I've thought since the NY Post started pushing the anti-drag line however many years ago that being against drag story hour is like being against clown story hour. If anything, drag for children reinforces the gender binary. "Hey, look at this clownish person who is violating the gender roles; isn't it funny?" It teaches kids that if you want to break gender roles, you have to be an exaggerated cartoon and not a normal person. There is a certain minstrel quality to the performance.
Not that I'm about "cancelling" drag queens like we "cancel" people who are caught in blackface (okay, if they're from one side of the aisle), but every argument you use for making blackface a taboo you can use against "drag." And I say that knowing a harmless man with no ill intent who did do drag and am not insulted by him. But as I say, the argument is there.
One could actually suggest that "drag" is not rejecting gender norms but reducing them to the absurd and insulting and unwittingly parodying being "trans" (or illustrating the insulting nature of "trans" so that one has trouble denying reductionism of "womanhood" to cosmetics by the "trans" movement, even if not all "transwomen").
I mention this view in a longer comment below. While I'm not an expert on this, and while drag is performed by a large number of people, all with their own motivation, it doesn't seem like that is a common motivation, and that it is much more about blurring gender roles than mocking anyone.
A drag show that did not exaggerate (and thereby intentionally or not) mock women would not be entertainment. Drag's very nature is not to "blur" gender norms. It's for men to put a show of exaggerated female performance. The whole point is not to take on female roles but to exaggerate them *as men*. It would not be nearly as funny if women did it, and that's the key. It's entertaining because it's men, and it's entertaining because it's exaggerated. The spectrum goes from a bit of fun to all out sexualization and caricature, but . . . it's still mocking, even if the "mocking" is mild.
And as a woman, I can take the mocking. I even laugh myself. And I can't stand makeup or dresses or any of that, so I frankly admire a man who can do what I'm unwilling to do and wear it so much more gracefully. But honesty demands that we recognize that these men don't really want to be women, because being women would be boring. They don't want to "blur" gender roles because wearing *normal* women's clothing and *normal* amount of makeup would be boring. They want to lampoon the idea of female dress and performance, even if it's colorful and all in fun.
I can see your point, but they aren't merely adopting tropes of femininity (i.e., wearing dresses and having long hair). Drag involves mimicking women's voices and wearing prosthetics to mimic women's bodies, and usually gross exaggerations of women's bodies at that. It goes beyond gender non-conformity; it's a stereotypic parody of women by men.
It just so happens that right now, since the dominant culture in elite spaces (private and public) is ruled by gynocratic HR ladies who speak in corporate/government copypasta, the counter culture is now largely driven by the political right. And that, predictably, makes any good progressive make a show of recoiling in horror of that counter culture, whether that horror is genuine or otherwise, in order to show other progressives that they are against anything "right coded" (icky! gross!)
This statement assumes that the entire left agrees on the anodyne liberalism of the DNC.
What are the right wing bands right now that will go on to shape music for the next decade? What right wing filmmakers are making movies that will change film moving forward?
it's counterculture - definitively it's underground and you wouldn't have heard of any artists in this genre because you're not a member of said counterculture, but it is being made. it's just not mainstream, and in many cases - actively suppressed.
If you can't name anything from this counter culture, it might not exist.
When people talk about this right wing counter culture, they seem to mostly be talking about the right wing dudes funded by billionaires who have larger audiences than any ABC, CBS, or NBC show.
yes, you just made case and point. You just named 3 Networks, combined their viewership of their show viewership matches/exceeds of whoever you're talking about - it's just there are less options.
Right wing counterculture is most noticeable online - shitposting Twitter being an excellent example - because the dominant cliques in the arts and academia are totally left dominated, and don't believe for a moment that dissent from institutional groupthink in those spaces is tolerated for a moment. Which has led too many conservatives to simply cede the arts to the left completely, which I think is a mistake.
However, there definitely are people who actively taking part in, and encouraging greater participation in the counter culture to our current (terrible) mass culture. Passage Press, for example, is taking a vanguard role in a resurgence of "right coded" (for lack of a better phrase) participation in literature and the visual arts. I wish them the best.
This is so absurd. Larry Correia is a pretty big name making conservative art. But being a conservative and making art is not the same thing as counter culture.
You think conservatives don't like music because it's too woke so they just refused to make music in favor of shitposting?
If Ben Shapiro can have a bigger audience than Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and John Oliver combined, there should be an audience waiting for this right wing stuff.
The fact that none of it exists may tell you something.
Why are you asking other people if you're so convinced you already know?
I do know right of center people who are writers and artists right here where I live, in the heart of the Acela Corridor.
Most of these people toil away in PMC dominated institutions that would not be pleased with learning they have Political/Culture Enemies lurking among them. So they keep quiet and stick to their day jobs, and when they do write or paint, they all keep their art as jejeune and apolitical as possible. Do you really want to raise a stink about it? For what?
And for aspiring artists or writers, it doesn't take long to read the room of the institutions you are trying to join. There are few explicitly welcoming places for institutional dissent in art right now for people who aren't independently wealthy already, and who don't give a damn about cancelation, etc.
The Passage Press stands out because they are chiding right coded culture warriors for sitting things out. They embrace the example the left set in dominating cultural spaces. Their mantra is to copy the formula: tear down the existing icons, replace them with your own.
I encourage this approach highly, and wish them all the best of luck in their endeavor.
I don't know the answer to this, which is why I'm asking: who are the conservative artists changing culture from the underground?
I can think of many left wing artist (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, for example), but I can't think of any similar right wing artists.
Also, being conservative does not make something counter culture. Especially since conservative culture is still very popular and mainstream. Tim Allen just had a show that ran for a decade on a major network. Ben Shapiro is one of the most shared people on social media. Fox News is the biggest news network. Twitter is owned by the second wealthiest man on the planet who has advocated that his followers vote conservative.
Conservative culture is huge and popular and mainstream.
I mean you don’t have to be an actual republican to feel extremely alienated in arts/culture spaces on the east coasts that have swallowed certain shibboleths wholesale. If you have even a tiny bit of skepticism for amorphous “queerness” as it exists in 2023, believe in due process under the law for the accused, think that monogamous, heterosexual love is still a subject matter deserving of depiction in the arts, and don’t fantasize about zapping conservative people out of existence just because they are conservative you better keep those opinions to yourself or your band/podcast/substack/gallery show will be immediately disqualified as “wrongthink.”
Not the DNC explicitly, but the Acela Corridor professional managerial class who, hey, just happens to be the class the DNC now exists to serve exclusively, certainly.
Point in fact, 20 years ago culture was at a medium, the left hadn't taken over yet, but the right (think '80s Regan culture) hadn't receded yet. Being anti-religious was neither good nor bad, simply a topic.
40 years ago, being anti-religious was rebellious. Otherwise, you point stands. The Babylon Bee is where SNL was around '78 or so.
The hegemonic class is the PMC, whose values generally skew left in cultural matters, as long as they get to keep their bonuses. They *are* The Establishment now.
As a result, the subversives, the mockers, the people who say outrageous truths that you aren't supposed to say in public, the professional class clowns and underground legends, are all on the alt-right, while the PMC left are uptight finger-wagging prigs so dour and censorious that they make The Church Lady look like G.G. Allin by comparison.
This is not because of any inherent qualities of left or right, but because of their relationship to economics and power.
Literally flinging actual human shit at other people will probably be the last transgressive act the PMC HR Lady caste tries to make a "gOod ThiNg, AcKSHuaLLy".
Until that time, GG can rest in his grave knowing he still remains a truly subversive figure.
It's an interesting point, about making distinctions between certain types of drag shows in the same way we do of, say, movies. But the larger problem is that mainstream progressivism is completely uninterested in making that distinction and in fact appears wholeheartedly opposed to it. We have seen many examples of vulnerable children being thrust into highly sexualized drag environments over the past few years, and progressives say absolutely nothing about it. They won't do that because they're afraid that it would give even a tiny infinitesimal shred of legitimacy to some tiny portion of conservative belief. The potential sexual victimization of children is seen as a reasonable trade-off to avoid even tertiary sympathy to anything resembling conservatism. And I think it's pretty obvious where this will lead in the end.
I would like to see 1 example of the liberal side of the culture wars ever acknowledging that other people could possibly have valid opinions based on objective criteria.
Would you accept pictures of children interacting with "highly sexualized" drag at pride parades? That's the only time I've really seen it.
(Speaking of which, "can drag be for kids" is really a microcosm of the debate about whether kids should be at Pride and if therefore participants should be more restrained in sexualization. Just an annual debate about assimilation/normalization)
I understand, I have a close friend who is a gay parent. The issue is not gay events, or even drag events, it's the drag events that are not for kids where people bring their kids, or events billed as family friendly that definitely are not. FWIW, most of the stuff I've seen/heard about is not gay parents taking their kids, it's straight parents taking their kids to show everyone how inclusive they are.
Curious why conservatives aren't protesting Hooters and Twin Peaks restaurants where kids are exposed to the sexualization of scantily clad women. But I suppose dad is just taking the young ones to that particular restaurant because of the tasty wings and dipping sauces.
The pearl clutching about kids seeing men in women's clothing is really less about the "potential" for sexual victimization at a library than it is about conservatives still upset the gays came out of the closet 30 years ago.
I don't take my kids to those places, either. But you're comparing a strip club/burlesque environment to Hooters. There's no pole dancing or sexual gyration to music at Hooters. And to be clear, men pretending to be strippers in public falls into the category of "kink," and women wearing tight/revealing clothing and serving beer with a bit of mild flirting thrown in does not.
Ah...okay. See now I get it. Taking your kids to see women scantily dressed as sex objects for pay while they serve you food is wholesome and appropriate.
Last I checked, a library is not a strip club. At least not the libraries I go to.
Yes, because if there's one thing we all know, influential entities in government and corporate institutions will call heteronormie chuds bigots if they don't take their kids to breastaurants (which they already don't - people don't take kids to sports bars in general), or god forbid, if they chose *not to* send women dressed like Hooters waitresses to read books to kids in public school.
That checks out - total apples to apples. Happens all the time. Great analogy right there.
Where anyone got the idea that "OH YEAH? HOOTERS!" was some sort of brilliant, incisive retort to pushback against drag queens being everywhere is completely beyond me. It's just not.
I thought the main complaint is bringing these things to schools with young children where the parents do not have the choice. I guess libraries are a tough one cause on the one hand you are not forced to go to a library, but unlike Hooters/drag, you'd think a library would be tame enough to bring young children.
Contrary to what I thought, when a friend took me to Hooters, it's a sports bar, somewhat over-staffed with young girls wearing somewhat tight workout clothes. Hooters doesn't have pole dancing, flashing lights, announcers, and the music is hip-hop in a bright football-basketball-hockey on prominent big screen TVs environment.
The last time I went to Hooters was when I was single with co-workers and the waitresses went out of their way to flirt with us and bent down low to take our orders to encourage cleavage staring. My coworkers liked going to Hooters because it was more culturally acceptable to oogle and harass the waitresses than going to the lunch buffet at the strip club down the street.
It's interesting that a mode of dress that was common for young women in the 1970s became compartmentalized and more or less entirely commodified as a sales-come-on in the 1980s.
I'm not apprised of the research on the phenomenon, but I admit to some curiosity as to the experience of young women who came of age in that era dressing the way women did in the film Smokey And The Bandit- whether they stopped going braless and displaying cleavage because their bodies were attracting too much unwanted attention from men, or whether it was simply a shift in the tides of fashion. Because my personal impression- firsthand, from the 1970s- is that the women who dressed that way then were not subservient, submissive sex toys. They typically displayed a lot of self-possession, and a sense of themselves and their sexuality that was self-aware without being overly self-conscious or defensive. I never noticed young men losing all self-control and pawing over them, or squeezing every unharnessed breast they noticed underneath a t-shirt. But, my experience was not that of a woman, firsthand.
fwiw, I never had any sense that there was a feminist insistence on women dressing more modestly in that era, either. It wasn't one of the demands. Self-expression was the rule of the day, from the casual braless t-shirt, sundress look, to braces and boots, to the Dykes on Bikes (who were known to ride completely topless.)
