Drag Queen Story Times picketed by protestors who claim that it grooms children and promotes paedophilia
- Thread starter Orang Utan
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SpookyFrank
Float like a caterpillar, sting like a tree
Sounds political to me. Still, nothing a few pitchforks won't fix.
goldenecitrone
post tenebras lux
Teaching children that cross dressing is harmless and just another facet of humanity. Aren’t all kids into cosplay these days
Yes, exactly.
It seems to the same thinking (and from largely the same people) as the 'my child should not be hearing about LGBT stuff in school because that's dangerous, but my child's teacher should be armed and ready to fire because that's sensible and desirable' shtick - being around a gay person might traumatize them, being around a gun won't. And the headfuck of 'pro life' and pro death penalty almost always being hand in hand. All of a piece.
If you're looking for logic from these people, you'll be looking forever. It's really disturbing to see this stuff filtering into the UK.
petee
no gods, no malarkey
compendium here
RainbowTown
Well-Known Member
A somewhat over the top reaction. Put simply, it was merely drag queen reading a children's story to a group of kids under the supervision of their parents who had willingly brought them there. All child friendly, nothing adult about it at all.
Hopefully, the kids would've enjoyed it all and found it fun and entertaining. Until, of course, the event got hijacked by those intolerant, bigoted right wing twats, who probably caused them far more upset and confusion than any drag queen supposedly could.
Orang Utan
Acceptable through usage
They will have fun and learn how awesome diversity is.
Cloo
Approved by toads
Tbh, I don't know if it 'achieves' much wokeness wise, i think the idea is supposed to be about LGBTQ inclusivity, but mostly it is someone who is a performer and therefore likely to be able to read to kids in an entertaining and engaging way.
I don't see how kids are going to take away a message of oversexualisation or anything misogynistic away from it - they'll just think it was a funny lady or a man dressed up as a funny lady.
As I've said, I think they'll take more sexualisation from your average pop video than they would from a drag queen reading a story.
I do get the issues generally about drag and misogyny, but I doubt much of that rears its head in this context.
The inability to recognise the political aspect is interesting.
I generally think dismantling gender enforced norms is a healthy thing, and I love what Harry Styles is doing.
But to suggest drag isn’t political is … what is it?
I’m not sure drag is harmless. Cross dressing is not the same as drag. How do you think it feels for women to be parodied? How does that parody work in the context of misogyny and power relationships between genders? Why is it hilarious and risqué for a man to dress up and affect being a ‘woman’? What might a little girl take from seeing her gender represented like that?
I generally think dismantling gender enforced norms is a healthy thing, and I love what Harry Styles is doing.
But to suggest drag isn’t political is … what is it?
Yes, can see that point.
SpookyFrank
Float like a caterpillar, sting like a tree
I don't much like adult drag shows myself, there being too much about them that strays into 'punching down' territory for my tastes, but this is not an adult drag show we're talking about here. It's a man in make up and 'women's clothes' reading stories for kids.
I often used to wear make up and 'women's clothes' out and about, with no attempt to imitate or parody anyone but because it was how I felt comfortable. I stopped doing this after I got my head kicked in for it by a couple of knuckle-dragging shitheads. Maybe if kids grow up with a bit more exposure to a wider range of positive role models, maybe we'll get fewer people being attacked for not adhering to a bunch of pointless and arbitrary expectations.
I often used to wear make up and 'women's clothes' out and about, with no attempt to imitate or parody anyone but because it was how I felt comfortable. I stopped doing this after I got my head kicked in for it by a couple of knuckle-dragging shitheads. Maybe if kids grow up with a bit more exposure to a wider range of positive role models, maybe we'll get fewer people being attacked for not adhering to a bunch of pointless and arbitrary expectations.
There are drag kings. Some are very talented, entertaining, and clever - their prominence will come round again, as fashions do - right now it's drag queens. There have also always been lesbians with crew cuts who sit with their legs open - are they misrepresenting men? Are they further entrenching how masculinity is presented to young boys? Or are they just doing what they want to in order to feel most true to themselves in daily life? I'd say definitely the latter.
Are women being parodied or is stereotypically female presentation being parodied? The two aren't the same thing, and the jury is out on which is being parodied. I'm aware of the debate and familiar with it. I think dismantling rigidly enforced gender norms as set and policed by conservative reactionaries is a good and essential too, for the happiness and safety of everyone. People deserve to feel satisfied within themselves, and develop what interests them.
Until I was 15/16 I lived in Soho, so I grew up around quite a few drag performers. One was a regular babysitter for me and my brother. Now and again, we'd be backstage with him - and the others who were getting ready or resting. I never felt belittled or threatened by them. I didn't take anything negative about my gender from them. I don't recall relating to it on that level, and they never pushed that aspect on me. I'm not in favour of performers being censured as a rule.
