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[title]‘People always say that pride is a protest,’ says Amardeep Dillon, who’s spent months rallying their social media followers to show up in support of drag storytime events at Honor Oak pub. ‘Well, it’s Pride month now. This is the protest. This is our Stonewall Inn.’
It’s surreal to think that a quiet suburban street in south London could be a key battleground in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights. But on this baking hot June morning, it really does feel like one.
‘What are you afraid of, it’s just wigs and makeup’, a glitter-faced woman is shouting into the megaphone, getting the hyped-up crowd to chant along with her. A stereo is playing old-school gay party bangers, and a good natured, iced coffee-clutching crowd of about 100 people of all ages is waving placards saying ‘Drag is beautiful,’ ‘Don’t let the far right divide us’ and ‘Fight for LGBTQ+ liberation’. And across the road are the people that have brought us here. About 30 far-right protestors are setting up a stall draped with a flag saying ‘Groom dogs, not children’, the smooth pates of the mostly male group glistening in the sun as they unfurl a union jack flag. ‘You’ve got more signs than people. You’re embarrassing. Fuck off and go home,’ blares the megaphone, but they’re not going anywhere.
A family wheels a pram past the steel barriers that encircle the protest, heavily guarded by police. A cheer goes up from the crowd, and I feel my eyes sting with unexpected tears. They’re on their way to a drag storytime, a 21st century spin on the kind of kids’ story sessions libraries have long hosted: drag queens in primary coloured dresses read a story, lead a dance session, and gently suggest that it’s okay to dress however and be whoever you want.
Unfortunately, that’s not a message everyone endorses. But why has drag suddenly become a political battleground?
In part, it's because it's soared from niche, late night gay spaces and into mainstream consciousness, propelled by both RuPaul's Drag Race and the support of straight institutions from museums to libraries to schools. ‘What has drag got to do with Pride?’ asked Julia Hartley-Brewer earlier this month on Talk TV, discussing the news that a secondary school had planned a ‘drag and rainbows’ themed school uniform day. ‘In my day, Pride had to do with accepting people for who they are. It had nothing to do with a caricature of females, fake boobs and nails and hair.’
Patiently, LGBTQ+ journalist (and part-time drag king Dishi Sumac) Shivani Dave replied that it was a drag king named Stormé DeLarverie’s scuffle with the police that sparked the Stonewall uprising. ‘Now, drag is going back to its roots, and rediscovering its fighting spirit,’ Dave tells me. And it’s got a serious battle on its hands.
A moral panic
Honor Oak’s drag queen storytime has been protested and counter-protested each month since January. It’s not the only event that’s become a battleground. A drag queen storytime at Tate Britain in February this year was picketed by nationalist organisation Patriotic Alternative. In March, actor Laurence Fox (whose celebrations of Pride month included burning rainbow bunting in his back garden) joined a crowd turning up at Dulwich pub The Great Exhibition to protest a drag queen storytime which didn’t even happen (blinded by fury, the protest’s organisers didn’t notice it was an out of date listing from last year). Things are worse across the pond. In the US, drag queen storytimes regularly attract massive protests, and right-wing politicians are currently pushing through legislation such as Florida’s proposed anti-drag law, which would ban drag queens from appearing anywhere children might see them, even at Pride parades.
But it feels weird that the same moral panic is coming to the UK. Generations of British kids have been raised by coiffed and powdered telly icons like Dame Edna Everage, and fought over sweets chucked by panto dames.
Journalist Michelle Snow, who writes for What the Trans, reckons that things started to shift in 2015, when the Women and Equality Select Committee held a consultation on transgender equality. ‘At the time, no one gave a shit about it,’ she says. But the recommendation that came out of it was reforms to the Gender Recognition Act, and as those were discussed, ‘the UK media began stoking up moral panic around trans people, and a lot of the people they were speaking to were also very anti drag.’
Obviously, these are different things. Trans is an identity. Drag is an artform and an entertainment. But the proposed legal change still sparked a national conversation about gender presentation, one which is becoming increasingly heated as debates play out online from Twitter to TikTok to Telegram (the messaging app beloved of fascists who fear police scrutiny).
Drag artist That Girl is the performer at the centre of the Honor Oak protests, and after a career in children’s publishing, she’s passionate about the importance of reading to kids. So why are people so angry about an act that involves her putting on a frock and some make-up to do so? She’s pretty clear on the answer. ‘It all boils down to the fact that once I take off all the drag, I am a gay man and, in classic Section 28 and Maggie Thatcher-era fashion, they believe that gay men should not be allowed around children. It's really boring.’
The fascist pile-on
Still, the anti-drag sentiment is more than just a cringey throwback. It’s also what Snow calls a ‘wedge issue’ for the far right: an emotive topic that enables them to gain supporters, by playing on peoples’ fears. ‘Post 9/11, the far right was stirring up hatred towards Muslims,’ says Snow. ‘Now, it’s drag. The far right is using the issue to try and swell their numbers, as well as to gain legitimacy and be part of the media conversation.’
