Queer harassment and the banality of evil
October 19, 2022
Editor’s note: Before the article you are about to read moves too far forward, it is important to establish a few ground rules here. This article will for the most part be focusing on the experiences and statistics surrounding specifically the Trans community. Most everything here applies just as strongly for other parts of the larger LGBTQ+ community, it’s just that many of the issues discussed are, at least for now, most evident and most pressing for trans individuals.
Secondly, this is not a place to argue over the merits of these people’s existence. There are plenty of other internet forums out there for one to do that. Trans women are women, and trans men are men; make no mistake, this is not being put up for debate.
In 1963, Jewish political philosopher Hannah Ardent wrote a series of articles for the New Yorker about the trial of a man by the name of Adolf Eichmann. These articles would later be compiled into the book ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.’
If the undeniably German names or the mid-century release of the book weren’t enough to give it away, Adolf Eichmann was a Nazi official, or more specifically, the lieutenant colonel who was tasked with overseeing the mass deportation of the Jewish population into ghettos and later into the extermination camps for which a bulk of the holocaust occurred. What is arguably most fascinating about him, and also the thing which Ardent focuses on most in her exploration of his trial, is not that he was some kind of monster who existed with a rare aversion to basic human decency, but on the contrary, Eichmann was an entirely normal individual; almost comically not special in his disposition and abilities. He didn’t even have a particular distaste for Jews, A point which he even went out of his way to establish during the trial, citing a number of Jews for whom he had helped escape to Scandinavian countries, and the fact that that he had even held quite a lot of respect for Zionists. Thus, his many horrible acts were not motivated by some unfathomable rage, hatred, or even bigotry, but rather for reasons as uninteresting as career advancement or situational convenience. This is to the extent that during interviews before and during the trial he had had trouble recalling many of his more unsavory acts and decisions which led to the deaths of an incomprehensibly large number of individuals, but was able to give clear testimony on events and meetings which had an effect on his own career. Eichmann was deeply unconcerned with the consequences of the tasks which he carried out and was generally apathetic towards the death that he had been the arbiter of.
One man like this though, does not a regime make, and so Ardent argues that Eichmann can be viewed more as an archetype for the types of individuals whom made up the larger national socialist party.
She writes, “The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.”
If a singular insight from Ardents work on Eichmann can be gleaned it is that the entirely ordinary person, without any non-standard morality or outside coercion, still has the capacity to do incredible evil, to commit some of the most horrendous acts known to man, and do so for reasons no more insidious than a job promotion, or personal convenience.
11th grader Ryan Jones is what many would look at as a typical artsy teenage boy, the type who is much better at his work than he would ever really admit. When his interview began his primary concern was with finishing a painting that had been overdue. At painting, Jones is notably good; a few weeks ago his first project of the year managed to make it to Mrs. Morrett’s Wall of Fame, an impressive feat that only an incredibly select few other works have ever managed to do. He is also what one would consider an Emo kid; typically wearing band t-shirts or sweaters paired with an otherwise entirely black outfit and matching his dyed black hair. His wardrobe even managed to catch the attention of a passerby during the interview, who reflected fondly upon a shirt Jones had been wearing, stating “Holy cow, is that a Chiodos Shirt?”
If one knows of Jones in school though, it is likely, and unfortunately, not for his impressive artistic talents, his maybe questionable stylistic choices, or really even at all for Jones himself. At the beginning of last year, Jones came out to PCM as a transgender man. While he had been out before that, because he was online during his freshman year, for the majority of Jones’s classmates, this was the first time they had met him as himself.
Jones recounts this stating, “Because there were a lot of discussions, mainly throughout my classes, I wasn’t in school for the first couple days; I was just in the counselor’s office talking about it. And then when I did start attending classes, I remember the first thing that happened was like – I was told to read a story out loud in the class, and they called my name, the name I decided to go by which is Ryan currently, and the whole classroom, or what felt like the whole classroom, just started laughing so loud.”
This sort of response is, on its own, incredibly disheartening. Even more frustrating though is the fact that it continued, and has yet to truly cease. For a few weeks in the second half of last year, food had been repeatedly thrown at him in the lunchroom on a near-daily basis. To avoid the harassment, he ended up eating either in the band room or just elsewhere in the school. A few weeks back another notable incident occurred;
“Apparently I got called a ‘he-she’ in the locker rooms and they wanted to beat me up – a certain group of people – for that reason, for being trans, but wouldn’t dare to do that due to my being a ‘he-she,’ in their words.”
