A woman who calls herself “Patriot Barbie” dressed up as a cat and went to a school board meeting in a bizarre attempt to humiliate a transgender teacher.
“I am a cat,” Lindsey Graham – not the U.S. senator but the conservative host of the podcast Patriot Barbie – said at a Liberty Elementary School District meeting in Arizona, while licking her hand.
“Meow meow,” she added with ennui.
“I’m not a woman dressed as a cat, but I am a cat,” she continued. “By show of hands, I’m curious, how many of you believe and confess that I’m a cat?”
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“Great,” she said without looking around.
Graham was interviewed on Fox News – still in her cat costume, complete with face paint and a nose ring – and said that she was upset that one of the teachers at the school is transgender, and this was her way of fighting the “woke agenda.” She did not specify whether she actually has kids at that school or in the teacher’s class or if she just decided to harass the teacher for fun.
“Not only does he appear in front of the children and insist that the children, you know, define him as a woman, but he sits on the board and he’s making decisions for these children,” Graham said, misgendering the teacher.
Throughout this past year, conservatives and Republican elected officials have raged at the idea that children are now identifying as cats in schools and demanding litterboxes in school restrooms. Schools have been forced to respond to angry local residents who believe, despite the lack of evidence, that kids are defecating in litterboxes in schools.
While the origins of this urban legend are deep, it has often come up in the context of discussions of transgender kids in schools. Like Graham, the point they are trying to make is that if someone can live authentically as their own gender instead of one imposed on them by others, then what’s stopping people from identifying as animals? The fact that the latter just isn’t happening doesn’t appear to stop them from arguing against it.
“Obviously, you can’t just identify as whatever you want,” Graham said on Fox News. “You can’t demand that others identify you as whatever you want.”
