How The National Rise Of Anti-LGBTQIA+ Rhetoric & Violence Has Manifested In Washington State
by Raccoon
263 Children woke up on the 25th of December to a Christmas that would not have been possible without the efforts of Ceasar Hart Vice President of the Out & Proud Coalition and their Operation Santa Claus event. In the face of growing anti-queer sentiment in the country and calls from local officials to protest the event, “Operation Santa Claus!” was a huge success The annual event raised a little over $2000.00 in one evening. The Out & Proud Grays Harbor Coalition donated an extra $500.00 and their online fundraiser raised another $575.00. So far over $3000.00 has been raised to purchase gifts for under served kids for Christmas! This was the most successful event they have ever had in their 8 years running. Children, parents, and other patrons packed the event leaving little but standing room as people enjoyed the drag performances, concessions, auctions, and even a balloon artist. The kids in attendance had an wonderful time with their balloon animals, dancing and singing along to the performances. In a statement posted to The Out & Proud Grays Harbor Collation’s Facebook page they said,
“We gratefully thank this amazing Grays Harbor community for not letting hate win and for showing up for LGBTQIA+ individuals and the amazing drag performers.”
But not everything was happy holidays and worry free celebration this year, in the wake of online hysteria in Facebook group’s by local conservatives & reactionaries, many parents were left worrying for the safety of their children by the threat of attack from far right extremists; as outcry and public threats jumped from the page’s of conservative Facebook to push back by local officials and state representatives and other organizations demanding a shutdown of the event.
Organizers received a slew of screenshots and messages from people who claim to be, as one message stated from a resident in Raymond, that they were, quote “Sympathetic to the domestic terrorists that target your community” These threats and statements are made openly with little push back or repercussion not even a month after the Club Q shooting where after the shooter targeted a queer bar injuring 25 and murdering 5 others was only stopped not by police but by the patrons of the bar subduing the shooter. Prompting the slogan in queer circles “Cop’s Don’t Keep Us Safe, We Keep Us Safe”
Luckily Operation Santa Claus! went off without incident, potential protesters deterred by the fog and rain of the winter weather. The same could not be said of other drag events happening the same day. In Renton one faced major push back led by city officials, and the business who was hosting the event had their windows shot out by unknown shooters days before. In Aberdeen the John Brown Gun Club was invited to run security for the event where a team of at least 8 guards ran over-watch and made sure the Drag Event resumed safely. This is a combination that has been trending since a event in Texas that had been the target of threats and harassment was shielded from a mob of reactionary protesters by armed antifascists from the John Brown Gun Club on the 28th of August 2022. As the number of drag shows being targeted by extremists continues to grow, so to has the need for community defense and the need for queer people to arm and defend themselves.
Our community also has experience with the results of conservatives fanning the flames of reactionary rhetoric against the LGBTQIA+ population. We decided that with the growing threat of violence and the and rising number of acts of terrorism by right wing extremists to not take any chances. The anti-trans Star Wars rally that happened in Aberdeen last August brought protesters from up and down the coast including the Proud Boys and self proclaimed theocratic fascist Matt Walsh, who capitalized on the protest by interviewing the business owner in his transphobic film “What Is A Woman”. Reactionaries lined the street waving signs with hate-filled messages and various flags including an Anti-Antifa Flag among the American, Trump, and Confederate flags in front of his store. Nearby parking lots filled with Oregon license plates as Proud Boys and out of town protesters were brought in to “defend the Star Wars shop from Antifa coming to burn the store down and kill the owner” as stated in conspiracy theories spread on Far Right & Neo Nazi message boards such as Stormfront and parroted by stochastic terrorist and far right troll Andy Ngo.
A sentiment mimicking similar conspiracies spread during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests that “Antifa” was coming to burn the town down resulting in a mass horde of armed counter protesters harassing a small group of women and threatening them with violence. This type of angry reactionary backlash brought on by a conservative minority and stirred up by corporate sanitized Neo Nazi talking points exposed by media personalities such as Tucker Carlson, Andy Ngo, Libs Of Tik Tok, and The Daily Wire, among so many other stochastic terrorists in a boiling pot of right wing echo chambers.
This was the source of the threats former Aberdeen council woman Tiesa Meskis faced as violent rhetoric was fabricated and used to whip up a frenzy to defend the Star Wars business owner Don Sucher, who was called out on video by the council woman for displaying transphobic messages on signs in his shop. Since the events of the Star Wars Rally GLAAD, an acronym of Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation found 124 incidents in 2022 of anti-LGBTQ protests and threats targeting specific drag events in 2022 alone, their reported stated as follows:
GLAAD Report: Drag events faced at least 141 protests and significant threats in 2022
GLAAD, the world’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) media advocacy organization, is releasing new findings providing the first comprehensive count and analysis of increased threats, protests and violent action against drag events nationwide. The mass shooting that occurred in Colorado Springs, CO, on November 19th was not included at the time of publishing as the attacker’s motive had not yet been formally declared.
Findings: GLAAD found 124 incidents in 2022 of anti-LGBTQ protests and threats targeting specific drag events. The majority of the incidents occurred during Pride festivities in June and into September, October, and November, including false rhetoric against performers deployed in campaign ads for the midterm elections. The analysis shows increasingly violent rhetoric and incidents as the year progressed, including the firebombing of a Tulsa donut shop that had hosted a drag event in October.
