Here To Pee Comedy Protest Tour
Starlite Bar
April 11, 2025
Liv was joking, but not really: “Listen, if I'm going to live through another Trump presidency, I'm not going to do it as a woman.”
Last Friday, the Denver-based comedian told jokes at the Starlite as part of Ren Q. Dawe’s Here to Pee Comedy Protest Tour, a nationwide tour that will visit every single American state with the goal of raising funds to support efforts fighting anti-trans bathroom bills. So far, it has drawn crowds anywhere from twelve to 215. About 40 people showed up for the Tulsa show.
Liv used to live as a lesbian. Now, he is a bisexual transgender man. “I think it's pretty hard to pass for another gender once you've already reached adulthood,” Liv said. “It kind of feels like how you can tell when a building used to be a Pizza Hut.”
The show's bathroom-focused humor arrived at a critical moment in Oklahoma politics. Currently, the state’s trans bathroom bans only apply to public schools. It’s not a criminal offense for a trans person to use facilities aligning with their identity here—unlike in Utah or Florida. But the American Civil Liberties Union is tracking 26 anti-LGBTQ+ bills in Oklahoma.
In a conversation after the show, Dawe shared a story of his own about a group of aggressive men in Boulder who harassed him in the men’s room. That incident occurred the same week Nex Benedict died after being beaten unconscious by a group of girls in an Owasso High School bathroom. For trans people like Dawe and nonbinary folks like Benedict, the bathroom is a battleground.
Dawe started the Here to Pee Comedy Protest Tour as a way to fight back, using humor to raise awareness and shift conversations. The logistics of organizing a nationwide comedy tour aren't simple, and a trans-focused comedy tour involves special considerations. Dawe has done most of the tour management by himself, contacting queer-friendly non-profits to ask for local talent recommendations, venue suggestions, and publicity support. When traditional LGBTQ+ organizations are hesitant—Dawe suspects that some think taking the “T” off the “LGBT” will protect them from government persecution—he seeks out the punk and metal scenes or two-spirit organizations. The Center for Queer Prairie Studies helped him organize the Tulsa show.
The tour operates on a community-centered financial model. All proceeds from ticket sales cover operational costs (mainly venue fees), with any remaining funds split equally between local nonprofits and performers. Dawe is committed to supporting businesses and making sure performers get at least $100 per show. Essentially, Here to Pee is a volunteer-driven organization with personal reimbursement only for venue expenses. It’s been smooth sailing so far, though Dawe says his car got keyed after a show in Missoula, Montana.
In addition to Colorado-based comedians Liv and Dawe, the Tulsa Here to Pee show featured strong local support from Tulsa’s Laura Cook, a consistently hilarious bisexual, and Hilton Price, who is also bisexual. Amanda Kerri, Oklahoma City-based comedian and transgender columnist for The Gayly, was also there to muse on a lifetime of navigating queerness, horniness, and awkwardness.
“I was the first trans comic in Oklahoma,” Kerri said at the beginning of her set. “Now, there’s like seven of us.” Kerri is close to 50 years old, so strangers have been asking intrusive questions about her genitals for a long time now. “They would always start off with that same fucking question: Have you had the surgery?”
“I still have my penis,” Kerri said, “because I like having my penis. It's like a strap-on that I don't need to stop and adjust every five minutes. If you feed me enough Adderall, it'll even vibrate.” Sex reassignment surgeries are also very expensive and rarely covered by insurance. If Kerri ever does get the surgery, the plan is to “put it on a credit card and then declare bankruptcy. Because they can't repossess your vagina, right?”
Jokes about uncomfortable truths—like how testosterone makes your butt really hairy, or how party drugs can make you poop yourself—got laughs, gasps, and claps from the audience all night. Dawe, the show’s headliner, was especially good at finding humor in a world that feels scary for queer people. Like how if President Trump dies, we’d have our first gay president (referring to Vice President J. D. Vance).
It was refreshing to laugh about the stuff that usually makes me want to scream. One of the few lulls came when Dawe asked the room if they use condoms (y’all penis-havers should probably be wrapping it up more).
Joking that he looks like Daniel Radcliffe and Draco Malfoy’s love child, Dawe found irony in the current political language restrictions. “Because now you may refer to me as ‘he who shall not be named,’ right? I feel like J. K. [Rowling] would have really liked that.”
The show ended on an earnest note. Dawe encouraged us to have tough conversations—especially with people we have cut out of our lives for political reasons. The news looks pretty bad right now, he said, and the only way forward is through community. Approaching these kinds of conversations with humor and compassion is an effective strategy for achieving real progress.
He knows it works, because he has seen it work before. In his day job as an educator for You Can Play (which advocates for LGBTQ+ athletes), he works with professional sports organizations to provide sensitivity training, using humor and storytelling to make people laugh and then understand why homophobia and transphobia are hurtful. His work in locker room politics and bathroom politics shares a common thread. Both are fundamentally about improving conditions for everyone rather than creating special protections for some.
If the goal of the Here to Pee Comedy Protest Tour was to foster community, raise awareness, and give a platform to voices that we don’t get to hear often enough in Tulsa, the show was a success. It also made me laugh, fired me up, and led me to reflect—especially on how much I take bathroom access for granted. I love bathrooms. Sometimes I’m not even there to use the toilet. As a cisgender woman, bathrooms have long been a safe space to gossip with friends, hit my vape pen, play on my phone, or escape overwhelming social pressure for a few minutes. That’s not the case for everyone. But I think it should be (except the vaping part, kids).
For those wanting to support this cause beyond attending comedy shows, there are multiple ways to (if you will) give a shit: Support queer-welcoming businesses, donate to nonprofits like Freedom Oklahoma, Transpire OK, Oklahomans for Equality (OkEq), and QueerLit Collective, and show up to Tulsa Pride and other community events.
