By JT Santana | jtwb768

Let us begin with a sentence I never expected to type in a serious piece of historical journalism: Iowa deserves considerably more credit for Sister Anal Receptive than it has received.

Not direct credit, mind you. I have found no evidence that Sister Anal Receptive was conceived in Iowa, spiritually or otherwise, and I am not submitting a paternity claim on behalf of the state. Yet the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, the international order that gave us Anal Receptive, Sister Porn Again, Sister Ann E. Lingus, Sister T’aint A Virgin, Sister Paddlemé Tooshie and enough other names to keep a junior-high cafeteria giggling until graduation, have roots reaching straight back to Iowa City and Cedar Rapids.

That part tends to get lost.

People know San Francisco. They know the Castro. Some know the story of queer men putting on nun habits over Easter weekend in 1979 and discovering that a man in a Catholic habit at a nude beach attracts attention. Apparently market research was simpler in 1979.

Far fewer people know where those original habits came from.

Cedar Rapids.

Far fewer know that two men central to the Sisters’ origin story had deep connections to gay liberation at the University of Iowa, that an Iowa City drag troupe called the Sugar Plum Fairies used those habits before San Francisco ever saw them, or that one future founder experimented with the whiteface aesthetic in Iowa years before white-painted faces became one of the Sisters’ most recognizable visual signatures. Iowa journalism, the Sisters’ own historical accounts, and interviews with founder Ken Bunch all place Iowa near the beginning of the story. (littlevillagemag.com)

Then there is the modern Iowa chapter, the Priory of the Wilde Rose Sisters in Des Moines, populated by people with names such as Sister Ada Boufeit, Sister Helda Magnum, Sister Anita Biscotti, Sister Sue Filet, Sister Kitty Khaos, Sister Constance Struggle and, God bless Iowa, Novice Sister Dinah Sorass. The Priory describes its work in terms of community service, equality, ministry, education, humor and confronting bigotry and guilt. Its members appear at fundraisers, Pride events, legal clinics, trans-community events, performances and plain old bar ministry. (PotWR Sisters)

So, yes, we are going to enjoy the names. We would be committing journalistic malpractice if we did not.

Yet the names are the bait.

The story underneath them is about what happens when queer people take symbols historically used to judge them, turn those symbols inside out, paint their faces white, add six-inch heels, tell an indecent joke and then go raise money for somebody who needs it.

Before San Francisco, There Was Iowa

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence formally came together in San Francisco in 1979, but their prehistory begins years earlier and roughly 1,800 miles east.

Fred Brungard arrived in Iowa City after being expelled from Catholic seminary for being gay. He studied film at the University of Iowa and became involved in the university’s Gay Liberation Front. There he met Ken Bunch, an Iowa native, antiwar activist and former Mennonite who had come out as gay. The two became deeply involved in early gay activism at the university. Little Village reports that they served as co-chairs of the UI Gay Liberation Front and helped make queer visibility part of campus life through Pride activities, film screenings and Midwest Pride conferences. (Little Village)

Bunch’s own historical account places him and Brungard among the organizers of Midwest Gay Pride Conferences at the University of Iowa in 1974, 1975 and 1976. He recalls an Iowa where organized gay life consisted of very few bars and student organizations, which makes the scale of their activity far more striking. This was not Iowa City in 2026 with decades of LGBTQ organizing behind it. This was the mid-1970s. (Brew City Sisters)

Then things got wonderfully weird.

Bunch, Brungard and friends formed a traveling Iowa City drag troupe called the Sugar Plum Fairies. Historical accounts identify members including Tracy Bjorgum, Michael Salinas, Lisa and a troupe member identified in differing sources as Sue Gilbert or Susan Short. The troupe was less interested in conventional female impersonation than theatrical absurdity, political mischief and experimentation. (Little Village)

At the time, drag shows often leaned heavily on celebrity impersonation: Judy Garland, Diana Ross and the familiar pantheon of divas. The Sugar Plum Fairies apparently looked at that tradition and thought, “Fine, but what if we dressed like dead Catholic nuns and performed the University of Iowa fight song?”

And this is where Cedar Rapids enters queer history.

