Drag show at SDSU calling itself kid friendly while encouraging $1 and $5 tips. That doesn’t sound very kid friendly.

@SoDakCampaigns

(h/t to State Rep. Scott Odenbach)

If an SDSU club was advertising that they were hosting strippers at the SDSU Student Union, and telling people to “bring $1 and $5 bills to tip if you choose” to the stripper event, or encouraging children to attend, I don’t imagine it would be very well received by the SDSU administration, nor considered kid-friendly by the community at large.  So, someone explain to me why a drag show would get a pass for the exact same thing.

According to the SDSU Event Calendar:

If you’re into this sort of thing, that’s kind of your own business. But when someone is enticing you to stuff a single or five-dollar bill in an article of their clothing, it’s not something that most of us would consider a “kid-friendly” event, or a “bring your whole family” event, as much as adult entertainment. And last I knew, I didn’t think SDSU hosted adult entertainment on campus, whether it be strippers or a drag show.

If they want to hold a pride event on campus, and tells people so inclined to bring their kids, who cares? But when they start pulling adult entertainment into the mix, and tell people to bring their dollar bills, someone hasn’t given it a lot of thought, and is bumping up against (and probably grinding on as well) what a lot of people would not consider appropriate for a campus activity.

84 thoughts on “Drag show at SDSU calling itself kid friendly while encouraging $1 and $5 tips. That doesn’t sound very kid friendly.”

  1. New bills need to come out of the next legislative sessions sending these people to where they’re appreciated!

  2. They have shown drag performances on tv and in the movies for over fifty years. Flip Wilson. Robin Williams. John Travolta.

    Kids can see thousands of murders on television and nobody gets excited… but whooah… that dude is in a dress and has long hair too!

    Murder is OK to watch but drag shows… OMG… the country is coming apart!

    Relax people.

    1. It is less the dress and more that they’re encouraging them to stick money in their clothes, and calling it kid friendly.

    2. How do you say you’re a senior citizen without saying you’re a senior citizen?

      Invoke Flip Wilson.

          1. Thanks. I will plug my nose and accept defeat like a true patriot. I will keep breathing, however. Like it or not.

    3. “They have shown drag performances on tv and in the movies for over fifty years. Flip Wilson. Robin Williams. John Travolta.”

      Many things have been shown on TV and movies for over fifty years that most people would consider inappropriate for children.

      This is why the MPAA rating system exists, and why some movies are rated “G” or “PG,” and others are rated “PG-13,” “R,” or even “NC-17.”

      “Murder is OK to watch but drag shows… OMG… the country is coming apart!”

      Is there a “kid-friendly” murder show on SDSU’s calendar of upcoming events?

    4. Is SDSU hosting a murder on campus, advertising it as a family friendly event, and encouraging people to bring tips for various instruments of death? $1.00 for a throwing star, $5.00 for the chain saw. I must have missed that email. There is a very big difference between what a privately owned TV station produces and airs in comparison to a publicly funded educational institute.

    1. Scott –

      You’re sucking up useful space on this site with your nonsense and precious oxygen in the Legislature. USD, SDSU, and BHSU have been hosting drag shows for decades on campuses as fundraisers for student organizations, most specifically organizations that support LGBTQ+ students. The money fundraised helps send students to national conferences across the country, helps bring in speakers, and funds additional programming for the student groups because they all struggle for funding.

      It must be getting boring on the back-benches to have to come off for an issue as stupid as this. Was Taffy too busy to sink this low to take on the issue? If the State legislature would provide real funding for education for schools and universities, organizations wouldn’t have to hold fundraisers and you wouldn’t have to be so openly closed-minded.

      Can you honestly tell me that drag shows pose any risk to anyone? I’ll wait.

      Can you find any example of a drag queen/king in South Dakota attacking anyone?
      – There’s a list of priests out there if you want a real cause to show you’re protecting children in the South Dakota.
      – I’m also waiting for real reforms to address the growing crime in and around Sioux Falls.
      – I’m waiting for a member of the legislature to do real work to address economic development on the reservations and in the dying towns across the state.
      – Address the labor shortages for farmers across the state.
      – Waiting for you or anyone in the legislature to do something to address real travel and tourism promotion in the state, even for your district.