Within the past two weeks, legislation targeting public drag performance was introduced in Tennessee and Texas, leading to a total of eight proposed anti-drag bills this year.
Location: 2022 news reports cited incidents targeting drag events in 47 US. states, with the exclusion of South Dakota, Rhode Island, West Virginia and Washington, DC. It is possible that incidents did occur in those areas but they did not receive media coverage.
The states with the highest number of drag events targeted by protests and threats in 2022 were:
Texas (10)
North Carolina (10)
Illinois (8)
Tennessee (6)
California (6)
Georgia (5)
While many of the incidents were reported in smaller cities and towns in the South and Midwest, a number also took place in areas with higher LGBTQ populations and LGBTQ-inclusive communities. New York saw four protest incidents, three of which took place in New York City. Some of the more violent or threatening incidents took place in Eugene, Oregon; San Francisco suburbs, and Oklahoma’s capital, Tulsa. Events were also targeted in larger cities including the aforementioned New York, Philadelphia, Memphis, Dallas, Cleveland, Las Vegas, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Boston, Miami, Denver, and Phoenix.
A number of the drag events targeted by threats and protests in person were first targeted by right-wing media outlets like Fox News and the Daily Wire, and social media accounts like LibsOfTikTok. The outlets and accounts often misrepresented what would occur at upcoming drag events, spinning them as harmful to children, and protests or threats would follow. A Media Matters report from June found that Fox News had devoted more hours to targeting drag queens and transgender people than to coverage of the January 6th insurrection hearings. A Media Matters analysis in November found that disturbing misinformation about drag had ramped up on Fox News and the Daily Wire in the weeks before the Tulsa firebombing, with Tucker Carlson falsely claiming that drag queens “want to sexualize children,” and the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh calling on police to “break down the doors” of LGBTQ clubs and arrest drag queens. Sometimes the targeting came full-circle, with right-wing media hyping up negative attention ahead of an event and continuing afterward. In June, LibsOfTikTok targeted the Couer D’Alene, Idaho ‘Pride In The Park’ (where 31 anti-LGBTQ protesters were arrested) ahead of the event, saying that a ‘family friendly drag dance party’ was being promoted by the Idaho Satanic Temple. Afterward, the account shared a doctored video of a drag performer that spread misinformation and falsely alleged indecent exposure during the performance, which led the drag performer to file a lawsuit in September. The LibsOfTikTok account was briefly suspended by Twitter in September after news reports connected its posts to bomb threats made against children’s hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to transgender youth, but the account was reinstated.
A number of incidents involved violence or weapons. Extremist groups like the Proud Boys, Patriot Front, and local white supremacist chapters were involved in several incidents.
● In Tulsa, Oklahoma, this October, security video captured a person smashing the windows of a donut shop before lighting a Molotov cocktail and firebombing the storefront.
● In Eugene, Oregon, this October, protesters carried semiautomatic rifles and threw rocks and smoke bombs.
● In the Chicago suburb of Downers Grove, Illinois, in September, a public library canceled a drag bingo event after receiving a threatening letter that included a bullet and the phrase “more to come.”
● In Memphis, Tennessee, in September, local leaders said Proud Boys were among the armed protesters that showed up to a drag event at the Museum of Science and Industry, forcing the event’s last-minute cancellation.
● In Sparks, Nevada, in June, children at the town library ran for safety from a Proud Boys protester carrying a gun.
● In Couer d’Alene, Idaho, in June, police arrested 31 Patriot Front members who had traveled from ten different states armed with riot gear and smoke grenades to protest a Pride event that had been targeted by LibsOfTikTok online.
GLAAD reviewed legislative proposals in six states that aim to restrict or ban drag. In most cases, extremist politicians pointed to local drag events as the motivation for new legislation that would ban public drag performances such as those that take place at Pride festivals, or ban minors from observing drag performers, including library events such as Drag Story Hour. This report notes the connection between news making incidents and bills or legal action later introduced.
In Tennessee this November, Sen. Jack Johnson filed a bill that aims to ban drag performance in public.
● In Texas, two bills were proposed in June and November. One proposal seeks to ban minors from attending drag story hours or similar events, and another would classify drag as a “sexually oriented business” on par with strip clubs.
● A federal bill introduced in October and backed by 30 House Republicans would ban drag shows at any federally-funded institution such as libraries and schools.
● Idaho news outlets reported in October that a bill banning drag in public would be introduced in the upcoming legislative session.
● In Michigan this June, lawmakers announced a plan to ban drag from schools despite no evidence of any drag events at Michigan schools.
● In Arizona, state senator Vincent Leach announced in June he and other Republican colleagues would attempt to ban minors from drag events.
● In Florida this June, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced he would consider a proposal to ban minors from drag events. Later that month, he filed a complaint against a Miami restaurant that held an all-ages drag show.
[Note: after this report originally posted, Montana state representative Braxton Mitchell filed a proposal to ban minors from drag events—just three days after a mass shooting took place the night of a drag show in Colorado Springs. The original map graphic and totals have been updated to reflect the news.]
OTHER RESOURCES:
- GLAAD’s 2022 Social Media Safety Index (SMSI)
- GLAAD’s Guide for Media Covering State Legislation Targeting LGBTQ People
- GLAAD Media Reference Guide
- GLAAD’s Guide for Media Covering Book Bans and Anti-LGBTQ School Policy
Methodology: GLAAD reviewed news reports in all 50 states, plus US. military bases, for protests that explicitly targeted drag events and for drag events that had faced cancellation or rescheduling due to threats or severe criticism. Because news reports were used as the sole source of tracking incidents, it is likely that even more incidents occurred that did not receive media coverage. The mass shooting that occurred in Colorado Springs, CO on November 19th was not included at the time of publishing as the attacker’s motive had not yet been formally declared. The full list of events is available to journalists on request.
