Storytime with a performer (who happens to be a drag artist)

The world doesn’t hang about for nuance, does it? It makes up its mind really quickly and then starts shouting from a place of emotion and sometimes, sadly, hate. Social media and the media seem to encourage this. I feel they bring out the worst aspects of human nature and appear to revel in them as - after all – contention does keep people hooked doesn’t it? 

So the latest shouting match appears to be around the protests aimed at drag artists who read stories to children. One such act read one of my books recently and made 
it far more entertaining than I ever could. It was totally child-friendly, really funny and extremely engaging. So what is all the fuss? Well I have been watching closely…. 

Drag has its history in a gay culture that was mostly pushed underground and 
‘outside’ mainstream – thus not in common consciousness, so many people are not used to it (other than a handful of ‘distanced’ TV celebrities). It also has history in 
the fact women were not allowed to play parts in theatre. Pantomime shows remnants of this. But to me, a man in an outlandish outfit is just that – a man in an outlandish outfit. It’s funny, garish and over-the top and I absolutely love it. 

But what I am picking up is that a man in a dress is too unusual for a small, but noisily aggressive, number of people. And for those people, what seems to happen is that anything that diverges from ‘what most people are used to’ is lumped together on some sort of unrealistic scale that they assume always slides to an unrelated and harmful extreme. Through this process, some adults appear to manage to link drag to paedophilia. This is outrageous and highly offensive. The reality is there will always be dangerous adults who cause harm to children and I will make the fair assumption that most of these are straight males. To claim (consciously or even subconsciously) that a man is more likely to be a paedophile because he is a drag artist, is bizarre, hateful and totally illogical. To claim with such certainty that such a performer is going to harm a child says more about the ignorant minds of those saying such things than anything else. This is the realm of simplistic prejudice. 

There is also an idea that watching a drag act read a story is somehow sexualising children. This is absurd. I would love to hear a full and logical reasoning that explains this. This sexual connection really does need challenging because as I learnt when I worked in the field of relationships and sex education: anything that can be linked to sex – however incorrectly, can whip up strong emotional responses. We often have programming about sex that comes directly from the adults in our childhood. The significant others of our childhoods might have been prudish, they might never have made reference to sex, they might have giggled about it, they might have exposed us to things that made us uncomfortable, or in the worst cases, abused us. None of those approaches would give us a balanced, logical and non-emotional attitude toward sex. I think a drag act reading a story to children being automatically linked to sex has menacing origins. Women are sexualised, gay people are sexualised, trans women are sexualised and drag artists are sexualised. Sexualising these groups seems to be a method the establishment/right uses to demonise that which does not sit within it. There’s a lot of that about. It’s really time to broaden horizons for those that sexualise these minority groups. How about a more everyday and actually relevant focus, like some gay people like gardening, some trans people love to cook and all drag artists are extremely entertaining? 

Then there’s the whole, ‘you’re going to make children trans’ thing I keep hearing. To that I would firstly have the knee-jerk reaction of ‘so what?’ I welcome any challenge to gender constructs and identity. They are so restrictive and often damaging. If a child grows up to question or change their identity in any way – that’s great in my book. Nobody does this lightly even though the media will imply that there are people going around forcing conversion of vulnerable young people. (It’s good to remind yourself that the media always has the agenda of bringing you the most shocking stories, whipping you up, unsettling you and is certainly not impartial. It can also give you a distorted and exaggerated view of the prevalence of what they report: making generalisations from one off incidents). But my main point is, seeing a drag artist read a story is extremely unlikely to make a child go, ’you know what, I have had enough of identifying with the gender I was assigned at birth’ if that’s your misplaced fear. I mean get real people! It’s clear that understanding trans issues is considerably outside the mainstream awareness, therefore most people are ignorant about them, and yet still happy to judge, often quite forcefully and angrily, from that place of ignorance. Same thing happened historically with race. It’s a low-level thinking response, not a high level one. 

