OK the whole drag story time thing

[Qcng]

I've seen posts on this board before basically completely denouncing drag story time, but I've never really gone along with the perspective that it's such an oh so terrible thing. So I don't join in on those threads. As GC as anyone I actually think, dressing up is fine for girls and boys, these people aren't trying to send a message to children that it's big hair and fake lashes that actually make you a woman, (unlike say, someone like Caitlyn Jenner would send that message). They're sending a message that boys can do dress up too, that being gay is ok, and being a man in makeup is ok.

Anyway, I came across an article (posted by a GC feminist who was rather sarcastic and not at all sympathetic) where the drag queen received online abuse after attending a school for drag story time. So that's what got me thinking really, I don't think anyone should be on the receiving end of a torrent of abuse over something like drag.

I know drag itself is for adults, sexually charged, drugs involved etc and I am completely against "Desmond" and "Lactasia" (sp?) I would never in a million years want children to be encouraged to do drag or be in that scene at all under the age of 18.
Drag story time isn't encouraging that though surely? Like having a clown do tricks in a school, they aren't there saying "you should all start learning to juggle and paint your face now".

In the school setting the drag queens are literally just reading a story, usually with a positive LGB message. They aren't making crude jokes and won't use their same stage name (EG "Flow Job" is just "Flow" and "Popping Cherry" is just "Cherry" etc etc)

Am I being unreasonable in thinking that DQ story time isn't actually that bad, and in fact does send children a positive message particularly to the gender non confirming/LGB/those with LGB family members?

the drag queen is dressed up but not doing anything apart from reading a story

And rolling around on the floor with the children. How many other visitors to a primary school would deem that appropriate behaviour?

I'm all for diversity role models coming in and doing a proper training session on being gay or whatever, but if you're going to invite drag queens, why not invite a BDSM master and his slaves to educate the children? They march at pride so presumably they're ok too?

It's a mark of how successful groomers have been, and how far we we have swallowed it as a society that men with sexual, sometimes to the point of obscenity pun stage names, dress in glittery, colourful pretend sexy-lady costumes and we think that we are teaching kids anything positive when we stand on the sidelines while they do everything from reading books badly to misleading children about being anything other than the sex they were born as to fucking lapdancing for them and we shrug and say diversity.

The mother in that video, merrily bopping away while her small daughter experiences something that may well cause her problems for years to come, looks like every embarrassingly stupid parent so eager to be seen as 'cool'. Only this kind of stupidity may well do more than just embarrass.

Utterly shameful, and anyone who cannot see the issue is part of the grooming machine.

Where are all the men not in drag queuing up to read children stories?

“ Where are all the men not in drag queuing up to read children stories?”

They probably wouldn’t be allowed and their motives would be questioned.

Highly sexualised caricatures of women aside, iI recall correctly, one of the reasons drag queen story time was invented was to teach children as young as possible what constituted hate speech/bigotry. I don't know if that is still the case, or whether or not people have just forgotten.

Which might have a little more credibility, if there wasn't a stream of drag queens with, variously, their arses hanging out, kissing the children, twerking to the children, getting the children to lie across their bodies, exposing their penises under their skirts, photographing the children and putting it on social media, etc, and a whole bunch of people telling us that to object is hate speech/bigoted.

But some kids like glitter, so it's fine.

The children aren't being twerked at or anything

Errr

www.theblaze.com/news/drag-queen-shows-children-how-to-twerk-during-story-hour

Oops. Ok I stand corrected there.
That's completely not appropriate.
I honestly thought DQSH was just reading books with nothing else going on.

If they were 'Just Reading Books' they would turn up in mufti.

So would you be ok with 'stereotypical hooker story time?'' Whats the difference?

As the drag queen kitty Demure points out, drag queens tend to inhabit a highly sexualised world.

Imagining that this starts and ends with their performance is naive. As evidenced by a whole load of drag queens who have allowed their outlook to spill over right in front of the children.

Protecting this is a huge signal to any men who fancy getting close to children. Obvs not necessarily drag queens, but any men who gravitate towards 'protected castes' as cover.

Knowing that they can be sexualised in front of little kids, and even accidentally on purpose expose themselves, or touch the children, and people will defend them, must be an absolute gift.

So OP would you say every Drag Queen is suitable for reading stories in schools or is there a line you would draw?

If they're just sat there reading books I don't see a problem!

So, some of them are actually are twerking and flashing at the kids? You'd think surely no school would actually allow that to go on.

I must say I've never been to a DQ Story hour myself. You'd think, common Sense on the part of the DQ would keep things PG. I just wouldn't expect anything sexual going on.

