Drag Queen Story Hour

San Francisco author Michelle Tea, who identifies as queer, started Drag Queen Story Hour in 2015, after attending children's library events with her newborn son and finding them welcoming but heteronormative.[8] She imagined an event that was more inclusive and affirming to LGBTQ families.[8] Together with literary and arts non-profit Radar Productions, Tea organized the first event at the Eureka Valley/Harvey Milk Memorial Branch Library in the LGBT Castro neighborhood of San Francisco.[8][9] It featured Honey Mahogany and was well received.[8][10] As of February 2020, there are 50+ official chapters of DQSH, spread internationally, as well as other drag artists holding reading events at libraries, schools, bookstores, and museums.[8]

In 2017 the New York chapter incorporated as a non-profit and has received funds from the New York Public Library, Brooklyn Public Library, and two city council members.[8] The funds buy books, some DQSH events do book giveaways, go for paying the queens, and training to ensure the queens “talk effectively to children and their parents about gender identity and drag.”[8]

The books read include children's classics and works featuring LGBT characters and issues.[11] One popular book at DQSH is This Day in June, written by Gayle Pitman and illustrated by Kristyna Litten, which introduces the reader to the idea of an LGBTQ pride parade.[12] Pitman also authored Sewing the Rainbow, about rainbow flag creator Gilbert Baker, she is also on faculty at Sacramento City College teaching psychology and women and gender studies.[12] She feels it important to teach LGBTQ kids, including children in LGBTQ families, about subjects outside two tropes she's seen: gay and lesbian parents; and gender non-conforming children, like in 10,000 Dresses.[12] Pitman feels that children are smarter than given credit for, and can understand complex issues like intersex bodies, if the explanation is simplified.[12]

In March 2020, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic which has accompanying shelter in place and avoid group gatherings orders, DQSHs are among events postponed.[13] Nina West and other drag queens have started live-streaming readings.[13] West authored the children’s album Drag Is Magic, featured RED: A Crayon Story by Michael Hall as the first book of the online series.[13] RED is about “a crayon who suffers an identity crisis when he is labeled wrong.”[13]

Some of the DQSH events have met with opposition towards the drag queens, and the books being read.[6][14][15] The DQSH concept is seen as unconventional as the libraries are usually more reserved, and the queens traditionally are associated with bars and nightlife.[6] An event organizer and performer noted, “Just like an actor can do an R-rated movie and a G-rated kids’ movie, we have different levels of how we entertain and how we can put on our character as well.”[16]

John Casey, an adjunct professor at Wagner College in New York City, posits in The Advocate,

“[Drag queens] are incredibly talented, and they are trying to live their lives, and in the process, brighten the lives of those around them. That’s the message parents should be communicating to their kids, at any age. It’s all about acceptance and being loved for who you are.”[17]

In a May 2019 First Things article and a subsequent debate with David A. French, Sohrab Ahmari argued that drag queen story hours presented a challenge to proponents of "conservative liberalism" who emphasized personal autonomy and opposed "the use of the public power to advance the common good, including in the realm of public morality".[18][19] Steven Greenhut responded in a Whittier Daily News editorial that, although he perceived the story hours to be "bizarre and agenda driven", banning them would be an overreach of governmental power and an attempt to legislate morality.[20] In August 2019, a petition by LifeSiteNews and Personhood Alliance, both anti-abortion activism groups, asked the American Library Association (ALA) to stop promoting the story hours; it gathered nearly 100,000 signatures.[21] The ALA responded by affirming its support for DQSH events, stating that it "strongly opposes any effort to limit access to information, ideas and programmes that patrons wish to explore" and "includes a commitment to combating marginalisation and underrepresentation within the communities served by libraries through increased understanding of the effects of historical exclusion."[21]

According to ThinkProgress, “it has been a common tactic among the far right to disrupt DQSH".[7] In April 2019, two members of the white nationalist group American Identity Movement (formerly Identity Evropa) dressed as clowns and disrupted a DQSH in New Orleans, Louisiana.[11][22] In June 2019, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)—an organization that monitors and reports on anti-LGBTQ hate groups—released “White Nationalist Threats Against Transgender People Are Escalating” reporting “white nationalist and former U.S. Congressional candidate Paul Nehlen announced on June 19 a plan he called 'PROJECT DOX TRANNY STORYTIME.'"[11] Using Telegram, which SPLC characterized as “a platform favored by white nationalists and terrorists,” he urged followers to gather photos and vehicle license plates of DQSH participants for doxing, the Internet-based practice of researching and broadcasting private or identifying information (especially personally identifying information) about an individual.[11] The SPLC sees conflating DQSH with the increasing public support for LGBTQ people—specifically transgender people—and culture as the reason “transphobic rhetoric, some of it violent,” has “[increased] among white nationalists and neo-Nazis.”[11] According to the SPLC, “for far-right extremists, the increased visibility of transgender people is a sign of the growing ‘degeneracy’” from “leftists and Jews as part of an assault on white, Christian families and strict gender roles.”[11] The extremists “believe that trans people, like immigrants and non-whites, are hastening the destruction of an idealized white, Western culture.”[11] An anonymous Telegram poster also called for doxing participants.[11] The SPLC reported that events such as DQSH were "a big draw for far-right extremists".[11]

In September 2019, Family Research Council, designated as an anti-gay hate group by the SPLC, sent out a daily prayer email in which they described DQSH as child grooming.[23] They cited Romans 1:18–32, which LGBTQ Nation interpreted as "[calling] for death".[24]

• Picture books
• Early reader
• Chapter books
• Young adult fiction
• List of drag groups
• List of drag kings
• List of drag queens
• Banned Books Week
• Lists of banned books

• American Library Association resources for Drag Queen Story Hour
• Official site