Are drag queen storytimes worth fighting for? These people think so

As pushback and protests continue over drag storytimes across Southwestern Ontario, advocates say making those experiences available is a way to teach understanding and accepting differences.

Adam Davies, the co-chair of the Anti-Oppression Rainbow Research Lab at the University of Guelph — who is also a registered early childhood educator — believes drag queen storytimes are something worth fighting for.

"It is of the most – the utmost importance – to fight for drag and drag storytime because of how it really is showing children, young people, families what we could be as a future society in terms of reimagining and transforming gender," Davies told CBC News.

"And these spaces are so important because we know that children start bullying and policing each other's gender at a very young age, and those behaviours are often learned from parents and family figures."

June is Pride month across Canada with local events happening in places like London, Oxford County and Waterloo Region. As part of some of these celebrations, there will be drag storytimes across the regions, but many of the events in the past have been met with protests by anti-drag activists.

"If you think about the children in that audience who are able to engage with drag and ask questions about gender, it is creating opportunity to reimagine gender for the future and also hopefully show children and young people that gender can be transformative. It can be outside of the binary," Davies said. 

"I think one of the reasons why it's so under attack is because people want to restrict our imaginaries around gender. People want to maintain the same ideas of gender that we've had over the last 400 years in Western society."

Lack of affirmation 

Davies said storytimes aren't just for queer youth, and believes there can be consequences for young people not having the sort of affirmation that they might find at these events. 

"The consequences, I think, are incredibly severe because by seeing someone embody gender in a way that is self affirming, that allows permission for a child or youth to say, 'Hey, I can do that too,'" Davies said.

"So if they don't have any role models in their life or people that they can turn to, or representation on TV and media, then it almost creates the idea that they should be ashamed of who they are in their desire. And so the desire to be yourself and to express your gender in a way outside of our societal norms becomes something to be kept within."

'Hate can't win' 

Wortley Pride in London's Wortley Village is hosting a drag storytime of their own on Saturday.

They put on a similar storytime last year with no incidents, but this year, Kathy Bell-Copeland, Wortley Pride founder, said they've had pushback.

"People going so far as, they don't have a problem with drag rights," Bell-Copeland said. "They just don't like it when we implicate children or involve children into drag storytime. 

"I don't understand why, simply because drag performers are people at the utmost of their core that are doing what they feel is right for the community. They're reading stories about self-love, about acceptance, about being who you are to an audience of children who are there attending drag storytime with their parents and legal guardians."    

Despite the pushback, Bell-Copeland said they're still continuing with the storytime because "hate can't win."

"To be who you are, to be your authentic self, is so crucial starting at any age."