Well-done! We need careful and nuanced discussions of issues like this one that have become frontline battles in the culture war (with no real upsides for libraries, as you describe).
From the first launch of drag queen story time, I don't recall there being any discussions of what, exactly, libraries were trying to accomplish with it. https://hxlibraries.substack.com/p/free-to-be
I don't think there is much librarians can (or should) do about DQSH if there is a large contingent of silly parents who want these events to happen so they can be seen taking their kids to them.
I also don't think there is much librarians can (or should) do if Matt Walsh types turn up to angrily protest these events, as long as they are only using their words and not pushing and shoving (though I do lament that such protests merely drive the silly parent dynamic I mentioned first).
What I hope will happen in the longer term is that the conversation shifts such that DQSH comes to be seen as embarrassing, regressive, and deeply uncool. Taking boys and girls to see a performance of womanface, fake boobs pushed up to the clavicle, a ton of slap on a smirking man, all of it emerging from a creaky tradition of men laughing at women, is putting a plate full of sexualized misogynist poison in front of tender, trusting little hearts and minds and instructing them to dig in early and often.
thoughtful people who care about love and equality are looking at you and shaking their damn heads at your terrible choices.
First, why does a thoughtful writer chose to be anonymous? Second, how does one define neutrality? (I have written about this myself.) Third, why do we assume drag queen story times are about conversion, instead of simple experience?
I never thought DQSH was abt conversion. I always thought it was a performance to make women seem shallow. I also think that Youth Services librarians skills are seen as easily given away to a pretty face.
I have not known any DQs so my reaction is based only on pictures and videos. I have only known 1 woman who even came close to looking like the DQ performers. I feel the whole enterprise makes fun of women. And I know this is a gut reaction, not an informed one.
Hi Joyce, we invite anonymous articles in case anyone is worried about "cancellation" or concerned about potentially losing their jobs, since these issues can be very controversial. We have some other articles about library neutrality that you may be interested in. Here is one recent example: https://hxlibraries.substack.com/p/library-neutrality-and-pluralism
If you haven't already, I recommend scrolling through some of the old posts on this stack to find more perspectives on library neutrality. Since you mention having written about this topic before, please feel free to submit a guest article: https://forms.gle/x9kYoGXRyr6UGhw17
Thoughtful article. I would also add an additional critique of DQST: that it does not constitutes a high quality early literacy experience that is congruent with what well trained library staff normally offer. Public library storytimes are not just about entertainment or reading a book to a bunch of little kids. Intelligently presented using best practices supported by research, storytimes help small children develop specific early literacy skills. They also implicitly provide training for parents and caregivers on how to support early literacy development.. (For example: not everyone might know that engaging the child in the content of the picture book by asking questions throughout is better for learning than just reading the text. But they can learn that from watching the storytime librarian.)
My feeling about DQSH is not as smart as this discussion. I have always felt the enterprise is demeaning to women, makes fun of women. There isn't an equivalent Drag King Story hour is there? My reaction is not intellectual at all, just feel like DQSH is another way that men belittle women.
But it's mostly a "particular" kind of man, isn't it? I've known some. Not all gay men belittle women; but many do. I remember listening in on on one conversation between such once where words like "bovine", "cows" and "breeders" were flying around with lots of laughter. One was a queen.
I heard someone call a pregnant woman friend "a breeder." It was hurtful and it wasn't a jest, more a derogatory statement. I don't think DQSH performers model pregnant women, tho. Pregnancy and childbirth are the unglamorous side of being a woman so aren't (that I have see/read) part of the performances. I may be wrong.
Women as "fish", or on RuPaul's drag race the acronym "Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve, Talent" ha ha ha ha spells what ha ha ha. It's incredibly misogynist.
yeah -- it's so interesting that parents will take their small kids to see a man dressed that way but if they turned up on day 1 of kindergarten and the young woman teacher were dressed in heels, fishnets, pancake makeup, a miniskirt and bustier with her cleavage pushed up to her chin they'd completely freak out. It's really not about liberating everybody's self-expression, it's just about pandering to misogyny.
