Petty Disappointments

In some past entries, I've occasionally referenced the columns of Rod Dreher, a conservative Orthodox writer at The American Conservative. I find many of Dreher's columns a refreshing departure from the chorus of pro-Trump rhetoric in my daily tour in the realms of right-wing media. Dreher also wrote The Benedict Option, a work whose argument (basically--Christians should hunker down and focus on surviving in a secular world) I find important in my own research.

Most recently, it was Dreher who turned me on to Heroes of the Fourth Turning, Will Arbery's new (and now very well-known) play about white conservative Christian thought. The script name-checks The Benedict Option and other ideas. It's smart, complex, and eye-opening for coastal-urban progressives who often have trouble imagining beyond their own worldview. I've toyed with the idea of having a mini forum on the play, even inviting Dreher to participate.

But then I read pieces like this. Dreher takes aim at a small group of trans people who spoke at a city council meeting in Olympia, Washington, to express displeasure at some aspects of the city's Transgender Day of Remembrance celebrations. What exactly they were upset about you do not know from Dreher's retelling. (The issue seems to relate to the city's use of police forces as part of the celebration, though I'd need to do more research myself to know for sure.) Instead, Dreher focuses on other matters. "Now, you regular readers know that I, a passionate Ignatian (Reilly), go catatonic with joy in the presence of freaks." It goes downhill from there.

Dreher includes pictures and videos, mocking them for their appearance, their complaints, their being trans (an identity Dreher simply has no truck with--he consistently refers to the trans women there as men). He sprinkles in a bit of pity; from his perspective these "loonies" are in distress. But his main point seems to involve pointing and laughing at the "freaks" whose complaint "shows why there's no satisfying progressive activists."

Let's bracket off the host of issues here--the fact that three trans activists in Olympia are hardly spokespeople for "progressive activists" the world over, the fact that these are largely out-of-context clips of a local political situation we're not privy to, the fact that almost no one except for clickbaity right-wing sites are showcasing this story. Let's even stipulate that the activists in the video are performatively expressive--wearing outfits and speaking words meant to get attention (and that seems to be working). They seem odd and unusual because they're mobilizing a bit of spectacle.

Do I agree with or endorse these activists' stances? I don't know enough about them to say. I might not. Like any inchoate group, left-leaning LGBTQ folk don't always like or agree with each other. Obviously other trans folk in Olympia thought the Day of Remembrance was good enough to participate in. (Notice we don't hear about them from Dreher's piece.) Look, there are plenty of times where I've been annoyed at woker-than-thou internecine squabbles on the left (just as I used to be annoyed at holier-than-thou internecine squabbles on the right). But do I feel the need to add to the pile-on of the right-wing internet laughing at how odd or extreme some people in the video look? Nope.

I'm disappointed, then, to see Rod Dreher joining the pile-on. Dreher, a pundit and writer of national renown, seeks out and lifts up for ridicule three people who are about as powerless and remote in comparison to him as anyone. It's punching down. It's just mean. It's--to be frank--just not Christlike. What have these three people to do with anything in Dreher's life? The only reason we know about them is because right-wing media has made their clip go somewhat viral, largely in order to present them as somehow typical of trans people or progressive activists.

Dreher is of course free to comment on people and respond to their public statements. But his piece here occurs as part of one his larger narratives, that Christian-hating progressives like these three people pose an existential threat. The constant, pernicious threat of progressives (especially LGBTQ progressives) forms a favorite theme of his. White Christian conservatives, it seems, are the ultimate victims of victims. Even that would be something I can read and think about. But this piece isn't a measured, well-thought-out argument. This is name-calling and jeering at people who live their lives as constant targets of ridicule.

It's just disappointingly petty from a writer who I rarely agree with but often learn from. It makes me rethink the whole notion of having some kind of forum about the play where he's a speaker. He'd be a natural--essential--participant but for the distracting noise of pieces like this. For better or worse, he's established that these kind of comments are part of who he is as a public intellectual and representative of conservative Christian thought. It's not just Benedict Option; it's also calling people "freaks." His attitude here makes me wonder how he'd be around some of my students, especially those who are themselves queer, trans, and/or nonbinary. And how would they feel knowing I've invited to speak someone who has a history of mocking people like them?

I just can't see an ethical way to have him at some official event for my students.


And that's depressing.