“I thought maybe it was a case of mistaken identity,” explains Crystal – real name Colin Seymour – a drag artist who won the UK’s first Ru Paul’s Drag Race show.
Though they’re not talking about being surprised at their win on the TV show, or even getting on the British version considering they’re a Canadian living in the UK. Instead, they’re talking about the argument they were involved in on Twitter/ X with former actor and leader of right-wing Reclaim party, Laurence Fox, back in 2020.
It started when Fox tweeted calling to boycott Sainsbury’s after the supermarket announced its support for Black History Month in October 2020, where it would be providing safe spaces online for Black employees, which he described as “promoting racial segregation and discrimination”.
Crystal replied to say Fox’s move was racist, leading to Fox calling Crystal and and Simon Blake, a former Stonewall trustee, paedophiles, a homophobic trope historically used against gay men. Within the same argument, Fox used the same slur against broadcaster Nicola Thorp too.
Horrified at the use of the slur, Crystal quickly Googled to see who else went by their stage name. “I found a drag artist called Crystal Couture, who had a criminal sex conviction. I thought, ‘oh, he’s mixing me up with someone else,’” added Crystal. Though they quickly realised that wasn’t the case. Crystal then went on to sue Fox, who retaliated to counter-sue for libel.
Fox had become known for his outspoken right-wing opinions, namely about racism on the BBC’s Question Time show in January 2020 over comments about Meghan Markle’s treatment by the media and for calling Sir Sam Mendes’ casting in the 1917 film “forced diversity” as it included Sikh soldiers. He later apologised for the latter after not knowing an estimated 200,000 Sikh soldiers died or were injured fighting for the British in both World Wars.
He even went on to turn his Twitter profile picture into an image of a Swastika using the Pride flags, for which the platform temporarily banned him, and he also filmed himself burning the rainbow flags.
In January, Fox lost the case against Crystal and Blake (Thorp wasn’t involved in the case) and in April Fox was ordered to pay £180,000 in libel damages, split between Crystal and Blake, though Crystal has said it will be split three ways, including Thorp too. They’ve also previously said most of it will go to charities “focusing on issues I know are close to Laurence’s heart“.
Though a lot of money, it’s hard to put a monetary amount on the compensation of false accusations of paedophilia and 3.5 years spent on the case, including the reputational damage and emotional toll it’s taken.
Never did Crystal imagine this would go on so long. “I thought we would send him a letter from the lawyers and he would issue a meaningful retraction and apology and it would go away.”
Yet ensuring it went to court, and that they won, was important to Crystal, not only as they have a platform as a former Ru Paul’s Drag Race UK winner, but also for the fear that some people might even believe it if they didn’t. “I was conscious that if I didn’t robustly defend myself, that some people might see that as some kind of admission, which was also very, very scary to me,” they add.
Winning the case was a huge victory as so few similar cases even get to court. The win was made even more powerful, not only considering it was about homophobic slurs against members of the LGBT+ community and Crystal and Blake got justice, but it was also on such a huge public scale as the case garnered so much media coverage too.
“I think it was just a victory for a lot of people who have felt bullied or pushed down, which is basically the entire queer community. That’s the queer experience. So I think it is powerful to see someone stand up to that and to win,” says Crystal.
It marks an important and positive change in attitudes towards online abuse, which since the inception of social media has largely gone unmonitored and, even worse, unpunished.
Though winning the case is a step forward in terms of punishing online abuse, trolling and hate speech against the LGBT+ community, Crystal has said there has been a marked difference in attitudes towards them since Fox’s words. Crystal thinks there’s now ‘a time before Laurence Fox’ and a time after it, which they’ve noticed both on and off stage where now the paedophile slur is used against them, which was never the case until Fox said it.
Now Crystal thinks Fox’s words and actions have “emboldened” other people to use that kind of language. “I’ve had gigs where I was walking from the train station to the gig just with makeup on but not in drag and people were threatening me. We had to call the police at one event because a man was trying to hit us.”
As well as what Crystal faced on stage and in the street, the online abuse didn’t stop. The only way to cope with it was to learn how to have a “thick skin”. Crystal says “it’s so hard to separate the world of the internet from real life”. They have their notification set so “I only see things if the person already follows me, which filters almost all of the nastiness”.
Even though it’s possible to turn off notifications and to not see the trolling, the problem of online abuse on social media is often so relentless that Crystal thinks “if you don’t need to be on there for your job, you should leave”.
Crystal says some people’s behaviour on social media platforms is “pure cowardice”, especially those who troll others and hide their identity. “I think it’s very clear that it’s not in Elon Musk’s interest to make people [show their identity], because it would probably reveal that there’s a lot of people with 20 accounts or there’s so many bots.”
Now, Crystal has an injunction against Fox who, if he says anything else similar to Crystal again, he could “go to prison”. The case was certainly a momentous win, but it’s also a landmark event showing that defaming others online has real and serious consequences. But, there’s still a long road to making it a truly safe space.