Anybody considering attending or hosting DQST might benefit from hearing the purpose of DQST from queer theorists directly by reading this academic paper “written collaboratively by an education scholar and a drag queen involved in organizing DQSH” and titled: “Drag pedagogy: The playful practice of queer imagination in early childhood” by Harper Keenan and Lil Miss Hot Mess. “This article…contextualizes the programme within the landscape of gender in education as well as within the world of drag, and argues that Drag Queen Story Hour provides a generative extension of queer pedagogy into the world of early childhood education. Drawing on the work of José Esteban Muñoz, the authors discuss five interrelated elements of DQSH that offer early childhood educators a way into a sense of queer imagination: play as praxis, aesthetic transformation, strategic defiance, destigmatization of shame, and embodied kinship. Ultimately, the authors propose that “drag pedagogy” provides a performative approach to queer pedagogy that is not simply about LGBT lives, but living queerly.” “In what follows, we begin by addressing legacies of schooling and its role in teaching children about gender norms and other aspects of personhood. We offer a brief background on drag, analysing it not only in terms of its gender disruptions, but also its own vernacular pedagogies and community engagement. In the second half of the article, we describe the kinds of knowledge that drag pedagogy can share with children (of all ages). We focus on five interrelated themes: play as praxis, aesthetic transformation, strategic defiance, camp and its relationship to stigma, and embodied kinship. Ultimately, we suggest that drag pedagogy offers one model for learning not simply about queer lives, but how to live queerly. And we’re living for it.” “Building in part from queer theory and trans studies, queer and trans pedagogies seek to actively destabilize the normative function of schooling through transformative education” “it is undeniable that DQSH participates in many of these tropes of empathy, from the marketing language the programme uses to its selection of books. Much of this is strategically done in order to justify its educational value” “In discussing the work of DQSH within our social circles, we have occasionally encountered critiques that DQSH is sanitizing the risqué nature of drag in order to make it “family friendly.” “It may be that DQSH is “family friendly,” in the sense that it is accessible and inviting to families with children, but it is less a sanitizing force than it is a preparatory introduction to alternate modes of kinship. Here, DQSH is “family friendly” in the sense of “family” as an old-school queer code to identify and connect with other queers on the street.”https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03626784.2020.1864621
I'm just not seeing why it's the business of librarians -- qua librarians -- to be decoding these events into objectionable political or ideological viewpoint advocacy (and then using that interpretative procedure to rationalize a case against hosting them); or even why it should matter what political or ideological viewpoint events a library hosts might be conveying. What is the principle at work behind singling out these events over others for such decoding?
It's one thing if, out of expediency, a library declines to host such events because, say, it's located in a Red flyover state where doing so would risk jeopardizing essential functioning of a library (via, for instance, a public backlash leading to defunding). It's another to see librarians trying to intellectually justify doing so. This strikes me as eerily similar in spirit to stories of woke librarians preventing access to books that don't chime with their pieties.
I suspect it’s due to the reason libraries do host them are due to ideological viewpoint. They host them and do so saying they are doing so for ideological reasons (perhaps only in internal communication though). So then staff try to counter that statement with a different ideological point. Which does seem like a trap based on your comments. Your insight is helpful. Best to not play that game so one does not end up censoring!
Hi Bridget, Thanks for your response. I was suggesting the author should define how they were using the concept of neutrality, since it is a vague word that folks use pretty willy-nilly. It's not that I think they should use a particular definition, just tell us what they mean by it. I am always in favor of defining terms. While I understand why someone would chose to be anonymous, out of personal anxiety for the impact of sharing their thoughts, I think that raises more issues than the one it resolves. For me, it diminishes the significance of what they have to say. Owning our thoughts in the face of controversy is what gives our thoughts credibility. We need to be able to manage the criticism that comes our way when we share our understanding. It is the discourse that I think matters most. But I appreciate that "hxlibraries" makes those thoughts at least possible. We are having some discussion, here, yes?
That's a very fair critique! I agree that it would be preferable if people could share their convictions more openly without feeling the need to be anonymous, and being able to put a face and a name behind an idea adds credibility and weight. I find it unfortunate that, as much as many of us would like to be able to stand up that way, the reality is that the risk is often too high. My hope is that as this substack and HxLibraries grow, there may be more support for diverse viewpoints!
In a profession adjacent to many of the sort of easily-angered ideologues who will gladly do all they can to destroy the careers of those who will not agree with them, I think anonymity is very understandable. A topic like this is especially rife with that danger, as there are many who somehow conflate having a view on something with attacking someone else. I'm working on a piece for this very Substack called "You Might Be a Dangerous Ideologue" (based on that "You Might Be a Redneck" guy's comedy).
"If you refuse to respect, listen to or see as human those who cannot, will not and, ultimately, do not agree with you on those issues you really, really want to discuss...you might be a Dangerous Ideologue."
"If somebody has views on something that don't align with yours and you think that means they hate you, want to round you up and gas you...you might be a Dangerous Ideologue."
This particular topic, unfortunately, inspires just those kinds of ideologues to be as interpersonally destructive as they can.
