Now the CBS news story about this states that the Florida law is part of a set of "anti-transgender" bills that were recently signed into law, and that is a weird thing to say. Drag shows are no more connected to transgender issues than minstrel shows are to black issues. Indeed, as I have discovered when reading up on this to try to understand the controversy, those two sorts of entertainment bear a number of similarities: they both came to be about the same time, both initially involved American black culture (the first one on record was a formerly enslaved performer in Washington, D.C.), and both involve someone who is not X impersonating X in a highly exaggerated way for the entertainment value of that. Minstrel shows and blackface are now regarded as entirely inappropriate and racist (which they are), but drag shows -- which involve usually-but-not-always-gay men impersonating women -- are widely accepted and enjoyed in major cities to this day.
What they are not is in any way transgender. A drag performer is no more claiming to "really" be female than a performer in a minstrel show is trying to present himself as actually black. I wonder if the accidental linkage -- a biological male dressing as a woman -- is causing confusion on both sides, as neither Florida Republicans nor CBS seems clear on the distinction. That might explain why we are suddenly having a nationwide fight over drag culture.
I have myself never been to a drag show, so I am not positioned to comment on them with any depth, but they are a long-established part of Americana. They are a fringe activity that nobody has been very exercised about for decades at least. I remember there was a drag revue down in Savannah when I lived there, and I don't remember there ever being the slightest trouble about it; people I knew who went enjoyed themselves, and the rest of us just walked on past without stopping in. Like many other fringe parts of American culture, it has managed to exist without causing a major disturbance. Suddenly, everyone is talking about it.
It's not like we don't have a lot of actual problems in the country right now, from inflation and economics to a collapsing military to a corrupt government to an electoral system that has lost the faith of the people. It's weird that, among all of this, what people choose to get exercised about is drag shows.
18 comments:
I feel like something is being left out here. Other than for audiences of children, Republicans are no more concerned about drag shows than they have ever been.
What they are concerned about is all of the drag stuff that has been put on specifically for children over the last few years. That's why the laws make them legally adult performances.
It is a reaction to the Democratic insistence that drag shows are perfectly wholesome entertainment and that they should specifically be put on for children. I think the connection w/ the trans issue for them is that drag shows for children are seen as a way to get children to accept the idea of nonbinary gender. But that's just my opinion.
I endorse Tom's point, Grim. There is and long has existed a minority that wants to shut down or at least ghetto-ize "adult entertainment"> That includes performances by fully clothed pole dancers or half-naked beer waitresses, or outright strippers. Yeah, that faction isn't thrilled with drag performers, either. But the newer reactions arise from the provocation of recent re-definition of "sex" education (for pubescent students) to "gender awareness" (for elementary school students, even toddlers). Drag Queen story hour for pre-readers? Fairy Queens with beards, glittery wings, hairy legs and tutus? No, that's over several lines, and every line crossed adds another sub-faction of opponents to the "progressive" agenda.
I do realize (and did mention) that the laws target performance in the presence of minors. Even so, a felony? For an artistic performance, in whatever taste? Here we aren’t talking about anything being forced on anyone; the kids are being taken to these things by their parents. Wouldn’t I normally object to the government daring to tell parents how to raise their children, as if the state knew better?
I was replying to what I took as your main contention that the conservative reaction was weird. You didn't mention the recent push to put on drag shows and other drag events for kids, and to get kids to perform in drag as well, which together were the causes of the conservative reaction. If understanding the current conflict over drag shows is important, then surely the initiating movement to target kids is an essential factor.
It's just not the case that conservatives have suddenly became upset with the long-established norms of drag culture. It's the new norms that have them up in arms.
As for parental choice, it's been a long-standing practice to keep kids out of strip clubs and bars and other adult spaces, so it's not really a break with past norms to keep them out of drag performances. Should it be a crime for parents to take kids into strip clubs or bars? What about having strippers in thongs and pasties read to kids at the public library?
Also, some of these events were in public spaces like libraries, so families could just walk in unaware of what was going on. Or, unaccompanied children could be at the library with the parents back home completely unaware of the drag event. Another part of the change in drag culture has been to push it increasingly into public spaces.
I think your point about drag being closer to woman-face than trans is spot on. But I still think the left uses drag to push an anti-binary / gender spectrum belief system on children. They know childhood is when key value systems are formed and so they must target children to accomplish their goals.
Perhaps what struck me as an explicit mention of that did not strike you as adequately explicit; in talking about how the push was to define drag shows as 'explicitly adult entertainment," I thought I was clear that the push was to ban minors from being exposed to it.
As for parental choice, it's been a long-standing practice to keep kids out of strip clubs and bars and other adult spaces, so it's not really a break with past norms to keep them out of drag performances. Should it be a crime for parents to take kids into strip clubs or bars? What about having strippers in thongs and pasties read to kids at the public library?
