The “moral panic” over drag shows seems to have reached a disturbing inflection point. 33 GOP House members have just introduced a federal “Don’t Say Gay, Don’t Say Trans” bill that could ban institutions getting federal funding from hosting drag shows or making books featuring gay people available to children.
And in Idaho, Republicans plan to introduce a bill to ban all public drag shows outright in a bill that, depending on its wording, could conceivably also make it illegal to cross-dress in public.
On the federal level, the misleadingly named “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act” would ban federal funding for developing, promoting, or hosting any “program, event, or literature” that would supposedly expose children under ten to what the bill calls “sexually-oriented material.” But the bill defines “sexually oriented” material so broadly that it includes not just things like “lascivious dancing” and racy books but also “any topic involving gender identity, gender dysphoria, transgenderism, sexual orientation, or related subjects.”
This would presumably include family-friendly drag queen story hours and children’s books that feature gay parents.
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana has made it plain that the target isn’t just sexually explicit material but ideas themselves, declaring in a statement that the bill was designed to prevent children from encountering not just “sexual imagery” but also what he called “radical gender ideology,” which would presumably include any “ideology” that defends trans people’s right to exist — or even simply acknowledges that they do exist.
In a thread on Twitter Harvard Cyber Law Clinic instructor Alejandra Caraballo shows why the law would be even more draconian than Florida’s notorious “Don’t Say Gay” law.
In a separate tweet, she points out that the law could be the first step down a very slippery slope.
Meanwhile, Idaho Family Policy Center president Blaine Conzatti told the Idaho Capital Sun that state Republicans are planning to introduce a bill banning all public drag shows. And while the text of the legislation isn’t yet available, the Family Policy Center petition that got the ball rolling on this proposed bill gives some hints as to what the nature of the bill will be:
[T]he state legislature carries the responsibility of enacting legislation that promotes morality, public virtue, and the purity of the home.
Therefore, we call on our state lawmakers to implement legal reform that would prohibit drag performances in public places where children are present.
The petition claims that cross-dressing is inherently sexual and fetishistic.
Our concerns stem from the proliferation of public drag events that are now taking place in our communities. Perhaps most alarmingly, these aberrant sexual exhibitions are regularly marketed toward impressionable and vulnerable children.
Like strip shows or adult magazines, drag culture is inherently sexualized. In fact, cross-dressing is classified as an erotic fetish, and drag performers often become sexually aroused when they imitate sexualized behaviors of the opposite sex in public.
Our children’s innocence—and public virtue—must be protected. Please update state laws to ensure children are not exposed to sexual exhibitions like drag shows in public places.
And in his interview with the Capital Sun, Conzatti insists that
no child should ever be exposed to sexual exhibitions like drag shows in public places, whether that’s at a public library or a public park.
Given the sweeping nature of the group’s language, it is hard not to wonder if the bill itself will be worded in such a way that it could effectively ban cross-dressing in a library or public park, or indeed, anywhere else where human beings and their children can be found.
Which is just a step away from banning the public existence of trans people. After all, anti-trans activists also like to argue that living and dressing as a trans woman embodies a sexual fetish called, with pseudoscientific pretension, “autogynephilia.”
Whether or not this proposed bill will make trans existence illegal, that seems to be the endgame here. And Caraballo reminds us just how quickly Russia slid down this slippery slope. Can it happen here? Politically, we need to act as if it could — because otherwise, I fear, it will.
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That could be a factor, but by itself it can’t explain the outcome of the Stanford Prison Experiment, which assigned the roles randomly as I recall. There was nothing that would have particularly attracted the corruptible to the experiment (academia, with its open processes and peer review, is a generally hostile environment for the corruptible, by design) let alone specifically to the “guard” roles. And yet, look what happened …
@ Surplus to Requirements
There is now a lot of doubt about the Standford Prison Experiment, apparently guards were given direction, results were messed with etc etc.
I’m wondering whether the ban on cross-dressing would extend to women wearing trousers. Not immediately, but when Evangelicals scent blood in the water they decide that everything is sexually inviting. “Morality, public virtue, and the purity of the home.” sounds like something that might possibly be used later to insist all women wear ankle-length skirts and cover their shoulders and maybe even hair, and definitely forbid women from wearing their shoulder bag across their chest because that emphasises their breasts.
@Sheila: They’d have all women in burqas if they didn’t hate Muslims so much. As it is, they’re ready to shove us all in Handmaid’s outfits. Or maybe dressed like Amish, Orthodox Jewish, or at best Orthodox Mormon women.