A new queen is crowned, and it’s not Queen Camilla. Drag Race Season 15 announced the winner and the new queen is Sasha Colby.
Condragulations Sasha, you’re a winner baby!
After accepting her scepter, Mama Ru asked her if she had anything to say,
If you have been watching Drag Race for entertainment, I also wish that it educated you.
Throughout its herstory as Ru Paul says, the show wasn’t always as accepting as it is now. Ru Paul called the trans community his teacher.
Even Ru Paul saw drag differently only a few years ago, and he had to apologize when he was quoted saying these,
Apology accepted. And today, Sasha Colby becomes not only America’s Next Drag Superstar but also becomes the second openly transwoman to have won the title, Kylie Sonique Love was the first.
. . .
After the grand finale, what’s next?
All the drag queens on Season 15 would have great careers as all the other queens from the previous seasons. But there is a looming danger for the community that it has to face, the reality starts after the lights have dimmed on any stage that these queens perform.
There is a growing war against trans visibility. At least 9 GOP-led state legislatures were pushing for anti-drag bills, they are even going as far as prosecuting drag as a crime.
Mind you, with jail time.
. . .
Visibility and vulnerability
Aside from Drag Race, we have seen more visibility for trans actors, even Broadway had welcomed Jinx Monsoon twice the winner of the Drag Race franchise, the crowned “Queen of all Queens” Jinkx Monsoon is giving a world-class performance as Matron “Mama” Morton in the long-running Broadway production of Chicago.
She has big shoes to fill as the same role was once played by Jennifer Holliday, Patti LaBelle, and Queen Latifah.
Jinx is getting great reviews.
From Netflix’s Pose, Bianca played by Michaela Jaé Rodriguez made history with her Golden Globes win as Best Actress — she was the first transwoman to win in that category, beating along the way Uzo Aduba, Jennifer Aniston, Christine Baranski, and Elisabeth Moss.
But controversy continues to hound the trans community, and the roles in Hollywood remain few. And in some roles, CIS-gendered actors are still getting cast, how can we forget Eddie Redmayne from The Danish Girl?
In sports, the pushback comes from transwoman athletes competing in women’s sports. The conversation is heated.
There is no rational debate or discussion, it usually ends with a lot of hate and ad-hominems thrown around by its critics.
Former NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines comes out openly against trans woman athletes and claims to have been assaulted in one of the events she spoke in recently.
Violence had escalated.
Others have weighed in like Caitlyn Jenner a former Olympian, and a transwoman herself is often caught mimicking ideas on transgenders by right-wing agenda.
How can we not mention a used-to-be beloved author J.K. Rowling who is now considered to be transphobic?
. . .
Dylan Mulvaney controversy
Bud Light decided to send Dylan Mulvaney some beer cans to promote, and hell broke loose.
It is what she does, Dylan is an influencer.
There were threats of boycott, the New York Post said the company lost $5 billion in value after the controversy. Kid Rock made this video, to which Howard Stern slammed the rock star.
How can a beer commercial be so polarizing, has anyone gotten the memo that these critics believe that — drinking beers are only for straight people?
. . .
Final words
After right-wingers found out that the person responsible for the latest mass shooting in Nashville was identified as a transman, they exploited the Nashville shooting to escalate anti-trans rhetoric.
When the discussion should be about gun laws.
The reality is there’s more violence directed at trans people every year. In 2022, 38 transgender people were fatally shot or killed by other violent means.
Most of the victims were black or from the Latino community. Some of them were sex workers.
Not all transwomen live glamorous lives as drag queens, many are struggling to make ends meet and the only work available to them is sex work, which makes them even more vulnerable to violence.
Contrary to the opinion of right-wingers, most trans people only wanted to live their lives without the threat of being killed.
Not because they are trans, they want to groom your kids into becoming trans themselves.
Drag queens in real life are not out to lipsync for their lives, they are afraid for their lives.
And if you take out the time to see them as people, without the wigs and the makeup, you would realize that transgendered or gender non-conforming, or the whole LGBTQ community to which I belong as a gay man, have as much right as you have to exist.
As Sasha Colby said after her Drag Race win,
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This post was previously published on The Pub.
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