I am attracted to people irrespective of their gender.
— Courtney Act
For people living with HIV, the knowledge that undetectable equals untransmittable is huge news, not only as a means of preventing transmission, but in breaking down the stigma that many people still experience.
Drag has taught me that I have deliberate control over my image, and when this notion is applied to one's whole life, it is both powerful and transformative.
The art of drag is intrinsic to who I am.
I've had boyfriends I've dated whom I met as Courtney, but then dated as Shane. Courtney can certainly act as a glamorous stepping stone across the pond.
The thing about gay male pop stars is: they aren't supported by gay men. Gay men don't really support them until they've gone beyond the gay community and had success in the mainstream, so it's really challenging.
You can't really necessarily explain what being on a reality show is like until it's happening to you.
My style of drag has always been a little bit more moderate.
The gay community has had a sometimes tumultuous relationship with non-queer people coming to their shows because it was tourism, like using the queer spaces as a form of comic relief or entertainment.
I think it's really important to acknowledge that gay men and straight men can be friends.
I am a Madonna fan.
It's so easy to be polarised and yell from different sides of the room about certain subjects, but I think it's so much better to walk into the middle and have a conversation to drive change forward.
I think that gay men in particular need to just listen to bisexual people and believe them when they say they're attracted to different genders.
I remember my first Mardi Gras. It was in the year 2001. I decided earlier that day that I was going to go in drag. It was my third time in drag.
People care about what I have to say now, and they want to hear it, and that's one of the greatest gifts you can be given.
I had post-traumatic stress from 'Drag Race' a little bit.
I'd always been a performer, growing up in a theatre school.
There's so much visibility for trans people, for gay men and lesbians, but there's still not a lot for bisexual people.
We live in a fear-based world where HIV stigma can prevail.
To hold and know the power of a woman is something so amazing that I don't think a woman could ever understand because they cannot know life without it.
There are gay people in every community, there are bi people in every community and they can come together with a bit of strength.
I've seen attraction manifest itself in so many fascinating ways. Lots of straight-identifying men have been attracted to me as Courtney.
I just feel like, at any moment, a drag or a trans or a gender-diverse artist that doesn't fit in a box is ready to break into the mainstream. I want to do my best to put myself in the best position to have that happen for me.
It's easy to make a reality show that's sensational but it's more challenging to make a reality show that's got a lot of heart and integrity and still keeps you enthralled and makes you want to keep watching.
Drag can make you a little more fearless and I think girls especially love drag because they get to see somebody define their own standard of feminine beauty.
Drag is more like a license to be what you want. But you don't need drag to do that.
I'm a big fan of Stormzy.
Call me old fashioned, but I love songs that end. As a songwriter, I feel like you put a fade out when you can't work out how to end a song.
When someone is saying something bigoted, try and remember that that person actually just doesn't understand, and that it comes from a level of ignorance, or from socialised brainwashing, or religious ideas.
Because bisexual people almost have a foot in the gay and the straight world, their friends can misunderstand them too. Like if a bisexual man starts dating another man, people are like 'Ah, he's gay,' but you know, bisexual people remain bisexual, and their attractions can change and flux over time.
I genuinely had always thought, this sounds dumb, I always thought that 'RuPaul's Drag Race' was shot in the basement of RuPaul's house.
I'm just looking at other opportunities, television... not so much another existing reality show, but more about creating stuff.
The Spice Girls and Fran Drescher were such important parts of my childhood. There was something about them that allowed me to be myself.
You can literally tour all around Australia in two weekends.
'The Bi Life' will show many stories. I think that people will find some of those stereotypes, maybe some people are greedy, maybe some people are using bisexual as a transition, but not all of them are.
An ex-boyfriend of mine is living with HIV. He has an undetectable viral load so I know first-hand how this can affect people in a serodiscordant couple - which is where one partner is HIV-negative and one is HIV-positive.
The ability to create anything I want without rules is the real thing I love about drag.
It's a common misunderstanding, that when a bisexual person is dating someone of the opposite sex that they are now straight, or if they are dating someone of the same sex they are now gay.
As a drag performer, people have traditionally put us into the category of 'pervert' or 'deviant' or things like that. So I've always been really careful not to be vulgar or grotesque with sexuality.
Recognizing your place of power and privilege in an unfair system can, as an ally, help you to start using that privilege as an opportunity to do good.
On 'Love Island' you're trying to win the prize money and stay together; on 'The Bi Life,' the winner is the one that finds love.
I think it's really cool that 'Drag Race' has created this space where so many different kinds of people can come together and socialise and have fun on equal terms.
I love being Courtney, but it almost feels like something different to drag for me - it's a part of me, it's not a parody, it's a form of expression for me, a way to give my feminine and masculine sides an outlet.
Pole dancing is way harder than it looks.
So many reactions in our lives are based on what happened to us when we were younger.
I acknowledge that I'm really fortunate to have found pockets of people all through my life who've accepted me.
Normally when you go to a queer space the people often look like you, they are the same age as you and so on, but at Mardi Gras and at queer events in general, everybody is different, everybody comes together. And that is what I love about Pride and Mardi Gras and those sort of events.
I think my first actual real job was a door-to-doors salesperson for Foxtel, a cable TV company, and that lasted a couple of weeks because I got held, like I wouldn't say at swordpoint, but I was kept in someone's house against my will and she did have a sword and was sort of brandishing it.
It's detrimental not to support marriage equality, even just on a financial level.
On New Year's Eve, 2000, my friends and I were going to a party in Melbourne and I decided to do it in drag. It was the happiest night of my life.
