Courtney Act has called out the gross way conservatives hyper-sexualise and project onto drag queens after a senator baselessly accused her of grooming children on Play School.
Liberal Senator Alex Antic threw a fit in parliament earlier this month after Courtney Act (whose real name is Shane Jenek) read a book to children on the iconic ABC show. The book follows a little girl who simply likes to wear pants — a concept so alien to Senator Antic that he accused Act of encouraging gender dysphoria.
“Cross-dressing. Let me ask you this, does ABC agree that transgender or cross-dressing are adult concepts?” he said in parliament. He then accused the ABC and Act of “grooming” Aussie kids.
Yeah, all because a fictional little girl wanted to wear pants.
Courtney Act spoke to The Project about Antic’s comments, which she said shocked her because they were so out of touch with what actually happened.
“I was really taken aback that I would be accused of such a thing ’cause grooming is really serious, right?” she said.
“Like, grooming is the act of an abuser, manipulating a child so they can sexually abuse them. It’s really a serious thing.
“And to use terms of abuse when no abuse is actually happening really takes away from the occasions when it is happening. And you know, I’m on television, reading a children’s book. There was nothing untoward about it. I – yeah, it was really quite a shocking thing to be accused of.”
Act then explained how Antic’s accusations were the result of an inherently homophobic over-sexualisation of queer people.
“We have all agreed women can wear pants – it felt a very peculiar thing for him to zoom in on. I think it was probably more to do with the fact that it was me reading the book,” she said.
“I think the reason that is – and the reason the term ‘grooming’ was used – is because somebody like Senator Antic might see my identity as sexualised and there’s this idea that who I am is inherently sexual.
“And I think the reason behind that is the thing that makes me maybe different from him is my sex life, who I have sex with, and because I’m attracted to men and I’m a male person who’s attracted to men, that sort of reduces my whole identity just down to who I have sex with.”
Showing queer kids straight content won’t turn them straight. Showing straight kids queer content won’t turn them queer. Your queer kids will be queer regardless of whether you show them examples. It just depends on how much shame you want them to carry into their lives. https://t.co/VxUN7mGcgM
— Courtney Act (@courtneyact) November 20, 2022
Act then called out Antic for not being able to see her outside of who she has sex with — which is obviously not something children even think about.
“Obviously I’m much more than just that, and I think that him viewing me as inherently sexual is probably the place where we get a bit off track because – you know, all sorts of performers – you know, he’s married with a kid so he’s obviously had sex at some point in his life,” she said. I love the subtle burn that she can only assume he’s had sex, lol.
“But obviously we know what’s appropriate in different circumstances. In that circumstance I think what I was doing was completely appropriate. Kids just see colour and sparkles and fun. They’re not sexualising me. That’s something the adults do.”
ICYMI, this moral panic among the right about queer people (and specifically drag queens?) grooming children is a pretty dangerous form of homophobia that has been around since at least the 1970s.
Back then, the Save Our Children coalition weaponised terms like “grooming” — which by definition refers to the process where adults make children vulnerable to sexual abuse through compliments and other trust-building tactics — against gay people who it claimed were trying to “recruit” the “youth of America”.
These accusations of grooming and pedophilia against the queer community (specifically gay men) were then taken up by far-right conspiracy groups, who we know love to accuse anyone they don’t agree with of being a child abuser or pedophile. But since 2020, this specific type of homophobia has been bleeding into regular conservative talking points.
It is fkn concerning that we’re now seeing these accusations — once associated with fringe hate groups — appear in parliament in our lord’s year of 2022. The world has come a long way in its fight for gay rights, but clearly some groups are regressing.
