Drag Queen Story Time - all the reasons it has no place in Early Years

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3830536-Drag-Queen-Story-Hour-in-Scottish-Primary-School

@Goatsaregreat
Yuk, flowjob the drag queen. Poor kids being educated that it's normal to women-face!

Here you are Enough4me. The charmingly named flowjob who I believe posted photos of the primary children on their facebook? page along with all sorts of other age inappropriate images. Just one example but there are numerous other incidences in primary schools and libraries:

www.scotsman.com/education/row-over-flowjob-drag-act-invited-to-speak-at-scottish-primary-school-1889329

Is it really already happening in early year libraries - in primary schools?

What do parents and teachers think?

Libraries here a lot.

I don't look into what my kids are doing at school in detail tbh!
If anything different to usual they came home chatting about it when they were primary anyway!

I mean also panto dames are total misogyny and everyone seems to take kids.

I just randomly feminist at them about whatever and they roll their eyes 😁

Has anyone seriously seen this (apart from the rainbow monkey man) in their DC school?

I cannot imagine the staff including heads at my DCs primary or secondary schools thinking this was a good idea.

And drag is inherently misogynistic and reinforces harmful stereotyping of women.

I agree. Children should not be used as a tool to validate mens' sexual identities.

Bonhex
This nonsense is queer culture imported from the US. It has a determined political agenda. They aren't doing it for the benefit of the children.
British drag has a history stretching back centuries. It permeates through our theatre history. It's funny and filthy and anarchic and satirical. And very adult.

Very well said. Children are not there to affirm drag queens - in schools, libraries or anywhere else.

Normal sex education covers what most DC need in primary schools. Add in the more recent updates about pants being private areas for them and encouragement to talk to schools if they have concerns, and it's all covered.

Surely parents and staff haven't been saying, you know what the DC don't know about drag yet let's add this into lots teaching and learning lessons?

What would be the learning objectives to drag?

I spent most of the 80s and 90s in gay clubs up to my ears in drag queens and had good friends who did it.

This isn't drag.

This nonsense is queer culture imported from the US. It has a determined political agenda. They aren't doing it for the benefit of the children.

British drag has a history stretching back centuries. It permeates through our theatre history.
It's funny and filthy and anarchic and satirical. And very adult.
All the old drag queens I've known would rather die than read to kids in a school. None of the were up before midday anyway.

It seems now that "breaking down barriers" more often actually means "breaking down boundaries"

Excellent point well put. Children are relentlessly taught to be kind, not to judge, to be accepting. Are they ever taught to know their boundaries, ask questions, use common sense, trust their instincts, respect consent? Or are those all seem as old fashioned ideas in the new queered classroom?

I clicked on that "Drag Pedagogy" paper and started reading it.

I am shocked to realise that I am finding it very persuasive. Or perhaps "plausible" is a better word? I still know don't want the small children I care about exposed to men in clown makeup making fun of women. I still know it would have upset and bothered me as a small child. But the narrative of the paper makes the whole concept sound great. It's a big contrast with anything I've ever read written by a TRA - I think you have to have sold your brain to Satan to find the specious nonsense on stilts that TRAs pump out persuasive. This is different.

I think where it's getting me is that I'm rather persuaded by the idea that schools need a court jester figure encouraging kids to talk back and break the rules. Not all the time obviously, but bringing that energy into school every now and then sounds like a good thing to me. But agreeing with that doesn't mean I agree that figure should be a drag queen. Drag Queens are men mocking women; they're reinforcing social hierarchies, not breaking rules.

Ultimately the photo at the end of that paper says it all more effectively than all their pompous verbiage. The adults are looking at the Drag Queen quite enthralled, and pleased with themselves. The children look bored and sceptical. And that's the picture they chose!

Essay previous post is about
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03626784.2020.1864621

Stuff posted by 'little miss' (also FFS) on FB and insta.

Not RTFT sorry.

Started link then looked for the site they talking about. Then onto this piece (v long) but read fair chunk before skimming.

