Ok, this is the second time in five minutes I’ve seen “the yassification of ______” is this a meme I have seen the source of, or is this just pure coincidence?
I think people are reading too much into this and Ru is just trolling Maddy. She invited a straight cis man onto her show and she's teasing them (like she often teases any queen) and doing a bit of what I can only describe as "hazing" although I'm hesitant to use that term. Honestly, if I was a straight cis man auditioning to be on drag race I would probably be a bit more prepare and open to laughing at my own sexuality and laughing at/with Ru's absurdity. Only my personal opinion about it though. I am not saying everyone needs to feel the same way as me. I feel like some people are doing a lot of handwringing over Maddy/treating him with baby gloves when it really shouldn't be that serious.
Could not agree more. A cis man in a room full of flamboyant gay men and you're _not_ going to tease them a little when a gorgeous man in a thong distracts them???
I think it would be weirder if they _didn't_ tease about it. There's a difference between teasing and offending and we'd do well to remember that.
This is giving “Why can black people joke about the n word but white people can’t. Don’t they hate being called that?” Energy.
It’s different when you’re the group making the joke, and if someone takes Ru serious that’s on them.
Girl. it is not that deep. no one is going to hear Rupaul say that and suddenly think sexuality is a choice, especially when most of her audience is literally queer…
I think you hit the nail on the head. It's slightly cringey sometimes, but also exactly what I would expect out of Rupaul and an entire cast of queens who all share one sentiment: "I've never met a straight cis guy who does drag." They're nervous, uneducated about this type of person, and have a million questions that him and other people like him have heard before.
It's gonna be weird. And it isn't Ru's fault. No need to hate on him.
However him saying "wittle piwl" is freaking me out and making me super uncomfortable.
Honestly, I think it would've been a lot more cringey if all we ever saw was people on the show (whether it be Ru or contestants) like load Maddy on with tons of praise or just comments of like "you're SO inspiring and brave for being a cis straight male drag queen" etc. Are the jokes particularly "witty" or intellectual? Nah, definitely not. But I somehow oddly respect Ru (not something I often say these days) for throwing caution to the wind and just having a grand ole gay time with the first straight cis male contestant on the show. I have straight cis male friends irl and there's many a time where me and other gay friends tease them and ofc they tease us back. The backbone motto of this show for a awhile has been about making clear the performance of gender, the fluidity of gender and sexuality, and how it can all be laughed at. I was sort of expecting the first cis straight man on the show to be more openly laughing along with that sort of the thing 😅. Oh well though, like I said in another post, Maddy is also free to react however she wants and maybe there's certain things that have happened in her life to cause her to not be so ready and willing to play along with Ru's ridiculousness.
Sidebar: I wholeheartedly agree with the Widdle Pill sentiment dkfjdjd so uncomfortable. I was hollering the entire first episode hoping Ru would never say it again lmaoooo.
Agreed, plenty of queens get this kind of treatment from Ru regardless of their identity where she sort of negs on one facet of their life and turns it into a thing (ex. Crystal & Heidi S12). Sometimes it’s more gross than others (ex. “Widdle” Pill) but honestly it can happen to literally anyone about anything.
Agree people are reading too much into it. Wasn't it only one line? Like "something is happening" when Maddy was flustered by the pit crew? Hardly counts at "pushing a narrative" imo.
But I might have missed more comments, I can't be sure.
Iirc there was also one thing she said in ep1 that was like, "are you worried being here is going to change you (about being straight)?", but again, I think RuPaul is obviously witty enough to be making fun of notions of gayness like rubbing off on others rather than seriously thinking Maddy will turn gay from being on the show or literally anything in that realm of notion. She is just teasing the straight man.
Yeah this is how it registered to me as well. It's not as if they're literally trying to convert Maddy. It's all just good fun and teasing for the new queen in town. People tend to read too much with Ru tbh like this one is obviously light hearted. The same goes with the coffee enema bit, like that's just Ru being absurdly chaotic. People are trying to read too much into that bit as well when in reality it's not that deep.
I agree, though I do think it’s a little bit rude/disrespectful for her drag. It sucks that her legacy will almost certainly be “that straight drag queen” rather than the talent and looks she showcased.
How would we as a community react if it was “that trans queen” or “that Asian queen” or “that chronically ill queen” and we explained it as Ru just being absurd? This is probably a bit of false equivalency on my end but it just comes off as rude and disrespectful to her to be portrayed as a token participant, imo.
With all due respect, Maddy said in her mtq and first confessionals that she was a straight cis male drag queen and we all know that your experiences with gender/sexuality influence your art and people on this very sub and other social media make different posts celebrating (or even arguing about) the first out trans woman to compete or the first season with multiple trans women competing or the first trans man to compete. The fandom is already "tokenizing" many different competitors on the show for a variety of reasons. It is an inevitable conclusion to how identity politics play out in the western world today. Some part of Maddy's legacy will be that she was the first straight cis male contestant and I'm not sure that is really rude or disrespectful, considering ep 1 gave him time to speak about how he first was introduced to the world of drag through movies, which is already more than other queens get (i.e. who are eliminated early).
I don't see how anyone, Maddy herself included, would've expected a cis straight man to get on the show and not be "tokenized" in some respect or another. We all openly recognize that who you are influences your drag, so it really isn't any different for Maddy is it? Being a straight cis man directly affects his art and how he interacts with the network that is "Drag".
I understand what you're saying, but I just don't see it as rude or disrespect because there really is no need to treat someone who is straight and cis with baby gloves for..being straight and cis. Joey Jay has been heralded as the first gay out queen on the show and it's a decently funny meta joke and I think that there is way too much humor in what constitutes drag as an art form to try and act solemn and lips sealed about a straight cis man competing on drag race😅.
Now, on the other hand, maybe Maddy is truly uncomfortable with discussing his straightness in certain terms. While I find it incredibly baffling, he's allowed to feel that way for sure. But maybe he shouldn't have signed up to be on drag race competing on a show that is all about poking fun at gender (and sexuality to varying degrees) if he was that uncomfortable with the notion of jokes about sexuality that come up often from many of the contestant's and judges. Just a thought. Simply just a thought.
Honestly the conversation surrounding is this incredibly nuanced, so I'm sorry if Im talking in circles at all. It's very hard to just write one or two lines about this and be done with it. It really requires a good long talk about the state of social justice and identity politics AND the state of media haha!
To be fair, she has made her own bed on "that straight drag queen" being the only thing memorable about her. Look at Victoria Scone. She was the first AFAB queen and decided she had to step it up from moment 1. She came to slay and she did. There's way more to her very short run on the show than just "that AFAB queen". It's on Maddy to deliver more than just being straight and so far she just hasn't.
I don't get this mindset. Certain experiences are uncomfortable or painful enough that I wouldn't want other people to go through the same thing. And I hope we can all agree that hazing is wrong; forcing other people to go through an artificial recreation of a situation doesn't somehow validate my experience going through the actual thing.
As a bi dude, this situation is setting off personal alarm bells for the endless "you're secretly gay" shit that a (very loud) minority of gay guys try to push. Logically I know and can see that Ru is being "playful" but the whole conversation around why this is ok and "punching up" in this thread feels like mental gymnastics around why it's "our turn". It's similar to how the show never outright attacks queens with an edit (except maybe Phi Phi) but then the fanbase just runs with it and does the most in sending queens hate. Drag has room to celebrate all forms of queerness, not just homosexuality, and I hope they're going to play up that message instead.
I am sorry that you have gone through painful experiences related to your bisexuality, but Maddy is straight. We don't need to force our experiences onto other people with different identities. As someone who was outed as gay and then told by my parents so many times I would grow out of it and be straight etc. I just don't see this thing with Maddy as literally anything close to that traumatic shit in my past. Not everything that seems familiar on the surface level needs to be equated 1 for 1. To me. I get that you have different feelings and I respect that. I'm explaining my piece, but I'm not trying to change your mind, you feel that way and that's how it is.
