Entertainment featuring cross-dressing has been around for centuries. Usually, it was aimed at adult audiences however.
I recounted before the differences between drag queens, transvestites, and transsexuals. They are not all the same, although there may be overlapping between the three. A drag queen (or king) is someone who dresses in the clothing of opposite gender, generally for the purposes of entertainment. They may or may not be gay, may or may not be transvestites, and may or may not be transsexuals.
With the regard to the last category, I guess the definition of someone dressing in the clothing of "the opposite gender" gets confusing, as there are some "drag queens" who are transsexuals, and thus you could argue this is not "opposite" per se. This gets confusing, which is one reason why people are upset over this whole trend of mainstreaming gender identity issues. What gets annoying is people demanding being called by certain pronouns (who addresses someone by their pronoun? "Excuse me, Him, could you hold the door for me?" That just doesn't happen in real life!). When people make mistakes about gender identification they should not be shouted down for it.
The other day, I was at the grocery story and a lady held the door for me and I said, reflexively, "Thank you, sir!" and she gave me a dirty look. "I mean, ma'am!" I corrected, but it was too late. But she shrugged it off and didn't have me arrested or anything. And no, she was not "trans" or androgynous or anything, just a regular little old lady. I was just old and confused.
People get so offended over everything these days. Sheesh!
Anyway, as I noted in my previous posting, transvestites are people who like to wear the clothing of the opposite gender, either because it makes them feel good (e.g., reduced anxiety issues) or for sexual gratification. Most are heterosexuals. There are many men who wear women's panties all day long, and you'd never know it unless you were a paramedic or an ER nurse. Trust me, they've seen it all. And there are even women who wear men's clothing because they like to. I dated a woman who liked to wear boy's underwear. But that's another story. She said it was a lot cheaper to buy!
The transgender thing is something I don't understand. Folks claim they were given the wrong equipment at birth and they can only be happy if they switch teams. Now there are some people who are born hermaphroditic - having both sets of genitals. In the past, doctors would "correct" this with surgery, by removing one set. Some folks who went through this felt that they were forced into a gender construct they were not comfortable with.
In recent years, however, it seems everyone wants to change genders or create new ones and this is meeting with a lot of push-back. It seems that the smallest slice of opinion these days gets the biggest megaphone. To hear the media tell the story, you'd think half the country is having sex-change surgery next week. But I don't think that is the actual case.
What worries me about this whole thing is that when you popularize something like that in the media, people will jump on the bandwagon without thinking about it. I mentioned before that it seems the media is selling homosexuality like soap flakes - advertising it in magazines like "Out!" where an entire lifestyle is packaged for consumption. You need to buy this car, drink that beer, and do those drugs - it is a package deal! Some folks may jump on the bandwagon, without thinking of whether they belong on it, or maybe it just looked like fun at the time.
And people are conformists, too. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, there was a look (and lifestyle) called the "gay clone" look. Men would vie to be thin and muscular and all have the same haircut and mustache - sort of a Freddy Mercury/Tom of Finland/Ned Flanders kind of look. You'd go to a gay bar and everyone looked the same. It became somewhat comical - almost a joke - at one point, and as a result, the "gay clone" look became unfashionable, almost overnight.
There is another gay "look" today - with tattoos, piercings, odd-colored hair, and weird fussy clothing. It makes me feel old, sometimes. Mark and I just shake our heads. We have no intention of squandering money by defacing ourselves for the fickle fate of fashion - nor to end up looking like everyone else. It is funny, I guess, that so many gay groups exhort people to "be themselves!" but look on with suspicion at anyone who doesn't fit the mold.
But I digress. The topic was Drag Shows.
We've been to a few, and they vary all over the place. At one campground they had a "Ms. Florida Drag Queen" contest, with contestants from all over the State who had won local drag contests and were now competing for the State title. It was amazing. Many of the contestants had backup singers and dancers, all in matching costume, and the drag queens themselves were, well, if you could tell they weren't women, you're lying!