Never been- there just aren't that many Hooters restaurants around, certainly fewer than public libraries- but did you notice any pre-pubescent children there, during your visit?
I have to say, I went to high school and college in the early 1970s, and no one had to go to a restaurant featuring scantily clad women as a draw. The no-bra, hot pants, short skirt or peasant-dress look was found in every public high school and college. It wasn't a dress code, but it was normal. As natural and unforced a look as drag is dependent on artifice, makeup, and costuming.
Later, when the ripped lingerie, torn sweatshirt, bullet bra look came into fashion for women in the 1980s, I was like, what is this?
I'm a librarian. People have weird ideas about public libraries, somehow expecting them both to be a "family friendly" environment with no objectionable materials, while at the same time having a wide range of materials representing the full variety of adult perspectives and tastes . They think that because libraries are public, they're obligated to "represent the values of the community" (by which they usually mean, "Don't be any more liberal or conservative than I am!"), but they somehow forget that because libraries are public, they're also bound by the same Constitutional obligations to ensure free speech and free association.
Over on some comments at The Dispatch, I've been trying to explain that public libraries can't ban drag shows in the library any more than the police can ban Nazi marches on public streets.
It's an interesting observation. Not that I'm equating the two situations, but to posit an analogy: are public libraries required to host an "alt-right" gathering of men in brown uniforms with swastika armbands? Freedom of political speech is freedom of political speech, no? And presumably visual symbolism like costumes and regalia are part of that, no?
Uh...if the local Nazi Youth Club wanted to have a reading hour of Mein Kampf the library would host it. They can't abridge the free speech of Nazis but I suspect some people would object to that.
thanks for the reply. It would be interesting to see whether a protest that got news coverage would focus more on the activity being hosted, or the protests against it. Or whether both sides would be granted equal time to express their position.
The answer, I would certainly hope, should be yes.
There are, of course, limits on free speech in libraries. They are the same limits on free speech that apply in all governmental, public contexts. That is to say, the specific limits defined by statute and clarified in legal precedent. And no others.
The thing that prevents "Nazi Story Hour" from occurring in your local library is not any library policy. It is public opinion. There simply aren't enough people out there who wish to organize such a thing, and not enough people who wish to attend such a thing.
That's how a free and open society is supposed to work. Especially in America.
"There simply aren't enough people out there who wish to organize such a thing, and not enough people who wish to attend such a thing."
The guy who runs the Daily Stormer claims that he gets 3,000,000 unique impressions a month. By his estimation he'd get twice as many if his web hosting wasn't pulled out from underneath him every few months.
I think there's plenty of people who do attend such things, but public space isn't exactly uncommon so they have no need to rely on the local library.
These are very good points. That said, I think there's a difference between banning outside groups that want to do drag performances at the library (unconstitutional) and deciding that the library's own programming (i.e., story hour) will now be led by drag queens.
I think that's an excellent point, and there are real challenges in that respect. Libraries do attempt to maintain some degree of viewpoint neutrality and non-controversialism in promoted programming choices. And what qualifies as neutral and non-controversial will vary based on local community conditions and the vagaries of "cultural values."
I've yet to see a drag show at a public library where the drag queen is grinding the book they are reading. And I'm certainly not aware of drag shows occurring at schools - public or private - for that matter.
I know the links are old, but I had to adjust the google search parameters because most recent protests are against objectification. It wasn't until I search for stories before ~2015 that I found parents and Christians upset rather than feminists. I'm sure you'd also see more protests if there were specific events, like a Hooters-catered lunch at a library, but I couldn't find any examples of that happening.
It also seems pretty unfair to think that taking kids to Hooters is something considered socially acceptable in most circles. It's often cited as proof of poor parenting. See this TMZ article about Dwight Howard's child custody battle for an example of a common trend:
I'm not saying it doesn't happen today but I don't see as much media attention about parents taking their kids to Hooters as I do the kerfluffle about drag shows at a library.
I drove a cab, in Sacramento. I once saw the son of a gay/in-drag parent/guardian at a drag night in a gay bar. 35 years ago. He was about 10, getting fussed over outside the door by a couple of the other queens. I didn't notice any groping, or any of that. You know, it's a big wide world of niche social milieux. Driving a cab in Sacramento is like studying Chinese history; it tends to make one very broad-minded.
But, to your point? Neither Hooters or a gay bar is a public library.
Curious why conservatives aren't protesting Hooters and Twin Peaks restaurants where kids are exposed to the sexualization of scantily clad women.
You meant that they are doing so, but no one pays attention.
I'd say the reason you don't see much media attention about kids at those restaurants is that it's the NEWs, not the OLDs. Why would the media report on something that's been considered inappropriate for decades? Should they write articles by skimming r/trashy?
I was only in a Hooters twice. Hooters is a sports bar with big-screen TVs, where the waitresses are dressed more conservatively at work, then they are at the gym.
My buddy used to love strip clubs, to the point where he got friendly with the dancers and hung out with them socially. Some of them would give him hand jobs in the back room where they did lap dances. When he was thinking about moving to my city we had to do a tour of the local clubs so he could see if they were up to snuff as a precondition for relocating.
I don't think the waitresses at Hooter's are scantily clad. And I wonder if people who compare Hooter's to a strip club have ever been to a strip club.
Stretching the definition of tight booty shorts and a low cut cleavage crack revealing t-shirt as "conservatively" dressed is a bit much. Especially considering Hooters used to host wet t-shirt contests as well.
Yeah, it always confuses me that people think this is a good argument.
First of all, it's not appropriate to take kids to Hooters or Twin Peaks.
Second, the state/institutions aren't interested in promoting Hooters or Twin Peaks in education/ cultural programming.
Third, drag is both sexualized AND includes parody and critiques of femininity that are generally not interpretable/ comprehensible to children, and thus drag is definitionally age inappropriate.
The ad hominem/ setting up some theorized resentful strawman instead of being able to respond to concerns really betrays how thin the rationale is for supporting this stuff.
I don't agree with your third point at all. Drag is not inherently sexualized (see the movie analogy above) and children are able comprehend Bugs Bunny in a dress. Why think that they're unable to understand a parody of femininity?
Drag isn't necessarily meant to be sexually exciting.
But it almost always is a send up of female sexuality or male heterosexual perceptions of it or female sexual tropes or what it is about female sexuality that gay men find most entertaining and amusing.
Kids will get that it is a parody of femininity, but what exactly is it that you think they will do with that parody? How will a 10 year old situate and contextualize it?
Yeah, look, when one of my kids was 4 he told me that boys can be born into girls bodies.
This is something they were told at preschool and parroted back to me.
I'm not particularly worried about this, but again, I don't think my 4 year old was able to meaningfully parse this esoteric ideology in a critical way.
If a pussy hat mom wants to take her 10 year old son to drag brunch to feel good about herself I don't really care. It's vacuous narcissism. I think it's age inappropriate and generally not a good idea in the same way that eating processed food is not a good idea. The 10 year old who hasn't encountered puberty won't be able to make sense of the performance in any sort of meaningful way other than it's a 'man in a dress.'
And the point that 'other things are bad' isn't a good one: My kids don't play video games either - they play sports and have other activities after school and on the weekends.
Yep, I have seen and enjoyed plenty of drag shows. But it is indisputably a stereotypic parody of womanhood by men. I wouldn't take a young girl (in particular) to see it.
This is kind of what I wonder about it. Like, enough with the pearl-clutching, but in an era of trans acceptance what are we supposed to do with a guy in a dress acting campy? Is it supposed to be funny? Because, sexual or not, it's only funny because it's transgressive - if crossdressing and genderqueer appearances are normalized then it just becomes a "person reading stories."
In certain instances, yes, it is intended to be `a stereotypic[al] parody of womanhood' but mostly it comes from a reverence of certain aspects of womanhood that are exclusive to women. Queens do not spend hours, upon hours of preparation and practice just to perform elaborate acts of misogyny. There is a certain vulnerability in their performances (one must have the right makeup, the right physique, the right voice, etc. that is open to very vocal criticism on the stage) that comes from an understanding and appreciation of women since a young age.
If the young girl is into fashion and the absurd then it could be a great experience for her.
`First of all, it's not appropriate to take kids to Hooters or Twin Peaks.'
Then spend at least an equivalent amount of time/outrage pressuring Hooters to change their age admission policy to +18.
`Second, the state/institutions aren't interested in promoting Hooters or Twin Peaks in education/ cultural programming.'
Well, no, because you don't need to teach boys to appreciate T&A. Getting boys and girls to not ridicule, accept, and be friends with non-conforming and trans children/adolescents might take a bit more doing. I'm open to better ideas than DQSH.
`Third, drag is both sexualized AND includes parody and critiques of femininity that are generally not interpretable/ comprehensible to children, and thus drag is definitionally age inappropriate.'
Drag needn't be sexualized, and isn't during nearly all interactions between drag queens and children (except where permitted by parents, it seems---blame that on the parents and not the queens). If the `parody and critiques of femininity' are incomprehensible then there's no issue! The drag queens look a bit like clowns or, hopefully, impart the idea that it's OK to be different.
If it makes any difference, as a bona fide prudish conservative orthodox Catholic, I am very much opposed to the titty restaurants, too, and would never ever take my kids to any of those.
Yeah, I'm not prudish and not religious, and I don't like them either.
I think most people want their kids to be able to be capable of full adult lives which at some point includes successfully managing a monogamous, focused relationship, preferably marriage.
Why expose your kids to sexual 'junk food'?
They will ultimately decide for themselves what they want and be responsible for their own actions. But why would you not want to provide them with an understanding of what a good model is?
There's a world of difference between accepting gayness and modeling body-dysmorphia-as-normative-existence. And if you can't see that, then I want to gently suggest that your mental model of people that disagree with you is lacking.
Speaking for myself only, I am not upset that gays came "out of the closet." I do find it irritating and in some cases alarming that whoever is in charge of normalizing cultures does not see a distinction between highly sexualilzed drag shows in school libraries and environments that can be accessed by choice.
"The potential sexual victimization of children" is such a ludicrous leap from "seeing a man in a dress and exaggerated makeup read 'Julian Is A Mermaid.'" It's a ludicrous leap even from "seeing a man in a dress twerk to Beyonce" or "seeing a man in a dress make a sex joke" or "being in the room during an adults-only comedy set."
What about this is *sexualizing vulnerable children?* What about it is teaching them to be okay with adults touching them inappropriately, what about it is teaching them to see themselves as sexual when they otherwise wouldn't have, how much of a comedy show with sexual elements would a storytime-age child even understand as sexual? I have never seen this thousand-yard leap justified except with links to out-of-context LibsOfTiktok videos showing me something I'm supposed to find so gross and horrible, I become convinced it *must* somehow turn children into victims of sexual predators. And I've never been convinced. Even if drag is not appropriate for kids in all instances, I cannot see how seeing drag, even adult-oriented drag, magically transforms children into victims of sex abuse. It is not obvious to me at all.
Lady, if you can't see how normalizing children at highly sexualized adult-content shows is a perfectly logical pathway to the sexual exploitation of children, it's because you don't *want* to see it.
As I said to another commentor below, drag queens aren’t abusing children. The same people are abusing children who always have: primarily their male family members, and men in their immediate communities. Drag isn’t making that kind of abuse more prevalent, and making drag illegal tomorrow wouldn’t make it less prevalent. The number of kids actually seeing sexually-explicit comedy in the form of drag is vanishingly small, and the epidemic of drag-addled children enthusiastically falling into the arms of abusers you’re predicting is fiction.
