Drag Queen Story Time - and a business opportunity for the GC

Making shite up that sounds vaguely plausible; & importing views from the US which is utterly saturated in “black people cannot be racist” & “white people cannot experience racism
White people can't experience racism like black people do though!
To say this as well as comparing drag to blackface is frankly ugh (for want of a better word!)

That article is an absolute embarrassment. Making shite up that sounds vaguely plausible; & importing views from the US which is utterly saturated in “black people cannot be racist” & “white people cannot experience racism” that they correctly identify blackface as punching down & then refuse to acknowledge drag as [containing elements of] the same. No, drag is about “exploring gender”. They’d - rightly - flip their lid if someone tried “blackface is an experiment in race-bending/queering race/exploring race”; but expect women to simply accept the parallel explanation of drag + gender rather than acknowledge that we live in a patriarchy & men hold power over women.

Absolute embarrassment to both the UK & their profession for this journalist to make such a patently absurd claim about Early Modern Theatre. Shakespeare must be spinning in his grave at such a heinous abuse of language & misrepresentation of his Players & their contemporaries. Are they trying to gentrify drag now?! If it belongs to any historical tradition it’s towards some of the Molly Houses. If you’re not really familiar with them/that period I’m not saying drag queens are massively promiscuous; I’m referring simply to the act of cross-dressing combined with creating a “female” persona (inc name); & webs of homosociality intertwined with homosexuality that create hugely complex relationship & social structures. That’s a relevant historical comparison to make - but nobody’s going to do it, because it doesn’t fit the new narrative of “drag is lovely family fun & all men in dresses are exactly the same & Shakespeare did it you uncultured swine…”.

Fair enough, YetAnotherSpartacus, it's just so relentless. The other day, I saw a post elsewhere about an event that was supposedly encouraging girls into a particular area where women are under-represented. And who did they have presenting? Men.
If I'd been braver, I would have asked why this was, did they not think of asking women to speak, or could they not find any willing to speak? If not, why not? It's any area with a very bad reputation for bullying and harassment, and speaking out about it ends up with you out of a job.
But back to the original suggestion: great idea, OP.

Of course, drag has long played a role in British society, from Shakespeare’s time, when women were banned from the stage and men wore female costumes to play their parts
So basically, drag comes from a long history of women being excluded.

Yes, but this is also an anachronism and is ahistorical. Just because men dressed in women's clothes at this time and for this reason does not make it 'drag' as we know it today. This has an entirely different context and meaning.

But with a name like that, too many libraries would refuse to book us because of fear of a backlash from the alphabet soup brigade.

100%. Just call it feminist story time.

Great idea btw.

I didn't make it through the whole article, but this stood out for me:
Of course, drag has long played a role in British society, from Shakespeare’s time, when women were banned from the stage and men wore female costumes to play their parts
So basically, drag comes from a long history of women being excluded.

Yet more mainstream press attempting to associate FWR with the far right.

We sse you.

I think a GC feminist story hour would be fantastic.

But with a name like that, too many libraries would refuse to book us because of fear of a backlash from the alphabet soup brigade.

I'd call it Diversity Story Hour. They love that word and with stories about strong girls and women, families with 2 mums or 2 dads, boys who liked "girly" things but still knew that they were boys, children with disabilities, and children from a variety of ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds it could actually be properly diverse and inclusive.

Oh god I didn't realise the libraries were paying for DQST. I just can't even.

www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/aug/11/im-just-trying-to-make-the-world-a-little-brighter-how-the-culture-wars-hijacked-drag-queen-story-hour?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Guardian, your misogyny is showing. And nice dig at MN, you really don't like us do you?

It started in San Francisco. There's a section about the origins in this video

And if they feel the 'costume' element of the storytime is lacking, perhaps the gender critical storytellers could come dressed as female scientists, businesswomen, footballers, doctors, politicians etc..? You know, something young girls should aspire to be, instead of being encouraged to aim for a glorious career on Onlyfans?
See, I don't see anything wrong with a storytime that celebrates women in prominent roles.
I do take issue with people judging other women judging them for choices you might not yourself take.

Bookmark

What a good idea.

Well done, and thank you, for going in to speak to the library management.

I really like this idea- dressing up as various important and inspirational women from history and reading relevant stories.

that could be really diverse, sexuality, age, ethnicity, religion, race, disabilities etc.

We could get one of the lionesses to tour libraries, reading the stories of other sporting greats like Raducanu, Williams and Adlington.

Women bigging up women. I like it.

Could you imagine the protests? At least the tras would get a bit of fresh air, bless. I wonder how the guardian would write it up.

Thank you so much for putting your (our) points across at your local library, OP
The ideas in the posts here are brilliant, exactly what children need and deserve

Dinosaur story time? Can use Dinosaur costumes and kids love Dinosaur stories!

Scientist story time could include cheap to run simple experiments - like lemon juice invisible ink…

I am not losing the run of myself 😳

Your post really nails something here.

Would it not be a better idea to have "scientist story time" where stories about science were told by a scientist? You could riff on this theme for ages, combining children meeting a real "scientist/businesswoman/doctor/nurse/botanist/engineer etc" with the theme of the story being told.

This would open up the world of professions, interests and hobbies to children, which is something that needs to happen in a lot of areas where there is little exposure to huge swathes of human endeavour.

Because DQST is just, fundamentally, about young children meeting a drag queen who reads a story. And that's it. What other further educational outcomes are there for children in this?

We could wear our dinosaur and witches costumes 😀

I would be…

Is be proposing that female strippers come in with the “content altered to be children appropriate”. And I would wear exactly the same clothes as the drag queens.

and then I would sit back and seek them explain their refusal