(upbeat house music)
- Hey you guys it's me, Gia and I'm here
Spillin' the motherfucking
tea with all these queens.
Girls, how you doin'?
- Hey.
- We here.
- Are you guys nice and
warmed up, steamy, ready?
- Yes.
- Steamed.
- There it is.
- I don't want steamed
I want very blunt and up
front type of answers, okay?
'Cause that's they type of bitch I am.
- Jiggly loves blunts.
- What?!
- So we're just gonna
get started, we know.
- I dig them!
- She likes smoking blunts and getting DP
at the same time.
- No, the boys I date do it, not me!
- Well we've all heard different.
So I wanna know your guyses
literal first celebrity crush.
- First ever?!
- First ever.
- I know who my first one was.
It was Kristi Yamaguchi.
- Shut up!
- Yeah I remember just
watching figure skating
and then seeing Kristi
Yamaguchi on the screen
and I was like, wow she is so beautiful.
And I walked up to the screen
and I kissed the screen and then the--
- Is that why you were just
trying to touch my hand?
- Exactly!
And the TV shocked my
lips and now I'm gay.
(laughing)
- You wanna jacket?
- That is a true story.
Well the gay, I am gay now,
well I am gay in general,
but I remember going to
kiss Kristi Yamaguchi
like oh my god she's so
pretty, I wanna (lips smacking)
and then the static shocked my lips,
then I was like girls bad.
- You know japanese girls tend to have
that kind of tendency on people.
(speaking in foreign language)
How 'bout you Pepp?
- Um my first celebrity
crush was probably a cartoon.
I think it was He-Man.
- [Gia] Work!
- [Peppermint] You know,
he was just so hot?
- Hot and studly.
- Bulging, you know.
- Girl that's that strong man.
- Yeah I love that cartoon.
- And he also has a sensitive
side as Prince Adam.
- You like that Swedish looking fish.
- Yeah, with the bowl cut.
But my current celebrity crush
is definitely Jason Momoa.
- [Aja] Oh daddy.
- I wish I knew who that was.
- Aquaman.
- He's Aquaman and he was also on--
- Baywatch!
- Baywatch?
- Yeah.
- Oh, well he was also on Game of Thrones.
- Khal Drogo.
- Yeah!
- [Gia] He sounds masculine, so.
- He's pretty butch.
I'm really obsessed right
now with Wiz Khalifa.
he's so hot.
And I also love Ezra Miller.
- I heard he likes the girls.
- Oh really?
(exclaiming and laughing)
We're spilling the tea.
- Honey I didn't sign no NDAs Miss Thing.
How about you Miss Aja?
- My first celebrity
crush was Travis McCoy
the lead singer of the Gym Class Heroes.
I just wanted to braid his hair
and stick my fingers through his ears.
- His ears?
I love a finger through the ear.
- That got very X rated real quick.
(laughing)
- How about you Jiggles?
- Mine was Austin St. John.
The Red Ranger from Power Rangers.
- Oh my god!
- [Gia] Is that the actors name?
- I know.
- Cartoon shits that's not even alive.
- Who knows the name of the actor--
- I did!
- It's a little fetishy.
- She's a stan.
- You knoW they have a thing called manga
which is Japanese anime porn,
y'all should get into this.
- He was so hot to me, I remember being 12
and being flustered looking at him like,
oh my god he is so cute!
That's when I was like,
okay there is something
different with me.
I was like there's something wrong.
- Well my--
- I need a sarsaparilla.
- What's yours girl?
- Do you guys remember
that magazine Word Up?
- 0h honey!
- That they used to send you the posters
and so I was so tacky and
this was when I literally knew
that I liked boys because I
literally was obsessed with,
I don't even think he's
a celebrity anymore,
but Lil' Bow Wow, oh bitch!
- He was fine.
- Fine.
- [Aja] I don't even think
he's a celebrity anymore.
- That was some shade,
that was some shade.
- Bitch I remember
- why was that shady?
- [Bob And Jiggly] I don't even think
he's a celebrity anymore!
- Bitch I said I'm gonna keep it real.
- Wasn't he gonna box Chris
Brown recently or something?
- Probably for some more fame.
- No that was Soldier Boy, that
was Soldier Boy, nevermind.
- Soldier Boy?
- So yeah, Soldier Boy and Chris Brown
were gonna have a boxing
match or something?
It got canceled.
- Next!
- That sounds like a porn.