      Why are you wasting time on this nothing-burger when you could actually be doing something important?

      1. There are two ways to really screw people up. The first is by giving them denigrated genes. (Nothing to do with denim here either.) You, as a gene carrier got screwed in that deal too and need to find a mate from a much better gene pool than yours to hopefully alter any offspring. The only other way, which has a chance of changing the outcome, would be an environment of high morals, incredible love and strict rules. It would be nice being able to say that our American culture is moving in the right direction for the second chance of altering the outcome of our youth to occur but sadly subjecting them to drag Queen exposes is not part of the equation.
        But Hope and Change is happening right before our eyes folks.

      2. I attended both SDSU and USD each for 2 years. Never did I see drag Queen event at either institution.

  5. Interesting recruiting strategy for the university. Cotton…let’s see if it pays off for them

  6. When is Fred D going to Brookings to put an end to this ? There may be a penis (the horror) that slips out, or maybe there’s an outline that’s suggestive. The horror. It may tempt those that otherwise are repulsed by the male body. Repulsed but yet can’t look away. Why, why can’t I look away. The fabric feels so soft against my body. Oh, the horror.

    2. What a lame caricature. So stale, yet so self-satisfied. The right has finally become the funnier, interesting, joyous side. The left on the other hand is becoming a cesspool of censorship and stale narratives. It doesn’t make anything new anymore. It just takes what it has and fetishizes it and makes it more grotesque by the day. That’s what decades of self-worship will do for you, I guess.

  7. Stripping? However offensive this may be to some, it doesn’t sound like a strip show. It doesn’t sound like they are suggesting you stuff bills in their bras. I’m guessing they will have tip buckets like street performers. I get why some people are appaled, however misguided it is, but don’t exaggerate so much. It doesn’t help your credibility.

    1. Yeah, the only ones pulling adult entertainment into the mix are Pat and Scott. Gotta find something to whip up a panic about before session I guess.

      I’m just surprised Fred isn’t jumping in.

      2. This is a really gross misinterpretation of a fundraiser Pat – you know this.

        It’s a drag show. People who are interested will show up, people who aren’t, shouldn’t. Why is the author of this post against free speech, just because they disagree with it? And why are you, Pat, contributing to it with comparing a drag show to a strip club? I generally agree with the majority of your statements on this blog, but this one really has me scratching my head. Almost as much as the Governor firing Josh Shields.

        These are college aged students, volunteers, and people who choose to participate. Also, if children are showing up, I can almost guarantee that a parent or guardian brought them to the show. Are you now opposed to parents/guardians rights to choose in terms of what they want their children to see?

        Again, stupid distractions from actually getting good legislation and policy done to actually help people.

        1. You need to read for context, and what I actually said. Telling people to bring dollar bills, which are invariably to be stuffed in their clothes is not kid-friendly, nor a family event.

          If they want to have the event for college kids, that’s not an inappropriate age group. Who cares if they have it for college age kids? But it’s not appropriate for younger kids at all.

          1. What you’re missing out on, and it hasn’t been explicitly said yet, is these events are typically FUNDRAISERS. Of course they want people to bring 1s and 5s.

            Even with the leaking of the videos, there wasn’t any nudity you wouldn’t see at a public pool around South Dakota or on any cable news channel including Fox News. I assume you’d be fine with your kids going to any public pool in the State? And that as a parent, you’d have discretion as to what events you’d bring your kids to, and that you wouldn’t want legislators in Pierre telling you what you can and cannot do in that regard?

            If you’re outraged by a fake silicone or rubber “breastplate” that helps the performer in the illusion of woman, that’s a whole other story. A lot of coverage for not much of a story.

