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A question: Is dressing in drag (that is, a man dressing like a woman potentially with makeup and so on) an inherently sexual act? I ask because it seems to me differing beliefs about the answer to this question are at the root of differences in belief about the propriety of events like Drag Queen Story Hour and perhaps related to trans issues more generally.
For my part, I think the answer is "No". This isn't to say that nobody ever dresses in drag for the purpose of engaging in a sexual fantasy, certainly some people do. Similarly I do not intend to claim drag events are always appropriate for children, I've been to ones that certainly would not be. There does not seem to me anything inherently sexual about someone in drag reading an age appropriate book to children though.
So I guess I'm interested in hearing from people who would answer the opposite way to my posed question and why they think so. Some ancillary questions: If it were a cis woman dressed similarly would it be equally inappropriate? Or is the fact that it's a man dressed that way central to the impropriety? Is there an implied inference that the only reason a man would dress in drag is for a sexual purpose? That seems like a failure of imagination to me.
Is blackface inherently racial? Is blackface inherently racist?
"Wearing women's clothing" isn't drag if you're wearing a woman's... sweater, say, or overalls. A guy in a pink parka isn't "in drag." I'm not a big fan of "no true Scotsman" arguments, I don't think I know enough about drag to say there's a bright line here or there. But I can't think of anything I'd call drag, that wasn't at least sexual to the extent of "involving what would likely be regarded as 'sexy clothing' on a woman." I don't think it's plausibly a drag show if you're wearing baggy blue jeans and a loose t-shirt from the ladies' section at Walmart.
Dina Martina seems to do a sort of housewife drag that isn't trying to be sexy. There's also a long tradition of impersonating female celebrities, some of whom dress sexily and some of whom do not. Judy Garland impersonation tends not to be overtly sexual, for example. Admittedly, this Garland impersonator says that "My wig designer and friends of mine have said I’m not a drag queen because drag tends to go over the top." There's some truth, there -- drag doesn't always have to be sexy but it's often comically exaggerated in one way or another, with sex and sexiness as frequent aspects of such comedy.
The thing that draws my notice in the housewife and Judy Garland examples is the makeup. The earliest arguments I'm aware of that makeup is inherently sexual are from feminists critiquing objectification; for example:
More recently we see makeup tracked as inherently sexual by Jordan Peterson, who is arguably a 2nd or 3rd wave feminist (via his work coaching women for career advancement) but would likely be disclaimed by most feminists today.
That's a pretty broad culture war spectrum agreement on the idea that makeup, at least in the classic foundation-lipstick-blush-eyeshadow configuration, is inherently sexual. It's not strongly sexual, and I think many, maybe most people do not consciously think of it that way, most of the time. But I think that's one of those ways people kid themselves about our inescapable nature as sexually-reproduced members of a sexually-reproducing species. Noticing that makeup is inherently sexual breaks the kayfabe, but that doesn't mean it's a mistake--to the contrary, what generally breaks the kayfabe is the truth.
Now, I do think @Gillitrut's phrasing is a little ambiguous; I'm not claiming that every man who participates in drag is doing so for personal sexual gratification. But the phrase "inherently sexual act" strikes me as inescapably inclusive of either doing or parodying things that are historically about sexual attraction and value. The objectification of women is not accidentally sexual. (I think this also accounts for much of the discomfort people express at seeing makeup on young girls, e.g. in beauty pageants.)
The best objection I can think of, right now, to my view is that men doing drag could claim to be somehow defusing the objectification of women, by making makeup and sexy dresses just another thing humans do with no sexual connotations whatever. But this would strike me as on par with holding minstrel shows for the purpose of fighting racism. I occasionally hear people claim they are trying to "break down the gender binary" by doing gender-nonconforming things, but sex and sexuality have such a (so far) inescapable biological grounding that it would be very hard to persuade me that this is even an achievable result (modulo transhuman levels of body-mod tech), much less a likely one.
Saying that Makeup is done by women to add to their sexual value, so therefore anyone wearing makeup is engaging in sexual activity, and we should keep that away from children, leads in pretty weird directions by analogy. Makeup is inherently sexual in the same way that most behaviors that aren't related to food-shelter-safety needs are inherently sexual. Most things can be argued as "about sex" and part of our "inescapable nature as sexually-reproduced members of a sexually-reproducing species" by evo psych or RedPill or freudian types. Or as Dave Chapelle put it: "If a man could fuck in a carboard box, he wouldn't buy a house." Is there any aspect of improving one's appearance or lot in life that isn't about sexual value by some definition?
