None of the above
When the choice is between Proud Boys and Drag Queen Story Hour:
Authorities in the San Francisco Bay area are investigating a possible hate crime after a group of men stormed into a library where a drag queen was hosting a children’s reading event, and allegedly shouted homophobic and anti-LGBTQ+ slurs.
Why do children’s reading events need drag queens?
I suppose it could be like the old panto Dame, or Edna Everidge, but we’ve seen too many reports of such “reading events” that were not that. I don’t think there’s really any burning need for drag queens to do events at the children’s section of the library.
But I certainly don’t want Proud Boys to be the ones making that point.
Panda Dulce was hosting a Drag Queen Story Hour at the San Lorenzo library on Saturday in celebration of pride month when a group of five men disrupted the event, shouting “tranny” and “pedophile”. The men “attempted to escalate to violence”, Dulce said, and “totally freaked out all of the kids”.
Law enforcement believes the group is affiliated with the far-right Proud Boys.
But what does Pride Month have to do with kids? Kids don’t have sexualities yet. I don’t think Pride Month is for kids.
There are several drag queen story hour programs in the Bay Area, which organizers say offer kid-friendly entertainment while teaching children about diversity and community. “I thought the closet was the loneliest place, but I was wrong. It was being out in the open, vulnerable and alone. Drag Queen Story Hour is so important to me, and for our youth, because it converts our differences from shame into power,” Dulce told the Guardian in 2017.
So in other words it’s for the adults.
Let’s not do that. Let’s not use kids to make adults feel good. There’s plenty of time to learn about drag after puberty; they should have space to be children until then.
Which is not to say the Proud Boys should be breaking up the party.
But the story hours have long faced backlash and criticism from the right and conservative publications, who claim the events are indoctrinating children. This weekend’s story time event was shared by Libs of TikTok, a rightwing anti-LGBTQ+ social media account with more than a million followers, SFGate reported.
Hmm. I’m pretty sure that’s a lie. I’m pretty sure Libs of TikTok is opposed to trans dogma, but that doesn’t make it either right-wing or anti-LGBTQ+MNOP.
The impression I’ve gotten in the anti-woke sphere is that LoTT is very much right-wing and anti-gay. Which still isn’t a vote for drag queens reading to young children.
I mean, it’s not like current activism isn’t making it seem like the homophobes were right about there being an agenda to hypersexualize society, break down the concepts of man and woman, and destroy protections for children.
And don’t think I’m not angry that typing that sentence involved irony.
I don’t think these story hours are promoting sexuality to kids, I think they’re actually more about showing the drag queens as being relatively harmless, and part of the community.
The trouble isn’t with the idea itself per se, it is with the fact that there doesn’t seem to be adequate screening of the drag queens, so you end up with sex offenders doing it.
Part of the problem I have with wokeness is that it tends to see identity before individuality. I mean think of that university where the students and the faculty protested a bakery – after the bakery caught a couple of black students shoplifting.
The bakery won that defamation case. That the shoplifters happened to be black, didn’t mean they weren’t thieves. The students and the university didn’t have a leg to stand on.
There is a reflexive “Well the religious right don’t like this group, therefore this individual is fine” that undercuts a lot of the woke message.
Most of us here I think came to the Terf position from one of relative neutrality or even mild support for trans rights. I know our host did – I saw it happen.
Our journey away from that was punctuated by seeing a lot of trans individuals act appallingly. Saying that trans isn’t a rape threat, when we’ve seen trans activists writing articles aimed at pressuring lesbians into sex doesn’t really wash.
We’ve seen the harassment campaigns, and the rape threats. It isn’t Terfs painting the trans community this way, it is their own activists. It is not simply that they are men, it is that they act like the precise men that female only spaces are designed to exclude.
It is a movement full of people who think that because bigots accuse the group of various misbehaviors, anybody accusing them as individuals of that behavior can be dismissed as a bigot, thus giving them some cover to act according to the stereotype.
And throughout all of this the TRA movement, has been a bad actor. “Respectability politics” used to be something I strictly opposed, but it is important to note that a degree of respectability is required to make one’s case.
I’m a gamer. I was a gamer during Gamergate. I know the stats and the research that shows videogames do not correlate with violence. That case was not helped by violent sexists harassing female journalists and critics, for saying they didn’t like certain bits of certain games.
“Games don’t cause violence, and I’ll murder you for saying they do” does not make for a compelling argument right? “Die cis scum” isn’t something a woman wants to share a bathroom with.
There needs to be a step back on a lot of these activists, to say “hey, maybe this person, and these tactics shouldn’t be part of the movement”. Until that happens, the TRAs are going to continue with these efforts backfiring, because we’ve been given more than ample reason not to trust them when they say they’re not going to be a problem.
Bruce Gorton #3 wrote:
It wasn’t so much the trans transgressors or the denial from the activists, but for me it was the realization that it wouldn’t, couldn’t matter. Even if statistics showed that transwomen are even more likely to offend than other men —51% with criminal histories, say — it wouldn’t change their view that they’re women and should be treated as women in every situation. The whole argument about violence and potential violence is a red herring. It’s like Young Earth Creationists arguing over the dating methods used on rocks when they admit that even if all their criticisms were answered they’d still believe the earth was 6,000 years old because that’s what the Bible shows. It’s not an honest debate.
As for Drag Queen Story Hour, I’ll admit that I can see it as fun & valuable if they’re properly vetted. Gender Identity needn’t come in to it; it’s about gender non-conformity and non-conformity in general. I guess I see Drag Queens as capable of being natural storytellers in the same way I’d view pantomime performers as natural storytellers — extravagant and exaggerated, with humor.
One of Jason Stanley’s twitter-troll defenders has pointed out, in reference to Jane Clare Jones that “most scholars don’t have PowerPoints on hand to explain why they aren’t Nazis.”
https://twitter.com/rossmanofwar/status/1536468364000116736
So one is supposed to stay silent in the face of baseless accusations? Because no genderist has EVER made unfounded claims of hatred, violence and trans-genocide. They would NEVER do that. Never ever. But “misgender” them and they’ll fucking bury you.
The simple accusation of “bigotry” allows any critique or comment from the accused to be ignored, with no need to provide any evidence for the validity of said accusation. At all. In fact, ignoring the points made by people accused of being “Nazis” or “Fascists” or “TERFs” becomes a moral duty. “NO DEBATE!” Blanket, pre-emptive accusations of ultra-right association saves trans activists a lot of work, in the short term, but it keeps them from having to sharpen their debating skills. Maybe not the best strategy in the long run, though. Somehow, somewhere along the line, you’re actually going to have to argue your case to someone and convince them.* Use it or lose it. Some people have been lulled into a false sense of unanswerable moral superiority while they’ve let their debate muscles go soft and flabby, as evidenced by how well Mr. 200 Years has been faring.
*Though the degree of success the movement has achieved through institutional capture and backroom dealing has been extraordinary. But someone was bound to complain, and complain publicly. Women. They forgot about women.Trans activists sought to do a quiet end run around the rights of women. Turns out that was the easy part. They thought that once their fait was accomplied, that would be the end of it, they would have their way unopposed. They completely underestimated the anger and organizational skills of women, who’ve had centuries of practice dealing with being fucked over, figuratively and literally.
Whatever success you’ve had in secret, once the doors are opened and lights are turned on, you’ve got to make your case. If you have no case to make, then the jig is up, and you’re left with nothing but brute power and emotional blackmail to hold onto whatever gains you’ve made. I believe we are, in some jurisdictions at least, well into the beginning of this phase. I believe the tide is turning, with women in the UK in the vanguard.
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