What is it that the Bigots and Conspiracy Theorists fear about Drag Queens reading stories to children?

Demonstrators in Brighton and Hove see off an assortment of racists and fascists led by the King of Conspiracy Theorist, Piers Corbyn

Bigots & Piers Corbyn Demonstrate Against Drag Queens Reading Stories to Children

There was a demonstration by hundreds of people on Thursday at Brighton’s Jubilee Library against an assortment of fascists, cranks and conspiracy theorists who were attempting to prevent drag queen Aida H Dee from reading stories to children.

They were led by Piers Corbyn who seems to take pride in his idiocy. Leading chants of ‘your parents were straight’ and speaking of the New World Order it is clear that Corbyn has become gripped by a pathology that prevents all rational thought.

The pervasive idea that gripped the counter demonstrators was that by being read stories by a drag queen the ‘innocence’ of young children was being compromised and that they were being groomed.

Hove Bigots Demonstrate

These people have a fear of any sexuality which isn’t straight and believe that by coming into contact with those who are gay or transgender children will be contaminated and converted. Simply as a matter of fact children are sexual beings. They are inquisitive about their own bodies and that of other children. They will often play ‘doctor’ and play with themselves. That is a normal part of  growing up. For fascists and racists, children are innocent until they reach puberty. See Child sexuality.

The idea that children might experiment with different gender roles is a threat to those who cannot envisage anything other than male and female stereotypes. Anyone who has actually had children knows that they like to experiment in for example dressing up as the other sex or playing different roles.  But for the fascists and the assorted nutcases who gathered in Brighton and Hove this is a threat, not least to their own identity.

Not all those who demonstrated in Brighton and Hove were fascists but a good proportion were. I received an email a week ago from the outright neo-Nazi  Patriotic Alternative boasting that

‘Patriotic Alternative has led the charge to oppose this clear attempt to introduce children to sexualised material.’

We were accused by them of being paedophiles (a favourite accusation of neo-Nazis), grooming children and we were otherwise subject to abuse from these low lives. The irony is that it is the far right which has always contained within it numerous child abusers and paedophiles.

Hove Paedophile Woman

This should be no surprise since authoritarian political movements are a magnet for those who want to dominate others, including children. It is the Right and far-Right which have always supported beating children. Of course that was for their own good! Nothing to do with child abuse or their own sexual proclivities.

The woman in the video who accused us of paedophilia, was repeating a standard fascist trope belies the evidence. Below are a few examples.

Child abuse, paedophilia and the far-right

Despite his claim to campaign against child abuse, no one has been friendlier to paedophiles and child abusers than Tommy Robinson. Robinson has repeatedly equated Muslims with child abuse yet the statistics are quite clear. The actual data shows that the ethnic origins of those convicted of sexual contact with children are pretty much the same as the ethnic mix of the UK.

What is clear though is that fascists and neo-Nazis are over represented amongst those who are convicted. Below are a few examples:

1.            In 2010 Tommy Robinsons friend Richard Price was convicted of making 4 indecent images of children. Far from condemning Price a campaign was launched by the EDL for his release. Robinson wholeheartedly supported Price, claiming he had been “stitched up” and that “Price has no idea how they were on his computer.”

Since its formation, there have been at least 20 members and supporters of the EDL convicted of child sexual exploitation offences. At least 10 of these were active while Robinson was still leading it.

2.            The most shocking case was that of Robert Ewing, who murdered schoolgirl Paige Chivers. He was later prosecuted for abusing two other children.

3.            Leigh Mcmillan, a senior EDL figure was sentenced to 17 years after abusing a 10 year-old schoolgirl 100 times in the mid-1990s.

4.            In 2010, EDL supporter Brett Moses was given a 12-month suspended prison sentence after pleading guilty to sexual grooming.

5.            In 2011 John Broomfield, an active EDL supporter, admitted 20 counts of making indecent images of children. The police found 236 indecent images depicting children and babies on his computers.

6.            Also in 2011, Michael Coates was charged with a series of sex offences, including two attempted rapes. He was active in the EDL splinter group the North West Infidels.

7.            In 2011, a gang of racists attacked Redbridge Islamic Centre. Elliot Jones, one of the attackers on that day, was convicted of trying to incite a child into sexual activity.

8.            Mark “Archie” Sleman was an EDL supporter who was active in London and Exeter. He was imprisoned for nine years in 1994 for the kidnap and rape of a ten-year-old girl.

