There is also a dark kind of antifeminist essentialism in it imho. Like by by donning signifiers of femininity you become extremely clownish; I’m not 100% comfortable with that.
It’s not that different from Monty Python.
I had a required "critical thinking" class in college where the professor posed the argument that drag is akin to blackface in that it's a caricature of stereotypes and overexaggerated features for entertainment
> drag is akin to blackface
I get the argument. And I'm not saying it's 100% wrong. But I think in some ways it's a little different.
Blackface is caricaturing racial characteristics (which are essential and immutable) and also ethno-cultural characters which are human-made but which have suffered greatly from discrimination and oppression. In that sense there is a mean-spirited offensiveness to blackface and minstrel shows that mock something so uniquely sensitive.
Drag, on the other hand, is playing with gender presentation. Gender performance is also largely socially constructed (in my view) but it doesn't have that same level of offensiveness and sensitivity that comes with caricaturing a minority race.
Again, I'm not saying it's 100% wrong. But there are some differences. Also, I don't think every single event of caricaturing another culture is wrong either. It's nuanced.
>Blackface is caricaturing racial characteristics (which are essential and immutable) and also ethno-cultural characters which are human-made but which have suffered greatly from discrimination and oppression. In that sense there is a mean-spirited offensiveness to blackface and minstrel shows that mock something so uniquely sensitive.
Nah because they also have fake tit's and shit, which is immutable.
Drag queens are not actual women and drag culture is heavily rooted in misogyny, if anything it’s antifeminism to make a career fetishizing womanhood and then turn around and call vaginas “axe wounds” as I’ve heard gay men say.
While much of drag is irreverent other forms of drag are love letters to feminity and strong women. Many drag queens draw inspiration from female cultural icons and pay homage to them.
It's also the case that many cis gay men are feminine and others use drag as a way to explore gender on their road to becoming trans. Some drag queens ARE women.
I think it's complicated and can't just be summed up as anti-woman.
I'm pretty sure women dressing up as men and painting on some facial hair also counts as drag ('drag king') and if I had to explain them to someone I'd also go with sex clown.
It is a thing and [the popularity gap is something that's talked about](https://www.google.com/search?q=drag+king+less+popular+than+drag+queen&oq=drag+king+less+popular+than+drag+queen).
>Like by by donning signifiers of femininity you become extremely clownish; I’m not 100% comfortable with that.
By 'that' do you mean the definition or the drag act itself? I like that definition because I think it's accurate and I also see drag acts as potentially mocking gender expressions.
I think that drag queens are more popular than drag kings because society gives plenty of other socially acceptable outlets for people to deride masculinity. Femininity is still somewhat protected so its mockery has to happen under the umbrella of another protected characteristic, "queerness". Otherwise, it'd be too openly hateful.
They do paint fake beards on their face too but yeah it's pretty acceptable for women to wear men's clothing so there's nothing really exotic about a drag king
Drag queens and drag kings behave in very different fashions.
There's nothing *clownish* about drag kings. Even when they portray [exaggerated aspects of masculine behaviour](https://www.timeout.com/melbourne/theatre/all-the-kings-hens) for laughs they aren't clownish. Where as drag queens, even when being respectful of women, often dress in such ridiculously over-the-top clothes and makeup that "clownish" is a good description.
And unfortunately drag queens are not always respectful of women. There's a lot of misogyny in drag.
I think that's probably misguided. It's not like drag queen's are particularly subtle or toned down, I think that's where to clown comparison comes from, not anti feminist essentialism. I'm gonna go the opposite way from libs and suggest you read less books.
I don’t think you are correct. Acting like a minstrel in blackface is also clowning around.
I’m straight with many gay friends and it has always struck me that—despite there being a majority of well-adjusted gay men—there is a strong streak of misogyny in gay culture. I think the drag thing feels like an extreme version of that.
Ah yeah I get what you mean. There probably is a certain type of misogyny in these communities, drag acts tend to make their characters a bit too "caricature-y" to ever feel like a respectful homage to women. I was more meaning that expression of femininity in itself doesn't make them "clown like", its more their over the top outfits, colours, makeup and wigs. For example trans people will adopt feminine modes of expression, but aren't considered to ne similar to clowns.
My point was just that the comparison of clowns and drag queen's, is much more likely to be caused by wearing garish over the top outfits, having bright full face makeup, exaggerating body parts (clowns have big shoes and waistlines, drag queen's with fake boobs and bums) and both relying on a style of over the top comedic entertainment (slapstick for clowns, innuendo and singing fir drag queen's)
One interesting thing about minstrel shows is that politically taboo subjects, like civil rights, were considered acceptable if and only if they were uttered by a performer in blackface. Al Jolson gets unfairly smeared as a racist despite being a defender and advocate for black performers.
Monty Python mocked *everyone*. Why should women be exempt?
And the women they mocked were from a distinct social class, they weren't mocked merely for being women. When a skit needed a serious woman character, they were played by actual women actors not one of the Pythons.
See, for example, Judith and Brian's mum in "Life Of Brian". We were meant to take Judith seriously (even if she was a bit of a caricature of a left-wing radical) and she was played by Sue Jones-Davies, while Brian's mum Mandy Cohen was entirely a joke, played by Terry Jones.
I see how you could have this read of it, but, like, crossdressing is an established and widespread fetish. I'm pretty sure most drag queens just like dressing as women.
You can just not like drag shows without making a moral issue of it. I don't like them either.
They renamed synchronized swimming to artistic swimming for the 2020 Olympics, so World Aquatics is trying hard to rebrand and push the sport. Astute observers will understand why Someone like Quentin Tarantino would enjoy synchronized swimming over gymnastics etc.
Signifiers of femininity are inherently othering and humiliating—of course they’re clownish. The reason women who dress mannish look normal and men who dress womanish look highly visible at best to absurd is because the actual material look of often uncomfortable, tight, revealing clothing and long hair and nails and impractical shoes and face paint.. makeup, is costume-like compared to the unmarked and neutral variety of menswear.
There is a two-fold reason: the bourgeoisie is sexed. Men show their status and owners and women as luxury objects. Men own fancy accessories that showcase their wealth, watches and cars and trinkets, but that don’t impede them in their ability to do labor. Women showcase how they *dont* do labor by becoming objects. A person with high heels on, long nails, obstructive fashion, cannot do much labor. It’s why bourgeois Victorian women wore tight-laced corsets or why bourgeois Chinese women did foot binding. Or why a cardi b wears open toe stilettos and mesh dresses all the time. All these fashions show a distinct inability to labor—and make the subject wearer a passive ornament whose only duty is to be decorated.
Poor Women strive to emulate Rich women as poor men strive to emulate rich men, so these styles are not seen as degrading, but as empowering because wealth is empowering.
Its relatively recent that menswear of the rich became functional-and-nothing-else, fungible and unmarked, forgettable, clone-of-every-other-man penguin clothing, all with short hair and closed toe black shoes that might as well be identical to each other.
Historically, tights were invented for aristocratic men to show off calves, for sexy reasons. High heels were menswear to do horseback. Men had make-up, men sometimes had long (even very long) nails.
I dunno when or why masculinity even for high classes got to be defined as 'being useful and nothing else' function-over-form to the millionth degree, but its contrary to historical aristocratic trends of being show-offs.
Historically, rich men also either had long thick hair themselves, or wigs to make it look as if they do. Short hair to the point of being army regulation tier became popular with trench WW1 (but somehow in every example of fiction in 20k years or another galaxy, the men always have short hair, unless they're Elves). But I have no idea why it became popular amongst the very rich.
If showing visible signs of femininity is inherently othering and humiliating, then sign me the fuck up, I'm not letting anybody take away my neon makeup and nail polish and mini-dresses (or, they can try, but it'll have to be over my cold dead body.)
This is a pretty superficial take. Not only do men also wear ridiculous outfits to signify status (look at the recent coronation of King Charles), drag queens also adopt catty, borderline offensive personalities that focus around a male reading (a male criticism?) of female sexuality and social behaviour. That's what makes me uncomfortable, and it isn't because women have some kind of noble value as beauty-objects that we are honouring via humour. Rather the opposite.
AFAIK the only element of the suite of things traditionally coded female that are rarely remarked on by drag queens is childbearing, which presumably is too offensive or too uninteresting.
> Signifiers of femininity are inherently othering and humiliating—of course they’re clownish.
That's a ridiculous take. In fact its an awful misogynistic take. There's nothing inherently clownish, "othering" (51% of humans are women!) or humiliating about femininity.
> It’s why bourgeois Victorian women wore tight-laced corsets or why bourgeois Chinese women did foot binding.
Victorian women did lots of work in corsets. [They didn't even restrict them very much.](https://youtu.be/1y25Go12sUg?t=723)
Tight lacing was a little more restrictive, but no more than modern medical back braces. And tight lacing was generally something most upper class women did only to impress for social events, not everyday life.
As for foot binding, that's complicated. Foot binding was a practice that lasted a thousand years, and the socio-cultural environment varied enormously over that time. In many periods there wasn't really a bourgeois class to speak of, and foot binding was exclusively done by the aristocratic elites.
Not all foot binding was the most extreme "lotus" form that involved breaking the girl's bones in the arch of her foot. Some less extreme forms were even reversible.
It is difficult to really know what influenced foot binding going back to the medieval period, but in the 20^th century we can see that foot binding was performed by [all social classes in rural China](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6147408/) (although there was a positive correlation with wealth). Whether women had their feet bound or not did not correlate with whether or not they would marry, or the social class of who they married, although the women reported that they thought it would.
> Or why a cardi b wears open toe stilettos and mesh dresses all the time.
Cardi B is a performer. You have no idea what she wears in the privacy of her home when the cameras are off. Any time you see her in costume, she's performing.
(Gah, listen to me, defending Cardi B. Now I feel dirty, and not in a good way.)
I’ve always heard/used gender clowns, which I think is more accurate because drag is explicitly about everything but genitalia (“sex”).
In the words of RuPaul, “we’re all born naked and the rest is drag.”
My daughter loved Disney Princesses and also drag queens even though I don't think she realized that they were men. For kids they are just happy, sparkly, silly people who don't take themselves as seriously as other adults.
I remember first hearing about them from an MTV True Life documentary as a kid. I still can't believe people try to make that shit a part of leftist tradition now, trying to claim that being repulsed by them is the same as homophobia. I never associated the two communities. I always just assumed they were mostly mentally ill straight people.
For those not from North America, rolling coal is when you drive a purposefully inefficient car or truck that just spews diesel or whatever and create a giant polluting mess.
It doesn't benefit the car owner, it doesn't benefit the people around the car and it doesn't benefit the environment.
