Monkey see, monkey dildo

Queer theory's war on childhood innocence

As part of a wider literacy project this summer, Redbridge Libraries in London booked Mandinga Arts, a group of performers, to promote reading to children. The trio included a man in a furry rainbow monkey suit, whose costume included fake genitals.

Redbridge Libraries, which is controlled by the Labour-run London Borough of Redbridge, commissioned the charity Vision Redbridge Culture and Leisure Trust, which is a partner of the same borough, to book the group. When people complained to Redbridge Labour, they were initially blocked. Later, even after the Labour leader of the council, Jas Athwal, took action against Mandinga Arts, he still attacked those who had expressed concerns.

If anyone in a position of authority had spent just a few seconds on Mandinga Arts’ website or social media, they would have realised how unsuitable the group were for this job. Get a load of this happening scene, for example.

Despite this, they seem to be actively pursuing work with children.

They’re funded by Arts Council England and have performed at the BBC Radio One Teen Awards.

Redbridge Libraries apologised, saying they were not aware of the costume at the time of the booking. Earlier, however, the same account wrote ‘when you’ve got it, flaunt it’ when another library mentioned the monkey costume.

This was not the first time - this year - that Redbridge Libraries has showcased an event unsuitable for children. In February, to celebrate LGBT History Month, they ran a ‘Drag Queen Story Hour’, and uploaded it to YouTube (the video has been removed in the last few hours).

And they are by no means the only council that has had to defend itself after complaints that inappropriate, sexualised content was being shown to children under the guise of education at a local library.

Two years ago Brent Libraries booked twerking drag act Mama G to read and dance to children. Council leader Muhammed Butt responded to claims that Mama G had been trying to obtain the private contact details of some of the young attendees by mocking those who raised concerns and implying that they were being abusive.

In fact, several councils are convinced that getting men - often adult entertainers - to dress up as parodies of women and dance sexually in front of children, is a good use of taxpayers’ money.

Renfrewshire Council last year invited an act called ‘Flow Job’ to speak at a primary school as part of LGBT History Month. He was even joined by SNP MP Mhairi Black, and the event produced some disturbing video footage. In Houston, two members of a Drag Queen Story Hour troupe were exposed as paedophiles.

This normalisation of adult content for children is not confined to libraries. It’s part of a wider push to ‘queer’ childhood for ideological reasons. Even a (probably clueless) Michael Rosen appeared at a Goldsmiths event, ‘Queering Children’s Literature’.

But why is it so important to expose children to the grotesque caricatures of women found in adult cabaret? Drag’s venomous comedy holds an important place in gay culture, but it’s not uncontentious and it’s usually enjoyed by sexually active adult men. What is it doing in libraries before audiences of toddlers?

James Lindsay wrote last year that children’s innocence is seen by some activists as part of an undesirable system of power that enforces heteronormativity: ‘One of the targets that woke culture wants to dismantle is the innocence of children … The disruption is simple: exhibition of sexuality, especially queer sexualities and trans people demonstrating sexuality … in order to ‘liberate the potentialities’ of their identities … Children can't be innocent; they must be activists.’

Susan Cox, interviewed by Derrick Jensen, adds this.

SC: …queer theorists do make the argument that all social norms need to be transgressed and that is a progressive force of queering. For example, BDSM is seen as a “queer” identity. And queer theory argues that there is not material harm done by, for example, someone beating someone with a whip and getting sexual pleasure from it, but that the social harm comes from the marginalization of certain groups who are seen as deviant, such as BDSM practitioners or paedophiles.

For example, Michel Foucault, in a 1978 radio interview, was advocating for France to abolish the age of sexual consent –

DJ: As in down to infants, as in down to any age?  

SC: As in down to infants, yes. Make it so there was no restriction on sexual consent.  

DJ: He’s not unique. Pat Califia also said that any child old enough to be able to choose whether he or she wants to wear shoes is old enough to participate in sex, by which she doesn’t mean playing “doctor,” but instead Pat Califia has written child torture porn.

SC: Oh my god.

DJ: Anyway, so go ahead.

SC: So yeah, this is quite a common argument amongst queer theorists, and Foucault himself made the argument in a radio interview. He said that there is not actually harm done by adult males raping children, but rather that children are merely constructed, socially constructed as a vulnerable population through various psychological, medical and legislative discourses, and that the paedophile is merely socially constructed as a figure, as a phantom. They’re nothing more than a phantom, and that the creation of this phantom through the law on sexual consent would actually cause the social harm and be carried out on the bodies of men, and women and children throughout society.

The blurring of sexual boundaries is not a consequence of Drag Queen Story Hour, it is the point of Drag Queen Story Hour. Even those participating innocently are involved in a wider project that seeks to make safeguarding so porous that it may as well not exist. The Wi Spa, despite certain Trump-like attempts to call it a hoax, is just one such example. No wonder they want to pretend it’s a hoax. You don’t want too many people realising it’s illegal in California to shame male flashers.

Queer theory took root in American colleges and is currently blossoming in the form of young men who try to shame women because they insist on maintaining their boundaries. You can see many of them—a fair number with blue ticks—doing it every day to Helen Staniland.

Helen Staniland @helenstaniland

You appear to have forgotten to answer the actual question @cd_hooks. Do you believe that a male born person with a penis should be free to enter and undress in a space where women and girls are undressing?

Christopher Hooks @cd_hooks

@helenstaniland @kept_simple I can’t stress enough how Normal you guys seem from a distance. Keep it up 👍

Helen asks a question that is central to safeguarding and so is subjected to endless derision. Again, this is part of a wider project. By sneering at women’s safeguarding concerns, Christopher Hooks is either someone who needs his hard drive checked, or merely a useful idiot for someone who needs his hard drive checked. Either way, men like him will end up apologising to women like Helen. The open contempt in which he holds her rights to privacy, fairness, and safety, although hugely fashionable at the moment, will not age well.

This ideological coup has been attempted before. In the late seventies and early eighties, the Paedophile Information Exchange, or PIE, had an extended run around the grounds before being escorted back to their padded cell. How did they achieve this feat? “PIE managed to gain support from some professional bodies and progressive groups. It received invitations from student unions, won sympathetic media coverage and found academics willing to push its message.”

Sound familiar? But this current movement learned from PIE’s mistakes. Why court the media, or any adult, when you can target the children themselves?