and how difficult it can be to find support. People have said to me, “I’m the only Drag King!” And I go: WHAT?! Wait a minute kid! Hello? I realized The Drag King Book is out of print and I don’t have online representation! That’s when I got the website together and I thought that kids today really need to know about Drag King history! So, I contacted Fudgie Frottage in San Francisco who has been doing the Drag King Contest for almost twenty-five years and said: Fudgie I want to do a book about Drag King history, will you do the chapter on San Francisco? Fudgie said, “Mo, nobody reads books anymore. Do a website!” Which was a good point. It was kismet because I contacted Drag King Ken Vegas in D.C. and asked Ken to do the D.C. portion of Drag King History and Ken said, “Whoa, whoa. Drag King History? Do you know that I own the domain name dragkinghistory.com?” And I went: WHAAAAT?! So, we decided to collaborate. So, Ken Vegas and I are collaborating on this and we brought in Flare, who is a Drag King from Toronto, to help and for the first year the three of us worked together. Flare does contracts in her daily life for a production company and so she helped do the template if you will and the basic structure. I do the research and Ken does the website upkeep.

GS: I love the way its structured. I love how you have this timeline and it’s just amazing to see how far back in human history performances of female to male drag although I don’t know what lingo would have been used in the Tang Dynasty. How have you been doing the research?

Hogs and Heifers by Del LaGrace Volcano. Image courtesy of Mo Fischer.

MF: Basically just online! I found this man’s paper in which he chronicled male impersonation in Chinese opera and referenced it as going back to the Tang Dynasty. I read his bibliography to inform myself of that era. And I started looking at other art forms from that Dynasty that represented these impersonations and thus uncovered Wu Zetian, the first and only female Empress. So, all of this history led to the formation of male impersonation. No one really knows why or how it got started but it happened and I talk about it in the newsletter but the first Romeo and Juliet, if you will, was during the Tang Dynasty. It was a Chinese opera in which this woman falls in love with this man and because of economic circumstances couldn’t marry him and so she adopted a male persona to be near him and they were best friends etcetera, etcetera and it ended up being that if he couldn’t be with her he’d kill himself so she killed herself and they turn into butterflies. So, it’s this whole love story predating Romeo and Juliet by a thousand years.

GS: It’s cool to see these threads through history relating to gender presentation.

MF: Mhm!

GS: I love that your website links to book resources also. It offers so many tools for people in need of context and community! Thank you so much for your incredible work in so many different capacities, not just in performance but in helping younger generations find history!

MF: Aw! Thank you! It’s just fun and such a gas! I feel like these women are whispering in my ears! (Laughing) Wanting me to tell their stories!

GS: When I hear some of these stories I wish so badly I could time travel and go back to visit some of these clubs and performances.

MF: Right? Especially looking back at Webster Hall when queer communities in New York City started to form when they had the drag balls… that was really the start of gay and lesbian nightlife. This would have been in the late 1800s. People don’t realize that in the Victorian era nightlife was pretty risqué! There were some really naughty things that came out of that era – I think because of the strict morals of the time – people rebelled, and male impersonators were all the rage! The crazy thing is that the audience for these male impersonator shows were all men because women weren’t permitted in public!

GS: I just started reading Gay New York by George Chauncey.

MF: Oh, it’s so good. That book is so good. But he doesn’t talk about male impersonators much or Drag Kings. It’s very scant. There are some footnotes about Drag Butches and Mother Camp by Esther Newton who did an anthropological study of Drag Queens in the ‘60s and in her book she had footnotes about Drag Butches and male impersonators. I was frustrated because I wanted her to talk more about it but her study was more on Drag Queens. But yeah, George Chauncey’s book is amazing.

GS: Yeah, I got to see him speak about the book about a year ago which, was really cool.

MF: Oh, lucky you! He’s just a warehouse of knowledge.

GS: He really is. And even in terms of lesbian history and history from the perspective of women he knows a lot it is just a shame that so much of it is footnoted even in his book

MF: Yeah. He’s the one who talks about Webster Hall in the late 1800s and how drag started. One thing that I read in his book that still makes me squeamish and is just horrifying is NAMBLA (the North American Man/Boy Love Association), basically just pedophilia. There is a long history of that. It goes back even to China because women weren’t permitted to perform on stage so men and boys would wear women’s clothing and then started tricking in the bordellos. Little boys… it’s just so horrifying, it makes me sick to my stomach to say out loud… but little boys would put on makeup and dresses. (Sighs) It’s hard to conceive of the sexual desire for that. It goes back to Rome and Greece. There is a long history of that.

GS: Just awful. And sad that it’s a part of this history.

MF: It’s a part of human history. Then these men would have their wives and whatnot.

GS: I mean it’s still happening. When you think about what’s going on in the news now.

MF: Priests… yeah. Jeffrey Epstein. The desire for power I think is behind all that. You’re violating the powerless and people who don’t have a voice. That’s basically it. Anyhow! George Chauncey’s book will tell you all about the beginnings of drag balls in New York City and a lot of the vernacular used by Drag Queens in the ball world of Harlem came from the Webster Hall era. For instance a cotillion ball is when a young girl comes out into society as a debutante so gay men used that same terminology of coming out. So, they were coming out into these drag balls.

GS: I love that. You’ve talked about this a lot but I love how drag takes these like super hetero, weirdly oppressive social traditions, coopts them and makes them into something so, so freeing and awesome and fun!

MF: (Laughing) They turned it into art! Also what George Chauncey talks about was trade between communities. For instance gay men would pick up prostitute’s vernacular and use it. I always wondered why gay men would call each other “she” and George Chauncey brings it up! Say two men are working in a straight environment, their code would be something like, “Oh yeah, she was in rare form last night!” or “Yeah, I met her at the docks!” But they were picking up sailors when sailors were coming in. That’s also where the term “fish” came about, from sailors! Now it’s been coopted by drag queens to call someone out for passing as a biological woman. I don’t like the way it’s used.

GS: Yeah, it’s like a nasty reference to the vagina.

MF: You’re absolutely right Gwen. But you know what’s interesting? You’re never going to hear a straight man calling the vagina stinky fish! It’s only gay men. It’s misogyny basically.

GS: For sure. I hate it. There’s a lot of problematic language in all areas of our culture. But anyway. Thank you so much Mo! This has just been totally amazing.

MF: Oh you’re so welcome!

Casting a spell by Efrain Gonzalez. Image courtesy of Mo Fischer.

Lisa Davis

Shell Gottsagen