The right drums out a beloved teacher for moonlighting as a drag king. by Vivian McCall For English teacher K. Wayne, the trouble started on a Friday, when a friend texted to say they were sorry for what had happened. After some confusion about what that something was, Wayne learned the Instagram account @phs_crazy, an anonymous, student-run page that bullied queer and minority students at Peninsula High School about their looks and “cringe” behavior, had discovered that on nights and weekends Wayne performed as the drag king, Jack King Goff. Wayne didn’t know how they’d made the connection at first, as they had taken pains to publicly separate their personal and professional lives. As a rule, they didn’t discuss drag with parents and students. Conservative parents took enough issue with their trans identity to begin with. They say some had even appealed to the administration to remove their children from Wayne’s classes.  Their drag account was public, but they wore heavy makeup and habitually untagged themselves from social media posts linking Wayne to their persona. To prevent future conflict with the district, Wayne says they disclosed their hobby before they accepted a job with PSD. The news was received warmly, and among staff it was no secret they did drag. Several staff members told The Stranger they had attended performances and had seen their fellow teachers in the audience. “I made a thick line between those two lives; I was not the one to initiate the blurring of that line,” Wayne said. “I am not interested in being a martyr. I literally am interested in just going to work.” But Wayne missed at least one tagged Instagram photo from six years ago that connected them to their drag persona. Wayne learned of the post on that Friday, the end of the first week of classes at PHS. In anticipation of where this level of exposure could go, Wayne went private on Instagram. That Sunday, Wayne told their vice principal about the post. That Monday, they planned to walk into class, obliquely reference the fact that they had a life outside of school, and then focus on teaching English to their sophomores and juniors. But Wayne never went back to school, and as of this week they are no longer employed at PSD. After three weeks of leave from their job, they’re planning a move home to Los Angeles. They have no clue when they’ll teach again. The district didn’t fire Wayne. They took leave voluntarily after their union advised them to stay home for safety reasons, and they stayed home when the commotion didn’t stop. After a few days passed, when it still seemed plausible they might return to work, conservative commentator Brandi Kruse obliterated any chance of that with a segment on her show, [un]Divided with Brandi Kruse.  “[The district was] already having a hard time with the community because of the initial Instagram posts, and then the Brandi thing threw kerosene on the fire,” they said. “I literally can’t do my job because the kids are only going to think about one thing; then they’re not going to be able to focus … And therefore, I’m no longer going to be a competent employee. I hate to say that.” Kerosene on the Fire Wayne hadn’t gone back to school after that weekend because photos from the Instagram account had spread to community Facebook pages and conservative parents groups.  On Informed Parents of Washington Peninsula School District, page admin Sarah Garriott posted that students had allegedly reported Wayne to PSD administrators. A fixture at PSD school board meetings, Garriott also chairs the Pierce County chapter of Moms for Liberty, itself an extremist conservative parents’ group that opposes inclusive lessons about race, sexuality, and gender identity in schools. As the posts continued to circulate, Kruse ran her first segment about Wayne on September 10. Kruse began by saying she loved a drag show and had no problem with a teacher moonlighting as a drag performer, but she did have a problem with Wayne’s stage name (Jack King Goff), the tagline in their bio (“The Orgasmic Drag King”), and a photo from 2018 that showed Wayne wearing a blonde wig and a headband captioned, “Lock up your daughters. Jack Goff is here.” Kruse later played a tongue-flicking, horror-themed drag routine from Wayne’s YouTube channel and mused that Wayne seemed like someone who was “not well.” (That was the intention–Wayne was playing a mad scientist and lip-synching to Alice Cooper’s “Feed My Frankenstein.” The blood is tomato soup with added food coloring.) “I’m not debating the district on whether a teacher can do drag shows–but if there was a male high school teacher who took to Facebook or Instagram and posted a picture of themselves, let's say shirtless, and said ‘lock up your daughters,’ you don’t think the police would pay that male high school teacher a visit?” Kruse said. “I do. If I was a parent, I would want them to. I would probably call 911 and say, ‘Hey my daughter’s male teacher just posted on Facebook “lock up your daughters.’ That’s disgusting.” Kruse ran a second celebratory segment a few days later, reporting that the Peninsula School District displayed an “ounce of common sense and sanity.” Although Kruse and her producer were still working to confirm the details, she speculated that a letter from Vice Principal Mike Benoit informing parents that Wayne was “currently on leave” meant that the school had taken disciplinary action against them. She congratulated the district for taking the concerns of parents seriously. “Another win for sanity,” she said. Many details of Kruse’s account are either wrong or played for maximum, sordid effect. The district hadn’t disciplined Wayne with leave; despite Kruse’s disclaimer that they were working to clarify details, a video titled, “Teacher on leave over concerns about his drag persona,” in which Kruse congratulates a school for the “perfect,” “sane” outcome leaves the distinct impression that the school took action. If Wayne’s exaggerated, hair-metal costuming didn’t give it away, “Lock up your daughters” is a cornball rock ‘n’ roll cliche that could be taken either as a reference to AC/DC’s 1975 single “T.N.T.” (“So lock up your daughter/ Lock up your wife/ Lock up your back door/ Run for your life”), or Slade’s 1981 song, “Lock Up Your Daughters.” While Slade merchandise is a rare sight in 2024, no little boys section at a Kohl’s or Target is complete without AC/DC shirts, and conservatives haven’t ripped those off the shelves with the same enthusiasm as they have rainbow merchandise. The accompanying photo, on its own about as scandalous as a Bret Michaels Halloween costume, was taken years before the district hired Wayne. More recently, they’d dressed as Agent Dale Cooper from Twin Peaks and Waluigi, not known as a sexpot. Even if the photo were taken yesterday, would conservatives persecute a straight, cis, white man for dancing around on stage dressed as a hair metal god and posting the same comment? As for Wayne’s drag name, Jack King Goff, I genuinely wonder if these pearl-clutchers have forgotten how they talked as kids. A masturbation pun is not exactly out of orbit for teenagers, and if that’s corrupting the youth, then perhaps we should stop teaching all that smut peddled by that perverted bastard, William Shakespeare. Kruse Disagrees with The Stranger’s Assessment In a statement to The Stranger, Kruse said she would suggest “not posting ‘lock up your daughters’ under your persona as an ‘orgasmic drag king’ when you teach high school girls. Parents might not care that it’s a ‘rock ‘n roll cliché.’ How laughable of an excuse is that.’”  Most of Kruse’s replies followed this same general pattern: If Wayne wanted a job as a school teacher, they shouldn’t have been the “Orgasmic Drag King Jack King Goff,” and it said a lot about The Stranger’s extreme ideology that we’re “trying to downplay the predatory nature of a high school teacher calling themselves an ‘Orgasmic Drag King’ named ‘Jack King Goff.’”  Did we mention Wayne is the “orgasmic drag king Jack King Goff?” Kruse did five times in her email, and then many more times across two segments.  Given that Kruse hadn’t reached out to Wayne for comment before airing her segments, we also asked Kruse if she considered the potential harm of portraying someone as mentally ill and predatory, or if she felt any sense of responsibility to understand the full context of a story before broadcasting her show. Her excuse for not trying to reach Wayne directly was that their social media accounts were locked down, and so they had reached out to the school. The Stranger had no trouble getting in touch with Wayne.  “I don’t need the ‘full context’ of a high school teacher posting ‘lock up your daughters’ under [their] persona as an ‘Orgasmic Drag King’ named Jack King Goff,” she wrote. “Completely inappropriate. If The Stranger wants to normalize this sort of bizarre behavior, you’re going to set gay rights back 20 years. I dare you to print that because a lot of your readers will agree.” Bravely, we persisted and did not heed the warning of noted LGBTQ+ expert and ally Brandi Kruse (parody). Students Speak Out Against Bullying Days after Wayne took leave, teachers say they were called to a voluntary staff meeting and told to say nothing when students asked about Wayne. A queer teacher, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, said the social media posts, later amplified