So I just wanna go around because nowadays
we have so many different
ways of identifying
and da da da da da, so I
want everyone to go around
and just simply state their pronoun.
- Yeah I'm not really pronoun specific,
but usually if out of drag
everyone calls me a he
except my drag friends, my
drag friends call me she--
- Oh I'm sorry, that's me!
- Excuse me I'm so, I had
a little to eat today.
- There's an Amber Alert.
- The whole couch vibrated,
your battery is strong!
- There's an Amber Alert!
- Sorry that's my fault.
- All I'm saying is that
wasn't the phone vibrating.
- Okay so.
(laughing)
- I'm not really super pronoun specific.
- Okay.
- But no pronouns really offend me.
- So what if they called you they?
- They wouldn't, that wouldn't bother me
I think it'd be kind of weird,
I don't know why you would
think I would go by they,
but it wouldn't bother me.
If someone was like they like this.
- Like I always say baby, anything but it.
Okay 'cause how dare you,
how fucking dare you.
- She, me, her, those are all it.
- She, me, who?
- She, me, her.
- Her, okay.
- That's your drag name,
we could say She Me Her.
- She Me Her!
- She Me Her.
I prefer to go by they.
For me drag is not
really like my art form,
it's more of a medium for
art and gender for me.
So I just prefer they 'cause to me--
- [Gia] It's both!
- It' kind of just blurs everything
- [Gia] General.
- For me this is not a character,
I'm really just being
me, like what you see
is what you get, it's a mess all the time.
- I love that, that's awesome.
I think more of us need
to probably embrace that
at the end of the day.
- Yeah my pronouns are she, her.
She, me, her
- Not me?
- She, me, her.
- Yeah, and I agree for awhile drag was,
I imagine for a lot of
queens who are also trans
or gender non-conforming in some way,
drag was my access to my femininity
or other people being able to respect
my expression of being female, and so yeah
that was kind of how I--
- Drag was what opened my
epiphany to who I really am.
'Cause I always noticed
I loved getting in it,
dreaded getting out of it.
- Yes, same!
- Dreaded it, like I would
be mortified every night
to be like, ugh I do not
want to take this off.
- Can I tell you what
was so strange to me?
When I started doing drag
it was so important for me
to be convincing and
passable and real looking.
It was so crucial 'cause
I wanted everyone to know
I'm just a woman.
- The pressure, yeah.
- But after you're starting transitioning
and kind of living my life as a woman
outside of my drag, now I don't care.
I'll be campy, I don't care,
I'll wear crazy colored hair
'cause it's fun, right?
It used to be really crucial to me though.
- I feel its so interesting
too because a lot of people
don't realize that Pepp is really good
at doing crazy over the top makeup
like in that fucking club kid challenge.
That was probably the best
- Oh that was amazing!
- That was probably the
best look in my opinion
from the whole season.
So people don't realize even
though you do super fishy
paint all the time, people
don't realize Pepp can do,
'cause I've been following
you for years in the city,
following you all the way home.
(laughing and shouting)
- Help, there's some
black guy at my window!
- That was a shadow!
- That wasn't a shadow,
that was a black man.
But yeah, people don't
realize that you can
do a lot of these things
and you have been.
And I love when you wear
that big green and white
peppermint look you did.
People don't know, Pepp can turn it.
- Well my name's Gia Gunn
and I have something to say.
I'm a woman, thank you.
Moving along.
So Jiggly, you had the opportunity to be
on the infamous show, Pose that has a lot
of trans representation on there
and honestly for me, it's
super important for our time
right now bringing trans
women specifically.
- Trans women of color.
- Trans women of color
also to mainstream culture.
Can you tell us about your
experience on the show?
- It was amazing.
I have never felt so at home
and the girls were all so good.
The women in that show were so good.
Janet was directing the
episode that I was on.
- I would die, I love Janet.
- And she was just like,
keep doing what you're doing.
I was like, "She spoke to me!"
And then the girls were just so great.
Literally MJ is amazing,
Angelica, Indya, all the girls.
Literally it made me
want to step my game up
as far as in, I was like I need to deliver
these lines right, don't mess up.
- Can I ask you how you
felt differently doing that
than you do maybe at drag
shows, or in drag environments?
- Well for me acting has
been, after Drag Race
I wanted to focus on acting
and I wanted to continue that
so it didn't feel, it
felt like I was still
playing a character, but I
wasn't, I felt more comfortable
because...