Well, slightly off topic, but the RuPaul Netflix show, which features him and a young girl as his co star, includes a back stage scene of the kind of risque banter I've seen commonly among gay men, which they are, of course, perfectly ok to indulge in. But a child is present, and it goes so far as to include a joke that when the young girl is forthright in a request, she is a 'top', which is a sexual term for the dominant sexual partner, for those that don't know.

Now obviously, that's a Netflix show, not a story time aimed at kids, but I mention it because the scene is exactly the kind of subtle bleed of adult culture, meant for adults, into places it has no right to be, ie, a young girl hearing very specific sex terminology for the first time, and in a context she has no way of properly processing.

Caution and thought are not bad things when it comes to young children. They're really not. Glitter or no.

OP

Please watch the video I linked to.

OP “You'd think surely no school would actually allow that to go on.“

I think it’s initially too shocking to contemplate but that’s partly how organisations are getting away with this.

I don’t think this is ok. I think it’s fucking terrifying.

I just wouldn't expect anything sexual going on.

And that's exactly how it happens. Priests were considered pure and good. TV presenters, above approach. Grooming gangs weren't challenged due to fears of racism.

How anyone can apply that to drag queens, though, is beyond me. Their entire raison d'etre is to be sexual.

It's completely inappropriate for children, which ever way you look at it.

But despite that, you have an MP calling women bigots for objecting to a drag queen who photographed the children, put it on their social media, and has said, variously, that they want to punch a child, a woman, has photographs strewn across their social media with them licking dildos, having their genitals touched, grabbing their own penis, blah blah blah.

The wonderful LangCleg said that one the tenets of safeguarding is, if something untoward was to happen, could you adequately defend your reasons for allowing the situation to arise? That you had done everything you reasonably could to prevent a situation arising.

Imagining adult men, whose entire job is to be overtly and misogynistically sexual, are best placed to read to kids, wouldn't cut it, in my opinion.

Datun as disturbing as those pics are, I don't think they're from a DQ story hour in a school. They're from some other sort of LGBT event.

Ok, I'm getting the picture though.
So it's like a wedge type of thing, if you allow hyper-sexualized performers to present a toned down non-sexualized performance to children, but then some of them "accidentally" show children how to twerk or "accidentally" flash children, you're basically opening the door to opportunists.

I do feel extremely uncomfortable with the response to the DQ who just went in to read a story, they were accused of being a paedophile when they are clearly just homosexual, and homosexuals have unjustly been accused of being paedophiles since forever. I don't like the implication that DQs are Paedophiles it's homophobia 101.

What a mess.

Autumnrose yeah I'll take a look

OP “You'd think surely no school would actually allow that to go on.“

Well you would think that, but what teacher or librarian, having invited a man dressed up as an overly-sexualised woman to show tolerance to children is going to jump up and say "oi, stop, not appropriate" when he says "do you know what twerking is? I'll give you a demonstration".

Once in a situation people find it very hard to challenge.

The idea that drag queens represent the LGB community is dire. If people want to get children to appreciate that many of us are LGB then get the gay police officers, the lesbian rock climbers, the gay nurses and so on to come and read to children.
Telling young children that drag artists in over sexualised and usually grotesque images of women represent this community is offensive and regressive.

This.

Mhairi herself was (sort of) enough of a role model in that she is a lesbian politician. (Except she's not the beat role model imo.)

We don't have these storytimes for other things.

Story tellers and illustrators are the ones who've been going on for yonks. Why not an author who happens to be gay?

The whole thing is actually pointless and a
caricature of ... I don't actually know what.

This is the picture used on the Drag Queen Story Time website, as the banner image on their 'Gallery' page. It's a weird choice of photo I have to say.

I agree though, I do not condone the abuse of DQs. Criticism yes, abuse, no.

I’d like to see stuff like nurses and firefighters reading to kids in their work uniforms.

Well obviously the LGB movement has spent bloody years fighting the awful homophobic idea that being gay means you are a predator to children. It's been a profoundly important thing to break that association in the minds of the public so that lesbians and gay men can live their lives the same as anyone else, and be treated fairly when it comes to working with kids, or adopting, or even getting access to their children in the event of divorce.

SO WHY THE FUCK WOULD ANYONE THINK IT WAS A GOOD IDEA TO HAVE SEXUALIZED ANYTHING AS A REPRESENTATION OF LGBT TO YOUNG CHILDREN.

Sorry for shouting, but why is this not ridiculously obvious to everyone????

I can think of many better 'types' of people to read stories to kids - firefighters, doctors, scientists, nurses, charity workers, etc etc, gay or straight, but something positive and connected with real life. You might as well ask a pantomime horse in as a drag queen as far as I can see - both people dressing in costume to entertain others/make money, and nothing much noteworthy or 'inspiring' in it.

Drag is an exaggeration of a stereotypical male view of women. It's a caricature of women.

What sort of message is it sending to primary aged girls?