Probably in response to this nonsensical Twitter thread (which I've featured before)
Conflating "Drag Queens" with LGB | GenderCritical | Ovarit
"There is a meme going around picturing favorite children's books with this caption: "I bet most of the people flipping out about drag queens and kids have no idea that their favorite classic children's books were written by queer people"
This is apples and oranges. The authors may have been (I have not researched) LG or B, not likely were they drag queens, and equally not likely would they have preferred to be called queer.
It is disingenuous, and designed to mislead people into thinking "drag queen story hours" are just fine. And normalize the term "queer". I am annoyed by this, everytime I see it."
I note that the stupid meme's logic is that "Many children's books were written by queer people. Therefore there's nothing wrong with drag queens interacting with children". Besides the slippage between queer people and drag queens and being queer and doing queer things, there is no logical link between children's books writers being queer and exposing children to queerness.
One might as well say that since most children's books were written by straight people who had sex, there's no problem with showing kids straight porn.
Comments:
i) One, drag isn't what it used to be. Drag shows used to be female impersonators dressed as divas like Diana Ross, Judy Garland, Carol Channing. They'd wear gowns and lip-sync to the original music. They weren't lewd--the tips went into their hands, not their underwear. This is no longer the case.
Two, drag queen story hour is not just a guy in drag reading any old book to kids, it's a national organization which promotes gender identity theory. They read from TQIA+ books for kids, and they use worksheets from the "Dragtivity" book. Not every DQSH is a local franchise, but whether they are or not, they're hired to present a certain agenda. That's the whole idea.
ii) This is the only sort of drag I'd experienced before and I was initially really surprised at all the backlash. Women dressed up in glittery costumes to look like a princess or fairy or whatever seems pretty par for the course as far as children's events go. Might be neat to show kids that men can do that sort of thing too.
It took seeing stuff like the 'it won't lick itself' backdrop that made me realise they were straight up showing adult entertainment to kids, not adapting it to just be an age-appropriate performance. That is truly disgusting.
iii) This is the crux of the problem to me. I don't care about drag queens in general, and I don't even think it's terrible for drag queens to be around kids as long as their act only involves makeup and wigs and costumes and they keep it strictly G-rated. My issue is with gender ideology, and that organization is heavily invested in normalizing child transition to impressionable kids. It's not about breaking gender stereotypes. It's about telling children that if they "feel like" the opposite sex, maybe they actually are.
v) I have found out in the past week how many "normies" on my
FB list (plus, of course, the woke libfems who would cancel me in a
second if they knew what I really thought) suddenly think taking kids to
drag shows is a wonderful idea, and also, apparently how this is how we
(I'm a lesbian....a normal, "boring" one though) all are. It is so
depressing.....at this point I think it's basically "if the
conservatives hate it, we love it, no matter what it is!". One
grandmother on my list posted a rant about how she'd be happy to take
her grandchildren (ages 4-11) to a drag show over church (I'm not
religious whatsoever and I get the sentiment about religious
indoctrination....I also get that this is new religion indoctrination)
vi) "I'd rather take my kids to a drag show than to church!" Who
even said it was a binary choice? You can choose to do neither, or to
do any number of other things. Only in the American political landscape
do people think they have to pick one or the other team, they are
conditioned by the mindset and spread it everywhere.
vii) This. I remember Francis Foster recounting how some of his friends had reached out to him to tell him that he should change his opinions if he wanted to remain on the left.
viii) Like how about I'll just say whatever I think is right and it'll fall where it'll fall on the spectrum... And not, like, just defend things because I want to be on the side which I think is the right one even when I think the opposite of what they think?
I’m not religious at all either, but it’s worse than one religion over another. There aren’t strippers in their work lingerie giving sermons in church and twerking during Sunday school.
Children being deliberately exposed to sexualised adult entertainment is a form of sexual abuse. If the teacher invited a stripper or porn star, of either sex, into school to do their adult entertainment, police would be called.
Even if people are fine with drag for adults (I’m not) they shouldn’t be ok with children exposed to it.
ix) At least churches try to instill socially supportive moral values. Oh, like: don't lie, don't cheat, don't steal and don't kill. Honor your parents. Care for the poor.
What values are being presented at drag shows? At the least, theatrical mockery of women is ok.
x) I am in the same situation: if I responded as I wish to this meme, I would be catapulted into the ether. I keep my thoughts to myself and thank the goddess we have this forum in which I can rant.
xi) Same here. I feel much more supported here by so many anonymous women than the collection of acquaintances (some of whom I used to call friends) on facebook.
xii) These people have some major problems with logic. There are many great artists who were horrible people. Pablo Picasso for example. You may be able to appreciate one of his paintings, but he wouldn't have been someone you wanted as a father or husband.
