The Daily Beast wrote about a photograph of JD Vance that is circulating on the web. It apparently was taken while he was at Yale Law School. Thus far, he has not denied that it was he.
On Twitter, “Sofa Loren” is trending. That’s the name attached to the photos of JD in drag. And now he wants to criminalize drag queen performances.
Although Republicans have demonized drag queens in the past few years, guys dressing up in drag has a long history. Aside from Ivy League men’s colleges, where drag performances were not unusual and a source of great fun, there was a press event in NYC in 2000 when Rudy Giuliani dressed up in drag; he was accosted by his good friend Donald Trump, who kissed his “breasts.”
I don’t care if men want to dress up for drag shows, but I am disgusted when they hypocritically attack drag queens. As Tim Walz says, “Mind your own damn business.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Methinks (the GOP) doth protest too much.” The so-called conservatives are a band of hypocrites. Their culture war is designed to spread fear and hate. They attack, target and try to silence anyone that disagrees with them. They supposedly support freedom while they step on the hard earned rights of others. They are opportunistic, fair weather friends. While Giuliani and Michael Cohen deserve their punishment, their “good friend Trump,” a convicted felon gets to run for President again. What a bizarre justice system!
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JD is just another GOP fraudster.
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If this photo embarrasses this band of vandals known as the GOP. then post it. After what Vance tried to do to Walz, maybe this silly photo will give the media someone else to focus on. Vance is already getting lots of ridicule on social media from his many faux pas.
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JD Vance is NOT doing Drag! This was likely a costume for Halloween or some club/sport initiation event. This is totally different from Drag performance. How do I know this?….I have son in college and he plays sports and hangs with the frat crowd. They are ALWAYS having themed parties.
This stupid stuff is what will take down the Dems, because they are so bad at the “exposing” of dirt. Walz is keeping it simple and Harris is following his lead….and it’s working! Everyone knew trump was a filthy, misogynistic, philandering groper before the Access Hollywood tape. Exposing the tape looked petty and desperate for the Dems.
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Of course, JD Vance is doing drag. He’s wearing a dress and a wig. Drag is a man impersonating a woman, a woman impersonating a man, even a woman impersonating a woman! Yes, there are “drag queens” who are female. I wrote about one in Texas last year. She learned about from a fellow hairdresser and decided it would be a fun way to make a living. She loves performing and does well.
I said in the post that there’s no shame in being a drag queen.
There is shame in demonizing drag queens.
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Sorry, but this is NOT Drag! This is what stupid boy-men do while in college to occupy down time and weekends(themed dress up parties!). I would prefer “study more” and “stupid less”, but that’s not much fun while away from home for the first time.
If Dems want to lose again to the orange madman, they should just keep up this petty garbage posting of the past. Walz is doing it right and Harris is following his lead…. No S-it posting, no name calling, and no gloom and doom.
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LisaM,
You’re wasting your time asking this blog’s host to be fair and accurate in her commentary. She is now an extreme partisan who will use any and all tactics to advance her preferred narratives. Truth does not matter.
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Lisa Morton,
One of the great things about America is that all of us are entitled to our opinion. That includes me. It’s my blog. If you don’t like it, you have lots of alternatives.
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So I looked it up on Wikipedia. Drag refers to exaggerated performance of gender that often includes cross dressing. The photo is cross dressing, but not necessarily drag, as we don’t know what Vance did in the costume.
That being said, the screaming Republicans don’t know the difference and take it all as sexual. And Vance is the ringleader of false or exaggerated accusations. So you’re both right.
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Yes, drag involves a performance.
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I’m a’gonna step in as an English teacher here. We want accuracy of language. Dropping all the words like ‘drag’ versus “costume”, it’s more accurate to say that Vance dressed up as fem. Disregard his intention of which you have no way of knowing. In that case, dressing up applies to all people who wear clothes. Don’t let words preclude the meaning of ideas. It should not be against the law to choose attire that is not excessively showing, period. Vance dressed up in attire of his free choice, and everyone else deserves the same right. Period! Vance is a hypocrite.
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LCT, my point exactly!
