In this blog Eva Silfver explores the recent drag queen debate in Sweden – in Swedish television (e.g. SVT Kulturnyheterna), various newspapers (e.g. Dagens Nyheter), and magazines (e.g. Amnesty Press), and asks what we can learn from it.
Drag Queen story hours
One of the things that has given rise to the ongoing drag debate in Sweden, just like in the UK and the US, is ‘Drag Queen Story Hours’. The idea of these story times comes from the US, where they started in 2015 and have since spread internationally. In a Drag Queen Story Hour, drag queens read stories for children at libraries. Even if these fairy-tale moments are not a new phenomenon, the debate about them is new, at least in Sweden. In Malmö for instance, where the story telling have been going on for more than five years, it has now been necessary to employ guards for them. In Trelleborg, the story telling hours were even cancelled and in Olofström, a story telling hour had to be held digitally because of the threats from outside (Amnesty Press 2022, no. 4). That these storytelling moments can receive so much criticism says something about how threatening queers are perceived to be and how stable ideas about gender are.
In Sweden we have a principle that ‘politicians should keep an arm’s length away from culture’. But the Swedish nationalist party which now has a large influence on in some municipalities, questions this principle, and argues that the drag story telling is extremely inappropriate for children. They also question whether we should use tax funding for the story telling. They say that society neesd to protect children from inappropriate sexualities and talk about queer identities. Some are even angry about the names that drag queens use (e.g. Miss Shameless and Miss Busty). They argue that it is abnormal for grown men to dress up as women and thus inappropriate for children to meet drag queens at libraries hours.
However, I agree with those who emphasise that even young children absolutely need to have queer role models and experience diversity at a young age. Drag plays a big role even for people outside the drag culture. It is a story of redemption. It wants to show children and young adults more family types than the heteronormative family. It comes with queer role models and shows diversity. Traits can help open up border crossing and more fluid identities.
Regulating people’s lives and freedom
In America there are now new laws, for example the anti-trans act, the anti-drag law, and the “don’t-say-gay” law. Laws made to silence stories that come from the LGBTQ+ movement. The Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has in various speeches even talked about a possible bill where parents who bring their children to Drag Queen Story Hours can be deemed unfit as parents. In the UK many of those protesting drag come from the far right, including conspiracy theorists – possibly linked to QAnon in the US, but also religious groups, and nationalists, and some come from more traditional second wave even left-wing feminism.
Although the situation in Sweden is not that harsh as in the US or the UK, we can see tendencies towards regulating people’s lives and freedom. Part of the Swedish debate in relation to the Drag Queen Story Hours is, for example, about whether politicians should have the ability to decide on cultural events. They want to have the power to decide what sort of culture we should have in Sweden, and where and how it should be shown. To me, all these arguments that appeared in connection with Drag Queen Story Hours show a fear of people’s different ways of living their lives. But it also shows how the nationalist Swedish party use this fear, through their politics, to get more power and control over people. It is a very frightening development.
