I just finished this article (linked below) about the connections between DQSH, queer theory, and sexual harm to children. The article seems to be from a right-wing, anti-gay source. But it's still very interesting to me. For years, I've read on Ovarit about how bad Drag Queen Story Hour is, and how it's all connected to pedophilia, and it didn't really make sense to me. It just seemed like a bunch of tenuous links. When people would point to drag queen story time as being for groomers, I just saw the "evidence" as a loose set of connections from people who wanted to pick the worst elements and exceptions to make a poorly constructed argument. Some radfem would point to some some bloke who got arrested on sex abuse charges and say, "SEE?! He was a drag queen at story hour time!" and I'd think... so? They're everywhere. Priests, Imams, rabbis, atheist iconoclasts, whatever. Pointing to some random guy doesn't prove that an entire organization with randomly and loosely-associated performance artists is working in a conspiracy with the one guy. That would be something a paranoid schizophrenic would think, but it doesn't mean it's true.

After reading this article, my opinion has been changed somewhat (though not entirely). I still think you can't tar every drag queen who does the story hour with the same brush, but the actual board of directors of the main organization has at least one man who really does understand the foundations of "queer theory" and wrote a book using it extensively (so he doesn't seem to just be quoting soundbites but actually understands what he's saying and advocating for). He basically states that he wants DQSH to be a phenomenon that 'queers' the 'transgressive sexuality' of children, and that the official work of tolerance and gay acceptance that DQSH is legitimized by, is basically a pretext to open doors for the desired 'queering' of children's 'transgressive sexuality' to happen. Harris Kornstein, aka Lil Miss Hot Mess (Drag Queen stage name) is on the board of Drag Queen Story Hour, the nonprofit organization that was founded by Michelle Tea in 2015 to promote “family-friendly” drag performances and has since expanded to 40 local chapters that have organized hundreds of performances across the United States (as of 2022, when the article was written).

It was a really dense article to read. And part of that was all of the quotes in it by queer theorists. At this point, I have a confession to make. I am fairly intellectually minded, but don't have much in the way of higher education. Over the years I've seen many snippets of academic essays that use this type of hyper-intellectualizing language that seems to be covering up a large expanse of... empty space. It's tricky because on the one hand, I think the masses often want to reduce complex ideas down to easily-digestible axioms, and I believe that's dangerous and wrong. I also think there is often resentment towards those who are highly educated and/or more intelligent than the general population. It's easy to scorn and punish those who are the credentialed and intellectual elite, and to try to denigrate their value to the world. I also think I can understand some of enthusiasm for postmodernism, because I believe that attempts at categorization are always limited in capability, and that definitions and paradigms that foster these categories are always to the benefit and centering of those who do the categorizing. I don't think "nothing means anything" but in another sense it kind of does. Matter is energy. The medium is the message.

And yet... it does seem like a lot of the snippets I've come across are sort of bullshit. Just a lot of navel-gazing and finding the most complex way possible to state that wind is air-based and that lint is fuzzy. Or to put together intellectual-sounding buzzwords because a particular author wants to sound smart. Here's my beef: I AM an intellectual. I DO like complex ideas. Usually more than the people around me, to my continual disappointment and frustration. And I recognize that some ideas are too complex for me to understand. Just because I don't understand, it doesn't mean something is "word salad" or "bad."

But... I really think a lot of this is just word salad. And I have to really wonder about the mentality of the early proponents of queer theory, especially those women involved over the decades like Butler and her predecessor Rubin who seem to have no real stake in or benefit from this (except a career where they get some acclaim for being "different" and smart). What the hell... are some of these people thinking? I really have to ask. I GET what a man like Foucault was thinking. I know why he was into this. But some of these people... I think what they're saying is just convoluted bullshit. And I wonder about their motivations. I wonder if they really believe what they're saying, or if they cynically understand that it's just literary diarrhoea, but they keep peddling it to fans who, presumably, champion it because they get to... feel smart by reading it? Maybe their readers think, "well, I don't understand what the fuck this person is talking about, but neither does anyone else probably, so I'll just pretend it makes sense and/or is plausible. That means I'm elite too, right?"

And this isn't just about queer theory. I have seen this in multiple academic disciplines where I sort of go... okay, this is bullshit and I think this group of people just wants to feel smart by putting words together. I think it's very sad and shocking when people do that.

Link below rather than in the title because this post is about my thoughts on whether the proposed connections between queer theory/sexual harm to children and DQSH are valid, and bullshit in queer theory and academic discourse in general. If not okay, please let know how/where to repost.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-real-story-behind-drag-queen-story-hour