A thread on drag queens, kids and politicians out of controI. I see @DuncanBannatyne has been attacked by @pinknews for defending women's spaces and opposing the Scottish government's insane Gender Recognition Bill. Welcome to our club Duncan. And well done you! 
2./ A sign of how out of touch Pink News journos are is they think their headline is shocking. They don't realise the vast majority of Scots want single sex spaces for women to remain single sex. Here's Marion from @ForwomenScot on STV's Scotland Tonight saying just that.
3./ As usual Pink News misquote the law, claiming the Equality Act (2004) means trans people must have access to single sex spaces. In fact the Act's provisions protect transsexuals alone. As @JoanMcAlpine said on the same show the Reform would be revolutionary. In a bad way.
4./ Anyone who objects to Self-ID is however denounced as a bigot and their concerns about male-bodied people sharing changing rooms with girls are ridiculed. The proponents insist safeguards for kids are watertight and our claims that women are being sidelined absurd.
5./ So let's look at how seriously the people who argue for this Bill actually take safeguarding or ...women. Last month the govt's own Finance Minister (a supporter of GR Reform) was fired for sending late night dodgy tweets to a 16 year old schoolboy.
6./ He'd been banned from drinking at the SNP Conference but no one said anything when he urged head teachers to invite him to schools because he loved meeting pupils nor when he hosted meetings at Holyrood for schoolboys in the evening. dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-…
7./ Then there was the drag show carcrash. Who on earth defended inviting a drag queen called Flowjob into a primary school, and kept defending them when their public online profiles were seen to be full of this? 👇Step forward G R Reform champions @MhairiBlack and @LGBTYS
8./ Don't get me wrong, I'm not against all drag myself. Here's @PantiBliss tracing her story from working with the incomparable performance artist Leigh Bowery in the 80s. Panti became the 'Queen of Ireland' & a powerful spokesperson for LGB and T rights.
9./ Panti points out 'her' surreal alter ego allowed her to say things & reach people in a way you or I never could. Defenders of drag say it can help people throw away the shackles of 'ordinariness'. Here's Ru Paul in a Vanity Fair interview on his most famous motto.
10./ But Flowjob is no Ru Paul, nor Panti Bliss. And even if 'she' was ...surprise surprise... loads of actual women find drag deeply uncomfortable. Why would they not? The 'art form' often starts and mostly ends as a parody, often a grotesque one of women.
11./ Yes I know there are exceptions like the artist Milk who's created a whole new genre of boy drag where the creative expression or the joke (take your pick) is as much at the expense of guys as girls. Here's him being interviewed on Mic.
12./ But most drag remains rooted in misogyny. Its defenders tho often argue a drag queen's presence will help boys feel liberated from gender constraints. I doubt it. And anyway what about the girls forced to meet a parody of women? Do their feelings not count?
13./ There's a way to answer that question. Here's the LGBT reading list of the Primary School visited by Flowjob. Out of 16 books... only one is (in part) about a tomboy girl. 10 are about boys who discover their true feminine selves. blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/re/public/glen…
14./ Yep 10 to 1 in favour of boys. The titles say it all. Sissy Boy, Sissy Duckling, William's Doll, Hello Sailor, Oliver Button is a Sissy, Bill's New Frock, My Princess Boy etc. So now we know girls ARE sidelined in so-called LGBT education. @MhairiBlack doesn't seem to care.
15./ But what does the drag queen incident reveal about safeguarding ? The Gender Reform lobby argue it was all cool cos kids would never look at Flowjob's twitter feed with its drunken rants and fights in the street. Yeah, 'kids would never do that' is a great strategy.
16./ They also point out kids see pantomime dames in the theatre. Yep, parents take kids to loads of events including the circus. Shall we invite any old clown or juggler into primary schools to discuss LGBT issues? Or only gay clowns and jugglers?
17./ Dames aren't as sexualised as drag queens nor is their trademark banter of double entendres anywhere like that of most drag. Here's Nathan Sparling a great defender of drag on his own site. Jokes about putting a boot into a vagina are surprisingly rare at pantomimes I find.
18/ But it's the lack of rules that's so striking about this incident. Images of the kids were posted on instagram alongside adult ones about BDSM and choking till orgasm. A parent pointed out she wasn't even allowed to take pictures in the school thescottishsun.co.uk/news/5320992/d…
19./ This wasn't Flowjob's fault. 'She' should have been advised by someone in charge of safeguarding. There was time to develop a policy. It was 3 years ago LGBT charity @tiecampaign first suggested inviting drag queens into primary schools. dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-…
20./ But it seems since then there's been no strategy worked out and basic safeguarding rules about kids' images were able to be set aside. That's all the more surprising given that the event was part of LGBT History Month which is coordinated by LGBT Youth Scotland.
21./ If any charity appreciates the need for safeguarding it must be LGBT Youth Scotland. After all it's only a decade ago that their then CEO was jailed for running a child abuse network. He circulated images of kids from what were then their offices. scotsman.com/news-2-15012/h…
22./ So what does this mess tell us? For one it seems lessons haven't been learned and schools, the Education authorities, Councils and politicians are rushing into this new drag adventure with a cavalier disregard for basic safeguarding. Girls are also being ignored or gaslit.
23./ That's bad enough. But there's something more troubling. The vicious response to any criticism of the drag queen visit reflects a general approach from the LGBT or 'gender identity' lobby which now characterises any criticism as homophobic or transphobic.
24./ If they had instead admitted right away a mistake had been made and things needed tightening up most people would have been immeasurably reassured. Mistakes do happen after all. Instead they doubled down, denied there were ANY problems and trolled their critics.
25./ But if the LGBT lobby cares so little about girls and is so seemingly disorganised about child safeguarding in general what are the chances they know what they're doing by introducing the Gender Recognition Reform Bill? A Flowjob's chance in hell, I'd say. #presspause
@JoanMcAlpine That'll be the Equality Act (2010). G R Act was 2004.
