Wednesday, September 11, 2019
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Life
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Transgender
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What is Drag Queen Story Hour? It is an organization that sends drag queens (men dressed in women's clothes) to read stories to children in libraries and schools. The idea is that the drag queens, by interacting with children, show children that they need not be limited by traditional gender roles. But are drag queens the best people to do that? I don't think so.
Judging from the pictures, the drag queens who are being sent out by this organization do not look like normal women. Rather, they are bizarre caricatures of women, with exaggerated makeup and hair. They are made up to be glamorous in an abnormal way (meaning in a way that no real woman would be). Basically, they look like female clowns. Many of them dress to be sexy, like prostitutes. Such a person is not a good role model for anyone, much less young children. Furthermore, I question how many young children struggle with gender roles and need to be shown that there are other options. I expect that such worries would come later in life. Even if they come early, encouraging children to question their natural gender is not wise. Transgender people are not the happiest people in the world, feeling as they do that their bodies are out of sync with their feelings, and for that reason, children should be encouraged to be the gender they were born as -- i.e., the gender that their bodies reveal.
Here is a blurb from DQSH's Facebook page: "Drag Queen Story Hour captures the imagination and play of the gender fluidity in childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models. In spaces like this, kids are able to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and imagine a world where people can present as they wish, and where dress-up is real."
I take exception to most of that. First, glamour is not a positive quality to develop in any person. Glamour is by definition superficial and pretentious. Glamour is great if you decide to become an entertainer, but most of us do not. Glamour is certainly not something that a small child should be focussing on. The verb "present" is interesting. Drag queens are concerned about how they "present" to the world, but that is an adult obsession. Young children don't generally care about, and may not even be aware of, their appearance. Also, why is "dress-up" a good thing? Our society is increasingly informal, not increasingly formal. Like glamour, formality is a kind of pretense. Finally, the word "queer" means "abnormal, strange, weird, unusual, odd". That is also not something that anyone should aspire to be. As you can see, this little blurb on their site reveals a great deal about what a drag queen wants, but it has little to do with children.
It should be noted too that drag queens do not "defy rigid gender restrictions"; rather, they whole-heartedly embrace rigid gender roles, except that they do it in reverse, by adopting the most extreme characteristics of women and femininity.
After exchanging notes with someone on their Facebook page, it suddenly dawned on me what is happening: Drag queens are looking for new opportunities to get into drag, and for new audiences to perform to. Drag queens (and transgender people also) want to be seen; if they are not seen, there is no point in dressing up. Drag is a performance art, and I suspect that there are always more drag queens who want to perform than available shows, so they've taken their shows to the kids. The kids at these story hours are captive audiences, and being very young, they are non-judgemental -- a perfect audience for a drag queen. Ultra-liberal parents bring their kids to these performances, thereby satisfying some twisted need to be "inclusive", and the drag queens get to preen and be pretty.
The question for me is, are the children being harmed by their interaction with drag queens? Probably not. I suspect that most children see the drag queens as clowns, although I still question the intelligence of exposing young children to the world of adults' sexual fetishes (for that's what I think drag really is, a fetish). A child who is not receiving good parenting, and therefore lacks emotional security, will be most vulnerable to the sexist messages of drag queens. The children who will be most influenced will be the ones who have it within them to become drag queens themselves -- and to that extent, Drag Queen Story Hour may increase the number of drag queens in the world. Ultimately, being read a story isn't a traumatic experience, even if the "presenter" looks like an alien.
I am almost seventy years old, but I am also a politically liberal gay man (and I have not gotten more conservative with age). Even to a liberal like me, it seems that our society is becoming increasingly bizarre. All that these drag queens are doing is showing kids how weird adults can be. "Adults can be strange" seems to be the most obvious lesson to be learned from Drag Queen Story Hour.
Coming Soon to a Library Near You:
Pot-Smoking Hippie Story Hour
Skid Row Bum Story Hour
Porn Dealer Story Hour
Venture Capitalist Story Hour
Compulsive Overeater Story Hour
Lounge Lizard Story Hour
White Supremacist Story Hour
Incurable Hypochondriac Story Hour
Recovering Alcoholic Story Hour
Street Walker Story Hour
Any of those would make a role model about as good as a drag queen.
