Jinkx Monsoon wears clothing by Delicia Studio
words by willow defebaugh
photograph by camila falquez
styling by lorena maza
The world’s top drag queen speaks to Atmos about the ancient history—and magic—of trans and gender expansive people.
On a wintry night earlier this year—Valentine’s Day—I went to see Jinkx Monsoon at Carnegie Hall in New York City. It was a worthy venue for a performer as mythic as Monsoon, known offstage as Hera Lilith Hoffer. She was crowned top drag queen in the world in 2022 after walking the stage of Rupaul’s Drag Race: All Stars as a witch being burned at the stake—an eerie portent for the position she and other trans people find ourselves in today.
At Monsoon’s Carnegie Hall show, woven throughout musical numbers and comedic monologues was a narrative about mythology and gender. She began by telling the audience that as a child she was obsessed with goddesses, and closed with the revelation that she had become one. This transformation came through learning that neither love nor femininity could be attained from the worship of men, but qualities she had to embody within herself.
At the climax of her performance, Monsoon called a fellow witch to the stage. They enrolled the audience into casting a collective spell that would, as Monsoon put it, uplift the divine feminine, heal the divine masculine, and free the divine androgyne. It conjured images of trans people not as a point on a spectrum, but the third point of the triangle—the symbol of alchemy (and the delta in Ancient Greek, denoting change) in which binary existence is transcended to form the most stable shape in nature.
The show came just weeks into President Trump’s return to office, which he marked with a slew of executive orders specifically targeting trans people. This ongoing campaign to strip us of our dignity and rights is the basis for our June digital cover project with Camila Falquez, that found me in conversation with Monsoon. It’s an ode to trans people past, present, and future—that we have always been here and always will be.
Here, Monsoon tells me about the history of trans people “carved in marble,” living in a world that worships at the altar of gender, and the magic of liberation.
Willow Defebaugh
In the poem Raquel Willis created for this project, she wrote, “There’s no telling the story of creation without us.” What is one part of the world that you feel trans people have helped create or are creating right now even under the circumstances in which we’re finding ourselves in the U.S.?
Jinkx Monsoon
I try not to talk about things I’m not too familiar with, but one thing I am familiar with is Ancient Greece. And intersex people existed in Ancient Greece. Trans people existed in Ancient Greece. At the dawn of our civilization, it’s carved in marble. It’s not someone’s opinion. It is factual, carved-in-marble evidence that we existed at the dawn of Western civilization. And we, you and I speaking right now, our culture is derived from the culture of Ancient Greece where trans people existed, intersex people existed.
The thing that makes me so upset about this whole fucking debate is they want to bring so many different sources into the conversation, but if they just look at what nature has already told us, she’s already given her input. And it’s that we exist and that we always have. We exist in nature, intersex animals, creatures exist in all kinds of forms and even in human form. And the idea that you can exterminate something that is part of our DNA is so asinine and so self-destructive as a species that I hate even having to defend it because it’s already been answered time and time again.
So, we’ve been contributing to culture just as long as anyone else has. We have places in so many cultures and the only reason we don’t have a place in modern Western culture is because it was eradicated. It was systemically taken away from us. The debate isn’t whether we should exist or come into existence or be allowed to exist. The debate should be, why the fuck are people still fighting about this? Why the fuck wouldn’t we be allowed to exist? The question has to stop being why let us do this and start being why would you stop us?
“…if they just look at what nature has already told us, she’s already given her input. And it’s that we exist and that we always have.”
Jinkx Monsoon
Drag queen
Willow
Exactly. Some species of fungi have up to 23,000 different sexes, and humans in their arrogance try to impose these binary systems on a world where nature’s primary principle is biodiversity. She only exists because of biodiversity. And that is why to me that it’s so ironic that what is natural is weaponized against us because what is unnatural is a monoculture.
