The drag queen Panda Dulce was at the San Lorenzo Library in California when members of the extremist group the Proud Boys barged in.
They interrupted Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH), where performers read books to kids as a means toward nurturing literacy and compassion for others, and, per Dulce, slung insults such as “groomer.” One man’s T-shirt instructed, “Kill Your Local Pedophile.”
A month later, Dulce is still reeling from the confrontation.
“The right’s alarmist, downright fascist bias of who should or should not exist will never override the indisputable reality that we (LGBTQ people) do exist,” she told CNN.
What happened to Dulce wasn’t a unique incident in the context of our present day. In recent weeks, some conservative politicians and right-wing groups have directed their fury at drag, insisting that children must be shielded from a supposedly pernicious art.
as the drag queen Logan Stone put it, “So many conservatives think that Drag Queen Story Hour is about sexualizing children. It’s not. It’s about educating and about offering representation of underrepresented people.”
The harassment of drag queens and LGBTQ people isn’t occurring in isolation. Rather, it’s part of a wider movement seeking to undermine the rights and status of certain groups, according to Thomas Zimmer, a visiting professor at Georgetown University, where his research focuses on the history of democracy and its discontents.