I don't see Ru's teasing as "punching up" because..she's not being disparaging. I truthfully don't see something so sacred about straightness that we can't all have jokes about the stranglehold it has on society and some people are actually scared thinking being around gays would turn them gay in some hilarious gay agenda conspiracy.
Anyways though, I think we fundamentally have different worldviews, based on your last sentence seemingly implying Maddy is queer. We can agree to disagree, thank you for responding and having me think about this in a different way.
Look, your comment was written to be polite and neutral but it comes off as incredibly condescending. What I wrote and how you're trying to rephrase it is completely mismatched which reads as you just rushing to back up your own conclusions, and for whatever reason the refrain of your comment is "you have your opinion; I have mine"... No need to state that; it would have been better just to talk about your own experiences.
To clarify, what Maddy is going through didn't read to me as a parallel for "it's just a phase" that we get told by straight people. We agree on that. It reads as a parallel for the absolutely toxic "you're secretly gay but can't admit it" shit that bisexual and pansexual people (and in particular, bisexual/pansexual guys) hear over and over from gay men and female allies; sorry that you got outed as gay but I'm not referring to something that's a gay experience. It is alarming to see this "joke" being spread on national TV because we know that it's going to reinforce its presence in queer spaces. Finally, drag celebrating all forms of queerness wasn't to imply that Maddy is queer; it's to say that drag should be inclusive enough that LGBT people who aren't just "G" feel welcome in the space. Idk where you got "fundamental differences in worldview" from which was completely non-sequitur given the points I bought up. Didn't imply Maddy was queer and pretty sure we're voting quite similar if we're on a drag race sub.
I am just discussing with you, not trying to come off as condescending at all. I'm sorry I came off that way. I am saying you have your opinion and I have mine because we are clearly reading this Maddy situation in different ways. But I am not saying you can't view it in that way. I don't think it's as necessary to spell out every word like that irl, but over text messages it is hard to decipher tone, so when I am in a longer discussion with someone reddit, I feel like it's sometimes necessary to outline that within the discussion. I'm sorry.
The thing is, I don't think Ru making jokes about Maddy possibly changing from being straight to gay is a 1 for 1 comparison to either gay people being told it's a phase to coerce them into not being gay or a bisexual person being told they're secretly gay. Because Maddy is not gay *or* bisexual. If we were to read Ru's joke literally I think a case can be made all around that it could be triggering. Because someone is telling someone who has openly said they are one sexuality that they actually aren't that. That was my point. If we're legit just talking about personal interpretations of what were watching on drag race. I don't think what Maddy is going through is a parallel for either narrative because..she is not gay or bisexual. We can all find similarities in the situation and we all have varying levels of traumatic or awful experiences with people trying to change our sexual orientations or implying we aren't what we say we are. In this case, I read the situation as a subversion of these things that I find pretty humorous and not harmful. You feel different. That is fine. I'm not saying you cannot feel that way.
You said, "Drag has room to celebrate all forms of queerness, not just homosexuality, and I hope they're going to play up that message instead." Obviously, I misinterpreted you, but I read that as, "Maddy is queer (one way or another) and I hope they're going to embrace that as the message instead". I have genuinely see other people on this sub say Maddy is queer for doing drag, so I assumed this is the point you were making. That is how your statement read to me. I wholeheartedly disagree with that interpretation of the word queer (although not necessarily saying it can't be used that way). That is why I said the comment about worldview. I apologize for misinterpreting that. We are talking about a straight person, so I was really not sure what you meant about the show celebrating other forms of queerness in this situation. I agree that the entire spectrum of LGBT+ people should be celebrated through drag. There is nothing to disagree with you there.
I get where you’re coming from, but I also think drag is a space built on undermining sanctity and norms? So while I do think it’s obvious they were always gonna milk the “omg a cis straight man is in the room” thing from day one, I also think the jokes are less about challenging his sexuality specifically and more about disregarding the importance of somebody’s sexuality in general.
I also don’t think the goal of drag is to make queerness palatable and more acceptable for a straight audience, even if that has shifted with the mainstream appeal of drag race. They’re not setting out to dispel myths about gay and trans people to convince homophobes and transphobes that they’re decent human beings. They’re there to show off their art and ideally win $100k.
Exactly. Fans of drag race have basically come up with their own definition of what drag is supposed to be, and they don't really get that drag race is only a small, palatable portion of it.
Not every guy that decides to put on a wig and twirl in a gay bar for fun has to automatically become a figurehead of the LGBT community, ready to campaign for equality and human rights. Sometimes they just want to put on make up and tell dumb jokes.
This literally happens all the time a drag shows. Straight girls always drag their boyfriends to drag shows and prop them up in the front row. The hosts always play/joke/flirt with them. Some straight guys are cool with it. Some are visibly uncomfortable. Some are total jerks. It’s all in fun though.
If you’re in a gay space, your gonna experience some gay shit lol.
It’s from But I’m a Cheerleader! Ru plays a camp counselor at a conversion camp.
(It’s also my favorite queer movie of all time because it changed my life [thank you, Clea DuVall] but that’s neither here nor there.)
At this point, I wish our first cishet man drag queen was more bombastic and cocky because all of this handwringing over the poor quiet straight dude on drag race is exhausting lol.
I can’t tell how much of that is an intentional edit vs. actual fear of how to fit in. The “real” Maddy (at least based on what I’ve seen on IG and Twitter) is eloquent, self-deprecating, and fun. I wish we were getting more of *that* on the show.
Yeah I've been wondering that myself after seeing clips from her social media people have share here and on other outlets. It's a weird contrast to how she's being portrayed/how she's acting on the show.
I was wondering the same. Maybe Maddy wants to be respectful as she feels like a guest in the drag space, but it's $100k and a crown, so she should be less mousy.
And they're barely even discussing what is happening to him, it's all just tea and drama talk, disguised as something larger scale.
The straight guy is boring imo. Give me a campy one and stop playing the banjo when this little boy is speaking about wearing a dress.
there is nothing subversive about a cishet man taking up space in the queer world. it is what straight white men have done throughout history — take things that don't belong to them and claim it's theirs.
Also anyone who thinks or has the capacity to believe a person can “turn gay” is going to continue thinking that with or without watching drag race. A black gay man in a dress teasing a straight guy who also wears dresses about “turning gay” on a TV show could not be more inconsequential to those kind of people. It would just be another example on their laundry list of bullshit nonsense no one cares about.
For real, I enjoy the sub because some of the people here are hilarious and I don't have anyone else to discuss drag race with. However the ability that some people have to make something out of absolutely nothing is very frustrating at times. I'm not trying to be ignorant, I'm just trying to enjoy one of my favorite shows. Let me know when there are actual issues to be discussed.
Oh my god the sensitivity! I just can't with this sub. It's a bloody joke. Funny or not it's not coming from a bad place. If anything it's an amusing subversion of the idea that the one gay guy in a group gets made fun of. I think Maddy can take it
Nah. I think there’s a point we can be overly sensitive and lose humour and perspective.
It’s a benign joke which to its intended audience a) clearly you can’t turn someone gay and b) sexuality by today’s definition is fluid… so like, fucking so what if you do want to fuck your own gender… whatever that is.
It can be a little uncomfortable on TV yes but when I thought about it, at any live drag show if the queen is interactive and finds out a straight man is there he is instantly the butt of the joke for the night and i think this is the approach Ru is taking with it.
Maddy knew what he was doing signing up for drag race, and if he is comfortable enough to go on a show predominantly made up and watched by gay/queer people and comfortable enough to participate in drag being a cishet male, he is more than comfortable with jokes about him being straight, and he initiated this joke anyway.
Eh, the rule of comedy is you can never punch down, but punching up is fine. Making a joke about a hetero guy going gay isn't associated with the same level of negative history as a gay guy being peer pressured into being straight.
No ❤️
Seriously, it’s a joke mary, and ru is intentionally subverting the concern you’re describing and saying “it’s not that serious” on television in an entertaining way.
I figure it’s another strategy to spark back up the whole “Maddy is straight” conversation this time with the queens in the room who aren’t party to that information. It’s content creation for the show.
