Joan Jett Blakk: The Drag Queen Who Ran for President in 1992
"If you see us more, you can't beat us all up."
Let's go back to 1992.
The AIDS crisis is unfolding in its familiar, devastating way. Homophobia is abound. And the only news stories you ever see about LGBTQ+ people are profoundly negative.
Then Joan Jett Blakk enters the picture. A member of Queer Nation—an edgy, confrontational activist group that was spun out of ACT UP—the group’s mission was to increase visibility for the community in order to combat homophobia and the rising wave of anti-gay violence.
Joan's candidacy created a media spectacle and forced queer issues into the limelight in a beautifully absurd way.
Check out her announcement video below.
"The reason I started doing it in the first place was because so many of my friends had died from AIDS. I had to do something,” she told me. “I felt like this was still such a major issue that people didn't get unless a gay person told them how it was really affecting us. We're fighting for our lives here. We're still suffering from some weird PTSD because we lost so many friends and got used to death being a part of our lives when we were 25 years old."
On this week’s podcast, I speak to Joan Jett Blakk (a.k.a. Terence Alan Smith) about her historic run, how the AIDS crisis influenced her candidacy and continues to shape how she thinks about sex, and what it was like to be an out gay teenager in the 1970s.
(And yes, I chose this picture specifically because of her biceps. SUE ME.)
A fun trivia fact for you: After winning the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, Tarell Alvin McCraney wrote and starred in a play based on Joan Jett Blakk called Ms. Blakk For President at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. Tarell played Joan!
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Next week I’m joined by a former member of Olivia Records, the famed women’s music record label founded in 1973 by lesbian separatists.
See you there.
Much love,
Jeffrey
@jeffmasters1