Rory O’Neill, better known as his part glamorous aunt, part Jessica Rabbit alter-ego Panti Bliss, has been an ‘accidental activist’ for the past decade. They’re back in town and have linked arms with the United Nations, ready to take over The British Museum. We grabbed a drink and got talking…
It’s been almost three years since The Queen of Ireland was released. How have those thee years been for you?
The film’s been amazing. It’s been out for years, and yet it still kicks along. This year I’ve been doing a lot with the people from the UN – we’ve done Vienna, Brussels. Three years after the film is out, people are still using it for a bunch of things. I’m a drag queen and I got into drag like everybody else gets into drag; because it was fun and stupid and a way to get paid to be drunk. It’s weird that it’ll be 15 years of drag in a few months. Half my life is now going around with the Irish Government who bring me around to make speeches, to meet civil rights groups, or women’s groups. It’s just an odd thing that’s happened in my life, as a drag queen especially. VERY unexpected, it’s really great.
Do you turn up to these meetings in full regalia?
It depends on the audience. The Irish Department of Foreign Affairs runs Irish aid money that goes to developing countries. All the money is channelled through rights-based organisations; women’s stuff, ethnic minority stuff, gay stuff. They bring me to these places and, depending on the context and what it is, sometimes Panti will be making a speech about the gays or something. For example, in Sarajevo it’s very difficult to be LGBT+. There are no gay bars, it can be very repressed, it can be quite dangerous. There, I met this 17-year-old lesbian who’s thinking ‘this is so depressing and this is never going to change’, but then along comes a big Irish drag queen and I can tell her that when I was 17, it wasn’t that different in Ireland. Now, Ireland is the first country to introduce marriage equality by popular vote! But sometimes they use me as a shorthand to sell Ireland as a modern place. They bring Panti to Thailand and I make a speech to business-types. It’s basically a way of saying that Ireland is not the country you think it is. “Here’s a drag queen! We have gays!”
You like calling yourself an accidental activist. Did you just fall into it or did you have…activist tendencies?
Activist tendencies? Like homosexual tendencies! I say I’m an accidental activist because I didn’t join Amnesty, I’m not Peter Tatchell, I didn’t dedicate my life to all this stuff. BUT, I’m a drag queen, and drag queens have a special place in the gay community. We often have a microphone in our hands and I feel like it’s a responsibility to use it somehow. I’ve always had a big mouth! I sometimes get annoyed about things that I don’t think are fair, or I’ll say something and get in trouble. Then I have to fight my way out of that trouble, and that usually involves being an activist in some way. My motivations are selfish; I’m usually doing it for me, and then it just so happens that it works out for people who are like me. Other queers. People often try to dismiss me, right-wing anti-gay types. They’ll say something like “just a bloke in a frock” or whatever, because they think that’s something to be dismissed. But I’ve found in my FIFTEEN years doing this, that drag is a help. It amplifies what I have to say.
You have to work that a little bit. At the Abbey Theatre speech, for the first few minutes I say nothing, just nonsense. That’s because I knew that audience was not the gay community and wasn’t use to seeing drag queens. So for the first couple of minutes, they couldn’t see past the drag. They’d have been trying to figure out where my wig line is and what are my boobs, so they weren’t be listening. Then after a couple of minutes, they’ve done all the questioning, they’ve figured out what my boobs are THEN I let them have it. If I’d have done that speech in jeans and a t-shirt, you wouldn’t know about it. Nobody would have fucking watched it, you know.
Drag Queens have always played a huge part of gay activism, from Stonewall to your own for equal marriage in Ireland. With this current surge of interest in drag now, do you think this “yas queen” generation is going to be that politically engaged?
I certainly hope so, and I know some of them certainly will. Part of the reason drag queens play this role is because we’re the obvious queers. If you’re a queer in a rugby shirt walking through town, people will think nothing of you. If you’re a drag queen, a transvestite or a trans person who doesn’t want to pass, we often end up at the sharp end of these things. The whole popularity of drag now is such a double-edged sword. But even if it’s a 19-year-old trying drag for the first time, jumping around to Britney Spears and he’s never had a political thought in his life, in a way that doesn’t matter because what he’s doing is still political. He might think he’s just having a laugh to Britney, but actually it’s more than that, he’s saying ‘fuck you’ to gender conformity, ‘fuck you’ to ideas of how men should behave. It’s a statement if he knows it or not.
How do you feel about the surge in interest by people before who wouldn’t know what a drag queen was? It’s on breakfast TV, winning Big Brother…
In one way everything’s cyclical. I remember when the last boom happened – RuPaul’s big song ‘Supermodel’. There was a time when there was a drag queen in every nightclub, you couldn’t go to a corporate event where there wasn’t a drag queen handing out canapés, you know? But it wasn’t as big as this boom – it’s never been this exposed and this popular. It does have its drawbacks. I think if we fast forward a few years, drag will be OVER. People will think it’s naff and old hat, and then it’ll go back to the same people who have always done drag like me, and it’s going to make it harder for us to make a living. RuPaul’s Drag Race has been great generally, but if it were up to me? Let’s just kill it now. It’s a one-dimensional version of drag, and because it’s a TV show and not a live performance, we don’t really know if they’re any good. Where you are in London, some of my favourite drag queens like Jonny Woo…what the fuck would RuPaul’s Drag Race do with Jonny Woo? Most of my favourite drag queens are the same. Christeene! Or in NY, Taylor Mac!
Then there’s the 18-year-old who thinks they know everything about drag because they know how to do a nose contour. As far I’m concerned, makeup is the least important part! It’s good to look good, but that’s not drag, that’s makeup artistry.
So Marriage equality was such a big issue for you. How does it feel that just across the border to the north, that struggle is still going on?
OH! Poor old Northern Ireland. What’s extra frustrating about that whole situation, is that poll after poll has shown the vast majority of the people in Northern Ireland are totally cool with marriage equality. It’s just this tiny biblically-driven nutcase party that are cynically using a mechanism that was fine for the peace process, and was not designed to stop gay people get married. They’re using this Petition of Concern that was put into the mechanics of Northern Ireland politics so that both sides – Unionists and Republicans – were comfortable going into government because this stopped one side railroading over the other. The DUP are using it to stop gay people getting married. It’s so frustrating! Who the fuck are the DUP? They’re a tiny asshole little party – feel free to quote me on that! It can’t last much longer (though I’ve been saying that for years now) it can’t.
Here’s the thing… I’m not the marrying type. I never have been! It’s strange that I’m so associated with this issue, but to me it’s a fairness issue. Marriage isn’t for me. I’d like to go to a lesbian commune, have group sex and make cheese. But most people are as boring and ordinary as everyone else. They do want to get married, get them a doctor and a chocolate Labrador, and the Toyota.
So this event you’re hosting – the first time you threw on a dress, did you ever think you’d be working with the United Nations and The British Museum?
That’s just the kind of person I am now…NO! Of course not! I got into drag because it was underground and transgressive and punk. It’s anti-establishment in every way so it’s a weird situation for me to have in some ways ended up being SO establishment. This event is celebrating 70 years since the United Nations Declaration of Universal Human Rights. A lot of people don’t realise that the queers are included in that! This is a great way of reminding people.
Fantastic! Well thank you for taking the time to talk, is there anything you’d like to shout out?
Just remind people how pretty I am.
Oh, they know! The event takes place at The British Museum on September 21st, with a screening of The Queen of Ireland followed with a discussion between Rory O’Neill (Panty) and Deborah Steward (Director of the UNRIC). Head over to www.britishmuseum.org for tickets.
by Ifan Llewelyn