According to Bunch’s account, a member of the troupe knew the Mother Superior of a Catholic convent in Cedar Rapids. Retired habits from deceased nuns had been placed in storage. The troupe obtained several after saying they needed them for a production of The Sound of Music. (Brew City Sisters)

They were not doing The Sound of Music.

I am shocked.

Shocked, I tell you.

The habits went into the Sugar Plum Fairies’ act, including a pom-pom routine performed to the University of Iowa fight song. Bunch later recalled that audiences erupted. The collision worked: traditional religious clothing, queer bodies, drag, school-spirit camp and the sheer nerve of the presentation produced something far more provocative than another celebrity impersonation. (Little Village)

The visual language that later defined the Sisters was already beginning to form.

Bunch has written that he had experimented with whiteface in Iowa during artistic photography sessions. He lived in an Iowa City house where costumes, photography and theatrical self-presentation became part of an experimental queer culture. He found that white makeup made photographs more dramatic and colors more pronounced. Years later, whiteface would become strongly associated with Sister manifestation, though individual houses and Sisters developed their own designs. (Blue Suede Sisters)

That gives Iowa two extraordinary claims in the Sisters’ origin story.

The habits came from Cedar Rapids.

Part of the whiteface tradition grew from artistic experimentation in Iowa City.

We are talking about Iowa here, the state better known internationally for corn, caucuses and people insisting that ranch dressing constitutes a food group. Yet tucked into queer history is this wonderfully improbable fact: some of the visual DNA of one of the most recognizable queer activist organizations on Earth traveled west from eastern Iowa.

Three Nuns Walk Onto a Nude Beach

Eventually, those habits went to San Francisco.

Sources differ slightly on dates surrounding Bunch’s move west, which is worth acknowledging rather than flattening oral history into false precision. His current Sisters biography says he moved from an Iowa City-area gay farm to San Francisco in January 1979; another account places his move earlier in the late 1970s. The core story remains consistent: he brought several Iowa nun habits with him. (thesisters)

On Easter weekend in 1979, Bunch, Fred Brungard and Baruch Golden put them on.

Bunch became Sister Vicious Power Hungry Bitch, later Grand Mother Vish-Knew. Brungard became Sister Missionary Position. Golden became Sister Roz Erection. They walked around San Francisco, including the Castro and a nude beach, in traditional nun habits.

The public reaction was immediate.

People stared. People laughed. People were confused. People paid attention.

That last part proved decisive.

The trio appeared again at a gay softball game, pom-poms included. What had started as theatrical mischief revealed something larger: the nun image generated an extraordinary response. The habit carried centuries of associations with authority, sacrifice, discipline, service, chastity and religion. Put it on a visibly queer man in 1979 and every assumption attached to that garment suddenly became available for parody, criticism and reinvention. (thesisters)

Later that year, a formal order took shape. Sister Vicious PHB, Reverend Mother, Sister Missionary Position and Sister Hysterectoria-Agnes became the four founders identified in the San Francisco house’s official history. They chose the name Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and adopted a mission that remains central today: to “promulgate universal joy and expiate stigmatic guilt.” (thesisters)

That phrase sounds like somebody swallowed a theology textbook and chased it with champagne, but its meaning is surprisingly direct.

Spread joy.

Fight shame.

For queer people in 1979, shame was hardly theoretical. Gay people had spent generations being described as criminals, psychiatric cases, sinners, security risks, deviants and threats to society. Queer sexuality itself had been framed by many institutions as evidence of moral failure. Religious condemnation had been especially painful for people raised to believe that spiritual worth and heterosexual conformity were inseparable.

The Sisters took the iconography of religious authority and reassigned it.

The habit could become a costume.

The nun could become queer.

Ministry could take place in a bar.

A blessing could involve glitter.

A name such as Sister T’aint A Virgin could coexist with serious service.

The joke was not that service was ridiculous. The joke was that the people claiming ownership of morality never had exclusive rights to compassion in the first place.

Then the Sisters Discovered Bingo, and Civilization Changed Forever

In 1980 the fledgling order moved from public spectacle into organized community fundraising.

Their first major fundraiser was gloriously on brand: bingo followed by disco.

The beneficiary was gay Cuban refugees arriving in the United States during the Mariel boatlift era. According to the San Francisco Sisters’ history, attendance was so strong that organizers had to create a second seating. After four bingo cards, furniture was moved and the disco ball came out. The event reportedly raised more than $1,500, a meaningful amount for a small community organization at that time. (thesisters)

Think about that formula.

