drag queens reading to kids

Kornstein sits on the board of Drag Queen Story Hour, the nonprofit organization that was founded by Michelle Tea in 2015 to promote family-friendly drag performances and has since expanded to 40 local chapters that have organized hundreds of performances across the United States. Drag queens read children's stories in a California bookstore as part of the "Drag Queen Story Hour" program to promote diversity among young children. In the United States, DSH is banned in the state of Tennessee (but was blocked by a federal judge) and bans are being considered in several other states.[52]. When parents, voters, and political leaders understand the true nature of Drag Queen Story Hour and the ideology that drives it, they will work quickly to restore the limits that have been temporarilyand recklesslyabandoned. 2.2K Share 138K views 2 years ago "Tall Tales with True Queens" is a short film that offers a glimpse into a budding trend that is reshaping culture. This book shows you're not just neither, and that you can be little parts of different things you can be somewhat and whatnot. The words are so cute in the way that kids can relate to them. As an organization, DQSH may be incentivized to recite lines about alignment with curricular standards and social-emotional learning in order to be legible within public education and philanthropic institutions. A protester against drag queens reading to children holds a sign as protesting groups come together outside Jubilee Library on August 4, 2022, in Brighton, United Kingdom. The new scholarship on sexual behaviour has given sex a history and created a constructivist alternative to the view that sex is a natural and pre-political phenomenon, Rubin wrote. They felt seen and validated, which is interesting because they read as more masculine to me, but were attracted to the fact that someone was leaning to a different side of the spectrum. The official Drag Queen Story Hour website is www.dragqueenstoryhour.org. Like Rubin, Foucault haunted the underground sex scene in the Western capitals and reveled in transgressive sexuality. "[17], In 2017 the New York chapter incorporated as a non-profit and has received funds from the New York Public Library, Brooklyn Public Library, and two city council members. He claimed that efforts to protect young children from drag queen performances is doing a disservice to young minds.. They describe drag as a site of queer pleasure that promises to turn rejection into desire and [transform] the labour of performance into the pleasure of participation, and DQSH as offering a queer relationality between adult and child. Those who violate the law could face up to a year of jail time and a fine of $2,500. The performance of drag plays upon the distinction between the anatomy of the performer and the gender that is being performed. You can follow her on Twitter @LilMissHotMess. [46], In March 2023, a drag storytime event was held at a library in Auckland. It is now being transmitted, with official state support, in a number of public libraries and schools across the United States. Thats the message parents should be communicating to their kids, at any age. To top it all off, several Republican politicians have, proposed legislation banning drag performances for children, While such legislation may sound absurd, it is particularly alarming in the context of very real, legislation targeting transgender youths access to education and health care, Though cross-dressed performance has existed for centuries, drag as a. began to take shape publicly. They believed that they were on the cusp of fundamentally transforming sexual norms. Butler argues that even the word woman, though it relates to a biological reality, is a social construction and cannot be defined with any stable meaning or categorization. It does mean that human sexuality is not comprehensible in purely biological terms. In other words, traditional conceptions of sex, regarding it as a natural behavior that reflects an unchanging order, are pure mythology, designed to rationalize and justify systems of oppression. Drag became explicitly political seven decades later, during the Stonewall riots of 1969, in which patrons of a gay bar in New York City rioted against police and began a wave of gay and lesbian political activism. Drawing on the work of Rubin and Butler, Hankins describes three genres of dragstraight-ahead, burlesque, and genderfuckthat range from stripteases and lap dances to simulations of necrophilia, bestiality, and race fetishism. Personally, as the author of two childrens books, my work has faced book bans and challenges, including from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) who parroted false far-right rhetoric accusing me of creating sexually charged content. I also regularly receive hate mail calling me horrific names and threatening my safety. [9][10], Drag Story Hour was started in 2015 in San Francisco by author Michelle Tea, who was also the executive director of nonprofit Radar Productions at the time; the first events were organized by Julin Delgado Lopera and Virgie Tovar. [39] An event also took place in Launceston, Tasmania, but was met with protests and criticism. The goal of drag, following the themes of Butler and Rubin, is to obliterate stable conceptions of gender through performativity and to rehabilitate the bottom of the sexual hierarchy through the elevation of the marginal. I spent a lot of my earlier years trying to abolish the feminine aspects of myself, knowing what I was drawn to and knowing it meant ostracization. Current laws make DSH events illegal in several countries, including Hungary and Russia. And that is why Drag Queen Story Hour is so powerful: not because it indoctrinates