San Francisco drag performer Per Sia (@per_sia), who is an elementary school teacher, says that when she began performing for Drag Story Hours, “we would walk into schools and get treated like royalty.” But lately, her arrivals involve walking through safety plans and identifying emergency exists. “If anything happens ... go down this hall and hide under that desk," she recalls a librarian telling her before a recent event. Amid a rapidly worsening storm of right-wing hysteria and disinformation demonizing LGBTQ+ people, and particularly drag performers, 2022 saw at least 124 significant threats and protests against drag events in the U.S., many of them violent. An art form that has provided LGBTQ+ people a sense of community for decades has been weaponized against them, and has forced drag queens to question what safety means in a culture intent on causing them harm. At the link in our bio, we look at how we got to this point and why the Right chose drag as its villain this year.