TMQH: Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence

Are you up to date on your Sistory? Get the scoop on the most outrageous protest, performance, and community service group to grace the streets in drag, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, in this episode of This Month in Queer History! 

Show Notes/Works Cited:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vLsxodnPQy1nPxriztiicx1jKlEWIonXoKms28p29Zc/edit?usp=sharing

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Transcript

On January 11th, 2022, San Francisco Supervisor Rafael Mandelman introduced a resolution to rename part of Alert Alley, in the Mission District of San Francisco, after one of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. This section, which would come to be known as Sister Vish-Knew Way, was named after the drag persona of Ken Bunch, one of the founders of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. The Sisters, an international order of drag queens who dress in habits styled after Catholic nuns, dedicate themselves to community service and LGBTQ+ causes. With Houses of Sisters now in more than ten countries across four continents, it may be surprising to learn that this group started as a drunken Easter weekend celebration between three friends in 1979.

Said Easter weekend was not the first time that Ken Bunch had dressed in drag. When he moved to San Francisco, he brought with him a couple years of drag experience and five nun habits. On that fateful Easter weekend, he, along with Fred Brungard and Baruch Golden dressed up as nuns and hit the streets, catching the attention of dumbfounded onlookers as they sauntered through San Francisco, even making a detour down to a nude beach. 

Seeing what an impact their appearance made on people, the trio dressed up again a couple months later and performed as cheerleaders at a gay softball game, stealing the show with their pom pom routine. In the fall of that year, two other friends of theirs, Edmund Garron (later known as Agnes de Garron) and Bill Graham went to a meeting of the Radical Faeries and recruited even more members. It was then that the Sisters came up with their name, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and decided on their mission: to promulgate universal joy and expiate stigmatic guilt.

Perhaps the most striking thing about the Sisters, after their name, is their look. As mentioned, most Sisters wore habits as well as white face paint and dramatic drag makeup. Many Sisters “camp” up their looks even further with sequins, colorful veils, and even feather boas.

From the start, the goal of the Sisters was not to make a mockery of nunhood, but to be a sincere and serious parody of it, as Melissa Wilcox puts it. The Sisters weaved aspects of gay culture like drag performances and “camp” into their criticism of the homophobia of the Catholic Church. For the Sisters, their professions of love and joy are just as important as their protests against the ill treatment of queer people and people of other marginalized backgrounds. A not insignificant number of Sisters were and are themselves Christians, but from the founding of the order itself, the Sisters have always accepted members of any religious or secular background. The idea that the love for community and genuine connection that happens within religious orders could also happen in a space made by and for queer folks is understandably one that appeals to a lot of people.

Their Sisterhood is genuine, down to the way that they initiate new Sisters into their orders. All Sisters start out as aspirants, which begins from the moment you tell another Sister that you would like to join. Then, you become a postulant, then a novice, and finally, a fully professed Sister. Activities and vows required vary depending on the House, and indeed the country in which the house is located. 

An important aspect of the initiation is proving one's dedication to the community which they would serve as a Sister. Many Houses require a postulant to successfully organize an event like a charity fundraiser before allowing them to join fully, and only fully professed Sisters are allowed to give interviews or represent the Sisterhood in an official capacity. 

If one wants to join a house, they need not become a Sister necessarily, as there are also Guards, with a capital “G,” for each House. These masculine members, who flank and protect Sisters at community events, are often dressed in leather and their own particular style of makeup, and go through similar steps of initiation as any aspiring Sister. 

Like both drag houses and convents, most Houses have a Mother, a Sister who takes on the organizing and well-being of all the other Sisters in the House., but there is no large governing body that controls all of the different Houses across the multiple countries and continents where the Sisters exist. However, the houses in Canada and the United States do have a council, called the United Nuns Privy Council, which generally advises Houses in the two countries. Houses are deeply embedded in their cities, and usually reflect the unique culture of their respective areas and communities. 

Community has been a key part of Sisterhood from the start. The first full performance of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence was in August of 1979, at the Castro Street Fair in San Francisco. Following this, they joined up with the Metropolitan Community Church, a queer church founded in San Francisco, to put on a drag bingo fundraiser, which benefitted queer Cuban refugees. This was followed a couple months later with their first appearance at a protest, which was the Three Mile Island protest  in March of 1980, where they performed their “Rosary in Time of Nuclear Peril,” including the pom pom routine that delighted onlookers at the gay softball game. 

In their subsequent protests, the Sisters presented an important counterpoint to traditional protest methods. Where the general rhetoric and positioning of a protest is hostile, the Sisters brought with them wherever they went an outpouring of queer joy. They understood that comedy and lightheartedness could reach people that would not be swayed by the usual chants and signs. They were seriously unserious, and their vision of camp-iness in the name of community has proven to have immense staying power. The rest, as they say, is sis-tory.

Thank you for joining us for the ninth episode of This Month in Queer History. Take care, and join us next month for our tenth episode, about the presidency of Jimmy Carter, the first presidential administration to invite queer activists to the White House.