In the wake of the rising violent rhetoric the actions of reactionaries were horrifically not tied to threats and vandalism alone. Many of the Queer community have been the target of fatal violence by these reactionaries and murdered for their In a article by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation (HRC) reported
Fatal Violence Against the Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Community in 2022
Sadly, 2022 has already seen at least 35 transgender people fatally shot or killed by other violent means. We say “at least” because too often these stories go unreported — or misreported. In previous years, the majority of these people were Black and Latinx transgender women.
In 2021, the Human Rights Campaign tracked a record number of violent fatal incidents against transgender and gender non-conforming people — with 50 fatalities tracked.
These victims, like all of us, are loving partners, parents, family members, friends and community members. They worked, went to school and attended houses of worship. They were real people — people who did not deserve to have their lives taken from them.
As HRC continues to work toward justice and equality for transgender and gender non-conforming people, we mourn those we have lost in 2022.
Please visit the article by the HRC Foundation here for a detailed list of the victims of these heinous hate crimes. The article goes on to state:
HRC works to shed light on this epidemic of violence in order to ensure victims’ lives are remembered with dignity, and to work to end the stigma that so many trans and gender non-conforming people face. HRC confirms these cases working with local advocates, the media and sometimes law enforcement. In doing this work, there are some cases that surface that are unclear — where victims may have died by other means than violent acts by another individual. In these cases, HRC works to monitor developments closely and calls for further investigation into the causes and circumstances surrounding their deaths. To view these cases, visit HRC’s “Additional Concerning Deaths of Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Individuals” resource page.
These victims were killed by acquaintances, partners or strangers, some of whom have been arrested and charged, while others have yet to be identified. Some of these cases involve clear anti-transgender bias. In others, the victim’s transgender or gender non-conforming status may have put them at risk in other ways, such as forcing them into unemployment, poverty, homelessness and/or survival sex work.
While the details of these cases differ, it is clear that fatal violence disproportionately affects transgender women of color – particularly Black transgender women – and that the intersections of racism, sexism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia and unchecked access to guns conspire to deprive them of employment, housing, healthcare and other necessities. HRC Foundation’s “Dismantling a Culture of Violence” report demonstrates how anti-transgender stigma, denial of opportunity and increased risk factors compound to create a culture of violence – and provides clear ways that each of us can directly make an impact to make our society a safer place for transgender and gender non-conforming people.
As is too often the case in the reporting of violence against transgender and gender non-conforming people, many of these victims are misgendered in local police statements and media reports, which can delay our awareness of deadly incidents. In the pursuit of greater accuracy and respect for transgender and gender non-conforming people in both life and death, HRC offers guidelines for journalists and others who report on these communities.
HRC has been tracking reports of fatal anti-transgender violence for the past several years. Previous reports can be found: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015. HRC also monitors additional cases which surface that are unclear – where victims may have died by other means than violent acts by another individual or suspicious circumstances.
Every year more and more lives are lost to the bigoted violence that threatens the safety of marginalized communities.
The Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR), also known as the International Transgender Day of Remembrance, has been observed annually (from its inception) on November 20 as a day to memorialize those who have been murdered as a result of transphobia. The day was founded to draw attention to the continued violence directed towards transgender people.
Transgender Day of Remembrance was founded in 1999 by a small group, including Gwendolyn Ann Smith, to memorialize the murder of transgender woman Rita Hester in Allston, Massachusetts. In 2010, TDoR was observed in over 185 cities throughout more than 20 countries.
Typically, a TDoR memorial includes a reading of the names of those who died from October 1st of the former year to September 30th of the current year, and may include other actions, such as candlelight vigils, dedicated church services, marches, art shows, food drives and film screenings. GLAAD has extensively covered TDoR, interviewed numerous transgender advocates (including actress Candis Cayne), profiled an event at the New York City LGBT Community Center and discussed media coverage of TDoR.
This year however the Queer Community was not given any time to remember any of the over 600 LGBTQIA+ people have been killed in acts of violence in the United States and Puerto Rico since Oct. 12, 1998. Nor were they able to mourn the loss of members of this community who had taken their own lives, those who had suffered so much in a society that would not accept them. Nor were they able to get the care or attention they deserved either from those who were supposed to love them or from the professionals in health care fields or their schools that were supposed to help them, or the institutions around them that was supposed to facilitate their lives or elsewhere. So in response they decided to end their lives believing that they had no other way out cause they felt alone or isolated from each other.
They had no time because on the Transgender Day of Remembrance 2022, a person entered a LGBTQIA+ Nightclub in Colorado Springs with a gun and injured 25 people and killed 5 others who was only stopped, not by law enforcement, but by the patrons of the club itself. This horrifying shooting has brought attention yet again of the rising epidemic of mass shootings that have been under-reported. Linked to the growing movement of far right White Nationalists motivated by stochastic terrorists through vague calls for violence, building their support through coalitions of right wing think tanks and white supremacist organizations through networks built upon Queer & Transphobia. For more information check out the podcast “Its Going Down” episode from December 1st 2022 entitled, “How Transphobia Built a Coalition of Eco-Radicals, White Nationalists and Right-Wing Think Tanks.”