  8. I think the issue at hand might be the promotion or facilitation of aberrant behavior telling me it is ok and I should educate my children on tolerance. To show them where they should spend their money on such a venue. Taxpayer or BLM or otherwise funded is questionable. Board of Regents might want to reconsider this one.

    1. Ir is getting so that anyone standing for morality is attacked for being hatedul, a bigot, old fashioned, etc.

  10. “Tranny drag shows for children” is one helluva hill to die on. These people are so broken. It’s real mental illness. Get help or get gone.

    1. Unlike some of you delicate flowers, I have actually seen a drag show. Grooming? Hardly.

      All I could think was… how did they do that? Where is it? I didn’t run home and try to imitate them. Drag shows have been around since before you were born. We didn’t need morality police back then. We don’t need them now.

  11. So according to the democrats…a white child dressing as an Indian for Halloween is racist. A child who is not black dressing up as the Black Panther is cultural appropriation. Referring to someone in proper English usage and not their “preferred pronoun” is highly offensive and must be punished. But men dressing up as and pretending to be women and then acting in a highly suggestive manner is just fine and dandy.

  12. Drag is the new blackface. While our modern society realized that blackface, Minstrel Shows, ridiculed blacks, it’s obvious that the commentators here are unaware that drag shows ridicule women.
    Drag queens take the most annoying stereotypes of high-maintenance women and ridicule them. They take on offensive names, wear too much makeup and outrageous costumes, and behave like idiots to the amusement of their audiences.

    So when is SDSU going to host a Minstrel Show? It’s the same thing.

    3. “Drag is the new blackface”? Well… they both involve makeup, I guess.
      So, you are bothered by drag but not blackface??

      1. “So, you are bothered by drag but not blackface??”

        That’s not what she said at all…I said it before, and I will say it here again; you’re a dolt.

  13. I would not wear heals for five bucks. But, if you want to… that’s your business. Some of you talk about freedom. But it’s just talk.

    1. Agreed. I’d also probably not bring my kids to this. But it’s not nudity and I have no issue with other people bringing their kids. Freedom indeed.

          1. I don’t think you get it. Drag has been around for ages. People used to keep their weird proclivities to more appropriate settings with adults. But this is totally different when they are displaying and making targeted efforts to engage CHILDREN in their weird sexual proclivities. So…you are defending your “freedom” to…groom kids?!?

            1. Drag was on TV for ALL TO SEE… decades ago! Stop this nonsense.

              Everything the morality police attempt to do… is “for the children”. We’ve seen this act before.

  15. Wonder if they’ll have the dildo ring toss like the “family-friendly” event last weekend in Venice, Florida.

  16. I don’t need Scott Odenbach telling me what I can or cannot watch. Who do you think you are? If I want to watch a drag show, I will. If I wanted to be in one, I would.

    I don’t need you to be my morality czar. I’d rather live my life unsupervised by you. Thanks anyway.

  17. The whining about what other people do is so typical boomer era GOP. Give me a break, you all could care less about these kids, that is just a reason to justify your delusions and desire to control people.

  18. Drag shows aren’t strip shows. They’re mainly singing and dancing by talented performers.

    I’m one of those parents that has taken my child to a drag show. She loved it. No one was stuffing bills in anyone’s clothes. When we wanted to tip, we held up our money and the performer politely took it from our hand. I will teach my child acceptance of diversity any day rather than the values of the morality police.

    Before you judge, why don’t you attend the show and see for yourself? For the party that touts freedom, you seem to forget that people who don’t think like you get to be free also. And we get to raise our kids with our values and morals, not yours.

    1. To Elk at 8:46 and An Actual Parent at 9:05…

      Your reactions remind me of a story I wrote back in my newspaper days how local veterans groups brought in stripper-prostitutes from the Twin Cities to dance naked and service hunters. The vets protested that it was all in good fun among consenting adults, blasted me as a morality cop, and promised they’d sue for slander. My response: “Prostitution’s against the law, and last I looked, strippers who turn tricks aren’t invited to high school job fairs. And for being such wonderful entertainment, I’m surprised you bring in strangers from out of town to have raunchy public sex with hunters, when you could keep all the money in town pimping your daughters and wives .” Upshot: The prostitutes took their trade elsewhere and the vets didn’t sue.