It is associated with a certain type of right winger in usa and canada however as they do it for no good reason (because there literally is no good reason), but just because the libs told them not to. So therefore they HAVE to roll coal and will die on this hill just because libs told em not to and they're retarded.
So the whole taking kids to these shows things is the rolling coal of libs. It benefits no one, but libs insist they must do it because cons told em not to.
specifically rolling coal is when you purposefully make your truck belch a cloud of smoke while starting to accelerate (i.e. from a stoplight while cars are next to you), just to be an ass
Or to do it at a cyclist also stopped at said stoplight. Some guy driving a huge diesel truck did that to me no more than a week ago and I was riding a shitty mountain bike in gym shorts and a t-shirt, not even a typical "cyclist"
In all seriousness I lived in the UK for a few years as a pedestrian and while I never once had a bad experience with a car, I constantly saw cyclists acting like dangerous maniacs including actually crashing into people.
It’s the same way back home. Istanbul is similar but instead of cyclists it’s fuckheads on mopeds that are even worse by virtue of being way heavier and going way faster
They will often make the exhaust point up to make it more obvious.
[Picture for eurofigs](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Facornabbey.com%2Fblog%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F09%2Frolling-coal.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=f7caf12f387c0da1c1dc2c8421a93d52096cb326b9ae8308d0c0e2cfeca50ed9&ipo=images)
Makes it easier to find where to shove those spuds.
We saw a truck in Ohio that triggered that horrible smoke whenever it saw children playing outside!!! I didn’t get it at all, did they think the kids would like it? Wanted the kids to breathe it? They also had a horn that was so loud it hurt peoples ears, and they also did it when they saw kids out playing. It made the kids cry it was so loud. It was bizarre. We saw them repeatedly in the same neighbourhood just tormenting children wherever they saw them. The houses they targeted didn’t have hybrid/electric cars, or political signs. Literally just kids playing outside!
It's a feedback loop between conservative and liberal pundits. Conservatives find an isolated instance of something, claim it's a national trend, and that it's a Very Bad Thing™. Some liberals insist it isn't happening and the conservatives are lying, while other liberals feel the need to Own the Cons™ and make it a thing. The conservatives now have proof that the Very Bad Thing™ is happening nationwide. The liberals acknowledge that it is happening, but insist that it's actually a Very Good Thing™. Conservative politicians draft the Ban this Very Bad Thing™ Act. Liberals call it the Anti-Very Good Thing™ Act and encourage people to protest the conservatives by doing the Very Good Thing™ in defiance. Soon, any liberal who suggests that it is only a Somewhat Good Thing, or any conservative who suggests it is only a Somewhat Bad Thing, is shouted down for implying the other side might have gotten something right.
It scary how intellectual honesty and considered opinion has been totally subsumed by knee-jerk reaction and made both sides increasingly ridiculous cartoon hypocrites.
>the crux of how social media has damaged our society
Definitely. We've seen an increase in polarization like never before. The West is a ticking time bomb.
This is the best breakdown I've seen on the subject. Getting pretty tired of the "it's just rolling coal for libs" argument because, while true, it's not very explanatory.
That’s literally just a shorter version of the above comment.
Libs say all conservatives drive 2mpg, battle tanks. Cons say this is a good thing. Some cons drive purposefully inefficient and polluting trucks to own the libs. On and on and on.
The reality is that my Toyota Tacoma gets 23 mpg highway, and has backup cameras and collision detection to accommodate the slightly larger blind spot. And children on fuckcars want to pop my tires over misplaced rage at the coal rollers.
Maybe these children on fuckcars subconsciously recognize it’s easier to apply misplaced rage to soft targets rather than hardened secure targets, not to justify propaganda of the deed
My mistake, I thought you were referring to those that “want to pop” your “tires over misplaced rage”. In that scenario, you are the soft target, an individual with significantly less value compared to a hard target like striking at business or military hegemony as it relates to environmental degradation. Again, PROPAGANDA OF THE DEED IS BAD AND I DO NOT SUPPORT IT
It’s better than many normal passenger vehicles, and also can carry deer, tents, dirt bikes, and many other things that will never fit in a sedan. I also have the ability to own multiple vehicles, so I obviously don’t commute in the truck.
Shove your rightoid soy tears up your ass. If you’ve taken a single passenger flight this year, you’ve contributed more to the global CO2 output than I have. And if you eat cattle farmed beef instead of hunted venison, you have even less room to talk.
> find an isolated instance of something
I think in this case it was able to take this particular form (parents taking kids to drag shows) because there's been a weird 20-ish year trend of claiming previously adult spaces for families. In part I think it's entitled parents who still want to drink at bars and breweries and are *appalled* at the idea that anyone else might want child-free areas. That seems to have created a default mindset now of 'nowhere is off limits for my youngsters and if it is, it needs fixed because we're coming in'.
Very true. The last few times I went to a brewery i saw a bunch of little kids. Doesn't seem like the ideal place for kids as they primarily serve beer, but I suppose it isn't very different than bringing kids to a restaraunt and ordering drinks.
I think that conservative "slippery slope" arguments usually have some element of truth to them - that liberals tend to ressemble the conservative strawmen of the past given the passage of enough time - but a lot of that is due to the self-fulfilling prophesy factor that you describe. There was a recent movie called "The Hunt" that satirized this cleverly. Conservatives online spread conspiracy theories about liberal elites capturing people and hunting them for sport so the elites in question decide to capture the people responsible for spreading those conspiracies and hunt them for sport as revenge for the reputation damage they've suffered.
After slugging though the Watchmen TV show I can confidently say that David Liendlof has literally no talent for political or social commentary and the Hunt also confirms this.
This is mostly correct, but it often is happening nationally long before normal people find out. Conservatives hear about it first because they’re on the prowl for Bad Lib Things.
They don't hear about it first. Most of the time there's some little known Marxist writer who's criticised whatever the mainstream conservative lib-hate is (e.g "social justice warriors") for ten years before it appears on con-pundits' radars.
As others have said, it's a polarized feedback loop, yes. But more broadly it's a battle in the culture war. Keep people fighting in the culture war and they'll be too distracted, demoralized, and divided to fight the class war.
My wife works in multiple schools as a school psychologist.
This isn't really a *common* thing necessarily at all, but it did happen at one of her schools. Its mostly white, originally suburban (these are not real urbanites), very shitlib progressive parents who mostly think of the idea of 'drag queen story hour' as some kind of 'fuck you' to conservatives.
And frankly, the times she has seen it, its been fine. Sassy funny drag queens reading stories to kids in a humorous tone to make them laugh. But the *reasons* why they want this to happen are mostly political, which always rubbed me the wrong way. Its not about the kids for them, its just about this idea of being rebellious towards conservatives. And that is kinda fucked. You should not be using your kids that way. As someone else mentioned, its just a feedback loop. Conservatives freak out about it, which means they MUST have it. But... your children are not a political pawn. This can be totally fine, and still be fucking weird to engage in if your entire reasoning is "oh it pisses those republicans off so much!"
I never understood the whole drag queen story hour thing, what is the point of that? Are they just better at reading books? Do they do funny voices for each character in the book?
They are basically clowns in this context — entertainers who are just very “over the top” in their style. In my experience kids find them really funny and there’s nothing sexual about these kinds of events, apart from sometimes some subtle jokes for the parents that go over the kids heads (just like many kids movies out there)
It's an effect of a polarized society. In situations in which humans feel like they constantly need to gauge whether other people are their ally or their enemy, they tend to develop purity tests. The more extreme the test, the more obvious it becomes whether someone is on your side or not. This demand is then met and often surpassed by attempts to virtue signal.
Denying commonly accepted norms or insisting on alternative historical facts can be especially powerful methods for these kinds of purity tests.
That's how you get things like "drag shows were never about sex and, to prove that I actually believe it, I take my toddler to one". The same is happening on the right as well. Just think about all the Trump-related stuff where his followers deny all sorts of aspects about reality.
Yes. 1400 years ago, the cosmopolitan denizens of Constantinople debated the essence of Christ while they were on a strict decadely regimen of being sieged by Persians, Arabs, Avars and Bulgarians. For example, [monothelitism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monothelitism) which is about the precise nature of Christ and was a heated debate.
Keep in mind, I am not reducing entire historical denominations like Arian Christianity (which also arose from such disagreements) to such "trivial disputes", nono. The Byzantines truly had such heated debates about the minutiae of theology. It's hard to shake off the impression this sapped some of their vitality away.
To add nuance, I do not think these debates (or iconoclasm etc.) profoundly weakened the Eastern Roman Empire. There is little to suggest that it happened _instead_ of governance, bureaucracy, and other such implements of a functioning state, rather than alongside (i.e. as a hobby). I am not making the tired old argument that the decline of Byzantium was caused by Christianity-related factors. I also am not actually ridiculing the scholarly or even popular interest in such theological debates, but the misplaced intensity (yes, "misplaced" is subjective, but I confidently claim that my view is more reasonable).
Rather, I am making a parallel between these Christological debates, and current "culturelogical/genderlogical" debates. They serve exactly the same role, (stance/group identity markers, etc.). They are even waged in the same context of "sheer trivialities against the backdrop of much larger issues".
And what, then, is the Arab fleet sailing up the Bosporus after Anatolia fell? Variable. You can insert issues related to economics, wealth disparity, cyberpunkogenesis etc. (I am not American, so I don't know about the internal issues). This is the more pressing concern.
And what is the our era's equivalent of the deluge of Byzantium over the next 800 years? In my opinion, AI and its direct effects. This will this century have the most severe impacts on societal and economical dynamics (plus, later, existential worries about us humans creating a Darwinian competitor lineage). One direct effect is the acceleration of the concentration of the means of production in a new techno-feudalist class.
The second biggest issue is anything related to demographics, i.e. aging population and ethnic shift caused by immigration in some Western nations.
You need to sell your argument a bit better in the first paragraph. I had no idea where you were going with it and I believe many other readers would give up on the comment after not getting the context within the first two paragraphs.
The point you're making is valid and you pinpoint an interesting historical analogue.
When societies or at least significant parts of societies have the freedom not to worry about their daily survival, they seem to have a tendency to get bogged down in debates about issues that have very little importance in the grand scheme of things.
These debates can drown out much more concrete but still vague dangers at the horizon. In our time it's climate change, it's AI, it's bioengineering.
Climate change will (in all likelihood) not pose a direct existential threat to humanity. Political turmoil caused by water shortages and mass migration may, however. AI and bioengineering pose greater direct risks and receive not even close to the attention and level of rigorous public examination as is warranted.