Secondly, 'queer' as they use the term today DID NOT EXIST. Yes, there were same sex attracted people, eunuchs and social classes similar to the Hijra in many cultures. There were often complex social and political reasons these categories existed, most of them not very progressive. I don't know of too many of them who wrote children's books.
There is absolutely NO REASON whatsoever for drag queens to be reading anything to children. There is nothing good to be learned here.
xiii) Saying gay men have the right to do drag as expression is not really that different than saying white women have the right to crossdress as black men to me. Both are categories that are in an axis of oppression and not on other appropriating and mocking other unrelated category. Ministrels did drag as much as they did blackface, but misogyny is not considered having the same impact as racism, so people argue it’s different. It is not.
xiv) I was just complaining about this as I looked at pictures of a local "family friendly" drag show that had a big "love is love" sign across the stage. Yes, I agree love is love! The LGB community has all of my support! What in the world does that have to do with a bunch of men on a stage ridiculously mocking women?
xv) Libs are really reaching for the gotchas on the drag queen issue. Their whole argument for drag queens is “Oh you don’t like drag queens? Than what about this (completely unrelated thing)!?” Just yesterday there was a post on TooAfraidToAsk asking if people would be okay with drag queens coming to their child’s school. Every single no was downvoted. People were saying shit like “I wouldn’t want Uvalde cops in my kids school”, “The same people who want drag queens out of schools want guns in schools!” Truly what the fuck. How the fuck are we now equating school shootings and drag queens? Are we incapable of recognizing that two things are bad?
Obviously men with guns are a massive problem and cops are useless, as we saw recently in Uvalde. I don’t want either of those men around children. I don’t want religion around children either, for the record. I also don’t want men who dress as caricatures of women around children. We should not be capitulating our children to gun violence or sexual depravity. I see them act as if not wanting these explicit performers in schools is an affront to trans children. Why are they conflating trans with drag? I thought they always vehemently declared they are separate things?
Drag queens do not teach “tolerance” or “acceptance” or “inclusion”. They teach stereotypes, hatred of women, and male supremacy. They’re not progressive gender benders, they’re the same misogynists we’ve had all throughout history. This time the indoctrination is covered in rhinestones and sexual innuendo. They don’t need to be around children, period.
xvi) I think what this means is just the general idea that "if you don't agree with me, a self declared liberal, then that means you are a gun toting Republican", y'know. It's probably mostly that they are saying the only reason one might not want an oversexualized man in womanface around children is homophobia. And who is homophobic? Conservatives!! Conservatives who think the solution to school shootings is arming both the teachers and the kids!!!
That's some of the stupidest logic I've ever heard frankly. Typing it made my head hurt.
xvii) Redditors skew young, male and overly online. I'm betting most of the people interacting with that post don't have children.
It's a great reminder that reddit is good for manufacturing consent and not to take it too seriously.
xviii) I’m aware of Reddit demographics, but there are many young women in my life who work with children that completely support drag queens and all other TQ/non-binary garbage. Unfortunately these bad takes aren’t confined to Reddit. I just hope as they get older they realize they were wrong :/
xix) Blair White had a good tweet saying “Taking children to Drag Queen Story Hour to learn to respect gay people is like taking them to a strip clinic to learn to respect women.”
Very succinct way of putting it, and if it comes up that’s what I’m saying for sure.
xx) Yeah, one thing that I think is overlooked is how the gay male drag queen stereotype makes gay men out to be clownish spectacles.
Maybe there was once a reasonable time and a place for this “art form” when gay men were considered scary and perverted; giving them a stage to perform in a nonthreatening, whimsical way might have made people more apt to laugh at them than spit at and punch them. But shouldn’t we be well past the point that we need to laugh at gay men to be comfortable with them in normal society? Of course we should be. The shit is beyond played out, but for some reason, drag queens are still trying to be relevant despite the social gains that LGB have attained.
Which makes me think most of these drag queens are not gay men. They are “queer” men with agendas that differ from the gay men who just wanted to be fabulous on stage from time to time. Exposing themselves to kids is their interest.
xxi) I'm not like a lot of rad fems in that I actually enjoy drag. I think its entertaining to see the cool costumes and makeup and production value. Do I think its feminist and that my take is perfectly reasoned? No, it isn't and I'm not perfect but it's fun and brings me joy in this capitalist hellscape we live in.
With that, there is absolutely no reason children should be exposed to drag queens. I come from a liberal family and I knew what a drag queen was from the time I was 12 or so but I didnt go to my first drag show until I was 18. It's sexually charged by nature. It's the same thing with pole dancing. I have no problem if adults want to participate for fitness/fun but it should not be viewed by children.
xxii) I admit I liked it back when it was just gay dudes dressing as Judy Garland and impersonating her, not mocking her.
I've never been to a drag show, but I used to like the gay male impersonators on TV.