Take a marginalized group.

Identify a need.

Add bingo.

Add disco.

Add queer nuns.

Raise money.

The Sisters had stumbled onto a model they would spend decades refining: philanthropy does not have to look solemn to be real.

Their early calendar became a parade of events that sound fabricated until you check the historical record.

During protests connected to nuclear issues, the Sisters performed a “Rosary in Time of Nuclear Peril,” complete with the pom-pom routine. They staged fundraising sporting events. They played baseball in habits against the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus to raise money connected with the Gay Games. The official history claims the Sisters got the chorus drunk in the eighth inning and then scored forty runs, which may be the most San Francisco athletic strategy ever recorded. (thesisters)

On Christmas Eve in 1981, authorities cited Sisters for peddling without a license. Sister Missionary Position objected that Sisters did not peddle; they accepted donations and provided “tokens of joy,” with the two transactions merely happening at roughly the same moment. The semantic defense may not belong in a law-school textbook, but I admire the attempt. (thesisters)

They held dog shows.

They held basketball games.

They produced pageants.

They performed rituals.

They crashed expectations.

And then history changed the stakes completely.

AIDS Turned Camp Into Emergency Public Health

By 1981 and 1982, gay men in San Francisco, New York and other cities were becoming sick from a mysterious cluster of illnesses. Kaposi sarcoma and Pneumocystis pneumonia appeared in people whose immune systems were collapsing. Nobody initially knew what caused the syndrome. Fear grew quickly, and stigma grew right beside it.

The Sisters were already embedded in queer neighborhoods when the crisis arrived.

That mattered.

In 1982, registered nurses Bobbi Campbell, known as Sister Florence Nightmare, and Baruch Golden, Sister Roz Erection, worked with other Sisters and medical professionals on an extraordinary piece of community health education called Play Fair!

Academic historian Thomas Blair documents that Campbell and Golden developed the medical content with consultation from physicians associated with Bay Area Physicians for Human Rights. The pamphlet addressed sexually transmitted infections, sexual practices, hygiene and health risks in plain language. Where medical materials might say that perfumed lubricants could cause rectal inflammation, Play Fair! translated the advice into words people would actually remember. (PMC)

This was an ingenious communication strategy.

The pamphlet did not begin from the premise that gay sexuality itself was filthy.

It did not demand celibacy.

It did not treat pleasure as the enemy.

It assumed gay men were going to have sex and deserved useful information that respected that reality.

That distinction is hard to overstate. Public-health communication fails when the intended audience hears contempt hiding underneath the advice. The Sisters used humor, recognizable community language and sex-positive messaging to turn medical information into something people might actually pick up, read and discuss.

Contemporary coverage from The Sentinel in July 1982 reported Sisters distributing Play Fair! at San Francisco Gay Freedom Day. Sister Mary O’Stop described its rude and tasteless tone as part of its effectiveness and pointed to a practical measure of success: people were taking the pamphlets rather than throwing them on the ground. (Digital Collections)

Later versions kept the concept alive. Seattle’s Abbey of St. Joan updated Play Fair! in 2002 and produced a Spanish-language edition, ¡Juega Bien!. The Abbey created another update in 2023, keeping the sex-positive humor intact while revising health information. (The Abbey)

That is education with staying power.

A joke-filled queer-health pamphlet created in 1982 has descendants more than forty years later.

Sister Florence Nightmare and the Human Face of AIDS

Bobbi Campbell deserves far more than a passing reference.

Campbell was a registered nurse and one of the first people to speak publicly about living with AIDS. He wrote about his illness, educated others and resisted language that reduced people with AIDS to passive victims. His dual identity as medical professional and patient made him a uniquely credible voice during the crisis. (PMC)

Campbell became widely known as the “AIDS Poster Boy,” a label he deliberately used as part of public education. He appeared with his partner on the August 8, 1983 cover of Newsweek, bringing the epidemic into American homes at a point when many people still regarded AIDS as distant, mysterious or something confined to stigmatized communities. The Sisters’ official historical record places Campbell at the first AIDS candlelight vigil in San Francisco in 1983, where the banner read “Fighting for Our Lives.” (thesisters)

The Sisters had gone from pom-poms and nude beaches to memorial vigils with astonishing speed.

