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ladybusinessI debated writing about this here because although I don't shy away from talking about politics on Lady Business, it's more for the politics as they relate to books, TV, film, other media, and culture. But given the rise of transphobia and the ongoing harassment of marginalized authors/fans in the book community/fandom, the ongoing attacks against the trans community by newspaper critics, government bodies, and fascists, I thought: this is relevant because media is created in this environment. This is the society in which art is made and consumed. This is the world where people will build stories about marginalized communities that can lead to us gaining more rights, being understood and treated with compassion, or being targeted with bigoted laws.
Let me introduce a very hyper local controversy in rural northeast Arkansas.
To discuss this, I have to go back in time. In 2019, my local library's YA department brought in Meredith Russo, a trans author who had written If I Was Your Girl, a contemporary YA novel, that Arkansans teens in 10th through the 12th grades had voted as one of the winners of the Arkansas Teen Book Award. I read the book and found it honest and bittersweet (and admit the title endears it to my Southern heart quite a bit even now). The local Tea Party learned about Russo's visit and started a two-pronged campaign: one, ensure that "taxpayer dollars" weren't used to bus kids to the library for an author talk and b) get the event canceled. They succeeded at the former. They failed at the latter. Iris Stevens, the leader of the Northeast Arkansas Tea Party, wrote in the Jonesboro Sun at the time:
It also made the state-wide news. Max Brantley reprinted an article from the editor of the Jonesboro Sun, Chris Wessel (a conservative Republican, in fact), in the Arkansas Times, where he said:
There was a lot of upset, a lot of bigoted rhetoric, and it all culminated when Dan Sullivan, a State House rep, got involved in order to raise questions about proper use of tax money and who had oversight of decisions at the library. He and the Tea Party fascists got the Library Board to reconsider the invitation to Russo. They thankfully voted to uphold her visit, but it left a lot of people feeling raw, there were serious safety concerns, and the Tea Party succeeded in denying kids in the area a chance to learn about people not like them who they might encounter once they go out into the world (and potentially about themselves). Plus, a lot of very incorrect information about the queer community, especially trans folks, was spread via the Jonesboro Sun Letter to the Editor page, which reaches the entirety of Northeast Arkansas, and often beyond.
2021 rolled around and the library did a Pride display for Pride Month. These displays are not new. The books in the library on queer topics are not new. Books for kids on queer topics are not new. They were just used in a display to commemorate Pride Month, which the library does for other types of celebrations.
The person to raise the issue first, as far as I can tell, was Cathy Davis Tarver. She wrote on Facebook:
This lit the fuse of the Tea Party, who have never met a cultural wedge issue they didn't like to jam into the discourse. They were also still mad that they were unable to get Russo disinvited from her public event, and a lot of the comments centered on the audacity of the library for inviting her, even two years later. A former Jonesboro City Council candidate called queer folks pedophiles and degenerates. There was grumbling about Marxism and Communism and a slew of homophobic, transphobic, etc. threads. And inevitably, along came Dan Sullivan, a freshly minted State Senator with all the power that entails, to ask questions like, "Do all taxpayers have the right to access taxpayer funded resources while having parental rights respected?" He incorrectly told everyone that the Craighead County Quorum Court had funding authority over the library (they don't; the voters approve their budget and it passes through the court; all they do is appoint Library Board members). In order to counter whatever narrative he and the Tea Party were going to trot out regardless of whether the quorum court had any power to target the library, we had to show up in force.
Unless you go to public meetings in rural areas, it's hard to explain how surreal and dehumanizing they can be. It's a bit easier (not easy, and the complications compound as you add marginalization) online to curate your experiences and to screen out bigots who want to tell you you're a threat to kids. It's very strange watching a grown woman get teary at the podium of a public meeting over the mere idea of having to teach her kids that people who aren't like them exist in the world. Her nine year old is too young to learn these things! Please wipe any mention of queer people from public life instead of forcing her to parent!
During the meeting, one of the elected members made multiple homophobic and transphobic comments, conflated sex and gender, and upset all the folks there to stand with the library and the queer community. Sullivan, who caused the crowd to descend on the court, had the audacity to get up and pull an "Aw shucks!" act, acting like he didn't know why people wanted him to speak. He was just "asking questions". He didn't want to target the library!
In a meeting summary document I wrote for the Democratic Party of Craighead County (I'm currently a member), I told them:
I'm constantly asking people to pull back from national issues and check in on what's happening locally. I'm constantly asking people to take up rhetorical space in their local papers on issues of importance to marginalized communities, especially in the Letters to the Editor section—opinion pages are a powerful vehicle for stories. I'm constantly asking people to attend public meetings, or watch the ones that are streamed/recorded/aired and write to their legislative bodies with their opinions, especially on a hyper local level. I'm sorry for being so boring on these issues! This is why I continue to organize in these lanes: a minority of loud people taking bigoted actions can threaten the opportunity for queer folks, especially kids and their caretakers, of seeing themselves represented in public life as full members of society. To tie this back to media: we churn for diverse content and representation because we know that seeing ourselves in media, as in public life, can shape the stories we feel compelled and allowed to tell.