If parents don’t want their kids to go to drag shows for whatever reason, that’s fine with me. I wouldn’t take my kid to an explicit drag show, if I had kids. I’d certainly be unhappy if another adult, whether a school administrator, or a parent, took my kid out to see an adult-oriented show without my permission. But I also think it is catastrophizing to a ridiculous degree to say that drag culture going mainstream is going to fundamentally change the nature of child sex abuse. 
You think child sexual abuse happens because children "enthusiastically fall into the arms of abusers?" That's a sick, backward view of what actually happens to these children and it does not surprise me that you're failing to see what's going on here.
In any event, regardless of how we debate this, I'm sure the scale and scope of this will all become clear as time goes on. Of course by then it will be too late.
Gender theory aimed at children—if and when it's outcomes are ever studied—will be the Catholic Church scandal of our times, imo. Abbvie made $726M on adolescent puberty blockers in 2018.
To be clear: I’m saying this is what YOU are predicting. I apologize if I made an incorrect assumption about what you predict happening as a result of drag being mainstreamed. But that is my understanding of the argument, and of what you said should be “obvious”: That the “sexualization” of children through seeing drag performers would cause them to be more vulnerable to predation by others. I don’t think that’s true; you seem to think it is.
My question is why does anyone need kids at drag events? What good do the kids get out of it? What good do the "drag artists" get out of it? Why do we as a society need this phenomenon that leads to debates like this one?
As deBoer points out there are drag shows and then there are drag shows. Specifically, for the ones where the kids tip the performers with dollar bills or paper currency one has to come to the inescapable conclusion that the people organizing these events are cognizant of the subtext of that custom and are okay with replicating it in a "family friendly" environment.
I understand your point that drag doesn’t *necessarily* do any of these bad things.
As a blunt and simple counterpoint, what is the purpose/benefit of drag (if it can be unsexualized) in schools? What are the lessons this specific art form conveys that can’t be expressed through another medium?
`But the larger problem is that mainstream progressivism is completely uninterested in making that distinction and in fact appears wholeheartedly opposed to it.'
No, progressives disagree with what *you* consider inappropriate w/r/t drag shows. What is inappropriate and appropriate to you? Please correct me if I'm wrong but it seems that any acknowledgement of drag queens and their interaction with children, along with an explanation for them, is inappropriate to you.
Again, what type of drag queen-child interaction is appropriate to you?
`We have seen many examples of vulnerable children being thrust into highly sexualized drag environments over the past few years, and progressives say absolutely nothing about it.'
I've seen acts of inappropriate behavior on the part of drag queens in select tik tok videos. How were those children vulnerable, exactly, as they were accompanied by parents/their parents blessed the participation?
We do actually know that poverty and an environment of domestic abuse negatively affects childrens' development, probably a lot more than a kid seeing a twerking queen...seems an odd thing to fixate on the handful of children exposed to inappropriate drag queens versus the 10s of thousands who are going to bed hungry right now.
`some tiny portion of conservative belief.'
What is the belief, exactly? How do you oppose children being exposed to something different that makes them more accepting of the diversity and range of humanity, and maybe, just maybe helps a few students, even a very few students, understand a little bit better who they are, and gives them assurance that they will be accepted by their peers in the future?
` The potential sexual victimization of children'
This is absolutely no different than what I was taught to believe as child (80s/90s): gay men are child molesters. Now we have that drag queens and `men in dresses' (trans women?) are sexual deviants looking for an opportunity to abuse children.
`And I think it's pretty obvious where this will lead in the end.'
And where is that? A trans or gender non-conforming kid not being bullied and having friends? Being able to accept who they are without shame? Drag queens are probably not the most effective way to help such kids, but if you have a better idea about how to inculcate acceptance for them then I'd like to hear it.
I presume you're referring to the standard procedure of tucking using a lot of duct tape on the genitals and, uhmmm, in crack...yes, painful, if not prepared. Cheaper than waxing, though. (Waxing recommended before applying this method).
Thank you for making this point. I have seen this shift myself. Drag used to be super transgressive, like in Paris is Burning, where Black and Latino men that were kicked out of their homes started their own culture. Now it's a sanitized art form for affluent liberal urbanites to virtue signal with. It’s a shame what they did to a vibrant counterculture. I wrote about it here, and I hope you read this, Freddie:
A lot of people who supported gay marriage saw things like normalizing drag, etc. as part of a slippery slope that made them waffle as to whether or not they should offer their own political support to gay marriage initiatives.
Whether you think it's harmless or not, there's no denying there are a lot of people who don't think it's appropriate, and find the normalization of drag (even and especially when sponsored by government and corporate entities) vulgar and inappropriate outside of private venues for gay men.
I think it does represent a coarsening of the culture. It's fairly harmless, but it does seem more bizarre to make the case that it's essential to have men in drag reading to kids than it is to not want men in drag reading to their kids.
I do agree that in just about every sense, the slippery slope that conservative and moderate gay marriage supporters were worrying about absolutely was real. They feel like this is not what they signed up for in exchange for their political support. Whether you think it's right or wrong, good or bad, it's impossible to deny that it happened.
Which brings us to the iron law of progressive discourse in this day and age, which is the metamorphosis of "that's absurd, that will never happen" to "it isn't happening, even if you say it is" until it reaches the final form of "ok, it really is happening, and that's a good thing".
Of course your personal opinion is important. Why else would you be broadcasting it by commenting?
I've never gotten the sense that anyone thinks drag story hour is "essential" and I'd be interested if you have any examples of that viewpoint. At most, I've seen activists insist that the right to do this harmless thing is essential and the critics are bizarre for caring.
It's led to the classic culture war argument - your opponent is wrong for having an opinion. There's not many people arguing for or against story hour, but plenty arguing (like you) about which of those opinions is an overreaction.
I also wouldn't say that this was the slippery slope that people were worried about. I used to read the editorials in the morning paper daily from around 2004-2008 and don't recall anyone making the connection between gay marriage and (non-sexual) drag shows for children. The closest I can find online is stuff like this letter, which I'd call openly bigoted:
My own personal opinion was not particularly relevant to my own comment, but whatevs. All you have to do is actually know and be friends with some of those moderates and conservatives to hear them say the exact same thing, but in progressives, that triggers the "eww, cooties!" reflex, so people pretend it's either not a thing, or Obviously Dangerous Hatred, etc.
I mean the fact that him saying “coarse, but harmless” would be immediately(and falsely) equivocated with advocating for the genocide of trans people is proof enough that this entire damn discourse has left rationality behind for good. Queer activists don’t understand that tolerance doesn’t mean being completely deferential to the fringe, and that’s why this particular cultural battleground has become such a sticking point.
One of the founders of Drag Queen Story Hour wrote us a paper on exactly what they intended DQSH to do and that was to plant a queer seed in kids heads. Some parents don't want that. I'm a parent and my resting stance is no culture wars for my kid from either direction. DQSH sees themselves as a queering polar opposite of "straightening" institutions like schools. "At many events, organizers invite kids to create their own drag name" and "Book selections often include queer and/or trans characters, gender-transgressive themes" and they see themselves as "drag pedagogs". Here's the paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03626784.2020.1864621
Right, the subtext here is that the state and aligned institutions can engage in speech and shaping of political opinion, but those outside the institutions cannot engage in legitimate speech or politics.
If you engage in speech or politics that goes against the state or aligned media/ academia/ activists/ etc you did an -ism or a -phobia or are engaging in mis/disinformation or are a fascist or a Russian bot or whatever the slur of the day is.
This is highly toxic. The purpose of free speech and opening up politics to broad interests is because that speech will both constrain and legitimize state power. A century of free speech law is predicated on the government responding to us, not the other way around.
If we exclude broad swaths of the population from politics, it creates instability and problems for all of us in the long run.
This used to be a basic precept that libs were aware of but seem to have conveniently forgotten.
This is why I would never take my kid to DQSH. These events are not just about meeting queer adults (which I don't mind--I'm one of them!) but about pushing very young children to question their gender and sexuality at an age when they shouldn't have to worry about those things.
This weekend at Barnes and Noble, I happened upon a children's picture book called I'm Not a Girl. A young child realizes she's a boy because she 1) Wants to be a pirate for Halloween, 2) Doesn't like pink frilly clothes, 3) Wants short hair. These three things = boy. This book is recommended for *preschoolers.* In addition to promoting regressive gender stereotypes, it's harmful to tell little kids that if they have certain interests they might be the opposite sex. It's confusing and scary for them, and it might even "flip a switch" of disassociation from one's body that otherwise wouldn't have been flipped. We've confused "normalize queer lives" with "encourage little kids to think of themselves as potentially queer" which is just bonkers.
I'm a lesbian with a young son. I read him books about how there are different types of families, and some adults are gay. I also have no issue with him knowing that trans people exist. But I don't tell my five-year old, "You might be gay or straight or trans or cis" and push him to think about his identity in a way that is age-inappropriate.
A lot of adults pushing this stuff mean well, but they just have no idea what they're doing.
This is the idea that the whole house of cards is built on - that traditional gender roles are socially constructed, rigid and stifling, and need to be broken down. I said elsewhere on this thread that these days the binary allows for any natural gender expression WITHOUT having to undergo any actual gender or sex transition.
More than that, it's all built on the paradox that gender role stereotypes in the binary are rigid and stifling, and yet, somehow?, a completely reliable indicator of who you truly are at the same time.
To defeat gender stereotypes, we must apparently promote and accept them at face value has become one hell of a progressive hill to die on.
Absolutely. I'm a straight person and I'm not constantly pressing my kid to be straight as a toddler, either. It's just bizarre and creepy to force identity issues on children.
Totally agree. My only message to my son is acceptance of all different types of people. Then when he grows up and figures out his own identity and dating preferences, he will know that it's okay.
Sexism was when we insisted women must do the dishes. Feminism was when we insisted anyone could do the dishes. Queering the kitchen means that anyone who does the dishes is a woman.
We forget that these cultural and social messages, while not having the same intrinsic power as nature, do play a role for children who, to your point, are at an age where none of that is supposed to be a concern at all. The consumerist roots of the PMC/DNC copypasta pushed through the infamous vertically integrated messaging apparatus have never been more evident, whether it's selling Pepsi, or how you should feel about Drag Queen Story Hour.
Have you ever read about those gay kids who grow up not really knowing that being queer is even a possibility? They go through life feeling unfulfilled, because it takes them so long to realize that they're gay? Sometimes they even get themselves into unfulfilling heterosexual relationships and don't realize they're gay until they're already married and have a couple kids? Wouldn't preventing that be a good thing?
"Planting a queer seed in kids' heads" doesn't mean turning kids queer. It means helping kids who are already queer realize that sooner, so they avoid the decades of failed relationships and opportunity cost that failing to realize that can lead to. If someone is queer they should realize it as soon as possible. I can imagine some parents don't want that, but those parents are jerks.
If you want to see what has people riled up go look at Libs of Tiktok. Or Gays Against Groomers for that matter.
Finally I don't believe that opposition to gay marriage is necessarily homophobic. I would prefer that government get out of the marriage business but consistency would then demand legalization of polygamy and that apparently is a non-starter.
I agree completely on this matter. Legalizing gay marriage was not "marriage equality" - it was simply extending a monopoly to gays. Muslims and Mormons should be free to marry whoever they want as well without it being an affair of the state.
Unfortunately, extending that franchise would require working an astounding number of existing public and corporate structures around two person marriages, but it still worthwhile to try if only to get government out of just one more thing it doesn't need to be involved in in the first place.
Trixie Mattel made the same point about "ok, which movies?" You're completely right that one can't be both transgressive and simultaneously mainstream. My biggest issue with the queering of mainstream culture or whatever is that straight, boring adults do stupid shit like take their kids to *inappropriate* shows to prove how cool they are. That's a parenting issue, though, and an issue for progressives to figure out: the difference between openness and having no boundaries at all.