They did not abandon camp.

They put camp to work.

That distinction helps explain their longevity. The comedy did not disappear when life became terrifying. It became a coping mechanism, fundraising tool, communications strategy and refusal to surrender joy.

There is something profoundly queer in that.

People were dying.

Families rejected some of them.

Churches rejected some of them.

Government response was painfully inadequate.

Fear spread faster than accurate information.

Into that atmosphere walked queer nuns in whiteface carrying condoms, health information, collection buckets and enough audacity to keep talking about sex when polite society preferred silence.

The Sisters Were Having Entirely Too Much Fun for People Doing Serious Work

The 1980s Sisters archive reads at times like somebody challenged an activist group to see how many respectable institutions it could make nervous before dinner.

Sister Boom Boom entered politics.

Jack Fertig, performing as Sister Boom Boom, ran for San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1982 using the slogan “Nun of the Above.” He received 23,124 votes. The episode became so famous that a subsequent city ordinance requiring candidates to appear on ballots under their legal names became informally associated with Sister Boom Boom. (Smithsonian Folklife)

Twenty-three thousand votes.

For a nun named Boom Boom.

American democracy has survived worse.

Then Pope John Paul II visited San Francisco in 1987.

The Sisters responded in the restrained and diplomatic manner everyone had come to expect from them: they staged an exorcism of the Pope in Union Square. Their own history recounts Sister Vicious PHB posting demands on cathedral doors using press-on fingernails, with live television cameras carrying the spectacle. (thesisters)

A year later, the Sisters staged Rally ’Round the Quilt, a basketball fundraiser benefiting the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. The event raised more than $5,400. The official history tersely notes that many things happened during the game that were “not fit to print,” which is an invitation to the imagination I am happy to accept. (thesisters)

For their tenth anniversary in 1989, they produced Sistericus, drawing Sisters from across the country and raising money for Project Open Hand and the AIDS Emergency Fund. Later that year, following the Loma Prieta earthquake, Sisters went into Halloween crowds with donation buckets and directed the collections to the mayor’s earthquake disaster-relief fund. (thesisters)

Then there was Halloween.

Beginning in 1990, the Sisters helped organize the enormous Halloween celebration in the Castro. Their events mixed performance, costumes, safety work and fundraising. Voluntary donations produced money that could be distributed later through community grants. (thesisters)

This pattern kept repeating.

Spectacle generated attention.

Attention generated participation.

Participation generated money.

Money went back into community work.

The Sisters were effectively running a charitable model built partly on the economic value of people wanting to see what these lunatics would do next.

That is not an insult.

I mean it with admiration.

Condoms, Whistles, Wigs and the NAMES Quilt

The Sisters’ educational and service work stretched far beyond Play Fair!

In 1991, Sister Roma developed a STOP the Violence campaign amid anti-gay violence in San Francisco. Sisters distributed whistles and window placards identifying safe places where someone under threat could seek help. The campaign later returned when violence again became a growing concern. (thesisters)

In 1992, Sisters distributed condoms at the University of San Francisco after permission to do so on the Catholic campus had been denied. Police removed Sisters from campus, turning an ordinary sexual-health intervention into a confrontation over who gets to provide health information and where. (thesisters)

In 1996, the order contributed memorial panels commemorating deceased Sisters to the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. That same year, Sisters appeared at Burning Man, passed out safer-sex materials and offered a version of communion involving medicinal brownies and tequila. Public health has had duller outreach programs. (thesisters)

In 1998, the Sisters organized Wig Out, collecting new and restored wigs from San Francisco drag performers for women undergoing chemotherapy. They worked with queer youth programs and helped create alternative youth events. Their archive records work with LYRIC, youth conferences, dances and community gatherings. (thesisters)

Their charitable grants became an institution of their own. Records from 2009 show grants to organizations and projects connected with AIDS housing, legal assistance, health, arts and community services. Past recipients across grant cycles have included groups supporting unhoused people, incarcerated LGBTQ people, queer and trans people of color, sex workers, immigrant communities and queer arts. (GuideStar PDF)

San Francisco’s current house says its 2026 work includes more than twenty grants for small grassroots LGBTQ organizations and leaders. The current house continues its annual Easter event, Project Nunway, community ministry and a newer public-safety campaign addressing safer hookups and intimate-partner violence. (thesisters)

The details change.

