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.

Incidentally, I was shocked to note Culture Club included blackface in a video in the 80s and it was stull going in Canada into the 2000s (hence the Trudeau expose)

Bo-Selecta, Little Britain and the Airline show they did were all doing it as recently as 15 years ago!

In Holland their 'Santa's helper' is a character called 'Black Peit', which is a blackface/minstrel character. Wild.

Has it occurred to you that the ones who aren't acting are the ones who are in the reports of it? You don't know how many parents were there originally, how many walked out, how many objected etc.

It wouldn't be "entertaining" for the SM influencers to post videos of the performers with no children engaging with them. So you don't see that bit. The data is therefore skewed towards the parents who have allowed it. Doesn't mean that it's "a lot" of parents who are allowing their children to drape themselves all over a stranger. And in that respect, does it matter if it's a DQ or not? Several famous BBC "entertainers" we're not men impersonating women but parents still allowed their children to sit on their laps...

Incidentally, I think it's significant that drag began with black gay men in the 19th century, and continued thay way via the Harlem scene, then the kind of drag houses portrayed in the documentary I mentioned, Paris Is Burning, composed of mainly black and some Latino men.

I wonder if part of the attraction of drag for these men was that in traditional Southern plantations, the 'Southern belle' was valourised and women were often the ones ordering slaves, especially household slaves,, around. This tradition continued to some extent when black women often worked as poorly paid & treated domestics for white couples.

So originally elements of mocking women/displaying hyperfemininity may have evolved in reaction to this. This does not excuse misogyny, especially since the situation now is very different, but it does make it a significantly different history from blackface in some ways.

Good point, videos etc show the people who stayed, who are hopefully not the majority.

Otoh, this thread itself shows a lot of parents seem worryingly naive, not particularly bothered about kids twerking, saying drag queen story hour isn't much to worry about etc Some parents don't seem to have the instinctive sense of risk that you'd think most have.

I think wider culture doesn't help as sexualisation of children has being going for quite a while,,as authors like Tanith Carey have documented.

I think they are, in subtle, insidious ways. I think that's why misogyny in society is still just as bad as it was 30 years ago, just enacted differently. Obviously they're not out there touting women hatred, but they support attitudes, norms, and laws, that promote the dehumanisation of women.

Just look at all the people who watch porn. It's misogynistic and harmful to women, and they're in favour of it. Or conversely, who think abortion should be illegal.

To be fair, the history of drag begins when white men began playing women's roles on stage, and it wasn't a gay thing.

It’s about creating plausible deniability though.

Some people are clearly happy to give these men a free pass when it comes to their behaviour with children - hand waving clearly inappropriate behaviour with weak excuses.

I would suggest that ‘statistically speaking’ almost all predators are the guys who create or exploit opportunities - from grooming the vulnerable neglected girls with charm and resents, to grooming weak minded adults with sparkles and sequins and entertaining their kids for a while.

i read a thing about men who groom children for sexual abuse, they are quite generous to each other. They are happy to attempt to groom a child even if they have no prospect of abusing that child because they know the next man along will ‘benefit’. They obviously expect to benefit from the ‘groundwork’ by other men. It suddenly made a lot of sense if the behaviour of some men.

In a world where child sexual abuse is so rife, why are some determined to turn a blind eye to so many obvious red flags in a group of men wishing to spend time with small children?

Yes, because women weren’t allowed on stage so men played the female roles.

But being a drag act doesn't make someone automatically into a raging misogynist nor a predator.

Agreed. But I think the genre attracts them though.

Hmm...I get what you mean, but by 'drag' I'm thinking of the gay male drag queen scene specifically.

I'm not sure if conflating all cross-dressing with 'drag' is necessarily clarifying as the vocabulary and stuff mostly associated with modern drag queens came from the gay male 'drag' scene rather than cross-dressing performance traditions generally.

You can't have it all ways. Men in drag are men in drag, regardless of whether they're part of the "gay drag scene" or not.

I'm not trying to 'have it all ways'. Giving context doesn't mean that I'm defending drag, panto dames, or any other form of men cross-dressing as women.
What I do think is that drag queens, panto dames & others have specific origins & histories which is important for analysis of sexism. The roots of sexism in the US-originated drag queen scene will be different from UK panto dames etc etc

Just as it's important to understand the roots of other harmful traditions.

I'm a history student so I quite like digging into various stuff anyway.