I agree with you, but I wonder how big of an issue this is? I'm a parent in a large, liberal city and I don't know of anyone taking their kids to inappropriate drag shows.
I think most parents make thoughtful, informed choices and I'm not sure all of this hullabaloo is necessary for what is no doubt a tiny portion of parents (who may or may not be hypothetical) who don't.
I mean I’m not all het up about this, just weighing in on the topic of today’s post. I find it baffling though that so many people can’t seem to say that “a lot of drag shows aren’t appropriate for kids.”
I mean, doesn't the R-rated movie analogy apply here too though? Some parents or relatives enjoy taking kids to violent or risqué movies because it makes them seem like a "chill" adult. Is that indicative of a larger cultural problem? If not, why not?
It’s all of a piece, to me. The parents who let their kids party, the parents who don’t give bedtimes or curfews, the parents who have no limits on the media their kids consume.
I’m a parent and for awhile was a foster parent, and I have a real issue with adults who deal with their own issues (or not) by messing with appropriate boundaries for kids. What makes this a little different is that for many drag shows, sexual transgression is very much part of the point, and the parents who take their kids to *those* kinds of shows are eroding the boundaries that help kids understand what’s appropriate interaction with adults and what is not.
I think the main objection (for me, the only one) is kid-targeted drag in public schools and libraries. Parents can do what they want, of course. They make what I consider bad decisions all the time!
I feel like the rush to normalize everything makes the normalized things less interesting. Part of choosing to live a bohemian life is accepting that "normies" won't understand or necessarily respect what you're doing. That's what makes the lifestyle alternative. And hey, some things are weird! I recognize that it's weird that I like intense music, that my polyamorous friends are weird, that my political activist friends are weird and not normal. Without a "straight" mainstream to create guide rails, you can't know when you're being transgressive or a follower.
I've been reading a bunch of Michael Moorcock, and all these issues make me think of the cosmic battle between law and chaos, two forces that are neither good or evil but rather just there. A world of total law or total chaos would be inhospitable to life (total death and order and endless cancerous mutation of reality are both bad for human flourishing). I feel like we were leaning too hard towards law for the first 60 years of the last century, and are tilting too swiftly towards reifying chaos now.
yeah, at some level, it's a matter of taste and esthetics.
In some sense, it's similar to the advisability of imposing personal tastes for the extreme and transgressive at, say, community events like street festivals, or soundtracks for large public events.
I like an awful lot of different styles of music, some of them pretty challenging or extreme, or just plain very loud in live performance. But I'm not out to get into a public confrontation with the more sedate taste of the wider public in that regard. And the plain truth is that some musical styles don't play well with others. They belong in a warehouse, a dingy dive bar, or a dedicated music festival where there's a social consensus of a self-selected group that's open to a wide range of outre behavior. A very different social milieu that a musical stage at the center of a public green on a springtime Saturday featuring a farmers market, attended by a cross-section of the local society ranging from parents pushing baby strollers to young children and teenagers, on out to senior citizens and disabled folks in wheelchairs with their caregivers. There are venues where it's within the permissible bounds of common consent to turn up the amps so loud that people can't even hear themselves think, or featuring rappers cussing to their hearts content. But not at a local outdoor street festival. That isn't Freedom. That's Dominance by the few, based on intimidation and superior amplification power.
It gets back to the notion that there's a tradeoff between the Center and the Margins, in whatever respect. Punitive morality that seeks the "purifying" eradication of the Margins is abhorrent- and invariably comes with a huge component of corruption and fanatical bigotry. But the Margins have no call to bid for Enshrinement of their Marginality, as a component of the Center, much less to attempt to dethrone it entirely. The Margins are inevitable- and vitally important, even priceless, in some sense. We all got a space to fill. Up to a point. Marginal behavior can also take things too far, in the public sphere. The world is not entirely Innocent. But we could at least keep the Innocence of Children as a Central value. Dispensing with that elevates everything rotten in the world. "Save the children" really does make sense, as long as it isn't used as an excuse to go on punitive inquisitions directed at adults doing consensual adult things with other adults.
I’ve enjoyed plenty of drag shows in my life, and agree that it’s not inherently sexual. But I’d wager that 80% of what I’ve seen HAS been overtly sexual, so I’m not sure you can completely blame the general public, who haven’t been immersed in queer culture, for having that impression. It’s going to take some time and a lot of sanitization to change that.
While drag isn’t necessarily sexual, it IS an extreme, stereotypical mockery of womanhood. This is literally what they’re doing; it’s not even disputable. I would probably avoid taking a young daughter to a drag show - even a sanitized one - for that reason.
I actually do think that point is disputable. My personal assessment of drag is that it's a mockery of gay male femininity; it's essentially gay men saying "You think we're feminine? Ok sweetie, we'll show you how feminine we can be." So on some level that may be a mockery of femininity but it's not a mockery of women, per se, it's a self-mockery of gay men and the way society traditionally mocked their gender expression. I don't think kids are capable of understanding something that nuanced though, to them it probably comes off as slapstick à la Mrs. Doubtfire or Madea.
I feel like a lot of kids have seen some kind of Madea content, no? Maybe less so in this era but I definitely watched some of those movies in the 2000s. Not saying they were appropriate but kids always find a way. Many young kids have surely seen Mrs. Doubtfire though, that's a pretty wholesome movie.
I think this is a really perceptive comment, and also it seems so obvious that I'm embarrassed that I, a gay man, have never thought about it this way.
I'm flattered! I had this realization when I first saw a radical feminist make the argument that drag is equivalent to "womanface" and felt myself viscerally objecting to that characterization. I had to stop and figure out why that take felt so wrong to me and suddenly it all made sense.
Yeah, that seems... not precisely equivalent. It really is different when you think about drag as being primarily an exaggerated performance of traits that are already present in the performer, rather than as primarily a parody of women. Anyway, yours was a really interesting comment in what's been a pretty unpleasant comment thread today. Thank you.
Exactly! Why would gay men be so drawn to a performance art that was fundamentally about making fun of women, anyway? It's certainly not women who have been the primary perpetrators of homophobia towards gay men. Most gay men have lots of female friends and spend plenty of time with women, especially the ones who are effeminate enough to enjoy doing drag. Not saying gay men can't be misogynistic but it's really not as common as radfems seem to think.
What's with this thread, anyway? I definitely have some views on certain aspects of the way we currently talk about gender that Freddie might disagree with and I expected to see a bit of that here. I expected some of the "drag is preparing kids for sexual abuse" stuff too because that's omnipresent in the discourse these days but I was genuinely surprised to see multiple people arguing that we need to promote heterosexual lifestyles in school. Thank you for your sane contributions as well! <3
I understand your point; I’m not suggesting that drag queens are thinking, “let’s go mock some ladies.” They aren’t thinking about women at all. I’m suggesting that perhaps we should.
This is like saying, “I’m going to dress and speak like a grotesque stereotype of a French person, but I’m actually mocking supposedly effete American liberals like myself.” Ok, that may be the motive, but it doesn’t negate that you’re literally doing a parody of French people, and they’re entitled to see it as such. It would be weird and egocentric to ignore the views and interests of the people you parody.
I agree that young kids are not ready to grasp most of these issues.
Drag is just stupid entertainment… a fashion choice and show. It isn’t conservatives going extreme on it; it is the woke left attempting to inject it as some new civil rights power play while also corrupting the already complex arena of human sexuality and gender relations only for politics. Keep it entertainment and keep it out of the schools and I am sure most sports fans would just get a chuckle.
Yes and let's please stop with the term "Drag Artist." I like to practice and play basketball in my driveway and sometimes with others but that doesn't make me an "Athlete," at the risk of wringing the sports analogy too tightly...
LOL! I haven't heard anybody called a "square" in about 40 years!
But I'm proud to be one, daddi-o!
I am also a fan of that phrase.
Interesting analysis and, I suspect, accurate. Keep it up Freddie. You make my day.
I've thought since the NY Post started pushing the anti-drag line however many years ago that being against drag story hour is like being against clown story hour. If anything, drag for children reinforces the gender binary. "Hey, look at this clownish person who is violating the gender roles; isn't it funny?" It teaches kids that if you want to break gender roles, you have to be an exaggerated cartoon and not a normal person. There is a certain minstrel quality to the performance.
Good point. But kids can be attracted to a vibrant clown lifestyle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aL2DvozMSQ
Not that I'm about "cancelling" drag queens like we "cancel" people who are caught in blackface (okay, if they're from one side of the aisle), but every argument you use for making blackface a taboo you can use against "drag." And I say that knowing a harmless man with no ill intent who did do drag and am not insulted by him. But as I say, the argument is there.
Yes. Why is blackface offensive, but womanface is not?
Now that's the question, isn't it? Because they are essentially the same thing, just targeting two separate groups.
I tend to see it thr other way. Drag is showing that rejecting gender norms does not necessarily mean you are trans or non-binary.
One could actually suggest that "drag" is not rejecting gender norms but reducing them to the absurd and insulting and unwittingly parodying being "trans" (or illustrating the insulting nature of "trans" so that one has trouble denying reductionism of "womanhood" to cosmetics by the "trans" movement, even if not all "transwomen").
I mention this view in a longer comment below. While I'm not an expert on this, and while drag is performed by a large number of people, all with their own motivation, it doesn't seem like that is a common motivation, and that it is much more about blurring gender roles than mocking anyone.
A drag show that did not exaggerate (and thereby intentionally or not) mock women would not be entertainment. Drag's very nature is not to "blur" gender norms. It's for men to put a show of exaggerated female performance. The whole point is not to take on female roles but to exaggerate them *as men*. It would not be nearly as funny if women did it, and that's the key. It's entertaining because it's men, and it's entertaining because it's exaggerated. The spectrum goes from a bit of fun to all out sexualization and caricature, but . . . it's still mocking, even if the "mocking" is mild.
And as a woman, I can take the mocking. I even laugh myself. And I can't stand makeup or dresses or any of that, so I frankly admire a man who can do what I'm unwilling to do and wear it so much more gracefully. But honesty demands that we recognize that these men don't really want to be women, because being women would be boring. They don't want to "blur" gender roles because wearing *normal* women's clothing and *normal* amount of makeup would be boring. They want to lampoon the idea of female dress and performance, even if it's colorful and all in fun.
I can see your point, but they aren't merely adopting tropes of femininity (i.e., wearing dresses and having long hair). Drag involves mimicking women's voices and wearing prosthetics to mimic women's bodies, and usually gross exaggerations of women's bodies at that. It goes beyond gender non-conformity; it's a stereotypic parody of women by men.
Was it you who wrote about how there is no counter-culture anymore? Anyway, there doesn’t seem to be a counter-culture anymore.
There is always a counter culture.
It just so happens that right now, since the dominant culture in elite spaces (private and public) is ruled by gynocratic HR ladies who speak in corporate/government copypasta, the counter culture is now largely driven by the political right. And that, predictably, makes any good progressive make a show of recoiling in horror of that counter culture, whether that horror is genuine or otherwise, in order to show other progressives that they are against anything "right coded" (icky! gross!)
This statement assumes that the entire left agrees on the anodyne liberalism of the DNC.
What are the right wing bands right now that will go on to shape music for the next decade? What right wing filmmakers are making movies that will change film moving forward?
Where is this right wing counter culture?
Pepe the Frog.
If the entire counter culture that right wing media has developed is a cartoon frog, I'd say that's a failed counter culture.
I'. obviously talking about 4 chan/ kiwi farms/8 kun.
Does right ring counter culture not exist at all or is it a failure? Make up your mind.
The running theme here seems to be that no one has any artists that represent this counter culture.
If they exist, feel free to share them and clarify this for me.
it's counterculture - definitively it's underground and you wouldn't have heard of any artists in this genre because you're not a member of said counterculture, but it is being made. it's just not mainstream, and in many cases - actively suppressed.