- You felt like you.
- Yes, I wasn't trying to be Jiggly
I was trying to be the role
that I am playing, Veronica.
And what actually really got me
was at the end of the
episode and the credits go up
and it doesn't say Jiggly Caliente on it
and it says Bianca Castro,
so I was just like--
- That's what you wanted it to say, right?
- Yeah, and for me it was just like,
I know it's not the character
that's in the forefront
it's the woman that's in
front, not the character.
- It's you.
- It's so interesting.
- It's me, so that's
why it felt so amazing
and you know hopefully they
keep me for season two 'cause.
- Fingers crossed bitch!
- Well congrats, and congrats on Jiggly.
- You're in the new house.
- Well I am in the house, so hopefully.
- Yeah it's just about
being on that list sweetie.
- Good old evil house.
- I don't mind, I mean I belong.
- Oh evil bitches.
- They're not evil.
- So between shows like
Pose and Transparent
we're finally seeing trans
women represented in the media.
Representation is obviously so important.
Not only for trans women,
but I think for all of us
in the community in general.
Do we think that Hollywood
is seeing this as a trend
or do we think that this will continue?
- No I think Hollywood
has seen it as a trend
'cause you know we have a
lot of historic moments,
but they're not necessarily the first time
that trans stories have been brought to
either the big or the small screen.
So and we've had a lot of great work
and a lot of great actors,
a lot of great writers,
but not necessarily all in one
project in an appropriate way
that gives reverence to
our movement, the movement,
and also to the times.
And so in the past we
have had, for instance
Candis Cayne was the
first trans woman to have
a reoccurring role on a
major television show,
but there was a lot of
people who kind of saw,
had issues with how she was
either being presented or with
some of the ways that the
character was brought about.
- Treated, yeah.
- And so this is the
first time that I think
there's a level of accountability.
That people in the community
are holding the industry to
and Hollywood to.
And you know, you can't just
give us a crumb anymore,
we are going to ask for
not only proper writing,
and writing that really
celebrates more than just
the transition story,
writing that actually
celebrates the lives of trans individuals
and also shows different types
of people in the community
and also gets people like Janet Mock
and directors and people
behind the scenes on set
who also have trans experience.
To make sure that we're
doing it the right way,
'cause it's not enough
to just have Jared Leto
do a great job acting,
but then when asked about
what's it like to represent
the trans community
and his response is, the pantyhose suck.
That is not.
- Did that really happen?
- That happened.
And so I think we're in
a time and place where
we won't take it anymore
and we're not gonna allow
Hollywood to give us that anymore
and I think they're learning their lesson.
- Because I also feel like it's dangerous
to have them, a cis-gender
man play a trans woman--
- When there's trans
women out there and men
that can actually fill the roles.
- My only thing is
because they take it off,
we don't take this off.
- I'm never taking this off.
- But you know what I mean,
where it makes it feel like
it's optional for us, and I don't want,
I feel like that dangerous
where it's sending
a message out there that it's optional
and I don't think that's right
and that's why I feel like
thankfully Scarlett Johansson
backed out on that role.
- I think she ran out of that role honey.
- Yeah 'cause it's like
to know the experience
you have to live the experience.
There's many actors and
actresses that can play the roles
and I feel like Hollywood
is just now getting it.
- I'm proud of Pose for, what
Pose did that really I loved,
they actually did too,
which doesn't happen a lot,
they put a lot of trans
men on their show as well.
'Cause trans men are just
not often represented,
I mean I think that the feminine visage
is just more interesting on television.
- Sure, the glamour.
- People love to see dresses and hair.
- Yeah 'cause honestly you mentioned that
and I'm like, there
were trans men in there?
- Yeah I think Laith
Ashley was on the show.
- Laith was.
- Okay, yes.
- But no one is interested
in seeing a dude you know,
but the fact that they were doing that,
I was like, wow this is.
- Well they were just some
good looking dudes bitches.
It just never crossed my mind.
I think it's just so
important that we continue
to keep the conversation
and educating people
the difference between a
transformation and a transition.
And from my experience
I feel that sometimes,
obviously due to Drag Race
and bringing the art of drag
to the main front, somehow us trans women
have kind of been left
in the dark a little bit.
- I agree.
- And now we're finally
seeing this representation
and we're seeing the difference
and people are kinda getting it now.
You know and I always tell people
literally being transgender
is a state of mind
it's not a state of being.