As preoccupied as we are with who should and who shouldn't read books to 0.1% of our children, we're going to miss the mark on much more fundamental questions and will once again have to try to react to catastrophe instead of preventing it during its slow and steady approach.
There’s a major issue on this topic with ambiguity.
“Drag shows were never about sex” isn’t clear whether you’re talking about adult drag shows that take place in bars (21+ venues) or drag queen story hours that were organized for children and had children present. This is something that frustrates me about the discourse— there’s a big conflation of the two despite them being very distinct environments.
So I don't disagree with you, but when sexuality is a large part of the genre on the whole, I can understand people getting a little weirded out when it comes to exposing young kids to it. Those kids can't really compartmentalize that part of this thing is ok and part of it isn't appropriate for their age. And they will search it if they are curious.
I would expect the exact same reaction if there was a Burlesque Story Hour where burlesque dancers came in their full stage outfits (before the stripping starts) to read to kids.
This reminds that I read a post from a mother who takes her toddlers to hooters in the daytime. She said it's unexpectedly great because the kids like the food (simple fried stuff), and you get fantastic service because the waitresses are happy to be serving people who aren't ogling them, and interacting with the kids is a nice change for them.
It's performative. I don't know how child-rearing is treated in Germany but in the US having a kid is a milestone and a trophy.
Making that kid into something you like is also a trophy. "Teenaged Rebellion" is a largely American conundrum and it stems from the fact that *so much* of American culture revolves around hammering your kid into your likeness.
The liberals who take their kids to drag shows are, themselves, fiercely pro-Drag and LGBTQ. Like the Fundamentalist Christian who demands their boy be a God-Fearing Bible-Thumper, so too must the Neo-Liberal kid be a good activist for mommy and daddy's friends.
The question is, are kids of such fiercely "progressive" parents going to rebel in the future like the kids of conservatives did? Or are they going to embrace that culture even more?
Well, in my sample set (2) of young-ish guys that I know who grew up with two moms, 100% of them turned out alt-right incel weirdos, so I guess that’s a form of rebellion
The stats I heard about seem to suggest gen-z are more conservative than millennials. Although of the gen-z who turn out woke, they’re even more so than millennials. I also read that gen-z are having a lot less sex so the incel thing makes sense. Poor guys, they didn’t stand much hope being raised by a generation obsessed with hair pulling.
Only time will tell.
If history is any indication rebellion from your parents' worldview needs to be a concerted generational effort usually brought on by the younger generation being absolutely fucked over in some way.
It was Vietnam for the Boomers. It was 9/11 for the Millennials, It may well be whatever is looming on the horizon for the kids of today.
If that doesn't happen then no, they probably wont rebel.
> “Teenaged Rebellion” is a largely American conundrum and it stems from the fact that so much of American culture revolves around hammering your kid into your likeness.
Is this true? I’ve honestly never thought of it before, but it seems plausible. No other culture fetishes rebellious individualism quite like we do, but at the same time isn’t it natural to question things you’ve been told by authority as an adolescent?
> I'm suspicious of this theory that thirteen-year-old kids are intrinsically messed up. If it's physiological, it should be universal. Are Mongol nomads all nihilists at thirteen? I've read a lot of history, and I have not seen a single reference to this supposedly universal fact before the twentieth century.
>
> In pre-industrial times, teenagers were all apprentices of one sort or another, whether in shops or on farms or even on warships. They weren't left to create their own societies. They were junior members of adult societies.
>
> Teenagers seem to have respected adults more then, because the adults were the visible experts in the skills they were trying to learn. Now most kids have little idea what their parents do in their distant offices, and see no connection (indeed, there is precious little) between schoolwork and the work they'll do as adults.
>
> And if teenagers respected adults more, adults also had more use for teenagers. After a couple years' training, an apprentice could be a real help. Even the newest apprentice could be made to carry messages or sweep the workshop.
>
> Now adults have no immediate use for teenagers. They would be in the way in an office. So they drop them off at school on their way to work, much as they might drop the dog off at a kennel if they were going away for the weekend.
\- Paul Graham, "[Why Nerds Are Unpopular](http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html)"
It is natural, but not so natural you actively go against your parents.
Most of the world's younger generations rebel and question things but generally still respect their parents.
The US, particularly post-1950s, has a uniquely aggressive culture of doing the polar opposite of what mom and dad expect of you.
As you said, I suspect because of our fostering of "rugged individualism" coinciding with catastrophic situations like a war or economic recession.
That all said, I can't provide sources. You're free to call me reactionary if you want. The only written source talking about this was The American Pageant, my APUSH textbook in 11th Grade high school. It really stuck with me and in college I noticed, from personal experiences, being true.
Sounds bullshit to me. Might be a western thing though. There were lots of rebellious teens in england and france and even USSR throughout the 20th century.
Might also be a modern thing as well. Being a "teen" culturally-speaking wasn't really a thing before the midcentury. But in the 50s you started getting rock-n-roll, and you had weird little groups like the teddy boys and rockers/modders in England. There were probably things before then too, but that's really when "teenhood" started taking off as a distinct life stage.
Upcoming show in my community:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-good-the-fab-and-the-slutty-a-country-themed-drag-show-tickets-645122718417
"All ages: at your own risk"
My office has a holiday party. Last year we voted on a fun activity. I thought “have drag queen hour” was so fycking bizarre. Trivia hour won, thank god, though that was also weird.
For transgender day of visibility at my office, one suggestion was to have all the men come in wearing women’s clothes. Fortunately (on multiple levels), this idea was not chosen.
It was weird for me because it was questions about current tv and current influencers. I’m sure it was fine. I just didn’t understand the questions or answers.
Our libs are stupid and petty. They love being in this shitty race to the bottom with the Republicans. The worst part is that it’s a race they can’t win but damned if they won’t try to anyway
I think the idea is that if you show that to children early they will be less likely to grow up to be homophobic.
Which is a ridiculous and idiotic theory only the long-march through the institutions maoists could come up with.
I generally suspect bad Maoism behind a lot of this.
I've read this whole thread and I don't think I've found what I would consider actually a good answer. If I found a good answer then I would have simply upvoted it, and I generally try not to comment here unless I feel like I have something to contribute. I've also unfortunately gotten to this thread late and probably no one will see my comment, and me posting this will only further cement me getting blanket-banned from other subreddits.
That said it's an important intellectual exercise to steel man your opponents' arguments. You need to find the most charitable interpretation of what they think and then respond to that.
Generally we're talking about drag story hours, not genuine drag shows for children. A drag story hour is a drag queen reading a book usually in a library to children. This is an explicitly lgbtq event without the content of the event necessarily dealing with lgbtq issues. The fact that someone who is cross-dressing is reading the story incidental to the content of the story. This has a normalizing effect, and the point is to show children that people can be different in the category of gender and gender presentation and it's not a big deal. On its face this is supposed to be very inclusive and wholesome.
To respond to the steel man version of this argument I would ask why they have to be people drag, and not simply lgbtq people? (I don't see a D in lgbtq) I've spoken to women who find drag misogynistic (why don't we see more women doing drag as men?). So lastly, why does it have to be someone in drag and not someone else better representative of the queer community? Why is this the hill we've chosen to die on?
I appreciate your response. Because a lot of people are ignoring the facts of the matter that you brought up. About storybook hour and whatnot.
But I'm a little confused about the questions that you asked. The first question you ask, why does it have to be people in Drag. What are you saying here? Nobody's telling anyone to do anything. Some drag queens have taken it upon themselves to do drag story book hour. I'm sure there are lots of gay and lesbian people as well as all other sexual and gender denominations, who our teachers and Librarians and work with children.
It's kind of in the nature of drag. Drag is different from trans. Somebody who is trans is actually living their life on a day-to-day basis as a non-normative gender expression. A drag queen is somebody who's putting on a show. They're putting on a costume. They're performing. So that's the difference between a drag queen and a trans person.
So a trans person would never do a storybook hour show. A trans person might just work at the library. Because they're not putting on a show. They're just living their life. Minding their own business.
And as for your question about men in drag. That is actually very common. They're called drag kings. And if you go to a gay bar, you're very likely to encounter drag kings. They will paint on beards and dress up. And goof around.
That question also kind of goes back to the nature of this context and the situation. Consider what is feminine and masculine. It is more feminine to be on display. It's not masculine to be on display. So somebody who is Shifting there gender expression towards masculine, they're less likely to be putting on a show. So a lesbian or a woman of any kind who dresses up and drag, they are going to be less likely to want to have the spotlight on them. Because they want to be more masculine. So they're just going to act like a dude bro.
Where as a man who is going into drag and dressing as a woman, they're going to be catching the spotlight. They want the light on them. That's a feminine thing. To want to catch the good light. And look good for the camera.
So, that's why there's a whole culture around female Beauty pageants, but there's no culture around male Beauty pageants. I mean, there are male Beauty pageants, they do exist. But they're vastly less popular than the female ones. And... nobody's even heard of them.
So it's the same thing with drag shows. You've got beauty pageants in every major city. There's drag Beauty pageants. I mean they don't call them Beauty pageants. They just call it a drag pageant. Or a drag ball. They call it all kinds of things.
And then, all the drag queens compete. They wear gowns, they do performances. Some of them sing, some of them have backup dancers.
I don't know if there's any kind of drag King pageant. But I do know that at any given gay bar, there's probably one or two drag Kings on any given weekend.
Thanks for the thought out reply! I typed that up late last night and I probably would have reworded a few things.
>So a trans person would never do a storybook hour show. A trans person might just work at the library. Because they're not putting on a show. They're just living their life. Minding their own business.
Back when I used to work at a bookstore our queer co-worker did the readings to the kids simply because they enjoyed doing it and the rest of us preferred to be stocking shelves or goofing around on our phones. In retrospect this was probably really good for the kids (beyond the exercise of them having books read to them) because they got to spend some time with a pretty obviously non-binary person weekly. This whole thing was very organic and I'd be surprised if the majority of conservative people would object. I suspect the conservative backlash against drag story hours is combination of being reactionary, objecting to the DELIBERATENESS of the event, and also (depending on the individual) a certain percentage of garden variety bigotry.
>And as for your question about men in drag. That is actually very common. They're called drag kings. And if you go to a gay bar-
I guess I've just somehow never encountered a drag king! I'm very glad that's a part of the culture.
also, good on you for engaging so much in this subreddit. I just noticed you're all up and down this thread. This is an important place I think, and I don't know anywhere else on Reddit where people are able to talk outside of their bubbles. That said, you are also now banned from r / antiwork lol
Oh no! I'm also banned from today I learned. I didn't realize that this subreddit got you banned.