Sadly this is true for a lot of people ..

I don't think that many women watch porn though, but lots of men certainly do.

Re abortion, I think most UK people think are pro-choice. The US recently passed horribly restrictive laws across the South, but when you check, most people in those states don't agree with them. The Republicans say it's democracy but it's not, generally these laws pass due to issues like gerrymandering, pro life zealots being more motivated to vote, etc etc

Great post. Scary that so many people want to ignore these red flags.

I believe the gay male drag scene evolved out of theatre drag, so they are very much connected. But yes, modern drag has become something quite different to what it was.

In the UK? That sounds plausible, though the 18th century 'molly house' stuff I linked to earlier was separate from that.
I think a lot of issues with drag in UK specifically come from US forms, heavily influenced by the exaggerated RuPaul TV show, coming over here. Gay men who did drag in UK, as you say, were traditionally more influenced by theatre (Danny LaRue for one).
The panto tradition was also an influence in UK. This may make UK parents more vulnerable as they assume 'Mama G' type events are child-friendly panto type stuff.

Incidentally, does anyone find the use of 'Mama' scary? If I'd been a toddler taken to see a heavily made-up man dressed as a woman & calling himself 'Mama', I'd have been scared!

Re the US form, 2 other thoughts I have: it's notable that drag seems to have been especially prevalent among & influenced by black & Latino gay men, whose cultures have traditionally placed even higher emphasis than general US culture on masculinity. I suppose drag was in some ways perhaps a reaction to that? Though you see similar among, say, ladyboys in Thailand, which isn't a hypermasculine culture afaik.

This kind of culture seems to have had a lot of blurring with transsexual gay men, who wanted to physically transition. The kind of behaviour described here seems to be more about imitating women (again like ladyboys) than mocking them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_culture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogue_(dance)

It's notable that insult exchanges were a ritual part of this kind of culture (you see this in wider US black culture sometimes with games like The Dozens), and a frequent target was someone's lack of ability to pass as convincingly female.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throw_shade

Arguably RuPaul's show has popularised this kind of insult culture & it's morphed into mainly mocking women themselves.

In the ladies toilets as a child.
Grayson is a cunning man.
Grayson leads you to believe he is very open.

Grayson is disgusting- how on earth did he become such a public figure?

I think it's a bit harsh to say parents should automatically have children taken away if this happens : 'getting kids to twerk, to lie on top of them, etc'

• a lot of the parents probably weren't expecting anything like that, especially since Mama G, for ones, hides under the cloak of 'panto dame'. This is a known tactic of drag queens trying to do storytime.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/07/30/call-drag-queens-pantomime-dames-fool-protestors-librarians/

Moreover : I agree kids lying on top of the drag queen is inappropriate but it's not illegal. Shows extremely poor judgement by parents but social services can't take kids away on that account.

I was looking through a few DQST on YouTube to find this guy that I’d seen.

I also found a promotional video that showed a DQ making up and sitting on the tube (presumably on the way to a gig). It then showed children wandering along in this public transport and coming to sit with this stranger. DQs like ‘Little Miss Hot Mess’ read to the children. 😬

DQST (as opposed to similar orgs like DQSH etc) is run by the LGBT Consortium.

This organisation, despite its name, promotes gender ideology over all ‘LGB’ interests. When you break it down, who are DQs even supposed to represent? They are nothing to do with lesbians. It is quite a niche gay adult entertainment with many gay men disliking the genre. They are not trans but they often read books promoting gender ideology.

Then when anyone objects they are accused of being transphobic or homophobic.

kansasfamilyvoice.com/drag-queen-story-hour-coming-to-a-library-near-you/

Screenshot if you don’t want to click on the link to see what kids are subjected to in Kansas.

As someone who grew up in Kansas, YABVU to quote Kansas Family Voice as a reasonable source in a debate.

Your screenshot also takes it totally out of context. They don’t name or source that photo as a Kansas library and instead use the old hash of ‘speak out to prevent the horrible bad things that come from cities before they come to our precious place’. Kansas is a rural and largely conservative state that struggled with education standards for generations and, aside from two particular communities, is known for fear led tactics to persuade people that the devil is everywhere, essentially.

Continue your argument but this is not a valid source.

It’s the man in the grotesque outfit apparently reading to kids that concerned me. As opposed to interrogating the journalistic credentials of the ‘Kansas Family Voice’.

Odd that discrediting my source is your primary concern here.