Joyce Cook, who is another member of the Tea Party, wrote a Letter to the Editor in the June 30 issue. Here's her thoughts (content warnings for seriously anti-queer nonsense):
If you need an eye scrub after that, a friend wrote a guest column that appeared in the same issue that was really nice and a good counterpoint to Cook's bigotry.
One of the ways these people make marginalized folks feel isolated and alone is continually speak as if we are a tiny, perverse population of weirdos performing gender and sex magic in the light of the full moon in ways that will Pied Piper kids into immediate sexual deviancy (whatever they think that looks like) instead of a large part of the population with full lives that don't only revolve around our gender and sexuality. They attempt, constantly, to define us by the type of sex we have instead of the people we are. They use their care for kids, who are complicated human beings themselves, as cultural capital, while ignoring the queer kids they're hurting with their cruel language. And if they're the only ones speaking up, they're the voices people read and hear and internalize. Those are the stories that get told about us and remembered by average folks not plugged into these issues.
Sometimes I feel like we forget the power we have over our local communities. How just showing up to say, "I support this decision," when marginalized people are included in public life can have knock on effects. If you can bring two friends to do the same? If they can bring two friends to be bodies in the room to show emotional support and solidarity? The power of people is immense. Here's how I know: Dan Sullivan, the State Senator I mentioned above, would have belted out an entirely different tune if he and his Tea Party allies had out-numbered the queer community and library supporters in that meeting room. Instead, he caved and left it to the Tea Party members who aren't elected officials, because he knew he was out-numbered and had inconvenienced the entire quorum court. For some reason, our quorum courts reads out every single ordinance instead of doing motions to offer them by title only, so the fact our issue took almost an hour before they could even get started on other business probably did not make them feel as if Sullivan was being respectful of their time. Not the kind of mistake you want to be making heading into election season when you're about to ask the majority GOP quorum court members to support your continued access to state power!
If you have a local paper: pay attention to what gets written in the Letter to the Editor section. Read the minutes of your local public meetings, especially where there are public comments (some bodies do transcripts). It's often an accessibility nightmare, but there is value in figuring it out and paying attention to what's happening locally. We must push back when people are bigoted toward queer folks, the Black community, or any other marginalized group they feel like they can drum up fear and hatred against to further their agenda of keeping us from building compassionate, diverse communities. Don't let them tell stories about us that aren't true. Stories are important and if you're a member of one of these communities or care about the people in them, you can tell your own stories about us, ones that center the depth of our humanity.
Let me introduce a very hyper local controversy in rural northeast Arkansas.
To discuss this, I have to go back in time. In 2019, my local library's YA department brought in Meredith Russo, a trans author who had written If I Was Your Girl, a contemporary YA novel, that Arkansans teens in 10th through the 12th grades had voted as one of the winners of the Arkansas Teen Book Award. I read the book and found it honest and bittersweet (and admit the title endears it to my Southern heart quite a bit even now). The local Tea Party learned about Russo's visit and started a two-pronged campaign: one, ensure that "taxpayer dollars" weren't used to bus kids to the library for an author talk and b) get the event canceled. They succeeded at the former. They failed at the latter. Iris Stevens, the leader of the Northeast Arkansas Tea Party, wrote in the Jonesboro Sun at the time:
"Of extreme concern is the "selling" of the trans identity movement to youngsters which is exploding throughout the Western world. Britain has seen more than a 1,000% increase in children seeking gender transition, with some as young as 4. Our country is also seeing a rise in children under 18 claiming a need to change genders. Why?
For adults to go through this process is one thing. But for minor children to be making permanent changes in their bodies that can lead to sterility, osteoporosis, heart disease and other medical problems is a far more serious situation. That's why after studying this issue for over 25 years, I simply can't take a cavalier attitude toward what society is exposing children to."
It also made the state-wide news. Max Brantley reprinted an article from the editor of the Jonesboro Sun, Chris Wessel (a conservative Republican, in fact), in the Arkansas Times, where he said:
"Believe me, it doesn’t look good to outsiders, especially those who might be interested in starting a business or expanding an industry to Jonesboro.
There are haters here voicing their ugly beliefs in public as though they have broad support. Pockets, maybe. As a nation, not even close.
I understand there are strong feelings about both issues, but that boat has sailed — one long ago and one being fought in the courts as I write this. Those who hold onto the divisive notions that Martin Luther King Jr., a Nobel Peace Prize winner who was assassinated 70 miles from here, isn’t worthy of having a street named after him in Jonesboro, and that LGBTQ people aren’t equal in God’s eyes and don’t deserve discrimination protection, are simply wrongheaded.
