During her initial run on season 6 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, Trinity
K. Bonét (a.k.a. Joshua Jamal Jones, who, like most queens, uses
female pronouns for his drag persona) impressed viewers with her top-notch lip
sync skills. With her performances and polish, she built herself into the lore
of the series as one of the top lip sync assassins. But she also let fans into
her personal life as she revealed she is living with HIV. She did this in an
episode of the aftershow Untucked and became the second queen in series history
to do so (Drag Race season 2 contestant Ongina revealed she was
living with HIV on the main stage in 2009).
Fast forward to season 6 of All Stars this year, when
Bonét chose once again to speak out about living with HIV, this time bringing a
strong message about U=U (undetectable equals untransmittable).
In a particular challenge, the queens placed themselves into groups and
produced segments of “Pink Table Talk,” a chat show modeled off of Jada
Pinkett-Smith’s popular Facebook series, Red Table Talk. Bonét was
matched with A’keria C. Davenport and Eureka O’Hara, and were given the topic
of sex to discuss. While Davenport took the segment to talk about having a
feminine body due to previously living as a trans woman, Bonét spoke about
attitudes around HIV.
“The thing about me when it comes to sex, is in my particular community,
it’s very taboo when it comes to being open and honest about their status,” she
said. “Being a person who is openly HIV-positive, for a long time I was a lot
of secrets for a lot of people. But I’m nobody’s secret. I’m successful, I got
my shit together, I’m good in bed. I’m taking care of myself — I’m undetectable
which is untransmittable.
“There’s a lot of people out here who are not educated that you can be
with someone who is HIV-positive if they are undetectable and not catch the
virus,” she continued.
“Thank you for that and I definitely tip my wig to you,” Davenport responded in
the roundtable-style discussion. “A lot of people are afraid to acknowledge
that they are HIV-positive because of the stigma that we live in in this
world.”
Throughout her career, Bonét has functioned as a high-profile activist around
various HIV-related efforts as well as the BLM movement. In addition to
bringing awareness to HIV facts on international TV, she has participated in
Slay Stigma (a drag tour across Canada to raise awareness about HIV), worked
with the organization LetsGetChecked, and headlined events like Rock The Know
on Worlds AIDS Day.
SOURCE: HIV PLUS MAG
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