Drag Race UK’s Sum Ting Wong reveals emotional response from her parents after she came out
Sum Ting Wong. (BBC)
Drag Race UK queen Sum Ting Wong has given fans an update after revealing on the show that she hadn’t come out to her parents.
In the second episode of the BBC series, the Birmingham-born queen – whose family are of Chinese and Vietnamese heritage – confided that she hadn’t yet come out to her parents as gay or as a drag queen.
“I don’t have the heart to tell them,” she said. “I think it’s a cultural thing.”
Speaking to Vinegar Strokes and Scaredy Kat, Sum Ting said she’d approached the subject with her father aged 12, “but he just didn’t acknowledge it.”
“We haven’t brought it up since,” she said.
“They don’t know I’m a drag queen, they don’t know that I’m gay, they don’t know that I live with my partner of five years.”
After the emotional scenes aired, Sum Ting revisited the topic on Instagram.
She called the episode was “the hardest to watch”, and said that her family situation is something that “unless [she’s] pressed to talk about, [she] rarely brings up”.
“I didn’t ever properly come out to my parents,” she wrote.
“Growing up in a traditional Oriental household, I always knew I was a little different, but being the first son of a first generation Chinese/Viet household I felt I had the world on my shoulders and a responsibility to be the ‘perfect son’.
“My dad always told me: ‘You and your brothers are like a train, you are the oldest and you are the front of the train, and I you veer off course, your brothers will too.’
“So I always felt I had a responsibility to be normal, to be exactly what my parents wanted for me, but that just wasn’t the case.”
For years, Sum Ting felt as though her sexuality would “be the straw that broke the camel’s back” and lose her the respect of her parents.
She had resigned herself to the fact that she would never come out to them for as long as she lived.
“All my success, all my achievements, my partner who I love dearly, hidden forever.”
But after being thrust into the spotlight by Drag Race UK, Sum Ting took the opportunity to be honest with her parents.
“My mother always guessed I was, but never asked out of respect for me (she’s not stupid lol).”
Though the experience “has been tough,” Sum Ting said that her parents have said they love her for who she is.
“My dad said: ‘You are a big man, you have the courage to tell me you are gay. I have a gay son. I don’t care.
“‘And if anyone says “your son is gay” I don’t care, because I love you, you are the best son, my first son, my favourite son.'”
As she shared her story on National Coming Out Day, Sum Ting Wong said she hoped her experience would help “some out out there watching [who] is in the same situation as me”.
“You don’t need to rush it, but in time everything happens for a reason.”
