Drag Race UK stars react with fury to Rishi Sunak’s ‘disgusting’ trans speech
Drag Race UK queens are calling out Rishi Sunak’s anti-trans comments. (Getty)
RuPaul’s Drag Race UK queens including Cheddar Gorgeous, Ella Vaday and Banskie have responded with fury following anti-trans comments made by UK prime minister Rishi Sunak.
Speaking yesterday (4 October) on the final day of the annual Conservative Party Conference, Sunak decided to use his speech to attack trans people.
He declared that the British public are being “bullied” into into believing that “people can be any sex they want to be”.
“A man is a man, and a woman is a woman, that’s just common sense,” he added, smirking as his Tory MPs applauded and cheered.
He also said that “patients should know when hospitals are talking about men or women,” alluding to his government’s reported plan to ban trans women from female hospital wards – a proposal that legal experts have already dubbed potentially “unlawful”.
Following the most brazen attack on the LGBTQ+ community of Sunak’s premiership to date, celebrities – including countless Drag Race UK alumni – have taken to social media to denounce his comments.
Writing on X, formerly Twitter, season four finalist Cheddar Gorgeous said the trans community was being used as an “easy sacrificial lamb” to detract from government failures.
“In the 2021 census 0.2% identified as trans, and 0.1% in Non binary ways,” they wrote. “If watching rich powerful people bully minorities isn’t enough to irk you, you should be angry that policies that only impact 0.3% of the population, are being touted as this government’s priorities.
“They don’t want people to notice the economy isn’t recovering, they have lined the pockets of their donors, interest rates are at a historic high, and they cancelled HS2. Trans people are just an easy sacrificial lamb to throw to an ignorant ‘party faithful’,” they added.
Ella Vaday, a finalist on Drag Race UK season three, also decried Sunak’s speech as a way to “distract” from his party’s failures.
“Why in 2023 the government has repeatedly tried to take away your rights and freedoms I don’t know. I don’t understand,” she wrote to her trans followers via Instagram Stories.
“The Tories are always using the LGBTQ+ community to distract from the real mess that they’ve got us in. I’ve lost count of how many bundering idiots we’ve had be our so-called leader. Sick of it.”
“This is actually disgusting,” shared Drag Race UK season five competitor Banksie on X. “I cannot keep quiet knowing that the hate-mongering taken out by the Conservative Party results in the safety, rights and protection of trans women being held to question,” she added, tagging the official LGBT+ Conservative Party account.
Sminty Drop, who competed on season four of Drag Race UK, declared the current political climate as “abominable”.
“Rishi Sewernak and Sewerella Braverman are dedicated to spewing bigoted hatred targeting trans and queer people as a low blow attempt to grasp the attention of the numbskull public,” she wrote in a scathing post on X.
Other celebrities, including non-binary Grammy Award winner Sam Smith, Hollyoaks actress Annie Wallace, Strictly Come Dancing star Layton Williams and music producer MNEK have shared their support for the trans community amid Sunak’s chilling remarks.
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