The baby show invites the drag queen and receives torrents of hate

In Bordeaux, the Children’s party bag offers a cabaret for the little ones with dancing, entertainment and games accessible to 0-3 years.

One “conceptual art” of which Jenny Morgane James is the creator, herself a burlesque artist and inspired by a show seen in London. A way for her “bringing people of all nationalities, all social categories closer together and sharing a moment together”thanks to mini-shows for the little ones, interspersed with breaks with games. “It’s dynamic and festive, parents having fun with their children, there’s a changing table for babies, booths for makeup and glitter, a giant photo booth” explains to Lose. His watchwords? “Kindness, tolerance and love. »

See this post on Instagram

A post shared by CABA BABY PARTY (@cabababyparty)

It is because he wanted to program La Maryposa, a drag queen whose performances he greatly appreciates, that Jenny Morgane James found herself at the center of the controversy.

If he wanted to hire La Maryposa, it was out of admiration for her character “who is not like the others” and his claimed freedom: “It’s not just an expression of femininity or beauty. I was happy to ask her to perform at my event. I wanted to prove that a drag queen is not just a night owl. » December 11 must therefore be the first time a drag show is scheduled as part of the Caba Baby Party. But nothing will go as planned.

It was the announcement of the performer’s arrival a few weeks before the event that was picked up by several far-right sites and triggered a wave of harassment against Jenny Morgane James and La Maryposaaccused of pedophilia and wanting to indoctrinate children.

For her part, the creator of Caba Baby Party believes that, through the controversy, it is her show that has been caricatured: “The concept has been completely overhauled to become an event organized by drag queens and with only drag queens. » After receiving threats, he filed a complaint.

When TPMP gets involved

But the case took on a whole new dimension during the show Don’t touch My TV he took it in hand. Airing December 5, 2022, Cyril Hanouna deftly added fuel to the fire by questioning his columnists and columnists about the merits of a children’s show featuring a drag queen.

Among those who take the stage, we find the same argument: the need to protect children from danger from a drag queen. Danger that is never explained of course, but that doesn’t matter: “From 0 to 3 years old, we shouldn’t give them internships on marriage for all, LGBT rights, inclusiveness”storm Géraldine Maillet. “Let’s leave our kids alone, we’ll do activism a little later!” », Danielle Moreau grumbles. And for Kelly Vedovelli, it’s definitely a “It will make them problem children!” “.

Paradoxically, among the defenders of cabaret and of the presence of La Maryposa, we even find a reactionary discourse, as when Mathieu Delormeau expresses his opposition to addressing the issue of gender at school: “Let’s come to explain the LGBT, all of this, I think it’s not the place in a school, so there instead, 0-3 years old, you don’t explain anything, you show them. »

By shaking off the rhetoric of protecting children from things that only concern adults, it becomes easy to sow anxiety and the threat of indoctrination. And it hasn’t been missed. After the show aired, La Maryposa announced via her Instagram account that she was the victim of mass harassment.

In the wake of the far right, and for the sake of confrontation, Cyril Hanouna’s show has therefore fueled violence against a queer artist.

“By using offensive terms, spreading false information, not inviting anyone capable of making this debate valid, Touche pas à mon poste is stoking anti-LGBTQIA+ hatred in front of a large audience. Words and their meaning carry weight and ignorance leads to reprisals on minorities”

See this post on Instagram

A post shared by LA MARYPOSA (@la.maryposa)

Keep or cancel the show?

After the show, Jenny Morgane James had to make a decision for the Dec. 11 show: “I had three options: cancel the cabaret, cancel the visit of La Maryposa or whatever be smarter, show the beautiful and remove the provocative side. » The first two options seemed unthinkable to her, so she asked the artists planning to do it “adjust” : “We put cabaret dancers in leggings, I retired from programming. Everyone has played the game.

But on D-Day, the outfit La Maryposa is about to perform in doesn’t suit her. “It wasn’t the right angle. It was too sexy and too provocative.”, believes Jenny Morgane James who above all wants to reduce tension and preserve the Caba Baby Party. Maryposa doesn’t want to change that, and both remain entrenched in their positions. Maryposa ends up pulling out of the show at the last moment.

In a video posted on her Instagram account, the performer complains that her outfit – not exactly vulgar – is being judged “not quite suitable by the organizers” : “I have decided not to represent myself for the Caba Baby Party. Here: the outfit is too sexy »declare before concluding, as an affront to fairness : “This is drag, girls!” »

Contacted by LoseMaryposa did not respond to our interview request. For her part, Jenny Morgane James regrets this situation and defends that above all she wanted to preserve her project: “Maybe I was wrong, maybe I should have taken an artist from another register. But I understand that he wanted to defend his rights, that he didn’t want to give up, that it was part of his way of resisting him. I don’t blame him, but that wasn’t my concept. Everyone was in the fight of him. »

What this case reveals

Readings or shows for children animated by drag queen or drag king, the idea is not new. But for some time, these events suffer a violent backlash.

If the harassment suffered by La Maryposa should be worrying, it is also because she has been in the United States, Canada or even the United Kingdom for several months. that we see this phenomenon repeating itself and intensifying, especially when reading children’s stories. These are almost always actions carried out by white supremacist groups who accuse the organizers of these readings, shows or even of perverting the younger ones.

In France, the Louise Michel library in the 20th arrondissement of Paris was attacked in March 2019 for scheduling non-gender story readings by drag queens as part of Queer Week. Not surprisingly, three years later, we find the same far-right sites at the origin of the online harassment against Caba Baby Party and La Maryposa.

While the Club Q massacre on the eve of TDoR is still on people’s minds, the multifaceted violence against the LGBTQI+ community needs to be taken seriously.

If drag queens are primarily targeted, it is certainly not a coincidence, but the reflection of an uninhibited homophobia and transphobia that takes on new impetus by leveraging the same reflections: the protection of minors, in the face of the growing popularization of drag . Candidate of RuPaul’s Drag Race in 2019, Nina West most surprisingly told BuzzFeed: “They can’t call us fags anymore, so they call us predators and paedophiles. »

Child protection continues to be the most effective joker to counter minority rights. And in this specific case, the words “censorship” Where is it “freedom of expression” they are never pronounced as can be the case when it comes to defending Bastien Vivès from a so-called environmental right-thinking, for example…

Photo credit: Alejandro Cartagena via Unsplash