Drag queen and UW math alum, Kyne Santos, revisited the school on June 18. (Photo credit: Mika Perez)
Drag queen and UW math alum, Kyne Santos, revisited the school on June 18 to share how he uses math outreach on social media to engage underrepresented groups.
Santos had excelled in and enjoyed math even before university. For him, math stood out as “beautiful and artistic.” This pushed him to become a math student at UW.
It was also during his undergrad program that he started his drag career which culminated in him joining Canada’s Drag Race in 2020. He discovered drag through watching Rupaul’s Drag Race which he saw as a “ creative expression of … sensitive, creative souls, just like [him],” and an “amalgamation of everything [he] loved: music, dancing, performance, artistry.”
He lived a “double life,” studying math during the day and performing at the Bombshelter Pub — now known as the Bomber — at night. It was also in 2020 when he started to combine these two aspects of his life. After discovering TikTok, he decided to post videos of him talking about math problems in drag.
What started as a funny idea was met with an unexpected amount of support as he received messages from people all over the world and from different age groups, saying: “Wow, I wish all of my math teachers were drag queens. I’m finally understanding math now.” This allowed him to make a career out of content creation where he discovered a larger community of queer people in STEM.
This discovery prompted Santos to ask more questions about the intersection of math and drag. He wondered, “Why should we think that the world of math and the world of drag are so far from each other that they only share a tiny conception?” This curiosity was faced by criticism as people often asked him, “Why do you have to make math woke?” and “Why can’t math just be math?” However, he argued against these notions as he highlights the similarities between these two concepts.
From having rules to defying rules, Santos emphasizes the artistry and flexibility of both math and drag and that “by embracing the idea that [our] frameworks and [our] definitions can change … [we]’ll have a better way of going through this life” because it allows us to “[understand] that this world’s so much larger than [we] really think [and] that we can have a better understanding of this universe and the people that we share it with.”
Currently, Santos is pursuing a masters program at the Toronto Metropolitan University. He tells students, particularly math and queer students, who struggle to feel a sense of belonging that “everybody has a community somewhere … and sometimes when you choose to be the trailblazer and you just do your own thing, other people will find you.”
Vice president academic of MathSoc, Remington Aginskaya-Zhi who was invited to attend the event expressed that “it’s important to make everyone feel included in math to challenge the stereotypes about what kinds of people are good at math.” They stressed, “It’s really important to do that here at Waterloo because … so many math students at Waterloo don’t know each other.… [T]hese kinds of events are also important for bringing people together and making sure they know that their community is out there.”
