Photo Credit: Holocaust Memorial Day Trust
Sometimes in order to tell the truth, you must first tell a story. For my purposes, you need to know these two:
1. According to the urban legend my sociology prof recounted in class one day, there is an old case study from the 70s study floating around out there about misattribution of intent and sexual predators. According to the urban legend, everyone used to pretty much believe that the summertime increase in rapes was because the heat drove sex maniacs crazy, and women were wearing skimpier clothes so as to be noticed by said sex maniacs, and that was why there were more rapes during the summertime. As it turns out, or so the legend goes, the rise in temperatures correlated to the increase in rapes because people were more likely to leave their windows open to keep cool at night during the summer, and that gave sexual predators an opportunity. I have no idea if this mythical case study exists or not, but the moral of the story was instructive nonetheless: When it comes to crimes against women, people would rather slut-shame and victim-blame and make excuses for sex maniacs than acknowledge that increased heat plus increased opportunity drove the surge in sexual violence. In my observation and experience, the moral of that legend has proven true time and again...
2. On May 6, 1933, a gang of Nazi-supporting youth calling themselves The German Student Union occupied, looted, and trashed the Institute of Sexology in Berlin. On May 10, they moved the entire library and archive into Bebelplatz Square and burned it. That is where the famous Nazi-book-burning photograph that we all saw in history class comes from. But somehow whenever people tell the story, they leave three key details out. 1. One of the founders of the institute was Bernard Schapiro, a doctor specializing in men's sexual and reproductive health who was also an Orthodox Jew. 2. The institute's mission was also to advocate for sexual health education, contraception, and women's emancipation. 3. The Nazi party itself had nothing to do with this. A group of pissed-off, radicalized young men took it upon themselves to do it. Their four-day occupation and subsequent eradication of the Institute and its research went unchallenged by anyone and were widely applauded by Nazi party leaders and media. That archive was burned because a roving pack of Nazi sympathizers was allowed to take the law into their own hands and wield it like a cudgel against Berlin's--Europe's-- queer community with absolutely no repercussions.
Now, it's my turn:
The truth is, it's going to be an awful, messy, hellish, and dangerous summer in places like Oklahoma. We are gripped in the ugly throes of a fascist civil rights apocalypse. Women are losing bodily autonomy left and right. The states are deputizing citizen finks to bounty-hunt anyone who helps a desperate woman out of a horrendous situation. Because civil lawsuits are on the line, private practice physicians will be prized game because they have money. They are also the ones to whom women with money could go to discreetly handle their abortion problem. That loophole is now closed. But something far more sinister has been opened: the doorway to turning a highly motivated group of violent and entitled citizen finks into an organized and fiscally-rewarded version of the German Student Union...Don't we already have Proud Boys standing by and standing back to do just that?
One of the biggest risks we face this summer is becoming victimized by "stochastic terrorism:" random acts of violence, which are statistically probable but completely unpredictable, committed by people who are driven by the hateful ideology of mass-media demagogues. According to Daily Kos author G2geek who coined the term, "The stochastic terrorist is the person who uses mass media to broadcast memes that incite unstable people to commit violent acts." The goal is plausible deniability with maximum carnage in service to the demagogue's political designs. Right now those designs involve encouraging my neighbors to strip a good deal of human rights and civil liberties away from me and others like me.
We need to better recognize when our areas are getting rife with the forces that generate acts of stochastic terrorism. With 100% certainty, Oklahoma and places like it will start seeing discrimination and violence being done against people of color, women, LGBTQ+folks, the disabled, etc.--likely by their neighbors. They've already seen it in Uvalde. To be honest, I can't think of a better recent example of a successful act of stochastic terrorism THAN the hideous massacre at Uvalde. There will be more of that.
The amount of airtime devoted to demonizing and oppressing the people with uteruses and members of the LGBTQ+ community is almost as staggering as the amount of airtime devoted by media outlets to platform fascists and sycophants (who weigh in like Waldorf and Statler) over just why our rights are so controversial that our right to existence up for debate. America's current cultural moment is being overdetermined by the demonization of marginalized people. It's pretty clear that a good portion of the impending waves of stochastic terrorism will be let loose upon women and the LGBTQ+ community.
The only thing missing from this situation is the trigger, and I'm afraid that in Oklahoma it will be more like a confluence of events than any single thing that does it. Like all of America, Oklahoma has skyrocketing costs of living, spasmodic wage growth, and small businesses failing because they refuse to acknowledge the shifting work demands and power balances of the post-pandemic labor market. The supply chain crisis is nowhere near resolved so food and commodities are not only expensive but actually scarce. We have a baby formula shortage of inequitably distributed awfulness. Oklahoma also now has rafts of pregnant women who are desperate not to be. The economic situation for many families is already terrible, and the desperation is very real. Climate change may be what transforms all of this into a rage.
There is truth to that legendary old case study my soc professor told us: heat drives people to become more violent. Oklahoma is just now starting to see "chaotic weather" in the form of massive storms that have already begun to inundate ill-maintained systems and shut down antiquated power grids. Other places have already experienced heatwaves so intense that their power grids all but collapsed. If these immanent power blackouts last so long that the refrigeration starts to go, it could take a sizeable chunk of the already scarce food supply with it. That's not even counting the healthcare crisis that such an issue would precipitate. When this heat finally hits here, tempers will spike right along with the temperatures.
