Justice is served — 'Drag Race's Jasmine Kennedie speaks out after man who harassed her is fired

Yahoo

16-04-2025

After being harassed and followed by a strange man on the subway, trans Drag Race star Jasmine Kennedie stood up for herself, and now justice has been served.
After a harrowing experience where a MAGA supporter invaded her personal space, followed her onto the subway, and shouted anti-LGBTQ+ slurs at her, Kennedie took her story to social media, and with the help of internet sleuths, she was able to identify the man who allegedly harassed her.
When the man harassed her, Kennedie told PRIDE she was 'sort of shocked, but at the same time, I am a person that when it comes to conflict, I don't necessarily back down.'
On Monday, Kennedie posted an Instagram reel detailing her awful experience and showing video footage of the man who made her feel unsafe, and shortly after, messages started flooding her DMs with information from people who recognized him.
Followers on Instagram, as well as a few people who worked with the man, sent Kennedie messages identifying him and letting her know that he worked at a New York City gym called Gym U. After contacting the gym and filing a formal complaint, Kennedie's followers began sending messages to Gym U about the incident and within 24 hours of her initial post the man was fired from his job.
'A job loss is horrible for anybody, but if you're working for an LGBTQ+ friendly gym, I don't think that's the type of rhetoric that should be spewed around by one of the employees,' Kennedie told PRIDE.
Kennedie revealed that she felt 'empowered' and 'vindicated' once he was terminated from his job. 'I didn't think there would be immediate action, but it gave me a little bit of a sense of joy in the world that we're living in right now that there is still hope for people to stand up for us,' she said.
Gym U could not immediately be reached for comment.
On her way home from a show on Sunday night, the 25-year-old performer was still in drag and decided to sit on the ground of a subway station in New York City because there were no seats left when a strange man approached her and sat down 'very, very close' to her. He immediately made her feel uncomfortable, so she quickly stood up, but then he started spewing anti-LGBTQ+ hate and following her, even when she got on a train.
The man told her that 'this is Trump's America,' 'Trump is still your daddy,' and called her the F slur. 'If you're going to use the correct slur on me, it would have been tr*nny, but he didn't. I think clearly he does not understand the range of slurs in this community,' Kennedie joked, using her signature brand of sarcasm to deal with a dark situation.
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She was scared, but she made the split-second decision to stand up for herself because she wasn't 'going to let someone push me in a corner and make me feel smaller' after she'd worked so hard to feel confident about herself.
'I just matched his energy essentially. I think in this time, a lot of this right-wing or the MAGA side wants us to be in fear, and I didn't want to back down and let him have that satisfaction,' Kennedie said. 'He would have been relishing it and bragging to people later that night that he told off a trans woman.'
While the experience was scary and forced Kennedie into a position where she felt like she had to stand up for herself, she was not alone in this fight. Other people around her at the subway station and on the train where the man followed her provided backup and support.
On the video footage of the incident that she included in her Instagram, someone can be heard helping to try to get the man to leave the subway car where he had followed Kennedie. She said that afterward she found out that this good samaritan is a part of the LGBTQ+ community and had his own experience with the same man who also made him feel uncomfortable, but wasn't able to stand up for himself.
'The guy who was helping me told me, he's like, 'I was too scared to say anything, but when I saw you speaking up, I thought it was my reason to come over and make sure you were OK,' Kennedie explained.
Kennedie is feeling stronger after standing up for herself and getting support from the community. Not only did she have people step up during the incident but her followers and fellow Drag Race stars have offered her emotional support in the aftermath. Daya Betty, Amanda Tori Meating, Alyssa Hunter, Aurora Matrix, and Deja Skye all posted supportive comments on her reel.
'People think that they could just walk over us and treat us like,' she said, 'and that nothing's going to come out of it or they think that we're gonna be in fear, and I felt like it was my duty to stand up and give this guy a stark reality check of like if you mess with someone, it doesn't matter if you think they're insignificant, you do have to deal with the repercussions and it's not something that should be dealt with lightly."
Kennedie said that while in the past she's been 'lucky to kind of skate through' and not face much bigotry in person, that has been changing as anti-trans legislation and hate have been increasing.
'I've noticed people are feeling a little bit more emboldened to either make comments or stare or make people in the LGBTQ+ community a little bit more uncomfortable,' she said.
But in spite of this harsh reality of the current political climate, Kennedie hasn't lost hope, 'I've gotten hundreds of DMs and comments on my social media posts and support from everybody not just in the community, but allies as well that see us and here to defend us and it is very touching and very sweet to know that this has touched so many people.'