These coalitions have changed the rhetoric spun by those in power, primarily in the republican party but by no means limited to them. From meaningless thoughts & prayers in the face of actual targeted violence against this community to calls to not politicize the victims; an infuriating statement silencing the victims, who’s very deaths were often motivated by politics, sometimes indirectly and sometimes very directly by these same politicians and influencers. Such as a shooter who wrote a white supremacist manifesto went out of their way to a black community in buffalo new York to kill black people specifically.
These responses of don’t politicize the deaths and thoughts and prayers weren’t the ones made in response to the Club Q shooting. They have instead shifted into rhetoric of outright hostility and support for the domestic terrorists agitated by stochastic terrorists such as Libs of Tik Tok, who the Club Q shooter had learned about the clubs events through their inflammatory rhetoric. Very similar to many other members of the right wing media, touching on everything from conspiracies about COVID, to ones about child sex trafficking rings. False reports made by such conspiracies often cause a flood of calls to call centers designed to actually help real cases of trafficking, often preventing them from doing their jobs. having to instead sift through reports to determine which cases or real or fake causing actual cases to often be overlooked or not reported at all As was seen in the height of the “Pizza Gate Conspiracy” where on On December 4, 2016, Edgar Maddison Welch, a 28-year-old man from Salisbury, North Carolina, arrived at Comet Ping Pong and fired three shots from an AR-15 style rifle that struck the restaurant’s walls, a desk, and a door. Welch later told police that he had planned to “self-investigate” the conspiracy theory. Welch saw himself as the potential hero of the story—a rescuer of children.
This is the motivation behind acts of violence based on inflammatory “Groomer” rhetoric. This notion of “Save The Children” has been the defending plea for so many of these domestic terrorists that have taken so many lives from this community. The majority of these stochastic terrorist’s media output is now concerning the LGBTQIA+ community putting them in the limelight for right wing reactionaries to harass and often commit acts of violence via being doxed by their content as well as the content of most of right wing media.
Just like they had in the wake of the Uvalde School Shooting where a conspiracy theory that originated on 4 Chan was spread by Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar, known for participating in white nationalist conferences, claimed that the shooter was a “transsexual leftist illegal alien,” repeating a lie that had appeared on the far-right recruiting platform 4chan. Right-wing media personality Candace Owens also spread this lie. It was no coincidence that a group of bigots repeated this claim as they assaulted an underage trans girl shortly afterwards.
A transgender 17-year-old girl only identified as “Tracey” in the media said that she was accosted by a group of four men outside a library in El Paso.
“Oh look, it has a dick,” one of the men said, Tracey recounted in an interview with the LA Blade.
“Yeah, you know they’re perverting kids instead of killing them,” she said one of the men said as he allegedly grabbed her arm and forced her to turn around and face him.
“I’m only 17,” she responded.
“Yeah, you know it was one of your sisters who killed those kids,” a different man allegedly said. “You’re a mental health freak.”
She was able to get away and she tried to report the incident to the El Paso Police, who refused to take an assault report. She latter called the Rainbow Youth Project to talk to a counselor, and that’s when she heard that conservatives were blaming the Ulvade school shooting on transgender people. The Rainbow Youth Project said that they tried calling The El Paso Police Department about the alleged assault, but they couldn’t get the police to take a report either.
Tracey also said that she is currently living in a halfway house after her parents kicked her out of their home because of their transphobia. She used to visit a community clinic to talk to a counselor, but they refuse to see her now since Gov. Greg Abbott ordered child abuse investigations into adults who support transgender youth. While the order doesn’t specifically apply to counselors, “the clinic isn’t taking any chances.”
This is also the same rhetoric again used by Libs Of Tiktok where a post of theirs was linked to a bomb threat made against a Bostons Children’s Hospital spreading the conspiracy theory that the doctors in the Trans Affirming Healthcare was “mutilating children’ claiming that gender reassignment surgery was being forced on children despite medical experts having an over all consensus that these types of surgeries should not be administered to those under 18 years of age. Gender affirming care for children often only consists of wearing clothes that make them fell comfortable or puberty blockers which are medically safe and standard policy.
Children’s National Hospital came out with a statement that “None of the people who were secretly recorded by this activist group deliver care to our patients. We do not and have never performed gender affirming hysterectomies for anyone under the age of 18”
The twitter account faced a suspension which has since been overturned and allowed to continue their stochastic terrorism after Libs of Tiktok targeted Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC., leading to online suggestions about bombing the hospital and putting its employees in a wood chipper. The account has targeted multiple other hospitals providing gender-affirming care, resulting in threats to patients and providers.
As reported by Ari Drennen of Media Matters.
“Libs of TikTok’s Chaya Raichik pledged to redouble her attacks on hospitals providing trans people with health care, she wrote in a rant on her Substack in which she called gender-affirming care “mutilating the body.” Raichik’s recent efforts against Boston Children’s Hospital, Children’s National Hospital in DC., and others have led to violent threats against health care providers and at least one request for help from law enforcement. Libs of TikTok has fallen silent on Twitter for the first time in weeks as a result of a suspension for violation of the platform’s rules against hateful conduct.”
A state of emergency was put into effect in Moore Country, North Carolina after two power substations were vandalized with gunfire, leaving tens of thousands of homes in darkness. No one knows who launched the attack on the substations — which left over 40,000 people in darkness — but the attack in North Carolina is being probed as intentional and a criminal act, authorities said. Moore County Sheriff Ronnie Fields stated during a press conference. that he called the attack “targeted” and said law enforcement would provide security for the substations and business overnight.
