To not understand drag queens at libraries?

[MouseShoes]

Just recently, there seems to be lots of news stories about drag acts reading books for children at libraries. I don’t understand what this is meant to do. Is it supposed to lead to acceptance as the children get older?

Are there any other 'story time' for kids in libraries?

Gay story time?
Lesbian Story time?
Engineer story time?
Doctor Story Time?
Lady in cardigan story time?
Shop owner story time?

Anything?

I've seen quite a few drag queen story times....they are exactly What they are advertised as - a story time for children . I haven't seen anything sexualized, or anything inappropriate for a young audience. There was another thread today with someone saying it was kids sitting on strange mens laps. It really isn't. Libraries have various people in to tell stories & they are all appropriately trained- aren't hugging kids etc just as staff wouldn't, they are police vetted, not delivering events alone.

I don't get thecwhole ethos of this. I can see someone dressing as a princess or Prince to read fairy stories to children but surely they'd be better just having someone read. I don't get the relationship to drag. Wouldn't one of the library staff be happy to run a reading session that's what happened when ours were little.

I find drag a bit tedious I have to say, don’t get the interest personally. Would find it weird if a drag artist showed up in my local library, just seems odd and out of place. Any drag show I’ve seen ( admittedly many years ago) were all sass and innuendo, hardly suitable for children….. have things changed?

@AlisonDonut I've seen special story times in libraries delivered by drag queens, older people, scientists, people who use service dogs, those from refugee or migrant community, dual language story times with someone from local deaf community, as well as performers from local theatres in custume. So yes absolutely loads of diversity and variety. We only hear about drag queen story time because people are obsessed with complaining about it and most of those haven't attended any story times at their local library.

Again, I've never seen the stats to talk about this generally, but my local library certainly does ask local professionals to come in. DH has been in to do it. Over pride they do also ask for LGBTQI+ readers to come in.

It seems to be the latest 'thing' and they are on tour - coming to a very small library near me soon. I just find the whole idea bizarre. The emphasis is clearly going to be on the performance/character not the story. I think it's virtue signalling at its worst - oooooo look how enlightened and inclusive we are. If you say no you are clearly some sort of phobic. I won't be going. Nothing against drag acts but they are for late night bars and adult audiences - not daytime libraries!

Sure - from the Stonewall glossary here:
"Trans: An umbrella term to describe people whose gender is not the same as, or does not sit comfortably with, the sex they were assigned at birth. Trans people may describe themselves using one or more of a wide variety of terms, including (but not limited to) transgender, transsexual, gender-queer (GQ), gender-fluid, non-binary, gender-variant, crossdresser, genderless, agender, nongender, third gender, bi-gender, trans man, trans woman, trans masculine, trans feminine and neutrois."

For what it's worth I agree with you that drag and cross-dressing are different to being trans (and I don't have a problem with any of these individually). But I just think the waters are being muddied in a dangerous way.

I think some organisations, some schools, some parents, are giving children the impression that if you are gender non-conforming then you might actually be the opposite sex. For instance Stonewall recently tweeted this Metro article. I appreciate this doesn't all relate to drag queen story time! But the whole issue currently makes me nervous.

@Namerchangerextraordinaire That event you reference already has at least one thread about it. It was not a library dragqueen story time. It was a national theatre festival evening event for adults, which one of the people who started a previous thread about it actually acknowledged once they looked at the event listing. What was said was . absolutely wrong. But it did not happen at a library story time for children.

I just don't understand it. I mean WHY would a drag queen want to tell stories to little children? What's in it for them? 🤨

I'm disappointed that libraries are organising these drag queen story telling events for children. When my children were small the library was a great place to go but I wouldn't want to go there if this is what's on offer. Certainly wouldn't want my grandchildren going there.

Why can't they arrange for a more child appropriate person to read stories?

Drag queens are for adult entertainment.

Wake up libraries, what on earth are you doing?

What do you think the young children are getting out of this weird experience?

How much weirder does it have to get before someone says 'hold on a minute ...'

How strange! I've never known a trans person calling themselves a crossdresser unless it's used as well as being a transperson (so they are both and both are not the same).

It is hard to keep up sometimes!

I haven't the foggiest what this is about. I suspect the dude who started it sold the idea to one or two councils/libraries who either thought it was fun or were too scared to say "no", and hey presto here we are. If you started "lesbian storytime" you might be given the same chance I guess...

There's a general vibe around drag like around "burlesque" years ago that it's somehow cool, fun and harmless instead of old, tired and sexist. I find it tedious tbh and not funny, and I doubt it can add anything at all to the experience of being read a story. Suspect the kids would get much more out of "person dressed as a dinosaur storytime".

My ds would have probably cried and got scared when he was younger. This isn't appropriate at a library.

The original premise of Drag Queen Story Hour originated in San Francisco, about a decade ago, by a librarian who had noticed attendance at the children’s storytime sessions on the wane and that those parents who did attend represented a very small subsection of the SF population. The having drag queens at a library was meant to break down barriers, demonstrate inclusivity, and make LGBT parents feel more welcome in what had previously been a heteronormative space. Traditionally the queens would read popular LGBT children’s books like Heather Has Two Mommies, And Tango Makes Three, This Day In June etc, with the idea of both helping the children of LGBT families see themselves in the mainstream and to educate the children of heterosexual families about the other different types of families living around them. Apparently it was immensely successful in encouraging greater attendance of SF’s LGBT parenting community to the sessions, and spread to other cities.

It’s clearly grown legs and arms since then if it’s now about sexualised performances and getting small children to sit on a strange man’s lap.

It’s not a “mould”. It’s a stereotype. We fought this battle and I thought won it in the 60s without any help from sexist stereotypes that are drag. We did it by going full throttle on gender elimination.

but that’s not cool now.
we’re tying ourselves in knots trying to break boundaries that we putting in as fast as we saying we’re breaking them. Just fecking eliminate gender stereotypes. Don’t perpetuate them with “oh look men can do woman too”
🤦‍♀️

Not disagree re drag..but then my son would scream at anyone dressed up..clown, teddy, bird 🤣🤣🤣

Drag acts are sexualised and over exaggerated versions of women and very misogynistic. They are adult entertainment not something children should be exposed to in a library or school. Good for the parents protesting and protecting children.

Can you link to this? This is quite different from what I know and have read. Cross dressing is different to trans and is different to drag though a person can be all three.

Transexual, what most people to think trans is an abbreviation of, has been subsumed by transgender which includes many labels for diverse gender expression. Drag is included under that umbrella despite being a performance art rather than about gender identity or personal gender expression. It's a bizarre thing to introduce children to. The usually adult nature of drag means that not all drag performers are equipped to modify their performance to make it age appropriate and some apparently have some less than wholesome dead about children and sexuality.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11031243/Drag-Queen-banned-Londons-National-Theatre-explicit-joke-children.html

There have been a couple times of incidents in the US where the screening of drag performers has not been as thorough as it could have been and a few sex offenders have slipped through to net to perform at storytime events!

One example of piss poor screening of performers.

www.newsweek.com/sex-offender-busted-drag-queen-who-read-book-children-city-library-1365384

I can see the benefit of having a signer in to sign a story if there are deaf children but why get a GP or scientist or firefighter in to read the tiger that came to tea or winnie the pooh.

I think that drag, in a few years time, will be seen the same as 'blackface' is now. People will be shocked that it was once so popular.
Quite rightly, you can't dress up to take the piss out of another race or nationality. So why should women put up with someone taking the piss out of them?

This country gets weirder by the day

Do they all also refer to women as Fish? And have slogans such as 'Charisma Uniqueness Nerve & Talent'?