So you can have as much surgery
and be as passable or
fishy or whatever it is
that you desire to be,
but at the end of the day
for me and for my
experience being transgender
is up here and in my heart.
- Has that always been like that for you?
- I struggled a lot with my gender.
Obviously battling just accepting myself
as a trans person 'cause I think that's
honestly the hardest step,
I don't know for you guys,
but for me it was the hardest thing
for me to look at myself in the mirror
and be like, I am
transgender and I have a lot
of fucking work to do
and I don't mean surgery,
but I mean self discovery.
And that was so hard for me.
But I do think when I look
back prior to starting drag
I always felt trans, I
just didn't, I was scared
of actually taking the
steps because I didn't have
positive role models,
positive trans role models
that were practicing a healthy transition
and a safe transition and that scared me.
I don't wanna be like
that in order to be me.
Does that make sense?
But once I got on drag race
then I was able to tour
at the time as you know, I
identified as a cis gay male
'cause that's kinda what
society tells you that you are
and that you do at one point I discovered,
you know what, there is
room for me in this world
as Gia Ichikawa not Gia
Gunn, and it took me awhile
to accept that and I'm still
figuring out the difference
'cause I think sometimes
it gets confusing.
'Cause sometimes when I'm in drag I feel
less than a woman which is kinda weird,
but it kinda makes sense for me
because for so long I dressed up in drag
just to feel feminine, for
people to perceive me as a girl.
Now that I literally go to
sleep and wake up as a girl
with or without makeup, or without hair,
it's like when I'm in
drag I feel like people
are perceiving me as a man in a wig.
Because that's the art of drag, you know?
- What people know, yeah.
- But at the end of the day
I think it has to do with
me accepting myself and
getting more comfortable with
who I am and just being more secure.
Like, bitch if you're a
woman you could put on
pounds of makeup, I mean
look at all the cis celebs
like Beyonce, Lady Gaga--
- Cher honey!
- They're in drag all day.
- They're all drag queens.
- They're queens in drag!
- Exactly, but somehow people
still kinda get it twisted
and I think that's the improvement
that we're looking to work towards.
- It's because when gender is involved
all of a sudden everything
becomes a blur to society
and they don't want to
acknowledge it as a thing.
- Well they confuse gender
identity and sexual orientation.
And it's like there's
a whole lot of things
that come around being
homosexual versus being trans.
For me personally I feel
even though we are in
the LGBT community I may
be naive in saying it,
but sometimes I literally feel like
the T should not even be in there.
'Cause at the end of the
day lesbian, gay, bi,
that has nothing to do
with being transgender
and your gender identity,
you know what I'm saying?
- Yeah I think obviously
it has a lot to do
with how we are often
discriminated against
and how people perceive us.
You know when someone's, god
forbid it happens to any of us,
but we know that there's girls who've been
chased down the street being called a man
whether they are or not, they
might have been drag queens,
they might have been trans, and they are
discriminated against in one way,
a lot of times in the same
way, so I think that's
how we've come together.
- Absolutely.
- It's 'cause we have
so many things in common
with the way that we're
discriminated against
and also the rights that we
sometimes are fighting for.
But we, I think the thing that's apparent
is that we need our LGB
brothers and sisters
who, some of whom do
identify also as trans
to step up to the plate
and realize that there is
a lot more work to be done, you know?
- I think their alliances,
I feel like their alliance
should be stronger with
us than our cis-gender,
heterosexual friends, allies.
- Yes absolutely.
- I would rather them be the stronger ally
than anybody else for us.
Because we're all in the
same umbrella of a community.
- I think it has a lot to do,
actually bringing it back to
the representation in the media.
I feel like people who have
any type of gender dysphoria
have always been parodized,
it's always made into a joke
or it's made campy.
You never see, especially even
10 years ago, all the trans
actresses were perceived
as prostitutes or like--
- Those were the only roles you could get.
- It was almost as if, like if
you watched Sex and the City
which 10 years ago was like, okay work,
but then you watch it now and you're like
this show's really problematic.
The amount of times that they
even say tranny in the show
when they're not even trans women,
there's drag queens and trans women,
it's just like trans women have
been displayed in the media
for a long time as not serious people
and I think that one
of the big transitions
in popular culture that has to happen now
is that people need to start
taking trans women and men
more serious and realize these
are people who have feelings.
These are not clowns.
- It's not an illusion.
