As I Lay Dying: School Shootings in (my) time of cholera
N.S.F.S. is back from the beyond with cautionary tales, blind fury at lawmakers, & a lot of the antibiotic cipro.
In this post: I talk about the reasons holding me back from releasing new content featuring a mini guest-post by Abs Wilson.
Last week: As a lesbian, I don't need to worry about getting knocked up at the wrong time and place but I am still furious.
Next week: I wrote about school shooters and toxic masculinity and I think this topic deserves further examination from all of us.
Check out the NSFS archive (now housed on my website) + Next issue of N.S.F.S. will be hosted by Substack (if you can't beat em, join em)
Hi folks,
Thanks for bearing with us as N.S.F.S. went on a somewhat not-scheduled hiatus. I have grand visions of posts about the horrid news stream of Don't Say Gay shenanigans, school shooters and their republican sponsors, and excerpts from that book about anti-racism in education that I've been twerkin' on for a year or so in store for y'all this summer.
In-between leaving Brooklyn at the end of April (but for real, the rent hikes y'all) and landing in our new home of Chicago this June (House is a feeling), my girlfriend and I decided to spend a month in Mexico City on a work-cation. It seemed like the perfect place to combat my hard-won and ever-encroaching burnout, until, that is, Montezuma's Revenge struck (traveler's diarrhea).
To make a long, bed-ridden story short, it took two different week-long rounds of antibiotics to "cure" us, multiple trips across town to a doctor who spoke English because my crusty-ass AP Spanish wasn't doing us any favors, and a lot of misery. In fact, there were moments when I was sure the cure was worse than the disease.
I was so ill that I even live-streamed the shit-show of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard's trial, with a fever-induced idea to write a spoof of it titled the Diarrhea Diaries. As someone who has had zero control over my bowels for about a month, I still managed not to shit the bed or start a men's rights movement based on a crazed alcoholic pirate. So despite the fact that I managed to see approximately nothing off my "must see" list in Mexico City, I'm gonna mark May as a win for me.
I've been unable to write anything articulate about either the school shootings or the Don't Say Gay shenanigans (though I did speak at a lovely panel last week about how to be a better ally to the LGBTQ+ community, shout out to the amazing people at Kantar for having me!).
Perhaps it's still my lingering burn-out (which is about as elusive to treat as whatever bacteria that lodged itself in my digestive track and flourished), but I am at a loss for words. Luckily for all of us, my fearless intern and co-conspirator Abs Wilson is not.
Here's what they have to say:
All the Republicans are saying that it's the individual shooter's fault, that he was mentally ill, bullied, and that's why "nothing" could be done to prevent the atrocities that continue to play out across the not-so United States.
Before you believe shitty journalism like this, the gunman, who mercilessly slaughtered 19 beautiful children as well as the teachers protecting them, was NOT bullied.
I am absolutely not discrediting the impact of bullying, it is a form of psychological terrorism that can really mess a kid up. But to say that bullying is "responsible" for 87% of all school shootings is a misdirect meant to take pressure off the NRA and its weapons of mass destruction.
There is bullying all across the world, in every classroom, no matter how excellent socio-emotional learning practices are (which Ted Cruz, in his Don't Say Gay bill also wants to ban). But there are only guns in U.S. classrooms.
An Uvalde High School student who knew the shooter came forward and denied the "he was bullied to the extreme" claim. The graduating senior, Ivan Arellano, told his local news station: “He was a boy who was not bullied… he would try to pick on people but fail, and it would aggravate him… he hurt animals. He was not a good person.”
On Tuesday morning, his mother pleaded with the media, saying “Forgive me, forgive my son, I know he had his reasons for what he did.” Are you fucking kidding me?
And that brings us to the toxic masculinity + guns of it all. Women: raise your sons as if we didn't live in a toxic patriarchal world that allows people to excuse psychopathic behavior as "having his reasons."
I am goddamn speechless.
How have you been processing (or not) the dismal education landscape of late? If you have any recommendations, let us know!
Until next time,
Allison + Abs
Similar posts about how the world is in flames and it’s the fault of Generic White Men (GWM):
I come by my disdain honestly in a long tradition of southern writers who remain obsessed with the uneasy cultural quagmire of postbellum southern history.