A Fairy Tale Gone Wrong: Social media, Recursive Hate and the Politicisation of Drag Queen Storytime
| Author | Justin R. Ellis |
| DOI | 10.1177/00220183221086455 |
| Published date | 01 April 2022 |
| Date | 01 April 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
A Fairy Tale Gone Wrong:
Social media, Recursive Hate
and the Politicisation of Drag
Queen Storytime
Justin R. Ellis
University of Newcastle, Callaghan, Australia
Abstract
Controversy over Drag Queen Storytime (DQS) childhood literacy events in many Western
liberal democracies between 2018 and 2020 occurred within a broader rise in reported ‘hate
crime’, notable in the United States and in England and Wales. Outrage from conservative US
Christian anti-LGBTQ hate groups and activists, and far-right groups, included online bias-
motivated harassment, in-person bias-motivated harassment, and alleged assault and property
damage. This article analyses news media and public discourse on hateful conduct against DQS
events in the United States and related conduct in the UK and Australia. This hateful conduct
draws on legacies of the criminalisation and pathologisation of same-sex attraction, and the
framing of non-conforming gender identities as ‘deceptive’. The findings emphasise the recur-
sive nature of bias-motivated hateful conduct based on medico-legal and pseudo-scientific stig-
matisation of same-sex attraction and gender fluidity, and the amplificatory capacity of social
media networks to engender hateful conduct. The article analyses the broader implications
of hateful conduct given the limits of the criminal law in the United States (and other
Western liberal democracies such as the UK and Australia) in addressing the translation of
online hate speech into bias-motivated in-person hateful conduct. In the United States,
these limits are often defined through the unqualified invocation of freedom of speech protec-
tions. The article applies ‘digiqueer’criminology as a frame to consider the harms of bigotry
against LGBTQ people amplified through digital media technologies and their intersection,
particularly in the US, with Christian righteousness and right-wing ideology through a ‘hate
feedback loop’.
Keywords
Drag Queen Storytime, Drag Queen Story Hour, LGBTQ, hateful conduct, digiqueer
criminology, structural violence, freedom of expression, hyper-partisanship, censorship
Corresponding author:
Justin R. Ellis, University of Newcastle, Callaghan NSW 2308, Australia.
E-mail: justin.ellis@newcastle.edu.au
Article
The Journal of Criminal Law
2022, Vol. 86(2) 94–108
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/00220183221086455
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