Drag Performer Ade Connere Attacked After Assailants Yell, "No! That's a Dude!"

Photo by Kelly O



Many people who go out on Capitol Hill are familiar with, a gender-fluid performer and personality who's easily recognizable as a staple of just about every gay Seattle thing worth doing. (Ade can be seen at Re-Bar, Chop Suey, and Pony, to name a few.)

At 3 a.m. Saturday morning, Ade was walking home from a 'Mo-Wave benefit at Pony, when two young men attacked him on the corner of 13th Avenue and East Cherry Street. "I was essentially jumped by a couple of young white males—one of which knocked me down."

Ade is certain that he was targeted for being LGTB.



After the attack.

"I was in drag, and at first I think they thought I was a real girl.... one of them lunged over me, so I kicked him in the face, got up and ran."

"I escaped with a couple of bloody knees, a scrape on my side and a scraped wrist," Ade says.

Ade decided not to file a police report. "The last time this happened, I filed a report, and it was more traumatic than the attack," he explains, a sentiment many are familiar with. "I just wanted to go home."

Ade's attack marks the fourth high-profile LGBT attack in the area since May 2013. Another popular local drag performer, Robbie Turner, was assaulted in a similar situation while walking from an event last spring. Last summer, Jason Jacobs and dancer Cassidy Katims were also both assaulted in reported hate crimes and sustained more serious injuries.

"It's a scary world, but Jesus! It was not a mugging, it was a drunken frat hate crime," says Ade. "I'm sick of college asshole kids fucking with people just going home."