First-Ever Trans Jeopardy! Winner Makes History While Wearing Trans Pride Pin

The victory continued a recent trend of visibility on the game show after a contestant wore a Bi Pride flag pin just days earlier.

 

As the final Alex Trebek-hosted episodes of Jeopardy! air, a few episodes included historic displays of LGBTQ+ visibility in the program’s nearly 50-year run.

Kate Freeman wore a Trans Pride Flag pin on her label, donning the pink, white, and blue emblem during her two groundbreaking Jeopardy! appearances in December. After she was crowned champion on the trivia game show’s December 11 episode, Freeman became the first winner known to be openly trans while appearing on the show.

Freeman, a financial analyst, reportedly had a knack for bar trivia during her studies in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she graduated with a Master’s degree in sustainability from the University of Michigan. A quiz whiz in her own right, having earned a perfect score on the ACT college admissions exam, Freeman’s skills paid off when took home $5,599.

“I spent a lot of time learning about and reflecting on my gender identity in grad school, coming out as transgender and lesbian a few months before graduating,” said Freeman, a Lake Orion, Michigan native, in an interview with the news site Michigan Live. “I’m proud to be out and I know representation is important.”

As fate would have it, the LGBTQ+ community was represented in ornate fashion twice on Jeopardy! during the week of Freeman’s initial appearance. Days before, Cody Lawrence, an assistant editor at the influencer hub Pocket.Watch, wore a pin with the Bi Pride flag.

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“I’ve always been bisexual and first became aware of it when I was 10,” Lawrence wrote on Twitter following his December 8 appearance. “It wasn’t until age 26 that I started expressing my truth openly. Everyone should be able to come out on their own terms but #BiErasure made that more difficult for me."

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In a follow-up post on Medium, Lawrence said that he has “sometimes” felt “gaslighted” past from other LGBTQ+ people, as if he “shouldn’t believe my own sexuality because some of the community-at-large doesn’t respect or acknowledge it.

"But then I remember… it’s my truth,” he wrote. “You can’t change facts. So yes, I wore my pin on Jeopardy! because it’s a powerful symbol to show you that we exist.”

Prior to Freeman and Lawrence showing their LGBTQ+ pride on Jeopardy!, several other contestants made passing mentions of their queer relationships while competing. While pondering a Daily Double question in 2019, John Presloid said “my husband would kill me,” when he stopped short of a sizable wager, as LGBTQ Nation reported at the time.

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Freeman’s appearance was filmed when the show resumed production, having been previously paused due to COVID-19 precautions. She said she was impressed with the show’s attentiveness to safety practices and protocols while filming and said she was “honored” to have the opportunity to meet Trebek before the beloved host passed away in November following a battle with cancer.

“Competing was equal parts thrilling and nerve-wracking,” Freeman told MLive. “Getting that buzzer timing right is so much harder than it seems when watching at home. It really lived up to my childhood dreams of being on the show.

Unfortunately, Freeman didn’t extend her winning streak past the December 11 episode, wagering everything on an incorrect Final Jeopardy! answer about the Sydney Opera House during the following appearance. Even so, her historic one-off victory is a win in itself — and the money is a decent consolation prize.

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