I used to watch Drag Race back when the contestants were gay MEN doing drag and I really liked being able to see them in their normal daily lives being men. Some of them were very obviously poor/low income and it was like a Cinderella story, getting to watch them try out new drag with more expensive/high-quality items. Like when Bianca gave Adore Delano his first corset, it was so emotional for me to get to experience that beautiful moment of kindness with them. And a lot of those contestants have great jokes and hilarious and energetic personas so that was fun to watch as well. I still randomly remember that Lil' Poundcake skit sometimes and it always cracks me up.

But now Drag Race and Drag Queens sit on on an uncomfortable precipice.

When they were doing (what rad fems call) "womanface" and treating the concept of women like ridiculous cartoon characters, no one cared. Women were just told that they were being stupid homophobes and to get over themselves, that drag wasn't about them and their fishy vaginas.

But now trans people are making it all about themselves and saying drag queens are offensive to trans people because men dressed as women acting like clowns is a bad look for trans, and people are actually taking this shit seriously, and I, a woman, am just sitting here like... Yeah, of course, when a man complains, suddenly it becomes valid.

So is Drag a niche part of American gay culture, or is is twansphobic uwu?

Whats hilarious is that most normies can't tell the difference between a trans woman and a drag queen, so when drag queens speak on Twitter, random dum-dums will be like 'Yassss Kweeen!!!!' when they really have no idea who TF is talking and what TF they are talking about. So to tie back to your main point, RuPaul's Drag Race contestants would do better to, instead of being attention whores who rush into the middle of drama with nothing of value to add, sit down, research, and understand that trans people are not their friends. Trans people literally erased them from stonewall, and are systematically transing all drag queens of the past one by one. In 20 years RuPaul himself will be remembered as a trans person at this rate.