Oklahoma summer heat really hits around mid-July, and I predict that this may be when we will start seeing acts of stochastic terrorism start really playing out here. We are already seeing signs of it. The Oklahoma City pro-choice rally scheduled for today got canceled by the organizer. A man had been picked up after making bomb and mass shooting threats but was released a few days later.
Way back in April, two local schools had safety issues on campus. Catoosa Middle School initiated a "soft lockdown" when an armed intruder came to campus. Nobody was allowed in but the students and faculty were free to leave...and to outside...where the armed intruder was. That story evaporated in a day. My student had to leave class early that day to go pick up her little brother. In early May, my old workplace, Broken Arrow High School, reported an incident of a student who'd brought a gun to school in the trunk of their car. That story also evaporated after a day. The people here are so desperate to own the libs on gun control and campus safety that they will mortgage their own children to do it. They will not blink twice at acts of stochastic terrorism committed against any member of a marginalized group that they don't happen to like.
When the SCOTUS Roe overturn draft got leaked...twice... I saw an article from the 19th about the impending decimation of civil liberties that would almost inevitably follow. I talked with my brother and I told him to keep an eye on whether or not things from that article started happening within the next two weeks because they would give us an idea of fast things will be moving. Then exactly two weeks to the day, I saw two of the big problems that the article discussed starting to wend through the courts and statehouse of Oklahoma: the judicial stripping of parental rights to children they had adopted from LGBTQ+ parents, and the most abominably draconian abortion ban in America had been passed (it's now law). We need to pay close attention to local and national civil rights struggles, because we can be certain that once they mention getting a specific fascist ball rolling, it will be maybe two weeks before other fascists take it and run. I reckon that about two weeks after news of more legislation being passed, the stochastic terrorism will begin in earnest.
This is why I'm incredibly grateful that my brother Larry, who lives in Dallas, finally agreed to me having guardianship papers for Nate. It's hard, though, because he was fired from his job in what is almost certainly an act of homophobic discrimination. Al this is right on the heels of his paying $10k in medical bills from his heart attack last March. This guardianship process is turning out to be slow, expensive, and nerve-wracking. I'm hopeful, but I'm also nervous.
Actually, I'm terrified. Today I learned some things that have chilled me to the bone. Two of my former students–both of whom were die-hard Trumpists with white supremacist leanings--have joined the police force. To be honest, they both strike me as exactly the sort of authoritarian, white supremacist enforcers types who could murder detainees and refuse to investigate hate crimes against transmen like Dustin Parker.
On top of this, I also finally heard about what happened at the district school board meeting after I resigned. Apparently, my farewell address caused a brouhaha among parents, colleagues, and admin precisely because I ruthlessly criticized the district's careless Covid policy, and then I said the quiet parts out loud about what the anti-CRT legislation would mean for LGBTQI+ educators like myself. It seems that my resignation spurred a conflagration that led to the superintendent's decision to resign in December during winter break. A Trumpist school administrator has since been appointed superintendent of the district. It seems to me that the district doubled down on homophobia and transphobia after I called out Oklahoma's Anti-CRT laws and the administrators and parents who wish to exploit them to harm students and educators. Things are getting very, very rough for the LGBTQI+ people in the district--and the town. I am not kidding when I tell you that I suspect I could be one of the most hated people in all of the greater Tulsa area, and it's all because I was trying to either help vulnerable people or stand up for myself against Christian fascist oppression.
Those sobering discoveries have also prompted me to ask a question about how, exactly, I got doxed during the Barnett-Yiannopoulos ordeal: If I didn't disclose my TCC employment in that letter to the editor, then how did I get linked to the place and doxed? I did not disclose my link to TCC in that letter, and I have always been purposefully vague with my college writing students about which school district I teach English for. The only people who knew the details about my working for TCC would have been my students and colleagues at the high school. It honestly HAD to be one of my co-workers or students.
There is only one student I've ever had who I am certain would do something like that--or whose father would. This was a student in the high school English class that I was also teaching at the time of the ordeal. P was a smart, clean-cut white supremacist who wore his black Proud Boys polo shirt every other Thursday and looked me right in the eye while he chugged a quart of whole milk during class. This student's father--impersonating him but with atrocious grammar--would regularly harass me through his son's Canvas account. P wasn't the only disturbing student I had in that class, but he was far and away the most well-behaved, cunning, and dangerous of them. He was constantly playing edgelord to goad me to do or say something he could report, and I'd have to ignore that, forebear, and press on to keep our class on track to finish our curriculum by the year's end. All of this was BEFORE our current era of anti-CRT.
I'm honestly scared about what will happen to me if, for some reason, any of those former students--or any of the fascists that stalked me and drove by my house during that doxing ordeal--start paying attention to me again. For any reason. I noticed some odd activity across my socials recently and am deleting Twitter just to be safe. I'm also going to scrape the queer bumper stickers off my car and stay home from Pride.
At this point, I'm scrambling to get out of here by July 15th and I don't know if I'm going to make it. I mean, I'm already deep in the process of separating the 80% of my stuff that is getting donated from the 19.5% that is going into storage and the .5% that will be coming with me wherever is next. I'm also trying to upgrade and sell this place ASAP so I can get the resources to do whatever is next. Did I mention that "this place" was my grandparents' house, where fully half of my happy childhood memories took place? And I finally got gainful employment--that starts on June 1. This getting out of Dodge thing is turning out to be very fucking hard. On the bright side, I'm talking with good friends in Colorado about next steps. Though nothing is certain yet, I endeavor to remain hopeful.