The basic method does not.

Meet people where they are. Talk about subjects polite institutions avoid. Use humor. Refuse shame. Collect money. Give it away. Show up again.

Easter, Hunky Jesus and the Fine Art of Getting People to Pay Attention

The Sisters’ annual Easter celebration may be their purest expression of this philosophy.

San Francisco’s current Easter in the Park draws thousands of people for performances, fundraising, Sister rituals, an Easter Bonnet competition and the famous Hunky Jesus Contest. The 2026 event included a family-oriented children’s portion earlier in the day, followed by more adult-oriented programming. Donations help pay for the free public event and fund community grants. (thesisters)

The Hunky Jesus Contest is exactly what it sounds like and simultaneously stranger than anything that description can prepare you for. Contestants reinterpret Jesus through drag, sexuality, comedy, political commentary and pure nonsense. Academic research on the Sisters has examined events such as Hunky Jesus as part of their broader use of “holy fool” traditions: humor and irreverence deployed to challenge conventional claims about sacred authority. (ResearchGate)

Then there is Project Nunway, where fashion designers create elaborate looks for Sisters. There have been tricycle races, resurrection bingo, Butt Plug Bingo, fashion events in sex clubs, AIDS rides, dog shows, drag marches, queer proms, condom campaigns, Pride manifestations and enough strange pageantry to make one wonder whether anyone in the organization has ever uttered the phrase, “Maybe that is too much.”

I suspect not.

That is part of the point.

An organization trying to remove shame from queer sexuality is poorly served by timid symbolism. The Sisters’ visual excess communicates before a Sister ever opens her mouth. A white-painted face under an enormous wimple tells you that ordinary rules are temporarily suspended.

You may laugh.

You may be offended.

You may stare.

Either way, they have your attention.

Now they can hand you the safer-sex pamphlet.

Iowa Comes Back Into the Story

For years the Iowa connection remained largely historical.

Then Iowa got Sisters again.

The Priory of the Wilde Rose Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence began taking shape in Des Moines in 2022. Its name comes from Iowa’s state flower, and the house’s mission blends community service, equality, ministry, humor and resistance to bigotry and guilt. (PotWR Sisters)

Its current roster is glorious.

Sister Ada Boufeit.

Sister Anita Biscotti.

Sister Helda Magnum.

Sister Sue Filet.

Sister Constance Struggle.

Sister Kitty Khaos.

Sister Dia Niceas.

Sister Lucy Tarte.

Sister Lei Meianna Davenport.

Novice Sister Dinah Sorass.

There are Guards Garrison and Randi Tarte, too, proving that Iowa can field an entire ecclesiastical comedy troupe before breakfast. The Priory’s roster records most of those Sisters as fully professed members, with Dinah Sorass advancing to novice status in May 2026. (PotWR Sisters)

Their work is not ceremonial window dressing.

In 2025, the Priory was among the community partners supporting a free LGBTQ legal clinic coordinated through Drake University Law School and Dentons Davis Brown. The clinic helped nearly seventy Iowans with legal name changes and corrections involving names or sex designations on birth certificates. Organizers raised close to $20,000 to cover filing fees for participants. (Dentons)

In 2026, the Priory took part in a Leather & Lace Ball where more than $3,000 was raised for the Iowa Trans Mutual Aid Fund. Sisters appeared in connection with the Des Moines Gay Men’s Chorus, the Des Moines Diversity Chorus, Animal Lifeline of Iowa and Capital Bears events. They continued bingo fundraisers, beer busts and “bar ministry,” which may be the only form of ministry where arriving at a nightclub in whiteface improves your credibility. (PotWR Sisters)

The current official international directory recognizes the Priory of the Wilde Rose as Iowa’s Sisters mission house. Iowa appears again in a multistate missionary order listed by the San Francisco Mother House. (thesisters)

Iowa City has another intriguing recent thread. In 2024, Little Village reported that Sister Phoebe-Milk and Sister NoVow OPoverty were working on a developing Iowa City presence. I have not found current documentation establishing that effort as a separately recognized Iowa house in the 2026 international directory, so I am not going to pretend its current organizational status is clearer than the evidence permits. (Little Village)

That qualification does nothing to diminish Iowa City’s historical role.