children (as if! When I enter the room with my big hair, big shoes, and lots and lots of sequins, children quickly prove to be a generous and curious audience. WebWhat is Drag Story Hour? We stand up for what we believe in, we volunteer in our communities, and we sometimes lead parades and protests. We like to wear our most sparkly clothes that make us feel fancy and fabulous. Many drag performers are gay men. Drag does suggest that queer sexuality is This summer, when librarian Todd Deck was tasked with purchasing books on diversity for the California State Library, he noticed a gap in queer-inclusive childrens literature in the librarys holdings. ", "Houston Public Library admits registered child sex offender read to kids in Drag Queen Storytime", "White Nationalist Threats Against Transgender People Are Escalating", "The importance of teaching kids about LGBTQ history and culture", "Coronavirus can't stop drag queen story time. Lets be clear, the injection of drag queens into childrens consciousnesses goes beyond innocently sitting in a classroom reading storybooks. I'm A Drag Queen Who Reads To Kids. I'm A Drag Queen Who Reads To Kids. However, this was met with several protests and counter-protests at council meetings. Do you have a compelling personal story youd like to see published on HuffPost? Here, DQSH is family friendly in the sense of family as an old-school queer code to identify and connect with other queers on the street. That is, the goal is not to reinforce the biological family but to facilitate the childs transition into the ideological family. [22] Nina West and other drag queens started live-streaming readings. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. He claimed that efforts to protect young children from drag queen performances is doing a disservice to young minds.. The Taunton Public Library last held Drag Queen Story Hour back in May 2022. I feel like this book would've given me a place. [21] She feels it important to teach LGBTQ kids, including children in LGBTQ families, about subjects outside two tropes she's seen: gay and lesbian parents; and gender non-conforming children, like in 10,000 Dresses. In time, the need to shock required the performers to push the limits. D rag Queen Story Hourin which performers in drag read books to kids in libraries, schools, and bookstoreshas become a cultural flashpoint. Copyright 2023 Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Inc. All rights reserved. [12] In October 2022, the nonprofit organization officially changed its name to Drag Story Hour, to be more inclusive and "reflect the diverse cast of storytellers. Its all about acceptance and being loved for who you are. They often have lots and lots of questions . A drag queen reading childrens stories during an event in Saint John, N.B. The books selected in many Drag Queen Story Hour performancesCinderelliot, If Youre a Drag Queen and You Know It, The Gender Wheel, Bye Bye, Binary, and They, She, He, Easy as ABCpromote this basic narrative. In March, Tennessee passed a bill banning drag show performances in public places making it the first state to do so, PBS reported. The video then cuts to a scene from inside, where a drag queen is reading from a childrens book called Love the World by Todd Parr. that intentionally push social boundaries. [8] In June 2019, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) reported that "white nationalist and former U.S. Congressional candidate Paul Nehlen had announced on June 19 a plan he called 'PROJECT DOX TRANNY STORYTIME. how do you get the glitter to stick to your face? There was nothing permanent about human sexuality, which was, after all, political. Through a revolution of values, they believed, the sexual hierarchy could be torn down and rebuilt in their image. Butlers theory of social change is that once the premise is established that gender is malleable and used as an instrument of power, currently in favor of heterosexual normativity, then the work of social reconstruction can begin. In effect, schooling functions as a way to straighten the child into a kind of captive alignment with the current parameters of that vision, Kornstein and Keenan write. The event in question was Drag Queen Story Hour, where drag artists read heavily illustrated books to children. The intellectual debate has even spilled into real-world conflict: right-wing militants affiliated with the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters have staged protests against drag events for children, while their counterparts in the left-wing Antifa movement have responded with offers to serve as a protection force for the drag queens. The father figure of the ideology, Foucault, whom Rubin relies upon for her philosophical grounding, was a notorious sadomasochist who once joined scores of other prominent intellectuals to sign a petition to legalize adultchild sexual relationships in France. Even my 98-year-old grandmother was like, Oh, that's fine, so it was all about finding pride from within and living my life out loud. "[33] As of May 2019, the video has been viewed over 806,000 times. The key figure in this transition was a genderqueer college professor and drag queen named Harris Kornsteinstage name Lil Miss Hot Messwho hosted some of the original readings in public libraries and wrote the childrens book The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish. From in-depth storytelling on the fight for LGBTQ+ rights to intimate profiles of queer cultural vanguards, its a platform for all of the bold, stylish, and rebellious ways that LGBTQ+ people are reshaping our world every day. Rubins American compatriots made the same argument even more explicitly. It's a pretty simple narrative about not fitting into really strict categories, so for me it's really queer in that way. have channeled a similar spirit of playful resistance to lead, Finally, in addition to the recent wave of fame that contestants on, many performers hail from underground traditions exemplified by icons like. Call it subversive or call it something else. (DQSH), a unique organization that promotes reading through the magic of drag. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. ", "11 Drag Queen Who Are Making The World A Better Place", "Drag Queen Story Hour Renames Organization Drag Story Hour", "Did a Convicted Sex Offender Read to Children at a Houston Public Library? Advocates of Drag Queen Story Hour might reply that these are outlier cases and that many of the child-oriented events feature drag queens reading books and talking about gender, not engaging in sexualized performances. [21], In March 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic which had accompanying "shelter in place" and "avoid group gatherings" orders, DSHs were among events postponed. The New York City Council and New York Public Library have provided taxpayer funding directly to the Drag Queen Story Hour nonprofit, sparking a trend of state-subsidized drag readings, dances, and performances across the country. . In this way, drag can teach kids (and adults) to utilize humor and playfulness to overcome stigma and fear. have you ever met a dragon? , a formerly enslaved and incarcerated person who hosted drag balls in Washington, D.C., in the 1880s, asserting the right to queer and Black joy in public. "When I enter the room with my big hair, big shoes, and lots and lots of sequins, children quickly prove to be a generous and curious audience." [43], In July 2022, police removed protesters attempting to disrupt a drag storytime event in Helsinki. Rubins projectand, by extension, that of queer theorywas to interrogate, deconstruct, and subvert this sexual hierarchy and usher in a world beyond limits, much like the one she had experienced in San Francisco. Such positions are hardly idiosyncratic within the discipline of queer theory. Marital, reproductive heterosexuals are alone at the top erotic pyramid. [18] The library had failed to do the background check that is part of its usual process for storytellers. Coming from a child, thats everything. 2.2K Share 138K views 2 years ago "Tall Tales with True Queens" is a short film that offers a glimpse into a budding trend that is reshaping culture. (R-Fla.) who parroted false far-right rhetoric accusing me of creating sexually charged content. I also regularly receive hate mail calling me horrific names and threatening my safety. "When I enter the room with my big hair, big shoes, and lots and lots of sequins, children quickly prove to be a generous and curious audience." To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. In March, Tennessee passed a bill banning drag show performances in public places making it the first state to do so, PBS reported. While many of Drag Queen Story Hours defenders claim that these programs are designed to foster LGBTQ acceptance and inclusion, Kornstein and Keenan explicitly dismiss those objectives as mere marketing language that provides cover for their real agenda. Clamouring below are unmarried monogamous heterosexuals in couples, followed by most other heterosexuals. The Taunton Public Library last held Drag Queen Story Hour back in May 2022. As a reader, I do love when books get you to ask kids questions and interact in that way. We even like reading stories to kids! The library apologized and recognized its shortcoming in not properly vetting the performer in question. [49], In May 2023, a ticketed event held at Weston Museum was reported to be sold out. The reason drag queens "as a group" are reading to kids isn't because they're more effective or because they need their own story time hour. Girl and Marti Gould Cummings. DSH captures the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive, and In November 2022, a drag queen appeared on the children's television program Play School reading a book about crossdressing, which drew criticism from many. However, the library was forced to close due to a protest. Or put differently, what makes drag performers special is that we are not actual royalty or celebrities were part of our communities and, at the end of the show, we all dance and laugh together. The event in question was Drag Queen Story Hour, where drag artists read heavily illustrated books to children. I discovered this book because a school district in North Carolina cut Jacobs New Dress from its curriculum last year, due to complaints from conservative groups. [12] The funds buy books, some DSH events do book giveaways, go for paying the queens, and training to ensure the queens "talk effectively to children and their parents about gender identity and drag. The drag queens all men dressed up as clownish versions of women read stories to children under the guise of normalizing gender fluidity and giving kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models. DQSH has chapters in 29 states, as well as in Canada, Mexico, Japan, Australia, Germany, Sweden, and Denmark. For example, I often start readings with an explanation foregrounding drag performers talents and contributions to society: Drag queens love to sing, dance, tell jokes and put on shows. And this is not just an American phenomenon: Events in, have also been targeted. This requires a working knowledge of an extensive history, from the origin of the first queen of drag in the late nineteenth century to the development of academic queer theory, which provides the intellectual foundation for the modern drag-for-kids movement.
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