Legislating Hate

yourself for this. A nine year old girl. This is according to The Daily Beast, a nine year old Canadian girl was left visibly shaking and sobbing. Why you ask, will let me tell you because she was accused by a grown ass fucking man of being transgender at a

school track meet. Let me just say this again. A nine year old little elementary school girl who was in the middle of a shot put competition was berated by a man who has been identified as Joseph Tessar for stopping the event and asking the officials if this was a mixed competition. He further claimed that he wanted to know whether or not this was a girl's event. He says that the mother of the child that he yelled at, shouted out him and said, do you want to see

her naked? Do you need to see her genitals? Folks? This is at a fucking kids track meet. It happened in British Columbia. The man who was screaming at the child used phrases like groomers, pedophiles, and genital mutilators. By the way, the little girl that he was yelling at as a ciss gender nine year old shot put her. This is what the Republican white supremacist hate group formerly

noticed the Republican Party has done. How their message, which has proliferated outside of the borders of our country and is spreading their hate around the world. Let me just repeat to you what you already know because we've discussed it during our Pride month. Trans people make up about one million people in the entire United States one million. The US population in comparison is three hundred and thirty

million people. Trans athletes make up about one hundred not one hundred thousand, not one hundred million, one hundred spread across the United States. But you see, the trans community, because of its very small size, because of bigotry and hatred, is low hanging fruit for the Republican Party, because they can create a boogeyman and a monster, tell you about scary people in bathrooms, tell you about scary books that talk about, you know, equity and justice and treating people

with kindness. They can talk to you about all of these scary things because in the grand scheme of this country right now, only about thirty percent of Americans know somebody who is trans. That leaves seventy percent of the population that has never come into contact with somebody that is trans. So you can fill that gap with bigotry and hatred as a way to distract from the policies that aren't being created to actually keep people safe, like oh,

I don't know gun reform, or I don't know climate change, or I don't know education reform or voting reform or policing reform or anything anything that could actually help secure our country, make our citizens safe, and allow us all to live free in this quote unquote democratic society. But you see, Republicans don't want to create policy that matters because they know that none of the things that they believe in register nationally with the people of this country.

So instead of them focusing on creating policies that would actually compete with the Democratic Party and actually compete for people's votes. Instead, they give you somebody to fear, somebody to hate, because it's easier to do that than actually do anything that makes your life and the life of your children, your family better. One hundred trans students across this fucking country, and they have rolled out over five hundred policy bills for this imaginary monster. Do you know

what trans people want? They want what all fucking people want, dignity, respect, the ability to live their lives inside of their bodies, inside of their skin, free from harm, free from abuse, free from discrimination. But that's not what the Republican Party wants. They don't want that for trans people, and they sure as fuck don't want that for the rest of us. They want you to conform, They want you restricted, they want your thoughts minimized, they want your critical thinking erased,

they want you subjugated. And where they start, dear friends, is with the transgender community. Because, unlike the larger lgb plus community, which has a majority of people in this country know somebody that is lesbian, gay, or bisexual, a majority of people in this country right have somebody within their family, somebody whom they know so they can defend right said person because they have real life experience. The fact is, you shouldn't have to know somebody in order

to treat a community with dignity and respect. You should see another human being targeted and think about how you would feel if it were you, knowing that you indeed are next. We have got to be better, folks, and we have got to come together as a collective, as a collective group of humans that care about the future of our humanity and our democracy that is under attack. You should need to know somebody black. You should need

to know somebody trans, You should need to know somebody Latin. Now, you should need to know somebody that is Asian American to see that when one community is being targeted, we are all being targeted. We are the majority, so let's

start fucking acting like it. Coming up next, dear friends, my conversation with Jonathan Hamilt, the founder and the director of Drag Story Our folks, I am very excited to welcome to WOKF Daily for the very first time Jonathan Hamilt, who is the executive director of a Drag Story Time

and Jonathan. First off, I I wanted you to talk about Drag story Time for those people who have only ever heard about it, you know, from the headlines that have been made over the last I guess year of drag story Times being banned, and all of these attacks tell people about like the beauty of drag story Time, the history of drag story Time, the creation of drag story Time.