Now it's just been hijacked by pedos. That's exactly what this is. And when parents have had enough, it's gay people who will be punished.
xxiii) Several years back outlets like Slate were cranking out article after article about how the gay community owed drag queens a big apology. Respectability politics! Gay liberation was STARTED and GUIDED by drag queens! I recognized the narcissism even then, though I was still learning.
Now I understand why some early gay rights activists didn't want drag queens around, or at least didn't center them in their activism. They actually didn't contribute a lot to gay liberation. The battle was largely won by people who just wanted to live their lives between consenting adults, without trampling boundaries or being hyper sexual in public. Drag wasn't even about gay liberation like marriage. It was just a burlesque act. It was part of gay culture but as a performing art. Not a priesthood.
Nonetheless, drag artists also used to need some sort of talent to do what they do. Now you can get most of the costumes from Amazon. Most just stomp around flicking their wig hair and lip-syncing. No dancing, no comedy, nothing. Way back in like, 1981, my mother went to see a drag act in a very conservative state, in a liberal enclave. They were two guys and they were stand up comics. They were apparently hilarious. Excellent timing, great voice work, they'd written their own act.
You'd think that if you valued drag, you'd be sad about the degradation and lack of talent. I love the performing arts. I could even look past the misogyny of drag if it were really well-performed. And they swept up the anti-woman dialogue, of course. The costumes are ugly, the makeup poor or generic, and it's all....well....a drag. But not the way it should be.
xxiv) This is the key difference "normal" people do not understand. They just group us all together as deviants.
There was an episode of QaF that actually addressed the whole normal gay people vs drag queens thing, but it dropped the ball by having Micheal go at the last minute, "No! Drag queens are a part of the rainbow too!"
Male writers and male solidarity, I guess. Gay men are the only ones constantly trying to include drag queens "as normal" (they're fucking perfomers, not the face of the average gay perosn!) and giving them more credit than they deserve. You can find old gay men going on about how the drag queens built bars and clubs for them -- as if gay men don't cruise and fuck anywhere and everywhere, including back alleys.
From Genuine question: What's with drag and kids? | GenderCritical | Ovarit:
i) Frankly doesn’t make any sense to me - dressing up as an exaggerated stereotype of a woman isn’t “beyond stereotypes” just because it’s a man doing it.
And if “encouraging acceptance of difference” is the goal, why is it ONLY men in dresses reading to kids? Why not invite disabled people, people of other cultures/nationalities/races, elder people, neurodiverse people… so many choices. Maybe even gay people who aren’t wearing offensive costumes?
ii) Bingo. The highly sexualized nature of these performances is lost on small children anyway (hopefully). Learning that some families have two moms or two dads is really all they need to know about homosexuality. If the point is gender nonconformity, there are dozens more age-appropriate options. Bring in a female scientist to do a science show. Kids love colorful smoke and explosions. What about a female firefighter or paramedic?
This is entirely about the QT, pedos, and/or kinksters using children to validate their lifestyle.
iii) Encourage children to look beyond gender stereotypes and embrace unfettered exploration of self by portraying a very specific stereotype as the only acceptable self expression.
iv) they are pedo bait. these kids serve a very specific function. they become the unwitting aide in a masturbatory paraphiliac's fantasy,
v) Why not include other children for these kids to interact with? They can share about their lives with other kids who are on their same level.
I don't know how it is in most schools these days, but at my elementary school all of the "different" kids were in separate special ed classes. We never interacted with them, ever.
So why not have a group of diverse children who can just play and be kids together while learning tolerance and empathy for others?
vi) I honestly think the people doing this are homophobes who are trying to virtue signal that they are gay allies. If their goal was really to help normalize homosexuality, they'd just bring in a normal gay man (or lesbian woman, gasp!). Just a regular gay person who talks about their life for a bit and then mentions that they're gay, introducing kids to the fact that there are lots of gay people around and they are just like anyone else regardless of who they're attracted to. Instead, when these "wokesters" think of a gay man, their first thought is "drag queen"? Some of these kids have never, as far as they know, met a gay person before, so it seems pretty toxic that what may be their first introduction to a gay man is seeing a man doing an adult entertainment act where he's caricaturizing a woman. Why would this be how you want children to see gay people? A boy questioning if he is gay might, after "drag queen story hour," be more hesitant now that he thinks being gay involves this level of performance or "queerness," rather than knowing that whichever sex(es) he ends up being attracted to has nothing to do with his personality.
vii) This is a good point. If this is a child's first encounter with gay folks (or even the concept of homosexuality), its going to leave a VERY bizarre, bad impression on them. Instead of being taught that gay people are just like everyone else, they're being taught that all gay men are flamboyant clowns (and that lesbians apparently don't exist because being "queer" is ALL ABOUT MEN). Which will likely cause quite a bit of confusion for kids who grow up to be homosexual, but would rather stay in the closet because they want no part of "queer" clownery
viii) I think we should start showing up outside of libraries and whatnot with signs like "Misogyny is NOT progressive" or "Stop Mocking Women" or whatever. I think most people thoughtlessly assume that they're supporting LGBTQIAAMNOPQ+ people without considering that they're just watching grown men mock women.
