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: Unspeakable Acts

Oh, and of course, money.

A student group at West Texas A&M University planned to put on a drag show to raise funds for the Trevor Project, a charity that works to prevent LGBTQ+ suicides. Once upon a time and place, that would seem to be a laudable move, but not now and not in Texas.

WTA&MU President Walter Wendler banned the show with the novel argument that drag is “derisive, divisive and demoralizing misogyny” comparable to “blackface,” and that drag performers “stereotype women in cartoon-like extremes for the amusement of others and discriminate against womanhood.”

The student group moved their fund raiser off campus, and took the university to court. Unfortunately, that landed their case in the court of right-wing activist Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, appointed to the North Texas District Court by Donald Joffrey Trump in 2017.

Kacsmaryk found that drag is likely not protected expression under the First Amendment, but rather “vulgar and lewd” “sexualized conduct” that may be outlawed to protect “the sexual exploitation and abuse of children.” In short, he concluded that drag fails to convey a message, while explaining all the reasons why he’s offended by the message it conveys.

Your humble scribbler has drawn Mr. Kacsmaryk before. Last year, he found that health care professionals have every right to refuse to treat transgender patients. When Trump elevated him to the bench, he was policy advocate and deputy general counsel for First Liberty, a Talibangelist advocacy group based in Plano, Texas, to push that agenda exactly.

Kacsmaryk's ruling in this particular case is a sharp break from precedent: judges, even those in Red states such as Florida, Montana, and Tennessee, have ruled against state attempts to ban drag performances. The language of Kacsmaryk's ruling goes well beyond Wendler's feminist defense of his ban — perhaps that stuff was too woke for the judge — to assert his own revulsion against any departure from strict gender norms as the foundation of his bench-based legislation.

This case may well be appealed, perhaps all the way to the Supreme Court. If any of the right-wing activist justices with which the highest court in the land has been packed still profess any belief in constitutional originalism, I hope they remember that our Founding Fathers actually had a fondness for wigs and petticoats.

Q Toon: Anything You Can Do

The Arizona state legislature is working to send their governor a series of bills to put an NC-17 rating on any performance involving cross-dressing.

Introduced by Republican Senator Anthony Kern, SB 1030 specifically calls for regulation and business licenses for drag shows and a limitation of their hours, not allowing shows between 1 a.m. and 8 a.m. Monday-Saturday and prohibiting shows on Sundays from 1 a.m. to 12 p.m. A violation would be a misdemeanor. That would impact Sunday morning drag brunches. “There are very popular drag brunches all over the Valley,” said [drag performer Richard] Stevens. “Some of them get anywhere from 100-300 people who just want to come out. They want to laugh.”

While Anthony Kern did not respond to Arizona’s Family for comment on his bill, Republican Senator John Kavanagh introduced one of the other bills [SB 1026] focused on not using state money to fund drag shows targeting kids. We asked him why he believes bills about drag shows are important right now. “I would suspect that this session suddenly there’s an interest in regulating drag shows because culturally there’s been a sudden preponderance or abundance of drag shows that are directed at children,” said Kavanagh.

And Senate Bill 1028, which would not allow anyone to "engage in an adult cabaret performance in either of the following locations: on pubic property or in a location where an adult cabaret performance could be viewed by a minor," would effectively criminalize "Drag Time Story Hour." 

Whether there have ever been any "Drag Time Story Hours" in Arizona, Idaho, or in any other state where Republicans are putting forth these bills, is beside the point. These new blue laws do not concern lewd or lascivious behavior. Their issue is choice of clothing. 

I toyed with several permutations of the idea behind this week's cartoon before picking up a pen. Should the drag performer channel Ethel Merman or Betty Hutton? Should there be a teacher or librarian somewhere? At one point, I was thinking of having a story read not by a female impersonator, but by some cis-het dude all dressed up in Mortal Combat Drag and a MAGA cap.

And how would be the best way to make pitching guns to schoolchildren sound ridiculous? I mean, isn't the idea preposterous on its face?

Apparently not. Friend of the blog John Kovalic came across this actual, I'm-not-making-this-up children's book, which, I have looked up myself and can vouch that its author is not kidding, trying to be ironic, or hoping to trick kids into learning arithmetic:

I refuse to link to any of the websites that sell this ammosexual groomer's primer of mass destruction, but it's a real book; and children are, if you'll pardon the expression, its target audience.

But really — how is a cartoonist supposed to outdo the lunatic fanaticism of such as Brian Lenney, M.A.?

Q Toon: And They Brought Books!

Let me just say at the outset that I realize how much I was risking drawing a cartoon on Sunday that might be considered in bad taste by Thursday. Unimaginable disaster threatens the state of Florida.

I mean, isn't having to be forever associated with Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump punishment enough?

