Drag Queen Story Time

[LizzyStrata]

First time posting here, so not sure of the etiquette. My apologies if this is the wrong place to raise these concerns.

Reading Borough Council is planning to hold Drag Queen Story Hour events in our libraries during the summer holidays. I’ve written to my MP, my councillors, and the Head of the Library Service to raise concerns. I think drag is entirely inappropriate for children, as it is a form of adult entertainment, highly sexualised and misogynistic, that blurs boundaries and undermines safeguarding.

The response Ive had is simply that they have received very few complaints so no reason to cancel.

Has anyone had any experience of tackling their local library over this issue? Grateful for any tips.

Also, if you live in Berkshire ,would you be willing to write and share your concerns?

thanks!

In the case of this particular library "protest" which you admire, the people at the centre appear not to be "women" as a general category but conspiracy theorists, including Michael Chaves, the anti-vaxxer/alt-right/white supremacist. Here you can see Chaves' own videos of the event, including him referring to the drag queen as "the degenerate."

The video I saw was of two brave women inside the library, then when they are escorted outside by the police they talk briefly to a male passer-by about what was going on.

Yep

when people in authority start neglecting their duty, they leave a gap

shouting ‘peadophile’ in a library in front of a bunch of kids isn’t ok, and neither is inviting adult entertainers to do their act to children

But..but.. aren't drag Queens at least supposed to "tuck"?? And for that matter actually dress "as women" (whatever that means)?? This person seems to have purposefully chosen an extremely tight revealing catsuit with untucked (aroused??!) male genitalia?!! In front of kids!! I know we talk about in plain sight but come on! What possible legitimate reason could there be ? Am I missing something ??

Yes I don't think women should have been scaring toddlers and babies but how has this event been allowed to happen. There's another photo of all the kids surrounding the "queen" and hugging/touching them at waist height! What the hell are people thinking

What the hell are people thinking

It's the sacred caste. Drag queens are under the trans umbrella, so are part of the LGBTQ++++ 'community', which can't be criticised and which never does anything wrong. Therefore they can't be predators, or commit crimes. All LGBTQ++++ people are to be considered pure and incapable of harm.

It's the either/or thinking of people who endorse gender ideology. Either all people in a certain group are predators or none of them are. They are incapable of understanding that acknowledging that some people in this group are predators doesn't mean that anyone thinks they all are.

Yes, it wasn't racism that led people to want to protect the girls who were being groomed by these gangs, but it was the fear of being labelled as racist which prevented some of those people from acting.

What posters like @exceptmeandmymonkey and @onthefencesitter don't seem to understand is that different people have different reasons for objecting to DQST. Some of them are anti-gay, anti-trans etc. Some of them just want to protect children. Some of them might be part of both groups. Most of the people on here just want to protect children (is that surprising on a site called 'mumsnet'?)

It's important that a fear of being labelled transphobic or homophobic (when we are not) doesn't stop us from calling out practices which are harmful to children.

Perhaps one of the posters who is in favour of DQST could explain how it is beneficial to children to have a story read to them by a man dressed as a grotesque parody of a woman, who may be visibly aroused by doing so.

Come to think about it, i once attended a great Purim event at my synagogue which featured a talk by a drag queen (alongside talks by a convert to Judaism; an ex ultra orthodox jew and a gay rabbi- theme was behind the mask along with dinner cooked by a social enterprise run by refugee women). I really don't remember if there were kids as the event ran until 9 plus pm on a school night but I wouldn't have expected any event at a synagogue to exclude kids! I think there may have been an earlier event featuring crafts and a children's reading of the megillah and that was only for kids but the later event never said no kids. I don't recall anything i thought would be inappropriate even in a religious setting and certainly no revealing costumes. The event took place inside the sanctuary!

There was also a drag queen providing evening entertainment during the Biennial (which I didn't attend and it was on Zoom due to covid).

