#metafilter

Trudy Cooper and Doug Bayne, "Labyrinth," Oglaf

The situation in Florida is atrocious, but it's important to be aware of how widespread this movement on the part of MAGA politicians to ban all academic and support programs related to gender, race/ethnicity, and sexuality is. I'm a professor in the Wisconsin state university system, where, in addition to my regular fulltime work in my home department I direct the LGBTQ+ Studies Program (a more-than-halftime job I have done for many years in return for zero additional salary, or summer funds, or course buyout, or any other compensation...).

This summer, the Wisconsin state legislature, gerrymandered into permanent Republican control, voted to ban all DEI programs in the state university system, and cut $32 million from the university budget, which it stated was amount of "taxpayer money being wasted on divisive indoctrination efforts" (to paraphrase Assembly Speaker Robin Vos). This comes after years of successive budget cuts and a ten-year tuition freeze and years of faculty and staff taking pay cuts in the form of "furloughs" through which we were expected to just keep working. The situation is now somewhat improved in that Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, vetoed the DEI ban, but he cannot restore the funding. Anyway: a few days after the legislative vote to ban DEI , I was giving a talk about the range of state bills attacking trans youth and adults, and there was a Democratic state legislator on the panel. When we were introducing ourselves and I told her I directed the LGBTQ+ Studies Program, she said, "Oh, but that's no longer legal. Well, unless Evers vetoes the ban; we'll see."

After doing some blinking, I responded by explaining the difference between DEI programs and academic programs. DEI programs provide student support services, which is deemed administrative work, in contrast to academic programs. The LGBTQ+ Resource Center and the LGBTQ+ Studies Program at my university are both vital and important. But the resource center organizes support groups and social activities for students, while the academic program teaches classes and sponsors academic talks. Academic programs are not part of the DEI system--and the very same legislature that voted for the DEI ban had spent years prior threatening sanctions against students and faculty for supposedly not sufficiently respecting the absolute value of free speech in academia. Legislators presented instructors as censorious ideologues, students as snowflakes in love with a victim narrative, and the legislature as the champion of teaching and discussing all ideas freely.

The image of DEI programs presented by Republican legislators is some kind of kink fantasy, in which cis straight white men are forced to prostrate themselves, declare themselves to be bad and deserving of punishment, and lick the boots of students who are trans and queer, of color and feminist. The reality is that university DEI programs are providing mental health services and tutoring and social support to college students, at a time when their levels of mental health challenges are very high. They have zero to do with the kink humiliation fantasy, they really are about inclusion, and it is ludicrous and cruel to cut social support to marginalized college students.

But even if the state ban were not vetoed, a DEI ban does not dismantle programs like Gender Studies or African and African Diaspora Studies or LGBTQ+ Studies, because they are academic programs, I explained to the Democratic legislator. But from her response, it was clear that not only did Republican Wisconsin legislators think they'd banned all academic programs examining race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and who knows what else (disability studies? Jewish studies and Islamic studies?), but that the Democratic legislators seemed to believe so as well.

The flip from "we are the party of free speech!" to "we are the party that bans books and entire academic disciplines!" happened with dizzying speed. But take it from me as a trans person--these legislative attacks can burst across the country in the space of months, shifting the landscape radically. The thing about the MAGA movement is that it is made up of people who believe that the situation is desperate, the American project is on the verge of failure, and the time has come to destroy or be destroyed. Most Americans, including non-MAGA Republicans, want to see the culture war cool down and Americans get along, but MAGA-sorts want it to go hot. And I have to admit some despair about what to do about this, because of the unpersuadability of this group. Take a look at Question 39 from this CBS/YouGov poll of Iowa voters last week, and what percentage of Republican voters there believe they are being lied to by various parties. The percentage of MAGA voters who said they said they believed they were being told the truth by Trump was 71%, in comparison to 63% for friends and family, 56% for conservative news sources, and 42% for religious leaders. Only 32% of Iowa Republicans generally believed they were told the truth by medical scientists. (The figures for Joe Biden and "liberal media" were 10% and 8% respectively.)

