Drag Race stars Kandy Muse and Joey Jay hit back after Nancy Mace uses their photos in anti-drag hearing
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Two RuPaul’s Drag Race stars have responded after Republican congresswoman Nancy Mace held up their images during a congressional hearing to argue that drag “sexualises” children.
Mace displayed photographs of Kandy Muse and Joey Jay during a House hearing on the Smithsonian, claiming that children seeing drag “sexualises them and makes them more vulnerable to people that want to rape them or abuse them”, according to posts shared widely on X.
Both performers, who competed on season 13 of Drag Race, hit back publicly. Reposting an image of the moment, Kandy Muse wrote simply: “can I sue?” Joey Jay added: “I’m talking with my lawyer, I’ll let you know what he says.”
Republicans attack LGBTQ+ history Smithsonian exhibit
Neither has confirmed any formal legal action.
At Wednesday’s House hearing, Republican congresswoman Mary Miller grilled Anthea Hartig, director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, over “Illegal to Be You: Gay History Beyond Stonewall”, a temporary exhibit that closed in 2021.
Miller and other GOP members held up images from the display, objecting in particular to a leather harness among the artefacts.
“Can you tell us what a crotch harness is? We brought a picture,” Miller said, accusing Hartig of exposing children to “sexually explicit material” and describing the exhibit as “the fetish attire of a very small subset of Americans with weird srxual proclivities”.
Hartig defended the museum, noting all under-18s must be accompanied by an adult, and that during the exhibit’s run “no one complained”.
The display explored the criminalisation and persecution of LGBTQ+ people in the US and the long fight for equality.
