Krista Smith, also known as Kentucky Fried Woman, is like a delightful, paradoxical riddle that the hero has to solve before passing through the gates.

She identifies as a queer femme, yet she performs in Butch Tap as a drag king. She’s a white, working class Kentucky girl, vehemently opposed to racism and skin privilege. And she’s a promoter and well-known performer without an overblown ego.

Smith’s performance persona is mostly feminine.

“Some drag king acts perpetuate dominant paradigms," Smith said. "Certain kinds of masculinity are violent to women.”

Smith has even seen people in drag simulate rape. She wanted to create a masculinity that she wanted to see, that she wanted to be around - so sometimes she performs as “Kentucky Grilled Man.”

Since moving to the Bay, Smith has been performing in, and has collaborated on many projects, including "Flabulous," a show dedicated to “envisioning revolutionary possibilities for fighting body fascism and embracing all bodies as beautiful.”

This past year, she produced her own monthly cabaret, the "Kentucky Fried Woman Show." Smith made sure her performers were paid properly - she gave them each an equal split of the profit. She purposefully created a space that did not include acts that were racist, sexist or culturally appropriative. She feels that the queer movement is not going to get very far unless it addresses issues of class, body image, race and ability.

“I didn’t want anyone to pay money, come and see something and then feel hurt by what was happening onstage."

I met Smith briefly at a club, but first noticed her at an Oscar Grant march in 2009. My Spidey senses told me that she was from a blue collar background. This week, when we sat by Lake Merritt to talk, she confirmed this fact.

“There’s a myth in America, that if you work hard, you will succeed," she said. "People from poor families know that’s not true. They watch their parents work themselves to death, work harder than anybody behind a desk. America thrives on rags to riches stories. But here’s the real story- it’s way easier to go down than it is to go up.”

Of all the kids she grew up with, she was the only one who went to college. Though Smith’s upbringing was working class, there was always food on the table and clothes on her back. Her mother was a secretary and her father job hopped, mostly in the restaurant business. She feels fortunate that she’s been loved ferociously throughout her life.

If I said that the interview with Smith restored my faith in economically disadvantaged white people, that wouldn’t be exactly right. You can’t restore faith that wasn’t there to begin with. I grew up working-poor, and I’m often disgusted by the fact that many who grew up like I did seem to love to sabotage our liberation by aligning with the interests of the elite. The pressure is increasing with the rise of the Tea Party - a crowd addicted to playing the role of the overworked overseer.

“I was raised to be racist,” Smith told me. “My entire family is. It’s scary to talk about. But from a young age, I knew that that mentality was wrong. I have no idea why. I was nowhere near examining my own privilege, but I did have a basic understanding.”

I respect anyone who is struggling to manifest a better reality, but many “conscious” people have tunnel vision. Smith understands the magnitude of more than one issue, not just the circumstances that have oppressed her personally - and this is why I feel that her work is so important.

She has little patience for lack of awareness in the white and queer community.

“Maybe there are places where it isn’t talked about, the fact that you’re white, but you are, and you’re getting a lot of benefits from that, and you’re participating in this system, so you need to examine that.”

Smith started dancing when she was 3. As a child, she was competing in tap and ballet. It was her whole identity. When she was in fourth grade, her dance teacher started harping on her weight (she was chubby). Eventually, the summer before she entered ^eighth grade, her dance teacher called Smith’s mother and said that Smith was not welcome back to the dance studio. It was heartbreaking to be that age and be torn away from the very thing she defined herself by. 

Smith was resilient. She was determined to perform. She turned to acting, but it yielded similarly frustrating results. She saw people with less commitment and less talent get better roles because they looked the part. She kept coming up to this wall - her size seemed to always be an issue.

By the time she entered the University of Kentucky, she was tired of hitting that wall. She turned to academia and became interested learning the history of racism and slavery in the south. One of her professors took an interest in her studies and helped her get a research grant for a project she was working on. She got published as an undergraduate student. Graduate school in Santa Barbara was her ticket out of Kentucky.

Smith is the riddle, but she’s also the hero. She has been tested and has emerged triumphant. Though she didn’t complete graduate school, she found her first queer community. At a talent show, she and a friend performed a piece about being fat. They tied for first place with a drag king troupe. At that time, the drag king scene was exploding. Smith began performing (as femme) with the troupe, the Disposable Boy Toys.

The talent show was the first time she’d been onstage in six or seven years.

“I was shocked that I could be who I was onstage, that I could embrace the fact that I was fat and queer and femme, and people were eating it up!" she said. "People wanted more! I’m not being told that I have to change; I can be who I am. Finally, I can do this!”

In Seattle, she helped found the Queen Bees - a performance group that included women of all sizes. It used political satire to address body positivity, environmentalism, gay marriage and getting Bush out of the White House.

Along with Vagina Jenkins, Smith co-chairs the performance committee for the Femme Collective’s Femme Conference 2010. She has been a part of the collective ever since the first conference in 2006.

“For some people, femme seems like a superfluous identity. What could we possibly have to do to get together and talk about?" Smith said, explaining the purpose of the conference, which takes place Aug. 20-22 in Oakland. "For those of us who were creating the conference, what we knew, was that we felt a lot of invisibility, a lot of misogyny in the queer community, and also experienced a de-valuation of things that were feminine.

“We wanted a place to get together and talk about issues. What does it mean to be queer and femme? What does it mean to address misogyny, both externally and in the queer community? What does it mean to be a consumer of make-up? How does that affect the environment and our consumerism? Are we tools of the patriarchy? Are we tools of capitalism? Or are we doing things in a way that’s subversive? Many of us were also interested in exploring ways that our femme identity intersects with our race, class, culture or religion.

“I wish that the queer community was this awesome space, where racism didn’t exist, classism didn’t exist, and misogyny didn’t exist, but unfortunately, all of those things that exist outside, exist inside the queer community," she continued. "We need to be hyper vigilant about the fact that masculinity is absolutely valued over femininity in queer culture.”

Smith is the riddle, and the hero, but she’s also the gate.

This conversation clarified and renewed me. I’ve passed through the threshold. I'm at the next level.