Drag Act and Bondage Act for a babies and toddlers to enjoy?

GSM
Or am I being old fashioned, prudish and, heaven forfend, judgmental?
Or maybe sensible, caring of child welfare and expressing a robust opinion
On GN and MN, it depends who you ask.
I read that they’ve closed the show, so you/I/we are not alone.

Excellent news.

The news of the closing of the show couldn't be better and I hope they think twice about ever organising something similar again.

Germanshepherdsmum

It looks to me like the worst kind of hen night, held in the afternoon and bring your baby. What kind of person thinks this kind of thing up, let alone wants to go along, baby in tow? Or am I being old fashioned, prudish and, heaven forfend, judgmental?

If you are then so am I, as are my DD, DIL and their friends.

I don't think it makes us old-fashioned or prudish Germanshepherdsmum, just sensible and sensitive to the needs of babies and small children.
Judgemental? If anyone thinks so, fair enough. Using judgement is a good thing, we use it all the time when caring for children.

After all, as I said earlier, we have not led sheltered lives wrapped in cotton wool but there is a time and place and this is not the right time and place for infants.

Yammy

The news of the closing of the show couldn't be better and I hope they think twice about ever organising something similar again.

Someone else will, sadly, Yammy
They have an agenda.

The show in Bristol was closed; it was blatant grooming of young children.

Callistemon21 Judgemental? If anyone thinks so, fair enough. Using judgement is a good thing, we use it all the time when caring for children.
yes it's strange how judgemental is always used as an insult to imply something wrong with the person employing judgement. No acknowledgement that we all use judgement for ourselves and others on a daily basis. Who hasn't used judgement when deciding what to feed to an infant, or what supervision is required for any particular activity? Babies and young children are like little sponges absorbing so much from everyday life that they can't yet understand or reason. This is the way they learn, the way they normalise their environment. I think half naked adults gyrating in front of, and interacting with, babies is not something that should be normalised.

Better to express one's opinion and be accused of being judgemental than having an 'anything goes' approach to raising children.

Smileless2012

Better to express one's opinion and be accused of being judgemental than having an 'anything goes' approach to raising children.

Well put!

I quite liked the wheels on the bus and miss polly had a dolly, poor miss polly wouldn’t be able to get a GP appointment though and would have to phone at 9am to be put in a 45minute queue resulting in the receptionist telling her to take the dolly to A&E

Smileless2012

Better to express one's opinion and be accused of being judgemental than having an 'anything goes' approach to raising children.

Absolutely. And using posters’ age as an explanation of their supposed judgementalism is such a cheap shot. Age is very much an ascribed characteristic, so nobody can deny it (and most non-judgemental people don’t use ascribed characteristics as a basis for judgement anyway), and there is no wriggle room - either you are X years old, or you aren’t. To make it a given that if you are >X years old you must think Y removes the option to disagree, which is a remarkably totalitarian and (in this case) youthcentric approach - not to mention a judgemental one. Also, if membership of a discussion board can be used as a predictor of opinion, how is the disapproval on Mumsnet to be explained?

JaneJudge

I quite liked the wheels on the bus and miss polly had a dolly, poor miss polly wouldn’t be able to get a GP appointment though and would have to phone at 9am to be put in a 45minute queue resulting in the receptionist telling her to take the dolly to A&E

If the Tories get their way, before long Miss Polly’s doctor will be back in the morning with his bill bill bill.

Smileless2012

Better to express one's opinion and be accused of being judgemental than having an 'anything goes' approach to raising children.

You couldn't be more right. It has been in all our local papers that the Police have broken a ring of paedophiles who were using the net to incite gross behaviour towards very young children. Alerted by the public.
If those people had kept quiet it does not bare thinking about.
Rather be wrong than keep quiet and put children in danger.

Doodledog

JaneJudge

I quite liked the wheels on the bus and miss polly had a dolly, poor miss polly wouldn’t be able to get a GP appointment though and would have to phone at 9am to be put in a 45minute queue resulting in the receptionist telling her to take the dolly to A&E

If the Tories get their way, before long Miss Polly’s doctor will be back in the morning with his bill bill bill.

yes and the number 8 bus to 4 rural villages has been cancelled due to lacks of funds to run the service, never mind there is a voluntary mini bus service that runs once a fortnight driven by Sue who is a retired nurse

Humpty Dumpty can't even sit on the wall as Northampton county council have attached anti pigeon spikes to it

The Daily Wail is very good at winding up its readership.