by Kruse’s segment, filled that void of silence, and she was unable to correct rumors that the district had disciplined Wayne or comfort the students concerned about their safety, particularly those in the Gay-straight Alliance and in the theater department that Wayne advised, who saw them as one of the most vocal and open adult queer representatives at PHS. At a September 10 school board meeting, several students reacted to posts about Wayne by speaking up about cyberbullying in the district. A student told the board they’d been afraid of the same account, @phs_crazy, before they transferred from Peninsula High School to Henderson Bay High School, known as a safer place for queer students in the district. Another student who transferred to Henderson said they avoided going to the bathroom at Gig Harbor High School because a bullying account posted mocking photos of people’s shoes while they sat on the toilet. The student body vice president of Henderson Bay High School said the board was setting a precedent by not taking action against the offenders.  A Henderson Bay graduate said they’d been mocked on @phs_crazy before, and while people fought for them in the comments, not every student has someone willing to stand up for them. “I know what I went through, and it is nothing compared to my friends,” they said. “I don’t have a kid, I’m not in the district, but I’m worried for the kids. I know it’s an election year, so sometimes things can get a little spicier, or aggressive, but I really do think that is something you guys should be focusing on.”  One member of the community said her kid had already graduated and she still had heard about Wayne. She said she saw adults egging on the online harassment, and she encouraged the board to hold people accountable for it. “Someone is going to die from this, and it needs to stop,” she said. In recent months, the board has heard many stories of bullying from PSD parents and students, which The Stranger recently covered in a story about board member David Olson, the GOP-endorsed candidate for Washington’s Superintendent of Public Instruction. While Olson has taken a firm stance against cell phone use in school for its impact on focus and on teen mental health, he’s also stood proudly behind his efforts to keep Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs out of PSD classrooms.  The district confirmed that Wayne had taken leave and left the district of their own accord, but added in an email that it was “deeply invested in creating a learning and working environment where every student, family and staff member feels welcomed.” The day after Kruse’s first segment, Superintendent Krestin Bahr published a letter addressing the “harmful rise of online bullying within our community.” “For any student or staff member who has been targeted by these harmful posts, please know that we are here to support you,” she wrote. Bahr said she’d directed PSD School Chief Michael Farmer to add online bullying to an ongoing review of the district’s approach to belonging around diversity, equity, and inclusion. According to the letter, PSD Deputy School Chief Julie Shultz-Bartlett would head a bullying awareness and prevention task force that would include students, staff, parents, and outside experts. The district wrote on its website that it expects to complete a comprehensive report between December 2024 and January 2025. Wayne grew up in a family of teachers, and they’d sworn they would never become a teacher, so they initially saw the job as just a job. But they’d grown to love their relationships with mentor teachers and the students they had the “honor of teaching.” They threw themselves into advising GSA and the theater’s makeup department and hoped to help organize standardized testing, an important endeavor nobody wants to do. “I pride myself on working hard,” they said. “I like to joke that my pronouns are they/them because I work multiple jobs.” Teachers who spoke with The Stranger on the condition of anonymity described Wayne as an engaging, encouraging teacher deeply involved with the school outside of the classroom. One says she knew bigotry existed in her community, but she personally struggled seeing such vitriol spewed at someone she knew to be a good teacher. She says Wayne made many queer students at PHS feel safer and understood. For Wayne, the hardest part of leaving was not being able to say bye to their colleagues and students. “I wanted to watch them grow up and make sure they got what they needed, so they’re ready to get out there and be the amazing person that they are, and be successful,” they said. “...Being around that, it’s inspiring. It’s hopeful and it makes me feel optimistic.”