Jinkx
One of the reasons why they are able to even propose the ideas that they propose is because they’re still operating on this idea that you can just look at a person and know these things about them. And that just isn’t true. My mother is 60 something. Two years ago, they found out she was intersex. They thought she had a cyst in her abdomen. Turns out it was an underdeveloped testicle that’s been there her whole life. Her entire life, she has dealt with hormonal imbalances, complications with birth control, all of this shit, because no one ever thought to even test or look for it because she showed no outward signs of being intersex.
There’s way more intersex people than we know because we don’t fucking acknowledge it and we don’t test for it and we don’t look for it and we ignore it. And when we see it visibly, that is the only time that operations are being done on the genitalia of children. It’s not trans people transitioning kids, it’s doctors making a decision for a child based on what they perceive to be as abnormal. And then that child grows up and typically has a whole slew of fucking problems because that doctor mutilated their genitalia in the way that we are being accused of doing and have never, ever done. So, this is what I’m talking about. Why am I having to defend being trans when the whole thing they’re fucking scared of absolutely does happen and it’s not us doing it?
Willow
Nature is the most trans thing in the world. She is just matter changing shape and form and reiterating and evolving. And to me, the biodiversity crisis we’re experiencing as a species, as a planet is so interconnected in my mind as to why trans people are the scapegoat of this moment. As a species, we have become ecologically dissociated. We are separated from the rest of the natural world, and that’s a forced separation. And here you have a group of people who have gone from dissociation and chosen embodiment. What could be more confronting?
Jinkx
Well, you’ve just used the word that is the key thing about trans people that is not true for every cis person and that’s that we made the choice to be this person. And most people, because they feel comfortable with the choices made for them, never think of it that way. They think they’re doing what came naturally to them, but how much do we talk about it?
With gender, we begin controlling people from the moment they’re born. We start making decisions for them. And in that way, we start conditioning them. We put them on a predetermined path. And a trans person, to even be themself, has to say, “No, stop. I’m getting off of that path you chose for me, choosing a new path for myself. And from this point on, everything’s my choice because y’all haven’t laid out a path for me. I have to make my own.”
And that choice, that begins everything. When I chose to be a drag queen and chose to defy what I was inundated with since birth, my whole life became about, “Oh my god, all of these rules are just arbitrary and I don’t consent to them anymore.” And when you choose that kind of freedom for yourself, you can’t be controlled. And that is what is so scary about us is we offer everyone the ability to choose for themselves their name, their presentation, the way they connect with other people, the way they demand respect for who they are, the way they claim their space. So, yeah, we’re a huge fucking threat and we ain’t going anywhere.
“The debate isn’t whether we should exist or come into existence or be allowed to exist. The debate should be, why the fuck are people still fighting about this?”
Jinkx Monsoon
Drag queen
Willow
I mean, freedom is really what we’re talking about here. When you see someone who is liberated, it makes you understand how far you are from freedom within yourself.
Jinkx
And you don’t have to transition to experience what we’re talking about. I mean, I think I’ve been transitioning slowly my whole life. I’ve been dying my hair red since I was 14. I’ve been wearing contacts since I was 15. I have been deciding how I want the world to see me my whole life, without any fear or apology. And anyone who dyes their hair, wears contacts or picks out what shoes they’re going to wear that day out of their multiple pairs of shoes or picks out a color shirt to wear that day based on how they’re feeling, or anyone who wears a certain piece of jewelry because they feel like that’s the piece of jewelry that tells everyone they are who they are, you’re already fucking doing the same thing that we are doing, just on a teeny tiny level.
Willow
People act like gender expression is something that only concerns trans people. But in reality, even the majority of gender-affirming surgeries happen on cis people.
Jinkx
The gender-affirming care that cis people use was [developed] through the efforts made to help trans people transition. So, you love your hair transplant, you love your breast implants, you love your hormone treatment. You owe it to trans people because it was trying to help trans people transition from the 1930s onward that allowed us the things that cis people are now taking for granted.
