Drag Race star Robin Fierce makes history with Drag Queen Story Hour event at Yale University
Drag Race star Robin Fierce holds Drag Queen Story Hour event at Yale University (Robin Fierce/Twitter)
RuPaul’s Drag Race star Robin Fierce has held a Drag Queen Story Hour event at Yale University, becoming the first drag queen to guest speak at the prestigious university’s law school.
Fierce, 27, spoke at the elite “Ivy League” university, in Connecticut, on Tuesday (28 February), reading three children’s books that had previously been banned from some US libraries.
After reading Anti-Racist Baby, by Ibram X Kendi, And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, and an excerpt from George M Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue, Fierce told the audience, “To be drag is art… it is expression [and] it is a release of a feminine side that is oftentimes suppressed by family members or the world.
“How are you banning art when there are so many different forms of art out there?”
Fierce, who appeared on the 15th season of RuPaul’s Drag Race, earlier this year, added: “[The] real purpose of drag storytelling and vocal performances is to bridge the gap between the different queer and non-queer communities through empathy… not to push ‘transitioning’ propaganda or ideologies of sexual orientation on children, as anti-trans and anti-drag extremists suggest.”
AJ Hudson, the host of the event and co-chairman of diversity, equity and inclusion at the Graduate School Senate, praised Robin Fierce’s speech at the 320-year-old university.
“Many of the queer students at the law school do not feel safe there or want to spend any extra time in that building,” Hudson told Yale Daily News.
“To pay a drag queen to speak, a directly system-impacted person whose expertise is just as valuable as a heterosexual cisgender white man, lawyer or judge, it’s historic.”
“I hope [tonight] broke some of the boundaries, real and imagined, that our audience members and classmates held.”
Yale Daily News reported that as well as reading the books to the students, Fierce also held a “discussion about the current political animosity against drag culture”.
Her visit comes as Tennessee became the first US state to ban public drag performances, with Republicans pushing through the law which LGBTQ+ activists claim could lead to events such as Pride being banned or cancelled.
Alongside the drag ban, Tennessee lawmakers also voted to send a bill to the governor that prohibits doctors from providing gender-affirming medical treatment ,such as puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgery, to trans young people.
PinkNews has contacted Robin Fierce for comment.