I asked someone how these drag queens found 10 backup dancers and they told me that many work in the theme parks in Orlando as entertainers (not in drag, of course) and their friends who are also dancers, work with them as a group. It was a pretty amazing show and I was floored by how much work they put into it and how professionally it was done.
These were not the campy old-time drag shows I was used to. There are plenty of those as well - with drag queens telling off-color jokes and doing campy routines and lip-syncing (sometimes well, sometimes not) to torch songs or old-time country-and-western. They are a lot of fun and the level of skill and professionalism varies all over the map.
Drag queen bingo is a lot of fun, too, and sometimes the prizes are a little ribald. The jokes are corny and off-color. But it is a good time and I have won hundreds of dollars at it (no, really!). There is usually drinking involved, too.
The bottom line for most of these drag shows is that they are aimed at an adult audience. 99.9% of them are not aimed at children or even allow children in the audience. The few "Drag Queen Story Hours" that exist are just someone in drag reading a story - not some ribald lip-synching contest. Indeed, in a gay campground or a bar, no one under 21 is usually admitted (or 18 at the very least). Why someone would want to read stories to very young children, in drag, seems a bit odd at first - and no, I am not sure I understand it either. But I doubt it is an attempt at indoctrination or "grooming" and it is not something a kid would stumble upon but something his parents would take them to.
Of course, as I noted above, there has always been "mainstream" cross-dressing for entertainment, although usually it was done as a gag. Milton Berle, one of the pioneers of early television, regularly appeared in drag. When I was a kid, it was Flip Wilson, and his "Geraldine" act. I suppose you could argue that Fred Rodgers, voicing "Lady Elaine" (a puppet that I think we can all say, we hated) was also doing a little gender-bending. PeeWee Herman is an example of an androgynous children's entertainer, although he has fallen from grace in more recent times.
So there is historical precedence for children's entertainment which includes cross-dressing or gender androgyny. If you don't think this is appropriate for your children, don't let them watch it. No one is forcing kids to go to "Drag Queen Story Time" from what I can tell. It sounds like the kind of thing that parents would have to take their kids to see - not something children would stumble upon.
So it seems like these people "protesting" Drag Queen Story Time are not worried about their own kids being "indoctrinated" (indeed, the incels who "patrol" with AR-15s at libraries don't have any kids, anyway) but are instead worried about the parenting decisions of other people, which is really none of their business.
I am not sure, as a kid, I would have liked Drag Queen Story Hour. Most small children are afraid of clowns, mall Santas, and children's entertainers in general. I know I cried like a little bitch when Mommy put me on Santa's lap. Who was this strange dude? Maybe it was latent autism, or just kids don't like unfamiliar things - hence why they fixate on certain foods early on. Kids like comfort and predictability.
But I digress, yet again.
Drag Queen Story Time won't scar children for life - anymore than taking them to an evangelical church would. In fact, based on the stories I read online, it seems more young people are scarred by fundamentalist religions and cults (again, redundant) than anything else. I am not sure that children of liberal parents who took them to a G-rated drag show are going to melt down when they turn 20. Nor are their parents likely to throw them out of the house and disown them, when they "come out" as Republicans.
No, no. That only works the other way around.
Of course, the people protesting these events would have no problem with "Assault Rifle Story Hour" for their kids - if they even had any - and in fact, that sort of has been a thing, every year, with predictable results. These responsible concerned parents are so worried that someone else's kid might be scarred for life seeing some guy in bad drag reading Little Red Riding Hood, but at the same time, leave loaded handguns lying around the house.
But we're not allowed to talk about that. The CDC, until recently, wasn't allowed to even publish statistics about it. Scary stuff.
But thank God those Republicans are protecting other people's children from Drag Queens reading fairy tales!
That shit is deadly!
UPDATE: I heard a joke online:
"I am against men in dresses reading fairy tales to children!"
"You mean Catholic Priests?"
Sort of sums it up. Who has the real track record of "grooming?"
