Drag Queen Storytime and The Safeguarding Question - Women Speak Tasmania

[IwantToRetire]

The Origins and Goals of Drag Queen Storytime

The international Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH) program was co-founded in 2015 in San Francisco. One of its prominent founding members, Lil Miss Hot Mess, has written popular storytime books such as The Hips on the Drag Queen, Go Swish, Swish, Swish.

According to the official DQSH organisation, the program’s goals extend beyond literacy and entertainment. Their stated mission includes:

Capturing “the imagination and play of gender fluidity of childhood” and providing children with “glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models.”

These stated objectives distinguish Drag Queen Storytime from traditional literacy programs. The goal is not simply reading promotion, but also exposure to particular ideas about gender expression, diversity, and identity.

Full article https://womenspeaktas.au/2026/06/03/drag-queen-storytime-and-the-safeguarding-question/

Thought this might be interesting to others as not only looks to the history of this concept, safe guarding in relation to different age groups, and some of the instances in Tasmania. And obvioously current in the UK.

Thanks for this. I always wondered just why these community-minded drag queens were only volunteering to read to children and not, say, read to old people in care homes or hospitals. Now we know that it's to normalise these fetishes and desensitise children to having a warped sense of what it is to be in a sexed body.

Yes - seeing it spelt out like this certainly makes it clear.

I have this sense of it something that just crept up on us all - and grew thanks to so many people thinking it "normal". Or about being in touch with modern ideas.

Just another arm of the Queer project to subvert everything to a male focused idea of what should be the "norm" in society.

Thanks, that’s interesting.

Until the 1990s Tasmania had a law against ‘cross dressing after 6 pm’. So I imagine they are trying to distance themselves from that. In Melbourne, several councils have given up on Drag time story telling as the backlash from a wide range of cultural / religious communities was immense. Local governments were shocked by this reaction because Melbourne is a live and let live kind of place, but various groups were absolutely not having their kids be part of it. There was much hand wringing in the media. I think there were bomb threats!

I think that is it. As with the trans movement.

That it isn't just about a group of people who have a life style or whatever, but about a group with a direct objective iof being an influence of others.

And this insidious intent to target children is just horrific.

I can imagine any other group making it clear that this is their aim that politicians, child carers, etc., wouldn't be lobbying to get them stopped.

There are days when I just despair at how easily their poison has been spread - and accepted.