Men engage in athletic competition to show off their fitness and get laid. Therefore, athletes shouldn't talk to kids. And for God's sake, don't let a bodybuilder get within 500ft of a school, that's as sexual as it gets. In fact, they shouldn't really be allowed to watch movies with guys who lift weights in them, Marvel bodies are homoerotically sexualized and should be banned. (To be fair, I'd take that last one if I never had to hear about them again)
Fashion is about sex, clothing is tailored to give women hourglass figures and men's suits are tailored to give them broad shoulders and narrow waists; better keep fashion designers and tailors away from kids. In fact don't even let anyone wearing a well-tailored suit talk to kids, that guy is really working on his sexual value.
Guys join bands to get laid, don't let kids listen to anything other than devotional music. And never, ever let them dance or see anyone dance, that's all about showing off one's skill as a potential sexual partner.
Once you start down this path you just end up with John Lithgow in Footloose as your YesChad meme. Which, to be fair, in my state right now I feel like if you asked Doug Mastriano if kids should be allowed to listen to Rock music it's 50/50 he'd say no it's the devil's music.
Going by OP's definition of drag (a man wearing women's clothing), drag is not inherently sexual. What makes sexualized drag queens performing for children bad isn't that they are doing drag, it's that they are overly-sexualized.
The OP's question wasn't about what should or shouldn't be kept away from children, but whether drag is inherently sexual. That's the only question I was answering, so following that up with a discussion of what is or isn't appropriate for children seems like an orthogonal and perhaps just uncharitable response. Nothing you've said here is responsive to any of the arguments I raised for the particular claim that drag seems to indeed be as inherently sexual as blackface is inherently racial.
If I am in favor of keeping children in the shallow end of the swimming pool, I must by analogy oppose tall drinking glasses, I suppose. Some slopes are indeed slippery, but you seem to have engaged the genuinely fallacious version, here. "If we stop kids going to drag shows, what's next!? Banning dances and bringing back Victorian fashions?"
Funny, when I read your reply, I thought to myself "Gee, did I misread OP and insert my own preexisting knowledge of culture war bullshit into it? That was rude of me!" Then I reread OP:
The whole discussion in the OP is about whether Drag is sexual, and whether that sexuality makes it inappropriate for children. OP further cites questions of the drag queens themselves engaging in "Sexual fantasy" as a potentially inappropriate element for children. So no, that question is not "orthogonal" to the one raised in OP, the entire question in OP is not whether drag is sexual in a banal sense (a point I addressed in my own reply to OP), but whether it is sexual in a sense that is inappropriate for children.
Your little syllogism of "JP/Feminists say Makeup is sexual >> Drag Queens wear makeup >> Drag queens are sexual >> sexual things are inappropriate for children >> Drag queens are inappropriate for children" doesn't work because the meaning of "sexual" shifts midway through. Feminists/JP define makeup as sexual in the banal sense in which athletics, dancing, etc are sexual; then you shift that definition to "too prurient for children" midway without showing your work. So my slippery slope is on point here, just as athletics aren't inappropriate for children despite having sexual elements to them, makeup isn't inappropriate because it has sexual elements to it. Your own article proving "makeup is inherently sexual" contains the passage:
Trying to draw some kind of weird logical circle for why inappropriate stuff is inappropriate leads to over-classification and lack of clarity. Sexualized drag shows are inappropriate for children due to content, not because you can point to some banal element of drag as inherently sexual. @hoffmeister25 is on point here, it is inappropriate if the people involved are doing or being inappropriate things; trying to draw the line at an arbitrary point like "Man in a dress" or "Makeup" creates an illogical boundary, making compliance more difficult and the purveyors of the rule look foolish.
I occasionally look at "events in my local area" type lists, and there are a surprising number of drag events included in those lists. Clearly they have an audience. And every single one of them that I have ever seen was flagged as "adults only 18+". Sure, you can dress in drag and just do normal stuff, but it doesn’t seem wrong to note that drag is usually heavily sexualized in the specific way Americans think of as inappropriate for children.
If people were putting on Strip Club Story Hour, where the clubs served Capri Sun and virgin daiquiris in the afternoons while reasonably dressed strippers read books to kids, we would probably think this was pretty fucked up and suspicious, even if the kids are too ignorant to figure out the context. If there were multiple videos of kids being encouraged to tip the strippers with dollar bills tucked into their pants, doubly so. And if creepy strip club managers used to opportunity to try to convince little girls to come get a job as soon as they turned 18, I don’t think anyone would be surprised.
Wouldn't this be perceived as "Nice"? But as, something similar did occur and backlash was sufficiently strong to end it, maybe not.
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