Lea DeLaria is often called a pioneering lesbian entertainer.

But that’s a little like describing Daniel Boone as one of the first guys to hike Kentucky.

DeLaria is an LGBTQ trail blazer. But she also found her way to Carnegie Hall as a performing artist.

DeLaria, 60, came out as an openly gay comic in 1982, one year after Kate Clinton broke that glass ceiling. She became the first openly gay comic to appear on a late-night talk show by guesting on “The Arsenio Hall Show” in 1993. She was recognized as the first comedian to host an all-gay stand-up comedy special after emceeing Comedy Central's “Out There” in December 1993.

DeLaria also is an acclaimed bebop jazz singer and multi-dimensional actress. She played Big Boo in “Orange Is the New Black” until she was written off the Netflix show last season, and she’s acted in films and stage productions since the 1980s. She’s appearing through Oct. 7 in the hit New York show, “Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties,” with an ensemble including Dana Delany and Adina Verson.

McCallum Theatre President and CEO Mitch Gershenfeld said he’s been aware of DeLaria since her Broadway debut as Hildy the taxi driver in the 1998 revival of “On The Town.” He’s booked her for a night of jazz and comedy Nov. 8 at the McCallum.

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“Lea DeLaria has been on my radar screen for many years,” Gershenfeld said this week. “Fans who only know her as an actress and comedian will be amazed at the combination of talents she will display on the McCallum stage. She is a powerhouse vocalist and I am really looking forward to her show.”

But DeLaria is a strong advocate for sisters doing it for themselves, as Aretha Franklin and Annie Lennox once sang.

She’s still upset at this summer’s controversy over Scarlett Johansson’s attempt to play the late Pittsburgh massage parlor owner, Dante “Tex” Gill, who dressed and groomed herself to appear as a man, and preferred to be called “Mr. Gill,” but was married to a lesbian.

Johansson decided against playing Gill after the transgender community argued that a transgender man should play the part. She released a statement in July saying, “I understand why many feel he should be portrayed by a transgender person, and I am thankful that this casting debate, albeit controversial, has sparked a larger conversation about diversity and representation in film.”

But DeLaria did some research on Gill and concluded the whole controversy was really another slight to the lesbian community.

“They said it was a movie about a trans man,” DeLaria said in a telephone interview. “Here’s the reality: That was not a trans man. That was a butch guy. If you read all the court papers, which I’ve done, it was this woman who liked to wear men’s clothes. She never called herself a man. She never thought of herself as a trans. She was a butch dyke.

“That’s the kind of thing that makes me go, ‘We need to all come together, guys.’ You can’t erase me out of my community. Why do you think I have ‘butch’ tattooed on my arm so strongly?”

Told about the recently addressed challenge of building a lesbian audience for LGBTQ theater in the Coachella Valley, as indicated in a Desert Sun story, DeLaria said that hasn’t been a problem in communities where lesbians take control of their own stories.

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“I think some of the issues you’re referring to from these organizations that do these plays is they are not doing things that are written by lesbians,” said DeLaria, speaking in generalities. “They’re not doing things directed by lesbians and they cast straight women in the roles of lesbians. In fact, that is the major problem I see with queer theater these days. We need to be in charge of our own stories, and we’re not. Whenever any stories about lesbians are written, they’re written by gay men or straight men. They are directed by straight men and they are performed by straight women, and I’m frankly sick and tired of it. They will scour the earth to find a transgender actor to play a trans role, and then they’ll let any straight woman play a lesbian. If they did that to a trans actor or a gay male actor, our community would never shut up about it. It’s up to our community to put up or shut the (bleep) up.

“I will talk about that on stage in my show. I think that’s the biggest issue. Do you know why lesbians aren’t coming out? It’s because it’s not real. It’s not true. In my play (“Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties”), written by a woman who identifies as gender queer, there’s two butch roles, both played by butch dykes: me and Chaunte Wayans. There’s a bisexual role in there played by a bisexual woman. It is the story of women — it is not really a lesbian story, but it is queer as (bleep) in that the lesbians just are.”

DeLaria will use an all-female band to play the music of David Bowie on the tour taking her to Palm Desert in November. They’ll be performing songs from her latest album, “House of David: Delaria + Bowie = Jazz.” But she’s not calling it an LGBTQ show. DeLaria doesn’t like to use the phrases LGBT or LGBTQ.

“I hate the alphabet because all that does is point out our differences instead of our shared oppression,” she said. “We have added so many letters that it’s comical. I say queer. We’re all encompassed in queer.

“The biggest issue in the queer community today, without a doubt, is in-fighting. If we spent half the time that we spent yelling at each other yelling at the powers that be, we’d already have our rights. We are not our own enemy and we need to stop behaving that way.”

Lea DeLaria in concert

Where: The McCallum Theatre, 73-000 Fred Waring Drive, Palm Desert

When: 8 p.m. Nov. 8

Tickets: $25-$75

Information: (760) 340-ARTS or mccallumtheatre.com