‘Drag Race’ Season 16’s Amanda Tori Meating comes out as trans

• On identifying as non-binary pre-Drag Race and her divorce: “It wasn’t at all supported by my partner, and it ended up being a big part of why I had to leave, because he didn’t want to be with a trans person. 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.”

• On finding herself on set: “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 victimized in the way that I feel like I have been in the past, pre-Drag Race. [I was] in this environment for the first time where everyone’s calling me Amanda and not my government name, and realizing how good that felt, and I started to feel a bit more comfortable in the reformation of my identity.”

• On life after filming: “It was kind of jarring to go from that environment where everyone is calling me Amanda and she/her-ing me, to being called by my government name again, and he/him. 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.”

• On the Internet’s thirst over her pre-transition photos*: “There’s going to be a lot of shit flung my way with the whole trans experience, and that’s something where I can choose to let it upset me, or choose to let it be water off a duck’s back… that’s fine, that’s fierce for them, I guess. I’m not really interested in hooking up with somebody who’s more attracted to who I was four or five years ago. If you want to get your rocks off to it? Sure.”