I see my hero Peter Tatchell is tweeting a headline from the Pink News on how Britons “unanimously reject calls for bans on drag shows. Tatchell thinks that those who oppose drag shows are “far right” and a tiny minority. I sense some fake news and a fake poll here. And I am right.
First to the poll. Do 100% ( as in unanimous) of we Brits oppose bans on drag shows? Guess what? No. According to the actual poll 62%% oppose a ban while 20% support one and the rest do not know. So that makes those with a view split 75% to 25%. So a big majority but not exactly unanimous. But then what was the question asked?
“Several states in the United States have proposed legislation to ban public ‘Drag Shows’, a form of entertainment which involves performers impersonating men or women. Would you support such a ban in the United Kingdom?“
As it happens the facts do not even support the question. The only state to enact a law, the state of Tennessee has banned drag shows “in public where they might be seen by children.” Other states are moving to do the same.
I remember going to see Danny La Rue in the old Brick Lane Music Hall. There was double entendre aplenty in a night of drag, humour which I’d rather my kids were not exposed too but which was actually quite funny. The protests we have seen in recent months on both sides of the Atlantic have not been about La Rue style drag but about a highly sexualised form of drag, often involving sex toys, being performed right in front of young kids, primary school kids. Hell’s teeth: what sort of man gets a kick from giving such a show?
It is already bloody hard deciding when to discuss the birds and the bees with your kids and then deciding what to say without such an intervention. And that is why, I bet the ranch, most parents would support the Tennessee law and ban such shows in front of minors. It does not make us “far right” to want to protect our kids at an early stage in their lives.
But that was not the question asked by the poll. It asked a different question altogether in order to be able to smear a vast majority of us as being an extreme minority. This is very nasty journalism and shame on Tatchell for endorsing a misleading headline and a false poll. He is better than that.