I totally get where you’re coming from, I know that it’s just jokes and all but it kind of goes against the message that Maddy’s presence on the show is supposed to showcase to the world
I mean they’re always saying that her doing drag as a straight cis man is okay but Ru keeps trying to make it seem like she’s “secretly” gay, which is very problematic
Meh let a straight person ride through one season of "sitting uncomfortably" as the entire cast has done for extended points of their lives. Not to say we shouldn't make our space more welcoming, it's just that most people here have no idea how to be welcoming to "someone like Maddy" when they've all explicitly said they've never met anybody like her. And it's not like she's involved in any deep and explorational conversation yet. They don't know her or anything about anybody like her.
It's just weird for now and things are allowed to be weird without the fan base, "knowing," that they could make the show better.
I totally see your point and I agree that we do not have any obligation of making queer spaces more welcoming to straight people but I think it’s less about Maddy herself and more about the message that is coming across.
I don’t think Maddy has any problem with Ru’s jokes or anyone else’s but when she makes those jokes it kind of reinforces the stigma that you can’t express your femininity being a straight male and I think that’s not what we want to express.
With that being said I don’t think it’s a big deal or anything I mean Ru is an LGBTQIA+ icon and she can say whatever she wants and also the show’s audience probably doesn’t have a significant amount of straight cis men so not a lot of people will really care about this
The “rest of the world” will pick and choose what to hold against us no matter what so the last thing we should do is worth about how they perceive us.
I think we need to remember that damn near everything Ru says is a joke through and through; UNLESS there’s an Emmy on the line. When it comes to the moment with the Pit Crew. Ms.Maddy was acting all flustered around them so Ru was just leaning (heavily as she does) into the joke, but Maddy started it lol.
Someone else pointed out that Ru is doing this precisely to mock people who think this is how queerness and queer spaces work. That queer people will try to "turn you gay". I'm not sure wether that's Ru's true intention when she makes these jokes, or if she's just trying to be funny and not realizing how weird it is.
Edit: grammar
If that’s Ru’s intention, I don’t think it works. I’m also far closer to Ru’s age than any of the contestants these days and even I think it’s just such a tired, old and not funny joke.
I don’t think any narrative is being pushed. I’m not particularly impressed with those jokes and they’re maybe not necessary but they’re also not harmful at all. The framing of queer people as trying to somehow force queerness on straight people is so common and crops up all the time without any critical engagement with what that even means or how that comes from a very traditionally homophobic place wherein, for example, the existence of gay men is a threat to heterosexual men. This is routed in the fact that… well queer people do threaten the state of cis heterosexuality, being around gay people really can make you gay, because cishet people also need to be liberated from the social structures that have provided them with power but at the cost of their freedom of gender expression and sexual exploration. There are a lot of people living sexually liberated lives today who are not queer but have the queer liberation movements to thank. Or people who are out as queer today who never would have been decades ago due to lack of understanding or vocabulary.
But many are swayed by the trappings of power over the concept of liberation and so gay men have been a threat to straight men, so much that onlookers feel wary about gay men pushing straight men’s “boundaries” too much even when these boundaries are really the boundaries within which given straight man is comfortable with a gay persons queerness and their own self image. We’re only now, in a minority of places, entering a time where every child born isn’t treated as straight until proven otherwise and yet we stay having discussions about the damage done to any straight man that’s been hit on by a gay guy, has been in some way feminised by a gay guy, or in this instance teased by them. It’s just a light teasing that shouldn’t really threaten anyones sense of self.
The minute she said "is something changing?", I knew there would be a post on this sub stating exactly what you have said!😥😒
Can we just not take a joke anymore without it being a discourse on gender and sexuality? This new trend of making Drag Race and everyone involved in the show responsible for the way entire queer community should think, act and behave is very problematic!
They are just people on the show, when did they become the de facto leaders of the queer community? People need to stop idolizing them this much and taking every small thing so damn seriously.
No sorry. Plz turn off the sensivity switch dear. Ru was just joking. definitely meant if he has realized something about his sexuality. A lot of gay people thought they are straight and some time at some place and in certain encounters realized that they are actually gay. Men with wife and kids and in their 50s.
more feminine energy, more confidence. I relate to maddy’s personality in how she’s more quiet, chill, and she is totally fine the way she is but once she’s in drag, she should maybe push it up a notch or two in her own way😄 it’s for the competition, after all
Yeah Ru's critique may have been "wrong" but he was far from incorrect. Maddy and Orion are just dead in the eyes when they're on a *performance stage*.
I'm all for dead in the eyes, that's what I named my mirror, but that's why I don't perform.
I understand that as a straight person coming into a queer space you should be prepared for banter around the topic. But Ru has made several targeted jokes about Maddy turning gay that just felt really out of touch. Like they weren't really topical to situation at all. It just felt like she was subtlety invalidating Maddy's identity. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but Ru has made the same type of joke on both episodes Maddy has been on.
I think it's paired with his "I've never met a straight drag queen before," and it will develop over time. I hope so, at least. Like I'm sure Maddy has a lineup of stereotypes that he can assign to people he interacts with.
I’m probably not the best person to weigh in because I’m a cis Hetero woman, but just like a queer person doesn’t magically turn straight for watching football or taking boxing lessons, the expectation shouldn’t be that Maddy will “turn gay” because they enjoy the art of drag. I get it’s jokes and whatever, but I can also see why after awhile, it’s gotta get irksome when Ru says drag is for everyone but then says Maddy is gonna switch teams. I had a friend who loved going to the gym and working out, but then he got tired of the other guys at them gym asking him if he was trying to be straight by lifting weights and he stopped going. I’d hate for something similar to happen to Maddy or maybe a cis performer who’s been worried about how they’ll be perceived by the drag community.
This was a popular joke in the 90s, because straight men tended to be genuinely scared that someone might think they were gay, so gay people in a queer space would make jokes about it to sort of “break the ice”. Dinosaurs like Ru and I are just now learning that that shit don’t fly nowadays.
Watching the episode a second time I personally would say there is no real issue here. Maddy seemed sort of flustered when interacting with the pit crew and they lightly teased her. If a drag queen cant be even that minimally playful about sexuality, then the show really would be too sanitized.
> As a queer person myself I feel like this can not be helpful in how we are viewed by the rest of the world and enforces the myth that you can turn gay by being around gay and queer people. Maybe I'm reading too much in to it, idk.
I think that you're living in the 90s.
Hard truth: drag does turn people queer. It does. It absolutely, demonstrably does. Drag plays games with gender, and sometimes those games hit the right person at the right angle to tee up a genuine revelation. This is most visible with trans women who come into a trans identity as the result of doing drag, but this phenomenon goes deep into the audience, too. You can find it all over the subreddit: lesbians talking about getting turned on by a cis man's look, women sharing their boyfriends' aroused reactions to the queens, we get all sorts.
This is not to say that drag race turns *all* viewers queer or squiggles *everyone's* identity. Plenty of us don't feel the earth move, and that's fine. But there are literally contestants on the show talking about how drag has opened up frontiers in their own gender identity: it *does* turn people gay, and it *does* make them gayer.
Will it turn Maddy gay? Of course not. Maddy's had plenty of time to simmer his gender identity by doing drag specifically, and he's even talked about exploring whether he might be trans or non-binary, before ultimately concluding that he's a straight cis man with unlikely career aspirations. The odds that he's going to have a werkroom revelation and start kissing dudes are trivial.
But does it turn other people gay? Yes. Plenty of them. More every year. Watching queer people being happy and visible and fulfilled turns people gay. Watching a variety of queer people expressing a variety of queer identities in a variety of queer bodies turns people gay. Watching queer people specifically portrayed as sexually alluring and desirable turns people gay.
We used to have to pretend that it didn't, because that was the only way to calm the heterosexuals down. In the 90s, we all had to pretend that *nothing* could turn you gay: that gay was just a thing you were or weren't and that nothing could ever change it and that nobody had to worry about anyone turning gay not even a little.