>>> I think that raises more issues than the one it resolves. For me, it diminishes the significance of what they have to say. Owning our thoughts in the face of controversy is what gives our thoughts credibility. <<<
I disagree with the article's conclusion and don't see how knowing who the author is would help make their argument more persuasive or credible. (It does cause me to fancifully speculate that they are a politically conservative librarian seeking an intellectually respectable veneer for their dislike of drag queen events happening in libraries, but that's completely immaterial.) Owning our thoughts in the face of controversy is what (when it does) gives *us as persons* expressing those thoughts credibility, not our thoughts themselves.
Same applies to pieces in Journal of Controversial Ideas whose authors are anonymous: they can be evaluated on the merits of their content without regard for their source: https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/
I don't see how that applies to assessing the content of the articles the journal publishes. (But the prestigious editorial board definitely predisposes me to expect generally high quality content, which has been the case so far!)
I thought one of the most salient points of the article was that libraries should be able to choose to either host DQST or not to host it. And also I suspect the idea is proposed to host it frequently or infrequently. It sounds like the author was saying DQST is fine but does have legitimate flaws and legitimate benefits. Since both have to be considered, a library should be allowed to choose it as a program sometimes, never, always or rarely. But with all of these choices there is always public critique so it’s likely exhausting and likely very hard for operations. It does sound like they are leaning towards not hosting it at all despite its benefits given it’s flaws and how there are other ways to achieve what the program is offering in a less contentious way without all the stress?
Thank you for a thoughtful and balanced assessment of this highly contentious issue and its implications for public libraries.
Well-done! We need careful and nuanced discussions of issues like this one that have become frontline battles in the culture war (with no real upsides for libraries, as you describe).
From the first launch of drag queen story time, I don't recall there being any discussions of what, exactly, libraries were trying to accomplish with it. https://hxlibraries.substack.com/p/free-to-be
I don't think there is much librarians can (or should) do about DQSH if there is a large contingent of silly parents who want these events to happen so they can be seen taking their kids to them.
I also don't think there is much librarians can (or should) do if Matt Walsh types turn up to angrily protest these events, as long as they are only using their words and not pushing and shoving (though I do lament that such protests merely drive the silly parent dynamic I mentioned first).
What I hope will happen in the longer term is that the conversation shifts such that DQSH comes to be seen as embarrassing, regressive, and deeply uncool. Taking boys and girls to see a performance of womanface, fake boobs pushed up to the clavicle, a ton of slap on a smirking man, all of it emerging from a creaky tradition of men laughing at women, is putting a plate full of sexualized misogynist poison in front of tender, trusting little hearts and minds and instructing them to dig in early and often.
thoughtful people who care about love and equality are looking at you and shaking their damn heads at your terrible choices.
That's perfect. Completely agree. Librarians seem at best to be caught in the middle of a bizarre cross-fire.
First, why does a thoughtful writer chose to be anonymous? Second, how does one define neutrality? (I have written about this myself.) Third, why do we assume drag queen story times are about conversion, instead of simple experience?
I never thought DQSH was abt conversion. I always thought it was a performance to make women seem shallow. I also think that Youth Services librarians skills are seen as easily given away to a pretty face.
Yes, I can understand how drag shows can appear that way. But I have known too many drag queens in my life to assume that is always true.
I have not known any DQs so my reaction is based only on pictures and videos. I have only known 1 woman who even came close to looking like the DQ performers. I feel the whole enterprise makes fun of women. And I know this is a gut reaction, not an informed one.
Hi Joyce, we invite anonymous articles in case anyone is worried about "cancellation" or concerned about potentially losing their jobs, since these issues can be very controversial. We have some other articles about library neutrality that you may be interested in. Here is one recent example: https://hxlibraries.substack.com/p/library-neutrality-and-pluralism
If you haven't already, I recommend scrolling through some of the old posts on this stack to find more perspectives on library neutrality. Since you mention having written about this topic before, please feel free to submit a guest article: https://forms.gle/x9kYoGXRyr6UGhw17
Thoughtful article. I would also add an additional critique of DQST: that it does not constitutes a high quality early literacy experience that is congruent with what well trained library staff normally offer. Public library storytimes are not just about entertainment or reading a book to a bunch of little kids. Intelligently presented using best practices supported by research, storytimes help small children develop specific early literacy skills. They also implicitly provide training for parents and caregivers on how to support early literacy development.. (For example: not everyone might know that engaging the child in the content of the picture book by asking questions throughout is better for learning than just reading the text. But they can learn that from watching the storytime librarian.)