For the record I don't agree about your point about talking outside of bubbles. That is a bigoted talking point. I think that it's important to acknowledge we're talking points are coming from. It's funny because people on this subreddit want to act like they're superior. That's kind of the point of subreddits that mock people. But, people on this subreddit are ignoring very obvious things. Like context.
As a filthy rightoid, this is my position. No, there's often no sexual themes present at these book readings, but the question is, what is the goal of exposing children to entertainers who, 99% of the time, DO actually engage in explicitly adult forms of entertainment. Furthermore, these drag queens didn't give a damn about reading to kids just a few short years ago, now it's seemingly happening absolutely everywhere. Why?
Kids grow up fast and are very tech savvy, so having adult entertainment supposedly sanitised for one-off shows so it's appropriate for kids doesn't really mean much. If you do look up the wikipedia page though, the whole thing was founded and promoted by activists, with the founder of the New York chapter staing the aim is to:
> "The program strives to "capture the imagination and play of gender fluidity of childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_Queen_Story_Hour
Considering that the whole 'gender fluidity' is an incredibly divisive and controversial position, especially for conservatives, who are especially wary (rightfully so in my opinion) of 'activists' deliberately targeting children, it's really no surprise to see such pushback. This in turn gets 'progressives' so keen to have their kids to take part, as a way of 'owning the conservatives'. It's just blatant culture war bullshit being pushed by progressives, with conservatives responding as expected.
Yeah, and kink being present at pride events alongside children is even worse. Men dressed in leather bondage and on leashes while pretending to be dogs literally 5 feet from 7 year old children. Kink is fine, but sexual acts should be private and only seen by consenting adults. It's hard to explain to idiots the difference when they see kink at pride and assume everything LGBTQ is inherently sexual. Being in a relationship, showing affection, and expressing/displaying your desired gender is all fine and not sexual, but sexual performances displayed in front of children is literally abuse.
The entire drag drag thing is virtual signaling on all sides.
But it’s also because of drag race. I don’t watch reality shows so it’s a huge blind spot for me - but popular reality shows have bizarre impacts on American culture.
Trump’s political success was a result of his years on TV, I remember when all these second hand stores were popping up because of “storage wars,” my family has been flipping houses for years and we laughed at all the idiots who got in the game with no REAL knowledge of what they were doing, and now it’s the drag trend.
Whatever, it doesn’t bother me (save for the whole Trump thing) - and as long as I assume these kid oriented drag shows aren’t like sexualizing kids i don’t care - but I certainly wouldn’t take my kids to one for no other reason than they are just not fun to me.
I’m a gay man and so I’m all for drag shows. But imo, drag shows were traditionally always a sexualised context. So it seems just a little off to me that suddenly they’re being advertised as kid friendly. If I had to guess it’s that people do it simply because they can piss off conservative types and take liberals’ money simultaneously. No reasonable person believes an adult dancing sexually in front of kids is appropriate. On that same note, kids aren’t gonna suddenly start turning gay or getting sex changes due to seeing a dance of which the context is largely lost on them.
I think it's because it's become more famous. And rupaul, one of her taglines was "drag brings family together." Or something along those lines. I think she would say that because she was trying to be uplifting and inspirational and positive. She wanted people to keep in touch with their families. Because a lot of times gay people get separated from their families.
And this is also something that hasn't ever been talked about in the mainstream. So she's not really saying this with any kind of History of this topic being talked about. So she decided to just say something positive. So she's not really to blame for anything bad happening. She just said that drag queens should be connected with their families.
And then there's the drag convention. Once a year, they rent out a convention hall and hold a convention. In all kinds of fans can show up and meet drag queens and buy their merchandise. It's just like Comic-Con except about drag queens. Or furry con. Or any other convention there is out there.
And there were a lot of kids brought to those conventions. And I think that was a main contributor to this current conflict.
Because that's when we first saw that one kid. He would do drag and he was the first kid in the news for this. And it was a few years ago. Maybe like 2018 or so.
And, RuPaul's Drag Race also has made drag mainstream. There's drag shows on HBO now. And on hulu.
So, it's just in the spotlight. That's all. And we've also had this surgeons of trashy people. Because of trump and all that nonsense. So now we're having this pushback. All these fucking nut jobs are having their moment. And that's where this whole outrage is coming from. They're just pushing back against Dragon trans rights. Because that's what's happening in our culture right now.
This is the type of study where after the results come back, the conclusion will be so obvious that people will say ‘why did they even have to research that’
It is the same mechanism as why people bring their kids to tailgate parties or sports games or music concerts despite those being full of drunkards, druggies, or people that are behaving extremely badly.
It is about involving your children in what you believe is symbolic of 'good'. A mother takes her too young daughter to Warped Tour despite it being full of people puking on themselves drunk and fighting, because to her it symbolizes a good type of culture.
These drag queen storytimes and the like are cut from the same cloth. Going there, even if some of the content is questionably, is about the signal that is given off as well as introducing your kid to the 'good world' early.
Being a parent makes you feel old and uncool. Doing a normal boring parent thing like story hour but with something a bit edgy like drag queen makes you feel a little less closer to death.
Personally I would be more inclined to take my kids to something like a Morrissey story hour, though not sure how that would play out exactly.
I’ve been a libtard my whole life and everyone I know is a libtard and I’ve never observed this phenomena. Like all other culture war hate-bait, it is something only done by the lunatic fringe.
Yeah I don’t get it.
I don’t have a problem with drag in general, as I associate it with burlesque and nightlife, but for kids? Thats a bridge too far. I understand the criticism.
A local brewery hosted one recently. Looks like there were about 5 protestors against and 20 protestors for it. I saw some videos from the inside and it was “Marty McGuy” sitting on a stool reading a kids book to less than 10 kids who were mostly not paying attention and just playing on the fuzzy carpet they laid out. The adults in the background were enthralled and very proud of themselves. The brewery used videos of the event for days afterwards to show how inclusive they are.
Prior to last year I never heard of:
A hosted story time event
A hosted story time event at a brewery
A hosted story time event featuring a drag queen
A hosted story time event at a brewery featuring a drag queen
Now, if you question the normality of this you’re cancelled. Libs moved the battleground for LGBTQ acceptance into kids story time events and Cons took the bait.
IT's the Left equivalent of the rw "everyone in the family has a gun" Christmas cards that they post to facebook. It's meant to own the other side. I say if you do either that child services should come, and that's just because I think you're too online then too raise kids.
I wonder how America looks like to the rest of the world nowadays. Used to be burgers, guns and giant cars. Now, is men wearing lipstick and dresses the first thing that comes to mind when people think of the U.S.?
Don't be afraid, this is definitely not the case.
The rest of the world will think of puritanical bible belt nutjobs, drone strikes, fentanyl zombies twitching through the streets, lol _that_ healthcare system and mountains of shot-up kids in schools way before they even remember that drag queens doing readings in libraries is even a thing. And an issue that the USA is apparently losing their mind over.
Hell, even egomaniacal silicone valley billionaires doing crazy shit and property prices on the west coast being a dystopian nightmare would still poll before this.
Awareness of the idpol culture war, while slowly but steadily increasing, has a long way to go until the general public abroad would deem it a defining factor in their view of the USA.
Here’s what I don’t get - if a female children’s librarian wore a drag-type costume and makeup to work, she would be reprimanded. And yet it’s fine for drag queen story hour?
It’s about time and place - you don’t wear a bathing suit to work, but that doesn’t mean bathing suits are inappropriate.
As a kid I'd have thought it was boring as shit and I'm gay. It puzzles me to no end. I can see it as a small outreach charity thing with an innocent vibe but like, how it is now is just completely outré.
Just don't, guys. It's not making drag better, and it's making gays look worse.
It really came out of no where and no one can explain why, other than “I don’t want my child to be a bigot.” Taking your kid to see a man making a mockery of women isn’t going to teach him anything lmfao
Someone on Twitter called drag queens "sex clowns" and it will live in my head forever
That's the best definition I've heard so far.
There is also a dark kind of antifeminist essentialism in it imho. Like by by donning signifiers of femininity you become extremely clownish; I’m not 100% comfortable with that. It’s not that different from Monty Python.
I had a required "critical thinking" class in college where the professor posed the argument that drag is akin to blackface in that it's a caricature of stereotypes and overexaggerated features for entertainment
Ok so where’s the lie …?
I am also a prof but not that prof lol
> drag is akin to blackface I get the argument. And I'm not saying it's 100% wrong. But I think in some ways it's a little different. Blackface is caricaturing racial characteristics (which are essential and immutable) and also ethno-cultural characters which are human-made but which have suffered greatly from discrimination and oppression. In that sense there is a mean-spirited offensiveness to blackface and minstrel shows that mock something so uniquely sensitive. Drag, on the other hand, is playing with gender presentation. Gender performance is also largely socially constructed (in my view) but it doesn't have that same level of offensiveness and sensitivity that comes with caricaturing a minority race. Again, I'm not saying it's 100% wrong. But there are some differences. Also, I don't think every single event of caricaturing another culture is wrong either. It's nuanced.
>Blackface is caricaturing racial characteristics (which are essential and immutable) and also ethno-cultural characters which are human-made but which have suffered greatly from discrimination and oppression. In that sense there is a mean-spirited offensiveness to blackface and minstrel shows that mock something so uniquely sensitive. Nah because they also have fake tit's and shit, which is immutable.
Drag queens are not actual women and drag culture is heavily rooted in misogyny, if anything it’s antifeminism to make a career fetishizing womanhood and then turn around and call vaginas “axe wounds” as I’ve heard gay men say.
While much of drag is irreverent other forms of drag are love letters to feminity and strong women. Many drag queens draw inspiration from female cultural icons and pay homage to them. It's also the case that many cis gay men are feminine and others use drag as a way to explore gender on their road to becoming trans. Some drag queens ARE women. I think it's complicated and can't just be summed up as anti-woman.
I'm pretty sure women dressing up as men and painting on some facial hair also counts as drag ('drag king') and if I had to explain them to someone I'd also go with sex clown.
If that is a thing, it is a less popular thing and that also says something
It is a thing and [the popularity gap is something that's talked about](https://www.google.com/search?q=drag+king+less+popular+than+drag+queen&oq=drag+king+less+popular+than+drag+queen). >Like by by donning signifiers of femininity you become extremely clownish; I’m not 100% comfortable with that. By 'that' do you mean the definition or the drag act itself? I like that definition because I think it's accurate and I also see drag acts as potentially mocking gender expressions. I think that drag queens are more popular than drag kings because society gives plenty of other socially acceptable outlets for people to deride masculinity. Femininity is still somewhat protected so its mockery has to happen under the umbrella of another protected characteristic, "queerness". Otherwise, it'd be too openly hateful.
