Transphobia of the Day alert: You may crossdress as long as you admit you're a "clown"

The Drag Queen Story Hour website says:

"DQSH captures the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models. In spaces like this, kids are able to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and imagine a world where people can present as they wish, where dress up is real."

In "Drag Queen Conservatism" (June 24, 2022), Andrew Sullivan acknowledges that the story hours can be kid-friendly. After all, in his view, the kids may not see them as sexually explicit "trannies" so much as "costumed clowns."

But he claims that nevertheless these story hours amount to "indoctrination in the various precepts of critical gender and queer theory." How? Because he objects to those two sentences on the DQSH website (above). He reads: queer role models. He argues that, since most gay kids have "absolutely no interest in being a drag queen," and because, once upon a time, "drag queens actually made me think I wasn’t gay, because I had no desire to be one" [emphasis mine], the drag queen isn't a role model for everyone and thus should be a role model for no one. He says: "Presenting it as a model for gayness is part of a misguided bid to impose the postmodern concept of 'queerness' on all gay people."

Look here: There's a potential misreading of the phrase "[adjective] role models." It might mean a role model who is [adjective], not necessarily a role model who teaches you the proper way to be [adjective]. For example, though I am not Christian and do not need a role model to teach me how to be Christian, nonetheless I might admire someone billed as a "Christian role model." Likewise, I might be inspired by a "woman role model," though I'm a man.

To say that a drag queen is a "queer role model" doesn't mean that all gay and trans kids, and only gay and trans kids, can be inspired by them. Straight and cis kids, too, can learn something from gay and trans adults about defying sexual and gender norms so the straight and cis kids, too, can be who they are. And if someone doesn't connect with this kind of role model on a personal level, that's OK, too. We learn from other people's similarities and differences. We learn who we are and who we are not.

Will all children appreciate every adult role model? Of course not. Some kids will think to themselves: I'm kind of like this person in one way, but not like them in another way. That we're all unique doesn't invalidate all role models.

Nor does it imply that Sullivan is the proper role model for all gay boys merely because he believes that his own identity/presentation align with whatever he believes the majority of gay boys feel.

He thinks it's necessary for other gay/trans people to diminish or hide themselves so that he, Sullivan, can be openly and proudly who he is. That may be how Sullivan works, but that is not how diversity works.

What Sullivan is doing here is characterizing drag queens and/or trans people as "just men in silly costumes" and implying that they really can't be role models for anyone except aspiring stage performers, because — in his anti-transgender worldview — the way in which they resist gender norms is, paradoxically, creating their own norm and imposing it on others. Just by visibly being who they are, he alleges, they pressure children to grow up to be exactly like them. Why this argument applies only against drag queens and but is invalid when it is used to compel gay men like himself back into the closet, I can't explain. You'd have to ask him.

And the idea that the child will believe that all gay men are drag queens only makes sense if you think the child interprets the drag queen as gay and that the child is unlikely ever to meet an openly gay adult who isn't a drag queen.

Sullivan also says that "bring[ing] up your kids to see cross-dressing as wicked" isn't necessarily "fear-mongering and moral panic." I really don't know what is to be gained from that distinction. Does he think it's good for parents to bring up their kids to see gay people as evil; would he say that's anything other than fear and hate? Then why does he allow for beliefs that it's evil to resist gender stereotypes in clothing, as if such beliefs had any rational or moral basis?

The article is called "Drag Queen Conservatism: A toxic, stupid sideshow is defining the post-liberal right as scolds." Not sure exactly what he means by "sideshow" here &mdash Drag Queen Story Hour or someone's reaction to it. Probably he's happy to leave that ambiguous.

He wrote another article, "Is Obergefell Next?" — i.e., given that the Supreme Court says that states can crimininalize abortion, can they also eliminate same-sex marriage — as his "immediate reaction to today’s [June 24, 2022] Roe decision." That one is for paid subscribers only. In a tweet teasing his article, he says the overturning of Roe is "unrelated" to certain "precedents" but doesn't specify which precedents he's talking about. I won't be paying for a subscription to find out.

See also: "121 Things I Want Cis Men to Stop Doing". It's a list of 121 sentences in a different article — also by Andrew Sullivan, still anti-transgender. It's a 44-minute read on Medium. Medium lets you read a certain number of stories for free every month. You may also consider a paid membership on the platform.

Also, no clownery in sports:

"gender critical" is now where you insist that only boys can play rugby and only girls can play netball and anything else goes against the natural order of things https://t.co/AjpXodz0bh

— Elaine Scattermoon (@scattermoon) March 30, 2023

Rosie Duffield in The Times fronting a report which says '60% of schools allow children to take part in sports traditionally played by the opposite sex.'

Is it the official Labour position that the two genders are 'assigned football at birth' & 'assigned netball at birth'? pic.twitter.com/VUpprvdhsW

— Tabitha McIntosh (@TabitaSurge) March 30, 2023

Related: Transvestigation

Fixation on supposed differences in trans and cis bodies leads to transvestigation.

"Gender Critical ‘feminists’ will go to desperate lengths to prove that trans women aren’t women, and that includes ‘transvestigation,’ or publicly accusing people of being trans using arbitrary metrics, such as measuring their hands. Sometimes, they succeed in outing trans people. Other times, they shame and mock cis women for having traits they associate with transness."
— Dr. Casey Lawrence, "Vulva Phrenology and the GC Crusade", An Injustice! (Medium), March 31, 2023. This is my Friend of Medium link: unpaywalled for you, earning $ for the author.

Related: Gay people who mock trans people with violent imagery

In 2014, Mitch Kellaway wrote An Open Letter to HuffPost Gay Voices: Why This Trans Man Will No Longer Blog on Your Page. Kellaway objected to "a parody video (later retracted) in which a trans woman is murdered as a consequence for voicing her objections to offensive language used on RuPaul's Drag Race." Kellaway wrote:

"Joy Less" is, as other commentators described her, a "man in a dress" -- an indictment often leveled at trans women to dehumanize them. She is coded, unlike the cisgender drag queen character, as a failure -- not solely in her femininity but in being able to "take a joke." She is a visual entry into a hateful lexicon that surrounds trans women in pop culture.

The fact that this video was produced by a gender-nonconforming drag queen does not mitigate its harmful effects. Viewers are still cued to make certain connections -- Joy Less' opinions are invalid, her gender is invalid, her life is invalid -- despite the veneer of in-your-face comedy that says, "We're absolved of blame if you take these conclusions seriously." Like rape jokes to rape culture, this video contributes to a culture of violence toward trans women, implying that it's "OK" to joke about, portray, and envision murder as a consequence for a trans woman's disagreement."

Related: They turn on Andrew Tate

Andrew Tate swimsuit pic starts trans panic among conspiratorial right: A not-so-revealing picture of Tate in men’s swimwear has some on the far-right saying he’s a woman. Mikael Thalen, Daily Dot, Aug 7, 2024