Trying to suppress us just makes us keep our talent for ourselves, our special gifts. So many things that women and men are now benefiting from the LGBTQ+ community bleeding out into the mainstream, they don’t even realize that it’s stemming from us, from trans people and queer people. Because now it’s so commonplace, you’re forgetting that 10 years ago, you didn’t fucking know what a beauty blender was. You know what I mean? If you think getting rid of us is going to make your life easier somehow, I promise you it’s the opposite. You will lose the things that you love that you don’t realize come from us.
Willow
It’s just scapegoating.And it’s no coincidence that we are the ones who are burning at the stake right now because what we’re talking about here are the same reasons witches were persecuted, it’s fear of autonomy and self-determination.
Jinkx
Oh yeah. And the connection to your environment is a huge tenet of witchcraft. And I truly believe that our systemized detachment from nature, which was an effort to make us not feel bad about the companies that are destroying our planet, cutting down our trees and polluting our environments, that detachment from nature was calculated.
And with witchcraft, again, I’m going to take it back to Ancient Greece. The polytheistic vibes that I love about the Greek pantheon and many cultures with multiple deities is that there was a god in charge of everything, right? So, every day, to try to ensure that you had a good day and a good tomorrow and that the people you loved were taken care of, every day you would show gratitude to all the things that you love because they’re attached to a deity. If you wake up and you love the northern breeze, then you would set out an offering for the goddess of the northern breeze. And if you love your cows, then you’d set out an offering for the god of livestock. And it reminded us to think of all of these things as alive, to think of these things of living in this world with us because they represented something that they believed to be alive.
And I’m not saying that you’ll live a better life if you set out offerings for multiple gods. But what I’m saying is the psychological ritual of thinking about each individual thing you’re grateful for and showing gratitude for it. And in that way, you reconnect with your environment and you don’t take these things for granted and it’s harder to just waste because you’re thinking about all of these individual things and how lucky you are to have them in your life.
“…what is so scary about us is we offer everyone the ability to choose for themselves their name, their presentation, the way they connect with other people, the way they demand respect for who they are, the way they claim their space. So, yeah, we’re a huge fucking threat and we ain’t going anywhere.”
Jinkx Monsoon
Drag queen
Willow
It’s seeing divinity everywhere. And speaking of Greek mythology: Hecate, goddess of witchcraft, was also goddess of crossroads and thresholds. Hello, transness. If you could really speak to all of the trans babies living in this country right now, what would you tell them?
Jinkx
I would say throughout history, people have tried to make it impossible for us to exist and we’re still here. If you’re here, we are still here. So, it’s just until we have a better option, you just got to survive and love every fucking day. I don’t know what else to say right now because I don’t want to encourage any reckless behavior [laughs]. And at the same time, I don’t want to act like I’m not living my life. I am doing everything I can to keep myself safe, cautious, and knowledgeable about the world around me, while I also do everything I possibly can to enjoy this one fucking life I have.
Willow
What kind of transcestor do you want to be remembered as?
Jinkx
I want to be remembered in the way that Lucille Ball is remembered where on the surface, she made us laugh, but when you peel away the layers, she was so much more than just a comedian on television. She was punk fucking rock. I want to be like that. I want to be remembered first pleasantly and then when you really sit there and think about it, you think, “that badass bitch really fucking did some shit. She really rattled some cages and ruffled some feathers.” I guess I want to be remembered for disturbing the peace of the status quo.
Willow
I’d say you’re on your way.
Jinkx
Thank you.
Set design Damien Vaughan Shippee casting GÜERXS, Maria Osado managing agent Lindsay Thompson photography assistant Sean Manuel Production coordinator Analia Aizersztein Hair Marin Mullen Makeup Kaiya Carlin
Made Possible With The Support Of Future Being.
Biome
Join our membership community. Support our work, receive a complimentary subscription to Atmos Magazine, and more.