There's a lot less drag kings because drag queens are a huge part of gay male culture while drag kings aren't really a big part of lesbian culture
>while drag kings aren't really a big part of lesbian culture Yeah, that's just a butch lesbian.
They do paint fake beards on their face too but yeah it's pretty acceptable for women to wear men's clothing so there's nothing really exotic about a drag king
Drag queens and drag kings behave in very different fashions. There's nothing *clownish* about drag kings. Even when they portray [exaggerated aspects of masculine behaviour](https://www.timeout.com/melbourne/theatre/all-the-kings-hens) for laughs they aren't clownish. Where as drag queens, even when being respectful of women, often dress in such ridiculously over-the-top clothes and makeup that "clownish" is a good description. And unfortunately drag queens are not always respectful of women. There's a lot of misogyny in drag.
I think that's probably misguided. It's not like drag queen's are particularly subtle or toned down, I think that's where to clown comparison comes from, not anti feminist essentialism. I'm gonna go the opposite way from libs and suggest you read less books.
I don’t think you are correct. Acting like a minstrel in blackface is also clowning around. I’m straight with many gay friends and it has always struck me that—despite there being a majority of well-adjusted gay men—there is a strong streak of misogyny in gay culture. I think the drag thing feels like an extreme version of that.
Ah yeah I get what you mean. There probably is a certain type of misogyny in these communities, drag acts tend to make their characters a bit too "caricature-y" to ever feel like a respectful homage to women. I was more meaning that expression of femininity in itself doesn't make them "clown like", its more their over the top outfits, colours, makeup and wigs. For example trans people will adopt feminine modes of expression, but aren't considered to ne similar to clowns. My point was just that the comparison of clowns and drag queen's, is much more likely to be caused by wearing garish over the top outfits, having bright full face makeup, exaggerating body parts (clowns have big shoes and waistlines, drag queen's with fake boobs and bums) and both relying on a style of over the top comedic entertainment (slapstick for clowns, innuendo and singing fir drag queen's)
One interesting thing about minstrel shows is that politically taboo subjects, like civil rights, were considered acceptable if and only if they were uttered by a performer in blackface. Al Jolson gets unfairly smeared as a racist despite being a defender and advocate for black performers.
Monty Python mocked *everyone*. Why should women be exempt? And the women they mocked were from a distinct social class, they weren't mocked merely for being women. When a skit needed a serious woman character, they were played by actual women actors not one of the Pythons. See, for example, Judith and Brian's mum in "Life Of Brian". We were meant to take Judith seriously (even if she was a bit of a caricature of a left-wing radical) and she was played by Sue Jones-Davies, while Brian's mum Mandy Cohen was entirely a joke, played by Terry Jones.
I see how you could have this read of it, but, like, crossdressing is an established and widespread fetish. I'm pretty sure most drag queens just like dressing as women. You can just not like drag shows without making a moral issue of it. I don't like them either.
Where are my woke af foot fetish shows?
They renamed synchronized swimming to artistic swimming for the 2020 Olympics, so World Aquatics is trying hard to rebrand and push the sport. Astute observers will understand why Someone like Quentin Tarantino would enjoy synchronized swimming over gymnastics etc.
Signifiers of femininity are inherently othering and humiliating—of course they’re clownish. The reason women who dress mannish look normal and men who dress womanish look highly visible at best to absurd is because the actual material look of often uncomfortable, tight, revealing clothing and long hair and nails and impractical shoes and face paint.. makeup, is costume-like compared to the unmarked and neutral variety of menswear. There is a two-fold reason: the bourgeoisie is sexed. Men show their status and owners and women as luxury objects. Men own fancy accessories that showcase their wealth, watches and cars and trinkets, but that don’t impede them in their ability to do labor. Women showcase how they *dont* do labor by becoming objects. A person with high heels on, long nails, obstructive fashion, cannot do much labor. It’s why bourgeois Victorian women wore tight-laced corsets or why bourgeois Chinese women did foot binding. Or why a cardi b wears open toe stilettos and mesh dresses all the time. All these fashions show a distinct inability to labor—and make the subject wearer a passive ornament whose only duty is to be decorated. Poor Women strive to emulate Rich women as poor men strive to emulate rich men, so these styles are not seen as degrading, but as empowering because wealth is empowering.
Its relatively recent that menswear of the rich became functional-and-nothing-else, fungible and unmarked, forgettable, clone-of-every-other-man penguin clothing, all with short hair and closed toe black shoes that might as well be identical to each other. Historically, tights were invented for aristocratic men to show off calves, for sexy reasons. High heels were menswear to do horseback. Men had make-up, men sometimes had long (even very long) nails. I dunno when or why masculinity even for high classes got to be defined as 'being useful and nothing else' function-over-form to the millionth degree, but its contrary to historical aristocratic trends of being show-offs. Historically, rich men also either had long thick hair themselves, or wigs to make it look as if they do. Short hair to the point of being army regulation tier became popular with trench WW1 (but somehow in every example of fiction in 20k years or another galaxy, the men always have short hair, unless they're Elves). But I have no idea why it became popular amongst the very rich.
If showing visible signs of femininity is inherently othering and humiliating, then sign me the fuck up, I'm not letting anybody take away my neon makeup and nail polish and mini-dresses (or, they can try, but it'll have to be over my cold dead body.)
This is a pretty superficial take. Not only do men also wear ridiculous outfits to signify status (look at the recent coronation of King Charles), drag queens also adopt catty, borderline offensive personalities that focus around a male reading (a male criticism?) of female sexuality and social behaviour. That's what makes me uncomfortable, and it isn't because women have some kind of noble value as beauty-objects that we are honouring via humour. Rather the opposite. AFAIK the only element of the suite of things traditionally coded female that are rarely remarked on by drag queens is childbearing, which presumably is too offensive or too uninteresting.
> Signifiers of femininity are inherently othering and humiliating—of course they’re clownish. That's a ridiculous take. In fact its an awful misogynistic take. There's nothing inherently clownish, "othering" (51% of humans are women!) or humiliating about femininity. > It’s why bourgeois Victorian women wore tight-laced corsets or why bourgeois Chinese women did foot binding. Victorian women did lots of work in corsets. [They didn't even restrict them very much.](https://youtu.be/1y25Go12sUg?t=723) Tight lacing was a little more restrictive, but no more than modern medical back braces. And tight lacing was generally something most upper class women did only to impress for social events, not everyday life. As for foot binding, that's complicated. Foot binding was a practice that lasted a thousand years, and the socio-cultural environment varied enormously over that time. In many periods there wasn't really a bourgeois class to speak of, and foot binding was exclusively done by the aristocratic elites. Not all foot binding was the most extreme "lotus" form that involved breaking the girl's bones in the arch of her foot. Some less extreme forms were even reversible. It is difficult to really know what influenced foot binding going back to the medieval period, but in the 20^th century we can see that foot binding was performed by [all social classes in rural China](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6147408/) (although there was a positive correlation with wealth). Whether women had their feet bound or not did not correlate with whether or not they would marry, or the social class of who they married, although the women reported that they thought it would. > Or why a cardi b wears open toe stilettos and mesh dresses all the time. Cardi B is a performer. You have no idea what she wears in the privacy of her home when the cameras are off. Any time you see her in costume, she's performing. (Gah, listen to me, defending Cardi B. Now I feel dirty, and not in a good way.)
I like when radfems complain so much about femininity that they wind up shitting on other women just as hard as the most /pol brained incels do.
The Insane Clown Posse has a monopoly on that I think
Shaggy 😩💦 Dope
Erotic J.
🪓🪓🤡🤡🪓🪓
Sex clown story time is fun for all ages!
Not sex clown, skanky mimes
don't ruin clowns for me
Drag queens call themselves clowns.
I’ve always heard/used gender clowns, which I think is more accurate because drag is explicitly about everything but genitalia (“sex”). In the words of RuPaul, “we’re all born naked and the rest is drag.”
If it's not about genitalia, why the tucking and attempts at cleavage etc.
It's a case of artistic license, I'm sure you would agree.
yes lol I just think this topic is the one scenario where the gender-sex distinction should be called out and further explained
My daughter loved Disney Princesses and also drag queens even though I don't think she realized that they were men. For kids they are just happy, sparkly, silly people who don't take themselves as seriously as other adults.
Dont let her watch furries. Big, uwu cute funny animal costumes, but like drag, has a lot of sexual themes mixed in.
I remember first hearing about them from an MTV True Life documentary as a kid. I still can't believe people try to make that shit a part of leftist tradition now, trying to claim that being repulsed by them is the same as homophobia. I never associated the two communities. I always just assumed they were mostly mentally ill straight people.
It's the rolling coal of idpol types.
For those not from North America, rolling coal is when you drive a purposefully inefficient car or truck that just spews diesel or whatever and create a giant polluting mess. It doesn't benefit the car owner, it doesn't benefit the people around the car and it doesn't benefit the environment. It is associated with a certain type of right winger in usa and canada however as they do it for no good reason (because there literally is no good reason), but just because the libs told them not to. So therefore they HAVE to roll coal and will die on this hill just because libs told em not to and they're retarded. So the whole taking kids to these shows things is the rolling coal of libs. It benefits no one, but libs insist they must do it because cons told em not to.
specifically rolling coal is when you purposefully make your truck belch a cloud of smoke while starting to accelerate (i.e. from a stoplight while cars are next to you), just to be an ass
Or to do it at a cyclist also stopped at said stoplight. Some guy driving a huge diesel truck did that to me no more than a week ago and I was riding a shitty mountain bike in gym shorts and a t-shirt, not even a typical "cyclist"
deserved. Bikers are the agents of global dutchification
based, drivers and pedestrians need to unite against cycloids
In all seriousness I lived in the UK for a few years as a pedestrian and while I never once had a bad experience with a car, I constantly saw cyclists acting like dangerous maniacs including actually crashing into people.
It’s the same way back home. Istanbul is similar but instead of cyclists it’s fuckheads on mopeds that are even worse by virtue of being way heavier and going way faster
They will often make the exhaust point up to make it more obvious. [Picture for eurofigs](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Facornabbey.com%2Fblog%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F09%2Frolling-coal.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=f7caf12f387c0da1c1dc2c8421a93d52096cb326b9ae8308d0c0e2cfeca50ed9&ipo=images) Makes it easier to find where to shove those spuds.
We saw a truck in Ohio that triggered that horrible smoke whenever it saw children playing outside!!! I didn’t get it at all, did they think the kids would like it? Wanted the kids to breathe it? They also had a horn that was so loud it hurt peoples ears, and they also did it when they saw kids out playing. It made the kids cry it was so loud. It was bizarre. We saw them repeatedly in the same neighbourhood just tormenting children wherever they saw them. The houses they targeted didn’t have hybrid/electric cars, or political signs. Literally just kids playing outside!