The Apolitical Librarian blog has a post: "A Neutral Way to Think About Drag Events for Children" https://apoliticallibrarian.wordpress.com/2022/07/18/a-neutral-way-to-think-about-drag-events-for-children/?fbclid=IwAR2ZdPTh_zuYE38f-8z3FsmeQTTpRP45PvOHAa3as3a4nAg2Bh4wDBvlrAQ
My feeling about DQSH is not as smart as this discussion. I have always felt the enterprise is demeaning to women, makes fun of women. There isn't an equivalent Drag King Story hour is there? My reaction is not intellectual at all, just feel like DQSH is another way that men belittle women.
But it's mostly a "particular" kind of man, isn't it? I've known some. Not all gay men belittle women; but many do. I remember listening in on on one conversation between such once where words like "bovine", "cows" and "breeders" were flying around with lots of laughter. One was a queen.
I heard someone call a pregnant woman friend "a breeder." It was hurtful and it wasn't a jest, more a derogatory statement. I don't think DQSH performers model pregnant women, tho. Pregnancy and childbirth are the unglamorous side of being a woman so aren't (that I have see/read) part of the performances. I may be wrong.
Women as "fish", or on RuPaul's drag race the acronym "Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve, Talent" ha ha ha ha spells what ha ha ha. It's incredibly misogynist.
I'm with you Kathleen (and Kathleen!) Womanhood as a costume strikes me as very misogynist.
yeah -- it's so interesting that parents will take their small kids to see a man dressed that way but if they turned up on day 1 of kindergarten and the young woman teacher were dressed in heels, fishnets, pancake makeup, a miniskirt and bustier with her cleavage pushed up to her chin they'd completely freak out. It's really not about liberating everybody's self-expression, it's just about pandering to misogyny.
Anybody considering attending or hosting DQST might benefit from hearing the purpose of DQST from queer theorists directly by reading this academic paper “written collaboratively by an education scholar and a drag queen involved in organizing DQSH” and titled: “Drag pedagogy: The playful practice of queer imagination in early childhood” by Harper Keenan and Lil Miss Hot Mess. “This article…contextualizes the programme within the landscape of gender in education as well as within the world of drag, and argues that Drag Queen Story Hour provides a generative extension of queer pedagogy into the world of early childhood education. Drawing on the work of José Esteban Muñoz, the authors discuss five interrelated elements of DQSH that offer early childhood educators a way into a sense of queer imagination: play as praxis, aesthetic transformation, strategic defiance, destigmatization of shame, and embodied kinship. Ultimately, the authors propose that “drag pedagogy” provides a performative approach to queer pedagogy that is not simply about LGBT lives, but living queerly.” “In what follows, we begin by addressing legacies of schooling and its role in teaching children about gender norms and other aspects of personhood. We offer a brief background on drag, analysing it not only in terms of its gender disruptions, but also its own vernacular pedagogies and community engagement. In the second half of the article, we describe the kinds of knowledge that drag pedagogy can share with children (of all ages). We focus on five interrelated themes: play as praxis, aesthetic transformation, strategic defiance, camp and its relationship to stigma, and embodied kinship. Ultimately, we suggest that drag pedagogy offers one model for learning not simply about queer lives, but how to live queerly. And we’re living for it.” “Building in part from queer theory and trans studies, queer and trans pedagogies seek to actively destabilize the normative function of schooling through transformative education” “it is undeniable that DQSH participates in many of these tropes of empathy, from the marketing language the programme uses to its selection of books. Much of this is strategically done in order to justify its educational value” “In discussing the work of DQSH within our social circles, we have occasionally encountered critiques that DQSH is sanitizing the risqué nature of drag in order to make it “family friendly.” “It may be that DQSH is “family friendly,” in the sense that it is accessible and inviting to families with children, but it is less a sanitizing force than it is a preparatory introduction to alternate modes of kinship. Here, DQSH is “family friendly” in the sense of “family” as an old-school queer code to identify and connect with other queers on the street.”https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03626784.2020.1864621
James Lindsay does a long brutal take on this paper: https://youtu.be/aBv19E-fF7w?si=dqoUJDLwTHae0V9y
I'm just not seeing why it's the business of librarians -- qua librarians -- to be decoding these events into objectionable political or ideological viewpoint advocacy (and then using that interpretative procedure to rationalize a case against hosting them); or even why it should matter what political or ideological viewpoint events a library hosts might be conveying. What is the principle at work behind singling out these events over others for such decoding?