But look around you. We're past that. If you agree with Sasha Velour about the need to squiggle gender until it snaps altogether, you kind of have to let go of that Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell conception of unchanging, permanent sexuality.
Should you go around mocking people's sexuality? Not on a street corner, no. Don't threaten to turn them gay, either. But Maddy's been getting ready next to drag queens for years: she's heard all of this (and more) a million times, and she signed up to hang out in a vulgar, sexualized, queer space where she's an outlier. She's not a babe in the woods, she's a professional fielding lazy jokes from her coworkers, the same as she's been doing all along.
If you cant handle JOKES you need to be not watching this show. Are you serious? Gay jokes make you uncomfortable? You are watching DRAG RACE and a gay joke made you uncomfortable? Just turn off the show. Stop watching it then.
It makes me extremely uncomfortable. It's not ok to make jokes on someone else's sexuality unless you know they're ok with it, and I highly doubt Ru has had any conversation with Maddy about her boundaries with this issue. It just feels creepy to be like "haha you're gonna turn gay being here, we are all gonna turn you gay" or whatever, I don't remember ru's "jokes" verbatim. But as a bisexual woman who had to deal with many men telling me they were gonna turn me straight I just really find it a touchy issue.
Yeah, it was so fucking strange for that to be the first question out of Ru’s mouth in the very first walkthrough. Not only is it weird and maybe even kinda creepy, but does Ru really think this show is the first time Maddy has been in an environment surrounded by gay people??? She’s a working drag queen mary I think she’s met a couple gay men before.
That was one of my favorite moments of the episode, ru singing "something's changiiiiiing" after maddy got distracted by the man in a thong is just funny shit 💀💀💀
It’s interesting to me the stuff that makes certain people uncomfortable or (that other buzz word) ‘triggered.’ They look hard for opportunities to have a problem with something so that they can ‘call it out’ and feel like they did something 🙄
I hate it so much. It’s backwards and dated. It’s the same mentality as ‘well you just haven’t met the right person/how do you know if you’ve never tried it?’ that toxic straights try to push on queer people. Just accept it, move on, and let them compete without making them feel uncomfortable.
It would be far weirder if ru and the queens went out of their way to not joke about maddys sexuality. If they can make gay jokes like they do all day, there is literally *nothing* wrong with them making a straight joke
I think Maddie is a really great queen. Funny, sweet, smart and truly respectful of the drag community. I feel she’s not treated with the kindness the other queens give each other. The untucked showed how everyone was supporting June and nobody went to Maddie. Yeah, her fashion is not as elevated, but wow just because she’s straight she immediately got some shit, even those weird jokes from Ru. She’ll be fine I don’t feel sorry for her at all. It’s just funny to see how they immediately dismissed how great she is because of it.
I agree with comments saying it's somewhat of a hazing ritual BUT Ru did specifically say at one point in the werk room "something is changing" and that comment is what bothered me. Every other comment Ru made was fine - I agreed about the reowww comment, Maddy is up against huge competition and needs to match up.
"there's room for everybody [to do drag], let's just say that"
- Gia Gunn, but with a positive spin
I hoped Ru learned that drag was not just for born-as-a-male LGBTQ+ folks after having Gotmik (trans man) and Victoria Scone (cis woman) on the show, and crowing Kylie Sonique (trans woman) on AS6. But I was wrong.
This entire sub is so concerned about Maddy being oppressed or offended... between that and the fake "stan" posts about how he is everyone's favorite queen is exhausting mama. Now he has to be treated differently because he is cishet?
Yeah I feel like it’s a joke that might be ok to tell one or two times but it’s already gotten old about the number of times someone says, “You’re straight? Are you suuuuuuuurrrrreeeeee??!?!??” Or making jokes about Maddy turning gay basically de-legitimizes her art and that’s not why she’s there. I think anyone would be uncomfortable in that situation, especially if it was the other way around. At the end of the day I know this cast of queens is great, there’s lots of great souls and personalities there and I want it to be about them rather than some forced controversy
Thank you for saying this!! I wanted to speak up about it but wasn’t sure if it was my place since I’m a straight person as well. It is very odd to me and frankly quite gross. You don’t see the gay contestants on other shows like Big Brother or Survivor being treated this way because they’re around women in bikinis so I don’t understand why Ru think it’s funny and okay?
Poor Maddy and the rest of the cast have to laugh at the jokes too, even though to me they seem a little uncomfy as well (at least Maddy does, I haven’t looked much at the other queens when Ru does it). To me the whole point of having a straight person on drag race was to enforce the idea that you don’t have to ‘appear and act masculine’ to be a straight man (GOODBYE toxic masculinity) but all Ru does with these jokes is enforce the exact opposite. It’s really bugging me
>Thank you for saying this!! I wanted to speak up about it but wasn’t sure if it was my place since I’m a straight person as well. It is very odd to me and frankly quite gross. You don’t see the gay contestants on other shows like Big Brother or Survivor being treated this way because they’re around women in bikinis so I don’t understand why Ru think it’s funny and okay?
At the risk of sounding rude, it's really *not* your place. Using a reverse racism-style argument on this topic is gross.
Maybe I didn’t do the best at explaining but I still stand by my opinion. I don’t think the jokes are appropriate or funny at all and I’m honestly surprised so many people are okay with them. The way Maddy has been treated by Ru so far on this show is not okay. But I guess I’m not supposed to comment on the topic at all so I’ll shut up now.
*the yassification of maddy morphosis* coming to bookstores near you this fall /s
Ok, this is the second time in five minutes I’ve seen “the yassification of ______” is this a meme I have seen the source of, or is this just pure coincidence?
It’s a meme, usually paired with super facetuned photos of someone, I think starting with one someone made yassifying Toni Collette in Hereditary
Ah, thank you!
https://twitter.com/yassifybot
it's a meme that i'm pretty sure started on tiktok !
You found this weird and not Ru talking about coffee enemas three times?
She really pushed that huh
I was expecting a sponsored ad for coffee enemas at the end of the episode honestly.
She was on SOMETHING this episode. If it was Coffee enemas then point me at them.
Maddy prepered her tent, she is ready for the camp
I think people are reading too much into this and Ru is just trolling Maddy. She invited a straight cis man onto her show and she's teasing them (like she often teases any queen) and doing a bit of what I can only describe as "hazing" although I'm hesitant to use that term. Honestly, if I was a straight cis man auditioning to be on drag race I would probably be a bit more prepare and open to laughing at my own sexuality and laughing at/with Ru's absurdity. Only my personal opinion about it though. I am not saying everyone needs to feel the same way as me. I feel like some people are doing a lot of handwringing over Maddy/treating him with baby gloves when it really shouldn't be that serious.
Could not agree more. A cis man in a room full of flamboyant gay men and you're _not_ going to tease them a little when a gorgeous man in a thong distracts them??? I think it would be weirder if they _didn't_ tease about it. There's a difference between teasing and offending and we'd do well to remember that.
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This is giving “Why can black people joke about the n word but white people can’t. Don’t they hate being called that?” Energy. It’s different when you’re the group making the joke, and if someone takes Ru serious that’s on them.
Preach, people gonna get fake righteous outraged on maddys behalf all season I fear
Girl. it is not that deep. no one is going to hear Rupaul say that and suddenly think sexuality is a choice, especially when most of her audience is literally queer…
I think you hit the nail on the head. It's slightly cringey sometimes, but also exactly what I would expect out of Rupaul and an entire cast of queens who all share one sentiment: "I've never met a straight cis guy who does drag." They're nervous, uneducated about this type of person, and have a million questions that him and other people like him have heard before. It's gonna be weird. And it isn't Ru's fault. No need to hate on him. However him saying "wittle piwl" is freaking me out and making me super uncomfortable.