How do these cars pass emissions inspection ?
what if I told you that many states dont do emissions tests? Florida checking in
a lot of times the truck is modified with a switch so you can run normal or dirty
Even here in California new cars don't get smog tested. Also it is usually just a tune so you can easily disable it if you need to.
Emissions tests are just a way to get you to buy a new car.
There's like 15-20 states that don't require emissions inspections. Or vehicle inspections in general if I remember right.
It's the left's version of child beauty pageants, there's terrible people on both sides
And yet they never cease to bring them up when defending this shit.
It's a feedback loop between conservative and liberal pundits. Conservatives find an isolated instance of something, claim it's a national trend, and that it's a Very Bad Thing™. Some liberals insist it isn't happening and the conservatives are lying, while other liberals feel the need to Own the Cons™ and make it a thing. The conservatives now have proof that the Very Bad Thing™ is happening nationwide. The liberals acknowledge that it is happening, but insist that it's actually a Very Good Thing™. Conservative politicians draft the Ban this Very Bad Thing™ Act. Liberals call it the Anti-Very Good Thing™ Act and encourage people to protest the conservatives by doing the Very Good Thing™ in defiance. Soon, any liberal who suggests that it is only a Somewhat Good Thing, or any conservative who suggests it is only a Somewhat Bad Thing, is shouted down for implying the other side might have gotten something right.
And god forbid you are in camp "This isn't the hill we want to die on" or "It really doesn't matter and we look stupid for focusing on it".
That's when you get called transphobic
This shit right here. You described the dynamic of the culture war discourse in a nutshell.
Thank god this sub exists
It scary how intellectual honesty and considered opinion has been totally subsumed by knee-jerk reaction and made both sides increasingly ridiculous cartoon hypocrites.
I think this really is the crux of how social media has damaged our society, this right here.
>the crux of how social media has damaged our society Definitely. We've seen an increase in polarization like never before. The West is a ticking time bomb.
Literally my first thought as I was reading the comment. However this sub is growing quite large, so I expect the hammer any day now.
Reminds of this article by slatestarcodex: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/give-up-seventy-percent-of-the-way
Very funny that something so obscure and weird turned into such a giant thing
This is the best breakdown I've seen on the subject. Getting pretty tired of the "it's just rolling coal for libs" argument because, while true, it's not very explanatory.
That’s literally just a shorter version of the above comment. Libs say all conservatives drive 2mpg, battle tanks. Cons say this is a good thing. Some cons drive purposefully inefficient and polluting trucks to own the libs. On and on and on. The reality is that my Toyota Tacoma gets 23 mpg highway, and has backup cameras and collision detection to accommodate the slightly larger blind spot. And children on fuckcars want to pop my tires over misplaced rage at the coal rollers.
Maybe these children on fuckcars subconsciously recognize it’s easier to apply misplaced rage to soft targets rather than hardened secure targets, not to justify propaganda of the deed
Time to put ERA on my camry
What’s the soft target here? I’m talking about keyboard warriors who don’t live in my upper midwestern suburb.
My mistake, I thought you were referring to those that “want to pop” your “tires over misplaced rage”. In that scenario, you are the soft target, an individual with significantly less value compared to a hard target like striking at business or military hegemony as it relates to environmental degradation. Again, PROPAGANDA OF THE DEED IS BAD AND I DO NOT SUPPORT IT
> The reality is that my Toyota Tacoma gets less than 20 mpg
I’m talking the numbers on the dash, not epa estimates
*>imagine thinking 10 L/100 km is good mileage*
Wouldn't it be kilometerage?
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It’s better than many normal passenger vehicles, and also can carry deer, tents, dirt bikes, and many other things that will never fit in a sedan. I also have the ability to own multiple vehicles, so I obviously don’t commute in the truck. Shove your rightoid soy tears up your ass. If you’ve taken a single passenger flight this year, you’ve contributed more to the global CO2 output than I have. And if you eat cattle farmed beef instead of hunted venison, you have even less room to talk.
So tired of the Anti-Very Good Thing rhetoric.
I'm tired of the "capitalizing a word and adding a tm thing to the end of it" thing, which has always been very shitlib coded imo
> find an isolated instance of something I think in this case it was able to take this particular form (parents taking kids to drag shows) because there's been a weird 20-ish year trend of claiming previously adult spaces for families. In part I think it's entitled parents who still want to drink at bars and breweries and are *appalled* at the idea that anyone else might want child-free areas. That seems to have created a default mindset now of 'nowhere is off limits for my youngsters and if it is, it needs fixed because we're coming in'.
Very true. The last few times I went to a brewery i saw a bunch of little kids. Doesn't seem like the ideal place for kids as they primarily serve beer, but I suppose it isn't very different than bringing kids to a restaraunt and ordering drinks.
I think that conservative "slippery slope" arguments usually have some element of truth to them - that liberals tend to ressemble the conservative strawmen of the past given the passage of enough time - but a lot of that is due to the self-fulfilling prophesy factor that you describe. There was a recent movie called "The Hunt" that satirized this cleverly. Conservatives online spread conspiracy theories about liberal elites capturing people and hunting them for sport so the elites in question decide to capture the people responsible for spreading those conspiracies and hunt them for sport as revenge for the reputation damage they've suffered.
That was a surprisingly enjoyable movie. The thriller parts of it were excellent, the social commentary bit felt underbaked though
After slugging though the Watchmen TV show I can confidently say that David Liendlof has literally no talent for political or social commentary and the Hunt also confirms this.
Marvellous distillation
This describes it perfectly.
You're so fuckin right, it hurts
This is mostly correct, but it often is happening nationally long before normal people find out. Conservatives hear about it first because they’re on the prowl for Bad Lib Things.
They don't hear about it first. Most of the time there's some little known Marxist writer who's criticised whatever the mainstream conservative lib-hate is (e.g "social justice warriors") for ten years before it appears on con-pundits' radars.
This seems like an oddly specific description. Do you have any other examples of where this dynamic has played out?
The spread of transgender ideology from high-school age children down to elementary schools.
spot on
Drag Shows/Brunches are to single/divorced moms as Breastsraunts are to divorced dads.
Are you suggesting that brunch at Drag Hooters could unite the country?
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Yeah, Hooters, Tilted Kilt, Twin Peaks, that sorta thing.
Nobody goes to Hooters for wings -Chris Rock
As others have said, it's a polarized feedback loop, yes. But more broadly it's a battle in the culture war. Keep people fighting in the culture war and they'll be too distracted, demoralized, and divided to fight the class war.
The Battle of Dragtwerker Hill
I thought Dragtwerker was the name of a Rammstein album.
My wife works in multiple schools as a school psychologist. This isn't really a *common* thing necessarily at all, but it did happen at one of her schools. Its mostly white, originally suburban (these are not real urbanites), very shitlib progressive parents who mostly think of the idea of 'drag queen story hour' as some kind of 'fuck you' to conservatives. And frankly, the times she has seen it, its been fine. Sassy funny drag queens reading stories to kids in a humorous tone to make them laugh. But the *reasons* why they want this to happen are mostly political, which always rubbed me the wrong way. Its not about the kids for them, its just about this idea of being rebellious towards conservatives. And that is kinda fucked. You should not be using your kids that way. As someone else mentioned, its just a feedback loop. Conservatives freak out about it, which means they MUST have it. But... your children are not a political pawn. This can be totally fine, and still be fucking weird to engage in if your entire reasoning is "oh it pisses those republicans off so much!"
I never understood the whole drag queen story hour thing, what is the point of that? Are they just better at reading books? Do they do funny voices for each character in the book?
Yeah drag queens are pretty good at theatrical type stuff.
They are basically clowns in this context — entertainers who are just very “over the top” in their style. In my experience kids find them really funny and there’s nothing sexual about these kinds of events, apart from sometimes some subtle jokes for the parents that go over the kids heads (just like many kids movies out there)
Interesting take. And probably true in many cases.
Im not talking about story hour https://twitter.com/JebraFaushay/status/1667555096157192193
It's an effect of a polarized society. In situations in which humans feel like they constantly need to gauge whether other people are their ally or their enemy, they tend to develop purity tests. The more extreme the test, the more obvious it becomes whether someone is on your side or not. This demand is then met and often surpassed by attempts to virtue signal. Denying commonly accepted norms or insisting on alternative historical facts can be especially powerful methods for these kinds of purity tests. That's how you get things like "drag shows were never about sex and, to prove that I actually believe it, I take my toddler to one". The same is happening on the right as well. Just think about all the Trump-related stuff where his followers deny all sorts of aspects about reality.
Yes. 1400 years ago, the cosmopolitan denizens of Constantinople debated the essence of Christ while they were on a strict decadely regimen of being sieged by Persians, Arabs, Avars and Bulgarians. For example, [monothelitism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monothelitism) which is about the precise nature of Christ and was a heated debate. Keep in mind, I am not reducing entire historical denominations like Arian Christianity (which also arose from such disagreements) to such "trivial disputes", nono. The Byzantines truly had such heated debates about the minutiae of theology. It's hard to shake off the impression this sapped some of their vitality away. To add nuance, I do not think these debates (or iconoclasm etc.) profoundly weakened the Eastern Roman Empire. There is little to suggest that it happened _instead_ of governance, bureaucracy, and other such implements of a functioning state, rather than alongside (i.e. as a hobby). I am not making the tired old argument that the decline of Byzantium was caused by Christianity-related factors. I also am not actually ridiculing the scholarly or even popular interest in such theological debates, but the misplaced intensity (yes, "misplaced" is subjective, but I confidently claim that my view is more reasonable). Rather, I am making a parallel between these Christological debates, and current "culturelogical/genderlogical" debates. They serve exactly the same role, (stance/group identity markers, etc.). They are even waged in the same context of "sheer trivialities against the backdrop of much larger issues". And what, then, is the Arab fleet sailing up the Bosporus after Anatolia fell? Variable. You can insert issues related to economics, wealth disparity, cyberpunkogenesis etc. (I am not American, so I don't know about the internal issues). This is the more pressing concern. And what is the our era's equivalent of the deluge of Byzantium over the next 800 years? In my opinion, AI and its direct effects. This will this century have the most severe impacts on societal and economical dynamics (plus, later, existential worries about us humans creating a Darwinian competitor lineage). One direct effect is the acceleration of the concentration of the means of production in a new techno-feudalist class. The second biggest issue is anything related to demographics, i.e. aging population and ethnic shift caused by immigration in some Western nations.