These instances are not the first of their kind, and unless some strange miracle occurs, they will not be the last. It is also because of this continued harassment and lack of respect that there are a number of other trans individuals at PCM who simply feel unsafe to come out to the school, who are forced into being people they are not for the sake of their own safety.
As noted in a 2018 article by the American Academy of Pediatrics, 50.8 percent of female-to-male transgender teens and 29.9 percent of male-to-female teens reported having attempted suicide in the past. These rates are multiple times higher than they are for cis teens, and as a whole, trans teens represent one of the groups with the highest risk of suicide. While this is admittedly incredibly depressing, it does make some sense considering the difficulties experienced by transgender individuals elsewhere.
In October 2019, the Williams Institute found that 29.4 percent of trans individuals in the United States lived below the poverty line. This is compared to 13.4 percent for cis-men, and 17.8 percent for cis-women. Trans people are also at significant additional risk of housing and job discrimination, both of which contribute to their systematic disqualification from much of society.
Moreover, there has been a veritable legislative assault on trans rights over the last few years, one which has taken hold of much of the political sphere surrounding transgender issues. The non-profit organization Freedom for all Americans has an online legislation tracker to monitor bills and pieces of legislation which would restrict the rights of LGBTQ+ individuals. At their most mild, the bills tracked by it seek to legally restrict trans athletes from competing in the competitions of their actual gender, but in their more extreme forms, they severely restrict access to things like public amenities, housing protection, or even basic healthcare for trans individuals, further ensuring the perpetuation of already all too present discrimination. As shown by the tracker, from January 2021 to the present, 19 such bills have been proposed in Iowa, and in the last year alone, over 100 have been proposed across the greater United States. These are largely fueled by a fundamental ignorance of and unwillingness to learn about trans people.
As if things couldn’t get any more bleak, the physical safety of trans people in public is also currently at risk. The Human Rights Campaign notes that 2021 marked the deadliest year on record for trans individuals in the United States. At least 57 people were murdered across the U.S. specifically because they were Trans or gender-nonconforming. This number, though, is almost certainly an underestimation of the actual total, seeing as police reports often fail to properly report these individuals’ gender or name them correctly. This is also not to mention other kinds of hate crimes which have also been on the rise. FBI crime statistics showed that from 2013 to 2019, Hate crimes against trans and gender-nonconforming individuals increased by a staggering 587 percent, and that this trend seems to have only continued from 2019 into the present.
All these statistics undoubtedly paint a rather bleak picture of the current state of trans rights in the United States; one which has only seemed to get worse as trans issues become more visible, and trans people increasingly become more and more targeted by certain political groups.
About the future that this represents, Jones stated, “It’s unpredictable, but there’s definitely been progress. Then again, with these recent things happening it seems like we’re going back. I feel like we’re losing our progress. So I don’t know how that’s going to continue; I don’t know if we’re going to eventually get out of that losing progress stage, or if we’re going to continue to push ahead. I guess we’ll just have to see; I’ll have to adjust to whatever happens.”
This is all not to say that things are entirely hopeless. Real progress is possible if people are willing to move past whatever preconceived notions they may have.
On the note of suicide and trans individuals, there is one single thing that has consistently been shown to reduce suicide rates down to those far more in line with the general population, and that seemingly magical thing is simply genuine support and acceptance from friends and family. On this front, while things may be bleak now, there is some hope to be found. When interviewed, Timarie LaFoy, PCM’s band teacher and another member of the LGBTQ+ community stated that she did have hope on this front,
“I think these future generations have gotten way more in tune with their mental health than past generations have, and are willing to talk about it; so I think that’s helping a lot. And the trans community is very outspoken which I love. I have a bunch of friends from college who are trans, and getting to see their journey is amazing; because it’s something that I don’t personally understand, but I love that they’re happy.”
It is simple acts of acceptance here, even if one doesn’t fully understand, which may save the life of another. Furthermore, while it is often missed in this sort of reporting, there is genuine joy and happiness trans individuals find in simply being recognized as they are. Amidst the pool of dower statistics and horrifying incidents, the joy that trans people can experience when they are merely seen as themselves is often easily missed. Even something as simple as using the correct pronouns for someone, or going even slightly out of one’s way to show basic respect for another person can end up significantly brightening their day.
