Q Toon: Bryon's Been Busted

Mercurial U.S. President Donald Commodus Trump has put his genocidal threats against Iran on hold for the next twelve days, so we cartoonists can all go back to all the other distractions from the Epstein files that have been piling up in our in-boxes.

By now, even the Trump l'oeilists in their Fox Noisemax echo chamber have heard about Cosplay Kristi Noem's husband, Bryon, getting caught in some cosplay of his own.

I confess that I was unaware of this "bimbofication" fetish scene among heterosexual males, who stuff inflated party balloons under a crop top and swipe their wives' hot pants to chat on line. It must be more popular than I would have expected, given that this is apparently what Republicans and J.K. Rowling think transgender women are all about.

So, while the temptation to make fun of this guy is way too irresistible (I drew the cartoon and you've read this far: QED), there is something to be said against kink-shaming a guy who is not himself a public figure, merely married to a Cabinet official who had a bed installed in her Air Force jet to share with her erstwhile underling Corey Levandowski where Bryon got to read about it all over the internets.

As Washington Post columnist Monica Hesse put it, “When I looked at those photographs, the first word that came to mind ... was 'lonely.' These were seemingly lonely, isolated photographs of a middle-aged man who had not sought a public life — and who now would not be allowed much of a private one. I almost see something vulnerable in those photographs, now exposed to the internet and all of our group chats.”

Sex therapists (and kink pridesters) counsel that kink shaming is wrong. 

Kink shaming is a problem because it prevents people from being able to live an authentic life.

It’s especially problematic that having niche sexual interests could land you on the front of a newspaper, losing your job or unable to retain custody of your children – all of which is totally legal as it ‘brings a company in to disrepute’.  

Or, as two upstanding citizens of the Noems' hometown put it,

“Y’all should be sympathetic, he’s a father,” a surly staff member at a Watertown strip club told The [New York] Post when the topic veered toward the scandal. A bartender at the jiggle-joint chimed in, “We don’t think of them as politicians, we think of them as parents.”

Of course, not everyone agrees, because America has a well-established Puritan culture. An argument can certainly be made, moreover, against the objectification of women and girls, out of which which Mr. Noem's kink very definitely grows.

But in case the next time you hear from Bryon Noem is when he organizes Bimbofied Story Hour at the Hamlin Elementary School Library, please keep one thing in mind. 

Y'all should be sympathetic. He's a father.

Q Toon: School Safety Drill

Faced with a fourth surge of the coronavirus sweeping the nation, Republican governors and legislators have been falling over each other to see which of them can do the best job of channeling Amity Island Mayor Larry Vaughn.

A number of them have acted to forbid school districts and state universities from taking the simplest measures to ensure the health and safety of students and staff. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has threatened to cut funding to any school district that requires students to wear masks in the classroom. Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued his own executive order to the same effect. Republicans running the Wisconsin state legislature want the University of Wisconsin to beg for the politicians' permission before making any COVID-19-related decisions whatsoever.

Even Alabama Governor Kay "Start Blaming the Unvaccinated Folks" Ivey says there's no reason why a couple dozen children too young to be vaccinated should be required to mask up just because they are cooped up in a classroom together for hours at a time five days a week for months on end. It's Alabama. They can open a window.

I suppose Tennessee teachers and students should be grateful that Governor Bill Lee is willing to leave responding to the COVID-19 crisis up to individual school systems. Tennessee Republicans have their hands full trying to keep transgender students out of school bathrooms and locker rooms, and are too busy to play Doctor like the other legislatures.

And South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem is probably preoccupied making sure that the Sturgis Bike Week Superspreader Rally goes off without a hitch. And maybe running for president, or at least to fill Sarah Palin's shoes. She's kind of tired of all this coronavirus stuff, and she thinks you are, too.

So let's all go swimming! Statistically, your chances of being attacked by a shark are actually very small. And most people who are attacked by sharks survive, don't they?

Q Toon: Tolerating That Crap

We take a break from the presidential campaign to check what's going on in statehouses around the country:

"We're currently tracking 192 bills, the vast majority of which are anti-LGBT with major themes being trans bathrooms and rfras (religious freedom restoration acts) focused on marriage," Mark Daniel Snyder, spokesman for the Equality Federation, a gay rights group, told ABC News.

South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard (R-Of Course) is poised to sign the first of a wave of bills to keep transgender persons out of public rest rooms. North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory (R-Need You Ask?) wants his state to void the recent anti-discrimination ordinance passed in Charlotte on the grounds that no place in North Carolina should be allowed to be any more progressive than the most backwards backwoods hamlet.

Where established LGBT organizations have dropped the ball, it becomes necessary for tax-paying businesses to pitch in. Tech giants Facebook, Google, Apple and Yahoo have come down solidly in favor of LGBT rights; the pushback from firms such as PayPal and Salesforce were instrumental in getting Indiana to reconsider its "religious liberty" law last year.

Business leaders in Georgia are worried about a loss of film and convention business if the state's so-called "First Amendment Defense Act" protecting antigay discrimination is signed into law. Decatur, Georgia telecom firm 373K recently announced that it would pull up stakes and leave the state over the issue:

“I’m gay, our CFO is gay, we have people from every walk of life working here,” co-founder Kelvin Williams told [New Civil Rights Movement] on Saturday. “I’ve got Muslims, Buddhists, atheists here. We’ve got great Christians working for us. They’ve never thought of not serving anyone – that’s not the message of Christ.”
“We don’t tolerate that crap,” he added definitively.

Q Toon: Intermural Drill

If you've ever considered the possibility that there might be some limit to how boneheaded our politicians can be, consider this news item from the Rapid City Journal of South Dakota:

A proposal by a state lawmaker could require that visual inspection be used as part of a process to officially determine a person's gender in South Dakota, including for high school athletes.
The battle over how to officially determine someone's gender arises from a controversy over whether transgender high school students can declare their own gender when participating in sports.
A high school athletic group enacted a policy last year that allows students to decide for themselves which gender group they will compete with. ... The proposal from Rep. Roger Hunt, R-Brandon, would rely on official birth certificates and visual inspections for determining gender rather than allowing people to decide and declare their gender on their own.

You had already guessed that Hunt was a Republican, hadn't you?

Only a dozen or so states have official policies either allowing or restricting transgendered students' participation in school sports.

In Colorado, for example, a student doesn’t have to sit through a hearing but is advised to submit documentation so the school can “render a decision,” like written statements from parents or friends or evidence of hormone therapy. In California, the language of a law passed in 2013 suggests the student need only say what their gender identity is and which team they want to play on, an approach that has drawn controversy. 

If you are wondering whether trans athletes are welcome in the state where you live, but you don't live in South Dakota, Colorado, or California, transathlete.com provides a state-by-state list of policies, or lacks thereof, regarding participation by transgendered students in public school athletics.