The TRAs have done a very good job of falsely portraying anyone who opposes them as 'transphobic' and we need to start making it clear to people that it's not 'conservative v. progressive' but '(conservative/status quo + progressive) v. regressive'.
ix) "Gays against drag" "Woman is not a costume" "Drag is for adults"
x) I don't like "Drag is for adults" because misogyny shouldn't be acceptable for anyone.
xii) Gay culture was always flanked by BDSM, self-harm and other weird sub-cultures and paraphilias, so when the ‘T’ latched on, all the gross sexual stuff oozed out as trans started leading the train into the corporate mainstream. Now we have things like gender-bending sex shows for kids (that are extremely inappropriate for kids) being held up as “LGBT progress” because, idk, whatever makes dicks hard, I guess?
xiii) My guess is because it’s a way to get a foothold to indoctrinate kids from an extremely young age by passing it off as a type of dress-up/clown/make-believe entertainment. It gets them used to the lingo and sexual suggestiveness from an early age. In other words, it’s a woke veneer for a type of grooming, being passed off as harmless. Has Jimmy Savile vibes.
Edit: who benefits by exposing (sorry, not intentional) children to an adult male, gay, subculture? Why is this deemed necessary to shove at kids, who if they grow up to be gay men, will learn about it anyway? Why can’t the library hire actors to be in character for the stories they read? This is an adult-driven agenda and is not benign. There have already been cases of pedos doing this and cases of indecent exposure.
xiv) Like most aspects to the Trans Agenda, there are layers to it. There is the cold and calculated manipulation cooked up by some truly terrifying people with money to push their agenda, and the foot soldiers doing their bidding. Those powerful men want societal-wide grooming, all over the planet. Their goal is to get sexual access to kids, make a killing financially, and to push their transhumanist agenda.
Then you have the normies acting it out because they can virtue signal how woke they are, and they hear that the chuds hate it so that makes it good. There are so many memes about how Red Hat types would eat a loaf of shit if they thought a liberal would have to smell their breath, but look at how many of The Right Side of History are willing to do almost anything to upset the "other team", even sterilize autistic kids.
Lots of people are dumb, there's no way around it. The thin arguments like "We're showing that sex stereotypes are meaningless!" are coming from the same crowd who say they have to sterilize their child and amputate their genitals because they don't perfectly match sex stereotypes. They haven't thought it through, they're virtue twerking and it's not much deeper than that from their side.
It would be good to have more radfem protests of these grooming events, because the chattering classes have bought the line that only homophobes, chuds and Christians (the horror!) oppose grooming kids into kink.
xv) It's being marketed as progressive and good family fun that also happens to "challenge" (allegedly) "old-fashioned" "stereotypes" about how men and women "should" be (except, as others have pointed out, drag actually reinforces the worst, most regressive, most old-fashioned stereotypes about women that exist).
It's being marketed as a way for children to escape from gender stereotypes while simultaneously strengthening those very same stereotypes. It's a mess.
xvi) I just emailed one local to me. Please email the ones near you! Here's what I said:
"Hi!
I’m a [redacted] County citizen. I recently became aware that you will be holding a Drag Queen Story Hour. What is your goal? To teach children that mocking women is normal and fun? Will you have a minstrel show next week? Please reconsider your choices. MISOGYNY IS WRONG and whoever organized this event should be fired for promoting hatred towards a marginalized group and spreading stereotypes. You’re on the wrong side of history."
xvii) I don't see how this helps dispell homophobia. If anything, those hideous costumes and those creepy men are going to plant the idea in these kids that "gay man = freak".
A generation of kids became terrified of clowns because of the movie "It" in the 80s. I wonder if this Drag Time For Kids bullshit will do the same for TIMs. 🤣
xix) I remember being completely dumbfounded by the religiosity of this particular librarian: https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2020/05/01/neutrality-when-speech-isnt-free/
If I was running a surreptitious social engineering campaign and someone suggested to target the librarian association I would have replied with something like "Nah, they are all well-read, smart and really understand the importance fighting censorship. You're never going to get them..."
...
xx) Yeah it’s very “stick it to the uptight Christian bigots” but they have to keep getting more and more extreme to get a rise out of people. Like they deliberately poke the bear and then scream that they just wanna live. Stop pushing it then
iv) I don't believe in gender ideology, and I don't think little kids get camp--what message are we sending to them, that a man dressed up as a woman is something to laugh at?