DQSH

The other day, I learnt that Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH) has come to my city. It is a capitol city, but a modest one.

Aside from the overt, in-your-face spectacle of a male drag-queen dressed as a female caricature reading stories often about drag queens or LGBT issues to very young children in a public library, there is also the churning cognitive dissonance.

For some reason we are expected to believe: a) that we live in an over-sexualised culture, and b) that there is nothing sexual about Drag Queen Story Hour.

We are told: DQSH is innocent. It is performative art. It is no different than having clowns.

The natural response is: OK, so why not have clowns?

The reply is: because children are encouraged to have positive queer role-models in their lives.

So, this isn't like clowns, at all. Clowns are merely for entertainment, not role-modelling; and certainly not for the formation of personal identity (sexual, gender or otherwise). Additionally, if there is any sexuality, at all, involved in these events, those who promote should be forced to reckon with that and choke on any defense they utter.

Such defenses of DQSH result in cognitive dissonance and often there is ad homimem that falls upon those who criticise it. When opponents point out the obvious sexualised nature of these events, they are told that there is nothing sexual about it, and that, in fact, it is the opponent of DQSH who is sexualising DQSH. None of these are healthy reactions, and both are the consequence of a desperate attempt to maintain ideological stability.

There is the visceral concern people have towards child sexual abuse - and there have been some cases of known and convicted abusers finding their way into DQSH events. These pose practical issues that have to be brought to the forefront of any DQSH proposal.

There is also another concern, and perhaps one that is more amenable to DQSH's supporters: by celebrating queerness/transgenderism/non-binary as valid gender/sexual identities, libraries, schools and the parents involved are promoting a body/mind disconnect which may very well bring about the dysphoric states that they should be trying to prevent.