Drag Queen Storytime at my local library (photo attached)

[Carla786]

I had a lovely trip to my local library yesterday. Spent a long time there choosing books, basically the whole time there was a very noisy toddler event going on in the next room. I didn't mind, they host a lot of stuff for various people & that's good.

As I left, I looked at the posters of various things they were advertising. I saw one for 'Mama G', clearly a drag queen, which I photographed for identification purposes. I thought this nonsense of drag story hours might be quietening down, but clearly not at my library. I'd never seen them advertise anything like that before 🤦‍♀️

Checking the photo when I got home, I saw the event had taken place that day, while I was choosing my books. I wasn't listening particularly hard, but from what I heard it sounded more like a 'panto dame' style event than anything sexualised. It still seems odd and inadvisable though. If a drag Queen wants to do panto style entertainment for kids too, he should have a separate line in that, rather than mixing it up. 'Drag queen shows ' are by nature sexual and adult, so 'drag queen' shows blur boundaries whatever the content/intention.

I don't think he read anything like that, from what I could hear. Hopefully not!

@RealEagle thankyou! I’ll add that to my trophy shelf.
You and others on this thread can have an award for lacking in awareness of what this is really all about. I’d rather clutch pearls than encourage/promote this to children.

I have to say that this thread has surprised and exasperated me.

So many posters who are quite happy for men to adopt womanface.

So many posters who think twerking is funny.

So many posters who have no idea about AGP.

So many posters so willing to subject toddlers to this abuse.

Very concerning. You're all so busy being naive and accepting, that you're throwing children into harm's way.

She was a baby! She’d probably have ‘loved’ bingo organized by Kier Starmer.

I'm shocked too. Otoh this is AIBU, frankly a lot of women don't have time etc to read about AGP which was hushed up until very recently. FWR would have different responses but I wanted to do a thread on a more general area to raise awareness of this dangerous practice

My mum (Gen X) had no idea about it until I told her, but she was immediately disgusted and saw the similarity between trans widows' stories & her own experiences of controlling partners.

What's disturbing to me is when people DO know about AGP but brush it off.

Honestly some of the comments on this thread make me despair. There are way more disturbing things to be worried about than an entertainer, booked by the library, reading stories to kids wearing (shock horror) a wig and make up. They are not ‘grooming’ them for heavens sake!! If you don’t like it then don’t go!
My teenage DC was going through a hard time mentally but really enjoyed Drag Race so I ended up taking them to many events and I have to say, without exception, every artist we ever met was kind, lovely and genuine. They almost all have had to face and overcome their own difficulties in life which in turn have made them some of the most compassionate people I’ve ever met. And guess what, some artists we met were women, some were straight men, so stop with your generalisation.

Agree also it's shocking how many are brushing off twerking.

Kids love drag queen's. They are fun and kind. Stop being homophobic.

It’s not womanface. It’s drag. It’s an art form and a form of self expression in its own right. It might have started out as parodying women but it has massively evolved since then. I’m going to bet that the posters who are pro this go to a lot more drag shows than those who are anti this, therefore have a lot more up-to-date experience & knowledge than the all-drag-queens-must-be-sexual-predators brigade

Twerking is viewed as sexual by some adults because some adults sexualise it. It is not sexual for kids. It’s about bums. Bums are funny. Stop sexualising children.

I know all about AGP. However, as has already been said upthread many times, the vast majority of drag queens are gay. So AGP is completely irrelevant in this situation

Please explain how a drag queen reading a story to children is “abuse” without devaluing the experiences of actual abuse victims

I would never put my child in harm’s way. But I’m raising her to experience & interact with a large cross section of society, which is likely to help her develop into a kind, thoughtful, open-minded adult who’s not going to grow up to be close-minded and scared of people who like to break social norms sometimes

@Carla786 I know there are people on Mumsnet who believe in AGP and will write about it as a condition. That doesn't mean it's an accepted or defined condition, and it isn't 'evidence' for the other posters claim that the majority of men who wear dresses do so for sexual gratification. I mean, I can read online about people's assertions that being gay is evidence of demonic possession and justification for conversion therapy, or that vaccines are causing autism, or that autism doesn't exist and is just bad parenting. Its a niche opinion, not fact. And certainly not an accepted psychiatric condition.

I take your point that not everything online is reliable- naturally. But it's not just a question of 'believing in' AGP. A huge amount of women post on the Trans Widows forum and describe recently transitioning husbands who certainly seem to have had long term cross dressing fetishes and continue to find it sexual after transitioning. Are they mostly lying?