Pretense
Discovering this organization has given me some insight into myself. If you read this blog very often, you may have noticed that I feel uncomfortable with transgender people in general, and that I am critical of the way in which they are trying to redefine what "gender" means. I have similar feelings about drag queens. But I also have the same feelings about bikers who dress up in those ridiculous leather outfits. Discovering this organization (i.e., Drag Queen Story Hour) helped me to see that my distaste is for pretense and superficiality in general. I also have a dislike for deception. A drag queen may simply look ridiculous, but transgender people, to some extent, are deceptive, especially if they still have their original genitals. For example, a transgender "man" (a woman who wants to be a man) can hardly claim to be a man if he has XX chromosomes, wide hips, breasts and a vagina -- but many of them do. It's that kind of thing that drives me crazy. Human culture is all about pretending.
Parents
The picture above bears some analysis. (Depending on your monitor resolution, you may have to click on the picture to see the whole thing.) The child -- who looks perplexed at best -- is dressed in a rainbow flag, which means that the parent is actively pushing liberal gender concepts on the child, a child who is probably too young to comprehend them. The mother has short hair and is wearing clothes that a man could wear, which leads me to suspect that she is a lesbian (no harm in that, certainly). The drag queen, of course, looks flouncy and ridiculous. The question for me is, why does this ultra-liberal mother accept the image that the drag queen is projecting as a positive thing? With all the feminine features exaggerated, the woman that the drag queen is portraying is not a woman that anyone would admire if she were a real woman. Is this really the role model that the mother wants her young daughter to emulate? If so, why isn't she dressing up her daughter to look like that? More to the point, why isn't the mother herself dressed up like that? Clearly, this is a mother who is messing with her child's head. Good parents let their children be what they want to be, and this parent isn't doing a very good job of that.
Pictures from the Drag Queen Story Hour web site:
Many of the drag queens in those pictures look like nice people, but a lot of them simply look strange, especially the ones showing a lot of leg and trying to look sexy. Few of them represent real women in a natural way. In fact, many of them look more like parodies of women, as if the drag queens were trying to ridicule women. The mixed messages that one sees in the drag queens concern me. Of course, it's possible that young children are too unsophisticated to pick up on such nuances, but children can be very perceptive. Drag queens may be showing children precisely what women aren't and shouldn't want to be.
There is just no reason why drag queens, of all people, should be reading stories to children in public libraries or schools. There is nothing about them that makes them good role models.
Judging from the pictures, the drag queens who are being sent out by this organization do not look like normal women. Rather, they are bizarre caricatures of women, with exaggerated makeup and hair. They are made up to be glamorous in an abnormal way (meaning in a way that no real woman would be). Basically, they look like female clowns. Many of them dress to be sexy, like prostitutes. Such a person is not a good role model for anyone, much less young children. Furthermore, I question how many young children struggle with gender roles and need to be shown that there are other options. I expect that such worries would come later in life. Even if they come early, encouraging children to question their natural gender is not wise. Transgender people are not the happiest people in the world, feeling as they do that their bodies are out of sync with their feelings, and for that reason, children should be encouraged to be the gender they were born as -- i.e., the gender that their bodies reveal.
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| Click image to see it in its entirety. |
I take exception to most of that. First, glamour is not a positive quality to develop in any person. Glamour is by definition superficial and pretentious. Glamour is great if you decide to become an entertainer, but most of us do not. Glamour is certainly not something that a small child should be focussing on. The verb "present" is interesting. Drag queens are concerned about how they "present" to the world, but that is an adult obsession. Young children don't generally care about, and may not even be aware of, their appearance. Also, why is "dress-up" a good thing? Our society is increasingly informal, not increasingly formal. Like glamour, formality is a kind of pretense. Finally, the word "queer" means "abnormal, strange, weird, unusual, odd". That is also not something that anyone should aspire to be. As you can see, this little blurb on their site reveals a great deal about what a drag queen wants, but it has little to do with children.
It should be noted too that drag queens do not "defy rigid gender restrictions"; rather, they whole-heartedly embrace rigid gender roles, except that they do it in reverse, by adopting the most extreme characteristics of women and femininity.