If you can't name anything from this counter culture, it might not exist.
When people talk about this right wing counter culture, they seem to mostly be talking about the right wing dudes funded by billionaires who have larger audiences than any ABC, CBS, or NBC show.
Pepe the Frog. God Emperor Trump. And so on.
yes, you just made case and point. You just named 3 Networks, combined their viewership of their show viewership matches/exceeds of whoever you're talking about - it's just there are less options.
If you're that big and popular and backed by billionaires, you're not the counter culture.
Ben Shapiro ain't the Velvet Underground.
Right wing counterculture is most noticeable online - shitposting Twitter being an excellent example - because the dominant cliques in the arts and academia are totally left dominated, and don't believe for a moment that dissent from institutional groupthink in those spaces is tolerated for a moment. Which has led too many conservatives to simply cede the arts to the left completely, which I think is a mistake.
However, there definitely are people who actively taking part in, and encouraging greater participation in the counter culture to our current (terrible) mass culture. Passage Press, for example, is taking a vanguard role in a resurgence of "right coded" (for lack of a better phrase) participation in literature and the visual arts. I wish them the best.
This is so absurd. Larry Correia is a pretty big name making conservative art. But being a conservative and making art is not the same thing as counter culture.
You think conservatives don't like music because it's too woke so they just refused to make music in favor of shitposting?
If Ben Shapiro can have a bigger audience than Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and John Oliver combined, there should be an audience waiting for this right wing stuff.
The fact that none of it exists may tell you something.
Why are you asking other people if you're so convinced you already know?
I do know right of center people who are writers and artists right here where I live, in the heart of the Acela Corridor.
Most of these people toil away in PMC dominated institutions that would not be pleased with learning they have Political/Culture Enemies lurking among them. So they keep quiet and stick to their day jobs, and when they do write or paint, they all keep their art as jejeune and apolitical as possible. Do you really want to raise a stink about it? For what?
And for aspiring artists or writers, it doesn't take long to read the room of the institutions you are trying to join. There are few explicitly welcoming places for institutional dissent in art right now for people who aren't independently wealthy already, and who don't give a damn about cancelation, etc.
The Passage Press stands out because they are chiding right coded culture warriors for sitting things out. They embrace the example the left set in dominating cultural spaces. Their mantra is to copy the formula: tear down the existing icons, replace them with your own.
I encourage this approach highly, and wish them all the best of luck in their endeavor.
I don't know the answer to this, which is why I'm asking: who are the conservative artists changing culture from the underground?
I can think of many left wing artist (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, for example), but I can't think of any similar right wing artists.
Also, being conservative does not make something counter culture. Especially since conservative culture is still very popular and mainstream. Tim Allen just had a show that ran for a decade on a major network. Ben Shapiro is one of the most shared people on social media. Fox News is the biggest news network. Twitter is owned by the second wealthiest man on the planet who has advocated that his followers vote conservative.
Conservative culture is huge and popular and mainstream.
But where is its counter culture?
I mean you don’t have to be an actual republican to feel extremely alienated in arts/culture spaces on the east coasts that have swallowed certain shibboleths wholesale. If you have even a tiny bit of skepticism for amorphous “queerness” as it exists in 2023, believe in due process under the law for the accused, think that monogamous, heterosexual love is still a subject matter deserving of depiction in the arts, and don’t fantasize about zapping conservative people out of existence just because they are conservative you better keep those opinions to yourself or your band/podcast/substack/gallery show will be immediately disqualified as “wrongthink.”
Not the DNC explicitly, but the Acela Corridor professional managerial class who, hey, just happens to be the class the DNC now exists to serve exclusively, certainly.
Twenty years ago a rebellious 20 something would be anti-religion. Now if you want to rebel you say the word "nigger".
Point in fact, 20 years ago culture was at a medium, the left hadn't taken over yet, but the right (think '80s Regan culture) hadn't receded yet. Being anti-religious was neither good nor bad, simply a topic.
40 years ago, being anti-religious was rebellious. Otherwise, you point stands. The Babylon Bee is where SNL was around '78 or so.
Yeah, I think your timeline ('70's and '80's) is a lot more accurate.
The hegemonic class is the PMC, whose values generally skew left in cultural matters, as long as they get to keep their bonuses. They *are* The Establishment now.
As a result, the subversives, the mockers, the people who say outrageous truths that you aren't supposed to say in public, the professional class clowns and underground legends, are all on the alt-right, while the PMC left are uptight finger-wagging prigs so dour and censorious that they make The Church Lady look like G.G. Allin by comparison.
This is not because of any inherent qualities of left or right, but because of their relationship to economics and power.
G. G. Allin is the perfect example of how Gen X values are completely different than the Millennials.
I thought that he might be a bit dated and obscure a reference for some.
Literally flinging actual human shit at other people will probably be the last transgressive act the PMC HR Lady caste tries to make a "gOod ThiNg, AcKSHuaLLy".
Until that time, GG can rest in his grave knowing he still remains a truly subversive figure.
You need a mass culture to have a counter-culture. Otherwise, what are you countering?
It's an interesting point, about making distinctions between certain types of drag shows in the same way we do of, say, movies. But the larger problem is that mainstream progressivism is completely uninterested in making that distinction and in fact appears wholeheartedly opposed to it. We have seen many examples of vulnerable children being thrust into highly sexualized drag environments over the past few years, and progressives say absolutely nothing about it. They won't do that because they're afraid that it would give even a tiny infinitesimal shred of legitimacy to some tiny portion of conservative belief. The potential sexual victimization of children is seen as a reasonable trade-off to avoid even tertiary sympathy to anything resembling conservatism. And I think it's pretty obvious where this will lead in the end.
How are kids thrust into sexualized drag environments?
Were the drag queens walking the streets using dildos as swords?
Their parents take them, to prove how cool and progressive they are.
I mean, how is that the drag show's fault?
If you take a kid to see an R rated movie, it's not the movie that has the problem.
No it's not drag shows' fault. But progressives have a PR problem, and it's often adults putting kids in inappropriate situations, on camera.
They do definitely have a PR problem
I would like to see 10 examples of children present at "highly sexualized" drag.
Google it.
I would like to see 1 example of the liberal side of the culture wars ever acknowledging that other people could possibly have valid opinions based on objective criteria.
Would you accept pictures of children interacting with "highly sexualized" drag at pride parades? That's the only time I've really seen it.
(Speaking of which, "can drag be for kids" is really a microcosm of the debate about whether kids should be at Pride and if therefore participants should be more restrained in sexualization. Just an annual debate about assimilation/normalization)
Conservatives do the same thing but it straight culture and no one bats an eye because it's culturally acceptable in some circles.
Yeah I'm not for that either.
Well, yeah, because people like straight culture.
It doesn't even have to be the drag show's fault for the point to stand.
Do they do regular screenings of r-rated movies at the kids section of bookstores?
What the hell do people think happens at drag shows?
Probably what they see of drag shows on YouTube.
Tbf there have been incidents of what's labeled in advance as "family friendly" or "all ages" turning out to not be appropriate for kids.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11027323/Drag-star-banned-National-Theatre-joking-children-taught-open-LEGS.html
Oh I'm well aware. I'm trying to be generous.
some gay people are parents and therefore appreciate family-friendly gay events
I understand, I have a close friend who is a gay parent. The issue is not gay events, or even drag events, it's the drag events that are not for kids where people bring their kids, or events billed as family friendly that definitely are not. FWIW, most of the stuff I've seen/heard about is not gay parents taking their kids, it's straight parents taking their kids to show everyone how inclusive they are.
People's brains are on fire, here. They can't hear or see your nuance, I'm afraid. I applaud your patience.
Kids are thrust into sexualized environments by their schools:
"New York City Mayor Eric Adams defended Thursday sending drag queens to public schools"
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/jun/16/eric-adams-throws-support-behind-drag-queen-story-/
"A Public School District Took Middle Schoolers to a Drag Show Without Telling Their Parents"
https://www.newsweek.com/public-school-district-took-middle-schoolers-drag-show-without-telling-their-parents-opinion-1776503
"A San Francisco area drag queen named Nicole Jizzington, or “Nikki Jizz” for short, allegedly performed for a group of middle schoolers Tuesday."
https://thenationaldesk.com/news/americas-news-now/had-them-kids-losing-it-drag-queen-named-nikki-jizz-flouts-performance-at-middle-school
Curious why conservatives aren't protesting Hooters and Twin Peaks restaurants where kids are exposed to the sexualization of scantily clad women. But I suppose dad is just taking the young ones to that particular restaurant because of the tasty wings and dipping sauces.
The pearl clutching about kids seeing men in women's clothing is really less about the "potential" for sexual victimization at a library than it is about conservatives still upset the gays came out of the closet 30 years ago.
I don't take my kids to those places, either. But you're comparing a strip club/burlesque environment to Hooters. There's no pole dancing or sexual gyration to music at Hooters. And to be clear, men pretending to be strippers in public falls into the category of "kink," and women wearing tight/revealing clothing and serving beer with a bit of mild flirting thrown in does not.
Ah...okay. See now I get it. Taking your kids to see women scantily dressed as sex objects for pay while they serve you food is wholesome and appropriate.
Last I checked, a library is not a strip club. At least not the libraries I go to.
Yes, because if there's one thing we all know, influential entities in government and corporate institutions will call heteronormie chuds bigots if they don't take their kids to breastaurants (which they already don't - people don't take kids to sports bars in general), or god forbid, if they chose *not to* send women dressed like Hooters waitresses to read books to kids in public school.
That checks out - total apples to apples. Happens all the time. Great analogy right there.
Where anyone got the idea that "OH YEAH? HOOTERS!" was some sort of brilliant, incisive retort to pushback against drag queens being everywhere is completely beyond me. It's just not.
I thought the main complaint is bringing these things to schools with young children where the parents do not have the choice. I guess libraries are a tough one cause on the one hand you are not forced to go to a library, but unlike Hooters/drag, you'd think a library would be tame enough to bring young children.
Contrary to what I thought, when a friend took me to Hooters, it's a sports bar, somewhat over-staffed with young girls wearing somewhat tight workout clothes. Hooters doesn't have pole dancing, flashing lights, announcers, and the music is hip-hop in a bright football-basketball-hockey on prominent big screen TVs environment.
Much to my disappointment ...
The last time I went to Hooters was when I was single with co-workers and the waitresses went out of their way to flirt with us and bent down low to take our orders to encourage cleavage staring. My coworkers liked going to Hooters because it was more culturally acceptable to oogle and harass the waitresses than going to the lunch buffet at the strip club down the street.
It's interesting that a mode of dress that was common for young women in the 1970s became compartmentalized and more or less entirely commodified as a sales-come-on in the 1980s.
I'm not apprised of the research on the phenomenon, but I admit to some curiosity as to the experience of young women who came of age in that era dressing the way women did in the film Smokey And The Bandit- whether they stopped going braless and displaying cleavage because their bodies were attracting too much unwanted attention from men, or whether it was simply a shift in the tides of fashion. Because my personal impression- firsthand, from the 1970s- is that the women who dressed that way then were not subservient, submissive sex toys. They typically displayed a lot of self-possession, and a sense of themselves and their sexuality that was self-aware without being overly self-conscious or defensive. I never noticed young men losing all self-control and pawing over them, or squeezing every unharnessed breast they noticed underneath a t-shirt. But, my experience was not that of a woman, firsthand.
fwiw, I never had any sense that there was a feminist insistence on women dressing more modestly in that era, either. It wasn't one of the demands. Self-expression was the rule of the day, from the casual braless t-shirt, sundress look, to braces and boots, to the Dykes on Bikes (who were known to ride completely topless.)
Never been- there just aren't that many Hooters restaurants around, certainly fewer than public libraries- but did you notice any pre-pubescent children there, during your visit?
