Foxholes “I feel more masculine in the summertime … whereas in the winter, for some reason girl mode comes out.” From this declaration by a high schooler, Fox News commentator Jesse Watters deduced that he’s spotted a new trend of young people claiming to identify as seasons, such as summer or fall. This is obviously a retread of the claim that throngs of young people were adopting animal identities, notably as cats, and coming out as “furries.” As ludicrous as these Fox-made memes may be, there’s a serious agenda here. Without uttering the word trans or transgender, the gambit is clearly meant to undermine a cornerstone of transgender rights, which is that your gender identity is whatever you declare it to be. The right to choose your pronouns is up there with freedom of the press in our time, and rightly so. The “furries” meme was a hoax that a few kids may actually have fallen for due to the power of suggestion à la The Crucible, but the message is clear: If gender identity is something that one names and claims, then why not species identity? This is reminiscent of the slippery slope argument around same-sex marriage that always ended with: “Next, people will want the right to marry their pets!” That movement has yet to materialize. Turns out real people don’t want to marry their pets, and they sure don’t want to be them.
Ya Got That? If ever a picture was worth a thousand words, this would be it, am I right? And yet, the Cerne Giant in southern England has been silent on the most basic questions: How the F did this 180-foot figure get there? And who carved it into solid rock? And when? It could go back to ancient times—those naughty Romans!—or to the Vikings, or possibly to the English Civil War. Modern science to the rescue! New dating methods have shown that the figure was carved into sediment whose layers reveal that it was created over a thousand years ago, about a century before the Norman Conquest. It was a period when the Saxons were fighting the Vikings, and “the Rude Man of Cerne” was probably carved by some Saxons after they successfully fended off their foes, sending a message that isn’t hard to interpret (an early version of the raised middle finger). That there’s something oddly “gay” about this image, a graphic message sent from one group of men to another, is a natural suspicion; let the reader decide.
And a footnote: the source of this report was the family-friendly National Geographic. Readers of a certain age may recall a time when our straight classmates would pounce on every issue, as it was the only magazine where naked breasts could be seen. It’s reassuring to know that it’s still a place where kids can learn about human anatomy, all in the service of science.
And There’s More This is our third report on a certain family drama, but it just keeps getting better. So far we’ve learned that Moms for Liberty founder and former head Bridget Ziegler and her husband Christian, former chair of the Florida Republican Party, are heavily into three-way sex with women, and there have been many, and that it is the Ms. who’s the instigator. While Moms for Liberty has been the main driver in the national campaign to ban LGBT books from school libraries, Bridget herself doesn’t banish the sex talk in newly released texts between the Ziegler couple. It was Christian who would go to bars in search of women to bring home (according to a Sarasota Police Department report), but Bridget was calling the shots. In one message she instructs Christian to furtively photograph the ladies and send her the pics, adding: “Don’t come home until your dick is wet.” The ironies multiply when we consider that Bridget helped write the infamous “Don’t say gay” bill in Florida. It seems clear from her texts that what she’s into is not so much the threesome as getting it on with another woman, albeit with hubby in the picture. It’s not the sort of thing they teach you about in school.
Klansman, Transman We all love a story about a private drama set against an epic historical backdrop (think Doctor Zhivago). The star of our story is one R. Derek Black, whose father, Don Black, was a Grand Wizard in the Ku Klux Klan while Derek was growing up, as a girl, and they never questioned the lessons of hate. Whether by accident or by design on Black’s part, they ended up attending the New College of Florida, which was known as a progressive, LGBT-friendly college. This was the environment in which Black began to question their gender assignment and to explore a change of life that would throw their ultraconservative belief system into turmoil. Their metamorphosis into a politically sane human being is detailed in a new memoir titled The Klansman’s Son, which also tells of how the college that nurtured Black is being turned into a right-wing bastion by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has appointed six super-conservative members to New College’s board of trustees. Professors and students have been fleeing in droves. In the book, Black documents their efforts to stop this “hostile takeover of a liberal college,” and their chagrin is understandable. It’s as if New College is recapitulating their transformation while a student, only in reverse.
Safe Journey Just in time for this issue with its “Sanctuary” theme, a piece in lgbtqnation.com reports on a psychedelic center tucked away in the forests of Ecuador. Described as “the only bipoc, queer, and female-founded ayahuasca retreat in the world,” La Vida Divine Institute (LVDI) was founded by two women, Jhoselyn and Courtney Gaddy, who saw a need for a safe space for LGBT people wanting to take the journey. A stay at LVDI involves skillfully guided psychedelic trips with a botanical drink first compounded by the peoples of the Amazon basin, plus hands-on instruction in plant medicine and Ayahuasca healing. The Gaddys are aware of the cross-cultural connection between gender nonconformity and the role of the shaman in pre-modern societies, including many in the New World. Perhaps this sanctuary in the jungles of Ecuador will allow some latter-day shamans to find their roots.
