A Mountain Lion Walks Into a Podcast
In this week’s Daily Beast Podcast, Team BeastStyle discusses a Scottish drag controversy, a beauty pageant like no other, and a mountain lion in Milwaukee.
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast
A mountain lion, a drag queen and a saucy beauty winner walk into a podcast…The BeastStyle crew had quite a range of topics to discuss this week.
First up, a decision to ban drag queen performers from an upcoming gay pride event in Glasgow, Scotland recently caused uproar in the LGBT community. Nina Strochlic, who reported on the controversy, joined Daily Beast editor-in-chief John Avlon and BeastStyle senior editor Tim Teeman to talk about the issue.
Teeman said the Glasgow controversy is a classic example of the kind of in-group, granular arguments LGBT communities now face, and explained the objection.
“Performative drag queens—at your local bar, or on a Pride Parade, or performing wherever—are in some way offensive to trans people, either transitioning or post transition, in terms of how they’re presenting femininity, womanhood, the state of being female.”
Strochic said some activists compare it to black face, but said the LGBT community as a whole had spoken out strongly in favor of inclusion rather than exclusion.
“What heartened me, slightly,” Teeman said, “was people from all kinds of areas of the LGBT community saying, ‘This is nonsense, back down, I’m not offended, this is just ridiculous, and let’s get on and have a great Pride.’”
Organizers eventually apologized and said they would allow drag performers, Strochic said.
Teeman, who graced the podcast with his impersonation of a Glaswegian accent, said Pride events have changed in recent years. He recalled walking in a U.K. parade in the eighties, chanting “Two, four, six, eight, is your husband really straight? Three, five, seven, nine, no, don’t worry, neither’s mine!”
“And then going past 10 Downing Street and shouting, ‘Thatcher out! Thatcher out!’ because of course she was the queen of homophobia back in those days.”
Avlon and Teeman also speak with reporter Lizzie Crocker about her recent story on a vagina beauty pageant and what the contest revealed about international vagina preferences.
Finally, Tim Teeman details a recent mountain lion sighting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It’s as quirky as only a Milwaukee mountain lion sighting can be.
The Daily Beast podcast is excerpted from Daily Beast Radio on Sirius XM Insight 121, which airs Saturdays at 9am and Sundays at 5am and 12pm. Sirius subscribers can listen to the entire show online. You can subscribe to the Daily Beast Podcast in the iTunes store. Our theme music is by the Breuss Arrizabalaga Quintet.