- Exactly!
- If anyone needs to
transition it's fucking America
can transition.
- Yes!
- Exactly!
- So my question is for Peppermint.
You're the first trans woman
to play a role on Broadway.
A lead role on Broadway and a
non-binary character at that.
Can you just re-illiterate
why this is so huge
for the community?
- Well I have to say that I'm,
while it feels good, I'm not 100% sure
that I'm really the first trans woman.
There's a lot of people that we don't know
who because of lack of
opportunity may have not
felt safe to either come out or disclose.
- [Bob] The first openly trans.
- And you know, so I'm one of
the first openly trans women
to originate a principle
role in a Broadway musical
and that's what I'm credited
with and I'll accept it,
but there are other women
that I've seen on Broadway.
I've gone and seen Justin
Vivian Bond on Broadway
obviously before I was on, I'm not sure
how Justin identified at the time,
but I think it's important that we,
it's interesting that we should look back
and see who's come
before us because there's
a lot of pioneers who've
helped me and our community
get to this moment, many
of whom we should share
a little bit of that light with.
That being said, I know
it's an historic moment
and it feels great, it feels
great to have the opportunity
to go out and perform as
a performer we all know
it feels so good to
perform eight shows a week.
- Except Mondays.
- Except Mondays!
(laughing)
- And have access to some of the things
that I never thought as a
black trans woman from Harlem
I'd ever have access to.
I knew it was kind of a weird dichotomy
knowing that I was auditioning
with every other girl
who was an actor 10, 20
years ago for Law and Order,
like that was a right
of passage to be playing
Prostitute Number Two, you know
the tranny Prostitute
Number Two who gets killed
on Law and Order they were
on every episode they had,
we've all done it.
- Trans girls gotta get a job.
- And then to go home and realize that
other than this gay bar that's paying me,
under paying me $100 a night to do a show,
I don't know how else I'm
going to afford my transition.
And I had to really struggle
with the possibility of
survival sex work and
how that would affect me.
Did I wanna make that choice?
And I really didn't think
there were any other
opportunities for me.
This was even before Drag Race.
And so having now looking
back and seeing that
I'm able to do a Broadway
show that will hopefully
open doors for people, just
being a trans woman on Broadway
will hopefully open doors and open minds
of casting directors
you know 'cause theater
has always been probably a safe space
for many queer people, it
was for me in high school
I know a lot of my
friends have always felt
like that was where they
would find their tribe,
in drama club.
And it seems ironic now that television
is leading the way in
terms of breaking ground
and opening doors for trans
folk with things like Pose
and projects like Transparent and film has
a little ways to go and
Broadway is really slow
to step up to the plate
and update themselves.
And so I'm happy to have
this, but I do see it
as just the very beginning of
a change that is long overdue.
- Yeah, it's baby steps.
- I just keep thinking about the fact
because I've been such a
fan of yours for so long
that you are, like,
you're gonna be in books,
like history books, it's gonna be like
when all those pictures
are up on the wall,
and it's gonna be Peppermint
standing there like.
(laughing)
And especially for some
young person in 20 years
is gonna be on Broadway being like,
I'm just so glad that Peppermint did this
so I could do this, that's kind of crazy.
- That feels great.
- What do you ladies think
that us as Drag Race girls
who have had such a big opportunity
and obtained such a big
platform, that obviously
a lot of people don't have, trans or not,
what is it that we can
do with our platforms
to give our trans brothers and sisters
the same opportunities so that
they don't have to sex work
or be put in this box of not
having equal opportunities.
What is it that we can
do as people in general
that have a wonderful
platform do for them?
- I think it could start
off, we travel a lot
and one thing you could do
is, even everywhere you go
I've encountered people who
say very transphobic things
they make the jokes
and I always tell them,
love I'm not the one,
don't say that around me.
Like I identify as
non-binary which falls under
that gender umbrella and you may not know
who around you you're
making feel uncomfortable.
You're probably scaring
someone around you.
You're supposed to make people feel safe
and so telling people
when they're wrong is one.
Never be scared to speak up.
- And use your privilege,
use your privilege.
And no matter what privilege,
no matter what little
privilege you have use that privilege.
One of my friends is a amazing trans woman
and she is very, very, very,
if she wants to be stealth
she could be stealth 'cause
she's one of those girls
and she was on the train one day
and there was a woman who
wasn't in stealth got on
and then this guy taps her and goes,
look at this tranny monster or whatever.
