Drag Race star Amanda Tori Meating comes out as trans
Amanda Tori Meating, star of RuPaul’s Drag Race season 16. (MTV/World of Wonder/YouTube)
RuPaul’s Drag Race season 16 contestant and meme queen Amanda Tori Meating has come out as trans, explaining that she has to do “what’s right” for herself.
Amanda, who has swiftly become a fan favourite on the current season of Drag Race thanks to her iconic clap-backs and goofy attitude, explained that her journey on the reality series, and the process of navigating a divorce, enabled her to step into her true self.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly’s Quick Drag podcast, the 27-year-old drag star explained that her divorce was partly the result of her partner refusing to accept her “gender exploration journey”.
She spent several years identifying as non-binary, before ultimately deciding that she felt most comfortable referring to herself as trans.
Sadly, her partner “didn’t want to be with a trans person” and Amanda had to leave the relationship.
“I was in a bad place about it, mentally, for a while, but you get to a point where you’re like, I have to do what’s right for me, and that involved getting out of that [relationship],” she explained.
“I showed up to Drag Race in this space of, I’m going to advocate for myself, I’m going to stand up for myself, I’m not going to allow myself to be victimised in the way that I feel like I have been in the past, pre-Drag Race.”
Amanda shared that being around her fellow drag stars, who all called her Amanda rather than her birth name, enabled her to feel comfortable in the “reformation” of her gender identity.
She went on to explain that going from a space of being referred to as Amanda and with she/her pronouns, to people using her government name and male pronouns once the show had filmed and she was back home, was “jarring”.
“I was like, this is very much not correct for me. That experience helped push me out of the nest a little bit and crack the egg,” Amanda said.
She further explained that she is comfortable referring to herself as a “t-girl” for the time being, as using the term “trans woman” is “an achievement that [she’s] yet to score”.
Amanda Tori Meating joins a number of RuPaul’s Drag Race alumni to come out as trans in past months and years, including most recently, Madame LaQueer, Jade Jolie, Farrah Moan, and Adore Delano.
RuPaul’s Drag Race continues on MTV and WOW Presents Plus every Friday evening.
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