Exactly right. The promoters need to explain what the benefit to children is. The benefit of exposing them to a genre which relies for its meaning on adult transgression of gender stereotypes is not obvious to me, but I am willing to listen to any arguments which are advanced.

MenopausalMe
I also do not want to share a platform with neo Nazis on any issue but I am not going to ignore safeguarding risks to children because neo Nazis may also be protesting. Agreeing the sun shines is not the same as sharing a platform

I agree with what you said there. Although not about DQSH, this is an interesting article about how the far left and far right can end up having a lot in common. This was originally in the New York Times but you can read it free in this publication.

The Far Right and Far Left Agree on One Thing: Women Don’t Count

www.akilligundem.com/the-far-right-and-far-left-agree-on-one-thing-women-dont-count/

This is a genuinely interesting story, but doesn’t explain the benefit to children of exposing them to a genre which relies for its meaning on adult transgression of gender stereotypes.

I could quite easily articulate the value of say a female firefighter reading to them and talking about her job. But a drag queen? I’d love to hhear some articulation of the benefit you perceive the children will get

Well I think the point of the event in my synagogue was to say that Jewish people come in all shapes and sizes and we are all part of one big jewish family. Also that it is ok to be who you are even in a religious setting and not hide who you are. That was my main take from it anyway. Maybe a lot of people think 'religion is not for them', because they made certain life choices but thats not true. I chose my synagogue because it is welcoming to everyone; religion is something that should be accessible to everyone who is willing to learn. As for drag story hour in a library, I do agree the benefit is not obvious to me but I have never attended one. I know how I feel about the event I attended because i felt I did gain something from attending it.

You are making assumptions about my opinions. I, personally, do not object to people who think DQST is wrong because they believe drag is adult entertainment and doesn't belong in children's presentations at libraries. I also think to campaign against this, or to protest against it, is fine, if you are so inclined.

What I have objected to in this thread is THIS particular protest, in which a small group of terrifying people which includes alt-right conspiracy theorists who have previously protested vaccine sites shout about paedophilia and autogynephilia to toddlers. That this is under the guise of "protecting children" and objecting to it is "silencing women" boggles the mind.

It's a leap that there are "good" protestors (the women, probably GC, who must not be silenced!) vs the "bad" protestors (the men shouting outside). They could be well part of the same group -- there was a vaccine site protested on my road where most protestors were women, and plenty of women are involved in alt-right/white supremacy/conspiracies about jews and paedophiles being the new world order.

The group of protestors was small and I do not believe that there's any chance the "good" protestors were unaware of what the "bad" protestors were shouting, which included well known far-right dog whistles.

There's another protest going on in Crewe right now, hopefully we'll get some more women inside the venue again.

These leaflets are being handed out to the general public who seem to be in agreement with the gender critical message.

It seems to me that if the desire is to get children comfortable with the idea some people are gay, drag queens (who bear no relation to the gay people one meets in daily life) have no value.
my theory is drag is popular because it’s an aspect of gay culture uneasy straight people can cope with. Glitter, rainbows, costumes, misogynistic jokes - yeah, I feel safe with this. Actual gay men having sexual, loving relationships ? SCREAM 😱

Nope. Disrupting events at which young children are present never OK. Picket the LAs offices if you want to protest.

Patriotic alternative is far right.

'Experts in the field of demography, including Professor David Coleman of the University of Oxford, predict that if immigration and fertility rate trends continue as they are doing, then the "White British" will be a minority (less than 50% of the population) in the United Kingdom by the year 2066.
The "White British" are already a minority in many towns and cities including Leicester, Luton, Birmingham, Slough and our capital city London.'- this is directly lifted from their site

Sorry as a non white, non- Brit resident of London, I can't see how I can support this given they are just as likely to hold a protest against me for existing.

Why are you trying to gatekeep how women protest?

Do me a favour

if they really wanted to protect kids they wouldn’t go and disrupt an event for children, they’d think of another way to protest, as Tully has suggested

The event shouldn't be going on if the first place, these protests help the sunlight flood in far more than chatting on the internet all day.

