What Catfish, chugging milk, and Ron DeSantis have in common with the Colorado Springs shooter.
Toxic masculinity it mad dumb, y'all.
Last week, I wrote about how the blatant transphobia and hate coming out of politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ron DeSantis were a dangerous sign of violence yet to come: “Queering Red Waves: Election wins and persisting transphobia.”
In this post: Drag queens and trans people were never the problem: how the real threat to America can be found (in my memory) making a teenager chug a gallon of milk. Toxic masculinity is mad dumb, y’all.
Oh hey folks,
You know how they say not to stare directly into an eclipse? Something about how it can burn your retinas, causing an image burn where you can’t see anything in the center of your vision? That’s what’s like following US Politics these days. When you stare into the moral abyss that is GOP political strategy for too long, you eventually feel like Cassandra: speaking out about what’s to come only to have to watch it play out before you, just as you predicted.
These violent “delights” of the GOP have violent ends, as we have seen over and over. While Republican candidates have delighted in false narratives of trans people and Drag queens as a “threat” to citizens, they’ve been inculcating home-grown terrorism (and arming them).
So, nobody was surprised when, low and behold, the spoiled grandson of a GOP election-denier of a politician took it upon himself to shoot up a gay club the week that marriage equality made news of being passed through the Senate. (No, really: “Colorado Springs Suspect's Grandfather Is Politician Who Compared Jan. 6 to Revolutionary War” from People, of all sources).
Colorado’s own Republican Loauren Boebertboebert has pushed the anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, proving yet again why their rhetoric is dangerous. So was it because his grandpappy lost his re-election, or more a cumulative result of being from family so in-bed with the GOP that their mentally ill son would become a terrorist? Just who is the real threat to families here?
A moment of queer rage:
For you straights (st8’s) reading, for queer people, being surrounded by each other, and just each other, is the most healing experience of acceptance. For many of us, our friends, and our larger community of local queers, becomes family. (shoutout to the very old documentary “Small Town Gay Bar”). And now, with accumulated daily political terror Republican politicians hurl at the LGBTQ+ community, it makes perfect sense that of course, that spaces most beloved by our community would be attacked and innocent people slaughtered. As Childish Gambino says, “This is America:” There is no such thing as a safe place to exist in post-Trump America.
“This past election, Republican candidates ran on a platform that characterized queer and transgender people as “groomers.” They targeted the families that support them as criminals. And many of the candidates talking like this won their races. In less than a decade, the right has managed to breathe new life into an old, dangerous narrative — queer and transgender people are threats to children and to the health of the nation. This strategic scapegoating is by design. It galvanizes white, conservative GOP voters by stoking the basest of emotions — fear of erasure.”
Source: LA Times Op-Ed: Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs follows six brutal years of Republican anti-LGBTQ Rhetoric
Washington Post: “Club Q shooting follows year of bomb threats, drag protests, anti-transbills:”. Right-wing demonstrators have increasingly mobilized over the past year against the LGBTQ Community”
Vanity Fair: House of Horrors: The Marjorie Taylor Greene Congress Is Upon Us- “the chamber under Kevin McCarthy, and with an embolden right flank, may “exist exclusively as a vessel state of MAGA Nation” by Molly Jong-Fast
The headlines go on and on.
The maddening thing about white, male terrorism is that it leaves in its wake inchoate rage, fear, and trauma that reverberates through all of us-- gay or not. I have nothing more coherent to say about it.
And now, in an act of defiant resistance that still allows me to avoid becoming engrossed in the details of this tragic shooting, I have a story for you about a boy named Catfish, a milk-chugging contest, and Ron-fucking-DeSantis. You’re welcome.
Once upon a time, a young, 16 year old me, emerged from wherever I was sulking to join my friends on a sunny bench that overlooked a large square where students in my high school ate lunch. From our vantage point, we saw the jocks and other idiot popular guys start to cluster around a large black trash can and an unopened gallon of whole milk. A classmate known as “Catfish” and his crew of jocks begin to crowd around it, led by a new teacher in the history department.
Fun fact: “Catfish” earned his nickname because of his professed love of “noodling” which is about as red-neck of an approach that you can take to the sport of fishing. (and ain’t that saying something).
It turned out, a teacher had challenged Catfish to chug a gallon of whole milk. In front of the whole school. I’ll admit I delighted in rolling my eyes at how stupid the whole thing was, especially when the kid didn’t even make it halfway through the galloon amidst chants of “chug, chug, chug,” before vomiting into the waiting black trashcan. I’d like to say I didn’t watch the event in relish, my sense of schadenfreude was alive and well in 16 year old me. It’s all just so freaking stupid, and precisely why I knew I would never again live in my hometown.
I would not think of this incident again for many years, mostly out of a fairly successful psychological campaign on my part to block out high school.
So imagine my chagrin when my parents texted me this NYTimes article,“Pranks, Parties, and Politics: Ron DeSantis’s Year as a Schoolteacher,” NYTimes by Frances Robles. In the article, an old classmate who I had also forgotten existed, is quoted condemning the way Ron DeSantis conducted himself while he was a young teacher at my high school in 2004, in a way that brought that gross pre-Frat boy dumbassery of that day back to me in full living color. I finally made the connection. That motherf--ker. Of course. I had completely blocked out that they were one in the same, even with all of my posts dragging Ron DeSantis, that he was, in fact, the same dumb-ass history teacher who instigated this gross spectacle of southern toxic masculinity.
My only memory of Mr. DeSantis at my high school revolves around seeing him tell Catfish to chug a gallon of whole milk. That’s it. I was a nerd and in honors classes, and he taught the regular history class, so I didn’t have him as a teacher (though, I don’t have to work too hard to imagine what my reaction to him would have been had he been my teacher: I’m sure we both would have hated each other and I would have made it my 16 year old life mission to make him miserable by pointing out when he was wrong like the Know It All I’ve Always Been). ((there may have been other redneck high school teachers I took to task repeatedly in class for the amusement of my other nerd friends, and the bemused consternation of my parents during teacher meetings)). #StayRatchetKids
But how more perfect of a story do I have about my experience being a student at a school where a young Ron DeSantis taught?
The toxic masculinity of it all would be amusing if it weren’t what was also killing all of us. Especially this week.
The real punchline of course is that Ron DeSantis represents a much bigger threat to civil liberties than even Trump (now). He may very well be the next president of the U.S.A.
A man who cajoled and hazed a teenage boy into chugging (and vomiting) whole milk in front of the whole school. A school in the same district as Marjorie Taylor Greene, I might add. This is America.
BUT DRAG QUEENS ARE THE REAL “THREAT” TO PEOPLE?!?! Plz.
Until next week, keep it gay out there.
P.S. Here are the posts in which I’ve dragged Ron DeSantis, but failed to make the connection in my memory that now is the only image I have when I think of DeSantis: A boy named Catfish viciously vomiting milk:
https://allisonharbin.substack.com/p/for-f-cks-sake-florida
https://allisonharbin.substack.com/p/generic-white-men-gwm-status-update