Even though I doubt I will ever fully understand the appeal of watching drag artists, I agree with Yglesias that we are in the midst of a full blown conservative panic:
Their most prominent target is, of course, the "drag queen story hour" events that are aimed at children.
The history of that movement is relatively short, and set out in this Wikipedia article. (It started in San Francisco - no surprise there.)
The events that are held in libraries are no doubt attended by children with parents who are already highly motivated to expose to children to "diversity" - and the relatively small number of families involved should be of no great concern to anyone.
On the other hand, I do think it a bit odd that schools should partake of these shows (as they have in New York).
But where ever these events are held, I have strong doubts that any but a relatively small proportion of the children in attendance would find them especially entertaining or of particular interest. In fact, an article in the Wall Street Journal "What I saw at Drag Queen Story Hour" made this point way back in 2019:
The adults present loved Drag Queen Story Hour. They laughed at
Venus’s jokes, and they sang the children’s songs along with her,
rolling their hands and shaking their fingers Hokey Pokey-style as she
did. When she stuck out her tongue during a ditty about a frog, so did
the mothers and fathers. It was the children who . . . didn’t react at
all. They either stared transfixed at Venus, squirmed restlessly, or
crawled and toddled off to find their own entertainments. After the
reading a mother brought her little daughter up to meet Venus, who
offered to let the girl try on one of the massive rhinestone bracelets
she wore on both wrists. The mother, delighted, slipped a bracelet onto
her own wrist; the little girl shrank back and turned her head away.
I couldn’t tell what was going on inside those small heads, of
course. Perhaps they were shy, or bored. Perhaps some of them were too
young. Or perhaps Venus and her 6-inch eyelashes terrified them. Heavy
stage makeup can look flattering under stage lights, but in ordinary
indoor daylight the effect can be more Medusa than goddess of love.
Spike heels and glitter viewed up close might seem scary to a small
child whose mother’s fashion inspirations are New Balance and
Lululemon.
Still, drag is a time-honored form of comic entertainment, from
the Greek stage to RuPaul. Perhaps if the drag queens toned it down and
positioned themselves less as “queer role models” and more as comedians
in the
Milton Berle
tradition, they’d be less off-putting. Also if they ditched the
propagandistic reading lists: How many kids really want to hear one more
tiresome lesson about “individuality,” much less same-sex marriage?
The last paragraph makes a valid enough point - it's not that I can't find some drag funny if part of a comedy act; it's just that I don't get the point of gay glamour drag, like Ru Paul, with its over the top visuals that are often more a parody of feminine glamour. (I guess some of the more ridiculous looking drag artists use it with ribald humour in shows with a primarily gay audience - so I suppose I "get" that aspect of drag show - but I still don't understand the appeal of the "serious" side of song or dance performance as a drag queen. And I seriously doubt that most children can understand the vibe of most drag playing to them, either.)
Anyway, while I find all gay drag rather strange and unappealing, I also know that conservative panic about it is ridiculous in its own way. I mean, seriously:
And in a San Francisco suburb, men invade Panda Dulce’s reading at a library’s Drag Queen Story Hour, shouting homophobic and transphobic slurs.
After focusing on transgender athletes and youths, anti-LGBTQ rhetoric
is now targeting drag storytimes — conceived as a way to educate and
entertain children by appealing to their imaginations — with
interruptions and other protests reported across the country in the past
two weeks, since Pride Month began.
I think drag is perhaps at a peak of cultural attention at the moment, and I can understand parents thinking it is a dubious use of school funds. But if I am right, and most kids don't really respond that well to the shows, the movement might never gain widespread footholds in schools. Or perhaps continue just as a thing you might see once during all of primary school - big deal.
Anyway, regardless of the degree of cultural visibility of drag, I very much doubt that it's ever going to be an evil influence over children who would otherwise not become gay. I mean, just common sense based on our childhood feelings tells us that, doesn't it? If a 6 year old boy gets a thrill that he doesn't quite understand from realising the "woman" is a man, it would seem a fair bet that he might not be destined for a purely straight life in future in any event. Isn't that sort of obvious to conservatives? Apparently not....
Update: Ha! Dover Beach at his New Catallaxy is still fanboying Ed Feser, the only Catholic philosopher in the world who still thinks the existence of (Catholic version) God is a lay down misere by force of logic alone, and has a completely over the top reaction to the issue:
