A Ru Paul’s Drag Race contestant has made history by becoming the first drag queen guest speaker at Yale Law School.
Robin Fierce, who appeared in Season 15 of Ru Paul’s Drag Race, delivered dramatic readings of three books aimed at children and young adults and then performed a dance number for the assembled audience who were present to witness this historic moment in the prestigious law school’s almost 200-year existence, reports the Yale Daily News.
The three books selected for this momentous occasion were: Anti-Racist Baby, by Ibram X. Kendi, And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson, and an excerpt from All Boys Aren’t Blue, by George M. Johnson.
“To be drag is art,” said Fierce, who reportedly jokingly requested to be called “Professor Robin Fierce,” at the talk. “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?”
The event took place as the debate rages around drag queen story times, with opponents arguing that such performances are an adult form of entertainment inappropriate for children, while supporters see it as a colourful form of harmless fun to promote tolerance and inclusivity.
According to the Yale Daily News, Fierce is of the opinion that the real purpose of drag storytelling is to bridge the gap between the different queer and non-queer communities through empathy, not to push “transitioning” propaganda or ideologies about sexual orientation on children.
Leaders of the Drag Queen Story Hour initiative have urged the public to think of the events as a celebration of diversity and a dissolution of “rigid gender restrictions.”
The choice to invite Fierce was a political one, said AJ Hudson, host and co-chair of diversity, equity and inclusion at the Graduate School Senate.
Along with being an attempt to change what was accepted as a “legal academic conversation,” Hudson explained to the Yale Daily News that the event was also a form of protest against what he believes to be an onslaught of “problematic” speakers invited by the Federalist Society branch at Yale, including Kristen Waggoner, a member of Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal advocacy group that has defended female sports and opposes the medical experiment of child sex changes.
“Many of the queer students at the law school do not feel safe there or want to spend any extra time in that building,” said Hudson. “To pay a drag queen to come speak — a directly system-impacted person whose expertise is just as valuable as a heterosexual cisgender white man, lawyer or judge, it’s historic.”
“Many of the queer students at the [Yale] law school do not feel safe there. Can you just imagine what generations of openly gay men and women from the past who risked their lives every day would think of these pathetic, whining, distraught babies?," tweeted writer and politcal commentator Andrew Sullivan.
“I would honestly say that although in a somewhat fringe way, drag and in turn queer politics have permeated most of Yale,” continued Hudson. “I hope that [tonight] broke some of the boundaries, real and imagined, that our audience members and classmates held.”
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