11 year old transgender kid dancing in gay club

Shows featuring drag queens reading to young children have proven increasingly popular - but they are also attracting angry protests. How have we reached a place where these joyful events are seen as a threat to infants? I n FebruaryI took my three-year-old daughter to a local pub for an event that sounded intriguing.

It was called Drag Queen Story Hour. I thought it may be right up her street — glitter, stories, wigs — and offer her the chance to learn something about difference and respect along the way. I also liked the idea of doing something different, although the main appeal was free child entertainment and the fact that my partner and I could have a roast and a pint of Guinness while we watched.

Two years on, she still does a good impression of the funny voices Aida H Dee would adopt for the characters.

The 11-year-old trailblazing drag kid 'Desmond is Amazing'

I might not have thought of that day again, but Drag Queen Story Hour has recently been hauled into a culture war. Parents entering the libraries had questions shouted at them about why they were taking their children to see a paedophile. Videos of the protests in Reading were posted online and looked terrifying.

But in Reading? Then I realised the drag queen at the centre of it all was Aida H Dee, the same performer who had entranced my daughter two years earlier. How could such a joyful event be causing such controversy? It turns out he has just escaped another protest, this time in Bristol, where protesters met counterprotests from antifascist and gay rights groups.

He was whisked off to safety. When we speak again, he is in a car returning from a successful event — and feeling great. However, he worries about protesters trying to film the children at Drag Queen Story Hour shows: one snuck into an event to try to livestream it. But, in general, the groups are easy to keep at bay with a few well-timed misdirections, he says.

Still, this is not exactly what Samuel signed up for when, inhe became the first drag artist in the UK to read stories to children in libraries. It is not what the parents signed up for, either. So, why carry on? As a child, Samuel struggled with autism and ADHD hence his drag name and found sitting crossed-legged in silence for story time boring.

So, I love being able to join those two together. Samuel describes himself as a victim of section I feel robbed of a childhood, in some way. He got a standing ovation, but, more importantly, was praised by a boy who had bullied him. It made him realise that not only could he inspire people like him, but he could also change the attitudes of those who were not.

Now, all he wants to do is continue reading his stories to children in peace.