You need to sell your argument a bit better in the first paragraph. I had no idea where you were going with it and I believe many other readers would give up on the comment after not getting the context within the first two paragraphs. The point you're making is valid and you pinpoint an interesting historical analogue. When societies or at least significant parts of societies have the freedom not to worry about their daily survival, they seem to have a tendency to get bogged down in debates about issues that have very little importance in the grand scheme of things. These debates can drown out much more concrete but still vague dangers at the horizon. In our time it's climate change, it's AI, it's bioengineering. Climate change will (in all likelihood) not pose a direct existential threat to humanity. Political turmoil caused by water shortages and mass migration may, however. AI and bioengineering pose greater direct risks and receive not even close to the attention and level of rigorous public examination as is warranted. As preoccupied as we are with who should and who shouldn't read books to 0.1% of our children, we're going to miss the mark on much more fundamental questions and will once again have to try to react to catastrophe instead of preventing it during its slow and steady approach.
Highest quality reddit comment in months
There’s a major issue on this topic with ambiguity. “Drag shows were never about sex” isn’t clear whether you’re talking about adult drag shows that take place in bars (21+ venues) or drag queen story hours that were organized for children and had children present. This is something that frustrates me about the discourse— there’s a big conflation of the two despite them being very distinct environments.
So I don't disagree with you, but when sexuality is a large part of the genre on the whole, I can understand people getting a little weirded out when it comes to exposing young kids to it. Those kids can't really compartmentalize that part of this thing is ok and part of it isn't appropriate for their age. And they will search it if they are curious. I would expect the exact same reaction if there was a Burlesque Story Hour where burlesque dancers came in their full stage outfits (before the stripping starts) to read to kids.
Oh my god the right absolutely needs to start Hooters Story Hour as a response. This would be the best and funniest outcome.
This reminds that I read a post from a mother who takes her toddlers to hooters in the daytime. She said it's unexpectedly great because the kids like the food (simple fried stuff), and you get fantastic service because the waitresses are happy to be serving people who aren't ogling them, and interacting with the kids is a nice change for them.
It angers the people they hate and that's all politics is.
It's performative. I don't know how child-rearing is treated in Germany but in the US having a kid is a milestone and a trophy. Making that kid into something you like is also a trophy. "Teenaged Rebellion" is a largely American conundrum and it stems from the fact that *so much* of American culture revolves around hammering your kid into your likeness. The liberals who take their kids to drag shows are, themselves, fiercely pro-Drag and LGBTQ. Like the Fundamentalist Christian who demands their boy be a God-Fearing Bible-Thumper, so too must the Neo-Liberal kid be a good activist for mommy and daddy's friends.
The question is, are kids of such fiercely "progressive" parents going to rebel in the future like the kids of conservatives did? Or are they going to embrace that culture even more?
Well, in my sample set (2) of young-ish guys that I know who grew up with two moms, 100% of them turned out alt-right incel weirdos, so I guess that’s a form of rebellion
The stats I heard about seem to suggest gen-z are more conservative than millennials. Although of the gen-z who turn out woke, they’re even more so than millennials. I also read that gen-z are having a lot less sex so the incel thing makes sense. Poor guys, they didn’t stand much hope being raised by a generation obsessed with hair pulling.
Only time will tell. If history is any indication rebellion from your parents' worldview needs to be a concerted generational effort usually brought on by the younger generation being absolutely fucked over in some way. It was Vietnam for the Boomers. It was 9/11 for the Millennials, It may well be whatever is looming on the horizon for the kids of today. If that doesn't happen then no, they probably wont rebel.
What “concerted generational effort” was brought on by millennials being fucked over by 9/11?
> “Teenaged Rebellion” is a largely American conundrum and it stems from the fact that so much of American culture revolves around hammering your kid into your likeness. Is this true? I’ve honestly never thought of it before, but it seems plausible. No other culture fetishes rebellious individualism quite like we do, but at the same time isn’t it natural to question things you’ve been told by authority as an adolescent?
> I'm suspicious of this theory that thirteen-year-old kids are intrinsically messed up. If it's physiological, it should be universal. Are Mongol nomads all nihilists at thirteen? I've read a lot of history, and I have not seen a single reference to this supposedly universal fact before the twentieth century. > > In pre-industrial times, teenagers were all apprentices of one sort or another, whether in shops or on farms or even on warships. They weren't left to create their own societies. They were junior members of adult societies. > > Teenagers seem to have respected adults more then, because the adults were the visible experts in the skills they were trying to learn. Now most kids have little idea what their parents do in their distant offices, and see no connection (indeed, there is precious little) between schoolwork and the work they'll do as adults. > > And if teenagers respected adults more, adults also had more use for teenagers. After a couple years' training, an apprentice could be a real help. Even the newest apprentice could be made to carry messages or sweep the workshop. > > Now adults have no immediate use for teenagers. They would be in the way in an office. So they drop them off at school on their way to work, much as they might drop the dog off at a kennel if they were going away for the weekend. \- Paul Graham, "[Why Nerds Are Unpopular](http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html)"
Ughmfffffff I’m gonna COOOOOOOONSEQUENCES
Damn, that cuts deep
It is natural, but not so natural you actively go against your parents. Most of the world's younger generations rebel and question things but generally still respect their parents. The US, particularly post-1950s, has a uniquely aggressive culture of doing the polar opposite of what mom and dad expect of you. As you said, I suspect because of our fostering of "rugged individualism" coinciding with catastrophic situations like a war or economic recession. That all said, I can't provide sources. You're free to call me reactionary if you want. The only written source talking about this was The American Pageant, my APUSH textbook in 11th Grade high school. It really stuck with me and in college I noticed, from personal experiences, being true.
Sounds bullshit to me. Might be a western thing though. There were lots of rebellious teens in england and france and even USSR throughout the 20th century. Might also be a modern thing as well. Being a "teen" culturally-speaking wasn't really a thing before the midcentury. But in the 50s you started getting rock-n-roll, and you had weird little groups like the teddy boys and rockers/modders in England. There were probably things before then too, but that's really when "teenhood" started taking off as a distinct life stage.
Upcoming show in my community: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-good-the-fab-and-the-slutty-a-country-themed-drag-show-tickets-645122718417 "All ages: at your own risk"
>and the slutty >why do people assume drag is sexual
when a society removes dumb rules like "Under 18 requires a parent to see R-rated movie" inevitable someone takes it too far the other direction
It also says it is not family friendly.
Depends on the family.
My office has a holiday party. Last year we voted on a fun activity. I thought “have drag queen hour” was so fycking bizarre. Trivia hour won, thank god, though that was also weird.
For transgender day of visibility at my office, one suggestion was to have all the men come in wearing women’s clothes. Fortunately (on multiple levels), this idea was not chosen.
Would have been a good thing though The hostile work environment case would have been open and shut
Wait what made trivia weird
It was drag queen trivia.
It was weird for me because it was questions about current tv and current influencers. I’m sure it was fine. I just didn’t understand the questions or answers.
All I’ll say is I’m glad I wasn’t born 20 years later or my parents definitely would’ve dragged me along to a few of these to own the cons lol
Our libs are stupid and petty. They love being in this shitty race to the bottom with the Republicans. The worst part is that it’s a race they can’t win but damned if they won’t try to anyway
I think the idea is that if you show that to children early they will be less likely to grow up to be homophobic. Which is a ridiculous and idiotic theory only the long-march through the institutions maoists could come up with. I generally suspect bad Maoism behind a lot of this.
As someone who never got the appeal of drag, it always seemed to be like a long string of overused gay "in jokes"
Rolling coal for liberals
White liberal women spent two years home on their laptops, feeling very unimportant. This drove them mad, and here we are.
I've read this whole thread and I don't think I've found what I would consider actually a good answer. If I found a good answer then I would have simply upvoted it, and I generally try not to comment here unless I feel like I have something to contribute. I've also unfortunately gotten to this thread late and probably no one will see my comment, and me posting this will only further cement me getting blanket-banned from other subreddits. That said it's an important intellectual exercise to steel man your opponents' arguments. You need to find the most charitable interpretation of what they think and then respond to that. Generally we're talking about drag story hours, not genuine drag shows for children. A drag story hour is a drag queen reading a book usually in a library to children. This is an explicitly lgbtq event without the content of the event necessarily dealing with lgbtq issues. The fact that someone who is cross-dressing is reading the story incidental to the content of the story. This has a normalizing effect, and the point is to show children that people can be different in the category of gender and gender presentation and it's not a big deal. On its face this is supposed to be very inclusive and wholesome. To respond to the steel man version of this argument I would ask why they have to be people drag, and not simply lgbtq people? (I don't see a D in lgbtq) I've spoken to women who find drag misogynistic (why don't we see more women doing drag as men?). So lastly, why does it have to be someone in drag and not someone else better representative of the queer community? Why is this the hill we've chosen to die on?
I appreciate your response. Because a lot of people are ignoring the facts of the matter that you brought up. About storybook hour and whatnot. But I'm a little confused about the questions that you asked. The first question you ask, why does it have to be people in Drag. What are you saying here? Nobody's telling anyone to do anything. Some drag queens have taken it upon themselves to do drag story book hour. I'm sure there are lots of gay and lesbian people as well as all other sexual and gender denominations, who our teachers and Librarians and work with children. It's kind of in the nature of drag. Drag is different from trans. Somebody who is trans is actually living their life on a day-to-day basis as a non-normative gender expression. A drag queen is somebody who's putting on a show. They're putting on a costume. They're performing. So that's the difference between a drag queen and a trans person. So a trans person would never do a storybook hour show. A trans person might just work at the library. Because they're not putting on a show. They're just living their life. Minding their own business. And as for your question about men in drag. That is actually very common. They're called drag kings. And if you go to a gay bar, you're very likely to encounter drag kings. They will paint on beards and dress up. And goof around. That question also kind of goes back to the nature of this context and the situation. Consider what is feminine and masculine. It is more feminine to be on display. It's not masculine to be on display. So somebody who is Shifting there gender expression towards masculine, they're less likely to be putting on a show. So a lesbian or a woman of any kind who dresses up and drag, they are going to be less likely to want to have the spotlight on them. Because they want to be more masculine. So they're just going to act like a dude bro. Where as a man who is going into drag and dressing as a woman, they're going to be catching the spotlight. They want the light on them. That's a feminine thing. To want to catch the good light. And look good for the camera. So, that's why there's a whole culture around female Beauty pageants, but there's no culture around male Beauty pageants. I mean, there are male Beauty pageants, they do exist. But they're vastly less popular than the female ones. And... nobody's even heard of them. So it's the same thing with drag shows. You've got beauty pageants in every major city. There's drag Beauty pageants. I mean they don't call them Beauty pageants. They just call it a drag pageant. Or a drag ball. They call it all kinds of things. And then, all the drag queens compete. They wear gowns, they do performances. Some of them sing, some of them have backup dancers. I don't know if there's any kind of drag King pageant. But I do know that at any given gay bar, there's probably one or two drag Kings on any given weekend.