“We faced something last night here in Moore County that we never faced before,” Fields said. “But I promise you we will get through this.”
He said rumors were circulating online that the attack was connected to protests over a drag show at a local theater scheduled to begin at 7 pm., however, investigators have not found any evidence the two were related. “No group has stepped up to acknowledge or accept that they’re the ones that done it,”, adding the FBI was working with state investigators to locate whoever is responsible.
Fields said someone “opened fire on the substation, the same thing with the other one,” though no motive for the crime was determined yet. But as pointed out in a tweet Gwen Snyder, Though the FBI and major media outlets may not be willing to call the Moore County power grid attack- that may have been the cause of death of one person in Pinehearst, the act of domestic terror it so clearly is. You know who else is only too happy to call it terror and attempt to incite copycat violence? Nazis on telegram.
How Political Violence Has Spread In Washington State
During a recent podcast episode “It Could Happen Here”, covering the events of an Anti-Drag Event in Port Townsend sponsored by Proud Boys and 3 Percenters and featuring an interview with the Trans Woman who was targeted at a YMCA in Port Townsend while they were doing their job supervising children.
On the 26th of July, Julie Jaman an 80 year old woman was banned from the local YMCA for a history of misconduct towards staff and guests after verbally assaulting a trans employee. After her banning was finalized on August 1st Julia Jaman had led the start of a harassment campaign, standing outside of the YMCA holding signs with transphobic messaging and going to city council, where she continued to make demands of the city that were not only based in transphobic rhetoric, but were beyond the hands of the city even if they were sympathetic to their fascist requests. Such firing people, reinstating her YMCA membership, and overturning state laws on discrimination.
Julie then proceeded to contact right wing media sources starting with a local far right blog called the Port Townsend Free Press by Jim Scarantino who released an article on August 2nd and served as a mouth piece of Julies inflammatory version of events coupled with conservative transphobia. More reputable news outlets and local press had not covered the story until it had already become a viral story in the right wind media circuit. This means that there was over a week where the only coverage of the events that had taken place were recorded on the Port Townsend Free Press blog post. 2 Days Later the story was picked up by Andy Ngo, who posted an article largely pulling from the blog post, followed by Ben Shapiro picking up the story one day later, over the course of the week the falsified story and inflammatory rhetoric surrounding the Port Townsend incident was picked up by Laura Ingram, News Max, Tucker Carlson, Breitbart, Daily Mail, New York post, Fox News, The Federalist, Infowars, and a slew of other right wing media pundits.
In a twist, on the 24th of August local transphobic radfem blogger Amy Souza had taken this story and ran with it, showing up with a group of roughly 30 supporters at the city council meeting, showed up at the YMCA with a film crew, and pushed their way into the building attempting to film the locker room while patrons were still using them. This resulted in the YMCA having to close its door for over a week as the facility was flooded with voicemails and emails threatening the lives of the workers of the facility. Leaving many local families without child care services.
This is just a quick summary of events we would advise readers who would like more extensive coverage of this event check out the podcast episode “How Transphobia at a YMCA Took Over a Town” by the podcast It Could Happen Here.
Though the city officials were supportive of the trans community, not all politicians in Washington are so supportive. Wes Cormier, who lost the race for the Washington’s 19th District and has consistently been a source of controversy has written multiple opinion pieces passed off as news on his conservative blog site Grays Harbor Weekly. This blog site was started shortly after our own blog news site was started. He writes pieces with inflammatory rhetoric against the queer community, attacking Tiesa Meskis during the Star Wars rally and supporting the shop owner’s appearance in Matt Walsh’s “What Is A Woman”. He recently spread outrage against a charity drag event for children and conspiracies that a state COVID survey for children between grades 6 and 12 is a front for indoctrinating children into the “Trans Agenda”.
Perhaps even more disturbing than this level of open bigotry and resistance against the queer community is how the growth of anti-queer sentiment has allowed for more reactionary politicians under this rhetoric of genocide to flourish in main stream politics. Leon Lawson, a politician from the Trump Republican Party and a member of the Federalist Society based out of Shelton, WA who ran this year for Washington State Senate Race losing to Patty Murray coming in 3rd with a staggering 33,389 votes. Now 33k votes for an independent party is not the highest that’s ever happened and not so impressive compared to the hundreds of thousands of votes brought in by the top 2 candidates. However when you look at his campaign sign you can begin to see why 33k votes is so staggering.
To the uninitiated: this flag comes from some of the more depraved dark forums of 4-Chan, a website where those can express your worst impulses and have them reinforced. Its commitment to anonymous interaction yet unmoderated posting has made its forums a breeding ground for the worst of the internet and has landed itself at the center of many controversies such as its connections including but not limited to the birth of Gamer Gate, harassment & raid campaigns, murders, white supremacist conspiracies & ideology, multiple incidents of child pornography, and on May 14, 2022, a mass shooting occurred at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, USA. The accused, Payton S. Gendron, is reported to have written a racist manifesto released May 12 onto 4chan, with the manifesto including birth date and other biographical details that match the shooter. The author wrote that he began to frequent 4chan, including its politically incorrect message board, known onsite as /pol/, beginning in May 2020, where he was exposed to the great replacement conspiracy theory.
