‘I’m just trying to make the world a little brighter’: how the culture wars hijacked Drag Queen Story Hour

In February 2020, I took my three-year-old daughter to a local pub for an event that sounded intriguing. It was called Drag Queen Story Hour. I thought it may be right up her street – glitter, stories, wigs – and offer her the chance to learn something about difference and respect along the way. I also liked the idea of doing something different, although the main appeal was free child entertainment and the fact that my partner and I could have a roast and a pint of Guinness while we watched.

As predicted, the kids in attendance went absolutely wild: screaming and dancing during the interactive bits, rushing to get their pictures taken afterwards with Aida H Dee, a fabulous character whom my daughter insisted was a “dragon queen”. Two years on, she still does a good impression of the funny voices Aida H Dee would adopt for the characters.

I might not have thought of that day again, but Drag Queen Story Hour has recently been hauled into a culture war. This summer, groups including the far-right and conspiracy theorists calling themselves “sovereign citizens” have been holding up signs saying “Welcome groomers” and “Nonce upon a time” outside libraries in places from Bexleyheath to Reading when Drag Queen Story Hour events were due to take place. Parents entering the libraries had questions shouted at them about why they were taking their children to see a paedophile. Videos of the protests in Reading were posted online and looked terrifying. It was a scene you might expect to see in the US, where homophobic Christian groups have long maligned large parts of the LGBTQ+ movement and their allies as “groomers”. But in Reading?

Then I realised the drag queen at the centre of it all was Aida H Dee, the same performer who had entranced my daughter two years earlier. How could such a joyful event be causing such controversy?

When I first make contact with Seb Samuel, the 27-year-old who performs as Aida H Dee, he sounds flustered. “The main thing you need to know is I am safe and the events are still going ahead,” he says, hurriedly. It turns out he has just escaped another protest, this time in Bristol, where protesters met counterprotests from antifascist and gay rights groups. He was whisked off to safety.

When we speak again, he is in a car returning from a successful event – and feeling great. “People think I must be stressed, but I’m actually totally fine,” he says over a video call. However, he worries about protesters trying to film the children at Drag Queen Story Hour shows: one snuck into an event to try to livestream it. But, in general, the groups are easy to keep at bay with a few well-timed misdirections, he says. “Often, they’re protesting outside the wrong buildings, celebrating that they’ve cancelled events that are actually happening elsewhere. We prepare ourselves for degree-level protesters, but they rock up as year 7s,” he says, with perfect drag-queen sass.

Still, this is not exactly what Samuel signed up for when, in 2017, he became the first drag artist in the UK to read stories to children in libraries. (Drag Queen Story Hour was established in San Francisco in 2015.) It is not what the parents signed up for, either. “It must be daunting,” he says. “I got a message from one, saying their kid asked: ‘Why are these angry people shouting at us?’”

So, why carry on? As a child, Samuel struggled with autism and ADHD (hence his drag name) and found sitting crossed-legged in silence for story time boring. “Pantomime was the best thing ever, because it was colourful and I got to shout. So, I love being able to join those two together.” He also wants to teach children who might be gay that they can love themselves. “It’s something I didn’t get to do until I was much older, because of the world we live in.”

Samuel describes himself as a victim of section 28. “The teachers saw a camp boy, but couldn’t help me. I feel robbed of a childhood, in some way.” A pivotal moment came at 13, when he was cast as an evil villainess in a school play. He got a standing ovation, but, more importantly, was praised by a boy who had bullied him. It made him realise that not only could he inspire people like him, but he could also change the attitudes of those who were not.

Now, all he wants to do is continue reading his stories to children in peace. “I didn’t choose to be an activist,” he says. Why, after years of drag culture becoming increasingly mainstream, is this happening now? Samuel believes it is a knock-on effect of the normalisation of anti-LGBTQ+ attitudes in the wider world: the high-profile anti-drag protests by Proud Boys in the US; the exclusion of transgender people from the UK’s ban on “conversion therapy”; the ban on trans female athletes competing in certain events. “All these things validate these people, and the people in power should know better,” he says.

The protesters who turn up seem to skew towards the conspiracist right. Piers Corbyn was present at an event in Brighton, chanting: “Your parents were straight,” standing next to a placard that read “End the corruption of childhood innocence”. But others have joined this moral panic. On Mumsnet, there are multiple threads calling for the end of Drag Queen Story Hour. The story has hit a nerve with some – but by no means all – gender-critical feminists, who believe some trans-rights issues are incompatible with women’s rights and have incorporated an anti-drag stance under that umbrella.

“Drag at its core is misogynistic,” wrote the pseudonymous Dr Em in the Critic magazine earlier this year. “It is men portraying women as sexually objectified caricatures. Drag performers frequently reduce women to hyper sexualised, big breasted, big haired bimbos.” The former Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies took it further in 2019 when she tweeted: “Am I the only person fed up of drag shows? A parody of what a real woman is, like black face.”

But others dispute the idea. “That criticism is not new and relies on the idea of men dressed as women mimicking and exaggerating femininity,” says Leila Rupp, a professor of feminist studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “But drag is far more diverse and complicated than that stereotype suggests, with non-binary and gender-fluid performers showing how diverse gender can be. Surely the lesson that people can express femininity or masculinity or anything in between is an important lesson for all children.”

