People even threatened her dog. Is nothing sacred?
Philadelphia drag queen Brittany Lynn at a Drag Queen Storytime event. (photo courtesy Brittany Lynn/Drag Queen Storytime)
Some people really have a problem with the combination of drag queens and kids. I know this all too well from firsthand experience.
You see, I’m the pianist and manager for The Martha Graham Cracker Cabaret, a Philadelphia-based drag show. Twelve years ago, a New Jersey school uninvited us from reading Dr. Seuss to their kids and playing some family-friendly songs after school board members learned about the event. In fact, today is the twelfth anniversary of the Dr. Seuss concert we did perform after Philadelphia’s historic Christ Church heard about the cancelation and insisted we stage the reading and concert there. Yes, a church. Go figure. (A filmmaker actually made a documentary short about the saga.)
Not much has changed. In January, a Delco man publicly labeled me a “pedophile” over my involvement with the drag show. And in February, when I promoted the fact that we were performing a free all-ages concert at Swarthmore College, my event promos were attacked with a host of transphobic and homophobic comments.
So, yeah, I have front-line experience with these types of controversies. But I’ve got nothing on legendary Philadelphia drag queen Brittany Lynn.
Easily the most prolific drag queen in Philadelphia, with an army of drag queens she employs in her Philly Drag Mafia company for drag brunches, drag bingo, nightclub performances, birthday parties, etc., Lynn long ago cornered the local market on drag events for children. In 2015, she launched the literacy program Drag Queen Storytime in South Philadelphia, and the events, in which Lynn reads books to children, quickly became a big hit all over the region.
Of course, they weren’t a hit with everybody.
Some Please Touch Museum members demanded refunds on their memberships after the institution announced a Drag Queen Storytime event in 2018. When Lynn brought Drag Queen Storytime to a library in Germantown in 2019, the infamous Westboro Baptist Church dispatched a group of followers. (Lynn fans and allies overwhelmingly drowned out the bigoted churchgoers with a counterprotest.) A similar protest and counterprotest played out at a Drag Queen Storytime in Cherry Hill in 2022. There was also a time, in 2021, when a group wanted to protest a Drag Queen Storytime in Old City. Except they went to the wrong location.
“Not just that,” says Lynn, a South Philadelphia resident. “They staged their protest two blocks away at the wrong place and at the wrong time. See? This is why we need literacy programs like Drag Queen Storytime. So that people can learn how to read a time and location so they can protest in the right place. [Laughs].”
The protests and ignorant comments rained down online as well. Some opponents, including Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, have used photos of Lynn performing at Drag Queen Storytime and elsewhere to spread false propaganda about the children’s events. Philadelphia tourism commercials featuring Lynn and Drag Queen Storytime on YouTube are plagued by comments like “Now I know to never visit that cesspool,” “Who do we complain to that we do not want this on TV with our children?” and “CHILD ABUSE REPORTED.” And trolls regularly go after Lynn’s business pages on Facebook — one for her grownup events and a separate one for Drag Queen Storytime.
“But ever since the buildup to the election last year, things have gotten a lot worse,” Lynn tells me. “I’ve been going through bullshit like this for nearly 30 years, being a gay drag queen, but nothing like what’s happening now.”
She used to get death threats once in a while. Now? With regularity. And online stalkers have made it clear that they’ve delved into Lynn’s real identity and friends and associates. Even her beloved dog.
Lynn says she hasn’t filed police reports, simply because she doesn’t think there’s much to be done about online harassment. She does work with a security company that maintains a presence at Drag Queen Storytime events.
“I’m a strong seven-foot five-inch woman,” Lynn jests. (But she is damn tall.) “You can come for me all you want. I’m a fighter. But these people now, they drop my middle name. How on earth would they learn that? They’ve threatened to harm people around me. And just the other day, someone who knew my dog’s name threatened to kill my dog.”
And so, Lynn just made the tough decision to delete her Drag Queen Storytime page on Facebook.
“I’m not giving these people a victory,” she insists. “I’m just giving them less access. And I’m taking away the home base for where most of this hatred is carried out. The real people who follow me, the 3,000 queer families in Philadelphia who come to my events, I still have ways to communicate with them. But the cuckoos on Facebook have just gotten to be too much.”
While Lynn has deleted Drag Queen Storytime from Facebook, she’s still very much hosting the events and is currently planning a series for Pride Month this June. And on March 13th, she’s holding a birthday party fundraiser at Bok in South Philadelphia to raise money to bring Drag Queen Storytime to more and more libraries and organizations.
“As a so-called ‘leader in the gay community,’ I don’t get holidays or birthdays,” Lynn says with a chuckle. “You’re always working. And it’s my job to make everything easier for the next generation of gay kids and performers behind me.”
This article was originally published by a www.phillymag.com . Read the Original article here. .