Cross-dressers ‘Lady Busty’ and ‘Miss Shameless’ are to teach children in Malmö the importance of equality and not to fear immigrants at events starting later this month.
From February 17th, Malmö City Library will begin holding Drag Queen Story Hours at which men dressed as women will read fairy tales encouraging children to experiment with gender, local media reports.
“As an LGBT-certified library, we want to work actively with these issues,” said communications officer Johan Björkwall. “So when we were approached about [Drag Queen Story Hour] we said yes.”
Stefan Anderson and his husband Mats, veteran ‘drag queens’ who both work with young people, first held a storytelling session for children as their alter egos Lady Busty and Miss Shameless at last year’s Malmö Pride, taking inspiration from a similar project in San Francisco.
“Drag queens are mostly only seen on television and at nightclubs and pride parades, so it’s not often that they are close to children,” lamented Stefan, asserting that Drag Queen Story Hour will be “very useful for the children”.
Through storytelling, children will learn that it’s “important to break taboos and social norms”, Anderson said, adding: “We want to show that it’s fun not to have any limitations.”
The pair will also use “playfulness” in the sessions to stress the message everyone is equal, and teach children not to fear that immigrants might be dangerous.
“Everyone is different. We come from different places, different cultures, we are different and we behave differently from each other. What’s important is not to be afraid of the unknown,” Stefan told Malmö24.se.
Though usually a pioneer in forwarding “progressive” programmes and policies aimed towards creating a gender-neutral future, on issues of promoting LGBT lifestyles to children, Sweden has lagged behind Britain since the UK government launched a war on “hate”.
Breitbart London previously reported that Drag Queen Story Time events are being rolled out across nursery schools, with cross-dressing men brought in as “queer role models”, supposedly in order to stop two and three-year-olds committing “hate crime” later in life.
And government-backed guidance issued in December demanded primary schools stock books and learning resources which “celebrate” transgender people in order to “fight prejudice”, and to ensure school uniform lists are gender neutral and “avoid stereotypes” so as not to upset “non-binary” people who believe themselves to be neither male nor female.