And she looked at him and said,
you don't know who you could
be saying that to, I'm trans.
And you didn't even know that,
so don't try to include me
on your mess, she goes,
I, you didn't even read;
but the fact that he didn't even realize
he just tapped this trans woman was like,
look at this monster and then,
I don't know what he said,
monster or whatever he said,
but was something derogatory
and she was like, you didn't even know.
And in that moment that may
have been really scary for her,
but she used her passing
privilege to be like,
don't do that, and I use my male privilege
even for stuff like the
way women are treated
I will use my male privilege to be like,
no you don't get to do that,
I will use my cis privilege
to be like, no you don't get
to do that, y'know what I mean?
- It could even go as far
as knowing that if you have
any type of marginalization
attached to you
you can use that to tell
someone, hey I'm marginalized,
you're marginalized, and these
people are marginalized too,
why would you want to
further that marginalization
and make these people feel
like they're lesser than?
- I used to turn it around,
years and years and years ago.
All my stories are years ago.
- Nothing's happened recent
for Pepp, everything is years.
- Nothing is recent, nothing's happened.
- Everything was in the '90s.
- Before I outwardly
transitioned I would go,
whenever I would see a
construction worker holler
at a woman or catcall a woman
I would instantly turn around
and just do it to him.
You know if he hissed at
her I would be like pss pss.
Just to show them, how
do you like how it feels?
You know, and so that's probably
not as appropriate, but.
- Sure.
- So just to wrap things up ladies,
so we're seeing
representation in Hollywood,
but there is an epidemic of trans people
that have been violently
murdered in the US
as we all know, this year alone
at the time of filming this
there have been 21 victims.
Why do we think that we're not
seeing coverage on these stories?
- 21 that we know of.
- Fragile masculinity.
I feel like fragile masculinity
is the root and cause
of a lot of trouble period in the world
and a lot of the deaths of trans women
are usually due to straight
men who are cis-gendered
who are, they hate trans women
for god knows what other reason!
- Its not even about
them hating trans women,
they hate something in themselves.
- Yes!
- The crime that happens to these people
has nothing to do with the
person being victimized.
It has everything to do
with the perpetrator.
You see what I'm saying?
And people don't realize
too is that the presence
of a trans person, the
presence of a queer person,
the presence of women,
cis-women, it can be so powerful
when it enters a room
that it encroaches on
the masculinity of
someone and they're like,
I have to assert my masculinity right now.
And I need to do something
to let everyone know
how masculine I am, but
it has nothing to do with
that woman or that cis
person or that homosexual
who walked into that room
where that person's like,
they feel like their
masculinity is being attacked
by the presence of someone
who is not cis-male.
And the further you get from cis-male
the scarier it is for someone
who is scared by that.
So if you're gay, if
you're a woman it's scary,
if you're a gay man it's scary.
If you're a trans woman it
is scary as balls to them.
Yeah for them, for that guy is like,
I have to do something right now.
And I think the reason
why it's not being covered
so much in the world right
now is because our world
is so messy right now
because the media likes
to sensationalize and
if it's not something
they can sensationalize,
if it's not click-bait
for everyone, they don't wanna.
The media's being usurped right now
by the Trump administration
and all that mess.
That's all people can
cover, people can only cover
that stuff, and while
they're covering stuff like
Trump's shenanigans at the UN
where everyone laughed at him
people don't realize they're slipping in
problematic legislation that goes beyond
gender issues and goes beyond race issues,
but it's like focus on this stuff
while we can slip in stuff
that undercuts your tax pay,
that gets the rich richer,
that gets the poor poorer,
and it's all just slipping
in while we're focusing on
what Trump said this week.
- I think it's even more than that.
I think that people are,
the news media doesn't know
how to cover yet trans people.
- They don't want to.
- They don't want to, they
don't quite understand it.
And it's really complex,
many of our stories
are complex and so reporting
on them in a proper way.
- Scary, uncomfortable.
- It can be a minefield if
they don't know how to do it.
A lot of times they have to realize that
it's important for them to
respect the gender identity
and the expression of the person.
- The legal names, the name they go by.
- The names, the legal
name, and a lot of times
they don't know how to do that.
- Well because we even have trans people
that are being buried.
- And misgendered!
- As the opposite sex,
but they identified as
by their own parents.
- That's messy.
- And that's horrible.
- The written press too.
