Clarissa Bye: A misguided story time at Sydney Aquarium

More needs to be done to protect our children against the highly sexualised parody of femininity drag queens portray, writes Clarissa Bye.

There’s a huge debate going on in the USA right now about promoting drag queens to ­children.

Not content to play in their own lane of adult sex show performances, men who impersonate women want to lap up the love and hugs of children.

But parents are starting to get vocal about this phenomena hitting local schools and libraries, particularly as it gets pushed into smaller country towns.

In Texas in early June, parents formed pickets outside a gay bar hosting a “Drag the Kids to Pride” event, where children performed drag to adult audiences and solicited cash tips.

The Discovery Plus channel has just begun a new six-part series Generation Drag, following the “drag queen journeys” of five boys aged 12 to 15, hosted by ex-model Tyra Banks.

Tyra Banks’ Generation Drag has stirred up debate in the US about the appropriateness of drag queens for children. Picture: Monica Schipper/Getty Images for Warner Bros. Discovery

It provoked a backlash among parenting, conservative and Christian groups, who branded it “creepy” and “child abuse”.

Here in Sydney, the Sea Life Sydney Aquarium has taken to hosting Drag Queen story time sessions for children.

Earlier promotion of drag queen story time event in 2020 at the Sea Life Sydney Aquarium.

The aquarium, which also touts its “gay” penguins, had a drag queen story time event in 2020, followed by a performance by drag queen Coco Jumbo.

The image used to promote the event was unbelievably crude — depicting the performer in an underwater tank in a glittery dress with barely concealed and absurdly fake mammoth breasts on top of the costume.

Now, on Sunday, the aquarium plans another “Drag Story Time at the Aquarium” event with entertainer drag queen and librarian Joyce Maynge.

In March last year, performer Maynge posted on social media about reading stories to children at Coogee Child Care.

Promotion of drag queen story time event at the Sea Life Sydney Aquarium.

A whiteboard of the comments by the little ones was posted on her Instagram account.Some bewildered children asked “was Joyce a boy or girl?”.

Other comments were: “I thought Joyce was a girl and boy.” Another added: “Was Joyce wearing a mask? Why did she have blue hair?” Good question. Why indeed? Another smart preschooler answered: “She had makeup on, not a mask.”

At Rhodes, in the April school holidays, a drag queen known as “Wonder Mama”, who is also fond of over-size fake breasts, offered school holiday classes in drawing for children aged eight and up.

She dresses in a parody of Wonder Woman and the kids learn to draw their “inner Super Hero”.

Drag queen story time event in 2020 at the Sea Life Sydney Aquarium.

Coco Jumbo (red hair short dress) Simon Dunn (black shirt) on Sydney harbour to promote a show on Pride Cruises. Picture Rohan Kelly.

In Darwin, drag queens perform at the city’s big Teddy Bear’s picnic and dress up as characters from the popular Disney movie Frozen.

When my children were little we had several giant bags of fancy dress outfits they would love to rummage through. The girls would clunk around on our wooden floorboards in wobbly high heels and pretend to be grown up mums.

One of my daughters had a fad to put colourful pegs in her hair when we went shopping, styled on her favourite Hi 5 character of the time. I still remember the looks on the faces of other shoppers at Miranda Fair.

At Halloween we would visit the local $2 junk shop and buy those garish plastic costumes; witches hats, black capes and wigs, and the girls would paint dramatic fake blood on their little brother, and dress him up in vampire teeth with slicked back hair. Same for the school plays and holiday classes spent at the local theatre company; a large part of the fun for the kids were the costumes and colourful stage props.

Throughout history children have been attracted to bright colours, dress-ups, stories, dancing and pantomime.

Which is why the whole drag queen story time push is so troubling. It’s managed to zero in on those very elements adored by children, all the while presenting an inappropriately sexualised parody of femininity.

Drag queen Maxi Shield appeared in a LGBTQ+ pride event for airline Virgin.

And for several years now it’s been done quietly behind the scenes, under the respectable cloak of “inclusivity”. But as it gets pushed into the mainstream, it has come up against growing community awareness and resistance.

In Perth earlier this year, a local council partnered with youth mental health group Headspace to put on an eight week drag queen course for kids.

How on earth did they think that was appropriate?

As Coalition for Biological Reality founder Stassja Frei pointed out, it was run by a queen called “Justin Sider” – a play on “just inside her”.

Many of the drag names chosen by male performers are filled with sexual innuendo.

The comments and outrage about the course, to be held in a library, were ferocious and the event called off.

Supplied Editorial Coalition for Biological Reality founder Stassja Frei. Supplied

Ms Frei says feminists have long compared drag to black face in an attempt to explain how offensive it can be.

“It is men performing gross parodies of sexist stereotypes in the same way black face uses gross caricatures of people of colour to mock their history of subordination,” she says.

“Why are we promoting extreme sexism to children?”

The push to include children in the drag world goes beyond merely offensive; it’s morally wrong. Last year the ABC aired a show called “Kids Ask About Gender”, showing young children interacting with drag queen Courtney Act on its iView channel.

The conversation was carefully couched in friendly, benign and uplifting terms. One kid asks “why is all drag queens so beautiful?” and the performer answers: “I think there’s something beautiful about people being themselves.”

Many of the ABC viewers gushed at how wonderful, sweet, accepting and non-judgemental the children were.

That’s the problem.

Adults have to stick up for children and not let this confusing, gender-confounding ideology be indoctrinated upon them. Children have always been warned not to accept lollies from strangers. We have a duty to keep the innocence of childhood intact.