Renae Green-Bean had started taking precautions in public even before the Tennessee legislature approved a law in March limiting where “adult cabaret” can be performed.

Ms. Green-Bean had watched the uptick in legislation restricting L.G.B.T.Q. rights and worried that restaurant nights with her wife, children or grandchildren, or her preference for masculine attire and closely cropped hair, would invite harassment. So she could not help but worry that the new law would make her feel less safe pursuing her creative outlet: throwing on a bedazzled jacket several nights a week and transforming into El Rey, a drag king.

If a federal judge allows the law to take effect in the coming weeks, it will ban what it defines as adult cabaret performances, including by “male or female impersonators,” on public property or anywhere children could view them. It will not stop the shows that Ms. Green-Bean, 46, puts on at an adults-only club in Clarksville and other clubs near the Kentucky border.

Still, she and other performers said, being seen in drag anywhere in public feels far riskier now. The law and others like it come as far-right activists have increasingly targeted drag shows across the country, with members of the Proud Boys and other protesters, sometimes heavily armed, appearing at the shows and at library story hours when drag performers read books to children.

“There is a scare factor,” Ms. Green-Bean said of the law, “because they’ve given people the right to be hateful.”