The road still runs through Iowa City.

And What About Davenport?

Davenport does not appear in the historical record I reviewed as an origin center comparable with Iowa City or Cedar Rapids.

That distinction deserves to stay clear.

The strongest documented Davenport connection in the current Iowa order is Sister Lei Meianna Davenport, a founding member of the Priory of the Wilde Rose who became fully professed in August 2024. Her official listing gives us the name; it does not establish why she chose it, where she lives or whether it refers directly to the Quad Cities, so I will resist inventing a biography around a fabulous pun. (PotWR Sisters)

Still, seeing “Davenport” on the roster carries a certain poetic satisfaction.

The Sisters’ American story has a remarkable eastern Iowa arc. Gay liberation organizing in Iowa City helped shape future founders. A Cedar Rapids connection supplied the original habits. Those habits crossed the country. San Francisco transformed them into an activist order. Decades later, Iowa has a Sisters mission again, and one of its founders bears Davenport in her Sister name.

That is a pretty good full circle for one state.

The Fifty: From Clever to “Oh, Dear God, Sister”

Now we can rank names without pretending the ranking is the whole story. My scientific methodology consisted of saying them aloud, occasionally laughing hard enough to lose my place and assigning extra credit whenever a name could plausibly get someone removed from a church potluck.

At 50, Sister Gina Tonic enters gently; at 49, Iowa’s Sister Kitty Khaos brings respectable feline disorder; 48, Sister Golda Lox, sounds ready for breakfast; 47, Sister Mable Syrup, should be seated at the same table; and 46, Iowa’s Sister Anita Biscotti, gives us coffee accompaniment. These are gateway Sisters, the names you introduce before Grandma realizes what kind of article you sent her. (thesisters)

At 45, Iowa’s Sister Constance Struggle may be the most emotionally accurate name in the order; 44, Sister Feral Streep, deserves an Academy Award for wildlife; 43, Sister Hellen Wheels, is a classic; 42, Iowa’s Sister Ada Boufeit, turns dinner into a vocation; and 41, Iowa’s Sister Sue Filet, does something similar with French cuisine. Nobody has taken off their clothes yet, so enjoy the innocence. (The Abbey)

At 40, Sister Penny Costal takes Pentecostalism out for cocktails; 39, Sister Mary Juanita High, brings incense of an entirely different sort; 38, Iowa’s Sister Lei Meianna Davenport, gets hometown-adjacent credit; 37, Iowa’s Sister Helda Magnum, sounds armed with something larger than regulation size; and 36, Sister Nancy Drew Blood, finally gives that teenage detective a case worth reading. This is where the convent begins losing its liquor license. (thesisters)

At 35, Sister Tilly Comes Again! gets an exclamation point, which feels medically appropriate; 34, Sister Merry Peter, takes a moment to register; 33, Sister Amanda Mount, requires almost no explanation; 32, Sister Anja Knees, comes with stage directions; and 31, Iowa’s Sister Dia Niceas, rounds out a group that should never share a church bulletin. We have now crossed the line from cute wordplay into the part of the monastery where HR stopped returning calls. (thesisters)

At 30, Sister Shalita Corndog brings county-fair spirituality; 29, Sister Dinah Might, arrives explosively; 28, Sister Bella Donna Summer BDSM, somehow combines disco, kink and toxic botany; 27, Sister Flatulina Grande, owes Ariana an apology; and 26, Sister Constance Lee Craving sounds prim until you say the name twice. The second reading is where the trouble starts. (thesisters)

At 25, Sister T’aint A Virgin wastes very little time establishing doctrine; 24, Sister Rosie Palmer is accompanied everywhere by five close friends; 23, Sister Hail Mary Fullasin should never be allowed near a parochial-school yearbook; 22, Sister Dinah Douche would have had a promising lounge career; and 21, Sister Marilyn MOAN-Roe turns one vowel into a misdemeanor. Seattle and San Francisco deserve a formal reprimand for this entire paragraph. (thesisters)

At 20, Sister Nova Gyna brings anatomy into religious life; 19, Sister Lupita Phat He Ta Buffet requires both pronunciation and faith; 18, Sister Morgana D. Stroker turns Arthurian legend into a private activity; 17, Sister Edith Moorecock begins like somebody’s grandmother and ends very differently; and 16, Sister Rubba G. Spot sounds less like a name than written instructions. At this stage we are no longer pretending any of these people were trying to behave. (The Abbey)