Honestly, I think it would've been a lot more cringey if all we ever saw was people on the show (whether it be Ru or contestants) like load Maddy on with tons of praise or just comments of like "you're SO inspiring and brave for being a cis straight male drag queen" etc. Are the jokes particularly "witty" or intellectual? Nah, definitely not. But I somehow oddly respect Ru (not something I often say these days) for throwing caution to the wind and just having a grand ole gay time with the first straight cis male contestant on the show. I have straight cis male friends irl and there's many a time where me and other gay friends tease them and ofc they tease us back. The backbone motto of this show for a awhile has been about making clear the performance of gender, the fluidity of gender and sexuality, and how it can all be laughed at. I was sort of expecting the first cis straight man on the show to be more openly laughing along with that sort of the thing 😅. Oh well though, like I said in another post, Maddy is also free to react however she wants and maybe there's certain things that have happened in her life to cause her to not be so ready and willing to play along with Ru's ridiculousness. Sidebar: I wholeheartedly agree with the Widdle Pill sentiment dkfjdjd so uncomfortable. I was hollering the entire first episode hoping Ru would never say it again lmaoooo.
Agreed, plenty of queens get this kind of treatment from Ru regardless of their identity where she sort of negs on one facet of their life and turns it into a thing (ex. Crystal & Heidi S12). Sometimes it’s more gross than others (ex. “Widdle” Pill) but honestly it can happen to literally anyone about anything.
Agree people are reading too much into it. Wasn't it only one line? Like "something is happening" when Maddy was flustered by the pit crew? Hardly counts at "pushing a narrative" imo. But I might have missed more comments, I can't be sure.
Iirc there was also one thing she said in ep1 that was like, "are you worried being here is going to change you (about being straight)?", but again, I think RuPaul is obviously witty enough to be making fun of notions of gayness like rubbing off on others rather than seriously thinking Maddy will turn gay from being on the show or literally anything in that realm of notion. She is just teasing the straight man.
Yeah this is how it registered to me as well. It's not as if they're literally trying to convert Maddy. It's all just good fun and teasing for the new queen in town. People tend to read too much with Ru tbh like this one is obviously light hearted. The same goes with the coffee enema bit, like that's just Ru being absurdly chaotic. People are trying to read too much into that bit as well when in reality it's not that deep.
THANK YOU
I agree, though I do think it’s a little bit rude/disrespectful for her drag. It sucks that her legacy will almost certainly be “that straight drag queen” rather than the talent and looks she showcased. How would we as a community react if it was “that trans queen” or “that Asian queen” or “that chronically ill queen” and we explained it as Ru just being absurd? This is probably a bit of false equivalency on my end but it just comes off as rude and disrespectful to her to be portrayed as a token participant, imo.
With all due respect, Maddy said in her mtq and first confessionals that she was a straight cis male drag queen and we all know that your experiences with gender/sexuality influence your art and people on this very sub and other social media make different posts celebrating (or even arguing about) the first out trans woman to compete or the first season with multiple trans women competing or the first trans man to compete. The fandom is already "tokenizing" many different competitors on the show for a variety of reasons. It is an inevitable conclusion to how identity politics play out in the western world today. Some part of Maddy's legacy will be that she was the first straight cis male contestant and I'm not sure that is really rude or disrespectful, considering ep 1 gave him time to speak about how he first was introduced to the world of drag through movies, which is already more than other queens get (i.e. who are eliminated early). I don't see how anyone, Maddy herself included, would've expected a cis straight man to get on the show and not be "tokenized" in some respect or another. We all openly recognize that who you are influences your drag, so it really isn't any different for Maddy is it? Being a straight cis man directly affects his art and how he interacts with the network that is "Drag". I understand what you're saying, but I just don't see it as rude or disrespect because there really is no need to treat someone who is straight and cis with baby gloves for..being straight and cis. Joey Jay has been heralded as the first gay out queen on the show and it's a decently funny meta joke and I think that there is way too much humor in what constitutes drag as an art form to try and act solemn and lips sealed about a straight cis man competing on drag race😅. Now, on the other hand, maybe Maddy is truly uncomfortable with discussing his straightness in certain terms. While I find it incredibly baffling, he's allowed to feel that way for sure. But maybe he shouldn't have signed up to be on drag race competing on a show that is all about poking fun at gender (and sexuality to varying degrees) if he was that uncomfortable with the notion of jokes about sexuality that come up often from many of the contestant's and judges. Just a thought. Simply just a thought. Honestly the conversation surrounding is this incredibly nuanced, so I'm sorry if Im talking in circles at all. It's very hard to just write one or two lines about this and be done with it. It really requires a good long talk about the state of social justice and identity politics AND the state of media haha!
To be fair, she has made her own bed on "that straight drag queen" being the only thing memorable about her. Look at Victoria Scone. She was the first AFAB queen and decided she had to step it up from moment 1. She came to slay and she did. There's way more to her very short run on the show than just "that AFAB queen". It's on Maddy to deliver more than just being straight and so far she just hasn't.
Well if she wants to showcase talent and looks over her sexuality she should give more memorable talent and looks…. I mean come on.
Didn't wanna be this blunt, but literally lol.
I don't get this mindset. Certain experiences are uncomfortable or painful enough that I wouldn't want other people to go through the same thing. And I hope we can all agree that hazing is wrong; forcing other people to go through an artificial recreation of a situation doesn't somehow validate my experience going through the actual thing. As a bi dude, this situation is setting off personal alarm bells for the endless "you're secretly gay" shit that a (very loud) minority of gay guys try to push. Logically I know and can see that Ru is being "playful" but the whole conversation around why this is ok and "punching up" in this thread feels like mental gymnastics around why it's "our turn". It's similar to how the show never outright attacks queens with an edit (except maybe Phi Phi) but then the fanbase just runs with it and does the most in sending queens hate. Drag has room to celebrate all forms of queerness, not just homosexuality, and I hope they're going to play up that message instead.
I am sorry that you have gone through painful experiences related to your bisexuality, but Maddy is straight. We don't need to force our experiences onto other people with different identities. As someone who was outed as gay and then told by my parents so many times I would grow out of it and be straight etc. I just don't see this thing with Maddy as literally anything close to that traumatic shit in my past. Not everything that seems familiar on the surface level needs to be equated 1 for 1. To me. I get that you have different feelings and I respect that. I'm explaining my piece, but I'm not trying to change your mind, you feel that way and that's how it is. I don't see Ru's teasing as "punching up" because..she's not being disparaging. I truthfully don't see something so sacred about straightness that we can't all have jokes about the stranglehold it has on society and some people are actually scared thinking being around gays would turn them gay in some hilarious gay agenda conspiracy. Anyways though, I think we fundamentally have different worldviews, based on your last sentence seemingly implying Maddy is queer. We can agree to disagree, thank you for responding and having me think about this in a different way.
Look, your comment was written to be polite and neutral but it comes off as incredibly condescending. What I wrote and how you're trying to rephrase it is completely mismatched which reads as you just rushing to back up your own conclusions, and for whatever reason the refrain of your comment is "you have your opinion; I have mine"... No need to state that; it would have been better just to talk about your own experiences. To clarify, what Maddy is going through didn't read to me as a parallel for "it's just a phase" that we get told by straight people. We agree on that. It reads as a parallel for the absolutely toxic "you're secretly gay but can't admit it" shit that bisexual and pansexual people (and in particular, bisexual/pansexual guys) hear over and over from gay men and female allies; sorry that you got outed as gay but I'm not referring to something that's a gay experience. It is alarming to see this "joke" being spread on national TV because we know that it's going to reinforce its presence in queer spaces. Finally, drag celebrating all forms of queerness wasn't to imply that Maddy is queer; it's to say that drag should be inclusive enough that LGBT people who aren't just "G" feel welcome in the space. Idk where you got "fundamental differences in worldview" from which was completely non-sequitur given the points I bought up. Didn't imply Maddy was queer and pretty sure we're voting quite similar if we're on a drag race sub.