The children I witnessed watching a story read by a drag act loved it. What’s more, I like to think their minds have been expanded to challenge a narrow idea of what is ‘normal’: that idea, the one that leads people to become prejudiced, able to target minority groups, never bother to develop their understanding to tackle their ignorance and to be comfortable to hate. Surely everyone understands finding excuses to hate is simply wrong and we must all know that kindness is the ultimate aspiration? I for one, enjoy, revel in, am interested by and celebrate difference of any kind. It definitely makes the world so much richer.

Comments

  1. Beautifully put Molly Potter

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  2. I think you hit the nail on the head, nuance is something often missing from discussions, especially online and in social media.

    I think the concerns around drag acts reading to children is perhaps a worry surrounding the acts previous work and the nature of drag performance. Some drag acts (including Titania) have used overtly suggestive sexualised behaviours / language in their act, going above and beyond what is expected of a dame in a pantomime. The crudeness and pushing of boundaries is something that makes the acts what they are. A parent would be quite uneasy letting their child encounter such acts in their conventional settings. It’s worth noting often the drag acts have 16+, 18+ warnings.

    It’s clear the drag acts will almost certainly modify their behaviours / language in front of children. However, you are relying on the performer and their ability to adapt to make the storytelling event successful.

    I think the media reaction and the ‘outraged keyboard warriors ’ at home, the Mumsnet forums who seem angry around these events - their reaction is often over the top. It’s a simple case of parents making decisions over what is best for their child. However, the conflict over drag and it’s suitability for children’s entertainment is a valid argument to consider.

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    1. You make a fair point about drag 'pushing boundaries' although those boundaries are often limiting societal constructs - like narrow ideas of 'normal'. I think overt flouting of such boundaries is totally understandable from those cast as 'outsiders' by those boundaries.

      But.....the acts I have seen have been totally child-friendly with zero sexualised jokes. I suspect there would have been no repeat commissioning by a public library if they hadn't been. I can't speak for all performers obviously but I would assume they would quickly learn what people welcomed and what they didn't within their performance. And as all parents/carers have different outlooks and they ultimately decide whether to go to an event or not - what a child experiences will vary considerably from family to family. I definitely preferred my children to have broad horizons... not narrow ones. It seems to have served them well. They are certainly diverse aware.

      Some might believe that drag storytime should not be offered at all so that those 'foolish' parents/carers who 'don't know better' can't make the choice to go along to an event....so all our children are 'protected'. I saw absolutely nothing that children need to be protected from. And I am not a fan of censorship.

      I feel the threats and abuse targeted at Aunty Titania are totally inexcusable. We are talking about someone (who I know is kind, intelligent, sensitive and caring) being the target of venomous hate.

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    2. And the 'line' is between things that cause harm and things that don't. Linking drag story time to paedophilia pushes it completely incorrectly into the realms of harm and some people seem to jump on that and think no further.

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  3. Hi molly, thankyou for this and the links to paedophilia are preposterous. I would like to see statistics on drag artists convicted of paedophilia and suspects the numbers would be comparable to piano tuners or dog walkers and definitely lower than other ' respectable' professions which I won't maligh here. There was an interesting programme about this on radio 4 called antisocial you might like. The person speaking against drag tales ( I think the project was called) did confess to being gender critical and most of her arguments held no water except that which was mentioned above that some of the drag artists have a you tube/ social media presence or website with much more adult content which the children may go on to find.
    In the olden days when I taught phonics, there was a reading book called the hairy fairy all about a man who was considered too hairy and heavy to be a successful fairy. I was gearing myself up for a gender conversation but the children never batted an eye. Young children are much more comfortable around gender etc than many adults.

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    Replies
    1. Yes Jackie, I think logic goes flying out of the window as most people react with an automated emotional response that they have not considered the original triggering of. Children are actually exposed to lots of sexualised images in adverts, on the internet, in films (most of it heterosexual). A man in drag reading a story is tame/nothing compared to much of what children see. And often children encounter material online etc without getting to talk about it to a trusted adult because of the taboo nature of sex.

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