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Dragfest 2019
Dragfest 2019

SocietyJuly 3, 2019

The Spinoff Reviews New Zealand #87: The eleganza of Dragfest 2019

Dragfest 2019
Dragfest 2019

We review the entire country and culture of New Zealand, one thing at a time. Today, Alex Casey and Jihee Junn give their thoughts on Dragfest 2019.

With the growing mainstream success of RuPaul’s Drag Race has also come a deluge of drag superstars visiting New Zealand to perform in front of glittered-up and sold out crowds. Last night, Alex Casey and Jihee Junn attended Dragfest 2019, an elegant smorgasbord, pick n’ mix and Valentine’s buffet of some of the biggest drag queens in the world right now. With each performer delivering snackable sets at two songs a piece, it only seemed right that we give them bite-sized reviews in return. 

Host Vollie Lavont with the queens froms RuPaul’s Drag Race

Jasmine Masters

Nothing but respect for MY meme president, who officially opened the show with a banger of a Beyonce number before launching into one of the most iconic performances of the night: walking in from the side of the stage in a sequin ruffle coat to Prince’s ‘Purple Rain’, then proceeding to take us all to the Church of Jasmine Masters with a techno ditty of “and I OOP” (The Remix). Then the bitch decided to fling her shoes off and walk around the whole damn place in bare feet. Why? “Because I’m Jasmine Masters and I’m tired as hell.” Fair enough! / Jihee Junn

Manila Luzon

She was robbed on All Stars 4, so Manila was totally within her rights to nick a million bits of corny Kiwi iconography for her set. First of all, she was serving Captain Cook World of Wearable Arts realness. Second of all, she said she spent the night “in a hobbit hole”. Thirdly, she said she loves kiwifruit, because “they look like my favourite thing in the world.” 

“TESTICLES” a woman shrieked from behind us.

Also by GOD, Manila makes catchy music. Leaping around the stage in platform sneakers and strategically-placed ruffles to ‘Gay Man’, my ears were absolutely inundated with worms. Of course, this morning in the shower I found myself belting “yaaaas, I’m a gay man”. Not strictly accurate but it is a sign of an absolute T to the U to the N to the E. Robbed. / Alex Casey

Manila Luzon off to sail the seas

Manila’s performance of ‘Gay Man’ was truly the gayest shit I’ve ever seen. She looked like a cross between an aerobics instructor, a flamenco dancer, a Power Ranger, and Louis XV. I was confused, I was bemused, and I loved every second of it. / JJ

Latrice Royale

There are very few drag queens out there that can bring the same level of emotional gravitas Latrice Royale brings to her lip syncs. Her season four rendition of Aretha Franklin’s ‘You Make Me Feel’ has gone down as one of the best in Drag Race herstory, and last night, she showed us exactly why with the most captivating lip sync to ‘He Loves Me’ by Jill Scott. It started slow and then crescendoed to a peak so epic, so dramatic that she ended up losing a motherfucking earring in the crowd. 

“I just got my right to vote back in Florida,” Latrice noted afterwards. “So remember: never minimise your voice, you have so much power. Whatever you want your life to be you have to fight for it.”  It was the inspirational pep talk I never knew I needed. / JJ

Latrice Royale: Large and in charge.

Adore Delano

I truly relate to Adore on a spiritual level. She’s lazy, loud, kind of a mess, and still thinks grunge is #cool in 2019. But unlike me, Adore is a genuinely incredible singer, and her rendition of Nancy Sinatra’s ‘Bang Bang’ in a tattered up Marilyn Manson shirt was utterly mesmerising, made better only by the fact that she decided to walk out with a bottle of Corona in hand (cos’ she’s a Libra, you know?)  / JJ

The only thing that let Adore down was the fact that the lighting crew couldn’t keep up with her as she stomped through the crowd and over chairs, beer in hand. It didn’t really matter though, everyone still screamed bloody murder for her and the Where’s Wally element really added to the drama of it. Breaking all the rules and never sitting still long enough to stay in the spotlight? Classic Adore. / AC

Monet X Change

Monet’s charisma hits you square in the face – just ask the poor guy that she literally straddled because his girlfriend had recently left her seat to take a better photo. “Are you from New Zealand?” she cooed in his ear. “Hell yeah,” he replied. “Do you like big black men that look like Fantasia?” the whole place erupted into laughter, and we were in the palm of her spongy hands from then on. A legend. / AC

Sponge queen Monet X Change

If you’re a straight man, Monet X Change will 100% hunt you down and make you uncomfortable. And if you’re on your phone while she’s talking, she’ll most definitely call you out (“Get off your phone. Get off your motherfucking phone!” *dabs forehead with sponge*). / JJ

Trinity the Tuck

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Full respect to Trinity for opening with Jessica Simpson’s ‘I Wanna Love You Forever’, a song that haven’t thought about since I was eight years old and staring at a 5ive poster. Happier days. After she scuttled off stage I was a little bit worried that she might be a bit tuckered out – ha, ha – on the last day of the tour, but she squashed all my concerns and taped them where the sun don’t shine for her closing number of ‘Heartbreak Hotel’. 

If God didn’t want us to get plastic surgery, why did he put Trinity the Tuck on this earth?

