Drag-queen story time: A tale of dark defence
by Dr Bruce Scott, UK Column:
This is the tale of a school called Glencoats Primary School in Paisley, Scotland. One day, a drag queen with a most racy social media profile, called FlowJob (no, really), and a Scottish National Party MP, Mhairi Black, visited the school as part of LGBT History Month to read a story and discuss Section 28 (long-repealed Scottish legislation prohibiting the promotion of homosexuality in schools) to four- and five-year-olds in the first year of primary school. When the story got out, the school closed its Twitter account to non-followers/non-followed, the headteacher (Michelle Watson) did the same, and LGBT Youth Scotland blocked anybody who dared raise a whiff of criticism of the event.
[…] Queer theory underpins the philosophy of LGBT-inclusive programmes such as the No Outsiders project in England and the TIE campaign in Scotland. The objectives of queer theory are to understand the operation of “heteronormativity” (heterosexual behaviour, lifestyle), its normalisation, and to develop means to challenge its normativity, in primary schools.
A more sinister aim of queer theory is to address the omission in primary schools of sexuality, pleasure, bodies and desire, which ordinarily within educational settings with children is omitted (quite rightly, in my opinion) in order to protect children.
The reason given by pro-queer theorists to justify the decision to “correct” this omission is that it denies children engagement with vital information about sexualities, silences the sexual voice of children and erases their sexual agency; that it exists to explore how to make “safe spaces” in primary schools in which children can talk about sexualities, their parents’ sexualities, their parents’ friends’ sexualities and indeed the sexualities of the children. Indeed, queer theorists argue that teachers also should discuss their own sexualities. The aim of these interventions? To confound or confuse heterosexuality or heteronormativity.
There is an even darker aspect of queering the classroom. This entails the overt disdain for heteronormativity and the rejection of heterosexuality and reproduction.
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