This Holiday, JD Vance is Serving

 

Uh. Huh.

Welp, I'm just screen capping the above Twitter post for posterity in case it disappears, because I believe in sharing the things that bring me joy, and perversely, this does. It sort of sums things up in a way I'm not even sure Vance has totally unpeeled. It's a psychological onion--it has layers.

I really wonder why the Harris/Walz campaign drifted away from calling these guys weird. Because you know what?

This is kinda weird. 

But you guys? You just have the kind of Thanksgiving that makes you happy. Which I'm sure will be very, very traditional. In its very own special way.

They *Do* Want Us Dead

 

Hours after a mass shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, LibsOfTikTok is targeting another LGBTQ organization in Colorado Springs.

They want to get people killed. That’s really the only explanation here. This is textbook stochastic terrorism. pic.twitter.com/l793uiMQpm

— Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D (@RVAwonk) November 20, 2022

The LibsofTikTok account is live at Twitter under the new Regime. I hate it. I want you to understand something about this weird little targeting site--they want LGBT people dead, and their allies. Yes, even their allies. I know this because they targeted a whole Children's Hospital.  For a weird lie about what pediatric trans care entails--no one is performing surgeries on minors.  And that hospital is still receiving bomb threats, even now.  Because, I guess, like they say, a lie can travel the world before the truth has a chance to put on its pants. 

But think on it--this is a hospital for all kinds of sick children. Every patient, employee and family member has now been targeted for the supposed transgressions of a very, very few. Because they want allies to be severed. They want people to give up accepting LGBT lives in public, at all. 

One of the heroes of the mass shooting was a dad. He was an ally--a straight family man who was just there to appreciate a show. The violence is directed at telling people to fear LGBT spaces. To say if you are an ally--don't be there. Your friends belong in a closet. They shouldn't be seen and their books shouldn't be read. Be afraid.

I don't think it works that way. Mr. Fiero and a drag queen * (CORRECTION--new reports say she was a trans woman,) beat the shooter senseless, and that was more than the hundreds of police at Uvalde did when there was a mass shooter there. Let's face it, drag queens were the front line at Stonewall and are gonna be all up in haters' faces until the haters serve surrender. (And vis the correction--yes, trans women, too.)

But in the meanwhile, LGBT haters are still targeting trans athletes, trans treatment, and drag anything at all. 

Nearly Speechless

 

It's the reason that lies behind what everyone will call a "senseless act" that leaves me beggared for words. I mean: a troubled young man with a history of violent activity shows reg flags, goes on to commit an act of horrific violence with an AR-15. 

I have written so many words following this very outline.

That the young man in question has a political connection doesn't shock me, either--after all, recall the July 4th parade shooting? His father had been a candidate for mayor, and believed he raised his son with "good morals".  That the Colorado Springs shooter's grandfather was pro-insurrection? 

There's nothing I can say about that. Was this violent fool under the impression he was firing shots in a cultural war? Was he a part of the recent violent threats facing LGBT communities? 

Of course. 

I am heartbroken for this community and the victims and the families of the victims. There is too much hate and too many guns in the hands of the hateful. I feel like I keep saying it and saying it and saying it...

What Do You See?

 

The Alameda County Sheriff's office is investigating a group of men who disrupted a drag queen storytelling event at the San Lorenzo Library Saturday with homophobic slurs. https://t.co/46G1IDQzVB

— KPIX 5 (@KPIXtv) June 12, 2022

So consider the scene--people in costume are reading books to children in a calm and unprovocative setting, and then weird violent guys show up and say horrible things with language that has no business being said in front of children. It was not weird until these people decided to come on in and make it weird. It was the Proud Boys--you know, the ones who have nothing to be proud about, accept for being accepted by the Miami-Dade GOP and being affiliated with the insurrectionists. Maybe they haven't decided to be as entirely domestic terrorist as Patriot Front this Pride month, but they definitely decided to make an impact. 

Just as a necessary follow-on to what I posted about yesterday--this movement is aiming increasingly harsh public harassment at gender-nonconforming people in what looks to me like a way to "disappear" LGBT people. Like Gov. DeSantis (who was protested today at Chelsea Piers by Chelsea queers) whose "Don't say Gay" law tries to put people back in the closet and jeopardize the employment of LGBT teachers by focusing attention on whether they mention a basic facet of their personal lives, a lot of the legislation that pretends to "spare the children" from adult topics is really aimed at just making it publicly difficult to be any kind of queer. 

They Want to Kill The Rabbit

 

I really don't understand the big deal about kids at drag shows, because I grew up on Warner Brothers cartoons, and you could not keep Bugs Bunny out of a dress. S/he was serving drag fierceness even though Elmer and their lil friends had a gun trained on hir. S/he was fighting for hir life up on that stage. In the olden days, before me and RuPaul were even babies, drag was king. All of Shakespeare started as drag. Panto was drag. And it was for the kids. Soldiers did drag. Drag was for macho men. And women.

Monty Python's pepper pots are drag. Benny Hill did drag. People who hate drag are the people drag was made for--to show them how they don't need to be. Drag is beauty and travesty. It is about telling on people. It is about showing up and showing out. It is entertainment. It is good-hearted people. The Drag Court raises so much for charity because beautiful people need to do beautiful things for others. 

Drag is realness because the world doesn't know what to do with nonconformists, but nonconformists understand how to do the world. 

So little Napoleon Blownapart Ron DeSantis is beside himself to know if he wants to investigate parents who take their kids to drag shows. Age-appropriate drag shows, because while drag queens might be gay, they are not stupid. Ron DesAntics has no "might" about him. He is just hopping on a weird bandwagon. What is the worst thing that happens to a kid at a drag show among so many people? As opposed to churches? Or anywhere else? 

So when people talk about making it a crime to expose kids to drag anywhere, it sounds to me like they want to impose compulsory heteronormativity. I mean, what is sexualizing about someone being fully-dressed? Unless they mean just not being fully dressed as the gender someone thinks you are supposed to be? So maybe today that just means no men in dresses or skirts. But tomorrow that means women shouldn't be in pants. 

I mean--pants. Girl pants. Yoga pants. Leggings. Jeans. Trousers. Pants suits. Maybe ladies shouldn't be doing man drag. And also doing work that interferes with the baby-making. I guess I am not in the baby making rota necessarily anymore, but I tell you what--I will be wearing the pants in this dystopia, thank you very much. And I will fight anyone trying to kill the rabbit--like these Patriot Front MF's trying to fuck up a Pride event.  The fash is always anti-gay and anti-trans, and so long as GOP stays fash friendly (yes, they are) you aren't confusing me for someone who will tolerate their bullshit. 

The GOP better purge their homophobe and transphobe shit before I'm willing to fuck with them. And they won't. So I will never. And I would rather most modern day elected Dems get that too.