Culture

On a chilly evening at the start of March, drag king Blaq Dinamyte found himself looking out at a crowd of young activists eager to make change.
He was certainly proud of the turnout — as the president and co-founder of drag activism group Qommittee, Dinamyte had organized that evening’s march on the Kennedy Center weeks after President Donald Trump replaced 18 board members of the arts organization with MAGA loyalists, was appointed chairman by those new members and vowed to end any and all drag shows or “other anti-American propoganda” featured by the center.

But the D.C. drag performer also couldn’t help but think about his fellow protester’s safety. What would the consequences of protesting outside the center look like for them? “There were a lot of young faces protesting for the first time, and a lot of things that they didn’t realize could happen,” he tells Billboard. “We really wanted people to understand what it is they are risking, what could actually happen to them, and how to counter that effectively.”

Three months later, Dinamyte and his colleagues at Qommittee have created exactly the kind of guidance he wanted to provide those protestors. The organization published the Drag Defense Handbook in May, a 43-page guide for drag performers around the country dedicated to providing tools on how to respond when met with threats, harassment and violations of their personal freedoms.

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“We want to address all of these elements that you can’t really think of when you are literally in the middle of it,” Dinamyte says. “We want everyone to have a plan ahead of time before all of this happens.”

Separated into seven sections — including “crisis response,” “threats of violence and harassment” and “protections against defamation” — the handbook offers step-by-step guides for what performers can do when dealing with different, unwelcome scenarios.

Each of those sections were created, Dinamyte says, with the help of drag performers who have experienced firsthand what the latest wave of right-wing backlash looks like. “I am in such support of this handbook,” says Miss Cali Je, an Idaho-based drag performer who volunteers with Qommittee. “It has a lot of vital information that I was grasping for two years ago that I did not have available.”

Je serves the Idaho-based non-profit Reading Time with the Queens, where she and her fellow board members perform a 45-minute drag storytelling events for kids and families at a local library. But in February 2023, a group of Christian churches and anti-LGBTQ+ groups began opposing the event, staging sit-in protests at the public library where the event was held, harassing the performers online and claiming that the event was putting the children attending in danger.

“It’s ironic when a lot of that hate is coming from a group of people who seemingly are there to ‘protect the children,’ when in actuality, at the time that they were protesting the loudest by taking up all of the space in our room at the library, they were scaring children that were there,” Je recalls. “I didn’t want that to happen anymore.”

Je kept the performances going, even with protestors taking up space in the room with her. But when city officials refused to provide the resources necessary to make the reading event safer for everyone involved, the performer decided — with the help of a number of community members — to move the event to a local synagogue.

“What it boils down to is not giving your oppressors what they want. They want you to not exist, and that can look as simple as you just not holding your program anymore,” Je offers, matter-of-factly. “Sometimes the solution that is easiest and is the most safe is to not hold that program, which I get. But I think all of us had a feeling that it was just like … everything was fine until a Christian-nationalist hate group decided to rain on our parade. The idea of backing down and not being ourselves, of bending to their will and their understanding of where queer people are allowed to be and not to be, was out of the question.”

That experience helped inform a section of the handbook, which instructs performers to put in the work building a community around them that, if and when the time comes, can offer support where necessary. The guide asks performers to not only establish those connections, but to create action plans with those community members by creating “clear roles and communication protocols,” while also training those community members about de-escalation techniques.

Yet some of the most pervasive threats for LGBTQ+ performers don’t come in-person — they’re instead issued online, via social media accounts mounting hate campaigns that result in persistent threats of violence and death. It’s a tactic that Los Angeles-based drag king Jack King Goff knows all too well. “I wouldn’t even recommend having a personal social media page at this point,” they say.

Back in 2024, Goff was starting his fourth year as a public school teacher in Washington state. Their co-workers and bosses all knew that they were a drag performer on the side, but they kept that information from students and parents, feeling that it wasn’t important information for them to know. But, when a student discovered a years-old tagged photo on Goff’s out-of-drag Instagram page, they created a fake account and started a cyberbullying campaign against him.

“That’s the fun thing kids do now,” Goff says. “They make anonymous Instagram pages, and then they will take photos and videos of people without their consent and write terrible stuff about them.”

Before long, the campaign caught the attention of far-right activist group Moms for Liberty as well as a number of conservative influencers, who began petitioning for Goff to be fired from his job. In the process, he was also inundated with anonymous threats on his life, some of which required the intervention of the FBI. Goff ultimately decided to leave his job and his home, moving down to L.A. to try and start over.

Today, Goff recognizes that the situation could have been much worse than it already was, thanks to the fact that they and their partner were already paying for a data removal service to scrub as much of their personal information from the web. “Who knows if people would have shown up to my apartment if they found my address online, or if they called me or something,” they say. “Cybersecurity is super important, but unfortunately, I think this country is absolutely terrible at it.”

After working with Qommittee to help navigate their hate campaign, Goff consulted on the handbook, reading over the guide’s lengthy section on online harassment and digital security and offering feedback. The section advises performers to keep their personal and professional accounts entirely separate, reminds performers to always document any threats issued against them, and to drive their community members to report and block all hate accounts involved.

Goff adds that, with recent news of the the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) being granted greater access to Americans personal information — as well as the Trump administration’s recent expansion of data technology firm Palantir’s access to federal programs — cybersecurity ought to be the first step queer people everywhere take to protecting themselves. “With DOGE taking all of this data and giving it to Palantir, and now having more biodata being stored, we have to be really careful,” he says.

Dinamyte agrees, pointing out that because younger drag performers rely heavily on platforms like TikTok and Instagram to gain a following, cyberbullying has become one of the most common forms of anti-LGBTQ+ threats in recent years. “They’re going to be reluctant to lock that down, to make that non-visible,” he explains. “So, being able to show them, ‘Hey, here’s some things you should think about when you’re online,’ feels like it’s having the biggest impact on the community.”

While attacks on the LGBTQ+ community have been steadily rising over the last few years — whether in the form of coordinated legislative attacks, online threats or actual instances of physical harm — a recent report from GLAAD revealed that, in 2025, attacks on and threats against drag performers dropped by 55%.

Some attribute this sharp decline to the numerous court rulings that have affirmed drag performers’ First Amendment rights to perform in public, without restriction. But Je cautions against thinking that the courts alone will solve the problem, pointing to the federal appeals court that overturned a previous decision allowing a drag performance in Naples, Fla. to take place outdoors. “This is why I have so much trouble really trusting anything coming out of the courts,” Je says with a sigh. “If there’s this much disagreement about what a First Amendment right is, then something is inherently flawed.”

Goff also points out that the 55% drop in threats may account for the fact that many venues and organizations have pulled back on hiring drag artists in 2025. “Just with Trump being back in office, I’ve watched shows that I’ve been booked for being cancelled, shows that have been going on for years and years,” they say, as Dinamyte joins them in agreement. “The political implications of having a drag performer come to your event have fundementally changed.”

That’s why Dinamyte hopes drag performers — and everyone else in the queer and trans community, for that matter — adopts the strategies within the Drag Defense Handbook to better prepare themselves for the scary new reality we’re living in. “Violence happening to a minority group is not specific to drag. There is nothing ‘new’ in this handbook,” he says. “So, I really hope other groups take the information in here and help protect their communities with it.”