Biography
Dr. Sadie Hochman-Ruiz is a transwoman and uses she/her pronouns. She began her work as an artist-researcher-educator-activist, doing performance-based activism. She is currently developing her dissertation research into a book, OK, Work! Drag Queens, Transgender Women and the Social Politics of Drag in San Diego, with the core argument that drag culture built a discourse of performance as professional labour around a need to distinguish themselves from transgender sex workers. The book centres lip-synching in a history of mass media, work and artistic value by exploring how the introduction of lip-synching into drag communities in the 1950s and 1960s reshuffled local scenes and created intergenerational schisms surrounding the topics of professionalism, virtuosity, and identity. San Diego’s scene is featured because it features significant intergenerational dialogue; the timikning of San Diego’s anti-crossdressing ordinance interweaves the city’s transgender history with the growth of its local drag scene; and my status as a community member allows for community engagement projects with focus on knowledge mobilization.
Her research and teaching interests build on her career as the drag queen Sadie Pins, the friendships she’s made and why they matter. Drag allowed her to step out of a university-based arts scene and become better acquainted with San Diego’s border communities. Her social circle and collaborators crossed race and class lines in ways unavailable within the experimental art world, and the feedback she received on her performance style and its unique brand of gender and sexual deviance prompted critical questions about what it means to make a queer project and how that connects to local justice initiatives. Alongside the growth of her drag career, she has reconnected with music-making. She plays guitar and electronics in the band masc4masc with her best friend Hillary Jean Young. Check out their debut record “Not Another Queer Movie” on your music streaming service.
Sadie is also a cofounder of the unique non-profit Beauties Trans Services which provides a safe space and free advice for transgender women navigating an often hostile and alienating beauty industry.