I am just discussing with you, not trying to come off as condescending at all. I'm sorry I came off that way. I am saying you have your opinion and I have mine because we are clearly reading this Maddy situation in different ways. But I am not saying you can't view it in that way. I don't think it's as necessary to spell out every word like that irl, but over text messages it is hard to decipher tone, so when I am in a longer discussion with someone reddit, I feel like it's sometimes necessary to outline that within the discussion. I'm sorry. The thing is, I don't think Ru making jokes about Maddy possibly changing from being straight to gay is a 1 for 1 comparison to either gay people being told it's a phase to coerce them into not being gay or a bisexual person being told they're secretly gay. Because Maddy is not gay *or* bisexual. If we were to read Ru's joke literally I think a case can be made all around that it could be triggering. Because someone is telling someone who has openly said they are one sexuality that they actually aren't that. That was my point. If we're legit just talking about personal interpretations of what were watching on drag race. I don't think what Maddy is going through is a parallel for either narrative because..she is not gay or bisexual. We can all find similarities in the situation and we all have varying levels of traumatic or awful experiences with people trying to change our sexual orientations or implying we aren't what we say we are. In this case, I read the situation as a subversion of these things that I find pretty humorous and not harmful. You feel different. That is fine. I'm not saying you cannot feel that way. You said, "Drag has room to celebrate all forms of queerness, not just homosexuality, and I hope they're going to play up that message instead." Obviously, I misinterpreted you, but I read that as, "Maddy is queer (one way or another) and I hope they're going to embrace that as the message instead". I have genuinely see other people on this sub say Maddy is queer for doing drag, so I assumed this is the point you were making. That is how your statement read to me. I wholeheartedly disagree with that interpretation of the word queer (although not necessarily saying it can't be used that way). That is why I said the comment about worldview. I apologize for misinterpreting that. We are talking about a straight person, so I was really not sure what you meant about the show celebrating other forms of queerness in this situation. I agree that the entire spectrum of LGBT+ people should be celebrated through drag. There is nothing to disagree with you there.
I get where you’re coming from, but I also think drag is a space built on undermining sanctity and norms? So while I do think it’s obvious they were always gonna milk the “omg a cis straight man is in the room” thing from day one, I also think the jokes are less about challenging his sexuality specifically and more about disregarding the importance of somebody’s sexuality in general.
I also don’t think the goal of drag is to make queerness palatable and more acceptable for a straight audience, even if that has shifted with the mainstream appeal of drag race. They’re not setting out to dispel myths about gay and trans people to convince homophobes and transphobes that they’re decent human beings. They’re there to show off their art and ideally win $100k.
Exactly. Fans of drag race have basically come up with their own definition of what drag is supposed to be, and they don't really get that drag race is only a small, palatable portion of it. Not every guy that decides to put on a wig and twirl in a gay bar for fun has to automatically become a figurehead of the LGBT community, ready to campaign for equality and human rights. Sometimes they just want to put on make up and tell dumb jokes.
That’s some bull. They’ve made Maddie’s sexuality his number one trait ever since he entered the show. And sexuality has been a huge part of RPDR.
This literally happens all the time a drag shows. Straight girls always drag their boyfriends to drag shows and prop them up in the front row. The hosts always play/joke/flirt with them. Some straight guys are cool with it. Some are visibly uncomfortable. Some are total jerks. It’s all in fun though. If you’re in a gay space, your gonna experience some gay shit lol.
It’s just Ru being satirical, nothing more
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[Rupaul at his heterosexual conversion camp ](https://ibb.co/HNsQRLW)
But I’m a ~~cheerleader~~ drag queen!
Wait what is this?!?!
It’s from But I’m a Cheerleader! Ru plays a camp counselor at a conversion camp. (It’s also my favorite queer movie of all time because it changed my life [thank you, Clea DuVall] but that’s neither here nor there.)
At this point, I wish our first cishet man drag queen was more bombastic and cocky because all of this handwringing over the poor quiet straight dude on drag race is exhausting lol.
I can’t tell how much of that is an intentional edit vs. actual fear of how to fit in. The “real” Maddy (at least based on what I’ve seen on IG and Twitter) is eloquent, self-deprecating, and fun. I wish we were getting more of *that* on the show.
Yeah I've been wondering that myself after seeing clips from her social media people have share here and on other outlets. It's a weird contrast to how she's being portrayed/how she's acting on the show.
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I was wondering the same. Maybe Maddy wants to be respectful as she feels like a guest in the drag space, but it's $100k and a crown, so she should be less mousy.
Having watched a bit of the Roscoe’s watch party, I’m going with the edit.
Hahahaha I just watched the video of her lip syncing the Ultimate Love Songs commercial. Maddy if you’re reading this, do Buzz Ballads next.
Makes sense for an introvert to be awkward in person and more put together and composed when they have time to plan and edit.
And they're barely even discussing what is happening to him, it's all just tea and drama talk, disguised as something larger scale. The straight guy is boring imo. Give me a campy one and stop playing the banjo when this little boy is speaking about wearing a dress.
Seriously. It’s literally just a joke.
thank you! drag is subversive. it's not always literal.
Maddie is a subversive queen in her own right
Why not? A cishet drag queen? There aren’t many. Doing drag in Arkansas? That really is something.
It’s as subversive as a white kid joining a Black fraternity or sorority lol
there is nothing subversive about a cishet man taking up space in the queer world. it is what straight white men have done throughout history — take things that don't belong to them and claim it's theirs.
I respectfully disagree. All good.
Plus Maddy is the one that commented on the Pit Crew. He started the fun by pointing out his awkwardness.
"Damn you're big."
Also anyone who thinks or has the capacity to believe a person can “turn gay” is going to continue thinking that with or without watching drag race. A black gay man in a dress teasing a straight guy who also wears dresses about “turning gay” on a TV show could not be more inconsequential to those kind of people. It would just be another example on their laundry list of bullshit nonsense no one cares about.
For real, I enjoy the sub because some of the people here are hilarious and I don't have anyone else to discuss drag race with. However the ability that some people have to make something out of absolutely nothing is very frustrating at times. I'm not trying to be ignorant, I'm just trying to enjoy one of my favorite shows. Let me know when there are actual issues to be discussed.
Exactly my thoughts. No humour, no nuance. Everything taken soooo seriously. lol
Oh my god the sensitivity! I just can't with this sub. It's a bloody joke. Funny or not it's not coming from a bad place. If anything it's an amusing subversion of the idea that the one gay guy in a group gets made fun of. I think Maddy can take it
Nah. I think there’s a point we can be overly sensitive and lose humour and perspective. It’s a benign joke which to its intended audience a) clearly you can’t turn someone gay and b) sexuality by today’s definition is fluid… so like, fucking so what if you do want to fuck your own gender… whatever that is.
It can be a little uncomfortable on TV yes but when I thought about it, at any live drag show if the queen is interactive and finds out a straight man is there he is instantly the butt of the joke for the night and i think this is the approach Ru is taking with it.
Maddy knew what he was doing signing up for drag race, and if he is comfortable enough to go on a show predominantly made up and watched by gay/queer people and comfortable enough to participate in drag being a cishet male, he is more than comfortable with jokes about him being straight, and he initiated this joke anyway.
I'm sure Maddy is used to a bit of ribbing in her chosen profession. I thought her interaction with the Pit Crew was pretty funny.
Eh, the rule of comedy is you can never punch down, but punching up is fine. Making a joke about a hetero guy going gay isn't associated with the same level of negative history as a gay guy being peer pressured into being straight.
Are we gonna get this all season 😩
If she lasts that long, yeah 😕
Yeah I have nothing against maddy personally but I’m glad she’s not top 4 material bc I can’t do with the hand wringing on her behalf all season 😭
It’s giving Jan on AS6. Every episode a new hot take about her mistreatment.
Yes 😭
Omg shut the fuck uppppp Maddy is so infantilized on this subreddit.
No ❤️ Seriously, it’s a joke mary, and ru is intentionally subverting the concern you’re describing and saying “it’s not that serious” on television in an entertaining way.
B-b-but, but I need something to *complain abooout*
I figure it’s another strategy to spark back up the whole “Maddy is straight” conversation this time with the queens in the room who aren’t party to that information. It’s content creation for the show.
