Did you really think that the debate about drag queens reading fairy tales to children was only about whether drag queens can read fairy tales to children? If so, you did not follow well. I understand you. There are a lot of things going on at the same time, in this file as in many others, and some of us do not yet have electricity.
There is one who follows these things closely in Quebec: Éric Duhaime. The leader of the Conservative Party of Quebec has understood that Barbada and his friends represent much more, in the spirit of the times, than the astonishing relocation, from the Red Light to daycare centers, of an art form of the scene which we had not recently grasped was also aimed at toddlers.
In the petition he posted online this week, Duhaime spins where it hurts: expected, he writes in the intro, “that some drag queens have been trying for a few years to enter daycares, schools and libraries to read tales about sexual diversity or explain gender theory from a woke point of view. Ah! It’s not just about their presence, but about what they say through their stories. gender theory. (It seems to me, Eric, that adding “from a woke point of view” here is redundant. Let’s move on.) Let me try to clean up this mess a bit.
gender theory. It is a question of affirming that men and women as they were conceived previously do not exist, but are social constructions. In fact, there is only one continuum which goes from one pole to another and which can vary or combine according to the people and the moment. Whether one likes this theory or not (count me among the skeptics), it has its place in conferences and post-secondary institutions. From preschool to the end of secondary school, the school is not the place for the dissemination of emerging theories, but of pedagogical consensus. (This also applies to white supremacy and systemic racism, although offered in video clips by Télé-Québec to secondary school teachers.) In short, if Duhaime can give us cases where anyone, disguised or not, teaches him children, let him tell us.
drag queen. Of course, anyone who’s seen a drag show on the Main must be horrified to find a similar performance at a library near you. Clearly, this is a completely “de-burlesquised” version of drag, of a man in disguise who comes to read a story. We do not see how the experience of life, nocturnal and for adults, of a drag predisposes her to have good contact with children. Barbada, a civilian teacher, must be a case in point. But insofar as the drags selected by libraries or schools offer a playful, educational experience of quality, in no way sexual or vulgar, and sticking to pedagogically approved tales, nothing justifies their prohibition.
The discomfort. The irruption of drag queens in public space and debate adds to the generalization of the gay and queer presence in all fields of activity and provokes, in my opinion, in a part of the majority hetero population, a questioning legit. Are we overvaluing difference? Have we first gone from an unacceptable situation of repression, to a liberating stage of acceptance, to a new, problematic stage of glorification of difference to the detriment of the majority practice? An overcorrection that would present the straight experience as devalued compared to others? To my knowledge, no credible measuring instrument can validate this hypothesis. But I dare venture here that this fear exists and that it feeds the backlash carried by the American right and, here, by Duhaime.
The trend. The increase in the proportion of members of the LGBTQ community is directly correlated with age, Statistics Canada tells us, according to data compiled between 2015 and 2018. While there are only 7.3% of gays and associates of over 65, there are 15% of those aged 35 to 44. Then, the first generations to have been massively exposed to the acceptance of sexual difference – the Y, born between 1980 and 2000, and the Z, born since 2000 – show respective LGBTQ rates of 29% and 30%. At this astonishingly high level, are we witnessing a simple flowering of a pre-existing but hitherto repressed difference, or is the phenomenon amplified by a fad? Be that as it may, we are witnessing a major transformation of sexual practice among those under 35, which seems both to increase and to be maintained in their thirties, which excludes the hypothesis of the phase of youthful experimentation.
Medicalization. A real debate is underway in the West on the medical practices for supporting children and adolescents who wish to change gender. Sweden and the United Kingdom, yesterday pioneers in this field, have suddenly made an about-face. The enormous difficulty lies in determining the difference between truly misgendered children and others who are simply confused or in search of experimentation. It is impossible to deny that a real gender problem exists in some of them. It is also impossible to deny that a fad can lead to irreversible decisions by young people who, having become adults, bitterly regret it. (The proportions of trans or non-binary, measured in 2021, are less than 1% for all age groups, from 0.15% among baby boomers to 0.79% among Z.)
Every society today must make these adjustments, which are both complex and delicate. My opinion is that the time has come for Quebec to face up to it, with the admirable tool it has acquired over the past few years to make progress on these thorny issues: a transpartisan commission, both open and clear-sighted, taking the double compass of tolerance and vigilance, and overseen by a personality that inspires confidence. That’s good, I see that Véronique Hivon is now a free agent.
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