The Honor Oak protests have been visited by every flavour of rightwing activist. When I went along, friends in the crowd pointed out YouTuber ‘Brexit Brian’, who had distinguished himself the month before by filming himself ‘chucking a Roman’ (slang for giving a Nazi salute) before being arrested by the police. There are other more unsavoury characters, too. ‘There are people from Keep Romford White, ex-English Defence League members, people from Democratic Football London, which is a fascist football hooligan group,’ explains Dillon, who has been watching the crowds closely each month.
The first Honor Oak counter protest in April had 700 people all rallying to support drag queen storytime, against 100 anti-drag protestors. This month’s offering was significantly smaller on both sides. But Dillon still doesn’t reckon things are petering out, and nor does Snow. ‘These people aren’t going anywhere,’ she says, ‘and it wouldn’t surprise me if their next step was to argue that the presence of any queer venue in London is inherently a danger to children. They’re against anything that goes against gender norms and the traditional family model, so I can see them showing up at G-A-Y, for example.’
‘It's definitely getting more dangerous for drag performers,' says Dave, who’s seen this rising tide of protest first hand. 'If I can’t get ready at a venue before a show, I have to plan my route really carefully. I’ll go on the bus instead of the tube so I can escape easily if I need to. I’ll wear a hoodie and look down at my phone so that people can’t see my face full of drag make up.’
On the night of King Charles III’s coronation, I went to watch Dave perform in Coronation of Kings, a furiously political drag night that’s streets away from the apolitical, wry, knowing drag shows that were the norm a decade ago.
A gamechanging new generation of drag performers is here, incubated by forward-looking cabaret spot The Glory, Soho Theatre's drag school, and the toxic current political climate. They're moving away from the familiar artistic palette of lipsyncs and wisecracks to make drag shows that are in open conversation with the forces that want to shut them down, arguing for their performers’ rights to live how they choose. And that means a backlash is inevitable. ‘An anti-trans blogger came to one of our recent gigs,’ says Dave. ‘It made us feel exposed and vulnerable knowing they were in the audience, and then after the show they wrote a review of it using our real names, which was a horrible thing to find.’
Still, Snow strikes a note of optimism: ‘if they make it to Soho, I can’t see them lasting long’. As she points out, it’s fundamentally incredibly weird that fascists are trying to make serious inroads in a city with a long embedded history both of crossdressing and minding your own business. ‘We all remember Lily Savage on prime time TV, which makes it a lot harder for them to convince people this stuff is dangerous.’
Something to believe in
With all this heat and chaos and noise around drag storytime, it’s easy to forget something important. Dressing up is fun. Gender doesn't have to be deadly serious. And that’s a principle that drag queens like That Girl are willing to put themselves in physical danger for.
‘I feel scared every time I walk in the room’, she says, describing what it’s like to run the gauntlet of Honor Oak protestors to get to the pub’s events room. ‘The vitriol being levelled at me is terrifying. But the community support gets me through it. And when I get there, there’s Disney music playing, the families are sat eating pastries, and it’s all just wonderful.’
For That Girl, drag is worth fighting for because it creates a vision of a more accepting kind of London. ‘I choose books which show that there are lots of different kinds of people in the world, and we all have our place here,’ she says. ‘It's about spreading joy and kindness, which is at odds with the vitriol and hatred being preached at us by the protestors right outside the door,’ she says.
For most kids, it’s just a fun morning out, but for a few, it’ll have a lifelong impact. Snow is trans, and wishes she had events like drag queen storytime when she was younger. ‘Seeing that kind of thing could have been very beneficial. When I was a kid, I always knew there was something up in gender town,’ she says, half-joking. ‘Instead of thinking “I’m a freak, I’m broken,” I could have seen that you can cross those gender lines, and it’s okay.’
On TikTok, kids of all ages are being introduced to the kind of ideas about gender that were once only published in academic journals. In this context, getting so angry about an event as innocuous as Drag Queen Storytime seems quaint. But it’s also symptomatic of a world where more and more people are becoming radicalised online, and craving an outlet for their anger at the speed at which ideas of gender and family are shifting.
The last time the far right took to south London’s streets in great numbers was the so-called Battle of Lewisham in 1977, when 500 neo-Nazis attempted to march from New Cross to Catford. A local mural commemorates the way local people proudly united to fight them off. Now, some of the same hatred is bubbling up in the unlikeliest places. But fortunately, determined Londoners are assembling to stamp it down.
‘This kids’ show is the frontline of anti fascism right now’ says Dillon, ‘and if we get to the point where more fascists than anti-fascists are showing up, we’ll be in an extremely dangerous situation. I know it’s nine am. I know we’ve all been getting fucked up the night before and living our best queer life. But it’s so important for us to come out from whoever’s house we’ve been sleeping at. Because we need each other more than ever.’