      Drag shows are for grownups at bars, not for families at a public university. Still, we can assume open-minded adults like Elk and An Actual Parent are fine with such shows in elementary schools and public libraries, which has happened in other parts of the country and could easily drift into South Dakota. Such shows are grooming opportunities, clear and simple. How do I know? Because, you two sillies, RuPaul wannabes never book nursing homes.

      1. Is a murder on television a “grooming opportunity”, Cliff? Soap operas? God knows what could result from watching one of those.

        Grooming. You folks throw that word around every time you disagree with someone.

        Reading what you write here doesn’t make me want to enlist with the morality police. Stop acting like we are all snowflakes.

        1. Elk at 11:04…

          Apples to apples, Mr. Elk. The drag show is done live in real time. TV dramas with murder in the plot are quite something less than the real thing, let alone “Macbeth” or “Julius Caesar” in the theater — which, by the way, are unsuitable for kids.

          My concern is for children. Adults should protect their little ones from flagrant sexual displays, not take them to the show.

          1. “flagrant sexual displays”

            Turn off the TV, Cliff. Forget the movies. Do not take them to any venue where alcohol is served. And whatever you do, do not take kids to the beach.

      2. Statistically, as a child in South Dakota, it is more dangerous to be adopted by one of these “christian republican” legislators, than it is to go to drag show. The facts don’t like, folks, sorry.

        1. Anonymous at 11:21…

          Non sequitur. Your example has nothing to do whatsoever with whether it’s right to invite children to a drag performance.

          1. Cliff Hadley….
            It’s not an non sequitur at all. you’re implying that it’s dangerous or morally repugnant for kids to be a drag show. Anonymous at 11:21am is pointing out that more state legislators have done suspect things with, and/or around children than a drag queen in this state.

          2. Regardless, you fail to address the facts presented and reinforce your new fear of “drag queens” being dangerous to children. The reality is, state legislators are more dangerous, statistically, than drag queens.

            I will be generating a petition to ban children from the state capital during the session. It is dangerous, we have seen multiple legislators be charged, accused, and convicted of child rape over the last handful of years. For the protection of children, we can’t have them around so many predators in Pierre. The facts don’t lie, sorry, Cliff.

      3. First of all, this isn’t happening at an elementary school, it’s happening at a college.

        Second, if you’re alluding to Reading Hour with a Drag Queen, why are you against someone volunteering and reading to children? When it the last time you signed up to read or do something at your local schools?

        Third, they do have drag shows in parks in at least Sioux Falls, it’s called Sioux Falls Pride, it’s family friendly, and straight families make up a large part of the audience. It happens all around the country, as the LGBTQ+ communities celebrates a piece of American history called the Stonewall Riots. Riots that were lead by black and brown drag queens who were fed up with Police brutality and raids on LGBTQ+ spaces. So if you’re against that, you’re against freedom.

        1. “Second, if you’re alluding to Reading Hour with a Drag Queen, why are you against someone volunteering and reading to children? ”

          If this is the same reading hour that I think you are referring to, did you see the video of what went on in that reading hour and what was actually read? If you didn’t, then maybe you should. If you did, and you still think nothing was wrong with it, I would have to say there is something wrong with you.

  19. “you seem to forget that people who don’t think like you get to be free also. And we get to raise our kids with our values and morals, not yours.”

    That road runs both ways.

  20. I have not seen a drag show for many years but it was common practice to hand them a dollar or two if you like a performance. From what I saw, you hand it to them… you don’t jam it in some g-string like a strip show. I have seen a couple of those shows too. I don’t care if the morality police approve of that either.

  22. Would you ban parents from showing a drag show to their kids in the privacy of their own home? Murder shows? Bank robberies? Shows with swearing? R rated?

    I didn’t think so. But you busybodies think you can tell parents how to raise their kids if they step outside the home. Is that what you’re saying?

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