Aimee’s 2019 interview with Erlich for “Mutha” Magazine, Erlich said of his videos, “time and time again, it’s a tool that doesn’t fail”:
“One time, Davon [aka Miz Jade, one of the drag queens on the show] brought his five-year-old nephew over to my apartment and we showed him the first episode of Sez Me. His nephew was raised in church and he didn’t know that Davon does drag. He was commenting out loud, like “What is it, a boy? A boy can’t wear a dress.” So he was conflicted but he wanted to keep watching and he thought it was really funny. And he would say things like “Oh, but you can’t be gay. Gay’s not good.” But he kept asking to watch more and more, and then at the end he said, “I wanna see more of it.” And we said “That’s it. That’s all we have for now.” Then he goes, “So I would need to be on it.” So Davon said, “If you want to be on it you have to talk with a drag queen,” and he goes, “That’s cool.” This kid that forty-five minutes ago had a real issue with drag queens and a boy wearing a dress, because he heard some things in church—forty-five minutes later this kid is ready to be on screen with a drag queen. So then Davon pulled out his phone and showed him pictures of himself in drag and actually kind of came out to him, and he was totally chill about it. That was the point where I knew that, time and time again, it’s a tool that doesn’t fail.”
Erlich is also the creator of the Dragtivity Book, which
“features 20 fabulous pages -‘find your own drag name,’ ‘circle your pronouns,’ and ‘match the styling objects,’ and “gives kids an introduction to the art of drag to helps them to unpack stereotypes and see beyond the gender binary in the world around them.”
[A page from Sez Me’s “Dragtivity Book”]
Although proponents of Drag Queen Story Hour attempt to sanitize drag culture, not everyone in that community is cheering the growing popularity of these sorts of programs. For instance, a drag queen named Kitty Demure has chided parents who “might want to look like they’re with it” by introducing their children in drag culture.
Advocates of programs like Drag Queen Story Hour, Drag Brunches, and “Drag Your Kid to Pride” like to present such events merely as family-friendly ways to build confidence, empathy, and self-expression. Yet these attempts to present an anodyne “all-ages” drag culture and claim drag has no relation to overt sexual behavior strains credulity. It requires us not only to ignore several actual instances of grooming, but also the very experiences that introduced performers like Cholula Lemon into drag culture in the first place. Many private school parents are through with being gaslit that drag culture is somehow appropriate for children.
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