Should Schools Cancel Valentine's Day?
#122
Welcome to Third Cultured, a newsletter covering all things queer and techno-politics from the perspective of Kyle Borland. My goal is to highlight all the ways today is different (and not so) from yesterday.
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This edition:
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Essay/Opinion
Links, Quotes & Things
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I’ve been teasing a second newsletter for a while now and the time has come!
Ounce By Ounce launches on Wednesday. If you’re interested in cannabis, psychedelics, and the overall War on Drugs – then Ounce By Ounce is for you. I’ll be covering the industries and movements propelling us into a new era of drug legalization, innovation, and research. In addition to keeping you updated on these ever-changing fields, I’ll be reviewing products and experiences and interviewing key organizations along the way.
I’ve worked in the cannabis industry since 2017 in a variety of roles, including as a budtender, at a testing lab, writing a cannabis column in a local newspaper for two years, and promoting social equity throughout the industry.
I’m excited to explore this new project and I hope you’ll join me for the trip.
Essay/Opinion
The playground wasn’t very large. It was tucked away on the left side of the school to keep the kindergarteners away from the fifth graders. To this day, I don’t know if the grayness I remember of that day was the typical German sky, the shade from the tree line, or a filter I’ve put over the memory to keep it as dull as possible.
All my fellow kindergarteners broke up into groups, and I followed what would prove to be a lifelong instinct of going with the girls. The boys were roughhousing and talking about sneakers, so I had nothing to contribute. As we sat away from the boys, the girls started talking about who they thought was cute, who was funny. You know, the kinds of harmless crushes all children get.
It wasn’t long before the “conversation” just turned into everyone giggling. At some point, the group of boys noticed and started turning their silliness up to 10x to keep the girls laughing. When the girls began naming who they liked in the circle, I answer without a second thought.
“I think is Thomas is cute.”
I still remember the silence on the playground. Before the eruption of laughter.
Somehow, even in the late 1990s, elementary students knew exactly what “gay” was enough to ridicule, demean, attack, and belittle on an unceasing basis. A teacher never had to tell them. There was no lesson on “gender and sexuality” or any Pride flags to be seen in any school within 5,000 miles of my elementary school.
As the 2022 anti-LGBTQ+ legislation season gets into full swing in Florida, South Dakota, and everywhere in-between – I’m mystified at Americans’ willful ignorance around queerness. They must understand their hypocrisy on some level. They are terrified of the idea of “gender and sexuality” in elementary school classrooms but don’t shy away from projecting heterosexuality onto children before they’re even born.
The Florida legislature is taking up a staggering array of anti-LGBTQ bills, some targeting transgender and gay children specifically. Similar bills are popping up around the country, some coded as “parental rights” bills, which undoubtedly include the right to botch the job.
These bills are designed to give parents a greater say in what their children should learn, read and hear in schools. Florida lawmakers argue that, with some parents unhappy over schools exposing children to LGBTQ issues in the classroom, restrictions are necessary. Lawmakers have also proposed medical-related measures that make it harder for LGBTQ children to obtain specialized care.
One Florida Senate bill, dubbed by critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, bars school districts from encouraging classroom discussions about sexual orientation or gender identity in elementary school or in an age-inappropriate way. Parents can sue if districts stray. Another one allows public school students to be taught about sex and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV, only if their parents provide written consent. (Another retrograde conservative fantasy is the nonexistence of raging teenage hormones and online porn.)
As for provisions on the medical side, one House bill makes it a crime for medical providers to perform gender-affirming surgeries for minors or to prescribe drugs, such as puberty-blockers, unless a child is intersex.
A Senate bill allows health-care providers or insurers to opt out of providing or paying for health-care services that violate their moral, religious or ethical beliefs; it grants them immunity from liability.
“This year it does feel like we have seen a serious increase in the threats to our community,” Jon Harris Maurer, public policy director for Equality Florida, an LGBTQ advocacy group, told me. “It plays on the fears of the extremist base.”
Should we also cancel every Valentine’s Day party in K–5 schools across America?
Unlike the vast majority of “concerned parents” pushing these pathetic laws, I have been a queer child. I know firsthand how myopic their concept of queerness is, and how little they care to change those false conceptions. Worse yet, the cruelty and violence their decisions wreak on LGBTQ+ kids seem to be the point.
To them, queerness is nothing more than AIDS, glory holes, and sex parties.
It couldn’t possibly be an intricate part of US history or the greater human experience. I guess we’ve spent the better part of a century erasing Alan Turing and the mistreatment of justice he underwent after his brilliant, queer mind saved the entirety of the Western world from Nazi domination – so why not continue? Doesn’t everyone say that a story is better with plot holes and without character development, societal evolution, or vulnerability?
After 2015, people told me that Blue and Red States were now “the same” despite that only being possible because DC – that wretched federal government that “conservatives” claim to hate unless its control your actions in your own home – dragged them kicking and screaming across the marriage equality line. A line they are actively clawing themselves back over, by the way. Each year they find new “religious exemptions” which amount to a blank check for Christians, and only Christians, to discriminate however they say their holy book justifies.
