Parents brought babies, toddlers, and little children to a Washington, D.C., drag queen story hour where a man dressed as a flamboyant woman read books about gender ideology for children.
As part of Washington’s Capital Pride events, the Capital Pride Alliance provided a “family zone” where Playtime Project, an organization that offers “transformative play experiences” to children “experiencing family housing insecurity,” sponsored two “Drag Queen Story Hour” events.
Drag queen story hours began as niche events on the West Coast that spread to libraries and schools across the U.S. The official Drag Queen Story Hour website boasts of almost 50 independently operated chapters across the U.S., including in New York City, D.C., and Chicago, as well as two international chapters in Tokyo and in Berlin.
According to the Drag Queen Story Hour’s official website, the events are designed to be about 45 minutes long for children aged 3 to 8 years old and intended to capture children’s imagination and help children explore their gender fluidity through “glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models.”
At Stead Park on Saturday, drag queen “VV Majesty” was dressed in a voluminous tulle princess dress with a black bodice and an exposed red bra—a “fairy rose princess,” as the drag queen told The Daily Signal. He also sported a long black wig, a three-horned crown with red paper roses on it, and a large glittery necklace.
The Daily Signal’s footage shows VV Majesty reading a book about gender ideology to the group of little children gathered around him. The first book was about a little boy who identified as a transgender girl. The book specifically mentions that the little boy also was black and had autism, and the child’s mother makes him a wig so that he feels more like a “rainbow” transgender girl.
The drag queen stayed seated the entire time and did not touch the children.
WATCH:
Next up, VV Majesty read to the children from the book “If You’re a Drag Queen and You Know It,” which encourages the children to “blow a kiss,” “strike a pose,” “say ta-da,” “wink wink,” “shake your bum,” and more. Prompted by their parents, the children followed many of these instructions.
In an interview with The Daily Signal after the drag queen story hour, VV Majesty denied that he was a groomer or a pedophile.
“I’m neither of those things. I live in a society that’s going to call me that just because I do this, because I wear a bra in front of children, or something like that,” the drag queen said.
VV Majesty described the books as “fabulous” and said that they were “about diversity, about inclusion, all the good things that pride and community is about.”
Asked what he hopes the children learn from the event, VV Majesty said, “I just hope that they know that it’s OK to be themselves,” adding that kids should begin expressing themselves “as young as they possibly can” as long as they are not harming themselves or their development.
He would not say whether he supports the so-called transgender care pushed on children, such as being put on puberty blockers. But VV Majesty did admit that drag queen story hours are inherently political, given the strong pushback from Americans and Republican lawmakers against the events.
“I think sexualizing gender like that is a little ridiculous,” the drag queen said, pressed as to why he was wearing a bra in front of children.
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