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The attire is likely for a performance. I saw one of these Ivy League shows with men dressed a women when my husband was at U Penn. I think it was called the Mask and Wig group or something similar. It was a comedy show, and not all that funny. Real drag queens are funnier.
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Drag requires a “performance”??
What does that even mean? That you have to be on a stage with an audience? Or that the very act of a man dressing in an exaggerated version of a woman is a “performance”?
Is the point that JD dressed as a woman to express his own female identity, so it can’t be called “drag”?
It’s weird to call dressing as a generic female a “costume” but not “drag”. Seems like a pointless distinction to distract from the subject at hand, that it is the height of hypocrisy to complain that it’s wrong to dress in drag for a “performance” but okay to dress in drag for a “costume” so you can show yourself publicly at an party and have others admire you.
To me, a group of frat bros dressing up as women to attend a party IS a “performance”, too. The point is to be SEEN.
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Read a book or even an article about drag sometime.
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I did. I suggest you follow your own advice.
There is a reason that people use phrases like “drag show” or “drag performance”. Why even include the word “show” if the word drag by itself requires a performance?
It’s like referring to a dead corpse. Or an armed gunman.
Perhaps the error isn’t that the people who use terms like “drag shows” need to “read a book or an article about drag sometimes” to prevent them from using tautologies. Perhaps the error is in the belief that drag always means a stage performance and the stage performance is an integral part of the definition of the word “drag”.
At any rate, I am not sure why anyone felt the need to criticize Diane Ravitch on the basis that the word “drag” can only be used to describe cross-dressing for a (stage?) performance.
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I wasn’t criticizing Diane. What a weird fight to pick. Are you bored?
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I am not sure why anyone took issue with Diane Ravitch’s use of the word “drag” in her post about the photos of JD Vance dressed as a woman. Were they bored?
The hypocrisy of Republicans like Vance who attack drag queens is similar to JD Vance’s hypocrisy in attacking childless women because Vance seems very happy that childless gay men like Peter Thiel wield extraordinary influence and power and Vance doesn’t criticize that, since it is why he won his Senate seat.
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I actually was bored.
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I am not bored, just sickened by the hypocrisy whereby JD Vance supports childless gay men like billionaire Peter Thiel using his money to have undue influence on politics, but objects to childless women having the same vote as a person who is parent has.
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I hope you feel better!
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Thank you!
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Imitation is flattery. Ain’t nothing like the real thing. Imitation is plagiarizing. A “Sofa” VP can’t pass laws to criminalize drag queen performances. Houses pass laws…
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Does he sing show tunes too?
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When I was a farmer, drag was a thing we did to our hard Tennessee dirt after we “turned it,” a phrase referencing the effect of the asymmetrical plow. It was a heavy piece of timber with spikes driven through it to pulverize the clods.
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The Washington Post reports that Vance once wrote in his blog: “I honestly can say that I felt more like a female than I think I ever have or will” after what Vance described as an “incredibly emotional” day.
That probably explains the eyeliner.
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The problem with this is there’s a line where this becomes homophobia. Being a strident MAGA politician who wears eyeliner = weird and fun to mock. Being a man who wears eyeliner because he’s effeminate or not a “real man” is a homophobic stereotype.
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You are right, FLERP, that mocking a person for being “effeminate” veers into homophobia, but the issue here is hypocrisy not homophobia. There are Republicans who want to criminalize drag queens and to imprison people for behaving as they did. Vance is certainly not effeminate. But he may be a hypocrite, with his strident advocacy of “traditional family values.”
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I am almost positive JD Vance has never said a single negative thing publicly about gay men. His entire political career has been bankrolled by famously gay billionaire Peter Thiel and Vance definitely believes very rich gay men should be free to do whatever they want with whoever they want and never have children if they don’t want.
Vance constantly disparages childless WOMEN – never men.
I suspect JD Vance believes childless men like Peter Thiel should not just have an important voice, but should be free to entirely own and operate politicians like JD Vance!
I was not surprised that the failed so-called liberal media seemed to give JD Vance a pass on what he thought about childless men like Peter Thiel and whether they did not care about America’s future.
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