GLR July-August 2023

BTW

like a loser all the way, with DeSantis a punchline in his feath erweight match with Mickey Mouse. But the war metaphor isn’t quite right; it’s really about DeSantis seeking ways to take re venge on Disney for its opposition to his “Don’t say gay” bill last year. And he’s been positively Ahab-like in this quest. His attempt to deprive Disney of its special zoning status was thwarted by a simple change in the bylaws by Disney’s board, leaving Ron a laughingstock. His latest gambit is a proposal to build a state prison on public land right next to Disney World. How exactly that harms Disney isn’t entirely clear. They would probably just turn it into an attraction: “See the Great Dungeon from Rapunzel’s Tower after dark!” Hypocrisy Watch This heading could apply to so many of the items that we feature here. And yet, the word “hypocrisy” does n’t quite capture the spectacle of men who promote a form of anti-LGBT hatred while engaging in precisely the behavior that they’re demonizing. Perhaps the word “mendacity” would suf fice, but only as uttered by Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof , with complete disgust. Here are four cases in point: 1. Dateline Texas Take, for example, former Texas state Rep. Bryan Slaton (R), a vocally anti-LGBT politician whose cause célèbre was the plague of adults “grooming” minors for sex. The term is a right-wing dog whistle, though it’s not at all clear why they attribute the practice of “grooming” to liberals. Sla ton is only the latest in a string of conservative politicians to be caught engaging in precisely this form of behavior. His offense was to invite a nineteen-year-old staff member up to his flat

That’s What You Saw? The host of The Michael Knowles Show on the right-wing site DailyWire devoted a show to in forming his audience that there’s a new kind of porn out there that uses hypnosis to turn cis men into trans women. The eerie power of this porn is such that it doesn’t just entertain the pas sive viewer but makes him want to leap into action to change his gender identity. But what force could cast such a spell? Knowles admitted that he’s so afraid of being hypnotized by these apps that he didn’t conduct any firsthand research, and it showed. Luckily, his guest was the very person who had made this discovery, one Genevieve Gluck of Redux magazine, who labeled it “hypnosis porn” and explained that it works through the repetition of insults spoken by a narrator who says things like “You’re a dumb bimbo slut; you want to be a girl,” over and over. Um, we hate to break it to Ms. Gluck, who seriously does n’t grasp men and porn: these are simply sites that cater to that small subset of men who get off on verbal humiliation (and the porn, of course). No one is hypnotizing anyone. Ahab in Florida It looks like the arch-nemesis of LGBT rights, Ron DeSantis, is running for president, but in a way that’s re assuringly klutzy so far. Going to war with Disney World looks

TheG & LR

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