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.

The Fable of the Critical Control of Freedom of Thought

 Once upon a time, not too long ago, a political party could think what it wanted, propose ideas it espoused and work to make the world a better place. But sadly those days are now the things of fairy tales.

Now you see it is not the right of polical movement to come up with ideals, hold them steadfast and work to making them take shape in society. No, now, even here in the UK, it is they who have the biggest crowdfunded legal fund who pull all the strings.

Yes sadly even if for years you thought your party's vision was that nobody should be enslaved by conformity, a small group of people, critical of changes in our society that are in the early days of being enshrined by law, will jump upon you at ever utterance of progress.

They believe they they should have the freedom of speech to speak their minds, even if what is on their mind is to make everyone conform to their ideal. They will challenge you from entering their spaces even though this has been established in law. They want to call you by a name you no longer use, without ramifications. They want to label you by whatever term they want to use and not what you want others to use for you. Indeed they say that you asking to be called what you want, labelled as you want is an intrusion on their liberty up with which they will not put.

Thus it have come to pass that through some legal challenges those critics of change have got their hate filled, harmful agenda recognised as a system of belief and those views are protected under law in certain circumstances. However, once judgement, while it does not give them carte blanche to express those views without restriction is actually not how they see it. They see the limited extent that one judgement has been made in their favour as validation that what they think is correct. It certainly isn't a pleasant way of thinking, it isn't kind, it isn't gentle. 

When any dare to challenge them they harrass and pile on. Allies of those impacted can be called all manner of slurs when they raise their heads above the parapet to defend those they attack and dismiss. Names like mysogynist, homophobe and when defending children who they attack paedophile is also thrown into the mix.

Yes what I am talking about is those who self identify as gender critical. In reality I will call them what they are transphobes. They have an irrational fear of trans women it would seem trans men are not the subject so much of their vitriol. They want everyone to only use the public toilets, changing rooms of the sex they were assigned at birth. So they start to challenge women cis or trans who look a little masculine. Heaven helps them if they get their way and trans men actually start to enter women's facilities and they get challenged about being where those critics have been campaigning for them to be.

But the sad thing is that apparently political thought is now dead. A political party that stands for liberal thought, that has long stood up for the underdog and the oppressed now must kowtow to those who express gender critical tought. This is the new watered down code of conduct on transphobia from the party I hold dear.

Well when like me you are someone who responds to a large number of  government consultations basing those responses very much on the thoughts laid out in the preamble to our constitution. When I also base my votes at oonference on those same ideals. When many of my speeches and answers to questions on doorsteps or in hustings also hark back to that document, I know where I stand. I know I shall not be moved. I too have a belief, a belief that the preamble to our constition sets out goals for  a liberal future.

Yes in a liberal society you can be critical of things, but when that criticism causes harm, maligns whole sections of society and is in fact intolerant rather that critical it does not have a place within liberalism. It is facism, it is thought control rather than freedom of speech of expression. When you cry defamation at anyone who questions you critically. When you slur and harrass anyone who questions someone on their motivation to the extent it takes hours to check on their notification. They you are in the business of subverting freedom and enslaving others to your conformity.

And that destopia is something I do not want to see come to be.

Other takes on this: 

miss_s_b

LGBT+ Liberal Democrats