Iowa Republicans Legislate Oppression

And constituents resist...

Fascism:

1. a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

2. a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control

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It was an angry crowd that gathered Monday evening to oppose the anti-trans House File 2389. Reporter Robin Opsahl with the Iowa Capital Dispatch sums it up:

Hundreds of activists rallied in the Iowa Capitol rotunda Monday evening as lawmakers held a public hearing on Gov. Kim Reynolds’ bill defining of “male” and “female” in Iowa Code and excluding transgender people from sex-segregated spaces.

House File 2389 has already passed through the committee process, and is available for debate by the House of Representatives. The bill would allow transgender people to be excluded from spaces like bathrooms, locker rooms and domestic abuse or sexual assault shelters.

It also would require that birth certificates list a transgender person’s sex at birth as well as their sex after gender reassignment treatment.

Above is the testimony. An important contrast can be seen first at the 5:21 mark where Christian and Republican radio/TV host and filmmaker Steve Deace speaks, who is followed by Alexandra Gray at the 7:09 mark. Please listen.

Deace is an accomplished speaker, and says he is appealing to fact, reason and science. He says that opponents to the bill ignore reality, and the “most basic fact of human existence is — we are all created male and female.” He goes on about reality, the atrocities that happen when we “deny reality”, and more. He commands, “No one was ever announced to the world as a non-binary construct” and that for every person in the room when they were born, it was announced that “it was a boy, it was a girl.”

I have friends who when their baby was born the doctor said, “Your baby has ambiguous genitalia.”

Deace’s testimony is an argument from authority, where “truth” is presumedly judged by how well and powerfully the speaker performs. The fact of the matter is that science says sex isn’t binary, and the idea of only two sexes is too “simplistic.” Anthropologists and biologists have known this for well over 100 years. It’s not science, it's a cultural construct. Our culture once said slavery was fine, women were lesser than men, and that being left-handed was an abomination.

Alexandra Gray knows reality and shares it at the hearing. Please watch the video, but here’s Ty Rushing with the Iowa Starting Line.

Alexandra Gray compared what is happening in Iowa to a dystopian novel during yet another hearing centered on creating new laws that specifically target trans people and pose harm to Iowans in the LGBTQ community.

“What dystopian novel are we in this time because I’m finding us slipping and going backward,” she said. “At one point in time, people of color—Black people—were declared 3/5ths of a person. I’d like to know what percentage of a person queer people are going to get so that I can base my life around it.

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We have historically been conditioned to see sex as binary when it isn’t. I call it our binary “goggles.” I have written about it here. Here is a small part about what happened to me when I took my binary goggles off before a large crowd:

Without the binary goggles, traditional standards of attractiveness along gendered lines become irrelevant. Where it actually led me to was amazing. Believe it or not, I saw beauty in everyone without the binary goggles on. I saw and appreciated the different shapes and sizes, all as beautiful as the multi-colored and differently shaped cobbles in a clear mountain stream. I didn’t assign “value” to tall and short anymore or fat and thin. Or any other dimension of humanity. There was no judgment because I had cast aside our norms. And because I abandoned that cruel standard of measurement, everyone was beautiful. 

Then it hit me like a ton of bricks how tragic of a world the binary goggles create. Small, gracile “men” are seen as effeminate and judged negatively. Tall, large-featured “women” are seen as manly and unattractive. Some of us live our whole lives being seen as inadequate and unattractive given binary standards. Because of this, many of us, and many readers of this piece, have been judged, teased, bullied, and even condemned for where we are on the binary continuum. The mental health consequences are enormous. And this has been going on for millennia and has NOTHING to do with who we really are. This may be the greatest tragedy of all human existence.

Cast off the goggles. See the beauty. Part of the beauty is letting people determine who they are. Honor them by honoring their pronouns.

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Take your binary goggles off and look at the biological continuum expressed in the video above at the capital Monday night. Aren’t they all beautiful? Don’t we all deserve equal protection under the law? Or, as the legislation demands, are some of us “lesser?” No, we aren’t.

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Nikoel Hytrek with the Iowa Starting Line reports on comments coming from the crowd, including:

“Separate but equal, that’s really fucking evil.”

“We will not go back.”

“Trans rights are human rights.”

And we will not shut up, fuck you Kim.

Referring, of course, to Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds who backs the proposed legislation.

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I spoke to a young man who had this interesting sign above. He laid out why he thinks Republicans have entered fascist territory. My interview with him coincided with people chanting “We will not shut up, fuck you, Kim.”

Here is what he had to say:

He shared with me that the current characteristics of the Republican Party mirror the characteristics of fascism as outlined by Umberto Eco.

Diana Goetsch, trans author of This Body I Wore: a Memoir, tells me: “It's not a culture war. The death camps weren't a culture war. Book burning is not a culture war. Jim Crow was not a culture war.” She calls it fascism.

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I looked at this sign, then briefly shut my eyes, and listened to the crowd. I heard outrage, anger, frustration, and deep sadness. I also heard faint echoes of the battle cries of warriors.

Republicans have been critical of the disrespect shown to them by the protestors, which to me is laughable, and a distraction (several Republican legislators are so disrespectful in general that it has become part of their “brand”). Do they want protestors to be quiet, polite, and respectful in the face of oppression? I don’t think so. I had a friend I admire share with me that she was worried about the “tone” of my last column where I criticized Republicans who are seeking to undermine our libraries. I gave her a more nuanced response, but here I have to ask, what is the most effective tone to use in confronting fascism?

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As the great American anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston said, “If you are silent about your pain, they'll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”

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