Kekistan is a fictional country created by 4chan members that has become a political meme and online movement. The name is derived from “kek” and the suffix “-stan”, a common Central Asian country suffix. Since late 2016, the satirical ethnicity of Kekistani has been used by US.-based alt-right protesters opposed to what they view as political correctness. The “national flag of Kekistan” modeled after the Nazi war flag, with the red replaced by green, the Iron Cross replaced by the logo for 4chan, and the swastika replaced by a rubric for KEK, was prominently displayed at the 2017 Berkeley protest for free speech in mid-April, and the Unite the Right rally in August 2017, and was carried by supporters of Donald Trump during January 6th Insurrection of the capital in 2021.
Its design was created to evoke the same agenda as the Nazi’s while giving itself a veil of deniable plausibility behind layers of so called “satire” and “irony” combating any criticisms as “Its a joke bro” deflecting critique as an attack of comedy. This is the culture that Leon Lawson has come from and is the guiding force behind his politics.
Not only has this bled into our states politics, but it has unsurprisingly bled into its law enforcement as well.
In Dayton Washington, a queer couple Katy Hussey & Jessica Wallingford were the target of illegal police harassment by officer Riley Conohan On Nov 29th outside of a local grocery where the off duty officer pulled a gun on the couple refusing to show any form of identification. Katy was quoted as saying,
“I took my girlfriend Jessica and her little sister Allison to the local grocery store. I waited in my grandpas truck I was borrowing for the night (mind you he is a retired state patrolman) while they went inside. When I was waiting I noticed a man come to an abrupt stop and turned into the store parking lot all crazy like. but I live in Dayton WA so crazy things are normal. I didn’t think much of it. A couple minutes later I noticed the same guy coming out the double doors looking all around and in a hurry. He went to his truck and went back inside. A few minutes later Jessica is getting into the truck and in order for her sister to get in she would have to pull her seat forward, so before I could ask “Where’s Allison?” the same man had a gun pointed right at Jessica. She literally got into the truck, closed the door and her window was rolled down already and the weapon was right there pointed at us. If her window was closed the tip of the gun would have been touching the glass. He yelled over and over again telling her to get out of the vehicle and she really quietly was telling me “We need to go.” I was in shock and had no idea what was going on. This man in cowboy boots, jeans and a hoodie pointing a gun at us claiming to be a cop really didn’t seem real. (the whole incident lasted about 5 minutes from what the dispatch calls time stamp shows.) I finally spoke up and yelled asking what was going on. He said to turn the vehicle off and I asked after that at least 20 times to see his badge. He said he will show me if I turned off the vehicle. Even though right before he said that, he already checked his hoodie pocket for it and you could see his hand go entirely through the pocket out the other side. I made the decision to leave and get out of this dangerous situation. I told him I was going to put the car in reverse and leave. I went and dropped Jess at her parents which you can see their house from where we were in the parking lot so it wasn’t very far at all, and I went home and called 911 myself. I explained how there was a man claiming to be one of them and he had a weapon pointed right at us and wouldn’t show a badge when asked. They asked if I wanted to speak with a deputy and sent one out since I was angry at what just happened. The deputy brought statement forms for me and told me to turn them in to him when he gets on shift around 6 the following day to make sure the forms actually get filed.”
During the time that Katy & Jessica had fled Officer Conohan had made a call to dispatch requesting the license plate of the pickup truck that she had been driving that day. This resulted in another call from dispatch to one Officer Rivera where after laughing and acknowledging that officer Conahan was attempting to make an illegal off duty arrest, nevertheless proceeded to assist the officer in what has been an ongoing campaign to harass this couple. Rivera having the license plate number proves just how much their home had been stalked because Katy only had the truck less than 24 hours and they wrote it down when it was parked outside their home. The morning after she made this call though Officer Conahan showed up at their house, after seeing her car home that was around 330- 430pm. The same Off Duty Officer who just had pointed a weapon at Katy & Jessica was now at their door demanding their arrest. Katy shut the door and demanded to speak with his supervisor and that she didn’t want to talk to him considering he was just aiming a weapon at her less than 24 hours ago without provocation.
Here are the audio clips from her interactions with dispatch:
After surrendering she was charged with obstructing a law enforcement officer, rendering criminal assistance, and resisting arrest. While at trial for this incident Katy was found not guilty for the first two charges and yet found guilty for resisting arrest which makes no legal sense if the courts had found her innocent of the first two charges given the absurdity of the incident. Her attorney has filed a couple motions to get her charged dropped or put up for a retrial. We won’t know what the decision is until January. The couple has also been forced in a dual case of no contact orders by the court. This is a load of garbage this couple was a victim of the state and even though the no contact order was lifted on behalf of Katy when the initial trial ended, they are still under the penalty of a no contact order on Jessica’s side.
And for what? So they didn’t have the same story? There was only one thing that happened that night and that’s the truth. If you were to look at all articles and the public statement and testimonies at trial every single one is different. Their stories haven’t changed a bit.
Katy Had this to say about the ordeal,
“All in all, we didn’t deserve what happened to us. Why did they do this to us? We aren’t violent criminals they make us out to be. They could have just said it was a rookie mistake and moved on, but they completely destroyed us. I’ve been to jail 2 or 3 times now because of this. They had a no contact order on us for an entire year and actually mine was just dropped at the end of trial, but Jessica still has one in superior court on me.
They drive by our house maybe 10-20 times a night and almost practically stop outside my place. Its why I have cameras outside.
