Bianca Del Rio has gotten into some trouble over a rape joke and now she’s defended herself, kinda, sort of… not really.
The first thing you need to know about Bianca Del Rio, apart from she is one of the funniest insult comedians on the drag circuit, is that she’s not very good at apologising for jokes that cause offence.
So to quickly recap, BDR, who won season six of RuPaul’s Drag Race, was performing a routine discussing how emotional the cast of season 10 was. She singled out Blair St. Clair in particular for her emotional recounting of rape at a college party.
She said,
“Seriously, I don’t even want to talk about season 10 because every fucking bitch cried every f*cking episode. Did you see that? Every episode!
It’s her fat ass going ‘Ugh I’m fat’ and then the other one… and then you’ve got that other bitch: ‘I was raped!’
No – f*ck you. You notice she wasn’t raped until she was in the bottom two? Think about that, bitch – that’s f*cking strategy.
Oh f*ck you rape is funny if you haven’t had it.
And if you weren’t raped, remember this – you’re ugly.”
The comments were quickly condemned, Montreal Pride distanced itself from the queen saying, it was “severely disassociating” from BDR.
“I wasn’t questioning the validity of anyone’s personal struggles”
BDR took to Instagram to share her response, which she gave to Hornet, to the backlash,
“Look, my point was everyone was crying on the last season of Drag Race to win over the judges and “save yourself from elimination.”
“I wasn’t questioning the validity of anyone’s personal struggles, but bringing it up right before you “lip sync for your life” was strategic … in my opinion.
“Back in the day, when a man in a wig had to “lip sync for their life,” they relied on a wig reveal, rose petals or picking up their opponent and twirling them around.
“Maybe I’m just nostalgic for the old days when drag was fun, not personal.
“Call it political correctness, social justice or whatever else. Bottom line is there will always be people who don’t agree with you. That’s life. I’m not everyone’s cup of tea. That’s why there’s coffee.”
Blair St. Clair responded (although didn’t mention BDR by name) with a statement “rape jokes contribute to rape culture”.
“In the U.S. someone is sexually assaulted every 2 minutes, but people persist in thinking that making rape or sexual assault jokes is “comedy.” It is not. Rape jokes contribute to rape culture”.
