Yvie Oddly eviscerates Republican lawmaker who called her drag show ‘woke and perverted’
Oklahoma state representative Justin Humphries is not a fan of the ‘woke and perverted’ icon Yvie Oddly. (credit: Getty / Oklahoma Legislative Service Bureau / PinkNewS)
RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Yvie Oddly has expertly shut down a bigoted Republican legislator who took issue with her performing as part of a university drag show.
Oddly, who won season 11 of Drag Race and went on to compete in the all-winners season All Stars 7, headlined The University of Oklahoma’s annual drag show, Crimson & Queens, on 28 April.
While the university described the event as one of its most popular, Oklahoma state representative Justin Humphries failed to see the fun side, and got himself so worked up that he demanded the university’s president be “instantly terminated” from his role.
Speaking to Fox25 about the university’s president Joseph Harroz Jr., Humphires said: “I’m gonna call on other legislators, I’m calling on the governor. Let’s fire him today.
“I openly oppose it and feel it is perverse,” he said of the drag show, adding that “the school seems to have lost their moral compass and they’re pushing a woke and perverted agenda”.
Humphries seemed to suggest that his biggest issue with the performance was that Yvie Oddly was reportedly paid a $18,000 fee, which he felt could have been instead spent on “scholarships” or “cancer research”.
However, considering that Humphries has made anti-trans comments throughout his political career – including suggesting that trans people have a mental illness, and saying he’d rather his children watch chickens kill each other than see a drag queen perform – it’s unlikely his biggest issue was the money spent.
Never one to let a right-wing zealot walk over them, Yvie Oddly has shared exactly what she thinks of Humphries’ attempt at belittling her.
Writing in a statement on Twitter, Yvie said that Humphrey was furious that she was paid more than the university’s football coach, and that “he and his lil friends are upset I got paid at all because to them I’m a ‘pervert'”.
“It’s ludicrous that any lawmaker would be this deeply concerned with how student groups choose to spend their budgets,” Yvie continued, noting how the show was paid for by student activity fees, rather than state student tuition funds.
“I’m an openly queer celebrity, meaning I’ve never been paid as much as my straight counterparts,” she added, suggesting that graduation speakers are paid far more to stand behind a microphone, while she had to create an outfit and conduct a whole live performance.
She then went on to outline exactly why Republicans are concerned with the cost of her performance, and not the cost of other speakers.
“Because I’m a drag queen. Because my very existence is just a hot-button issue right now. Because there are people who are truly scared of how I dress, who I love, and what bathrooms I use,” she wrote, referring to the number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills being pushed forward in states across the US.
“But mostly because politicians see that social fear as an easy way to rile up their constituents and win another term. They’d rather control people they don’t understand instead of focusing on the difficult, life-threatening issues they’ve been unable to fix.”
In a follow up tweet, Yvie reminded her followers that Oaklahomo – which Humphries and his fellow Republican lawmakers have control over – currently ranks in the bottom half of all 50 US states when it comes to education, healthcare, crime, the economy and more.
“Like how much of his taxpayer’s money does he make per day to ignore their actual issues? At least I actually do the job I’m paid for,” she savagely rounded off.
In March, Tennessee became the first state to outlaw public drag performances. In February, Oklahoma Republican state representative Kevin West put forward bill 2186 which would criminalise drag shows that are considered “harmful to minors”.