And before kids are baked, baked into societable norms, they have like freedom of expression and creativity to kind of explore whatever they want to explore with without being told, oh, no, you can't do that the society says, you know, blues for boys, or you know, whatever the case may be. So drag can be like a great window and mirror for kids to access really creative channels.

been rampant homophobia and transphobia. But with this recent iteration that's twenty twenty three, it's obviously very apparent that people very homophobic and transphobic, and Drag Story Hour and programs like ours are I think, just a scapegoat to what's really going on, which is transphobia and trans missogity, and people can't pinpoint it. But it's not about drag, it's

not about protecting the children. It's about legislating queer people out of existence and having control over people's bodies and having control over people's self expression and art, which is extremely dangerous. And if this isn't a red flag for someone who is not even in a martialized community or you know, gay or anything, it should be a red flag that a big group of people want to censor books and art forms and speech. That's kind of a

terrifying thing to think about. So it's part of a larger ripple effect, and sadly drag is in the middle of everything going on.

here we have arrived. What do you make of kind of the the that celebratory moment, right And I don't know if if the creation of drag Story are also coincided or just happened to be. You know that during that twenty fifteen year, we saw marriage equality passed, we saw the White House turn rainbow. We you know, there were representation of more queer people in government than we'd

ever seen. And now you have but a handful of years later, this return to the dark ages, This this return to a time where I just got an article sent to me about queer youth and the toll, the emotional toll that all of this hatred is taking. So how do you kind of see this sea change and also its effects that it's having on queer youth.

you know, gay people are just like you. We just want to get married and we want to have kids, and we can run for office, and we're citizens that pay our taxes and we're you know, we all go to the bathroom and you know, go to work and do everything that everyone does. But with that said, Story Hour, the progression of like gay rights and queer rights has changed a lot because Story Hour doesn't work in the binary and doesn't fit into this kind of like you know,

a patriarchical, capitalistic view. It's not cut and dry like marriage equality. It's not you know, it's not Pete for president. It's a little more complex and nuanced, and a lot of people don't understand the rich intersectionalities of queer culture and how a bunch of different marginalized groups can merge

together and create new culture and new waves. And not everybody's going to fit into this like white, patriarchal, monogamous you know, thing that we've been told forever, and Story Hour really breaks that out, and it's a whole different wave of rights and the movements for like queer families and queer youth zerbe lives their lives differently.

want that and or something totally different. And it's you know, important to recognize that families and structures look totally different and that not everything is going to fit into this pretty kind of nineteen fifties box that we think things should look like.

I was absolutely appalled. But what can you speak to what is happening or what you have heard happening in other places where now it's illegal.

trans performers. And if you're you know, a trans woman of color that does drag in the South where drag is banned, you could be arrested for just living your life. If you're stopped at a stoplight and your gender market doesn't match the clothing assigned that it's opposed to, you could be arrested for quote, being in drag in public and be put into prison for six years as a

sex offender. So these anti drag bills and laws are really harmful for our trans community, and they specifically target people that aren't wearing clothes that fit their you know, sex at birth and drag is an art form where you can take off and on and it's theater. But for the trans community, this isn't theater. Is their lives and gender. For me, clothing and appearance is you know, part of who we all are and taking that away is really dangerous.

also been discrimination against the trans community. And so, in your opinion, what does solidarity and like real strengthening of community look like in this moment when we know specifically that this isn't just about the costume, Like you said that you can take on and off for drag, but this is actually real people's lives, right, and the trans community has often been the letter of the alphabet that has been left behind in a lot of ways in

the progress that has been made. So for you, in your mind, what does solidarity and community strengthening look like at this time?

for a long time. But you know, with all these intersectionalities, all these different groups, there's all these different tiers of community, right, So you have like the big umbrella of like LGBT, but you could have you know, you know, POC queer people, and within that community there could be like disabled poc queers and it just kind of there's all these different levels of community, right, and kind of until we lift up the most marginalized group and we're all bringing each

other up together on that most impacted level, that's probably the only time we're going to actually have real equity and really bring everyone up at the same time, to have a space for everyone at the table. When like that group of like two spirited drag performers that no one even thinks about when they're getting lifted up, then

we're all going to be lifted up. So it just takes a lot of work, and you know, realizing that we're not the center of the world, and like there are other people out there that need help too.

You need need to speak up for you? What does a defender of your group look like? So with Story Hour, you know, we have a lot of protests, obviously, but we've a lot of defenders that come out and support Story Hour. But sometimes the people that defend us just yell back at opposition, which they should be yelled at. But you know, sometimes communities need more than you just defending them and defending yelling back at haters may not

be always the best thing in community needs. So just I guess asking, Yeah, what do you need from me? And I'll sit and I'll listen, and I'll help out the best I can.