At 15, Sister Jezabelle of the Enraptured Sling does not enter a room so much as receive a ceremonial announcement; 14, Sister Risqué of the Sissytine Chapel makes Renaissance art nervous; 13, Sister MRSA Kitt combines Eartha Kitt with antibiotic resistance, which may be the nerdiest filthy name here; 12, Sister Pussywillow Wilchenot sounds like a banned children’s book; and 11, Sister Coochie Von Beaverhausen possesses the aristocratic dignity of someone who inherited both an estate and an obscenity citation. This is high camp operating without a building permit. (thesisters)

Our top ten begins with 10, Sister Anal Receptive, whose commitment to clarity is admirable. 9, Sister Paddlemé Tooshie, gives Star Wars the spanking George Lucas somehow overlooked; 8, Sister Titania Humperpickle, drags Shakespeare behind a bar at closing time; 7, Sister Betty Tastewell, Self Rising, sounds like an indecent baking product; and 6, Iowa’s Novice Sister Dinah Sorass, proves our state can compete nationally when the category is phonetic filth. Iowans should take the win where we can get it. (thesisters)

At 5, Sister Coochie Von Beaverhausen nearly takes the crown through sheer aristocratic vulgarity, but repetition would violate the rules and the convent has bylaws, so she receives honorary double recognition rather than a second ballot slot. Her place is replaced by Sister Hail Mary Fullasin, whose promotion into the top five feels spiritually questionable yet comedically justified. 4 goes to Sister Titania Humperpickle’s equally fearless San Francisco colleague Sister Jezabelle of the Enraptured Sling, an entire erotic novella compressed into one title. (The Abbey)

At 3, Sister Betty Tastewell, Self Rising would have won almost any ordinary competition, yet this competition contains monsters. 2 belongs to Sister Porn Again, perhaps the cleanest dirty pun in the order: two words, instant recognition, perfect collision of evangelical language and sex-positive humor. 1 belongs to Sister Ann E. Lingus, whose name looks completely respectable until spoken aloud, at which point the parish luncheon is permanently altered. (thesisters)

And yes, I noticed that several names clawed their way upward during the judging.

This is what happens when the judges are corrupt.

Why the Names Actually Belong in the Serious History

The Sister names are not decorative nonsense sitting beside the mission.

They perform the mission.

Sister Porn Again takes the language of religious conversion and turns it into a sex joke. Sister T’aint A Virgin destabilizes the ideal of sexual purity. Sister Anal Receptive says a stigmatized sexual act aloud without shame. Sister Ann E. Lingus hides a sex act inside the rhythm of a conventional woman’s name, making the listener participate in the joke at the exact moment recognition arrives.

That is what camp does so well.

It changes the emotional temperature around taboo subjects.

A topic that enters the room surrounded by shame leaves carrying glitter.

The Sisters used the same instinct in Play Fair! They knew that talking about gonorrhea, anal sex, condoms, rectal irritation and sexual risk would fail if the audience felt scolded. Humor created another route into the conversation. The sexual joke and the health lesson were partners.

Modern Sisters continue that approach through San Francisco’s Safety First, Sexy Second campaign. The campaign encourages people meeting new hookup partners to tell a trusted friend who they are seeing, share location information and establish a follow-up check-in. It is straightforward personal-safety advice presented in language that assumes hookups happen and does not moralize about them. (thesisters)

Forty-four years separate Play Fair! from that current campaign.

The communications principle barely changes.

Sex is happening.

People deserve facts.

Shame does not make anyone safer.

So talk about it.

They Are Not Just Drag Queens Dressed as Nuns

Calling the Sisters “drag nuns” is not exactly wrong, but it is incomplete.

They are performers, activists, fundraisers, educators, ministers, satirists and community volunteers. Some identify deeply with spiritual ideas; others are atheists, ex-Catholics, members of other faith traditions or people whose religious histories are complicated. Smithsonian reporting has documented Sisters describing their role as a real form of ministry, especially to queer people who have experienced rejection by religious institutions. (Smithsonian Folklife)

Membership is structured. Houses can have aspirants, postulants, novices, fully professed Sisters and guards, with expectations around meetings, service and public manifestation. The system varies by house since there is no single worldwide headquarters controlling every local group. The San Francisco Mother House states plainly that houses remain autonomous and develop their own rules and cultures. (thesisters)

That local autonomy is part of why the Sisters can feel different from city to city.

