When the first cross-country trans comedy show made it to Atlanta this week, its organizers were reminded of the power of old-fashioned, word-of-mouth advertising.
It became their only option when their tour page appeared to be deleted on Instagram. A replacement page for the “Here to Pee 2025″ tour didn’t reach many people.
The problems started in January, tour organizer Ren Q. Dawe said.
“We had been reaching hundreds of thousands of people,” Dawe told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “But now Meta are turning down the volume on queer content. So we became a word-of-mouth event, and somehow, it’s working.”
The Atlanta stop on April 21 was the 15th on a 50-state tour that Dawe says is America’s first all-trans comedy and variety show, and attracted about 75 people. The tour travels this week to North Carolina, Virginia, and Washington D.C. before continuing on to New York and then back to Kentucky and West Virginia. It returns to the Southeast in November.
The event is taking place during a moment in which the trans community faces hostility and censorship from the Trump administration, Georgia Republicans and some corporations. But Dawe says the tour has a different message: that love and humor are the only ways to bridge the gap between trans people and those who seek to marginalize them.
“I was born a woman in West Virginia and now I’m a trans man living in Denver,” Dawe said. “I’m the amalgam of every barista you’ve ever met. When people asked me what I wanted to be growing up, it was not to be the star of every anti-DEI bill.”
Comedienne Lauren Jones of Atlanta said she wants people who have never met a trans person to come to the show. One of her main icebreakers is a joke about an awkward encounter between two trans people at a Chick-fil-A location. It’s funny, she said, “because neither of them should really be there, but yet they both want that fried chicken.”
Chick-fil-A has faced a boycott by some people after its president said the company was against same-sex marriage. The company has also donated to groups hostile to LGBTQ+ rights, the AJC reported.
The tour is also taking place during a moment in which trans Americans are more visible than ever, said Kadji Amin, a professor of gender studies at Emory University.
“People are turning on their televisions and seeing lots of positive images of trans people,” Amin said. “Or you hear stories of children going to school and their parents talking about trans people like it’s no big deal. Trans people are integrated in many institutions, in tiny numbers, but there nonetheless. But the sudden media spotlight has provoked a backlash.”
Amin says this “coming out” for trans people isn’t necessarily what everyone wants.
“As trans people, remaining invisible in a sense, blending in, isn’t just necessary for safety and upward mobility, but what a lot of trans people want,” Amin said. “Passing (as the opposite sex) is very old in trans communities. Trans men invented it first at the dawn of capitalism. In the 16th century, you had female-bodied people dressing as men and passing as men.”
He says the current right-wing focus on trans people is reminiscent of the anti-gay hysteria of the 1990s.
Trans visibility is also taking place amid an increase in hormone usage among all Americans, such as women undergoing menopause and cisgender men over 40.
KFF Health News found that online dispensaries have promoted “male menopause,” or even “manopause,” to drive sales of highly profitable testosterone-boosting injectables to men who wish to boost performance at the gym.
Amin says the fact that it is controversial when trans people use hormones for medical transition while straight people can use the same hormones for medical or recreational purposes raises questions about a double standard.
The American Medical Association says gender-affirming care is medically-necessary, evidence-based, and improves the physical and mental health of transgender and gender-diverse people, according to its website.
Courtney Cook is an education manager at American Documentary Inc., a documentary film forum. Originally from Perry, Cook says a climate of censorship of trans people in the arts has emerged in the first 100 days of the Trump administration.
“The state doesn’t get to be the arbiter (of) our of social and intimate relationships,” Cook said. “Trans people are people, not issues. This is not a ‘trans’ issue as political rhetoric wants us to depersonalize and believe.”
The censorship might be extending to the online world as well, according to a policy paper published in January by the Human Rights Campaign, which said changes at Meta and implemented across all Meta-owned platforms — including Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp — have the effect of permitting the exclusion of LGBTQ+ people online.
That’s just what Dawe said happened when he tried to buy ads on Instagram for the tour.
“Our ads kept being rejected with ‘this ad doesn’t meet our community standards’ messages,” he said.
Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton said one of the ads violated the company’s policy related to social issues, elections or politics because it “was raising funds, and that is deemed as advocacy.” Clayton pointed the AJC toward the company’s new policy outlined in January.
Meta now appears to permit users to accuse transgender or gay people of being mentally ill because of their gender expression and sexual orientation, according to a report in Wired magazine.
GLAAD, the world’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer media advocacy organization, said the changes mean that “Meta and Mark Zuckerberg are now not only permitting and encouraging, but engaging in anti-LGBTQ hate speech” and that “Meta is now an anti-LGBTQ company.”
In January, Zuckerberg appointed UFC chief executive and Trump friend Dana White to the board of directors of Meta, Axios reported. Recent changes have meant that Meta’s board went from being 44% female (five men and four women) to 23% female (10 men and three women).
The tour might not be able to change Meta’s policies, but it can help humanize trans people through the gift of laughter, Dawe said.
Tarunika Anand, a comedienne from D.C. who performed in Atlanta this week, takes inspiration for her comedy from right-wing portrayals of trans people, such as those she has seen on Fox News.
“My goal is to be the trans person portrayed on Fox News, going to satanic rituals and orgies,” she said, delivering one of her laugh lines. “Because my life is mostly movie nights and plant swaps.
“And when conservatives keep saying, ‘My pronouns are U.S.A.,’ I want to scream back: acronyms aren’t pronouns!”
All proceeds from “Here to Pee” are donated to local LGBTQ+ nonprofits battling anti-LGBTQ+ ballot initiatives on the local level. Tickets available at: renqcomedy.com/heretopee.
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