On another thread (the soap stall), a poster is putting forward an argument that perhaps the organisation that decided to withdraw the stall at the community event is not responding so much to what the woman claims to have written but the perception that once a claim of offence has been lodged, then the organisation has to respond for fear of being cancelled itself.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4598296-here-we-go-again-woman-told-she-cant-have-a-stall-at-a-community-event?page=2&reply=118824697

Isn't this the power of perceived guilt by association? Some of this is as the heart of the moral claims that Peter Daly wrote about in re: CGC and Maya Forstater. It's invidious.

"The adoption of this zero-sum approach arises because of the way that organisations define their own identities: the way in which they view themselves and encourage others to view them. This has a moral dimension, with organisations defining themselves as moral communities. In The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided By Politics and Religion, the moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt refers (p.312) to “moral capital” (p.312) as “the resources that sustain a moral community”. He writes:

“More specifically, moral capital refers to the degree to which a community possesses interlocking sets of values, virtues, norms, practices, identities, institutions, and technologies that mesh well with evolved psychological mechanisms and thereby enable the community to suppress or regulate selfishness and make cooperation possible.”"

Further, by adopting the language and identity of morality, accusations against them of discrimination strike at the core of their corporate identity and threaten their moral capital. Evidence of the immorality of those whose views are at variance with the moral community is not only that those views are at variance with the community, but that they challenge the morality of that community. Such allegations – even where made correctly – are more fundamentally wounding than would otherwise be the case because they strike not just at what an organisation does, but what an organisation is.

www.linkedin.com/pulse/morality-plays-lessons-forstater-peter-daly

But at the risk of harm to children. There are plenty of ways to protest that don’t carry that risk.
it’s not a tricky point to grasp, this one

Even religious groups can make poor choices sometimes because they want to seem relevant and progressive. Quite a lot like libraries. So I'm not really sure what your point is?

I mean, I understand the idea of religious institutions being open to all walks of life. But why have a drag queen in particular, who is not even a real person as such but a performance personality, like the Little Tramp? Or was it just a person who was a performer, without being all made up as a persona? Would you have had, say, a stripper, or prostitute, or convicted criminal who had been found guilty of a socially condemned crime, a junkie? Because those are people who are often significantly marginalized, more so than some guy who dresses up for performances in clubs?

And I'm not suggesting those people should not be welcomed, quite the opposite. But if an event is really about the kind of religious responsibility to the marginalized, that could include all kinds of people not appropriate to read kids stories at a library.

How you can watch that video and think it's women who a danger to children I do not know.

onthefencesitter 02:26
Please forgive the derail as what I want to ask, regarding the following you said, is not about drag queens:

I have never had any common ground with neo Nazis or trump..I will report back if that ever happens! Re trans issues- it is relatively new for me; and I don't have a fully formulated opinion. I have met trans people at my synagogue (somehow they choose to transition into a new religion at the same time!); Tbh they just seemed like very unhappy people but that is not unusual in a religious setting; after all, religion is often a refuge for the lonely!

I have a SIL who has now declared herself a member of the trans community (same issues with mental health; zero history of gender dysphoria). That's why I am looking into it seriously now.

This is an interesting post I think, onthefence. You often here GC people describe the insistence of trans allies and trans people that they are literally the opposite sex to what they were born, and to say otherwise is transphobic, to being something like a new religion.

In the cases you describe in your synagogue, you can see that, if the people you are mentioning are troubled in general as you say, both transitioning/converting to a new religion and a new body might feel like those joining evangelical religions’ ‘being reborn’.

I was wondering if your synagogue is less strict than some? I thought sometimes it could be hard to ‘become’ Jewish if your mother had not been - but perhaps in these cases their mothers had been. Also, if your synagogue has a women’s and a men’s side, have the trans people been allowed to sit in the side of their transgender identity?

How you can think involving young children in a disruptive protest, when you have numerous other options to make your views known, I don’t know.
you seem incapable of balancing benefits and risks. People like you help no one.