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There are definitely plenty of people like that, that are hostile to gender non conformity and queerness no matter what, but I think you are excluding a large middle ground of people who might be currently uncomfortable with gender non conformity but aren’t as ideologically tied to this position as the committed bigots would want. That’s why the bigots lie and show pictures from unrelated adult only events and say " this is what they are doing in front of your children".
I think it’s false to assume most people are settled into strong opinions and can never be reasoned with, it’s just the people without strong opinions are not the ones arguing on the internet. What we need to figure out is how to reach these people. That doesn’t mean you should argue with random bigots who pick fights with you on twitter or whatever but that does mean you should still think about how to reach people who don’t already agree with you.
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Again, if they are willing to align with nazis, then I doubt they’ll be convinced by seeing the drag show.
If they’re agreeing with actual fucking nazis… 
If that doesn’t set off alarm bells, whatever discomfort people might feel, then perhaps they’ve already made up their minds. Agreeing with nazis is already an extreme position. Because nazis are hell-bent on genocide. Always.
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Comfort be damned.
Anyone who somehow doesn’t know that the Nazi’s are always on the wrong side needs to get their moral compass checked.
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I don’t disagree but I’m not only speaking to the marginalized communities involved here. These drag queens are already putting themselves out there to help de stigmatize gender conformity, that is what these drag queen story times are about. I’m saying we could possibly better boost that message with articles like these by actually showing the event in question.
I’ll reiterate though that I understand there are privacy concerns and we shouldn’t put the people involved in more danger of violence than they already are, so maybe that is why video aren’t being posted more widely.
Gawd, this must have been so scary for everyone at the story time! Given the class and composure shown by the hosts in the news clips, I bet they turned it into a real learning moment for the kids, and hopefully helped them avoid ongoing trauma from it.
It makes me weep. It’s not enough that these kids need to go through active shooter drills in school, but now they have to deal with masked fucking NAZIs at their story time?!?
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Most people have already seen some form of non-threatening drag in film or television if not in person. For example, no one freaked out that Robin Williams was some kind of child-grooming monster when Mrs. Doubtfire was marketed as a family film.
The people who choose to believe that there’s something sick taking place at drag events will just continue to rationalize that the really bad stuff is what’s going on when the cameras aren’t around.
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It might help to be more clear. “Low income” and “trash” when written in close proximity have a fairly derogatory meaning, and I wasn’t the only one confused by this.
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So you do call people trash. How nice.
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The news clip showed Juicy reading a children’s book, like any story time. What more would someone need? A ring of children gazing on adoringly?
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Privacy, especially for the kids, is of primary importance. But even more so is the fact that it won’t work. All they have to do is claim that this was a “staged, safe event and doesn’t reflect what really happens when they summon Satan and sacrifice kittens” and whatever other bullshit they make up. The beauty of being utterly untethered to reality is that you never have to prove anything. Facts are not germane in any way. You cannot defeat this with facts, it will not work.
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But…but…maybe if we just changed the name!
Not to make light of this, because it’s truly infuriating, but I feel like we need a bingo card for all these “defending or making allowances for the fascists” discussions.
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I think this idea that everyone is the world has strong opinions about everything and can never be swayed comes from arguing with people on the internet. But that isn’t a good representation of people at large. The people who argue on the internet are self selected to have strong opinions, that is why they are arguing on the internet. But other people who might have less strong opinions are still exposed to the stuff being posted on the internet and that is who the real target is, and you can’t just pre assume these people either already agree with you about everything or will never agree with you no matter what you say.
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Ummm, in my experience, if someone doesn’t already have strong opinions about literal NAZIs, and fall in the “NAZIs are bad” camp, there’s not really much to be done. 
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No one said that. If people are not noting that actual nazis are showing up to shut these down, and are not doing the calculations about what that means, that’s on them. They are agreeing with nazis and are willing to stand with nazis in order to oppose a guy reading a book to kids, who just happens to be fancied up in drag.
Nazis are ALWAYS on the wrong side. We should not have to “convince” people of that. They don’t have to be enthusiatic or comfortable with drag to understand that very critical point.
Neither is that drag queens are a bigger threat to society than nazis. People are agreeing with nazis.
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I agree, but I’m thinking in terms of “what will it take for the police to get serious and charge them”-- I’m sure cops can shrug this off as “free speech” in the Live Free or Die state, but if punches are thrown or glass is shattered. . .
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Neo-nazis have spent the last 30 years infiltrating police forces across the US. They’re not going to arrest themselves.
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That kind of toes the line for assault charges, and it would definitely escalate things, which is a bad idea.
It’s a trope used mostly for laughs. I seem to recall that Williams pulled it off pretty well. Hell, there was To Wong Foo, Thanks for everything! Julie Newmar which had Patrick Swayze as one of the leads, and he absolutely rocked it. (As did Wesley Snipes and John Leguizamo), and that was back in the 90’s as well.
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“Bob?”
“Yes Joe?”
“Remember that drag queen thing we all wore our Best Buy cosplay outfits to and said things that would make a CoD online player blush?”
“Yep. Good times.”
“Chief says to say you weren’t there.”
“Oh. Ok. Got it.”
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As a poor libertarian socialist, I concur.
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