After exchanging notes with someone on their Facebook page, it suddenly dawned on me what is happening: Drag queens are looking for new opportunities to get into drag, and for new audiences to perform to. Drag queens (and transgender people also) want to be seen; if they are not seen, there is no point in dressing up. Drag is a performance art, and I suspect that there are always more drag queens who want to perform than available shows, so they've taken their shows to the kids. The kids at these story hours are captive audiences, and being very young, they are non-judgemental -- a perfect audience for a drag queen. Ultra-liberal parents bring their kids to these performances, thereby satisfying some twisted need to be "inclusive", and the drag queens get to preen and be pretty.
The question for me is, are the children being harmed by their interaction with drag queens? Probably not. I suspect that most children see the drag queens as clowns, although I still question the intelligence of exposing young children to the world of adults' sexual fetishes (for that's what I think drag really is, a fetish). A child who is not receiving good parenting, and therefore lacks emotional security, will be most vulnerable to the sexist messages of drag queens. The children who will be most influenced will be the ones who have it within them to become drag queens themselves -- and to that extent, Drag Queen Story Hour may increase the number of drag queens in the world. Ultimately, being read a story isn't a traumatic experience, even if the "presenter" looks like an alien.
I am almost seventy years old, but I am also a politically liberal gay man (and I have not gotten more conservative with age). Even to a liberal like me, it seems that our society is becoming increasingly bizarre. All that these drag queens are doing is showing kids how weird adults can be. "Adults can be strange" seems to be the most obvious lesson to be learned from Drag Queen Story Hour.
Coming Soon to a Library Near You:
Pot-Smoking Hippie Story Hour
Skid Row Bum Story Hour
Porn Dealer Story Hour
Venture Capitalist Story Hour
Compulsive Overeater Story Hour
Lounge Lizard Story Hour
White Supremacist Story Hour
Incurable Hypochondriac Story Hour
Recovering Alcoholic Story Hour
Street Walker Story Hour
Any of those would make a role model about as good as a drag queen.
Pretense
Discovering this organization has given me some insight into myself. If you read this blog very often, you may have noticed that I feel uncomfortable with transgender people in general, and that I am critical of the way in which they are trying to redefine what "gender" means. I have similar feelings about drag queens. But I also have the same feelings about bikers who dress up in those ridiculous leather outfits. Discovering this organization (i.e., Drag Queen Story Hour) helped me to see that my distaste is for pretense and superficiality in general. I also have a dislike for deception. A drag queen may simply look ridiculous, but transgender people, to some extent, are deceptive, especially if they still have their original genitals. For example, a transgender "man" (a woman who wants to be a man) can hardly claim to be a man if he has XX chromosomes, wide hips, breasts and a vagina -- but many of them do. It's that kind of thing that drives me crazy. Human culture is all about pretending.
Parents
The picture above bears some analysis. (Depending on your monitor resolution, you may have to click on the picture to see the whole thing.) The child -- who looks perplexed at best -- is dressed in a rainbow flag, which means that the parent is actively pushing liberal gender concepts on the child, a child who is probably too young to comprehend them. The mother has short hair and is wearing clothes that a man could wear, which leads me to suspect that she is a lesbian (no harm in that, certainly). The drag queen, of course, looks flouncy and ridiculous. The question for me is, why does this ultra-liberal mother accept the image that the drag queen is projecting as a positive thing? With all the feminine features exaggerated, the woman that the drag queen is portraying is not a woman that anyone would admire if she were a real woman. Is this really the role model that the mother wants her young daughter to emulate? If so, why isn't she dressing up her daughter to look like that? More to the point, why isn't the mother herself dressed up like that? Clearly, this is a mother who is messing with her child's head. Good parents let their children be what they want to be, and this parent isn't doing a very good job of that.
Pictures from the Drag Queen Story Hour web site:
Many of the drag queens in those pictures look like nice people, but a lot of them simply look strange, especially the ones showing a lot of leg and trying to look sexy. Few of them represent real women in a natural way. In fact, many of them look more like parodies of women, as if the drag queens were trying to ridicule women. The mixed messages that one sees in the drag queens concern me. Of course, it's possible that young children are too unsophisticated to pick up on such nuances, but children can be very perceptive. Drag queens may be showing children precisely what women aren't and shouldn't want to be.
There is just no reason why drag queens, of all people, should be reading stories to children in public libraries or schools. There is nothing about them that makes them good role models.
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