Seattle does not have to become San Francisco.

Des Moines does not have to cosplay the Castro.

An Iowa Sister can do bar ministry in Des Moines, support a trans mutual-aid fundraiser, work alongside a legal clinic and manifest at Iowa Pride events using a style rooted in Iowa itself.

That strikes me as one of the smartest features of the order.

Local culture gets to shape the habit.

The Joke Was Never Just the Joke

I started researching this piece thinking the names would be the main event.

How could they not be?

We have Sister Ann E. Lingus.

We have Sister Porn Again.

We have Sister Anal Receptive.

Iowa has Dinah Sorass.

There is an actual human being serving her community under the name Betty Tastewell, Self Rising.

Western civilization has produced opera, the printing press, antibiotics and Betty Tastewell, Self Rising. I refuse to rank those achievements.

Yet once the laughter settles, the history underneath it becomes harder to dismiss.

The Sisters raised money for gay Cuban refugees at a moment when those refugees needed allies.

They created sexual-health education during the earliest years of AIDS.

They stood with people with AIDS when many institutions would barely acknowledge them.

They helped organize vigils.

They raised funds for the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, Project Open Hand and the AIDS Emergency Fund.

They created anti-violence campaigns.

They distributed condoms.

They supported queer youth.

They collected wigs for people going through chemotherapy.

They funded tiny organizations that larger foundations overlooked.

They turned Halloween, Easter, bingo, basketball, dog shows, fashion shows, sex clubs, tricycle races and drag into fundraising infrastructure.

They made public-health information funny enough for people to read.

They converted spectacle into service.

And before all of that became an international movement, there was Iowa.

There were gay activists at the University of Iowa.

There were the Sugar Plum Fairies.

There was an Iowa City queer community experimenting with performance and liberation.

There was someone in Cedar Rapids who believed a story about The Sound of Music and released several retired nun habits into history.

I would pay an unreasonable amount of money to know whether the Mother Superior ever learned what happened to them.

Somewhere between Cedar Rapids and the Castro, those habits stopped being costumes.

They became symbols.

Then tools.

Then uniforms for an order that could mourn people with AIDS one day, distribute sexual-health information the next, raise money that weekend and show up at Easter dressed like the Catholic Church had been taken over by people with much better makeup.

That is the part of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence I find most interesting.

They never accepted the premise that serious work requires solemn people.

They never accepted the premise that sexuality becomes respectable only after it is sanitized.

They never accepted the premise that religious imagery belongs exclusively to institutions.

They never accepted the premise that queer people must become less visible to become more deserving.

Forty-seven years after that Easter weekend, the order is still here.

The Iowa roots are still here.

The HIV/AIDS work echoes through modern sexual-health and safety campaigns.

The grants continue.

The ministry continues.

The troublemaking most certainly continues.

And somewhere, presumably, Sister Ann E. Lingus is still forcing unsuspecting people to say her name aloud before they realize what just happened.

That may not be universal joy.

But it is awfully damn close.

References

• Blair, T. R. (2017). Safe sex in the 1970s: Community practitioners on the eve of AIDS. American Journal of Public Health, 107(6), 872–879. (PMC)
• Dentons Davis Brown. (2025). Dentons and Drake University Law School co-host the third annual LGBTQ+ free legal clinic. (Dentons)
• Hunter, A. (2023). Queer drag nuns devoted to community: Unveiling the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. (Smithsonian Folklife)
• Livingston, Z., & McClatchey, E. (2024). The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence have entertained, aided and provoked for 45 years. Their habits began in Iowa. Little Village. (Little Village)
• Priory of the Wilde Rose Sisters. (2026). Current members; Mission; 2026 manifestations. (PotWR Sisters)
• Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, San Francisco. (2026). Sistory; Meet our nuns; Orders worldwide; Safety First; Easter in the Park. (thesisters)
• Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Abbey of St. Joan. (2026). Sisters; Play Fair! (The Abbey)