Cops were my biggest advocate growing up, and my grandfather is a retired state patrolman, I had nothing against officers but now I’m traumatized. And the sight of a deputy sends me into a panic.
I want my life back. We want our life back. Jessica and I have lost everything because of these officers. I lost my job, Jess lost her home, and my rental assistance was terminated thanks to this county, and I don’t know what to do. I’m losing yet another place since I can’t afford it and my depression has completely taken over my brain. There’s no winning it feels like.
I wish I knew why they hate us and want to ruin us so bad.”
This rhetoric that for the past few years has been openly attacked the LGBTQIA+ and specifically the trans community through misinformation that sexaulized, villianized, and dehumanized trans bodies. Viewing them as inherently sexual, arguing that to be queer or trans is inherently a form of fetish instead of just being who someone is. In a nation with a highly complicated relationship with sex is there for viewed as bad. That the very act of drag or being trans is also there for a sexual act while ignoring the staple of drag performances throughout the history of theater from popular movies to Shakespeare plays.
This is all captured in the book Sexed Up by Julia Serano where she states
“Because queer people confound predator/prey roles and rules, we are “Marked by sex” in many people’s eyes. When i was growing up, people who fancied themselves tolerant would often say, “I don’t care what you do in your bedroom; Just don’t flaunt it in front of me.” In response to people who simply mentioned that they had a same-sex partner or who engaged in displays of affection such as hand-holding. these act- which would have gone unnoticed or uncommented upon if they occurred in the straight majority – Were treated as if they were sexual acts that needed to be kept private. Even today, chaste kissing between queer couples is sometimes viewed as indecent, and books that include LGBTQIA+ characters are among those most targeted for censorship, even if they are bereft of any explicit sexual content. In other words, we are seen as sexual beings through and through, and because many people view us as “fakes”, they routinely invent ulterior sexual motivations to explain who we are and what we do.”
So if you or someone has fallen down this rabbit hole consisting of rhetoric of lies and disinformation around trans people that their inhuman monsters who are breaking consent and grooming your children. Then if you believe that isn’t violence, whether it be physical verbal mental societal or political, justified in order to stop this “Trans Agenda”
That thought, is what all this rhetoric leads to.
Isn’t violence Justified?
That is the natural conclusion to this rhetoric it has to be the idea that has left unspoken at the end of this line of thought and those who propagate this rhetoric around queer and trans people know that this must be the end catharsis of this line of thought. That it must inherently lead to justifying the actions violent groups and domestic terrorists such as the Proud Boys, 3 Percenters, Patriot Front, and a slew of other stochastic terrorists like Libs of TikTok and Matt Walsh, who have spread this line of reasoning have led to mass harassment of individual trans people or organizations that support us like Boston’s Children’s Hospital so much so that the hospital itself was threatened with a bombing attack.
That thought, the idea that violence is justified, coupled with the growing power of politicians who justify that thought and pass laws banning our existence. Just look at what is happening in Oregon as stated by a trans firearms dealer in this interview with NPR:
Some of Oregon’s trans and queer gun supporters are worried that a new state law will prevent them from buying firearms.
The law, Measure 114, grants county sheriffs and police chiefs discretion to determine who qualifies to purchase a firearm under a new permit-to-purchase program.
But Measure 114 lacks criteria clearly defining what disqualifies applicants, details on what makes someone a threat and what data can be used by law enforcement in making that decision. That’s a problem for activists who have critiqued law enforcement, particularly in the racial justice protests that took place over the past two years.
“I just feel like if I was to go online and say like the police are terrorists or something… [the police] would be like, ‘Well, you seem like you might not be fit for this community to be armed,’ ” says Mia Rose, a trans person of color and former licensed firearms dealer. “If they were to get that information that you got snatched up off the street [arrested during the Portland protests prompted by the killing of George Floyd in 2020], I would assume that the law would say they could deny your purchase, or deny your right to have a permit.”
Rose focuses her efforts on sales and training for LGBTQ+ and black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC). She said she and her friends were initially drawn to guns out of fears that grew during the Trump presidency. Recent shootings like those in the LGBTQ Club Q last month in Colorado Springs, Colo., that left 5 dead or at a school in Uvalde, Texas, in May that killed 19 students and 2 teachers have solidified their desire for armed community defense – they feel police are not there to protect them, or even willing to protect them.
“Around 2016… there was an increase in white supremacist violence on places of worship, like mosques or like gay bars,” says Rose. “And then every time there’s a shooting, more and more people, especially in the queer and trans community, they see this and it’s like, OK, let’s start to do things.”
Activist Ross Eliot shares the desire for community defense and opposition to Measure 114. Rose and Eliot worry the law will disproportionately inhibit outspoken marginalized groups from purchasing guns, while doing little to prevent domestic terrorism. This is due to a confluence of factors, from the rise of 3D printed ‘ghost-guns’ to reports of ties by some Oregon law enforcement officials to right-wing groups like Patriot Prayer and the Oath Keepers.
“Given abuses widely documented among law enforcement, [Measure 114] would create an environment ripe for further corruption,” Eliot says. “Police could easily restrict permits to preferred individuals and deny others without oversight to determine if people from particular racial or ethnic groups, religious backgrounds, LGBTQ status or political affiliations were being screened out.”
Proponents of the law say it came as a response to mass shootings and hate crimes. Liz McKanna, chairwoman of Lift Every Voice Oregon, the group that wrote Measure 114, highlights that states that have passed similar laws have statistically shown decreases in gun deaths and injuries.
