Tis the Season for Drag...Oh No it Isn't

 Gender Critics are taking exception to Drag Queens interacting with children.

While this may be a cultural issue that sparks fear in the USA when they try to import it to the UK they forget a number of issues.

1. 
   
    Almost every adult in the UK's first introduction to the theatre was a cross  dressing bonaza known as Pantomime. Not only was there always a motherly figure (two/three in the case of Cinderella's sisters/mother) who was clearly a man in a frock, or to be more precise a different frock every time they appeared on the stage. But also the leathere ding lady would invariably fall for a principle boy who was another women dressed a man. And despite all this cross dressing everyone lived happily ever after. But more importantly these Drag artists were often used as fillers while the set was being redressed, bringing children up unto stage for interaction with them, or going out in to the auditorium with the house lights up to do the same.
2. Moving on from Pantomime the Bard, ie William Shakespeare had a number of plays they involved cross dressing. This is especially incredible out of sync with gender critical objections when you consider at the time of Shakespeare only men would appear on stage even in the female roles. But to this day those plays that contain plots lines of cross dressing do not draw the ire of gender critical, TERFs, transphobes in the same way and story time with a drag queen.
3. Historically we have always had Drag appearances on our TV. There was of course Dame Edna Everage and Lily Savage but also there were many sketches by the Two Ronnies and Dick Emery in drag all were mainstays of Saturday night televion.

You see drag and cross dressing is very much a part of British culture. Those who attack it are attacking UK culture from a narrow American world view. Indeed many male employees across the country and also dressed up in drag to raise money for Children in Need or Comic Relief down through the years. We in Britain do no inherantly have issues with men dressing as women per se.

But the transphobic Gender Critical movement have taken it on. With the success of Ru Paul's Drag Race and its spin offs we are now seeing more Drag Queens who like Lily Savage started in gay venues coming to the fore. The attack on these drag performers is an attack on otherness. It is an attack on the entire LGBT+ community. You see they have objections to the T, they see drag a gateway to the T, which is not the case for a large majority of drag performers. It is an art form. The art from the makeup, dresses and performace all of this is art. But it is art that is comfortable in an LGBT+ space, but is starting to find its feet outside those once safe (or not so safe historical) spaces into the mainstream.

The obection to drag queens. The mindless protests against drag story time up to the shooting of a gay venue hosting a drag night. All of this is an attack on LGBT+ people. It starts with the T but it spreads to include the LGB, another reason that the LGB Alliance does not represent LGB people. We see the harm that gender critical views are leading to. For them the T, the transphobia, is a starter to being H, homophobic. The LGB Alliance cannot see this and they do no represent us, there are a front for Transphobia painted up to appear LGB friendly. Somehow this organisation has charity status despite doing nothing to support LGB people, its sole purpose if to attack trans people, or more correctly only trans women.

The history of drag in the UK is in front of the Gender Critics for all to see. Or more to the point in this season, it's behind you, and goes back an awfully long way.