Should it be a felony to do those things?
Also, some of these events were in public spaces like libraries, so families could just walk in unaware of what was going on.
My concern about the public space events actually runs the other way: ANTIFA and aligned groups have deployed to prevent people from entering what is really a public space during these events, supposedly 'to protect the children' from scary right-wingers. In Maryland, at least, the police have just let them do it, even though that means denying citizens access to public facilities at the will of a mob. On the other hand, I suppose it does mean that no one will be exposed to the performance without knowing it's going on.
What I'm saying is that the sudden conservative concern w/ drag shows was a reaction to lefties pushing drag events for kids, which you did not mention.
Imagine someone on Dec. 8, 1941, talking about Americans' sudden weird anger at Japan without mentioning Pearl Harbor. There were events that led up to conservatives sudden new concern w/ drag shows that explain that concern.
Anyway, on the felony part, I really don't know. Our criminal justice system doesn't make sense to me, and it seems to be only getting weirder.
For comparison, I checked on a roughly similar crime in Oklahoma. Indecent exposure is a first-time felony w/ up to a $500 fine and a year in jail. It is also considered a sex crime and will put the perp on the sex offender list.
Is that appropriate? Putting a first-time offender for indecent exposure on the sex offender list seems extreme, but I don't know whether it should be a felony or not. However, given the comparison, making repeated offenses felonies doesn't sound disproportionate to laws currently on the books.
How should this stuff be decided? Should it focus on deterrence, or proportionality to the offense? Or something else? I don't know. What do you think?
So, to start with, I don’t think this is new. The Wikipedia page says the story hour thing has been going on since 2015, but it only became a focus of interest rather suddenly after seven years of practice.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_Queen_Story_Hour
They of course attribute this to conservatives’ conspiracy theories and moral panic, which is irrational in nature. That is in line with the American left/center theory that philosophical objections to LGBTQ behavior is always and only irrational in nature; that was encoded in the SCOTUS decision on gay marriage. That rationalists from Aristotle to Kant held otherwise is ignored; but I think that if you could pin them down, they’d give a kind of Freudian explanation that Kant etc were merely rationalizing an irrational fear.
Nevertheless it does still leave a weird fact that, after seven years, suddenly state legislators are treating this as one of the most pressing problems in America. It’s not like Pearl Harbor; it’s be like ignoring Pearl Harbor until 1949.
As for prison, I think it is 100% ineffective at rehabilitation, but is an effective incubator for worse crimes and gang formation. If we must maintain a government that engages in punishing citizens, I would recommend replacing prisons entirely with fines, work details, corporal punishment, and capital punishment. This really seems like a fine situation, work detail at worst.
The conservative reaction to drag queen story hour and attempts to involve children in drag shows is neither new nor weird. The increased attention to it by conservatives is due to the increased frequency of such activities and initiatives by LGTBQ activists.
When this this phenomena (drag queen story hour) first showed up it was a very rare fringe activity that occurred almost exclusively in the bluest of blue enclaves. However, as the frequency of such incidents spread and began to include drag shows designed for, and targeting, children concern about such activities naturally began to grow. This concern became even more pronounced once videos of these drag shows came to light. Some of the videos I have seen show children putting dollar bills in the outfits of the performers who are dancing around in a sexual nature like strippers.
I don't understand why growing concern over the overt attempts to expose children to bizarre sexual behavior would be considered weird. It seems like a healthy societal reaction to such things. Furthermore, I think making such grooming behavior a felony is perfectly reasonable and, once again, a healthy societal reaction.
As you noted, drag shows have been around for decades, and largely uncontroversial-- like you, I just walked on by. I would say that this became an issue, because some activists chose to make it an issue, by making it more and more "in your face" to the normies. Moving it from indoor performances to outdoor events (everything from Pride Parades to, apparently, even baseball games and Navy ships these days)... where "not participating" isn't an option. But that still wasn't drumming up suitable scandal, so the drag events have to move to children to get a response. What I remember kicking off the sense of outrage was when school field trips were taken to drag bars for this, and photos of elementary school children being encouraged to stick dollar bills into the drag queen's underwear, as noted. Oh, and of course, the fact that multiple DQSH performers turned out later to be sex offenders.
I'd say, the kerfuffle was manufactured by the QWERTYs, not the conservatives-- imagine that, drag queens acting like drama queens, who'd'a thunk it?
Can't say I'm particularly distraught at the thought that men who expose themselves repeatedly to minors will eventually cross the line into felony charges-- since, the misdemeanor charges and fines are clearly not deterring them, after all. Beating them up is a better option? Work gangs? Are they going back home at nights, to repeat offend? Because if you're keeping them in detention at night also-- haven't you just re-invented prison?
