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'm sure drag queens aren't particularly high on the list of entertainment that care home residents would love to see. It's a money making enterprise for the drag queens and the activities organisers - just like the library staff - get to feel a sense of smug self-satisfaction because they think they're doing their bit for 'LGBT folk' and inclusivity. I'm sure the women in Caerphilly would have preferred a Tom Jones tribute act or a session with the Paint Along Lady.

It's not bigoted to understand the difference between those in power mocking those they have power over (blackface), and a marginalised group exploring the social construct of feminity that they have been discriminated against, and even killed, for exhibiting. They're not people in a position of power punching down. That's the difference.
I'm sorry you think that's bigoted but from my perspective your view is incredibly simplistic and offensive, to women and gay men.

Live and let live, and let's the kids have some fun!

Not old actually.

You seem pretty ageist and a bit ignorant here, and I'd guess you're quite young if you're screaming 'bigot' at everyone and imagine that you're talking to people who don't understand gay rights or drag. You do know that most of us over 50 were busy fighting FOR gay rights, don't you? Drag has been around in the UK forever, but also a lot to do with historical suppression of gay culture, and before that, obviously, women. You seem to think you're talking to people of the wartime generation, it's very bizarre, as if you've missed out half a century's worth of social progress and equality legislation. You know, the kind that many women here grew up with and many fought for.

I'd question frankly whether watching drag makes you "less bigoted and homophobic". Do little girls need to be "shown" that adult women are there to be mocked as a caricatured figure of fun? Doesn't seem very unbigoted to me, but then, perhaps we had better critical thinking skills and wider access to diversity and difference back in Gen X days than you seem to.

They've booked him twice again - not sure why you think you can speak on behalf of other people who you don't know and when you weren't there. And of course there isn't ANYONE in a care home is part of the LGBT community themselves is there? Absolutely none. Not a one...

Offensive?

Lol. Clueless. You're well behind the times here.

Oh, and men aren't marginalised, don't be an idiot. And drag isn't "exploring" femininity in a "gender questioning" freeing way, it's taking the piss out of it. You free yourself from gender norms by getting rid of stereotypes, not reifying them. It's SO old fashioned and backwards. People who think like you are taking us back DECADES. Reversing all the achievements we made. It's embarrassing. I suggest you learn a little bit more than you clearly have about the UK's social history from the 60s to the 2000s onwards, especially women's and gay rights. As I say, you (or your university) seem to have missed out about half a century's worth of social history and progress.

Who's "freer" of gender norms, a bloke who decides "yeah, I'm a bloke but so what, I'm going to wear makeup today to express myself and play with it, doesn't make me any less of a bloke, why should it? Makeup doesn't make you a woman, let's expand what it means to be a man instead", or someone who says "I want to wear makeup today to express myself, therefore that obviously means I'm a woman because that's what real women do." Fuck off with that backwards shit.

It's not my cup of tea because I don't think any man who dresses up as a parody of a woman is anything other than insulting.

The whole thing is based on misogyny just like blackface is based on racial bigotry.

I remember looking at Al Jonson singing on TV as a child (in re-runs) and not understanding why he had to put on blackface to perform - why couldn't he just sing without makeup? It was a gimmick. He got rich parodying black people for other white people's entertainment. My father loved him because he had grown up watching him - I hadn't so I didn't like him, ever.

Ditto for Danny LaRue - when I saw him on TV on The Good Old Days back in the seventies I thought it was weird for a man to dress up like a woman to sing and even wierder for anyone to think it was entertaining.
It was just another gimmick, this time at women's expense.

How many women have made a career dressing up as a parody of a man and singing in as deep a voice as they can? None.

Behind the times of the Mumsnet terf bubble perhaps. I only ever see this stuff trotted out on here.

There are drag artists appropriate for story time (like this one seems) and DBS checked like all workers around children should be and then there are the few sexualised ones who are few and far between but ruin it for everyone and it isn’t appropriate.

Correct the gay is a sign of modern life😉,no gayness before COVID.

i agree with this

also confusing children at a young age is inappropriate!

So true! My great uncle Rosslyn who never married or had kids definitely wasn't gay because (a) it wasn't invented then and even if it was (b) it was illegal!

Victoria Scone. Drag Kings also exist.

There are Drag Kings btw.

Someone upthread has already explained what drag is in relation to femininity better than I can, but every drag queen I’ve ever encountered has been nothing but a queen.

The bigotry on this thread is beyond me. Please can we never ever relate a drag queen (predominantly based on white women) to someone doing blackface.

I think they should stick to pantos. I’m stick of fucking drag queens on every tv ‘celeb’ quiz/cookery/baking show too.

I’m certain you would.

I’m also quite certain you’re national president of the Uptight Women’s Alliance.

“UWA: Bitching about everything so you don’t have to.”

lol

Do you think that speaking in a higher voice, wearing wigs, wearing make up, dancing - are all those things exclusive to women? Do we, as women, own the rights?
Drag is an extension of the characteristics that many gay men have been derided for having for years. Characteristics that are part of them, and their personalities their whole lives - seen not just in Western society, but in cultures all around the world. Why should they not been allowed to celebrate that part of themselves? Why do you assume that the motivation is to mock women? Do you think that wearing dresses is what women are about, is that all we're reduced to in your eyes?

Can’t really see an issue, it isn’t as if drag queens dressed up in BDSM gear came in. Literally a panto dame, Justin Fletcher does this every year for the CBeebies panto.

Mr Tumble regularly does bedtime stories on cbeebies. DD has never once decided she needs to be a clown.

Can you please post the whole flier (with the location obscured if you're uncomfortable disclosing it)? Your pics are cut off. You say in your OP that Mama G is "clearly a drag queen", but this is not clearly correct. Mama G is a "pantomime performer". I'm perfectly willing to admit I'm wrong if you have the evidence, but otherwise I'd be very surprised if your library has described an event hosted by or featuring Mama G as "Drag Queen Story Hour", and if it has then I think you SHOULD consider contacting them about this.

Yes, drag is not the same thing as panto (although panto itself has its issues with misogyny - outside the scope of this thread) and drag is inappropriate for children. The best thing to do would be to simply have the performer show up and read with NO descriptors or comments drawing attention to the fact that it's a man wearing a dress and that dresses are traditionally more associated with women. But if you insist on classifying something as "drag" when it's not, you're doing more harm that good in muddying the waters and convincing the average casual bystander to ignore the real issues because they've been obfuscated and conflated.

Please can we never ever relate a drag queen (predominantly based on white women) to someone doing blackface

What do you think the difference is?

There are women who dress up as exaggerated parodies of masculinity in a similar way and have been for a considerable time, many of whom made and make a living doing so. The term drag king is often used nowadays, though when it was popular in Britain in the late 19th and early 20th century they were more often marketed as male impersonators. This is absolutely a thing, particularly within the lesbian community.

White women are not marginalised and oppressed.

It's been explained up thread. The key bit your failing to understand is that one has a power imbalance, and one doesn't. HTH

Drag queens will in time be seen as bad as blackface .