These people know there’s no actual harm in allowing LGBTQ+ topics to be discussed at any level of school. They know nothing they claim is happening, but it doesn’t stop their hate-driven quest to diminish history and society to the minuscule lane they’ve created within their mental bumpers. They want queer kids to kill themselves. To feel as small, as alone, as possible. There are valiant efforts opposing the diminishment of LGBTQ+ people, but the momentum is against us right now at almost every level of government where Republicans hold a comfortable majority. They will continue to drive this wedge as long as they see results, which seems to have no end in sight.
As always, thanks for reading, beautiful people.
Kyle (@kgborland)
Links, Quotes & Things
20 Queer Bakers To Follow on Instagram (Autostraddle)
A gay man yells “Praise Satan,” throws Bible in fire at pastor’s book-burning (Advocate)
Comment: A hero among men.
A Push to Remove LGBTQ Books in One County Could Signal Rising Partisanship on School Boards (ProPublica)
An hour from Tahoe, Reno is an LGBTQ haven (SFGATE)
Battle over government use of face recognition rages on (Axios)
Bisexual Dutch speedskater Ireen Wüst is the first individual athlete to win gold at 5 Olympic Games (LGBTQ Nation)
Bruce Pettit, Unsung Hero of the Gay Marriage Revolution (SF Standard)
California senator calls for police to reinvestigate death of San Francisco gay man (Pink News)
China censors lesbian plotline in 'Friends' (CNN)
Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia: NGO reports that LGBT+ Roma face discrimination from their own families as well as majority societies (Romea)
Dealing With My Own Self: Gender and Fatphobia (Genderf*cked)
First openly gay Honduras congressman reflects on historic election (Washington Blade)
HIV now infects more heterosexual people than gay or bisexual men (Metro)
Comment: Time to ban sexually active straights from donating blood, I guess.
House Passes Global Respect Act, First Global LGBTQI Bill (Global Equality)
How Oklahoma City Is Growing Into a Queer Destination (CN Traveler)
I Tried Going To A Queer Alcoholics Anonymous Meeting After Being Sober For 30 Days, And It Was Incredibly Eye-Opening (BuzzFeed)
I’ll fight to overturn US ban on my ‘Queer Bible’, says British author (The Guardian)
Israel to open first LGBT shelter for Arab youth (Jerusalem Post)
Judge Rejects 'Stand Your Ground' Claim Made in Savage Antigay Attack (Advocate)
LGBT Afghans Face Grave Threats Under Taliban, Report Finds (US News)
LGBTQ group is Mobile Mardi Gras’ hottest ticket (AL.com)
LGBT orgs ask UN to revoke status of British rights watchdog (Evening Standard)
LGBTQ students are ‘under attack,’ says Michigan teacher who quit over removal of pride flag (Michigan Live)
Montrealer's 'Queering the Map' project documents queer experiences all over the world (CBC)
Out members of Congress call on CDC to make new HIV prevention drug free of cost (LGBTQ Nation)
Over 30 percent of the 146 local governments in Japan that have introduced a same-sex partnership system (Kyodo News)
Queer Africa has always been an other (Mail & Guardian)
Queerness is a practice of renewal and invention. Our very capacity to live in this place is a queer ethic. African homophobes are on the losing side. Imported religion, colonial regimes, and a heterosexual capitalist order have failed to vanquish the queer spirit of Africans. We bob like corks on choppy water. When the tide turns in, we are still there: clinging, gliding, touching, and erupting. We are hidden in plain sight. We genuflect to homophobic governments and churches and then we turn around to furtively love and rub.
Queer Book Bans Aren't About Books At All (them.)
Russia makes failed attempt to shut down prominent LGBTQ rights group (Human Rights Watch, NBC News)
Senate confirms first out LGBTQ person of color to ambassador-level post (NBC News)
SF Board of Education Approves First-in-the-Nation Queer Transgender Parent Advisory Council (SF Standard)
The Case Against Civility in Politics (LitHub)
Activists at Standing Rock and in Flint knew that when it comes to building lasting coalitions and majorities, thinking intersectionally is key. Racial, gender, and economic oppression are interconnected because they come from the same root. Black and brown people, women, queer people, and poor people cannot struggle against systemic discrimination alone. They and their white allies make up the 99 percent. Ending mass incarceration adds newly enfranchised citizens to the population who can fight with workers for a living wage. Mobilizing against anti-LGBTQ sentiment creates a society in which no one will have to police their sexualities and identities to conform to some imagined norm.
Demilitarizing schools, defunding police departments, and ending the death penalty is the only way to transform a system that profits from death, social control, and punishment into one that respects citizens’ inherent dignity. Political rights mean nothing without accessible healthcare for all, a living wage for workers, pensions for retirees, no-cost public college, affordable public housing, and myriad social programs such as food assistance, disability benefits, and retirement aid. Freedom from want creates a baseline for everyone to make reasoned and thoughtful choices about their lives. And without the concentration of labor power through public and private sector unions, this freedom will be endlessly under attack. Without this freedom, the people have little political power with which to influence policy.
The Metamorphosis of Robert Pattinson (GQ)
The Metaverse Is Going to Suck for Queer People (them.)
The Science of How Alive You Really Are: Alan Turing, Trees, and the Wonder of Life (The Marginalian)
to all the boys i scammed before (sweater weather)
What Should the Left Do About China? (The Nation)
Who is Peter Thiel, the tech billionaire trying to push the U.S. to the right? (The Washington Post)
Why Drag Race is still important for LGBT representation (BBC)