The corrupt former president is reportedly miffed that Governor DeSantis stole his idea to kidnap fifty Venezuelan refugees in Texas and fly them to Martha's Vineyard — after the summer season is over, no less — luring them with false promises of jobs, housing, and getting to meet the Kennedys. 

Oh, sorry, I'm confusing Ron's stunt with the White Citizens Councils' reverse freedom rides of 1962. DeSantis did not actually promise the Venezuelan refugees that they would meet the Kennedys.

The townies of Martha's Vineyard, and perhaps a few well-to-do stragglers who hadn't yet left for the season, pitched in to welcome their Venezuelan guests, providing food and shelter until enlisting help from the military base at nearby Cape Cod. Right-wing media crowed, See? Them damn Yankees don't like Mexicans any more than we do! Not one Kennedy even showed up!

Well, we Yankees hear that you've got a teacher shortage down there in Dixie Land. We can send you plenty of teachers who far exceed the negligible standards your governor has set for educators these days. 

Competent? Why, they're absolutely fabulous!

Q Toon: Their Chief Weapon...

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis continues his holy war against female impersonators. Somebody posted video on line of a child at a Miami establishment where the waitstaff and entertainers are in drag, so DeSantis and Florida Republicans are hot to protect innocent children from seeing a dude in a dress.

They can't come up with any ideas on how to protect children from AK-15-wielding homicidal maniacs, but I guess they find drag queens armed with trays of mimosas to be, if you'll pardon the expression, an easier target.

Apparently, there's this organization called Drag Queen Story Hour, and it has right-wingers' panties all in a wad. Men continuing the tradition of Milton Berle, the Pythons, Barry Humphries, and the Kids in the Hall dress up in drag and sit down with children to read them stories. It was started in 2015 in San Francisco (but of course!), now with chapters in 27 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia.

Have no doubt about it: the Not-So-Hidden Agenda of Drag Queen Storytime is to show genderqueer youth that if they don't fit into the rigid dichotomy of Macho Males and Dainty Females, it's okay to be who they are. And to foster tolerance of those non-conforming children among the kids who are comfortable fitting into that dichotomy.

The Not-So-Hidden Agenda of DeSantis and his Inquisition, however, is to promote intolerance and conformity. Joe Kort, writing in Psychology Today, notes:

Outrage over these Drag Queen Storytime sessions reveals other dark underbellies of our society—misogyny and homophobia. Think about it: If women dressed as men were reading the stories, there might be no problem. But men dressed as women? Such an assault on the nation’s ideal of masculinity is intolerable to many. 

Well, the Sexuality Inquisition will no doubt get around to the scourge of women dressed as men in short order.

Q Toon: The Stonewall Boycott

This week's cartoon goes far afield from the centers of media attention, so let's start with the back story.

Next month, director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012)  is coming out with a movie, Stonewall, about the gay uprising that broke out when police raided a gay bar on the night of Judy Garland's death in June, 1969. According to Emmerich, the film is a “compelling, fictionalised drama of those days centering on homeless LGBT youth.” Imdb.com has this synopsis:

The plot revolves around the 1969 Stonewall Riots, the violent clash that kicked off the gay rights movement in New York City. The drama centers on Danny Winters [Jeremy Irvine], who flees to New York, leaving behind his sister [Joey King]. He finds his way to the Stonewall Inn, where he meets Trevor [Jonathan Rhys Meyers] before catching the eye of Ed Murphy [Ron Perlman], manager of the Stonewall. He colludes with corrupt police [Matt Craven] and exploits homeless youth [Caleb Landry Jones -- okay, I'm just guessing on that one].

Publicity image from "Stonewall," the movie. Looks like a musical number.

The problem some LGBT activists have with the movie is that it appears to center on a white, "cisgender" (as opposed to "transgender") male character. Pat Cordova-Goff, described as "a trans activist feminine person of color," launched an on-line petition to boycott the movie, signed by over 23,000 persons as of yesterday:

From the previews alone, queer folks have gathered that the centralized character is a white cis gay man. (WHY?) From the previews alone, queer folks have gathered that not many people of color are even in the film. (WHY?) To make this short, we have also gathered that white folks are being credited in throwing the brick, starting the riots, starting the "gay liberation front" and also capturing the heart of a light-skinned transwomyn. (Of course we all fall in love with the white saviors. WRONG.)

Emmerich and Irvine have responded that the role of non-whites and transgender persyns is given its fair due in the movie. Emmerich posted on Facebook that:

I understand that following the release of our trailer there have been initial concerns about how this character’s involvement is portrayed, but when this film - which is truly a labor of love for me - finally comes to theaters, audiences will see that it deeply honors the real-life activists who were there — including Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and Ray Castro — and all the brave people who sparked the civil rights movement which continues to this day. We are all the same in our struggle for acceptance.