I have to say, I went to high school and college in the early 1970s, and no one had to go to a restaurant featuring scantily clad women as a draw. The no-bra, hot pants, short skirt or peasant-dress look was found in every public high school and college. It wasn't a dress code, but it was normal. As natural and unforced a look as drag is dependent on artifice, makeup, and costuming.
Later, when the ripped lingerie, torn sweatshirt, bullet bra look came into fashion for women in the 1980s, I was like, what is this?
For cats, fashion is pretty much the same as it always was.
Although I am partial to long whiskers and soft fur. Smell is important, too.
I'm a librarian. People have weird ideas about public libraries, somehow expecting them both to be a "family friendly" environment with no objectionable materials, while at the same time having a wide range of materials representing the full variety of adult perspectives and tastes . They think that because libraries are public, they're obligated to "represent the values of the community" (by which they usually mean, "Don't be any more liberal or conservative than I am!"), but they somehow forget that because libraries are public, they're also bound by the same Constitutional obligations to ensure free speech and free association.
Over on some comments at The Dispatch, I've been trying to explain that public libraries can't ban drag shows in the library any more than the police can ban Nazi marches on public streets.
It's an interesting observation. Not that I'm equating the two situations, but to posit an analogy: are public libraries required to host an "alt-right" gathering of men in brown uniforms with swastika armbands? Freedom of political speech is freedom of political speech, no? And presumably visual symbolism like costumes and regalia are part of that, no?
Uh...if the local Nazi Youth Club wanted to have a reading hour of Mein Kampf the library would host it. They can't abridge the free speech of Nazis but I suspect some people would object to that.
thanks for the reply. It would be interesting to see whether a protest that got news coverage would focus more on the activity being hosted, or the protests against it. Or whether both sides would be granted equal time to express their position.
The answer, I would certainly hope, should be yes.
There are, of course, limits on free speech in libraries. They are the same limits on free speech that apply in all governmental, public contexts. That is to say, the specific limits defined by statute and clarified in legal precedent. And no others.
The thing that prevents "Nazi Story Hour" from occurring in your local library is not any library policy. It is public opinion. There simply aren't enough people out there who wish to organize such a thing, and not enough people who wish to attend such a thing.
That's how a free and open society is supposed to work. Especially in America.
"There simply aren't enough people out there who wish to organize such a thing, and not enough people who wish to attend such a thing."
The guy who runs the Daily Stormer claims that he gets 3,000,000 unique impressions a month. By his estimation he'd get twice as many if his web hosting wasn't pulled out from underneath him every few months.
I think there's plenty of people who do attend such things, but public space isn't exactly uncommon so they have no need to rely on the local library.
These are very good points. That said, I think there's a difference between banning outside groups that want to do drag performances at the library (unconstitutional) and deciding that the library's own programming (i.e., story hour) will now be led by drag queens.
I think that's an excellent point, and there are real challenges in that respect. Libraries do attempt to maintain some degree of viewpoint neutrality and non-controversialism in promoted programming choices. And what qualifies as neutral and non-controversial will vary based on local community conditions and the vagaries of "cultural values."
This is eminently sensible. They are democratic institutions after all. I don't envy the people making these calls.
"Age-appropriateness" is (or can be) content neutral. What materials a library stocks is obviously significantly different than the events it hosts.
I've yet to see a drag show at a public library where the drag queen is grinding the book they are reading. And I'm certainly not aware of drag shows occurring at schools - public or private - for that matter.
"New York City Mayor Eric Adams defended Thursday sending drag queens to public schools"
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/jun/16/eric-adams-throws-support-behind-drag-queen-story-/
"A Public School District Took Middle Schoolers to a Drag Show Without Telling Their Parents"
https://www.newsweek.com/public-school-district-took-middle-schoolers-drag-show-without-telling-their-parents-opinion-1776503
"A San Francisco area drag queen named Nicole Jizzington, or “Nikki Jizz” for short, allegedly performed for a group of middle schoolers Tuesday."
https://thenationaldesk.com/news/americas-news-now/had-them-kids-losing-it-drag-queen-named-nikki-jizz-flouts-performance-at-middle-school
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/parents-upset-over-hooter_n_1102181
https://www.wapt.com/article/hooters-customers-clash-with-protesters/2084910
I know the links are old, but I had to adjust the google search parameters because most recent protests are against objectification. It wasn't until I search for stories before ~2015 that I found parents and Christians upset rather than feminists. I'm sure you'd also see more protests if there were specific events, like a Hooters-catered lunch at a library, but I couldn't find any examples of that happening.
It also seems pretty unfair to think that taking kids to Hooters is something considered socially acceptable in most circles. It's often cited as proof of poor parenting. See this TMZ article about Dwight Howard's child custody battle for an example of a common trend:
https://www.tmz.com/2014/11/19/dwight-howard-custody-battle-son-hooters-child-abuse/
I'm not saying it doesn't happen today but I don't see as much media attention about parents taking their kids to Hooters as I do the kerfluffle about drag shows at a library.
Try and stuff a dollar bill into the waistband of a waitress at Hooter's and let us know how that goes.
I do this already and the only complaint I get is that I use $2 bills and the gals think they're fake money.
If there's a Hooter's where the waitresses will give you a hand job in the restroom send me the address.
I drove a cab, in Sacramento. I once saw the son of a gay/in-drag parent/guardian at a drag night in a gay bar. 35 years ago. He was about 10, getting fussed over outside the door by a couple of the other queens. I didn't notice any groping, or any of that. You know, it's a big wide world of niche social milieux. Driving a cab in Sacramento is like studying Chinese history; it tends to make one very broad-minded.
But, to your point? Neither Hooters or a gay bar is a public library.
So when you said:
Curious why conservatives aren't protesting Hooters and Twin Peaks restaurants where kids are exposed to the sexualization of scantily clad women.
You meant that they are doing so, but no one pays attention.
I'd say the reason you don't see much media attention about kids at those restaurants is that it's the NEWs, not the OLDs. Why would the media report on something that's been considered inappropriate for decades? Should they write articles by skimming r/trashy?
I'm guessing you've never actually been into a Hooters, cause it ain't a strip club as you apparently imagine.
What are you responding to? They characterized the restaurant as a place where people are
"exposed to the sexualization of scantily clad women."
What part of that description do you think is inaccurate?
I was only in a Hooters twice. Hooters is a sports bar with big-screen TVs, where the waitresses are dressed more conservatively at work, then they are at the gym.
So you would not call a hooters waitress scantily clad?
Yes, people at the gym might be scantily clad too.
My buddy used to love strip clubs, to the point where he got friendly with the dancers and hung out with them socially. Some of them would give him hand jobs in the back room where they did lap dances. When he was thinking about moving to my city we had to do a tour of the local clubs so he could see if they were up to snuff as a precondition for relocating.
I don't think the waitresses at Hooter's are scantily clad. And I wonder if people who compare Hooter's to a strip club have ever been to a strip club.
Stretching the definition of tight booty shorts and a low cut cleavage crack revealing t-shirt as "conservatively" dressed is a bit much. Especially considering Hooters used to host wet t-shirt contests as well.
Yeah, it always confuses me that people think this is a good argument.
First of all, it's not appropriate to take kids to Hooters or Twin Peaks.
Second, the state/institutions aren't interested in promoting Hooters or Twin Peaks in education/ cultural programming.
Third, drag is both sexualized AND includes parody and critiques of femininity that are generally not interpretable/ comprehensible to children, and thus drag is definitionally age inappropriate.
The ad hominem/ setting up some theorized resentful strawman instead of being able to respond to concerns really betrays how thin the rationale is for supporting this stuff.
I don't agree with your third point at all. Drag is not inherently sexualized (see the movie analogy above) and children are able comprehend Bugs Bunny in a dress. Why think that they're unable to understand a parody of femininity?
Drag isn't necessarily meant to be sexually exciting.
But it almost always is a send up of female sexuality or male heterosexual perceptions of it or female sexual tropes or what it is about female sexuality that gay men find most entertaining and amusing.
Kids will get that it is a parody of femininity, but what exactly is it that you think they will do with that parody? How will a 10 year old situate and contextualize it?
Can't that be answered empirically? 10 year olds have seen the shows, right?
From what I have seen, the answer is they have a decent time at the drag bingo brunch, then go home and have their brain rotted by Fortnite
Yeah, look, when one of my kids was 4 he told me that boys can be born into girls bodies.
This is something they were told at preschool and parroted back to me.
I'm not particularly worried about this, but again, I don't think my 4 year old was able to meaningfully parse this esoteric ideology in a critical way.
If a pussy hat mom wants to take her 10 year old son to drag brunch to feel good about herself I don't really care. It's vacuous narcissism. I think it's age inappropriate and generally not a good idea in the same way that eating processed food is not a good idea. The 10 year old who hasn't encountered puberty won't be able to make sense of the performance in any sort of meaningful way other than it's a 'man in a dress.'
And the point that 'other things are bad' isn't a good one: My kids don't play video games either - they play sports and have other activities after school and on the weekends.
You've not heard of Desmond is amazing, I guess? https://youtu.be/JxdvOLdG_34
Yep, I have seen and enjoyed plenty of drag shows. But it is indisputably a stereotypic parody of womanhood by men. I wouldn't take a young girl (in particular) to see it.
This is kind of what I wonder about it. Like, enough with the pearl-clutching, but in an era of trans acceptance what are we supposed to do with a guy in a dress acting campy? Is it supposed to be funny? Because, sexual or not, it's only funny because it's transgressive - if crossdressing and genderqueer appearances are normalized then it just becomes a "person reading stories."
In certain instances, yes, it is intended to be `a stereotypic[al] parody of womanhood' but mostly it comes from a reverence of certain aspects of womanhood that are exclusive to women. Queens do not spend hours, upon hours of preparation and practice just to perform elaborate acts of misogyny. There is a certain vulnerability in their performances (one must have the right makeup, the right physique, the right voice, etc. that is open to very vocal criticism on the stage) that comes from an understanding and appreciation of women since a young age.
If the young girl is into fashion and the absurd then it could be a great experience for her.
I've been going to drag show all my life....it's very rare that they are not all sexed up. Without that, no edge.
`First of all, it's not appropriate to take kids to Hooters or Twin Peaks.'
Then spend at least an equivalent amount of time/outrage pressuring Hooters to change their age admission policy to +18.
`Second, the state/institutions aren't interested in promoting Hooters or Twin Peaks in education/ cultural programming.'
Well, no, because you don't need to teach boys to appreciate T&A. Getting boys and girls to not ridicule, accept, and be friends with non-conforming and trans children/adolescents might take a bit more doing. I'm open to better ideas than DQSH.
`Third, drag is both sexualized AND includes parody and critiques of femininity that are generally not interpretable/ comprehensible to children, and thus drag is definitionally age inappropriate.'
Drag needn't be sexualized, and isn't during nearly all interactions between drag queens and children (except where permitted by parents, it seems---blame that on the parents and not the queens). If the `parody and critiques of femininity' are incomprehensible then there's no issue! The drag queens look a bit like clowns or, hopefully, impart the idea that it's OK to be different.
If it makes any difference, as a bona fide prudish conservative orthodox Catholic, I am very much opposed to the titty restaurants, too, and would never ever take my kids to any of those.
Yeah, I'm not prudish and not religious, and I don't like them either.
I think most people want their kids to be able to be capable of full adult lives which at some point includes successfully managing a monogamous, focused relationship, preferably marriage.
Why expose your kids to sexual 'junk food'?
They will ultimately decide for themselves what they want and be responsible for their own actions. But why would you not want to provide them with an understanding of what a good model is?
There's a world of difference between accepting gayness and modeling body-dysmorphia-as-normative-existence. And if you can't see that, then I want to gently suggest that your mental model of people that disagree with you is lacking.
