Mistress Isabelle Brooks, a contestant on RuPaul’s Drag Race season 15, is speaking out against online trolls spreading anti-drag hate after a video of her performing at a 21+ venue began circulating on conservative Twitter. In the video, Brooks is seen lip-syncing to Loleatta Holloway’s “Love Sensation”. The video was reposted to a Twitter account with the name of AlphaFox, with the caption: “Please help me describe this.”
Brooks slammed the “old-ass, balding white men” hiding behind “American flags [to] spread hate and create chaos” in a Twitter thread. She also spoke out about the video being shared to promote hard-line Republican ideology that all drag is inappropriate for children. Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, is set to ratify a bill that would make it the first state to effectively ban drag performances in public places.
While Brooks did not refer to Lee by name, it’s plausible that he is one of the “old-ass, balding white men” she refers to in her thread who make it their business to “share videos of queer people literally living their best lives” and “flood the captions with misinformation to spread hate and create chaos”. Brooks called the situation “depressing” and highlighted how the stance of standing up for “what you believe” in was being used to harass queer people.
In addition to receiving “juvenile insults” as a result of the video being shared, Brooks also condemned the “insane” group of people who are attempting to make drag illegal. She emphasized that they are “people who are f***ing idiots and categorize drag and transgender people under the same umbrella”.
The show RuPaul’s Drag Race recently celebrated its 200th episode in Hollywood, where Drag Race alumni from across the franchise came together to condemn anti-LGBTQ+ hate. Mistress Isabelle Brooks is widely considered to be one of the frontrunners of the current season of the show.