Introduction

Drag Queen Storytime (DQS) childhood literacy events became a focus of networked, hybrid hateful conduct between 2018 and 2020 in the US, with related conduct and commentary in Australia and the UK. This outrage occurred within a broader rise in reported ‘hate crime’, notable in the US (Edwards and Rushin 2018) and in England and Wales (Williams et al 2020). That rise occurred within a polarization of politics that encouraged the online growth of partisan agendas, misinformation driven by domestic politicians (Newman et al 2019), and permissiveness by digital platforms of hateful conduct (Hern 2020, Roose 2020). At the same time, violent domestic extremism became an increasing concern in the US (US Department of Homeland Security 2020), the UK (Sengupta 2020), and Australia (Greene 2020). Concurrently, drag performance through television programmes such as RuPaul's Drag Race have popularized drag beyond niche audiences.

During June 2022 – Pride month in the US and many other jurisdictions – in-person and online protests to DQS events have continued amid the growth of alt-right movements, some of which are now classified as extremist groups. These include the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters (Combating Terrorism Center at West Point 2021). The global nature of these networks is reflected in the postponement of a drag event in Melbourne in December 2022 because of threats from suspected Neo-Nazi and Proud Boys members (Thomas 2022). These more recent protests against DQS events have occurred within a sharpened framing of the conflation of male same-sex attraction with threats to children through ‘gays as child groomers’ rhetoric (Tiffany 2022).

This chapter analyses the mutual constitution of online representational harms against DQS childhood literacy events and its manifestation in in-person hateful conduct, and the other way around.1 The chapter documents the range of direct and indirect violence used to censor the gender-fluid expression of DQS, which include vilification, harassment, intimidation, alleged assault and malicious property damage; vexatious litigation, antagonistic legislative proposals that restrict resourcing of public libraries, the threatening of librarians with prison terms, and the criminalization of drag peformance in Tennessee (amid a wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in the US).