This bit sums things up:

'Building in part from queer theory and trans studies, queer and trans pedagogies seek to actively destabilize the normative function of schooling through transformative education '

There's loads in there spelling out the usual queer theory stuff. Knowing what I have learned about queer theory to see this argued as any way positive for anyone let alone children is arrrgh Jesus nope.

Here's a bit more that I was erm. Have you missed something extremely obviously basic here?

'
In the classroom, this queer dress-up might create more opportunities for young people to experiment with the feeling of how and why seemingly arbitrary changes of clothing and behaviour impact the ways they experience and are interpreted by the world. '

FOR FUCKS SAKE!

As a woman who was a girl, and noticed and was confused, baffled and annoyed by the differences in how boys and girls were expected to behave, enjoy, dress etc.
For as long as I can remember 4 or 5.

How the FUCK is the 'opportunity' to put on loads of slap and drag queen clothes going to challenge anything? Unless they're bringing clothes that are retailed 'for boys'????!!!!

I mean unless I'm missing something HUGE they have totally forgotten not just boys go to school.

Oh and just realised that as child in late 70s early 80s. Loads of men dressed as women for laughs all over tv. And I always disliked it and felt uncomfortable. When older I realised it was because it was MEN ripping the piss out of women.

I would have hated this and felt very... 'excluded' to use popular word.

Also "queer imagination"?

Yes, let's sexualise imagination now ffs.

It's all meaningless (but dangerous) bibble.

It seems now that "breaking down barriers" more often actually means "breaking down boundaries". As you say, it is healthy and right for children to learn that some things are private and "shameful".

Or, you know, let them roll about the floor with, and climb on a man dressed like a caricatured woman. That seems healthy.

elizabethjohnston.org/library-quietly-removes-photos-of-children-lying-on-a-drag-queen-at-story-time-after-massive-backlash/

It is the sacred cast issue; whenever you declare any group beyond reproach and give them special permissions, the perverts will join that group. And as you pointed out, the abusers you know did not in any way look different to everyone else. There is no way of harmlessly letting some people queer and destabilise children’s boundaries or dismissing the concept of shame, while keeping abusive people out.

If any group is granted special permission, the abusers will join that group. Always. So we have to keep them all away from children.

And I would say that monkey penis man is a totally different issue and when I would agree that it’s not appropriate!! (And I’m practically a nudist in my own home despite having DC!)

Having said what I said though - I do agree that there should be disabled people, people of minority religions, female in male job representatives etc being used as role models in school. 100% agree with that. ALL aspects of polite society should be represented to kids. (Yes drag queens are polite society, and yes there are many who walk the streets in their drag.)

The advantage I had as a child was being introduced to a very wide selection of society (the advantages of a heavily theatrical background!) and it’s done me the world of good. My son has had similar exposure and is a very caring well rounded lad who judges on individual merit rather than pre-conceived prejudices.

I actually know of some convicted perverts from my theatrical contacts (not in contact with any of them any more obviously but was friends before their crimes were discovered) and suffice to say they are ALL outwardly totally normal people. Not one of them was a drag Queen, or trans despite me knowing a high proportion of them.

This,from the abstract:

“… the authors discuss five interrelated elements of DQSH that offer early childhood educators a way into a sense of queer imagination: play as praxis, aesthetic transformation, strategic defiance, destigmatization of shame, and embodied kinship …

The concept of shame has many extremely important functions in society, and it is entirely appropriate that children learn some things are shameful and nobody should be doing it.

Destigmatising shame actively and deliberately undermines safeguarding. As for “embodied kinship”, I have no idea what they are on about, but strangers should not claim any kind of kinship with children, and “embodied kinship” sounds like something intended to breech children’s boundaries during the story hours themselves, but also teaches children that there is nothing wrong with adult strange men wanting to explore embodied imagination with them.

Who would want to destigmatize the shame associated with adult men exploring embodiment with children and why?

FFS, how does something this blatant get published?

In case the link fails. The monkey had a bare bum and penis, a man wore this to read to DC in a library.

www.google.com/amp/s/www.indy100.com/news/redbridge-library-monkey-custome-scandal-b1882666%3famp
the library link if anyone missed this when it happened.