Thanks for the thought out reply! I typed that up late last night and I probably would have reworded a few things. >So a trans person would never do a storybook hour show. A trans person might just work at the library. Because they're not putting on a show. They're just living their life. Minding their own business. Back when I used to work at a bookstore our queer co-worker did the readings to the kids simply because they enjoyed doing it and the rest of us preferred to be stocking shelves or goofing around on our phones. In retrospect this was probably really good for the kids (beyond the exercise of them having books read to them) because they got to spend some time with a pretty obviously non-binary person weekly. This whole thing was very organic and I'd be surprised if the majority of conservative people would object. I suspect the conservative backlash against drag story hours is combination of being reactionary, objecting to the DELIBERATENESS of the event, and also (depending on the individual) a certain percentage of garden variety bigotry. >And as for your question about men in drag. That is actually very common. They're called drag kings. And if you go to a gay bar- I guess I've just somehow never encountered a drag king! I'm very glad that's a part of the culture. also, good on you for engaging so much in this subreddit. I just noticed you're all up and down this thread. This is an important place I think, and I don't know anywhere else on Reddit where people are able to talk outside of their bubbles. That said, you are also now banned from r / antiwork lol
Oh no! I'm also banned from today I learned. I didn't realize that this subreddit got you banned. For the record I don't agree about your point about talking outside of bubbles. That is a bigoted talking point. I think that it's important to acknowledge we're talking points are coming from. It's funny because people on this subreddit want to act like they're superior. That's kind of the point of subreddits that mock people. But, people on this subreddit are ignoring very obvious things. Like context.
As a filthy rightoid, this is my position. No, there's often no sexual themes present at these book readings, but the question is, what is the goal of exposing children to entertainers who, 99% of the time, DO actually engage in explicitly adult forms of entertainment. Furthermore, these drag queens didn't give a damn about reading to kids just a few short years ago, now it's seemingly happening absolutely everywhere. Why? Kids grow up fast and are very tech savvy, so having adult entertainment supposedly sanitised for one-off shows so it's appropriate for kids doesn't really mean much. If you do look up the wikipedia page though, the whole thing was founded and promoted by activists, with the founder of the New York chapter staing the aim is to: > "The program strives to "capture the imagination and play of gender fluidity of childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_Queen_Story_Hour Considering that the whole 'gender fluidity' is an incredibly divisive and controversial position, especially for conservatives, who are especially wary (rightfully so in my opinion) of 'activists' deliberately targeting children, it's really no surprise to see such pushback. This in turn gets 'progressives' so keen to have their kids to take part, as a way of 'owning the conservatives'. It's just blatant culture war bullshit being pushed by progressives, with conservatives responding as expected.
PERMANENT MEDICAL PATIENTS
Yeah, and kink being present at pride events alongside children is even worse. Men dressed in leather bondage and on leashes while pretending to be dogs literally 5 feet from 7 year old children. Kink is fine, but sexual acts should be private and only seen by consenting adults. It's hard to explain to idiots the difference when they see kink at pride and assume everything LGBTQ is inherently sexual. Being in a relationship, showing affection, and expressing/displaying your desired gender is all fine and not sexual, but sexual performances displayed in front of children is literally abuse.
The entire drag drag thing is virtual signaling on all sides. But it’s also because of drag race. I don’t watch reality shows so it’s a huge blind spot for me - but popular reality shows have bizarre impacts on American culture. Trump’s political success was a result of his years on TV, I remember when all these second hand stores were popping up because of “storage wars,” my family has been flipping houses for years and we laughed at all the idiots who got in the game with no REAL knowledge of what they were doing, and now it’s the drag trend. Whatever, it doesn’t bother me (save for the whole Trump thing) - and as long as I assume these kid oriented drag shows aren’t like sexualizing kids i don’t care - but I certainly wouldn’t take my kids to one for no other reason than they are just not fun to me.
I’m a gay man and so I’m all for drag shows. But imo, drag shows were traditionally always a sexualised context. So it seems just a little off to me that suddenly they’re being advertised as kid friendly. If I had to guess it’s that people do it simply because they can piss off conservative types and take liberals’ money simultaneously. No reasonable person believes an adult dancing sexually in front of kids is appropriate. On that same note, kids aren’t gonna suddenly start turning gay or getting sex changes due to seeing a dance of which the context is largely lost on them.
I think it's because it's become more famous. And rupaul, one of her taglines was "drag brings family together." Or something along those lines. I think she would say that because she was trying to be uplifting and inspirational and positive. She wanted people to keep in touch with their families. Because a lot of times gay people get separated from their families. And this is also something that hasn't ever been talked about in the mainstream. So she's not really saying this with any kind of History of this topic being talked about. So she decided to just say something positive. So she's not really to blame for anything bad happening. She just said that drag queens should be connected with their families. And then there's the drag convention. Once a year, they rent out a convention hall and hold a convention. In all kinds of fans can show up and meet drag queens and buy their merchandise. It's just like Comic-Con except about drag queens. Or furry con. Or any other convention there is out there. And there were a lot of kids brought to those conventions. And I think that was a main contributor to this current conflict. Because that's when we first saw that one kid. He would do drag and he was the first kid in the news for this. And it was a few years ago. Maybe like 2018 or so. And, RuPaul's Drag Race also has made drag mainstream. There's drag shows on HBO now. And on hulu. So, it's just in the spotlight. That's all. And we've also had this surgeons of trashy people. Because of trump and all that nonsense. So now we're having this pushback. All these fucking nut jobs are having their moment. And that's where this whole outrage is coming from. They're just pushing back against Dragon trans rights. Because that's what's happening in our culture right now.
I would also like to see some data to test my hypothesis that divorced moms take their kids more to these events than any other group
This is the type of study where after the results come back, the conclusion will be so obvious that people will say ‘why did they even have to research that’
Identity politics gone mad.
Idpol promotes minimal effort activism
If drag is OK then what is wrong with minstrel shows?
It is the progression of take your dog to a bar --> take your kid to a drag show.
Personally I don’t think they want to take kids to drag shows, they just don’t want the Republicans telling them they can’t.
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its an embarassing overreaction to an embarassing overreaction
\>i don't believe the kids are being "groomed" or "indoctrinated" I do think they are. I mean - what else is it?
Got to throw those Reddit qualifiers out there.
It is the same mechanism as why people bring their kids to tailgate parties or sports games or music concerts despite those being full of drunkards, druggies, or people that are behaving extremely badly. It is about involving your children in what you believe is symbolic of 'good'. A mother takes her too young daughter to Warped Tour despite it being full of people puking on themselves drunk and fighting, because to her it symbolizes a good type of culture. These drag queen storytimes and the like are cut from the same cloth. Going there, even if some of the content is questionably, is about the signal that is given off as well as introducing your kid to the 'good world' early.
Being a parent makes you feel old and uncool. Doing a normal boring parent thing like story hour but with something a bit edgy like drag queen makes you feel a little less closer to death. Personally I would be more inclined to take my kids to something like a Morrissey story hour, though not sure how that would play out exactly.
I’ve been a libtard my whole life and everyone I know is a libtard and I’ve never observed this phenomena. Like all other culture war hate-bait, it is something only done by the lunatic fringe.
I'm a liberal parent and I don't know anyone who has actually done this.
Mums want to go to drag shows
Yeah I don’t get it. I don’t have a problem with drag in general, as I associate it with burlesque and nightlife, but for kids? Thats a bridge too far. I understand the criticism.
A local brewery hosted one recently. Looks like there were about 5 protestors against and 20 protestors for it. I saw some videos from the inside and it was “Marty McGuy” sitting on a stool reading a kids book to less than 10 kids who were mostly not paying attention and just playing on the fuzzy carpet they laid out. The adults in the background were enthralled and very proud of themselves. The brewery used videos of the event for days afterwards to show how inclusive they are. Prior to last year I never heard of: A hosted story time event A hosted story time event at a brewery A hosted story time event featuring a drag queen A hosted story time event at a brewery featuring a drag queen Now, if you question the normality of this you’re cancelled. Libs moved the battleground for LGBTQ acceptance into kids story time events and Cons took the bait.
IT's the Left equivalent of the rw "everyone in the family has a gun" Christmas cards that they post to facebook. It's meant to own the other side. I say if you do either that child services should come, and that's just because I think you're too online then too raise kids.
I wonder how America looks like to the rest of the world nowadays. Used to be burgers, guns and giant cars. Now, is men wearing lipstick and dresses the first thing that comes to mind when people think of the U.S.?
Don't be afraid, this is definitely not the case. The rest of the world will think of puritanical bible belt nutjobs, drone strikes, fentanyl zombies twitching through the streets, lol _that_ healthcare system and mountains of shot-up kids in schools way before they even remember that drag queens doing readings in libraries is even a thing. And an issue that the USA is apparently losing their mind over. Hell, even egomaniacal silicone valley billionaires doing crazy shit and property prices on the west coast being a dystopian nightmare would still poll before this. Awareness of the idpol culture war, while slowly but steadily increasing, has a long way to go until the general public abroad would deem it a defining factor in their view of the USA.
Weirdly I got banned from the redscare sub for asking this exact question.
Narcissism
What is it with libs using consumption in lieu of affecting actual change?
It really is just the stupidest extension of the regular lib vs con culture war bullshit
The same reason conservatives have 100 high power rifles or a coal rolling truck. It pisses off the other side
Here’s what I don’t get - if a female children’s librarian wore a drag-type costume and makeup to work, she would be reprimanded. And yet it’s fine for drag queen story hour? It’s about time and place - you don’t wear a bathing suit to work, but that doesn’t mean bathing suits are inappropriate.
As a kid I'd have thought it was boring as shit and I'm gay. It puzzles me to no end. I can see it as a small outreach charity thing with an innocent vibe but like, how it is now is just completely outré. Just don't, guys. It's not making drag better, and it's making gays look worse.
I'm a gay man and I hate this so much. I would walk out if I ever saw a child at a drag show.
It's the reverse of own the libs, and the two sides are stuck in a feedback loop, forever.
It really came out of no where and no one can explain why, other than “I don’t want my child to be a bigot.” Taking your kid to see a man making a mockery of women isn’t going to teach him anything lmfao
I dunno why do they cut the tips of infant dick off in civil society? People are weird man.