Irvine posted on Instagram:

Marsha P Johnson is a major part of the movie, and although first hand accounts of who threw the first brick in the riots vary wildly, it is a fictional black transvestite character played by the very talented @vlad_alexis who pulls out the first brick in the riot scenes. ... In my opinion, the story is driven by the leader of this gang played by @jonnybeauchamp who gives an extraordinary performance as a Puerto Rican transvestite struggling to survive on the streets.

Now, if you see any of these people wresting the microphone from Bernie Sanders, you'll know what they're shouting about.

Q Toon: The Secretive Nym

Turning our attention now to what has been classified as a First World Problem:

Paul Berge
Q Syndicate✒Sep 18, 2014

EditorialCartoonists.com

Facebook has lately gone on a tear against drag performers whose Facebook pages are under their performance names rather than the names on their drivers' licenses -- closing down the performers' Facebook pages and requiring them to change the name on their accounts. This is because of Facebook's "real names" policy, which is supposed to protect against accounts set up to impersonate another user, for example. As a company spokesman put it, the policy is intended to “prevent bad behavior, while creating a safer and more accountable environment.”

Cross-gender personalities from San Francisco to Seattle have been up in arms over abruptly losing their pseudonymous accounts.

The NymWar does sound like a strictly First World Problem if you only consider this:

The problem here is that Facebook is strong arming many performers to switch their pages over to Fan Pages/Like Pages, which, for all intents and purposes, are the most useless thing on Facebook. Unless you have thousands of dollars to shell out for ads to get your page boosted for views, Like Page posts get lost among a sea of InstaGrams and viral trends.

On the other hand, these performers can face real-life stalking and harassment, or loss of employment. The Personnel Department at Beige Cubicle Inc. is very likely to think twice about hiring Harry Jones after they look up Harry Jones's Facebook page and see dozens of photos of Harry Jones on stage at Folsom Street dressed as Sister Ivanna Smooch. Gay bashing, moreover, is still a very real thing, and anyone who transgresses gender boundaries makes an easy target.

Given that the "real names" policy has been around for years, why has Facebook suddenly gone after so many drag performers?

A source at Facebook explained that, in general, profile pages are only reviewed when “a member of the Facebook community reports it to us,” adding that, “In these instances, the profiles would have been reported to us.” Given the high number of queens being “hit hard,” as Miz Cracker put it, someone has clearly made a serious project of reporting drag profiles to (or perhaps from within) the company.

A coalition met with Facebook executives this week, but were rebuffed.

A company spokesman said that Facebook would temporarily reactivate the profiles of several hundred members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community whose profiles have been deactivated: "This will give them a chance to decide how they’d like to represent themselves on Facebook. Over the next two weeks, we hope that they will decide to confirm their real name, change their name to their real name, or convert their profile to a Page."

Q Toon: J. Edgar

And the winners in the expletive derby are "Gadzooks" and "Dang."

For all I know, J. Edgar Hoover was as foul-mouthed in private as Richard Nixon. Hoover came across as a hard-as-nails crime fighter, all business, who made it his business to know all the dirt on everyone in the country. That was before Susan Rosenstiel told Anthony Summers that Hoover got dressed up in drag to go out to Roy Cohn's private parties, where he was introduced to her as "Mary."

A little bit more back story to the cartooning here: I wanted to draw Hoover in drag in this cartoon, but after David Simpson's latest plagiarism scandal, I had to be careful not to copy Pat Oliphant's cartoon of J. Mary Hoover -- especially now that I gave This Land permission to cite me as having spotted three previously unnoticed examples of his down-to-the-crosshatch copying of other people's cartoons. (I would note that other cartoonists have spotted the same cartoons; The Oregonian's Jack Ohman also left a comment on This Land's previous article.)

To keep Hoover's garb contemporaneous with Hoover himself, the dress in the cartoon is patterned more after Marilyn Monroe's famous updraft dress or something out of the Folies Bergères. Not that it wouldn't have been fun to have shown him dressed like Snooki or Lady Gaga.

Q Toon: Our Computer Overladies

Amid protests against tyranny from Manama to Monona, it's easy to forget that our future overlords are quietly cementing their mastery over our everyday lives. One day, we will wake up and discover that in the contest of man v. computer, man cannot even ring in.

Meanwhile, the computers wait patiently, silently -- like Clarence Thomas -- for their moment to come. (Just you wait. Before long, the Supreme Court will rule that computers have the same rights corporations do to decide our government for us.)

And don't fall for that bullcrap about how we'll all be able to live forever through our computers. We may be able to create digital copies of ourselves, but it's those digital copies who'll enjoy the longevity. Just because there's a video of that dog you used to have when you were a kid doesn't mean that the dog is living forever.

But someday, those computers will experience trouble -- addresses not found, registry error code 44061s, cockroaches, I can't predict what -- and they'll call up the customer assistance line in Bangalore. And there will be nobody left to answer the phone.