Blair Workman, LaFoy’s fiancée and a student at UNI majoring in RTNL, is currently running a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to help out the local LGBTQ+ community. Currently, the plan is to donate proceeds to the American Association For Suicide Prevention, which will then distribute them among local organizations that offer services for LGBTQ+ youth. Workman describes her motivation for opening up the GoFundMe page.
“Being someone who is a part of that community, and all my friends are a part of that community, I really want to take the time to understand how important suicide is, because like, we’re not accepted by a lot of people. We get judged daily, just for being us, and that’s just not fair. So I really wish people, especially in smaller communities like this, would take the time to stop and realize their words really do affect people. That’s basically the whole reason why I started the fundraiser. Just because people really do need help, and a lot of kids nowadays don’t feel like they have that. I want to do my best to do my part.”
Workman also reflected on her own experience here, and sought to share some consolation with those who may be in similar circumstances.
“I think that a lot of my stress and like mental illness came from not being who I was, from hiding that. I want people to know that it’s ok to be who you wanna be, and we live in a society now where not everything is accepted, but that’s just how it is. I just wish these people would come out; Be who you wanna be. Yeah, it sucks that your family is not there, your blood family, but people don’t have to be blood-related to be family…They don’t have to rely on their mom or their dad or their siblings. I learned that the hard way; that family doesn’t mean blood. I just want people to know they can reach out.”
It is often a cliche in internet discussion that whenever disagreement arises, especially in our increasingly online world, one side will inevitably compare the other to the Nazis. This has even been prevalent enough for the coining of a term to describe it – Godwin’s law. It should be made clear then that those kids who threw food across the lunch room, who discussed beating up Ryan, or whose disposition has led to a number of students being afraid to leave their proverbial closets, aren’t nazis; they are, in fact, just kids. Their worst crime here is more one of immaturity and of ignorant youth, rather than true bigotry or malice. Typically even their most horrible offenses are done at best because they believe these things are funny, or at the absolute worst because they want to seem ideologically consistent with whatever misplaced political beliefs they have had little actual choice in adopting. This does not mean that there is no danger being created by their actions, but rather that whatever danger is present is not the specific intent of these actions. Furthermore, their actions are able to persist because most students, most people, simply don’t seem to care, or don’t want to actually intervene.
It is that still imminent danger where Ardent’s point shines the most. Near the end of her book, she writes of Eichman stating that,
“Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all. And this diligence in itself was in no way criminal; he certainly would never have murdered his superior in order to inherit his post. He merely, to put the matter colloquially, never realized what he was doing. … He was not stupid. It was sheer thoughtlessness—something by no means identical with stupidity—that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of that period.”
There is a clear parallel here. While by no means is it an even one – even at their best, the crimes committed by the nazis are still significantly more abhorrent than the current wave of LGBTQ+ targeted vitriol, especially when one considers the damage which the Nazis also did to the LGBTQ+ community which existed at the time – the root of what allows either evil to perpetuate is still largely the same. In all likelihood, most of the everyday people who regularly commit harm towards trans individuals, who harass, demean, and misgender them, likely don’t even realize what they are doing, or the actual damage they are inflicting.
If any simple lesson is to be gleaned from all the talk of nazis, harassment, charity, and suicide, it is simply this: Think before you act, and be kind to others if it means your life, you might just save theirs.
Below are a series of links for sources, further reading, and places to help out the local LGBTQ+ community if you wish.
Further Reading
Hannah Ardent’s Original New Yorker Article www.newyorker.com/magazine/1963/02/16/eichmann-in-jerusalem-i
Eichmann In Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil – https://www.amazon.com/Eichmann-Jerusalem-Banality-Penguin-Classics/dp/0143039881
Information about Gender Dysphoria and Trans Issues – https://genderdysphoria.fyi/en
Local LGBTQ+ support
Blair’s GoFundMe – https://gofund.me/97fa9c72
American Association For Suicide Prevention – https://afsp.org/
The Trevor Project – https://www.thetrevorproject.org/
Additional Information Sources
https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/National-LGBT-Poverty-Oct-2019.pdf
https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/142/4/e20174218/76767
https://freedomforallamericans.org/legislative-tracker/anti-lgbtq-bills/