For over a decade, drag story hour sessions have become mainstays of Pride events, especially those geared towards families. First developed by queer author Michelle Tea in the San Francisco Public Library, the concept is relatively straightforward: children and their parents gather around a drag performer, who reads storybooks for their audiences. For little ones, it’s very easy to see the appeal – bright colours, sparkly costumes and an entertainer that’s unafraid to add a little bit of oomph to storytime. 

Despite this simple and innocent premise, drag story hour events have become a battleground for conservative politics, and the site of a moral panic. Throughout its history, various libraries have attracted far-right agitators, bearing intimidating signs that wrongfully equate drag performers with child predators. Buildings have been vandalised, parents have been intimidated, and performers have been subjected to doxxing campaigns and threats of violence.

Some events in Australia and the US have even received bomb threats, and, according to a report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, neo-fascist and white supremacist groups, including the Proud Boys and White Lives Matter, are among those leading campaigns against drag story times. One library in Illinois, the Institute reports, received a bullet in the post with a message that read “more to come”.

While many of the headlines about harassment during drag story hour emerge from the United States, Irish events have not been exempt from intimidation. Just last year, Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) officers escorted two people from an event hosted by East Side Partnership in Belfast.

In a statement, authorities said these individuals were removed to “ensure that there would be no breach of peace”, and no further arrests were made. Gordon Lyons, the Minister for Communities of Northern Ireland, later said that the event should not have taken place in the first instance and that it was “not appropriate for children”. 

In 2023, a number of anti-LGBTQ+ protestors disrupted a storytelling event in Tralee, Co. Kerry during Kingdom Pride, which required Gardaí to attend the scene, though no arrests were made. 

Another planned drag story time, this time organised by the drag collective Glitter Hole, was cancelled by Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown Libraries after the organisers were hit with a slew of online abuse in 2019. In a post on Facebook, the collective said they were targeted by “a frighteningly large group of bigots who believe that a few drag queens reading books to children amounts to child abuse.” 

With such events attracting far-right agitators both worldwide and here in Ireland, Wren Dennehy, also known as Avoca Reaction, felt a sense of trepidation before hosting a number of drag storytimes for children in the National Gallery of Ireland. 

“Every time we do an event, there’s that concern at the back of my mind,” they tell GCN. “Both in terms of the safety of the children who are at the event, the performers that we work with and the gallery staff. It’s a very real fear and an unfortunate consideration that we have to make.”

Dennehy has firsthand experience of the abuse that is often levelled at performers who take part in drag story hour events. In 2022, their company did an online storytime event for Cruinniú na nÓg with the Five Lamps Festival, when those involved were hit with vile online abuse by far-right agitators. 

“As an organiser of these events, I’m always on edge about what the response is going to be and how I can kind of safeguard everybody who is involved,” Dennehy says.

Their most recent storytime sessions at the National Gallery of Ireland not only passed without incident, but were met with overwhelmingly positive feedback. 

“Everybody who attended had an amazing time and we got beautiful feedback – both from small people and their grown-ups,” they say.

The provision of a safe environment for all is of the utmost importance for Dennehy.

“These are events that are programmed with children in mind,” they say. “Any event that takes place will always have safeguards through Garda vetting and our own standards and practices as an organisation. Safety is really at the forefront of everything that we do.”

These measures, coupled with the age-appropriate materials selected for storytime, render the far-right’s response to drag story hour “paradoxical and ridiculous” to Dennehy. The harassment and targeting of events of this nature form part of a wider campaign that wrongfully equates the LGBTQ+ community with predators. 

“Trans and queer people have become this kind of convenient scapegoat and this sort of folk devil, but I think that serves to distract from the actual institutions and people who do actively harm children,” Dennehy says. “That false narrative created by these alt-right organisations and individuals, I believe, ultimately puts more children at risk because it takes the focus away from the actual threat. There are no statistics, there’s no research to back up any of these claims that a trans person or a queer person is inherently more harmful to a child than a cis person or a heterosexual person.”

Misinformation plays a large role in amplifying false narratives about drag story hour, Dennehy points out.

“All of the claims around drag storytimes being inappropriate for children, and all the ideas around queer people being inappropriate around children are being put forward by people who haven’t been to these events, who aren’t part of the community,” they say. “They are essentially just parroting talking points.” 

Abusive campaigns that equate members of the LGBTQ+ community with sexual predators impact drag performers, families and library staff alike, but, as outlined in the Institute for Strategic Dialogue’s report, this narrative can have even further-reaching consequences.

As of May 2023, 220 bills specifically targeting transgender and non-binary people have been introduced in the US, with much of the language of these bills mirroring “some of the generalisations the groups… have made about drag performers, sexualising them and arguing that no drag performance is appropriate for minors.” While no such bills have been launched in Ireland, anti-LGBTQ+ and particularly anti-trans rhetoric remain ongoing issues for the community.