Drag kids are the product of a dangerous American delusion The way the 12-year-old drag act, Desmond is Amazing, has been pushed on the world betrays a worrying tendency

The delusion takes no account of the influences affecting us all — influences which profoundly affect every human from birth. American popular culture takes little or no notice of this non-preternatural fact, because if it did, then it would have to do some accounting for its own behaviour, or at least for the diet of entertainment it is willing to pump into the homes and heads of the very young.

The fastest way to avoid any such accounting is to pretend that people just ‘are’, and that if the wider culture has any impact at all, then it is merely in providing affirmatory, confirming visions which the individual recognises as being in line with the self that they have already intuited.

Let me, in that case, put a contrary point of view. Which is that Desmond’s manner, dress and performance style is not the product of some pre-existing instinct but a mere, evident copy. When he moves his arms like Judy Garland there are two possibilities. One is that Desmond emerged from the womb like Judy. The other is that he watched people, and his mother encouraged him to watch people, who were successful and fascinating to a young child, and he chose to imitate them and was told he could ‘be’ them.

When he says at the outset of the Mashable video, “Can you come up here, you look gorgeous”, in an affected, nasally voice, there may be people who say (like Mashable) “Here is the true 10-year old child”. But most others will say: “Here is a child who you can see is doing an impression of a highly sexualised type of American adult celebrity.” A clear indication of this is that after saying “gorgeous”, Desmond looks to the adults in the room for laughter, approval and affirmation. The adults in the room (presumably including Desmond’s mother) oblige, and thus does he receive what he seeks.

Likewise, when he talks about “haters” and the importance of ignoring them in this and other videos, this is not the innate wisdom of a child being imparted to a bigoted, post-lapsarian world. It is merely another person – this time a child – chanting one of the taught mantras of the American pop-cultural age: “Haters gonna hate” etc. There is no insight here. It is merely a copy, as drag is. A copy of a copy of a copy.

Of course Desmond is not the only child to have been presented in such way. The child reality TV star Jazz Jennings grew up in America as a ‘trans’ child with a reality television series. That series made Jennings and her family rich as well as famous. And while still a child (Jennings is now past 18), the male-to-female transsexual was not just celebrated in the same way that Desmond is, but was also asked intrusive and intimate questions. This included – on prime time – questions about who Jazz was attracted to.

None of this is new: many cultures around the world allow for some form of sexualisation of children. But here it is surprising. The modern West has long exercised such a degree of opprobrium towards the taboo that the slightest hint it might be breaking down affects a great pushback. While people feel distinctly unable to make many moral judgements, about the idea of paedophilia — and that an adult might find a child “sexy” — we are very judgemental indeed. It’s a feeling the tabloid press has harnessed to great effect. Even if there is nothing else we know to be wrong, we know this to be wrong.

By insisting that a child like Desmond should not just be allowed to be something, but should perform as a sexualised adult, and that this should in fact be ‘the future’, it would seem that something further is at work. What is it? It’s unlikely that it is an organised push for tolerance or acceptance of paedophilia. But it does feel like an expression of the ‘Fuck you’ politics of our time.

If people are persuaded – and many Americans are – that they live in a cis-hetero-normative, bigoted, patriarchal, homophobic, transphobic society, in which all difference is squeezed out and forbidden, then that belief may do many things to you. One thing it may do, is cause you to push back with every maddening, extreme tool that you have at your disposal. So people must not simply tolerate things. They must be ‘confronted’ with them. Those who have imbibed this idea have already stretched themselves very far. But in pushing ‘Desmond is Amazing’ on the world, they may have reached one of their limits.

It is an interesting lesson in its way. People pushing tolerance and acceptance of normal differences end up over-compensating, in the vengeful and extreme tone of the time, and in the process risk not ‘liberalising’ the culture, but toxifying the movements they presume to speak on behalf of.

‘Drag children’ are not the way to break down the instinctive conservatism of the American public. They are the best imaginable way to make any such conservatism rear up again, in the knowledge that this time there is something serious not just to oppose, but to defend.

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Douglas Murray is an author and journalist.

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