There's also a large amount of research from Blanchard on, as well as cross-dressing groups like the Beaumont Society which were open among themselves about it being a sexual fetish. A large amount of news stories and SM content report transwomen engaging in fetishistic behaviour in varying ways - behaviour in toilets is one example.

Traditionally it was accepted that some straight men were transvestites and that it was a fetish. AGP was not a term used but it's only later that people have started to claim that a straight man cross-dressing must have some other reason, that it can't be a fetish.

I agree there are varying motives for cross dressing and AGP is only one, though.

How do commenters here fair with fancy dress parties? Are men allowed to dress up as women? Are women allowed to dress up as men?

How am I being homophobic? I'm bisexual myself, I don't see anything wrong with being gay .

Re twerking specifically, I am quite tired, so I'm afraid I asked ChatGPT to help me reply after telling them my points. I think they did a good job.

I agree that kids themselves usually aren’t intending anything sexual – for them it’s probably just “lol bum shaking is funny.” But I also don’t think it’s accurate to say twerking is only sexual because adults project that onto it. Movements have cultural histories and meanings. Twerking didn’t come out of nowhere as neutral silliness – in contemporary Western pop culture it mostly comes via club/dancehall/hip-hop spaces and music videos where it’s pretty explicitly sexualised. Even related traditions like Caribbean wining or West African dances aren’t simply “not sexual”; people from those cultures often describe them as them as sometimes playful, sometimes communal, and sometimes very sexual/flirtatious depending on context. So it’s not just adults imagining something that isn’t there – the dance vocabulary itself can carry adult/erotic connotations.
That doesn’t mean kids are being sexual. It just means context matters. We set age boundaries for lots of things that originate in adult spaces (lyrics, jokes, certain styles of dance, etc.

Yes, this happened a while back. A completely different person.

A relatively sympathetic follow-up interview with this drag queen confirmed that he had clearance to work with children, but didn't touch on his reasons for including photos of the children in his social media.

Apparently, he's transitioning, so subsequent articles referred to him as "Miss".

Blanchard isn't a reputable or credible source.
I know there are some men who have a sexual kink for wearing women's clothing, I don't dispute that, or that men prioritising that kink has caused relationships to break down. The notion that Blanchard put forward was that all trans women are motivated by sexual arousal of themselves as women, and that identifying as a trans woman is a paraphilia. That's what 'AGP' is, it's widely discredited, was never accepted by the medical community as a condition and so no I don't 'believe' in it as a condition. Nor do I see why it's even relevant on this thread, other than it being a trope of transphobes who tend to bring it up on these type of threads (appreciate though that you've said you saw a distinction between that and these performers)

This is the follow-up article. I'm shocked that he was only 21 at the time, to be honest - it might be the make-up (or stress) that's making him look older.

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/drag-queen-scared-walk-streets-21591048?int_source=amp_continue_reading&int_medium=amp&int_campaign=continue_reading_button

Thank you, yes I do differentiate.
Did Blanchard say it motivates all transwomen though? I thought he thought it was mainly applicable to hetero men who then transition, not gay men who transition. I didn't think he said all straight men who transition have it, if he did then I don't agree.

That's true. I don't think panto dames were traditionally that much like drag queens though, though there's definitely been increasing crossover

Agree mainly with this

It similar to "adult" jokes in kids cartoons - something to amuse parents, but to go over heads of children- I'm not sure about these myself. It can be OK, but some cartoons I think go too far

Sorry you're correct in that Blanchard differentiated re gay men who dressed as women or identified as women, but the original theory was that people who were born men, previously perceived as straight men who were attracted to women, and then transitioned (whether medically or not, but essentially those that identified as trans women) did so for sexual gratification. They essentially put forward that being MtF trans was a sexual orientation.
Blanchard did actually later step back from the idea quite a lot, but the theory is widely referenced by people who don't 'believe' in trans women, and see it as solely as a sexual fetish. It's often used in arguments as to why trans women shouldn't be accepted in society, because doing so means that women are being forced into colluding with/taking part in public displays of a sexual fetish.

Your friend sounds great. If all the drag queens doing storytime were like him I wouldn't have an issue.

Possibly ...

This is not a drag queen. This is a pantomime dame. Two different things.

That's different. Drag is a hyper-sexualised mocking version of what women are, right down to the names such as "Anne Abortion", "Miss Carriage", and "Molestia Child". I take it those names are not in pantomime!

And not every thing is about 'UK vs Yanks'. I am in Australia and I find it heartbreaking that womanface is the last bastion of discrimination and mockery allowed. Hell would break out if drag blacked up as African Americans or mocked women of another nationality or colour or mocked BLM. How can people not see how deeply offensive womanface is? Is it that some women have been so desensitised and so programmed to think this is ok, so they genuinely don't think beneath surface level?