I don't love drag, and don't watch drag race or any of that stuff, but not because it offends me. It doesn't. I'd just rather watch something else.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
everything's political and people who claim it isn't, well that's a political act too.
SpookyFrank
Float like a caterpillar, sting like a tree
My ex used to make me watch drag race. Mostly what I got out of it was that Ru Paul seemed like a really fucking vile person.
One bit of tatty reality TV should not be the only exposure people get to the idea of people not all looking quite the way they're expected to.
One bit of tatty reality TV should not be the only exposure people get to the idea of people not all looking quite the way they're expected to.
krtek a houby
Sail hatin'
The Sunak and Truss show is a bit of a drag, tbf
ElizabethofYork
Old Crone
Little children aren't going to give a shit about the nuances. They'll just see women being ridiculed.
I can only say again that I didn't see it that way as a child. I didn't see it as ridicule, or belittling of my gender. I wasn't an especially stupid child, or unaware of nuance. I genuinely didn't see drag queens as relating to women in any real way, let alone being ridicule of women. It was just clothes and make up and general camp, and I don't find those things inherently female. I am aware of the debate around drag, and I'm familiar with its themes. That it's cruel misogyny and mockery is not settled fact, it's theory with some thoughtful points - to which there are thoughtful counterpoints.
ElizabethofYork
Old Crone
I've always seen it as ridicule and belittling, ever since I was a child.
JimW
支那暗杀团
Post was fair enough but this bit leapt out - if I as a white man with much experience of China start doing yellow face parodies of East Asia stereotypes I'd quite rightly have my head kicked in. It is an aspect of drag that seems really off, though confess to only superficial understanding.
SpookyFrank
Float like a caterpillar, sting like a tree
Because dour and stoic children's entertainers are not in high demand?
And that's fair enough. That's you. I was talking very specifically about myself.
I don't know. That's your reading. Some of us didn't see a drag queen as a 'funny lady' but as a man. I'm no more wrong than you are right.
weepiper
I fix the machines that fight climate change
Well ok. I also see them as men. I'm not questioning how you personally see drag, it was more a reference to something I've seen discussed that way here before. Obviously these protestors are horrible cunts by the way and I want nothing to do with them and their 'activism' but I also just don't understand the desire to go and see a drag act or to take a kid to hear a story being read by a drag queen. It's all just a bit... why? to me. I don't think it's some terrible evidence of moral failing or anything like this lot apparently do.
I think that's very tenuous. There's an inherent characteristic about race - skin colour, eye shape (notably with 'yellow face'), lips (notably with 'black face') that simply doesn't apply to heels and make up. There's an irony in saying you reject gender stereotypes, only to find a man prancing about in stilettos and false eyelashes to be an affront to women.
Women weren't born in heels and make up. They aren't inherently feminine things. They haven't always even been generally female things - not until the 19th century and only then in white western countries, which is also when male dress codes became flat shoes, sober colours, concealing trousers instead of silk stockings, no obvious cosmetics.
However, this all seems to be going round the houses. The major part of this current focus on drag queens and children comes from the Christian Right, who are no friends to women or to gay people. They've found useful allies outside their usual milieu - who will be spat out as husks (at best) when the objective to reverse progress has been achieved.
The enemy of your enemy is very rarely your friend. They'll just tangle you in knots before hanging you out to dry.
Fair enough. I don't necessarily disagree. I don't love it as a form of entertainment. I wouldn't buy a ticket to go and see a drag show, but if one happened to be taking place in the pub I would leave in horror or feel attacked.
This current moral panic wasn't really a thing when my son was younger, so I don't recall any outrage about drag queens in libraries. I don't think I'd have objected if there were, but it just didn't come up at the time.
I think my instinct would've been, as usual, to expose him to as wide a range of people as possible and be open to discussing what he made of it all (if anything*). Maybe that's wrong, but that's how he's been parented.
Other people are entitled to drag their children from the sight of a drag performer, or pull their kids out of sex ed classes, etc, to see sexualization in everything - my passing thought would be sympathy for their poor kids.
*Perhaps so much the better he thinks nothing of something I might pick up on. My stuff doesn't need to become his stuff, and it seems ideal to me that it doesn't. I'd be wary of making a song and dance if the child was blasé.
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Cloo
Approved by toads
I'd say because her clothes and makeup are over the top, like a clown. I do think kids will see it that way rather than 'she's making women seem silly', the same way they wouldn't see a male clown as making men seem ridiculous.
I do get the problematic issues such as queens are often being celebrated for exaggerated performances of things women are (completely groundlessly) derided for by patriarchy: supposedly being shallow, bitchy, competitive, vain etc. But I don't think story time is an arena where those things are being played up, or the context in which to argue those broader questions, given some of the dubious agendas being brought into it.
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