Gila Münster, who bills herself as “Toronto’s cross-stitching, cross-dressing Jewish American Princess,” does drag queen storytimes in Toronto, though not without some right-wing protest.
She appeared on Saturday at the High Park branch of the Toronto Public Library, and baby-nap ended just in time for me to catch the tail end of it, and to observe the protest out front. Or rather, the anticipatory counter-protest.
I asked some of those gathered what this was about and they said that there had been “white supremacist” threats. The exact political and identity delineations were a challenge for me to parse—why “white supremacists” and not homophobes? Was this because it’s a Jewish-themed act?
And why the emphasis in the protest on trans issues, urgent though they may be, when Gila Münster is, as drag queens usually (not always!) are, portrayed by a man? Is this fallout from how the right-wing opposition to drag storytime seems to conflate categories in this way?
Also of note, this gig for Gila might’ve been made possible by the fact that prior drag storytime mainstays Fay and Fluffy severed their relationship with the Toronto Public Library in 2019—in protest of commentator Meghan Murphy being allowed to rent a room at the Palmerston branch to discuss her views on gender identity. (Fear not, Fay and Fluffy have found high demand elsewhere.)
And while Gila Münster had a packed schedule of Pride Month appearances that included Jewish community stops at the Baycrest Apotex Centre and Holy Blossom Temple, a mid-June reading at the Forest Hill library branch was postponed—but it now appears rescheduled for July 8. Jewish neighbourhood drag storytime aficionados will not be denied the experience of High Park.
Meanwhile, in other news that’s got people talking… Joyce Carol Oates questioned whether women fixate on historical events:
As the many replies to the 85-year-old novelist remind, there are women historians. There are even women such as Joyce Carol Oates who write historically inspired fiction. As a woman with a historical obsession or two, I suppose I ought to have been offended. But I was ultimately more impressed by Oates’s capacity to get people mad online—hardly gender-conforming behaviour! And she probably is speaking to a truth of sorts about the gendered nature of which people will respond positively to being gifted a 700-page non-fiction book about the Second World War.
Also getting people mad at her: philosopher Agnes Callard. She hates travel and is unafraid to philosophize about why in the pages of The New Yorker.
And finally, a couple good old-fashioned Jewish representation items. The coup that wasn’t got a distinctly Jewish spin, at least for members of denominations that accept patrilineal descent:
And I leave you with a bit of trivia that had me neck-deep in the Sunday night Wikipedia weeds: the actor who played Babu on some of the more hmm-in-retrospect episodes of Seinfeld is not only Jewish but somewhat Canadian!
“A year after his birth, the family moved from Israel to London and then, in 1966, to Toronto… He attended an all-boys school in London but made the switch to a public co-ed high school when the family moved to Toronto. He attended the University of Toronto, where he was active in theatre productions.”
Who knew? Maybe you did. Maybe I am the last on the planet to learn this tidbit.
What I’m still waiting to learn is where Joyce Carol Oates stands on the inherent femininity or masculinity of obsessing over sitcom trivia. If it turns out to be a man thing, then sign me up to wear jeans and a flannel shirt and recite the IMDb page about Frasier at a library.
One more thing! Please listen to my conversation about anorexia with Hadley Freeman, inspired by her new book:
The CJN’s senior editor Phoebe Maltz Bovy can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter @bovymaltz