It's one thing if, out of expediency, a library declines to host such events because, say, it's located in a Red flyover state where doing so would risk jeopardizing essential functioning of a library (via, for instance, a public backlash leading to defunding). It's another to see librarians trying to intellectually justify doing so. This strikes me as eerily similar in spirit to stories of woke librarians preventing access to books that don't chime with their pieties.
I suspect it’s due to the reason libraries do host them are due to ideological viewpoint. They host them and do so saying they are doing so for ideological reasons (perhaps only in internal communication though). So then staff try to counter that statement with a different ideological point. Which does seem like a trap based on your comments. Your insight is helpful. Best to not play that game so one does not end up censoring!
Hi Bridget, Thanks for your response. I was suggesting the author should define how they were using the concept of neutrality, since it is a vague word that folks use pretty willy-nilly. It's not that I think they should use a particular definition, just tell us what they mean by it. I am always in favor of defining terms. While I understand why someone would chose to be anonymous, out of personal anxiety for the impact of sharing their thoughts, I think that raises more issues than the one it resolves. For me, it diminishes the significance of what they have to say. Owning our thoughts in the face of controversy is what gives our thoughts credibility. We need to be able to manage the criticism that comes our way when we share our understanding. It is the discourse that I think matters most. But I appreciate that "hxlibraries" makes those thoughts at least possible. We are having some discussion, here, yes?
That's a very fair critique! I agree that it would be preferable if people could share their convictions more openly without feeling the need to be anonymous, and being able to put a face and a name behind an idea adds credibility and weight. I find it unfortunate that, as much as many of us would like to be able to stand up that way, the reality is that the risk is often too high. My hope is that as this substack and HxLibraries grow, there may be more support for diverse viewpoints!
In a profession adjacent to many of the sort of easily-angered ideologues who will gladly do all they can to destroy the careers of those who will not agree with them, I think anonymity is very understandable. A topic like this is especially rife with that danger, as there are many who somehow conflate having a view on something with attacking someone else. I'm working on a piece for this very Substack called "You Might Be a Dangerous Ideologue" (based on that "You Might Be a Redneck" guy's comedy).
"If you refuse to respect, listen to or see as human those who cannot, will not and, ultimately, do not agree with you on those issues you really, really want to discuss...you might be a Dangerous Ideologue."
"If somebody has views on something that don't align with yours and you think that means they hate you, want to round you up and gas you...you might be a Dangerous Ideologue."
This particular topic, unfortunately, inspires just those kinds of ideologues to be as interpersonally destructive as they can.
>>> I think that raises more issues than the one it resolves. For me, it diminishes the significance of what they have to say. Owning our thoughts in the face of controversy is what gives our thoughts credibility. <<<
I disagree with the article's conclusion and don't see how knowing who the author is would help make their argument more persuasive or credible. (It does cause me to fancifully speculate that they are a politically conservative librarian seeking an intellectually respectable veneer for their dislike of drag queen events happening in libraries, but that's completely immaterial.) Owning our thoughts in the face of controversy is what (when it does) gives *us as persons* expressing those thoughts credibility, not our thoughts themselves.
Same applies to pieces in Journal of Controversial Ideas whose authors are anonymous: they can be evaluated on the merits of their content without regard for their source: https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/
Perhaps ... but look at the editorial board of the Journal of Controversial Ideas. If you didn't know who they were, would you submit?
I don't see how that applies to assessing the content of the articles the journal publishes. (But the prestigious editorial board definitely predisposes me to expect generally high quality content, which has been the case so far!)
Maybe it is an issue of trust.
I thought one of the most salient points of the article was that libraries should be able to choose to either host DQST or not to host it. And also I suspect the idea is proposed to host it frequently or infrequently. It sounds like the author was saying DQST is fine but does have legitimate flaws and legitimate benefits. Since both have to be considered, a library should be allowed to choose it as a program sometimes, never, always or rarely. But with all of these choices there is always public critique so it’s likely exhausting and likely very hard for operations. It does sound like they are leaning towards not hosting it at all despite its benefits given it’s flaws and how there are other ways to achieve what the program is offering in a less contentious way without all the stress?
Good points. My take is perhaps too simplistic.
CUPE BC had a resolution at their 2023 Annual convention that is surprising...No. 21
CUPE BC WILL:
Work with the BC Federation of Labour to coordinate support for libraries that host a Drag Queen Story Time event.
BECAUSE:
• No one should be harassed, threatened, or subjected to violence because of their sexual orientation, gender expression, and/or gender identity;
• CUPE has an obligation to promote the values of equity, safety, and anti-oppression in our workplaces and communities.
CUPE BC Pink Triangle Committee https://www.cupe.bc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/2023-CUPE-BC-Resolutions-Book.pdf