‘Drag Race UK vs. The World’ Queens Tackle Tough Convo About Violence Towards LGBTQ+ Community in Must-See Mirror Chat

Being a fan of Drag Race in the year 2024, it’s very easy to see the franchise on the surface level: it’s an Emmy-winning global phenomenon that supports its own pop culture ecosystem. This is evidenced by the fact that there are currently four Drag Race series airing right now — two of them are even hosted by RuPaul. There’s so much Drag Race right now that it’s entirely possible that you missed the most important Drag Race mirror chat of 2024 (so far).

The mirror chat in question happened in the latest episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs. the World Season 2, an episode that challenged the queens to create commercials for an immersive Drag Race experience. After filming their ads and while getting in drag for the runway presentation, Marina Summers (Drag Race Philippines Season 2) commented that she really loved this challenge because there are not opportunities for drag queens to film commercials in the Philippines. She clarified to the rest of the cast that while being gay is not illegal in her home country, there are no legal protections for queer people in the Philippines.

Then Marina added that not only are there no legal protections for the LGBTQ+ community, there are still physical attacks against queer people in the Philippines. Keta Minaj (Drag Race Holland Season 2) echoed this, saying that gay bashings still happen in Holland. And then La Grande Dame (Drag Race France Season 1) joined in, saying, “I got fully attacked, got sent to the hospital, that’s why I left Nice.”

La Grande Dame elaborated, saying, “I went to the police and stated what happened and there was no investigation. ‘Oh, that happens every weekend.’ That’s basically the response.” The Philippines, Holland, France — and of course this episode aired on WOW Presents Plus in the United States amidst the outcry over the beating and subsequent death of Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old nonbinary student who was attacked in a bathroom at their Oklahoma high school.

Drag Race is not a live television broadcast, nor is it close to being one. This season was filmed last year, but La Grande Dame’s words airing at this moment, in this context — ?

“The people that hate us, in reaction to the progress we’re making are being way more vocalized and way more violent. And you see that happening more and more and it keeps getting crazier and crazier. Like, people have died. We have to keep the fucking fight going… Even in countries where the law is with us, it stays hard to get justice for what happens to us.”

I would call this prescient, but sadly attacks against the LGBTQ+ community are scarily commonplace worldwide — as evidenced by this global assortment of queens all speaking from some level of experience. “While we’re very lucky in main city hubs, there are people in different countries and different parts around the world that still do it quite tough,” said Drag Race Down Under Season 2’s Hannah Conda, who could easily be speaking about the Outback or Oklahoma.

This is far from the first time that queens have talked about violence against the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, the cast of Drag Race France Season 2 revealed to each other that they’d all been assaulted at one point. In Season 11, Nina West opened up about the campaign of terror that was waged against her for simply being an out college student. Two years before that, we heard about the Pulse massacre from Cynthia Lee Fontaine, a Florida queen who was supposed to perform on the night of the shooting. Drag Race is actually filled with these kinds of traumatic mirror chats, edited in-between campy, filthy commercial parodies and sickening runway looks. That’s indicative of the queer experience worldwide, though: you have to be ready to face trauma at literally any time, and then get back to being a fully functioning professional person.

But back to Marina, whose comment about the lack of public-facing career opportunities for drag artists in the Philippines sparked this mirror chat. She also spoke to how a show like Drag Race inspires actual change — however small. “When Drag Race started in the Philippines, we’re seeing a lot of conversations. We haven’t seen something like that in the past 10 years,” said Summers. “We are able to spark conversation about queer struggles and how to not only tolerate but also understand and respect the LGBTQ+ community. I’m happy to see that step, but we have a long way to go, girl.”

Yes, it is easy to think of Drag Race as a global phenomenon and it’s easy to think of ratings success and cultural dominance as a sign that things are better now. However, conversations like this tucked between all the top-tier entertainment are what allow Drag Race to spark real change. That success allows for a show like RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs. the World to exist, to bring together queer people from all across the globe to share and compare stories. Seriously, are there any other shows doing that? It’s upsetting that there are still stories as ugly as these to tell, but it’s important that Drag Race is still telling them 15 years into its run — even on Episode 3 of the fourth Drag Race season to air in 2024.