Grantanow

The Daily Wail is very good at winding up its readership.

???

Smileless2012

Better to express one's opinion and be accused of being judgemental than having an 'anything goes' approach to raising children.

I think that labelling people as 'judgemental' because they voice an opinion on an issue such as this is a variation on the 'no debate' statement. It is the same ploy - it stifles debate (as I believe it's intended to do). No one really wants to appear judgemental or phobic. I think it is deliberate. And it's unhealthy.

The organisers, and their supporters, have made their case and justified the acts. Fine. But, we cannot disagree or have a different opinion... because we are not the parents, and it is about parental responsibility, and anyway, to do so is judgemental?

There's no reason to suspect that the mothers at this performance are anything other than normal, nice, caring mothers, who love their children.

But this is a cultural shift and it affects everyone. Because there's a whole industry of services dedicated to the welfare of minors which would indicate that 'parental responsibility' is very definitely not an exact science.

Babies and toddlers cannot speak for themselves and are therefore vulnerable to the whims and fancies of their parents who do not always have their best interests at heart. So we, the public in general, are the backstop. We are sometimes relied on by child-protection services to be the informants, the whistle-blowers. If that were not the case, these services would not exist. Teachers, doctors, other medical professionals, dinner-ladies, shop assistants - everybody in fact, has a duty of care towards children.

So let's have a debate on the issue. These performances may be nothing more than harmless fun for he parents where the babies and toddlers are just amused by adults hanging upside down. I'm not an expert in child psychology but I do know from my own experience - as other mothers will - that babies are not simply a passive pair of eyes watching and ignoring what's going on around them. At this crucial moment in their development they are absorbing and processing everything they see, one way or another.

So very pleased this "show" has been stopped, hopefully for good.

There was a discussion of this show on Jeremy Vine (TV) on Friday. I was busy doing other things with it on in the background, so didn't pay full attention, but the gist was that a bloke in drag was defending it against an increasingly empowered panel - even JV is starting to sound very marginally less captured these days - and claiming that those who opposed it are anti-trans. He was roundly put in his place when a panellist pointed out that nobody had mentioned trans, in fact she had very deliberately not done so, as she knew it would be used against her if she had, so why had he brought trans issues into the discussion if they weren't relevant. She explained that she was more interested in the impact of such things on young children, and in the fact that the event was encouraging mothers in charge of babies to drink during the day. He deflected by saying that he was getting in first because people usually brought trans issues into the debate about sado-masochistic sex shows. Hmmm.

wtf those comments from him aren't even justified, it has nothing to do with transgender people. Drag doesn't have to be sexualised either

Agree JJ. And trans issues haven’t been brought into the argument here.

I think that labelling people as 'judgemental' because they voice an opinion on an issue such as this is a variation on the 'no debate' statement. It is the same ploy - it stifles debate (as I believe it's intended to do). No one really wants to appear judgemental or phobic. I think it is deliberate. And it's unhealthy.
this absolutely Dickens!

But this is a cultural shift and it affects everyone. Because there's a whole industry of services dedicated to the welfare of minors which would indicate that 'parental responsibility' is very definitely not an exact science.

Yes, it is a cultural shift and in some ways we need to change and adapt, become more tolerant as a society.

However, this is normalising what would have been termed fetishes and is it right that infants should be exposed to this? Adults have a choice, they can watch in clubs for adults and do the same at home if they wish but these children had no choice in the matter.

Drag doesn't have to be sexualised either
Many of us grew up watching Danny la Rue (my Mum loved him!) and Dame Edna was always wickedly humourous but not in an overtly sexual way at all.

Michael Deacon's wry comments in the Way of the World column (DT) are worth reading. They are addressed to the supposed type of parent who would take their children to this 'baby sensory' show.

It's the sort of parent who is so insufferably progressive that watching a show like this makes them feel even smugger than normal. Just imagine the lovely warm glow of self-congratulation that must spread over them (as they watch.)

Gosh, I'm just SO open -minded! So incredibly tolerant and inclusive! I'm taking my nine-month old baby to watch a load of semi-naked men prance about....and I don't feel uncomfortable at all

Imagine being the sort of hateful, bigoted old Tory prude who would object to all this innocent joy! I do hope my children grow up to be as kind, caring and compassionate as me!

To me, this is the only sort of explanation as to how anyone could defend this type of 'entertainment' for young mothers.