Drag queen story time

[RagingBall]

Manchester central library is holding drag queen story time over Halloween. How can I convince the council that this is a crap idea?

"How does this benefit children?" is what I would want the council to explain.

Reading stories to children benefits them. What additional benefit is there to children by dressing the storyteller in drag?

I can see how it benefits drag queens. Not children.

How strange. I don't understand why my last message was deleted and have asked the mods to clarify which rule it broke.

Trying again:

Ask the council to clarify how this benefits children. Storytime is obviously beneficial to children. That the storytellers be dressed in drag is not obviously beneficial to children IMO.

CBeebies always has Justin dressed up in, either, drag or as female characters.....Justin gets away with it, but I have to say I feel more than a little irritated with CBeebies sometimes - just too right on and manipulative in all sorts of ways.

Justin is a parody, which I personally dislike, but never a sexualised parody. It irritates me too, though.

Also Justin doesn’t encourage children to sit on him or teach the kids to twerk, which has happened at DQST elsewhere.

Traditional pantomime has always had men and women dressing as the opposite gender, in the case of the same, in a grotesque exaggerated caricature. The handsome prince has always traditionally been a girl in tights and boots. Very confusing.

Sorry - I probably should have said sex not gender.

I hate autocorrect. Dame, not same.

The mods reviewed and decided to reinstate my first post. Thanks, mods!

The quotes attributed to black women as a group are interesting: a couple of days ago it was the inclusive use of womxn, today its asking people not to compare drag with black and white minstrels.
A black woman may have said this but this cannot be extrapolated to black women as some sort of homogeneous group performing the role of an easy scapegoat.
Parodying women while eradicating their right to exist other than by the rules of patriarchy is akin to how white people used to mimic using black face .
Back to drag queens in the library. Someone said mentioned drag performed in pantomime. A definition of pantomime : an absurdly exaggerated piece of behaviour. Quite apt when it comes to describing drag queens and why they are unsuitable for libraries.

Pantomime dames and principal boys are quite different. In the case of the dame, the comedy lies in the exaggerated masculinity of the character under the costume.

And I do think the future will look back on this age in the same way we look back on past ages and gasp in astonishment at some of the things we accepted as normal. This always happens.

These were on a while back at a festfestivalivsl. I went and sat through the first story. Honestly the acting was awful, the storytelling was dreadful and the content was just so stereotyped. I listened to the King and King told by Yshee Black pronounced 'is she black'! Performed by a black man in drag. I thought it was really confusing and strange that we would be getting our kids to ask is she black? It really was very bad entertainment let alone the confusing messages. The leaflet was given out at the end, but I got one of someone else.

I brought it up with the organisers before the event and gave them links to American stuff. They replied saying it was family carabret drag story time. But it was people in drag reading stories!

Can't stand drag.

Did anyone watch 'Drag Kids' on the telly, must admit I started to watch it as I thought it must be a joke but turned over when I saw it was real. Just made me think the worlds gone mad.

Just a few suggestions off the top of my head.

1. Ask them how much they're paying these "entertainers";
2. Ask for reassurance that this money isn't coming from any library funds (for book-buying, other library events etc);
3. Ask who approved this idea, and whether anybody had done any risk assessment. You could also get the local press involved - stress that you're not homophobic or anti-drag, just worried about the suitabability of this for small children.

Thanks all - email is written, some great suggestions & points to make. If I get a reply I'll report back