It Is Spreading!

The attacks on drag queens are going international!

Violence against drags spilled over to Britain this week over a story hour.

Protest at Tate Britain over drag queen children's story event
BBC News
February 11, 2023


One person has been arrested during a protest over a drag queen story-telling event at the Tate Britain art gallery.

The London gallery was hosting a story time by children's author and drag queen Aida H Dee.

Protesters held signs that read: "No drag for kids!" and "Leave our kids alone!"

A separate group of demonstrators, led by Stand Up To Racism, also gathered outside the gallery in support of the event.

Signs from the second group read: "Don't let the far right divide us" and "Trans rights now".

About 30 protesters clashed with similar numbers of counter-protesters who appeared in support of the story-telling.

So I have to wonder how did we make it here? Where did all this anti-drag start?

EXPLAINER: Drag queens and how they got pulled into politics
AP News
By Jeff McMillan
October 29, 2022


Lately, drag has been dragged through the mud.

The art form has been cast in a false light in recent months by right-wing activists and politicians who complain about the “sexualization” or “grooming” of children. Opponents often coordinate protests at drag events that feature or cater to children, sometimes showing up with guns. Some politicians have proposed banning children from drag events and even criminally charging parents who take their kids to one.

Performers and organizers of events, such as story hours in which colorfully clad drag queens read books to children, say the protesters are the ones terrorizing and harming children and making them political pawns — just as they’ve done in other campaigns around bathroom access and educational materials.

First off… the protesters say “Save the Children” and I ask “From what?”

Their costumes tend toward extravagant, sometimes floor-length gowns. Drag queens may use false breasts, wear sheer costumes, and use makeup or other means to show cleavage and appear exaggeratedly feminine.

The difference, performers note, is that opponents of drag see sexual deviance in the cross-dressing aspect.

Drag does not typically involve nudity or stripping, which are more common in burlesque, a separate form of entertainment. Explicitly sexual and profane language is common in performances meant for adult audiences. Such routines can consist of stand-up comedy that may be raunchy — or may pale in comparison with some mainstream comedians.

But these prudes see anything LGBTQ+ as being obscene, they think that we go around like “rutting bulls.” And this leads us to the conservatives favorite word…

Opponents of drag story hours and other drag events for audiences of children often claim they “groom” children, implying attempts to sexually abuse them or somehow influence their sexual orientation or gender identity.

The term “grooming” in a sexual sense describes how child molesters entrap and abuse their victims. Its use by opponents of drag, as well as by protesters in other realms of LGBTQ opposition, seeks to falsely equate it with pedophilia and other forms of child abuse.

And that is how the right-wing do-gooders see us. They do not believe that we are born this way and think we somehow made a choice one lazy afternoon to be LGBTQ+… “Oh I think that I’ll be gay so that I can get attacked and discriminated against. That sounds like fun getting beaten up with a 2x4” 

Despite some opponents’ claims, drag cannot “turn” a child gay or transgender, although its playful use of gender may be reassuring to kids who are already questioning their identity. That way, therapist Joe Kort wrote in a blog post in Psychology Today, gender-nonconforming kids can have “other templates as they begin to sort out their feelings about who they authentically are.”

But don’t tell them because Fax News says otherwise.

I went to a fund raising drag show in New Haven and half of the audience were straight couples.