It is hard to persuade people with facts and logic and calls for empathy when they think you are a liar attacking their great leader with whom 99% say they identify. What we have to do is persuade others to stand up. And I don't want to be doomy, but my experience with resisting transphobic legislation and action causes me a lot of concern. It's not just "the face-eating leopards won't eat my face" problem. The fact is, frankly, that a lot of institutions and people are craven. This past year I was in a working group with medical and social scientists advising the HHS about creating guidelines for research with intersex and transgender populations, and then Libs of TikTok spread lies about hospitals supposedly performing "sex changes" on little kids, and several children's hospitals received bomb threats--and suddenly most of the medical researchers working with trans youth were pulled from the working group by the hospitals they were affiliated with. Hospital administrators are shutting down research on trans youth and clinics serving trans youth, rather than having the backs of threatened doctors and patients, handing a victory to the face-eating leopards who growled at them.

My conclusion is that we need to focus energy on teaching people who have not dealt with serious bullying before how to stand up to bullies. For people like concerned parents considering attending school board meetings to oppose book bans, we could teach basic mutual aid strategies, like forming a supportive group to attend together. But what we are to do about people like college administrators and corporate executives who would like to do the right thing for students and employees, but not as much as they'd like to avoid offending a wealthy donor or receiving negative conservative media attention. . . that's a big question to me.

I have left my own longer comment in the wider thread.

The following is a selection of statements taken from comments on an announcement of Jacques’ passing posted on MetaFilter Feb 7, 2011.

“Jacques came to our school library when I was in junior high and exclaimed over the many tiny dioramas of rabbits and mice preparing to go off on medieval quests -- and preparing the feasts he described in such lavish detail -- we had made to honor his coming. (For my sisters and me, this was basically re-creating our outdoor play with small animal dolls in smaller boxes; he so informed our imaginary worlds.) I remember he was incredibly gentle, read the voices of his characters wonderfully, and did a trick where he wiggled his ears.”

“I still think about Redwall Abbey. I think about scenes from those books all the time. They are an inextricable part of my internal life, in that way that only books you read as a kid can be.”

“He spoke at my elementary school library in the 80s. He was the first author I'd met in the flesh, and I was in awe. He was so gentle and sweet with us, and he will be missed.”

“I loved those books when I was a kid. I remember getting my younger brother into them, and reenacting vaguely Redwall-ian stories with Beanie Babies. And nerding out one day and putting all of the books into chronological order - not based on when they came out, but based on the chronology within the books. Next time I'm home, I'm breaking them out again.”

“Jacques introduced me to badgers and stoats, made me hungry with descriptions of epic rodent feasts, and taught me the difference between a mole and a vole.”

“These books were a big part of my childhood. My brothers and I would fight over who got to read the next one first.”

“I was into model trains, and in fourth grade I made a scale model of Salamandastron, its battlements and the surrounding countryside. It was about the size of a coffee table. When Brian Jacques was doing a signing at the local Barnes and Noble my grandpa helped me cart the entire thing into the store so he could sign it. I remember his eyes got huge and he looked delighted and amazed by my project. I walked on air for weeks. As a child, I lived in the world his books gave me - I learned to love good food, intentional community, architecture, the wilderness - many of the things that make me who I am today - by reading his adventures.”

“His books were a real 'gateway' for me, from children's lit into fantasy. Great, deep memories of childhood and wonder.”

“I think what really stands out to me was the heroism - the real heroism and time and again the lesson in choosing what was right over what was easy. I won't forget Matthias and his lady love Cornflower and the terrible Cluny the Scourge. Or Martin and Rose. Those books really had a hand in forming my young character.”

“I believe that I've read Redwall more times than any other book.”

“Mr. Jacques, thanks so much, for the riddles I could never solve, for making me perpetually hungry, for making a universe that just kept opening up on itself. I always hated finishing a super good book and knowing that I'd never find out what happened to all of the characters. But as soon as I closed a Redwall book, I could start on the next one, reading about the last protagonist's children or ancestors or friends. The feeling of having experienced a truly infinite, rich and fully realized world never failed to delight me.”

“I read these books like crazy as a kid, even fashioning myself my own Gullwhacker to keep under my pillow. Mariel was a big inspiration to a painfully shy and often frightened young girl.”

“They [Redwall books] were the only thing my bookphobic older brother would read, and he kept telling me to read them. I read the first page of Redwall when I was pretty small, and stubbornly decided I wouldn't like it, so refused to read any more. And then I was forced to read one of the series for a Brownie reading badge and, surprise surprise, adored them.”

When I asked the mod who stood by and did nothing about it for an apology, I was treated with contempt, not once but over and over, including by MeFi’s new owner, cortex.

MeFi says “This website exists to break down the barriers between people.” In theory it’s a place where you can comment and not be attacked by trolls. What a load of horseshit.