History will be as unkind as it has been in the past."
There was a lot of upset, a lot of bigoted rhetoric, and it all culminated when Dan Sullivan, a State House rep, got involved in order to raise questions about proper use of tax money and who had oversight of decisions at the library. He and the Tea Party fascists got the Library Board to reconsider the invitation to Russo. They thankfully voted to uphold her visit, but it left a lot of people feeling raw, there were serious safety concerns, and the Tea Party succeeded in denying kids in the area a chance to learn about people not like them who they might encounter once they go out into the world (and potentially about themselves). Plus, a lot of very incorrect information about the queer community, especially trans folks, was spread via the Jonesboro Sun Letter to the Editor page, which reaches the entirety of Northeast Arkansas, and often beyond.
2021 rolled around and the library did a Pride display for Pride Month. These displays are not new. The books in the library on queer topics are not new. Books for kids on queer topics are not new. They were just used in a display to commemorate Pride Month, which the library does for other types of celebrations.
The person to raise the issue first, as far as I can tell, was Cathy Davis Tarver. She wrote on Facebook:
"I’m having some righteous anger here. If this isn’t the place for this, I apologize. But this is a public library and this isn’t acceptable for children to many. Be warned. And who do we contact about this so they don’t think everyone is on board? Do we just avoid in June? Will it be gone after that?
From a friend 👉🏻 'In the Craighead County Public Library in Jonesboro, children can read a poster about different types of sexual attraction. It's also conveniently hung at their eye level. What age group is this posted for, you ask? The answer is Tweens and as you can see from the form the library recognizes Tweens as being 4th, 5th, and 6th graders. Why is the public library providing a poster about sexual attraction to 9, 10, 11 year olds? Then after the child identifies which label they are....they get to pick the flag bookmark that represents their sexuality.
And if that's not enough, in the younger children's section, they have displayed books on these varying types of sexual attraction and have provided the bookmark already inside, again, for your convenience.'
This lit the fuse of the Tea Party, who have never met a cultural wedge issue they didn't like to jam into the discourse. They were also still mad that they were unable to get Russo disinvited from her public event, and a lot of the comments centered on the audacity of the library for inviting her, even two years later. A former Jonesboro City Council candidate called queer folks pedophiles and degenerates. There was grumbling about Marxism and Communism and a slew of homophobic, transphobic, etc. threads. And inevitably, along came Dan Sullivan, a freshly minted State Senator with all the power that entails, to ask questions like, "Do all taxpayers have the right to access taxpayer funded resources while having parental rights respected?" He incorrectly told everyone that the Craighead County Quorum Court had funding authority over the library (they don't; the voters approve their budget and it passes through the court; all they do is appoint Library Board members). In order to counter whatever narrative he and the Tea Party were going to trot out regardless of whether the quorum court had any power to target the library, we had to show up in force.
Unless you go to public meetings in rural areas, it's hard to explain how surreal and dehumanizing they can be. It's a bit easier (not easy, and the complications compound as you add marginalization) online to curate your experiences and to screen out bigots who want to tell you you're a threat to kids. It's very strange watching a grown woman get teary at the podium of a public meeting over the mere idea of having to teach her kids that people who aren't like them exist in the world. Her nine year old is too young to learn these things! Please wipe any mention of queer people from public life instead of forcing her to parent!
During the meeting, one of the elected members made multiple homophobic and transphobic comments, conflated sex and gender, and upset all the folks there to stand with the library and the queer community. Sullivan, who caused the crowd to descend on the court, had the audacity to get up and pull an "Aw shucks!" act, acting like he didn't know why people wanted him to speak. He was just "asking questions". He didn't want to target the library!
In a meeting summary document I wrote for the Democratic Party of Craighead County (I'm currently a member), I told them:
One note about the "just asking questions" position that Sullivan and Stevens used: this is a tactic currently used by TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists), also called gender-critics, in order to plant harmful ideas that then grow to become larger cultural problems. We saw this in the past session of the Arkansas Legislature, where gender-affirming care for trans youth was banned, and where trans kids were barred from sports that matched their gender identity. When these people show up to "just ask some questions" they are able to very slowly and carefully poison people against some of the most marginalized communities if there aren't allies and advocates there to push back against them.
I'm constantly asking people to pull back from national issues and check in on what's happening locally. I'm constantly asking people to take up rhetorical space in their local papers on issues of importance to marginalized communities, especially in the Letters to the Editor section—opinion pages are a powerful vehicle for stories. I'm constantly asking people to attend public meetings, or watch the ones that are streamed/recorded/aired and write to their legislative bodies with their opinions, especially on a hyper local level. I'm sorry for being so boring on these issues! This is why I continue to organize in these lanes: a minority of loud people taking bigoted actions can threaten the opportunity for queer folks, especially kids and their caretakers, of seeing themselves represented in public life as full members of society. To tie this back to media: we churn for diverse content and representation because we know that seeing ourselves in media, as in public life, can shape the stories we feel compelled and allowed to tell.