Speaking for myself only, I am not upset that gays came "out of the closet." I do find it irritating and in some cases alarming that whoever is in charge of normalizing cultures does not see a distinction between highly sexualilzed drag shows in school libraries and environments that can be accessed by choice.
"The potential sexual victimization of children" is such a ludicrous leap from "seeing a man in a dress and exaggerated makeup read 'Julian Is A Mermaid.'" It's a ludicrous leap even from "seeing a man in a dress twerk to Beyonce" or "seeing a man in a dress make a sex joke" or "being in the room during an adults-only comedy set."
What about this is *sexualizing vulnerable children?* What about it is teaching them to be okay with adults touching them inappropriately, what about it is teaching them to see themselves as sexual when they otherwise wouldn't have, how much of a comedy show with sexual elements would a storytime-age child even understand as sexual? I have never seen this thousand-yard leap justified except with links to out-of-context LibsOfTiktok videos showing me something I'm supposed to find so gross and horrible, I become convinced it *must* somehow turn children into victims of sexual predators. And I've never been convinced. Even if drag is not appropriate for kids in all instances, I cannot see how seeing drag, even adult-oriented drag, magically transforms children into victims of sex abuse. It is not obvious to me at all.
Lady, if you can't see how normalizing children at highly sexualized adult-content shows is a perfectly logical pathway to the sexual exploitation of children, it's because you don't *want* to see it.
As I said to another commentor below, drag queens aren’t abusing children. The same people are abusing children who always have: primarily their male family members, and men in their immediate communities. Drag isn’t making that kind of abuse more prevalent, and making drag illegal tomorrow wouldn’t make it less prevalent. The number of kids actually seeing sexually-explicit comedy in the form of drag is vanishingly small, and the epidemic of drag-addled children enthusiastically falling into the arms of abusers you’re predicting is fiction.
If parents don’t want their kids to go to drag shows for whatever reason, that’s fine with me. I wouldn’t take my kid to an explicit drag show, if I had kids. I’d certainly be unhappy if another adult, whether a school administrator, or a parent, took my kid out to see an adult-oriented show without my permission. But I also think it is catastrophizing to a ridiculous degree to say that drag culture going mainstream is going to fundamentally change the nature of child sex abuse. 
You think child sexual abuse happens because children "enthusiastically fall into the arms of abusers?" That's a sick, backward view of what actually happens to these children and it does not surprise me that you're failing to see what's going on here.
In any event, regardless of how we debate this, I'm sure the scale and scope of this will all become clear as time goes on. Of course by then it will be too late.
Gender theory aimed at children—if and when it's outcomes are ever studied—will be the Catholic Church scandal of our times, imo. Abbvie made $726M on adolescent puberty blockers in 2018.
It will be much worse. The Catholic Church did not physically mutilate and sterilize thousands of children.
To be clear: I’m saying this is what YOU are predicting. I apologize if I made an incorrect assumption about what you predict happening as a result of drag being mainstreamed. But that is my understanding of the argument, and of what you said should be “obvious”: That the “sexualization” of children through seeing drag performers would cause them to be more vulnerable to predation by others. I don’t think that’s true; you seem to think it is.
My question is why does anyone need kids at drag events? What good do the kids get out of it? What good do the "drag artists" get out of it? Why do we as a society need this phenomenon that leads to debates like this one?
Lady? The name is Sarah.
As deBoer points out there are drag shows and then there are drag shows. Specifically, for the ones where the kids tip the performers with dollar bills or paper currency one has to come to the inescapable conclusion that the people organizing these events are cognizant of the subtext of that custom and are okay with replicating it in a "family friendly" environment.
I understand your point that drag doesn’t *necessarily* do any of these bad things.
As a blunt and simple counterpoint, what is the purpose/benefit of drag (if it can be unsexualized) in schools? What are the lessons this specific art form conveys that can’t be expressed through another medium?
Essentially, what is the steel man case for Drag in schools?
`But the larger problem is that mainstream progressivism is completely uninterested in making that distinction and in fact appears wholeheartedly opposed to it.'
No, progressives disagree with what *you* consider inappropriate w/r/t drag shows. What is inappropriate and appropriate to you? Please correct me if I'm wrong but it seems that any acknowledgement of drag queens and their interaction with children, along with an explanation for them, is inappropriate to you.
Again, what type of drag queen-child interaction is appropriate to you?
`We have seen many examples of vulnerable children being thrust into highly sexualized drag environments over the past few years, and progressives say absolutely nothing about it.'
I've seen acts of inappropriate behavior on the part of drag queens in select tik tok videos. How were those children vulnerable, exactly, as they were accompanied by parents/their parents blessed the participation?
We do actually know that poverty and an environment of domestic abuse negatively affects childrens' development, probably a lot more than a kid seeing a twerking queen...seems an odd thing to fixate on the handful of children exposed to inappropriate drag queens versus the 10s of thousands who are going to bed hungry right now.
`some tiny portion of conservative belief.'
What is the belief, exactly? How do you oppose children being exposed to something different that makes them more accepting of the diversity and range of humanity, and maybe, just maybe helps a few students, even a very few students, understand a little bit better who they are, and gives them assurance that they will be accepted by their peers in the future?
` The potential sexual victimization of children'
This is absolutely no different than what I was taught to believe as child (80s/90s): gay men are child molesters. Now we have that drag queens and `men in dresses' (trans women?) are sexual deviants looking for an opportunity to abuse children.
`And I think it's pretty obvious where this will lead in the end.'
And where is that? A trans or gender non-conforming kid not being bullied and having friends? Being able to accept who they are without shame? Drag queens are probably not the most effective way to help such kids, but if you have a better idea about how to inculcate acceptance for them then I'd like to hear it.
Insightful piece Freddie, thanks for this
I don’t that placing small children next to exposed adult male genitals is normalization of queer culture...period
Kinda the whole thing of drag queens is that they hide their genitals...
And hoo boy does that look painful, always wondered how they feel afterwards 😂
I presume you're referring to the standard procedure of tucking using a lot of duct tape on the genitals and, uhmmm, in crack...yes, painful, if not prepared. Cheaper than waxing, though. (Waxing recommended before applying this method).
Indeed, Alaska even has a line in her song `Hieeee' about the faux pas of showing genitals while in drag:
`If you see a bulge, don't be mad!
Some of the most beautiful women in the world have gigantic penises!'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPu05d3uLR0
I think I once saw an intentional bulge when an AMAB non-binary drag person was performing.
You've never been to a drag show
Didn't you just write that there are R rated drag shows as well as G rated ones?
Thank you for making this point. I have seen this shift myself. Drag used to be super transgressive, like in Paris is Burning, where Black and Latino men that were kicked out of their homes started their own culture. Now it's a sanitized art form for affluent liberal urbanites to virtue signal with. It’s a shame what they did to a vibrant counterculture. I wrote about it here, and I hope you read this, Freddie:
https://societystandpoint.substack.com/p/drag-queen-boring-hour
A lot of people who supported gay marriage saw things like normalizing drag, etc. as part of a slippery slope that made them waffle as to whether or not they should offer their own political support to gay marriage initiatives.
Whether you think it's harmless or not, there's no denying there are a lot of people who don't think it's appropriate, and find the normalization of drag (even and especially when sponsored by government and corporate entities) vulgar and inappropriate outside of private venues for gay men.
Do you think it's appropriate? If not, why do you feel that way?
My personal opinion on this is important to you?
I think it does represent a coarsening of the culture. It's fairly harmless, but it does seem more bizarre to make the case that it's essential to have men in drag reading to kids than it is to not want men in drag reading to their kids.
I do agree that in just about every sense, the slippery slope that conservative and moderate gay marriage supporters were worrying about absolutely was real. They feel like this is not what they signed up for in exchange for their political support. Whether you think it's right or wrong, good or bad, it's impossible to deny that it happened.
Which brings us to the iron law of progressive discourse in this day and age, which is the metamorphosis of "that's absurd, that will never happen" to "it isn't happening, even if you say it is" until it reaches the final form of "ok, it really is happening, and that's a good thing".
Of course your personal opinion is important. Why else would you be broadcasting it by commenting?
I've never gotten the sense that anyone thinks drag story hour is "essential" and I'd be interested if you have any examples of that viewpoint. At most, I've seen activists insist that the right to do this harmless thing is essential and the critics are bizarre for caring.
It's led to the classic culture war argument - your opponent is wrong for having an opinion. There's not many people arguing for or against story hour, but plenty arguing (like you) about which of those opinions is an overreaction.
I also wouldn't say that this was the slippery slope that people were worried about. I used to read the editorials in the morning paper daily from around 2004-2008 and don't recall anyone making the connection between gay marriage and (non-sexual) drag shows for children. The closest I can find online is stuff like this letter, which I'd call openly bigoted:
https://dailynexus.com/2004-05-19/praising-drag-queens-perpetuates-lack-of-treatment-for-mentally-ill/
My own personal opinion was not particularly relevant to my own comment, but whatevs. All you have to do is actually know and be friends with some of those moderates and conservatives to hear them say the exact same thing, but in progressives, that triggers the "eww, cooties!" reflex, so people pretend it's either not a thing, or Obviously Dangerous Hatred, etc.
So what's your opinion, which is so common? Is this a pretty concise way to sum up popular opinion:
"Drag is coarse/vulgar but harmless"
Can you describe your own belief (which is common) without bringing in how progressives (or some other group) react?
I literally did that already.
I mean the fact that him saying “coarse, but harmless” would be immediately(and falsely) equivocated with advocating for the genocide of trans people is proof enough that this entire damn discourse has left rationality behind for good. Queer activists don’t understand that tolerance doesn’t mean being completely deferential to the fringe, and that’s why this particular cultural battleground has become such a sticking point.
I have two thoughts:
1. RuPaul did to drag what Giuliani did to New York
2. Steven Crowder is the only true subversive drag queen left
One of the founders of Drag Queen Story Hour wrote us a paper on exactly what they intended DQSH to do and that was to plant a queer seed in kids heads. Some parents don't want that. I'm a parent and my resting stance is no culture wars for my kid from either direction. DQSH sees themselves as a queering polar opposite of "straightening" institutions like schools. "At many events, organizers invite kids to create their own drag name" and "Book selections often include queer and/or trans characters, gender-transgressive themes" and they see themselves as "drag pedagogs". Here's the paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03626784.2020.1864621
Right, the subtext here is that the state and aligned institutions can engage in speech and shaping of political opinion, but those outside the institutions cannot engage in legitimate speech or politics.
If you engage in speech or politics that goes against the state or aligned media/ academia/ activists/ etc you did an -ism or a -phobia or are engaging in mis/disinformation or are a fascist or a Russian bot or whatever the slur of the day is.
This is highly toxic. The purpose of free speech and opening up politics to broad interests is because that speech will both constrain and legitimize state power. A century of free speech law is predicated on the government responding to us, not the other way around.
If we exclude broad swaths of the population from politics, it creates instability and problems for all of us in the long run.
This used to be a basic precept that libs were aware of but seem to have conveniently forgotten.
Yeah, its basically Queer Inception.
This is why I would never take my kid to DQSH. These events are not just about meeting queer adults (which I don't mind--I'm one of them!) but about pushing very young children to question their gender and sexuality at an age when they shouldn't have to worry about those things.
This weekend at Barnes and Noble, I happened upon a children's picture book called I'm Not a Girl. A young child realizes she's a boy because she 1) Wants to be a pirate for Halloween, 2) Doesn't like pink frilly clothes, 3) Wants short hair. These three things = boy. This book is recommended for *preschoolers.* In addition to promoting regressive gender stereotypes, it's harmful to tell little kids that if they have certain interests they might be the opposite sex. It's confusing and scary for them, and it might even "flip a switch" of disassociation from one's body that otherwise wouldn't have been flipped. We've confused "normalize queer lives" with "encourage little kids to think of themselves as potentially queer" which is just bonkers.