The blackface comparison seems particularly wrongheaded. “It is completely unacceptable to compare drag with blackface,” says Nishant Upadhyay, an assistant professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. “Drag is an exploration of gender, while blackface is rooted in violent histories of anti-blackness. White and many non-black folks have used blackface to stereotype, ridicule and ostracise black communities, historically as well as currently. It is an assertion of racial power over black folks, whereas drag is a challenge to patriarchy. The comparison is ahistorical.”

Of course, drag has long played a role in British society, from Shakespeare’s time, when women were banned from the stage and men wore female costumes to play their parts, through to the pantomime dame. It has also helped gay men – in particular, gay men of colour – find a place for themselves in societies that reject homosexuality.

Politically speaking, drag queens and kings have been at the forefront of the LGBTQ+ movement for some time; Marsha P Johnson was one of the prominent figures during the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City. Drag has long had a presence in mainstream UK pop culture, from Les Dawson to Lily Savage. It is not just about fabulous queens competing on RuPaul’s Drag Race; even Mr Tumble performs in drag on CBeebies. So, how have we reached a place where a man in a dress is automatically deemed to be a threat to children?

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For six years, without incident, Matthew Cavan has been reading stories to children in Belfast as the drag queen Cherri Ontop. Then, last week, protesters appeared at his show. The morning I speak to him, he says he has just learned that a “paedophile hunter” group has been given his details and is on the lookout for him. “I’ve found this week incredibly difficult,” he says. “There’s been a lot of hatred and it’s really got to me. It’s heartbreaking that someone can take a gorgeous and special thing like this and tarnish it.”

His voice is full of emotion when we speak. “These are events for wee tiny kids. They shouldn’t have to hear fascists screaming: ‘Stop sexualising our kids’ … They don’t hear that inside.” Cavan says the protesters in Northern Ireland are largely people who “wrap themselves up in Christianity”, but are ultimately recycling homophobic tropes from previous eras: “‘Why would a gay man want to be around children?’ That kind of thing.”

Cavan was diagnosed with HIV when he was 21 and says the outlet of performing as Cherri Ontop saved his life. Now, though, some people are using his HIV status to scaremonger. “They’re claiming that children will be smitten with a disgusting disease if they’re in the same room as me,” he says. “It’s 80s shit.”

Cavan is dyslexic and has always struggled to read. “But I would go to a library and a woman in a patchwork coat would read stories to me, so I know how important that is. She was lovely and felt like a nanny, but if I’d seen a drag queen come in …”

The misinformation surrounding Drag Queen Story Hour gets Cavan down. “I have these children for an hour: I’m not going to try to tackle gender identity issues. My aim is just to give them little bits of information to try to make their world a bit brighter. I tell them that, growing up, I was considered very different, but now I get to wear what I want – and look at how fabulous I am! I let them know that being different is really cool, and so is being normal … and we can live in society together.”

This week, he will be dressing as Pinocchio and reading stories in a shopping centre, wearing makeup and wood-effect leggings: “Nobody will protest against that. But put a dress on my body and it turns it into something seedy and sexual?”

When I supported Drag Queen Story Hour on social media, I got a hostile reception from some women who claimed their opposition was about safeguarding. But Cavan says he is given a safety check for every job and is never left alone with the children: “They’re always with their grownup. It all needs to be above board, because we are dealing with little people. There are drag queens out there who have turned out to be absolute creeps. So I understand why people would be somewhat on the backfoot. But are they happy enough to send their kids to Sunday school? Do they vet every parent in a soft-play area? It’s so easy to dress homophobia and transphobia up as concern for children.”

Samuel says that he pays for a full DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) check for any drag queens who want to perform under the Drag Queen Story Hour name. He also makes sure they are well prepared for awkward situations that might arise. “Basic stuff like: never to respond to a young fan on social media, or what to do if they pose certain questions,” he says. “Often, we’re asked if we are a boy or a girl. Rather than get into that, I say: ‘I am whatever you want me to be.’ That means I’ve been called a robot, a fairy and a caterpillar.”

The furore doesn’t look like it will die down any time soon. Last month, the Labour MP Stella Creasy tweeted about taking her infant son to an event hosted by the drag queen Greta Tude, and faced a barrage of criticism online for doing so (as well as much support). Reading borough council was happy to defend its events, with a statement that noted: “We are pleased to say those who attended the performances have given positive feedback, saying that the content is both entertaining and age-appropriate.” But only this week, Rochdale borough council pulled its three planned Drag Queen Story Hour events for safety reasons relating to protests.

Related: The inspirational rise of drag kings: ‘We are smashing down doors left, right and centre!’

Yet Samuel and Cavan say they have a renewed sense of purpose and are determined to carry on reading to children. So far, the publicity has only made the events more popular.

“If anything, the negatives are just stoking the fire of: ‘Fuck you, I am going to do this bigger and better and prouder than I was before,’” says Cavan. “I’m now in a place I wasn’t expecting. It’s not just a lovely wee event any more, it’s become more political; so I will be in it for the long haul, to make this place a better place for everyone.”

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