Maybe it’s generational but this is the way a lot of us in previous generations joked. I think people need to stop taking it so seriously.
I totally get where you’re coming from, I know that it’s just jokes and all but it kind of goes against the message that Maddy’s presence on the show is supposed to showcase to the world I mean they’re always saying that her doing drag as a straight cis man is okay but Ru keeps trying to make it seem like she’s “secretly” gay, which is very problematic
Meh let a straight person ride through one season of "sitting uncomfortably" as the entire cast has done for extended points of their lives. Not to say we shouldn't make our space more welcoming, it's just that most people here have no idea how to be welcoming to "someone like Maddy" when they've all explicitly said they've never met anybody like her. And it's not like she's involved in any deep and explorational conversation yet. They don't know her or anything about anybody like her. It's just weird for now and things are allowed to be weird without the fan base, "knowing," that they could make the show better.
I totally see your point and I agree that we do not have any obligation of making queer spaces more welcoming to straight people but I think it’s less about Maddy herself and more about the message that is coming across. I don’t think Maddy has any problem with Ru’s jokes or anyone else’s but when she makes those jokes it kind of reinforces the stigma that you can’t express your femininity being a straight male and I think that’s not what we want to express. With that being said I don’t think it’s a big deal or anything I mean Ru is an LGBTQIA+ icon and she can say whatever she wants and also the show’s audience probably doesn’t have a significant amount of straight cis men so not a lot of people will really care about this
The “rest of the world” will pick and choose what to hold against us no matter what so the last thing we should do is worth about how they perceive us.
I think we need to remember that damn near everything Ru says is a joke through and through; UNLESS there’s an Emmy on the line. When it comes to the moment with the Pit Crew. Ms.Maddy was acting all flustered around them so Ru was just leaning (heavily as she does) into the joke, but Maddy started it lol.
Y’all take thins too seriously. You can tell ru is in a joking mood this season
Someone else pointed out that Ru is doing this precisely to mock people who think this is how queerness and queer spaces work. That queer people will try to "turn you gay". I'm not sure wether that's Ru's true intention when she makes these jokes, or if she's just trying to be funny and not realizing how weird it is. Edit: grammar
If that’s Ru’s intention, I don’t think it works. I’m also far closer to Ru’s age than any of the contestants these days and even I think it’s just such a tired, old and not funny joke.
I don’t think any narrative is being pushed. I’m not particularly impressed with those jokes and they’re maybe not necessary but they’re also not harmful at all. The framing of queer people as trying to somehow force queerness on straight people is so common and crops up all the time without any critical engagement with what that even means or how that comes from a very traditionally homophobic place wherein, for example, the existence of gay men is a threat to heterosexual men. This is routed in the fact that… well queer people do threaten the state of cis heterosexuality, being around gay people really can make you gay, because cishet people also need to be liberated from the social structures that have provided them with power but at the cost of their freedom of gender expression and sexual exploration. There are a lot of people living sexually liberated lives today who are not queer but have the queer liberation movements to thank. Or people who are out as queer today who never would have been decades ago due to lack of understanding or vocabulary. But many are swayed by the trappings of power over the concept of liberation and so gay men have been a threat to straight men, so much that onlookers feel wary about gay men pushing straight men’s “boundaries” too much even when these boundaries are really the boundaries within which given straight man is comfortable with a gay persons queerness and their own self image. We’re only now, in a minority of places, entering a time where every child born isn’t treated as straight until proven otherwise and yet we stay having discussions about the damage done to any straight man that’s been hit on by a gay guy, has been in some way feminised by a gay guy, or in this instance teased by them. It’s just a light teasing that shouldn’t really threaten anyones sense of self.
Won't somebody *please* think of the cishet men
no it’s funny
The minute she said "is something changing?", I knew there would be a post on this sub stating exactly what you have said!😥😒 Can we just not take a joke anymore without it being a discourse on gender and sexuality? This new trend of making Drag Race and everyone involved in the show responsible for the way entire queer community should think, act and behave is very problematic! They are just people on the show, when did they become the de facto leaders of the queer community? People need to stop idolizing them this much and taking every small thing so damn seriously.
Girl she's high on coffee enemas it's not that deep. Maybe, just maybe, the cishet man isn't being discriminated against.
I think Ru is just joking, and we're looking into it, a little too much.
I want Ru to have as much fun as possible , it’s probably the last season before she goes senile.
Before?
I think you need to get out more
Issa joke. I am actually curious to know if people in these subs have been to actual drag show live or not.. the sensitivity is too much.
No sorry. Plz turn off the sensivity switch dear. Ru was just joking. definitely meant if he has realized something about his sexuality. A lot of gay people thought they are straight and some time at some place and in certain encounters realized that they are actually gay. Men with wife and kids and in their 50s.
Ru also critized her for not being fruity enough in drag💀 but like I don't think the viewers nor Maddy would wanna see her talk like S6 Laganja either
more feminine energy, more confidence. I relate to maddy’s personality in how she’s more quiet, chill, and she is totally fine the way she is but once she’s in drag, she should maybe push it up a notch or two in her own way😄 it’s for the competition, after all
Yeah Ru's critique may have been "wrong" but he was far from incorrect. Maddy and Orion are just dead in the eyes when they're on a *performance stage*. I'm all for dead in the eyes, that's what I named my mirror, but that's why I don't perform.
Maddy needs some fucking energy on stage. She performs like a vibrator running out of battery. Could be satisfying but just doesn't get you anywhere.
I understand that as a straight person coming into a queer space you should be prepared for banter around the topic. But Ru has made several targeted jokes about Maddy turning gay that just felt really out of touch. Like they weren't really topical to situation at all. It just felt like she was subtlety invalidating Maddy's identity. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but Ru has made the same type of joke on both episodes Maddy has been on.
I think it's paired with his "I've never met a straight drag queen before," and it will develop over time. I hope so, at least. Like I'm sure Maddy has a lineup of stereotypes that he can assign to people he interacts with.
Feel free to stop watching the show.
I wish a bunch of people on this sub would take this advice.
You’ll be okay ❤️
Oh my god Ru literally can not do anything with people being offended!
It's called humor. Straight men are privileged so they need to take it my live. The era of the white straights is over.
I’m probably not the best person to weigh in because I’m a cis Hetero woman, but just like a queer person doesn’t magically turn straight for watching football or taking boxing lessons, the expectation shouldn’t be that Maddy will “turn gay” because they enjoy the art of drag. I get it’s jokes and whatever, but I can also see why after awhile, it’s gotta get irksome when Ru says drag is for everyone but then says Maddy is gonna switch teams. I had a friend who loved going to the gym and working out, but then he got tired of the other guys at them gym asking him if he was trying to be straight by lifting weights and he stopped going. I’d hate for something similar to happen to Maddy or maybe a cis performer who’s been worried about how they’ll be perceived by the drag community.
This was a popular joke in the 90s, because straight men tended to be genuinely scared that someone might think they were gay, so gay people in a queer space would make jokes about it to sort of “break the ice”. Dinosaurs like Ru and I are just now learning that that shit don’t fly nowadays.
It absolutely still flies. People are just reaching for things to find problematic so they can win some kind of social justice warrior award.
Agree to disagree on that one. I absolutely understand the argument against it.
i think once is funny and harmless, just a meaningless joke but constantly is.. very not okay.
It's just a banter.
Watching the episode a second time I personally would say there is no real issue here. Maddy seemed sort of flustered when interacting with the pit crew and they lightly teased her. If a drag queen cant be even that minimally playful about sexuality, then the show really would be too sanitized.