Reader, there were three reveals. Four if you count the final reveal that was me, crawling out of my own skin and dying on the carpeted Logan Campbell floor at the drama of it all. Wheeling out her iconic china teacup dress that won her half the All Stars 4 crown, she shed layer after layer until she was down to just a diamante knickers and a teacup bra. All I’m saying is, the tuck hype is real and we did a lot of googling of “inguinal canal” in the car afterwards. / AC

Alyssa Edwards

… was not there due to a last minute scheduling conflict. Many a tongue pop and death drop were missed. / JJ

Read more: Trinity the Tuck on Caitlyn Jenner and starring in Taylor Swift’s new video

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Demonstrators participate in the #MeToo Survivors’ March in Los Angeles in 2017. Photo: David McNew/Getty Images
Demonstrators participate in the #MeToo Survivors’ March in Los Angeles in 2017. Photo: David McNew/Getty Images

SocietyJuly 3, 2019

New laws are great, but rape victims deserve more radical change

Guest writer
Demonstrators participate in the #MeToo Survivors’ March in Los Angeles in 2017. Photo: David McNew/Getty Images
Demonstrators participate in the #MeToo Survivors’ March in Los Angeles in 2017. Photo: David McNew/Getty Images

Incrementalism will only take us so far, writes criminologist Jan Jordan, who argues the ‘system of injustice’ for sexual violence victims requires a transformational approach.

Back in the mid-1990s a New Zealand judge, the Hon Justice E. W. Thomas, wrote an article slamming the lack of justice accorded rape victims by the very system in which he held office. Rape, he said, is “the most vicious and reprehensible crime in the criminal calendar”. Our courts failed such victims, he asserted, a reprehensible occurrence since “the violated woman should not be victimised a second time”. The law changes announced this week by under-secretary to the minister of justice Jan Logie are, he would be pleased to see, oriented towards “ensuring fairness and safety for victims of sexual violence in the justice system”.

The changes proposed include giving sexual violence victims the right to choose by which means they give their evidence in court, training and supporting judges to intervene to protect complainants from inappropriate or aggressive questioning, and ensuring the availability of specialist assistance for witnesses who need it in order to maximise their ability to understand and respond to questions. Changes will also be made to ensure rape complainants can trust that they will not have to share the same waiting spaces and bathrooms as defendants and their family/whanau while attending trials.

These moves deserve to be roundly applauded. They are evidence-based initiatives that should help to prevent some of the most brutalising aspects of the existing system. However, much of what is being mooted could be viewed as basic rights that should have been recognised years ago. When it comes to rape, our justice system still languishes in the dark ages. It is also difficult to comprehend that many of the changes articulated were not introduced by the previous government, given the extent of the information they were provided with from the Law Commission and other sources urging the dire need for reform.

Take the provisions involving making specialist assistance available for rape victims who need it in order to maximise their ability to understand and respond in court. One group of complainants whom this will benefit are those with learning difficulties. These individuals are highly vulnerable to sexual victimisation, yet often struggle to tell their story or to be believed. Speaking out against the justice system’s failure to accord such victims justice, UK professor Betsy Stanko described in The Guardian how the rape of such vulnerable victims had effectively been decriminalised. Given that it is often said that the mark of a just society is how it treats its most vulnerable, this proposed change is indeed long overdue.

All of the changes announced signal a commitment to ensuring safety and fairness, implicitly acknowledging that the existing system fails to deliver either of these. It is difficult to be confident, however, that they will be sufficient to transform the existing system of injustice. While judges will be encouraged to intervene to prevent the worst kinds of abusive cross-examination, the system still in place is an adversarial one of the kind that Justice Thomas slammed more than 30 years ago. Previous legal changes introduced to limit scrutiny of a complainant’s sexual history have failed to prevent defence lawyers from finding ways to raise doubts and cast aspersions over her morality. Moreover, juries sitting on rape cases are likely to comprise individuals who lack any specialist understanding of such critical aspects as rape dynamics, trauma impacts, and counter-intuitive evidence. In the absence of these, chances are high that their attitudes will reflect dominant rape myths and judgments. It is not surprising that victims often describe trial experiences as “a second rape”.

Reforming the current system is laudable, but not if it deflects attention away from the need to explore viable alternatives. Specialist sexual violence courts are currently being piloted with initial positive outcomes, even though these are still conducted with jury trials. These are a beginning, while potential exists for exploring alternatives such as specialist judge-alone courts as well as possibly considering the viability of restorative justice options in appropriate cases.

What is clear is that in recent years there has been growing recognition that rape cases are complex and require specialist training and services. This has long been recognised by our support services, who knew from the 1970s that specialist counsellors were essential. Our doctors developed specialist training for those conducting forensic rape examinations in the 1980s, and in recent years we have seen New Zealand Police recognise the importance of specialist training and supervision for detectives involved in adult sexual assault investigations. Our courts remain as a last bastion, largely resisting the need for specialist interventions and systems. My hope is that the suite of changes proposed this week will help to pave the way for more radical and substantive changes in the future, and that Justice Thomas’s calls for an alternative to the adversarial system will finally be actioned.

Jan Jordan is Professor of Criminology at Victoria University of Wellington, with more than 25 years’ experience researching sexual violence.

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