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.

Exactly.

He also wore a big black sex toy on display at a children’s charity event. It says a lot about his boundaries.

So many people on here are so desperate to wave away all those red flags. There are multiple lectures if DQs having physical contact with children, having pornographic social media, posting children’s pictures on their social media (presumably without permission), offensive names, reading indoctrinating ‘LGBTQIA’ books.

One regular school visiting DQ not only had a very tight outfit that showed his anatomy clearly, pictures of physical contact between him and children but also had a close chum tho was a convicted paedophile. Anyone that believes that DBS checks are a strong safeguarding need to wobble their head.

There have been so many huge mess ups in this area - one high profile one being Rainbow Dildo Butt Monkey (yes as bad as it sounds) running around in a kids library.

How many red flags do they need to wave?

I don't!

I see from your username that a drag queen has a similar name, perhaps you are HIM!

You’re the one trying to discredit widely acknowledged condition of AGP and the sexual fetish element of trans identification that applies to many men.

And no, we are not seeking them out. They make sure everyone can see them, it’s part of the thing.

You only have to look at the trans activists who spammed FWR with hardcore porn so that MN had to take measures to prevent it. Or the trans activists who posted porn on JK Rowling’s free project for children to understand that. We can’t get away from it.

DQST has been instrumental in shoehorning trans ideology into schools and other activities involving young children.

"It would be awful if the library closed"

Yet here you are spreading / inflaming discourse about a perfectly harmless practice

People like you really are the worst. Not only ignorant, but hypocritical as well

AGP was never accepted as a credible theory, and even the original author has distanced themselves from what they first proposed. Just because you have a GC fantasy about hunting out perverts and diagnosing them doesn't mean it has any bearing in reality.
And Mumsnet 'feminism' boards are well known for transphonbia, so whilst I don't condone illegal action it's not that surprising it's been targeted.

FWIW I've never had a man tell me in detail about their sexual fetishes that they would know I'd disagree with, and I'm genuinely baffled at how this seems to accidentally happen to so many terfs on here, by so many men it seems.

So you know that some DQs are abusers - not all obviously, but some. Don’t you think they should be held to the same standards as all other people interacting with children? And not be given a free pass to flash their underwear, wave a dildo around, use offensive language, teach sexualised and inappropriate dances or have physical contact with children.

There is photographic evidence of all this happening but we’re not seeing any appropriate reaction from the authorities who should be safeguarding children.

My question is, why are you working so hard on this thread to defend these men regardless of the issues being raised?

Because the precautions that are being advocated on this thread are banning the events,

given the number of serious issues that we are already aware of, and the obvious inability of some of these DQs to properly separate their child facing act with their adult persona, and lack of unique tangible benefits to outweigh the issues, that seems like a good idea.

The precautions being taken are having these performances in a public place, by people who have undertaken the usual employment checks to work with children.

Assuming they have had the appropriate checks, it is clear they don’t go far enough. If a performer promotes porn on their social media or doesn’t know they shouldn’t have physical contact with children they SHOULD be failing checks to allow thrm to work with children, IF those checks were an adequate safeguard.

That is not the whole story though. I’m sure some of these performers behave perfectly within normal safeguarding rules, but if they are encouraging children to pretend men are just like women, and refer to them as women, or reading books produced to introduce them to gender ideology, or encouraging parents to ignore obvious red flags ;quite a few of those parents in here), that is also a problem.

And why are some on here so fixed on Drag Queens? I can see no tangible benefits for children that a group of Emergency Servhces workers of both sexes couldn’t bring and they could give children a whole lot more benefits. Inspiration for little girls for example.

What do DQs do for little girls? How is it good for them to have exclusively men read to them? Where are their positive role models??

I've not defended Grayson Perry, if that's what you're suggesting. I've been very clear that Grayson Perry is extreme, and I wouldn't personally encourage anyone to take young children to see Grayson Perry without doing their research (I don't know about the work they do with younger audiences, I would very much hope it's not the adult content) I don't know how many times I've had to repeat that I don't think Grayson Perry is representative, or linked to, or associated with, drag artists or trans women.

I do think it's strange that there are a subset of people on Mumsnet who apparently believe that all effeminate gay men, all drag queens, all panto dames, all men who wear anything they believe to be 'women's clothing', their creepy exes, and pretty much any other man who doesn't fit the stereotype of a straight manly man, are some sort of peverse subspecies who are intent on sexually abusing children.

I have mentioned on here that I was in school during section 28, which was extremely harmful. So that has influenced why I believe we should allow children to be children, to dress up, to play, teach them that it's ok to be themselves and to be kind. I don't need to justify or apologise that I think we should teach children to be kind and accept others. And it is entirely possible to do that whilst teaching them about boundaries and safeguarding.

