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My thoughts on it confusing. Why? Why drag queens was there a demand for this do kindergartners just want to see drag Queens? It's been my experience if you just sit down in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt and read to them they won't really care all they want to do is see the pictures.
So this seems more about the parents to me. I just don't think a 5 through 7 year old is going to get it.
Why does a man dress up like a woman? What is the point? In my experience (from what I've witness online), the whole act is sexualized. High heels, short skirts, obscene amount of makeup, etc. It's not like Frank is dressing up in yoga pants and a shirt and picking up a latte from Starbucks.
To your other point, a cowboy is a normal thing. A farmer is a normal thing. A fireman is a normal thing. It's not normal for a grown man to dress and act like a woman, unless they have severe mental illness.
DQSH takes place in a public library. Not a Drag night club.
And OK, it's not normal to YOU. Therefore, YOU keep your child away from DQSH. That is perfectly fine.
Teaching them to be accepting of people who are LGBTQ is not teaching them about sex.
They may have a friend with two moms or two dads, and they need to be taught to accept that those are still families too and just because they are different doesn't mean they are wrong.
What about that has anything to do with sex?
The whole point of LGBTQ is basically summed up by who you have sex with.
Is it normal for adults to walk around dressed like clowns or princesses? Are princesses sexual? They wear clothing similar to drag queens....
No, it's not normal. Do you go around dressing up like a clown on a regular basis? Do you make regular trips to the grocery store dressed like a princess?l Deleted
Last edited by june 7th; 07-06-2022 at 09:20 AM..
Reason: In calling other people unlike yourself "mentally ill."
Perhaps you should do some reading about attitudes towards women who first donned a pair of trousers. Do you ( or the women in your life) wear pants, and do you think women wearing pants is a sign of mental illness?
We are discussing men dressing like women. You're off topic and reaching.
Bingo. I love how every individual taxpayer thinks they get a say... but then what about your neighbor who also pays those SAME taxes, but has a different opinion on what's appropriate? That's why, as you said, we don't censor based on these personal opinions. We choose what to present to each age group based on appropriateness and (broad) community interest, which are determined by our professional training and education + experience.
I'm often asked why Librarians need Master's Degrees? Well, there's one reason for ya.
Publicly funded things should try to maintain a even keel level of normalcy on things. Kind of like a don't rock the boat mentality. They should not be catering to the extreme's of society. As we all know, the percentage of people who dress in drag is infinitely small. It's for the same reason they don't have Jesus Story Hour at your local library. All you atheist's would be up in arms.
The whole point of LGBTQ is basically summed up by who you have sex with.
I am not saying to tell them about sex.
I'm saying that if someone has 2 dads or 2 moms, there is no reason not to accept them as the same as your expected nuclear family.
When a teacher puts a picture up of them and their spouse at their desk that their kids can see, is that teaching kids about sex? If not, why is it teaching them about sex if a male teacher has a picture of him and his husband?
Publicly funded things should try to maintain a even keel level of normalcy on things. Kind of like a don't rock the boat mentality. They should not be catering to the extreme's of society. As we all know, the percentage of people who dress in drag is infinitely small. It's for the same reason they don't have Jesus Story Hour at your local library. All you atheist's would be up in arms.
No, I would not, because it's not an event anyone has to go to or send their kids to. I would only be up in arms if they had a Jesus story hour and denied another religion the same platform to have their stories shared.
No, ....... I would only be up in arms if they had a Jesus story hour and denied another religion the same platform to have their stories shared.
Libraries actually do a lot of Christmas stuff. That is Jesus story hour. And incidentally, fine with me, even though I am not a Christian. Children can be taught to respect other religions. Put up a menorah, have a Kwanzaa dance. Great, go for it. Put up a yule tree, too. As long as they aren't putting up a sign that says "only Christians allowed".
And they do a lot of Easter stuff. That is also Jesus story hour, although I'm not quite sure what other religious stuff they can out up to balance it. I guess celebrate the spring equinox.
If I still had little kids, I would be trying my best to teach them to be tolerant, but to be thoughtful about it. You don't have to accept everything or everyone, but there is no reason to be hostile to folks who aren't hurting anyone. I don't believe in raising up children to be bigots.