McKanna discounted the concerns about police bias. “The state police, I believe, will be drafting regulations that might clarify that law,” she said. “But they’re intended to be objective, and not something that’s left to the whim of law enforcement. You also ask why did we leave it to law enforcement? The statute says that it can be, you know, the sheriff or police or their designee. And it’s still possible that the legislature would choose another agency to actually be the permit agent.”
McKanna points toward the requirement outlined by the new state law that there is to be an annual publication by police of the number of permit applications made, approved, and denied, as well as the reason for denial. She says the aim of the publication is to function as a mechanism to root out bias. However, any data published beyond the metrics above, including factors such as race, gender, or sexuality, will be decided by state police. “We’re leaving that up to them,” she said. “It may be important for ensuring that there’s not a disparate impact. And so that’s one of the issues that’s being discussed…. I can’t answer how it’s going to be resolved, but we are confident that it will be resolved.”
When asked what criteria would be used to deny applicants under the new law, and if social media, political views, or condemnation of law enforcement could be used in making the determination, Oregon State Police replied with a link to the Firearms Instant Check System — procedures the agency says have been in place since 1996. For now, the measure’s opponents have won a partial victory.
Last week a state judge blocked Measure 114 from taking effect only hours after a federal judge gave it the go-ahead, albeit with a delay in its original Dec. 8 implementation. The state judge upheld his temporary restraining order at a hearing earlier this week. Attorneys for the state requested a hearing for Dec. 23.
In the face of genocidal violence, we need a healthy and inclusive gun culture dedicated to the protection of marginalized communities. The rise of mass shootings and gun violence is unprecedented and needs fact based solutions, not magic wand solutions given by the left or right wing. Solutions given by the partisan dictatorship of national politics based on more or less guns rather than solutions based on who has those guns in the first place.
If anyone should be banned from firearms it is the police. Who not only turn their heads in the wake of terrorism being inflicted on our communities but often engaging in this terrorism themselves. A healthy community is a responsibly armed and informed community, those communities know best than any federal body who should and should not have a gun. This can only be made by creating healthy gun counter culture against the hegemonic gun culture dominated by right wingers who are stoked by the NRA and a Misogynistic White Supremacist Agenda and guided by fear fueled by a larger network of Stochastic Terrorism.
Even those who do not wish to participate in a healthily informed participation of this gun culture can still benefit from the notion that marginalized communities are not to be fucked with. But we cannot protect our communities with the ill informed gun control that has been pushed in the wake of these shootings. Gun control, in it’s history, has often only been used to target marginalized communities. Since the first laws pushed by the NRA themselves and were enacted to prevent the Black Panthers from their rights to open carry and to protect their communities.
The gun culture we would make would differ from the fears stoked by the NRA that push the idea that they will be attacked at any moment in a very similar way that police are trained that leads to frequent gun violence at both the hands of police and civilians locked in the right wing political sphere. Almost every time, when the online habits of mass shooters have been investigated, these domestic terrorists were more often than not radicalized to do their heinous actions by various stochastic terrorists across the right wing.
Instead this culture would focus on the communal ownership of guns rather than the individual stockpiling of guns, to make sure that guns are consistency where they need to be for the protection of the community, while also making space for everyone in that community to have equal and proper access on how to handle guns in a safe and efficiently trained manner. Through participating in community there can be a more nuanced discussion when someone is showing signs that they should not have a gun and allow us to focus and getting those individuals the help they need before tragedy can ever be a possibility, prevention is always better than harm reduction. This community will also protect all marginalized communities regardless of their decision to use weapons or not. Protecting them from this hostile gun culture that has targeted them. Much more could be written on how these type of communities might function that we may cover in a future article but the take away is this.
You cannot reason with a community that wants us dead, you cannot make laws to stop people who go outside the law in the first place to harm our community, and we cannot protect ourselves by emulating the same gun culture that harms people everyday outside of politics.
We don’t want guns out of blood lust for our enemies real or projected. We need guns to keep each other. safe and hold each other. accountable. We don’t need gun control, We need to take control!
Citations:
https://www.glaad.org/blog/updated-glaad-report-drag-events-faced-least-141-protests-and-significant-threats-2022
https://www.hrc.org/resources/fatal-violence-against-the-transgender-and-gender-non-conforming-community-in-2022
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_Day_of_Remembrance
https://itsgoingdown.org/transphobia-dgr-wolf-rnc/
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/man-charged-threatening-kill-black-people-tops-market-buffalo-rcna39614
https://news.yahoo.com/gop-rep-paul-gosar-spread-045739433.html
https://abcnews.go.com/US/woman-arrested-bomb-threat-made-boston-childrens-hospital/story?id=89987487
https://www.mediamatters.org/libs-tiktok/libs-tiktok-vows-continue-targeting-hospitals-after-twitter-suspension-hateful-conduct
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/north-carolina-power-outage-moore-county-state-of-emergency-alejandro-mayorkas-roy-cooper-duke-energy/
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-transphobia-at-a-ymca-took-over-a-town/id1449762156?i=1000578129562
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/kekistan
https://www.juliaserano.com/sexedup.html
https://www.npr.org/2022/12/15/1140713659/oregons-lgbtq-community-worries-that-a-new-law-will-keep-them-from-obtaining-gun8m
https://www.history.com/news/black-panthers-gun-control-nra-support-mulford-act