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[–]jim_steak 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I don't think it's fair to criticize the gay community for this, because ultimately drag queens are just performers who show up to these events because they are paid to do so. Who's actually organizing and attending the events? They're usually put on by librarians and attended by parents with their kids, so I would have to guess most of the people who are actually responsible for the events are straight women who like gay culture and drag. The hysteria around these events is totally overplayed as well - I agree kids shouldn't be at a drag show but that's not what these are.

The events might be bad PR, but there really isn't any such thing as the LGB community to manage things like that. In most major cities the community is just centered around bars and nightclubs, and there certainly isn't anyone in charge of managing PR or telling drag queens they shouldn't go to events they're being paid to do. In my opinion, if these events are inappropriate it comes back to the parents who are bringing their kids into the environment. If Drag Queen Story Hour is about sexualizing children and grooming them to be molested by pedophiles, what is going on with the people who are bringing their kids to the event?

[–]JulienMayfair[S] 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

For the most part, I agree with you, within certain parameters.

The hysteria around these events is totally overplayed as well - I agree kids shouldn't be at a drag show but that's not what these are.

True, but the problem is in creating an event the appearance of which is readily adaptable to anti-gay narratives. As an example, I was recently re-reading the novel He, She, and It by Marge Piercy in which she interweaves a dystopian future and a story about a Jewish rabbi creating a golem in Prague of 1600. In one section, the golem is sent out to find a teenage Christian girl who's gone missing and whose disappearance the rabbi worries will be blamed on the Jewish community. He sends the golem out to find here, and she is found locked up (and pregnant) in the house where she was working as a servant. The crisis is avoided. My point is that the rabbi understood that whatever the truth was, he was already hearing rumblings that the Jews would be blamed for the girl's murder, even though she hadn't been murdered.

Likewise, Drag Queen Story Hour may be mostly or entirely innocent, but the problem is that it creates images that can easily be twisted by people with an anti-gay agenda to promote anti-gay hysteria. And there have been cases where the drag queens doing the readings have not been properly vetted and turn out to have criminal histories.

"What about the children??" has long been a strategy used to attack the LGB. Creating events that create images that provide fuel for these slanders is not a good idea, even if the events themselves are relatively harmless.

You have to control your public image. No one else will do it for you. And if straight women are promoting these shows, I think we need to tell them to stop it.

I hope I don't step on anyone's toes here, but I think back to the 1990s and the image of "thugs" endlessly disseminated via gangster rap videos. I don't think that did the general public perception of the black community any good whatsoever. It was producers and record companies profiting by marketing something that made money, even if it dealt in negative stereotypes.

[–]jim_steak 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I agree that it's a bad look, I think I'm quick to defend the drag queens because I see a lot of right wing content online that is calling these events "gay child grooming" and I think that's ridiculous. It's the same thing as with the trans kid stuff - that gets called LGBT indoctrination but the vast majority of parents transitioning their kids are straight couples, just as the vast majority of school teachers talking about gender identity are straight people. It all loops back into trans issues too - gay people get blamed for these mentally ill (mostly) straight men and women who are forcing themselves on everyone in our name.

I would love to see better PR for the gay community but first I think there actually needs to be some sort of community outside of just nightlife. It's hard because so many of the activist spaces for LGB people have been captured by gender activists who set the tone for the whole community, and I imagine many gay people wouldn't want to join some kind of gay only organization for fear of being attacked by those elements.

[–]On_Wheels 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I agree that community outreach by gay people without the involvement of trans or "queer" people is a good idea. I think it's best to leave kids out of it, people get (understandably) insanely defensive over their children and kids will end up believing what their parents tell them anyways. Best to focus on adults, and maybe teenagers.