New stuff is the opportunity where you can discuss things with children. Lots of exposure to different things prepares them better to cope with life, where they are going to experience lots of weird things and are better off if they know how to cope with weirdness and how to evaluate it.
As for why the drag queens do it, I am certain that they are not doing it to recruit new members to their cause. The most likely reason is that they want to be accepted as human beings and think that doing regular human being things is what will have people realize that they are human beings.
Seriously, not any different than the blacks who wanted to walk into the drug store and sit at the soda fountain. They wanted to do regular human being things and to be accepted as human beings,
Uhhhh, I think you've got things a little backwards here... although I did get a good laugh at your comment! The "Paws for Reading" (or Reading Buddies as we call it here) is for children to read to the dogs. Not the other way around.
The idea is that for shy or un-confident readers, they might feel more comfortable with an audience that doesn't judge. Meaning a dog or cat. We only do it once a month at my library, and it's a limited pre-registration; so if your kid is afraid of dogs, obviously you wouldn't sign them up for this. Common sense.
We restarted it about two months ago at my library. I'm planning to have my new (rescued adult) dog certified to participate, as he absolutely ADORES children. He's a big yet surprisingly calm husky, so the kids usually love him right back. I can't wait to get him started!
My comments were somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but I was illustrating a point that we accept one of the most common threats to children in the public library without a second thought, while one of the smallest threats (I don’t know of a single child attacked by a drag queen) generates a huge bout of hand-wringing.
About 3 million children are bitten and 10-20 are killed by dogs every year in the USA. Obviously very few of these are during paws for reading, but it can and has happened (a bite, not a killing).
I would think that reading to a dog is far worse than reading to a library volunteer, drag queen, or stuffed animal. The paws for reading dogs I’ve seen certainly don’t understand human language, are “usually” calm, until they aren’t. Then they bark, want to walk around, want to sniff, and want to do natural doggy things, with their doting owner struggling to control them and apologizing how “she’s not usually like this” or “it must be because that child did *insert normal child behavior*” etc. If you’ve never done that, or had that happen to you, then you are a better owner than most and your dogs are very well-heeled.
Like DQSH, the focus is not really on the kids, but rather on the dog or drag queen and normalizing their presence, making the queen or dog owner feel like they’re doing something special. I don’t buy that there are these hordes of “shy” readers who, if only they had a non-judgemental dog to read to, would become a literary genius. Sounds like something a dog owner invented in order to bring their pet in to “delight the children.”
For the record, I dislike them both, but I’m not going to go protest either; I just won’t take my children. I get that, for those who go, paws for reading and DQSH are harmless fun. I have a chip on my shoulder about dogs, and others have a chip on their shoulder about drag queens. I don’t feel the need for that chip to spoil everybodys fun, so long as I can *female dog* about it on City-Data.
Our kids are well-practiced in their response to dogs. They love them and they play happily with familiar dogs. However, we are often approached in public by unfamiliar dogs of irresponsible owners who think it’s fine for their pet to bark or jump at strangers. In response to an approach by an unfamiliar dog, my kids cross their arms (to protect fingers) and turn away (to protect neck and face and not trigger more jumping or an attack). Every time we take them in for a checkup, our pediatrician goes over risk factors, and one of the first things they ask about is whether there is a dog in the home and if my children know dog safety, simply because they see so many disfiguring dog bites to children in our very dog-friendly area.
I feel--with no real evidence--that it is a bad idea for you to take a rescue (or high-strung or inbred breed) to be around a group of unfamiliar children in a strange environment. You don’t know for certain what past trauma that dog has suffered and you cannot have thoroughly explored all of his or her triggers and PTSD. Rescuing abused dogs is great, but insisting that they socialize with vulnerable young jumpy humans is not. I assume you let all the parents know that it is a rescue and that their children need to be capable of avoiding, and remember not to do any triggering or prey-drive behaviors. I’m glad to hear you limit it to a small number of pre-registered children, that’s smart.
I’d be happy to hear your counter-arguments of why rescues are just as safe or safer to be around children, and anecdotes about how positive an experience your dog reading program has been.
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