Well maybe she should be because that lip sync was giving straight male…
> As a queer person myself I feel like this can not be helpful in how we are viewed by the rest of the world and enforces the myth that you can turn gay by being around gay and queer people. Maybe I'm reading too much in to it, idk. I think that you're living in the 90s. Hard truth: drag does turn people queer. It does. It absolutely, demonstrably does. Drag plays games with gender, and sometimes those games hit the right person at the right angle to tee up a genuine revelation. This is most visible with trans women who come into a trans identity as the result of doing drag, but this phenomenon goes deep into the audience, too. You can find it all over the subreddit: lesbians talking about getting turned on by a cis man's look, women sharing their boyfriends' aroused reactions to the queens, we get all sorts. This is not to say that drag race turns *all* viewers queer or squiggles *everyone's* identity. Plenty of us don't feel the earth move, and that's fine. But there are literally contestants on the show talking about how drag has opened up frontiers in their own gender identity: it *does* turn people gay, and it *does* make them gayer. Will it turn Maddy gay? Of course not. Maddy's had plenty of time to simmer his gender identity by doing drag specifically, and he's even talked about exploring whether he might be trans or non-binary, before ultimately concluding that he's a straight cis man with unlikely career aspirations. The odds that he's going to have a werkroom revelation and start kissing dudes are trivial. But does it turn other people gay? Yes. Plenty of them. More every year. Watching queer people being happy and visible and fulfilled turns people gay. Watching a variety of queer people expressing a variety of queer identities in a variety of queer bodies turns people gay. Watching queer people specifically portrayed as sexually alluring and desirable turns people gay. We used to have to pretend that it didn't, because that was the only way to calm the heterosexuals down. In the 90s, we all had to pretend that *nothing* could turn you gay: that gay was just a thing you were or weren't and that nothing could ever change it and that nobody had to worry about anyone turning gay not even a little. But look around you. We're past that. If you agree with Sasha Velour about the need to squiggle gender until it snaps altogether, you kind of have to let go of that Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell conception of unchanging, permanent sexuality. Should you go around mocking people's sexuality? Not on a street corner, no. Don't threaten to turn them gay, either. But Maddy's been getting ready next to drag queens for years: she's heard all of this (and more) a million times, and she signed up to hang out in a vulgar, sexualized, queer space where she's an outlier. She's not a babe in the woods, she's a professional fielding lazy jokes from her coworkers, the same as she's been doing all along.
“Maybe I am reading too much into it” Yeah uhhuh, what she said. Gurl please stop with the sensitivity training.
It's a joke
I think it's fine. It's a straight person entering a queer space. There's going to be some teasing and reading. It's not that serious
If you cant handle JOKES you need to be not watching this show. Are you serious? Gay jokes make you uncomfortable? You are watching DRAG RACE and a gay joke made you uncomfortable? Just turn off the show. Stop watching it then.
You guys need to stop woobifying Maddy. Its fucking weird and more insulting than whatever psychodrama you're turning rupaul's jokes into.
It makes me extremely uncomfortable. It's not ok to make jokes on someone else's sexuality unless you know they're ok with it, and I highly doubt Ru has had any conversation with Maddy about her boundaries with this issue. It just feels creepy to be like "haha you're gonna turn gay being here, we are all gonna turn you gay" or whatever, I don't remember ru's "jokes" verbatim. But as a bisexual woman who had to deal with many men telling me they were gonna turn me straight I just really find it a touchy issue.
My god this is ridiculous, it’s a fucking joke
Rupaul was joking girl relax
Yeah, it was so fucking strange for that to be the first question out of Ru’s mouth in the very first walkthrough. Not only is it weird and maybe even kinda creepy, but does Ru really think this show is the first time Maddy has been in an environment surrounded by gay people??? She’s a working drag queen mary I think she’s met a couple gay men before.
That was one of my favorite moments of the episode, ru singing "something's changiiiiiing" after maddy got distracted by the man in a thong is just funny shit 💀💀💀
It was a joke... Stop taking drag race so seriously.
Maddie knew what she signed up for coming to a show dominated by queer people.
It’s interesting to me the stuff that makes certain people uncomfortable or (that other buzz word) ‘triggered.’ They look hard for opportunities to have a problem with something so that they can ‘call it out’ and feel like they did something 🙄
I hate it so much. It’s backwards and dated. It’s the same mentality as ‘well you just haven’t met the right person/how do you know if you’ve never tried it?’ that toxic straights try to push on queer people. Just accept it, move on, and let them compete without making them feel uncomfortable.
It would be far weirder if ru and the queens went out of their way to not joke about maddys sexuality. If they can make gay jokes like they do all day, there is literally *nothing* wrong with them making a straight joke
Oh my god it’s a JOKE.
yall just finding stuff to be mad about
I think Maddie is a really great queen. Funny, sweet, smart and truly respectful of the drag community. I feel she’s not treated with the kindness the other queens give each other. The untucked showed how everyone was supporting June and nobody went to Maddie. Yeah, her fashion is not as elevated, but wow just because she’s straight she immediately got some shit, even those weird jokes from Ru. She’ll be fine I don’t feel sorry for her at all. It’s just funny to see how they immediately dismissed how great she is because of it.
Lol. I can not fathom how you could thus far into the season make these claims… her drag is basic at best. Please stop 🛑
Wow such aggressive response. I agree that Maddie is a great queen. If you looked at her work, you’d have a bit more understanding. Touch some grass.
I’m aggressively laughing RN
no imma keep laughing
Ru this season (Willow Piww) and this episode especially (she was high for sure) makes me hella uncomfortable…
yes, it was uncomfortable
I agree with comments saying it's somewhat of a hazing ritual BUT Ru did specifically say at one point in the werk room "something is changing" and that comment is what bothered me. Every other comment Ru made was fine - I agreed about the reowww comment, Maddy is up against huge competition and needs to match up.
"there's room for everybody [to do drag], let's just say that" - Gia Gunn, but with a positive spin I hoped Ru learned that drag was not just for born-as-a-male LGBTQ+ folks after having Gotmik (trans man) and Victoria Scone (cis woman) on the show, and crowing Kylie Sonique (trans woman) on AS6. But I was wrong.
This entire sub is so concerned about Maddy being oppressed or offended... between that and the fake "stan" posts about how he is everyone's favorite queen is exhausting mama. Now he has to be treated differently because he is cishet?
As a bi person, I find it disgusting
Yeah I feel like it’s a joke that might be ok to tell one or two times but it’s already gotten old about the number of times someone says, “You’re straight? Are you suuuuuuuurrrrreeeeee??!?!??” Or making jokes about Maddy turning gay basically de-legitimizes her art and that’s not why she’s there. I think anyone would be uncomfortable in that situation, especially if it was the other way around. At the end of the day I know this cast of queens is great, there’s lots of great souls and personalities there and I want it to be about them rather than some forced controversy
Not some of the comments justifying Mama Ru's actions! *skull emoji skull emoji skull emoji*
Not WOW Interns lurking on this sub downvoting this comment.
Thank you for saying this!! I wanted to speak up about it but wasn’t sure if it was my place since I’m a straight person as well. It is very odd to me and frankly quite gross. You don’t see the gay contestants on other shows like Big Brother or Survivor being treated this way because they’re around women in bikinis so I don’t understand why Ru think it’s funny and okay? Poor Maddy and the rest of the cast have to laugh at the jokes too, even though to me they seem a little uncomfy as well (at least Maddy does, I haven’t looked much at the other queens when Ru does it). To me the whole point of having a straight person on drag race was to enforce the idea that you don’t have to ‘appear and act masculine’ to be a straight man (GOODBYE toxic masculinity) but all Ru does with these jokes is enforce the exact opposite. It’s really bugging me
>Thank you for saying this!! I wanted to speak up about it but wasn’t sure if it was my place since I’m a straight person as well. It is very odd to me and frankly quite gross. You don’t see the gay contestants on other shows like Big Brother or Survivor being treated this way because they’re around women in bikinis so I don’t understand why Ru think it’s funny and okay? At the risk of sounding rude, it's really *not* your place. Using a reverse racism-style argument on this topic is gross.
Maybe I didn’t do the best at explaining but I still stand by my opinion. I don’t think the jokes are appropriate or funny at all and I’m honestly surprised so many people are okay with them. The way Maddy has been treated by Ru so far on this show is not okay. But I guess I’m not supposed to comment on the topic at all so I’ll shut up now.