Exhibitionists Pretend to be Activists, Strip at School Board Meeting
There’s been a troublesome spate of weirdos dropping trou at school board meetings to own trans people… somehow.
Humor by Aly Gibbs
Maine has been a hotbed of anti-trans activity this year, starting when President Trump tried to starve the kids of impoverished families in the state because Governor Janet Mills told him she wouldn’t capitulate to his demands to ban trans girls from school sports. In spite of Mills’ support for trans kids in Maine, conservative state lawmakers have tried to enforce Trump’s will without a ton of success.
Now the people are getting involved and making their voices heard. Or, well, one guy is doing a lot of talking, and his friends are engaging in a little good old fashioned kink at a school board meeting.
The guy doing the talking is Nicholas Blanchard, an Augusta man who made Fox News headlines back in April when he spoke out against Maine’s current Title IX interpretation (starting at around 46:35), was told he couldn’t speak at the meeting because he wouldn’t stop trying to talk shit about school board members, and then stormed away from the podium while declaring, “It’s like communist China in here.”
An astute geopolitical observation from a man shaking with rage in a MAGA hat.
While speaking at an Augusta school board meeting last Wednesday, Blanchard (who apparently goes by Corn Pop, pursuant to the “everybody’s 12” theory of American politics), had his buddies, two women and one man, get up and start taking their clothes off to prove some sort of point about transgender people. When I figure out what that point is, I will update this article to reflect it. Please check back daily.
“You feel uncomfortable? Because that’s what these young girls feel like when a boy walks into the locker room and starts undressing around them,” Blanchard urged in the over the top tenor of an unhinged school bully. “You feel uncomfortable, right?”
Well yeah, man, most people don’t want to see strangers get half-naked in an environment where that half-nakedness is generally considered inappropriate. If a man in scrubs hustled towards me carrying a scalpel in the middle of the supermarket, I’d be frightened and probably try to run away. When things happen differently and in different scenarios, my reaction to them is different. I think that’s pretty typical.
“This is Maine’s capital. We should set an example for the rest of the state,” Blanchard raved maniacally. “Know what example you all are setting? That you don’t care about girls in this state. You guys only care about politics.”
I think that’s a pretty funny remark, considering what Blanchard wants the school board to do is inherently and obscenely political. Consider that the 1971 Maine Human Rights Act was amended to include protections for gender identity way back in 2005, long before the current onslaught of anti-trans activism created and promulgated by wealthy conservatives funding unscientific organizations with dark money. To obey Trump’s Executive Order regarding trans kids’ participation in school sports, Augusta school districts would be violating state law. Blanchard wants to politicize young trans people’s bodies in a way that is gross and offensive to protect theoretical girls who are at no risk of harm.
The whole affair reminds me of a Moms for Liberty activist who began stripping at a California school board meeting last month for essentially the same reason, and it makes me wonder whether or not the hate group is in touch with Blanchard and feeding him ideas, or if he’s just an uninspired copycat.
Either way, here’s my stance: While I’m as sex positive and pro-kink as the next queer gal, I do think that you should practice your exhibition kink with an informed and consenting audience. This sort of nonconsensual public play is inappropriate and unwarranted, and I simply cannot support it.
Aly Gibbs (She/They) is a trans writer who reports on news important to the queer community.
