Here's Why Fans Are Upset About Boy George Appearing on Drag Race UK

‘Drag Race UK’ fans aren’t happy.

Today, Boy George was announced as one of the many extra special guest judges appearing in the fourth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK. Other high-profile guest judges include Dame Joanna Lumley, Mel B of the Spice Girls, FKA Twigs, Olly Alexander of Years & Years, Cathy Dennis, and Lorraine Pascale, to name a few.

Most audiences around the world know George as the lead singer of the band Culture Club, which was responsible for massive hits such as “Karma Chameleon,” “Time (Clock of the Heart),” and “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me.” The British singer made waves in the 1970s and 1980s for dressing up in an androgynous way and for coming out as gay as early as the 1990s.

Since then, however, George has faced criticism from people within the LGBTQ+ community for his behavior and statements regarding other queer people. Upon the announcement that the singer will appear on Drag Race UK season four, many fans took to social media to point out his past wrongdoings and question why the series would bring him on as a guest judge.

Scroll through to find out why fans are upset about Boy George appearing as a guest judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race UK season four.

Boy George assaulted and falsely imprisoned a male escort in 2007.

In 2007, George was convicted to 15 months in jail for handcuffing a male escort to a wall, beating him with a metal chain, and falsely imprisoning the sex worker. The singer was 47 years old when he was finally convicted of this crime in 2009, as reported by The Guardian.

The judge in charge of this case was quoted as saying that George’s crime was “so serious that only an immediate sentence of imprisonment can be justified.” The singer received an early release in May 2009 but was require to wear an ankle monitor and follow a curfew throughout the remainder of his jail sentence.

He was accused of transphobia between 2017 and 2020.

George started to share problematic statements about trans and nonbinary people starting in 2017, when he blasted people who called themselves “gender fluid” during an interview with Gay Times (via Them). The singer called himself “a little bit old-fashioned” and added: “I’m kind of like, ‘How many flavors can there be?’ I feel like there’s girls and boys and there’s people that like both. What else is there?”

Though George denied being transphobic over the years, he went back to sharing problematic in 2020. “Leave your [pronouns] at the door!” the Culture Club singer wrote in a tweet. After a fan told George that his comments were “quite ridiculous,” he shot back: “You must refer to me as ‘Napoleon’ and that’s as ridiculous as it gets! I used the ladies’ toilet throughout the 80s!”

It really comes as no suprise that these two incidents would lead to some backlash at the idea of the singer being celebrated on one of biggest queer stages, aka the main stage of Rupaul's Drag Race UK. And they sounded off on Twitter.

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