Roxi

Aug 19, 2023

Austin native Dylan Kaercher has received pushback in recent months for his work as drag performer Roxi Manacoochie. August 18, 2023 — 8:13pm Gift Email Copy link AUSTIN, MINN. — For the past three years, Roxi Manacoochi — a drag performer and Austin native, real name Dylan Kaercher — called bingo at the Mower County Fair. This year, he learned, he wasn't welcome back. "Someone had reached out and said, 'Well, we were told that you weren't allowed to do it,'" Kaercher said. Concerns about drag were cited, he said, at a time when he and other drag performers around the country have found themselves a growing target of conservative pushback for hosting events like story-time hours at libraries and schools. Kaercher, 29, has been working full-time as a drag performer since 2020. He's won accolades, including the title of Miss Drag Iowa earlier this year, and has plans to open a storefront in downtown Austin with theater and event space. The 2012 Austin High School graduate also sits on the city's human rights commission. More residents in his hometown have publicly spoken out against his public persona in recent months, Kaercher said, than in the decade leading up to that. "It's only been in the past year where I feel like every time Roxi goes to do something, I'm met with some sort of vocal backlash," Kaercher said. Austin's American Legion runs bingo at the Mower County Fair, which wrapped up last weekend. The post's commander did not respond to a request for comment. Mower County Fair Board President Kevin Finley said fair officials stay away from interfering with groups over social or political issues. "The last thing you can do is take any kind of a side with anything," Finley said. "You may have your own personal opinions of things, but that's something we're not able to share." Kaercher said local Legion members supported him in the past; he believes a new bingo organizer this year opposed his drag act. Other bingo volunteers later reached out and asked Kaercher to participate at next year's fair. The snub lit up social media in Austin, a southern Minnesota city of about 25,000 people most known as home of Hormel Foods. But Kaercher said it wasn't the first sign of local resistance to his work. There had been opposition to a planned drag show story time last month at the Austin Public Library. Members of a group called STAND4RIGHT protested the event and urged the local library to cancel it. A local pastor, Ed Brady, wrote to the library board asking them to replace it with an event where grandparents would read to children. Kaercher, in character as Roxi, has read to kids at the library since 2019. Brady said this week that he wrote the letter because, in his view, men acting like women is an offensive sin, and he feels the drag event would be harmful to children. "If you are exhibiting a lifestyle that God considers sinful and you lead children to do that, it's brainwashing, if you will, in an inappropriate direction," he said. Brady said he and other members of STAND4RIGHT don't wish harm on Kaercher, but they do hope to curb his business in Austin. They plan to approach the library to host their idea for a senior citizen reading event in the near future. Austin is no different from other communities struggling with a nationwide culture battle over drag and sexual identity, according to former Mayor Bonnie Rietz. A longtime community volunteer herself, Rietz hopes Kaercher and other drag performers continue to find support in the city. "You want your community to be a welcoming community," Rietz said. "And for people to feel safe and to feel proud of who they are and what they're doing." Earlier in August, the mayor of the nearby city of Owatonna made public amends with a local LGBTQ group after it accused him of using his position to harass and intimidate organizers of a local Pride celebration. Kaercher said several venues approached him after hearing about the fair, asking for Roxi to call bingo and host other events in the future. On Friday night, more than 50 people gathered outside a home in northwest Austin bedecked with 1950s-themed decorations — a classic car here, a jukebox cutout there — to hear Roxi, Domita Sanchez and a special backup singer (Kaercher's mother) sing and dance for a yard show. Kaercher, as Roxi, joked around in between numbers, noting his lack of coordination in heels. "When I walk through the grass, it looks like Jurassic Park!" Roxi said to laughs. Kaercher said he knows his critics are a vocal minority, and he's received plenty of support from residents. But he decided to take new measures, including security cameras and extra lights at his new business. "That's just kind of the world live in now too, where someone who is a part of the LGBTQ community as a business owner has to take those precautions," he said.