I'm a lesbian with a young son. I read him books about how there are different types of families, and some adults are gay. I also have no issue with him knowing that trans people exist. But I don't tell my five-year old, "You might be gay or straight or trans or cis" and push him to think about his identity in a way that is age-inappropriate.
A lot of adults pushing this stuff mean well, but they just have no idea what they're doing.
And more to the point, use the broadest gender stereotypes available to define those boxes.
I'm almost old enough to remember when the progressive left was defiantly opposed to all forms of stereotyping instead of relying completely on it.
This is the idea that the whole house of cards is built on - that traditional gender roles are socially constructed, rigid and stifling, and need to be broken down. I said elsewhere on this thread that these days the binary allows for any natural gender expression WITHOUT having to undergo any actual gender or sex transition.
More than that, it's all built on the paradox that gender role stereotypes in the binary are rigid and stifling, and yet, somehow?, a completely reliable indicator of who you truly are at the same time.
To defeat gender stereotypes, we must apparently promote and accept them at face value has become one hell of a progressive hill to die on.
The Progressive Paradox. Good book title.
Except that it's not in the least progressive to bring back gender roles. People who want to do so are not "progressive" in any true sense.
Absolutely. I'm a straight person and I'm not constantly pressing my kid to be straight as a toddler, either. It's just bizarre and creepy to force identity issues on children.
Totally agree. My only message to my son is acceptance of all different types of people. Then when he grows up and figures out his own identity and dating preferences, he will know that it's okay.
It drives me slightly nuts that otherwise smart, well-intentioned people can't see how regressive this gender stereotyping is.
Sexism was when we insisted women must do the dishes. Feminism was when we insisted anyone could do the dishes. Queering the kitchen means that anyone who does the dishes is a woman.
We forget that these cultural and social messages, while not having the same intrinsic power as nature, do play a role for children who, to your point, are at an age where none of that is supposed to be a concern at all. The consumerist roots of the PMC/DNC copypasta pushed through the infamous vertically integrated messaging apparatus have never been more evident, whether it's selling Pepsi, or how you should feel about Drag Queen Story Hour.
Nicely said.
Have you ever read about those gay kids who grow up not really knowing that being queer is even a possibility? They go through life feeling unfulfilled, because it takes them so long to realize that they're gay? Sometimes they even get themselves into unfulfilling heterosexual relationships and don't realize they're gay until they're already married and have a couple kids? Wouldn't preventing that be a good thing?
"Planting a queer seed in kids' heads" doesn't mean turning kids queer. It means helping kids who are already queer realize that sooner, so they avoid the decades of failed relationships and opportunity cost that failing to realize that can lead to. If someone is queer they should realize it as soon as possible. I can imagine some parents don't want that, but those parents are jerks.
If you want to see what has people riled up go look at Libs of Tiktok. Or Gays Against Groomers for that matter.
Finally I don't believe that opposition to gay marriage is necessarily homophobic. I would prefer that government get out of the marriage business but consistency would then demand legalization of polygamy and that apparently is a non-starter.
I agree completely on this matter. Legalizing gay marriage was not "marriage equality" - it was simply extending a monopoly to gays. Muslims and Mormons should be free to marry whoever they want as well without it being an affair of the state.
Unfortunately, extending that franchise would require working an astounding number of existing public and corporate structures around two person marriages, but it still worthwhile to try if only to get government out of just one more thing it doesn't need to be involved in in the first place.
Trixie Mattel made the same point about "ok, which movies?" You're completely right that one can't be both transgressive and simultaneously mainstream. My biggest issue with the queering of mainstream culture or whatever is that straight, boring adults do stupid shit like take their kids to *inappropriate* shows to prove how cool they are. That's a parenting issue, though, and an issue for progressives to figure out: the difference between openness and having no boundaries at all.
I agree with you, but I wonder how big of an issue this is? I'm a parent in a large, liberal city and I don't know of anyone taking their kids to inappropriate drag shows.
I think most parents make thoughtful, informed choices and I'm not sure all of this hullabaloo is necessary for what is no doubt a tiny portion of parents (who may or may not be hypothetical) who don't.
I mean I’m not all het up about this, just weighing in on the topic of today’s post. I find it baffling though that so many people can’t seem to say that “a lot of drag shows aren’t appropriate for kids.”
I mean, doesn't the R-rated movie analogy apply here too though? Some parents or relatives enjoy taking kids to violent or risqué movies because it makes them seem like a "chill" adult. Is that indicative of a larger cultural problem? If not, why not?
It’s all of a piece, to me. The parents who let their kids party, the parents who don’t give bedtimes or curfews, the parents who have no limits on the media their kids consume.
I’m a parent and for awhile was a foster parent, and I have a real issue with adults who deal with their own issues (or not) by messing with appropriate boundaries for kids. What makes this a little different is that for many drag shows, sexual transgression is very much part of the point, and the parents who take their kids to *those* kinds of shows are eroding the boundaries that help kids understand what’s appropriate interaction with adults and what is not.
Thank you! This is the comment I wanted to see from you.
I am to please, Mark.
I think the main objection (for me, the only one) is kid-targeted drag in public schools and libraries. Parents can do what they want, of course. They make what I consider bad decisions all the time!
I feel like the rush to normalize everything makes the normalized things less interesting. Part of choosing to live a bohemian life is accepting that "normies" won't understand or necessarily respect what you're doing. That's what makes the lifestyle alternative. And hey, some things are weird! I recognize that it's weird that I like intense music, that my polyamorous friends are weird, that my political activist friends are weird and not normal. Without a "straight" mainstream to create guide rails, you can't know when you're being transgressive or a follower.
I've been reading a bunch of Michael Moorcock, and all these issues make me think of the cosmic battle between law and chaos, two forces that are neither good or evil but rather just there. A world of total law or total chaos would be inhospitable to life (total death and order and endless cancerous mutation of reality are both bad for human flourishing). I feel like we were leaning too hard towards law for the first 60 years of the last century, and are tilting too swiftly towards reifying chaos now.
yeah, at some level, it's a matter of taste and esthetics.
In some sense, it's similar to the advisability of imposing personal tastes for the extreme and transgressive at, say, community events like street festivals, or soundtracks for large public events.
I like an awful lot of different styles of music, some of them pretty challenging or extreme, or just plain very loud in live performance. But I'm not out to get into a public confrontation with the more sedate taste of the wider public in that regard. And the plain truth is that some musical styles don't play well with others. They belong in a warehouse, a dingy dive bar, or a dedicated music festival where there's a social consensus of a self-selected group that's open to a wide range of outre behavior. A very different social milieu that a musical stage at the center of a public green on a springtime Saturday featuring a farmers market, attended by a cross-section of the local society ranging from parents pushing baby strollers to young children and teenagers, on out to senior citizens and disabled folks in wheelchairs with their caregivers. There are venues where it's within the permissible bounds of common consent to turn up the amps so loud that people can't even hear themselves think, or featuring rappers cussing to their hearts content. But not at a local outdoor street festival. That isn't Freedom. That's Dominance by the few, based on intimidation and superior amplification power.
It gets back to the notion that there's a tradeoff between the Center and the Margins, in whatever respect. Punitive morality that seeks the "purifying" eradication of the Margins is abhorrent- and invariably comes with a huge component of corruption and fanatical bigotry. But the Margins have no call to bid for Enshrinement of their Marginality, as a component of the Center, much less to attempt to dethrone it entirely. The Margins are inevitable- and vitally important, even priceless, in some sense. We all got a space to fill. Up to a point. Marginal behavior can also take things too far, in the public sphere. The world is not entirely Innocent. But we could at least keep the Innocence of Children as a Central value. Dispensing with that elevates everything rotten in the world. "Save the children" really does make sense, as long as it isn't used as an excuse to go on punitive inquisitions directed at adults doing consensual adult things with other adults.
I’ve enjoyed plenty of drag shows in my life, and agree that it’s not inherently sexual. But I’d wager that 80% of what I’ve seen HAS been overtly sexual, so I’m not sure you can completely blame the general public, who haven’t been immersed in queer culture, for having that impression. It’s going to take some time and a lot of sanitization to change that.
While drag isn’t necessarily sexual, it IS an extreme, stereotypical mockery of womanhood. This is literally what they’re doing; it’s not even disputable. I would probably avoid taking a young daughter to a drag show - even a sanitized one - for that reason.
I actually do think that point is disputable. My personal assessment of drag is that it's a mockery of gay male femininity; it's essentially gay men saying "You think we're feminine? Ok sweetie, we'll show you how feminine we can be." So on some level that may be a mockery of femininity but it's not a mockery of women, per se, it's a self-mockery of gay men and the way society traditionally mocked their gender expression. I don't think kids are capable of understanding something that nuanced though, to them it probably comes off as slapstick à la Mrs. Doubtfire or Madea.
yeah, kids are very well acquainted with the tradtions of Madea!
That was sarcasm. (This always has to be said explicitly on the internet.)
I suspect that to most kids drag actually comes off as just weird and icky.
I feel like a lot of kids have seen some kind of Madea content, no? Maybe less so in this era but I definitely watched some of those movies in the 2000s. Not saying they were appropriate but kids always find a way. Many young kids have surely seen Mrs. Doubtfire though, that's a pretty wholesome movie.
Believe it or not, a lot of parents don't let their grade-school kids watch a ton of video.
I think this is a really perceptive comment, and also it seems so obvious that I'm embarrassed that I, a gay man, have never thought about it this way.
I'm flattered! I had this realization when I first saw a radical feminist make the argument that drag is equivalent to "womanface" and felt myself viscerally objecting to that characterization. I had to stop and figure out why that take felt so wrong to me and suddenly it all made sense.
Yeah, that seems... not precisely equivalent. It really is different when you think about drag as being primarily an exaggerated performance of traits that are already present in the performer, rather than as primarily a parody of women. Anyway, yours was a really interesting comment in what's been a pretty unpleasant comment thread today. Thank you.
Exactly! Why would gay men be so drawn to a performance art that was fundamentally about making fun of women, anyway? It's certainly not women who have been the primary perpetrators of homophobia towards gay men. Most gay men have lots of female friends and spend plenty of time with women, especially the ones who are effeminate enough to enjoy doing drag. Not saying gay men can't be misogynistic but it's really not as common as radfems seem to think.
What's with this thread, anyway? I definitely have some views on certain aspects of the way we currently talk about gender that Freddie might disagree with and I expected to see a bit of that here. I expected some of the "drag is preparing kids for sexual abuse" stuff too because that's omnipresent in the discourse these days but I was genuinely surprised to see multiple people arguing that we need to promote heterosexual lifestyles in school. Thank you for your sane contributions as well! <3
I understand your point; I’m not suggesting that drag queens are thinking, “let’s go mock some ladies.” They aren’t thinking about women at all. I’m suggesting that perhaps we should.
This is like saying, “I’m going to dress and speak like a grotesque stereotype of a French person, but I’m actually mocking supposedly effete American liberals like myself.” Ok, that may be the motive, but it doesn’t negate that you’re literally doing a parody of French people, and they’re entitled to see it as such. It would be weird and egocentric to ignore the views and interests of the people you parody.
I agree that young kids are not ready to grasp most of these issues.
It’s a mockery of femininity in general.
Drag is just stupid entertainment… a fashion choice and show. It isn’t conservatives going extreme on it; it is the woke left attempting to inject it as some new civil rights power play while also corrupting the already complex arena of human sexuality and gender relations only for politics. Keep it entertainment and keep it out of the schools and I am sure most sports fans would just get a chuckle.
Yes and let's please stop with the term "Drag Artist." I like to practice and play basketball in my driveway and sometimes with others but that doesn't make me an "Athlete," at the risk of wringing the sports analogy too tightly...