With the evidence you say you have about abuses of children, have you reported them? Because I keep hearing on here that people know that this is going on, but it isn't my experience, or that shared by the parents who have been to these sessions on the thread. The examples brought up on here where someone has behaved inappropriately were known about because the situations were investigated and dealt with, which suggests that 'the authorities' do have an 'appropriate reaction'. Do you have any examples where there is actual evidence, complaints were made and nothing was done?

And there it is, it's fA to do with actual safeguarding for you, and everything to do with your view that boys should behave one way and girls another.

The emergency services angle is a bit bizarre. Emergency services do go into schools to teach children about fire safety, or keeping out of crime. Don't you think it would be a bit of a waste of their time and skillset if they had to add in reading books, rather than teach kids about their specialisms and spend most their time actually protecting the public? And there are plenty of non drag storytime sessions, why on earth would you think that there are no other role models? The vast majority of nursery and primary teaching staff are women!

No different from the pantomimes. If they were wearing leather it’d be different.

Minstrel shows existed as a form of racial mockery, white people portraying black people as subhuman, stupid, lazy etc.

I don't think I've ever seen a drag act maliciously mock women. Usually they're the butt of their own joke...they're performing an exaggerated caricature of a woman, attempting to be 'fabulous', glamorous, classy, high society, a diva etc...but with a very obvious nod and a wink to the fact that they're healed together by sticky tape, rough around the edges and - ultimately - a bloke underneath it all.

When a man picks a female name, wants to be referred to by female pronouns, makes up their face in a way that's deliberately trying to make it look feminine, and wears (or contours) fake tits, they're parodying a woman.

'they're performing an exaggerated caricature of a woman'

Hmm... And dressing in womanface as a poor caricature of a woman, and doing a song/dance/comedy routine doesn't remind you of anything? Maybe the mockery of women?

And are you trying to say that blackface is fine so long as they aren't 'portraying black people as subhuman, stupid, lazy'?

Teaching children that men dressed up as women are lovely, safe people. So much so that here they are reading to you in the library so it must be ok.
Who stands to gain from this?
The men in frocks.

Well, they could've said the same about minstrel shows.

Honestly, why are people so insistent on ignoring the similarities there?

Oh I wish! Yn anffodus na!

Most drag queens may be gay but nearly 90% of men who cross-dress are heterosexual.

All it shows is that gay men are every bit as misogynistic as straight men.
Nothing to be proud of.

And there it is, it's fA to do with actual safeguarding for you, and everything to do with your view that boys should behave one way and girls another.

How did you get there from what I actually said?? That’s not remotely close.

If you think there are lots of other non DQ storytime options then that’s great. There is absolutely no need for such a questionably motivated thing as DQST which has already enabled far too many safeguarding failures (that we know of so far) and is an extremely niche activity that is mainly for the benefit of gay men (according to PP) and where there appears to be no evidence that it helps children read.

Exactly. The mental gymnastics on show in this thread are Olympic standard!

I wasn’t talking about Grayson Perry. There are others in the DQST type genre.

Nobody has said ‘all’ in relation to any group. Just pointed out that child inappropriate and safeguarding free behaviour is not only over-represented in a particular group of performers in a primarily adult genre (DQ), but defended vigorously by some. Predators will exploit weak spots - we’ve already seen these men seriously beaching boundaries of what is appropriate, but instead of condemning v it snd acknowledging the issues, people on this thread and elsewhere are excusing it.

Here is one of the threads mentioned earlier which gives more background on one subset of men you have mentioned.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3668898-trans-widows-escape-committee-3-rise-of-the-trans-widows

Why do gay men dress up as caricatures of women in the first place?

Why don't they parody the men who bullied them as boys instead?

It's easier to punch down - that's why.

I remember listening to "Panty Bliss" giving a very emotional speech about how difficult it was for him growing up gay in a conservative country.
It would have touched me if he wasn't a drag queen who made a living out of vulgar parodies of women. He's just as bigoted as the men he complained about but can't see it due to his own misogyny.

So have you reported all of this, all these people you know know for sure are grooming and abusing children, that you have evidence of?

And there are plenty of posters on here who have suggested that "all' are perverted, and that there can be no other reason for any man to wear a dress, make up, or even want to work with children.

Do you have any evidence to back up your claim that drag queens are over represented in sex offender statistics? Hint: the fact that when it happens the press are more likely to report it and it's more likely to be discussed on Mumsnet isn't evidence.

Are you denying the lived reality of the wives and children of these men?

I’m so pleased to have managed to avoid this sort of thing - I can assure you we don’t seek it out - some women even have it imposed on them at work with compulsory ‘training’ courses.

One training provider, a high profile trans identifying male tells ‘jolly’ stories of stealing his sisters underwear as part of his ‘trans’ journey. ‘Caitlin’/Bruce Jenner told a very similar (almost identical funnily enough) story at an awards ceremony about stealing and wearing his teenage daughter’s underwear.

Men and their sexual fetish of themselves as women. If you have a better name for it please feel free to pipe up but the behaviour is well documented and more common than we’d like. Not at all discredited.