9.            In 2012 EDL member Matthew Woodward was charged with possession of images of children as young as 10.

10.       Michael Kinnear, who was active in the EDL was gaoled in 2015 after police found images on his mobile of a primary school aged girl “performing a type of striptease” and in a state of undress.

11.      47 year old Paul Whiteside was given a 10-month jail sentence suspended for two years for abducting a school girl. Whiteside had previously campaigned against ‘Muslim grooming of young girls in Lincolnshire.’

12.            Other EDL child abusers and sex offenders include Bradley Daniel Alford, Alan Boulter, Pete Gillett, Luke Atkinson, Dean Chambers and Bruce Cordwell amongst many others.

13.       More recently, Robinson once again found himself allied with a sex offender. In June 2017, he shared a stage with William Charlton at a rally in Sunderland at an event where the sexual abuse of children was the key theme of the speeches. It later transpired that Charlton was found guilty of distributing an indecent photograph of a child. 

I could go on but as I said, fascism attracts people who love uniforms and worship authority. Children are their ideal targets because of their vulnerability which is why their accusations of paedophilia are a means of projecting their own inadequacies onto others.

Gender Criticism

However there is also another aspect to this fear of people who don’t conform to ‘normal’ gender stereotypes.

As people will know from previous blogs, I do not agree with much of transgender ideology when it comes into conflict with women’s demands for autonomy.  In particular I find it difficult to accept the claim that a transwoman is a woman sexually when that clearly isn’t the case biologically.  Likewise I can’t accept that mere self-definition without more therefore means that a man can claim to be a woman.

However I have always been clear that we should not countenance prejudice or discrimination against transgender people. I find it strange that this debate focuses primarily on transwomen and not on transmen even though the majority of trans people are the latter. I have no doubt that a section of transwomen are imbued with what might be called masculinist ideology. For example the attack on a group of feminists by transwomen in 2017 in Hyde Park.

What has though shocked me is that someone who I know as a gender critical feminist posted to me an article critical of the drag queen story telling and when I pointed out the far-right connections she was nonchalant about this. 

Last year the Institute of Race Relations published an article by Sophia Siddiqui arguing that gender critical feminists were peddling a far right agenda. I wrote to them at the time saying that they might find that they were embarking on a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Feminists around Womens Place UK and other gender critical feminists have a responsibility to clearly and explicitly dissociate themselves from the fascist inspired demonstrations in Reading, Brighton and Hove and other places.  Otherwise their gender critical   ideology will be seen as nothing more than an attack on trans people per se.

Piers Corbyn

I have a few words to say about Piers Corbyn who I have just unfriended on Facebook. I sent him a message:

After today I am removing you as a friend. You have come a long way from a squatters leader and member of the IMG to someone who demonstrates alongside Patriotic Alternative and assorted fascists and bigots. I have no idea what has taken hold of you but you are working with an assortment of cranks and conspiracy theorists. Clearly socialism and a class analysis play no part in your world outlook or analysis. From always being an eccentric you have made idiocy your byword.

I first knew Piers over 40 years ago when he was the leader of the London Squatting Union as well as a member of the International Marxists Group. Now he comes across as a deranged conspiracy theorist, a climate denier and anti-vaxxer who happily works with fascists and other freaks.  He has now decided to join these people in ‘protecting children’.  It is true that children do need to be protected but primarily from Corbyn and his fascist friends.

Hove Paedophile Woman

The irony is that it was the parents of the children who were taking them to the story time, so it was they who were being accused of being paedophiles and groomers by these misfits and bigots.

This was undoubtedly distressing to the parents which was why it was necessary that we outnumbered them. CNN quoted one parent who had to pass through a Patriotic Alternative demonstration in Reading:

Rosie said she was unprepared for the vitriol she encountered at the library, where protesters waved signs reading "Stop grooming children" and a line of police officers ushered parents into the building. At least one mother was crying inside as protesters played the theme song to British TV show "Jim'll Fix It," whose late host was a notorious ​child sexual abuser, on loudspeakers outside the library.

"It was just horrible. I was expecting it to be a joyous thing, considering it had been Pride a couple of weeks ago in Bristol." Instead, she said the harassment by protesters was "very backwards and (I feel) naive to think there's been any progress."​​

Bigots and fascists chant 'Antifa Out' - an obsession of Trump loyalists and assorted White Supremacist groups

At least one person chanted ‘antifa out’.  Antifa being an anti-fascist organisation that Trump demonised in the United States. These are the people that Corbyn has decided to link up with.  He should remember the saying about those who lie down with dogs get up with fleas!

Tony Greenstein