Janet
The two drag shows I've seen parts of (in clubs, over 21 only) involved portions that mimicked sexual fetish activities and included mock-coitus on stage, as well as guys showing off their outfits. The men-mocking-women part of the drag shows today is irritating, but the overt sexual stuff strikes me as anything but family friendly. Felony-level? If it had the strap-ons and other fetish gear and so on, AND had children approaching the performers or vice versa, it might be close, in my opinion. That's edging into grooming, as I see it.
Having activists loudly proclaim that if you don't like kids going to drag shows, you hate trans-gender people and want to kill them doesn't help clarify the matter.
LittleRed1
Having activists loudly proclaim that if you don't like kids going to drag shows, you hate trans-gender people and want to kill them doesn't help clarify the matter.
Actually, it clarifies things a great deal. The goal, as with child mutilation in the form of transgendering hormone drugs and/or surgery--an extreme (so far) version of racist and sexist identity politics--is to weaken to the point of failure American society by destroying the culture* that made us so great as a nation. Drag queen shows aimed at children are one front in that assault.
Calling us transgender haters and murderers is an aspect of the Left's tactic for shutting down debate when they have no rational argument to make; it's another shiv in the "you're racist if you disagree with me" attack.
*Keep in mind: the leadership of the Progressive-Democratic Party have loudly proclaimed that Party's goal is to fundamentally transform our nation. It isn't possible to fundamentally transform something without first destroying it. Party understands that fully; we need to, also, and take appropriate action.
Eric Hines
It sounds as if the discussion about prison and alternatives might deserve a separate post.
"Beating them up is a better option? Work gangs? Are they going back home at nights, to repeat offend? Because if you're keeping them in detention at night also-- haven't you just re-invented prison?"
I was not planning on it, no. The concept is to fine people for small matters, assign them to pick up trash on the highways or work on other sorts of projects for minor matters, and then to move to whippings or the like for serious matters and death for really dire things. Repeat offenders could reasonably be moved up the scale, so that even just a repeat shoplifter could end up getting whipped or killed. In every case, the idea is for the punishment to be carried out at once and then over.
The concept is that prison entails warehousing millions of people (over one million at any given time, but millions over the years), which requires then also diverting a substantial part of our productive-age worker population to being prison guards; and it doesn't work anyway. All it does is create networking and training opportunities inside prison, nurture gangs, and then turn out unemployable people for whom some sort of crime may be the only way of making money, and who now have the contacts and training to engage in that crime. It's a terrible system.
I think some people will be convinced of the importance of reform by an expensive fine; others may need much harsher treatment before the clarity descends upon them; and some may not be reformable at all, in which case hanging them or the like is the only way to clear the world of them.
Even if I agreed with your conceptual prisonless society, I can't see where you ever get a large enough percentage of the population to go along with it. They barely hang onto the death penalty for heinous crimes as it is, they aren't going to go for expanding that and capital punishment of the non-fatal kind either.
So then the question is what do we do about prisons if we can't get rid of them?
Or maybe the question really is how do we raise fewer criminals? What sort of society has lower criminality but still retains freedoms?
Nothing like America is or is apt to become. Small, socially coherent societies do pretty well; but that ship has sailed.
Still, I should point out that you may be on the wrong track in thinking that it’s necessary to persuade anyone. These prisons may not be sustainable. Only a society as fantastically wealthy as America has been could afford to house, feed, and provide health care to more than a million people who also have to be guarded full-time. As the national economy suffers under the current leadership, it may become necessary to find a cheaper way of dealing with the problem.
Actually, I think a reasonable case could be made for using corporal punishment instead of prison for many lesser crimes. Even if only put in economic terms, that makes sense.
Social engineering is another thing altogether with no guaranteed results. The main problem is the breakdown of the traditional family, but what can government do about that? Certainly, the government could look at any of its actions that are pushing that breakdown and stop doing them, but beyond that it gets sketchy.
Maybe you could teach pro-family stuff in the public schools. I dunno.
What do you think, douglas?
Grim It’s really about pushing pedophilia on innocent children.
They need to hang from the nearest Lampost
Greg
Tom, I think these kinds of proposals are really quite *sensible*, but in our hyper-safe, comfortable, and clean modern life, I can't see enough people agreeing to it- they'll call it barbaric, medieval (as if that were an insult), and the like. They don't know what happens in prison really, and don't want to- and they *like* it that way, and intend to keep it that way. Not their problem. This goes hand in hand with a more accepting of socialistic policies population that doesn't want the messy, chaotic nature of freedom near as much as they want comfort and ease.
There's a reason our ancestors fled across the seas to get here. They were the adventurous ones- the ones who would value freedom despite it's messiness and unpredictability.
If we were that kind of people again, maybe these ideas could get traction. Until then, I think we're stuck with prisons, and bad ones at that.
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