If you see sometimes the
written press they'll call
trans women drag queens
or it was a man in a wig.
They will literally bluntly say that
and you're just reading it,
and as a straight person
they're probably reading it like,
a hahaha, yeah that's what it was.
But as a queer person or a trans person
or someone who has that
enlightenment of the community
you read that and it's cringy.
And you're just like, you
feel it, you feel that pain.
- Well because why is it any different
when it comes to a trans
woman that's getting murdered
versus your aunt or your mom
or you know a close girlfriend?
- Because it's the same
thing, it's the same thing
that Aja was saying that Bob was saying,
it's that toxic fragile masculinity.
And it's not just the
perpetrator of the crime,
it's also the reporter, the police officer
that's investigating it, the
people in their neighborhood
and also the reader a lot of times
that are supporting that
culture that enables
that perpetrator to kill
that person, that trans woman
in the first place, you know
they're setting that all up.
- [Bob] Jiggly has something to say.
- Okay, so oh fuck, alright.
Prior to drag race I have
never been ashamed of
telling people what my past was,
and so long time ago,
and this is probably why
they don't report about it,
is because I remember one time
I was working, and it got out of hand.
I was attacked and, oh shit.
So I went and tried to
tell a cop what happened.
I tried to press charges, whatever
'cause I still had the
information of the guy who did it.
They didn't care.
Did not fucking care.
And the guy basically like,
well what were you doing?
- What?
- You're fault.
- It was your fault.
And this is a cop mind
you who said this to me.
So I was just like, not even
can I get a rape kit, nothing.
Nothing.
So I could understand why they're not
talking about in the news,
'cause they don't care.
And it sucks that this is our world.
Something bad happened to me,
I couldn't even tell a cop.
- It's not even this is our
world, this is our reality.
- So who can you talk to?
- So who am I gonna talk to?
I wasn't even in New York,
I didn't know who to call.
And it just sucked 'cause I was just like,
you did this to yourself was
basically what the guy told me.
- Can I ask you a very
honest question though?
Not that it was your fault obviously
because you were attacked,
but do you at all
take responsibility for putting yourself
in that predicament?
- Yeah, I completely, I
know what the job there's
what did I used to call it
- [Gia] 'Cause it's a risk.
- I used to call it
casualties of the job, yes.
But I know that, but at some
point I'm still a human being.
- [Gia] Of course.
- I don't know your situation
to put you into that,
but I mean I think it's really
important that we focus on
the, yes it's dangerous
to, if you're a sex worker
it can be, it may be, it
sometimes is, very dangerous
to be in that situation
where you just don't know
when you're gonna be with
someone that could hurt you
or kill you or try to steal your money,
but what is the alternative?
I think a lot of times
we have to think about
not doing that sex work,
where you gonna live?
That can be more deadly than
getting in the car tonight.
And so I think people often
times focus on the sex worker
and, well you shouldn't
have been in that situation
or maybe you shouldn't
have, but where else
would she have been 'cause
no one is there to help.
- Hello.
- And this is prior to
Drag Race, so I have to,
I have to pay my mortgage, I
have to put food on the table,
I have to live, and as
much as people think that
drag can't necessarily sustain you.
So I didn't have a
regular job, I had to do
what I had to do.
My mom, after my mom
passed there was nobody.
I couldn't lean on anyone
anymore, I was by myself
with my brother so we couldn't afford it
and I had to figure
something out and at the time
I thought that I was, it's
easy money, it's fast.
I could pay the bills and it's good,
but it just sucks and it feels like
we have all these little pockets of upward
where we're finally getting
some kind of momentum
and some respect for the
community and then there's just
something that just keeps it back
and it always, it's like
I said, it's baby steps
and I feel like it needs to be.
- [Gia] Leaps forward.
- Leaps and bounds.
- Leaps and bounds.
- Thank you for sharing that,
girl that's really painful.
- Misogyny and transphobia are so powerful
and I think it's hard for
misogynists to respect femininity.
And stuff like that--
- 'Cause it's a threat!
- Yeah, it is a threat.
Female power is power.
It's the strongest power in the world.
- The pussy got power sweets.
- Yeah pussy power, that's why they call
her mother nature, you know what I mean?
It is a very powerful thing,
and that's why a lot of women.
- Don't get it twisted,
dick got power too though.
What dick will make you do.
♪ Woohoo ♪
- And when you got both,
you better watch out.
- Get her out of there!
