Drag Race star Peppermint on anti-LGBTQ+ bills

“While drag is a very important key tool and a tool that our queer community has always used and will never stop using to communicate and to educate and to entertain each other and ourselves and the rest of the world, healthcare for transgender people is in an extremely fragile state because, when healthcare is outlawed, then we will still do what we need to do, but do it in a much more dangerous way,” she says of the many bills targeting things such as gender-affirming care and medical needs more generally.

“But across the board, the LGBTQ+ community has always been resilient. We’ve always been faced with challenges and I personally stand at the intersection of Black and trans and queer, which means that I come from a long line of people who were either discriminated against because of their sexuality and gender throughout the decades, or people in our country who have been enslaved and blocked from voting, blocked from reading, blocked from education, from the ability to call themselves a human being.

“I’m a descendant of people who were not considered human in our country on paper, but I’m here and I’m thriving and I’m working and I’m creating art and I’m doing all of these things – and so that’s my reaction to these bills.

“My reaction is, this is nothing new. I know this game. It’s literally in my blood to fight back against this.”

Peppermint says “it is difficult” to see how clearly “things are repeating themselves” but encouraged trans+ youth to stay strong “in spite of the barriers” being put up.

“My womanhood as a trans woman is not at stake and people want to attack that,” she says. “My Blackness is not at stake, my humanness is certainly not at stake. I am exactly who I am, regardless of what they say about us.”

“There are barriers and they may be difficult, they may make something illegal that was perfectly legal last week, but it doesn’t change who you are at your core,” Peppermint adds.