Joyce Cook, who is another member of the Tea Party, wrote a Letter to the Editor in the June 30 issue. Here's her thoughts (content warnings for seriously anti-queer nonsense):
Why is the Craighead County Jonesboro Public Library promoting the very controversial homosexual Pride agenda in the children's section of the library? There are much better ways to spend the taxpayer's money than on sexualizing children.
Children need to learn the ABC's, not the GayBC's, (an actual book on display in the library) such as "Q is for queer" or "I is for intersex" or "Pan is for pan (pansexual)." These are actual examples from this book, and it was written for 4-8 year-olds. They are too young to deal with these adult themes and should be reading fun books instead of learning what the different Pride flags mean.
A large full-color poster in the library includes different flags and a blurb of what each one represents. For instance, "The lesbian flag represents women (or non-binary folks) that are attracted to other women (or non-binary folks)." Or "The transgender flag represent those that are a different gender to the gender they were 'assigned' at birth."
This is not some harmless exercise. With all the problems that are going on in the world with sexual exploitation, including sex trafficking, even in our area, I am at a total loss as to why the library would promote such an extensive display on sexuality for young children like this.
Since the library spent a month celebrating what is considered perversion for many of us Christians with my tax dollars, I want to know what kind of display they are planning for National Bible Week in November? After all, according to the Guinness Book of World Records and other sources, the Bible is the world's best-selling book, and a library's focus is on books, right?
From Noah's ark, to Moses and the parting of the Red Sea, there is an abundance of Bible heroes that are more appropriate for this age group than sexually themed material. Apparently, the Craighead County Jonesboro Public Library is being used for someone's political agenda instead of what it is supposed to be doing.
If you need an eye scrub after that, a friend wrote a guest column that appeared in the same issue that was really nice and a good counterpoint to Cook's bigotry.
One of the ways these people make marginalized folks feel isolated and alone is continually speak as if we are a tiny, perverse population of weirdos performing gender and sex magic in the light of the full moon in ways that will Pied Piper kids into immediate sexual deviancy (whatever they think that looks like) instead of a large part of the population with full lives that don't only revolve around our gender and sexuality. They attempt, constantly, to define us by the type of sex we have instead of the people we are. They use their care for kids, who are complicated human beings themselves, as cultural capital, while ignoring the queer kids they're hurting with their cruel language. And if they're the only ones speaking up, they're the voices people read and hear and internalize. Those are the stories that get told about us and remembered by average folks not plugged into these issues.
Sometimes I feel like we forget the power we have over our local communities. How just showing up to say, "I support this decision," when marginalized people are included in public life can have knock on effects. If you can bring two friends to do the same? If they can bring two friends to be bodies in the room to show emotional support and solidarity? The power of people is immense. Here's how I know: Dan Sullivan, the State Senator I mentioned above, would have belted out an entirely different tune if he and his Tea Party allies had out-numbered the queer community and library supporters in that meeting room. Instead, he caved and left it to the Tea Party members who aren't elected officials, because he knew he was out-numbered and had inconvenienced the entire quorum court. For some reason, our quorum courts reads out every single ordinance instead of doing motions to offer them by title only, so the fact our issue took almost an hour before they could even get started on other business probably did not make them feel as if Sullivan was being respectful of their time. Not the kind of mistake you want to be making heading into election season when you're about to ask the majority GOP quorum court members to support your continued access to state power!
If you have a local paper: pay attention to what gets written in the Letter to the Editor section. Read the minutes of your local public meetings, especially where there are public comments (some bodies do transcripts). It's often an accessibility nightmare, but there is value in figuring it out and paying attention to what's happening locally. We must push back when people are bigoted toward queer folks, the Black community, or any other marginalized group they feel like they can drum up fear and hatred against to further their agenda of keeping us from building compassionate, diverse communities. Don't let them tell stories about us that aren't true. Stories are important and if you're a member of one of these communities or care about the people in them, you can tell your own stories about us, ones that center the depth of our humanity.
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Date: 2021-07-01 07:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-02 03:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-01 01:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-02 03:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-01 04:20 pm (UTC)Community support is vital. It's so dispiriting when the loudest people in the room are bigots who think their beliefs trump other people's humanity.
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Date: 2021-07-02 03:14 am (UTC)We're waiting for everything to die down a bit and then we're going to do some cool community support projects for the library staff. :)
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Date: 2021-07-28 11:36 pm (UTC)