“An Automated Autopsy”  is a column that connects the sociopolitical with pop-culture and history. Clare X. Ely is putting her Letterboxd account to use. 

“Brokeback Mountain”. That’s it. That’s the punchline. Not even a day after my previous article’s release, my point was proven correct. I screamed when I saw the video on Saturday morning; Kristi Noem, current Secretary of Homeland Security and ICE raid queen, donning a full cowgirl outfit in her most recent ad for the Trump administration. She even rode a horse amongst a herd of CGI bison. 

In my previous column installment, I discussed the racial implications of Donald Trump’s promise that “Our country will be woke no longer” in relation to his new beef plan, choosing foreign farmers over Americans. Then the morning after, Kristi Noem decided to do her politically charged cowboy cosplay, so I’m here to reheat my nachos. 

According to Noems former spokesperson Brittany Comis, in response to the original gay marriage ruling, “Rep. Noem believes marriage is a space between a man and a woman”. Like other Republicans, she wears the same hat Jake Gyllenhaal wore in that “gay cowboy” movie. Now, those comments are ten years old and made well before she became Secretary of Homeland Security. But. I don’t think her viewpoint has changed, considering the actions of the Trump administration. 

The stereotypical cowboy encapsulated a traditional hyper-masculine image, the aspiration for MAGA men. This year marks the 20th anniversary of Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain”. Upon release, it was called a “mockery of the Western genre” and “morally problematic” for daring to challenge the masculinity of the cowboy. The pushback that the movie received is reminiscent of the Trump Administration’s crusade against the LGBTQ community and focuses on gender essentialism. Gender essentialism is the theory that a trait is inherently feminine or masculine, based on biological sex.  Just like the movie’s criticism, to MAGA, real life queer people are a part of a larger, woke, perverted, threat to the country. 

Transgender people especially have taken the brunt of the Trump administration’s mission against “wokeness”. Not a year in office and  124 anti-trans bills have already passed. MAGA has made its definitions of gender strictly binary, based entirely on biology. Anyone who falls out of that is “cancer,” apparently. 

Conveniently, MAGA does not acknowledge the existence of Intersex people. Conflating gender by biological sex is incorrect as gender itself refers to social and cultural surroundings based on biological sex, but not containing to biological sex. This is concerning, considering The White House website reads, “The Attorney General shall issue guidance to ensure the freedom to express the binary nature of sex”. The wording is extremely vague; Hypothetically, anything considered outside the gender exception is subject to persecution. At the most extreme, this could be interpreted as outlawing women in pants and men who have a pink tie. Obviously comical examples, however, laws following this principle are already passing.

The transgender bathroom bans, in practice, imply all women must present as feminine to be accepted as “real women.” Texas Governor Greg Abbott, calls his bans “a common sense public safety issue”. MAGA claims they are protecting cisgender women by surveilling their bathroom, but how would that be enforced? Would they check genitalia, or would they stop any women, regardless of sex, that they deem “masculine”? 

This can be further seen in MAGA bans on drag too. MAGA’s definition of drag itself is overly simplified and untrue: to MAGA it’s cisgender gay men dressing as women. By using MAGA’s definition of drag, MAGA sees men not conforming to traditional standards of masculinity as inherently perverse. Arizona Republicans, in an official joint statement, describe it “complete and utter perversion”. Former Texas Representative Bryan Slater commented, “perverted adults are obsessed with sexualizing young children”. Of course, this was right before he was formally expelled from the Texas House for having sex with a drunk teenage girl on his staff. These MAGA complaints perfectly mirror those of the “Brokeback Mountain” reviews. 

The cisgender male director of Evangelical Right-Wing lobbying group Concerned Women for America, Robert Knight, called it a  “lowdown attack on morality”. In “Brokeback Mountain’s case, unlike the drag queens, Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar are stereotypically masculine men and textbook cowboys: they shoot elk, chop wood, drive tractors, ride horses, drink, physically fight people, and rarely express their emotions. Still, Gene Shalit’s review on “The Today Show” called Jack a “sexual predator”. 

It’s not just this movie either. When another queer western, “Power of the Dog” came out in 2021 people said the same thing.  Even if these fictional cowboys match up to stereotypical gender presentation, there’s one key problem to detractors: they’re still gay. Gender essentialism at its core is reliant on the nuclear family structure. Many queer people have nuclear family-like structures like any other couple. However, due to the heteronormative standard, they are not considered nuclear, no matter how many children they have. Because the LGBTQ do not fall into that standard, they are seen as incompatible with traditional masculinity or femininity. That’s how you get arbitrary reviews of “Brokeback Mountain” concerned with its assumed perverse lack of masculinity. 

This idea is also how you get last month’s quote from Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson in reference to Netflix’s new queer military show “Boots”: “We will not compromise our standards to satisfy an ideological agenda, unlike Netflix whose leadership consistently produces and feeds woke garbage to their audience and children.”

Homophobes and MAGA alike are using fear as justification against the LGBTQ community. They are making up hypothetical victims for the queer people that they are actively making laws against. This makes Shalit’s comment about Jack Twist even more funny because if anyone in that movie had to be considered predatory, it would be Ennis, who dates a fresh out of high school woman (though, Bryan Slater would approve). All of this misdirected fear has accumulated into the horrible gendered world that we are all stuck in. Now, people who perpetuate these fears are in office with 616 Anti-LGBT Bills. Do you know how bad it has to be to have an active tracker? 

Trump’s well documented misogyny plays a part in this too. I genuinely think it is impossible to be homophobic and transphobic without being misogynistic, as misogyny requires you to base your beliefs on gendered structures. If MAGA cared about sexual violence, why did it take so long to release the Epstien files? If MAGA cared about the family structure, why are they ripping apart brown families? If MAGA cared about women, why are they prolife? The reason I think MAGA cares so much about gender essentialism is its an extremely effective control tactic. It forces people to conform to traditional gender expectations out of fear. By framing the “other” as a perverted threat, you are keeping everyone else in line. For what happens to the “others,” good luck because Trump has removed the LGBTQ specific services on the nation’s 988 suicide hotline. 

For more information about the Trump administration’s anti-trans legislation, please read Jasper Benson’s “Trump’s New Anti-Trans Policies Spread Fear and Danger to Trans Community” and “So-Called ‘Gender Radicalization’ Bans are Getting Out of Hand”. For more on the control aspect, read please read Abigail Carsner’s “The American Dream is on the Verge of Becoming a Fascist Nightmare.”  

The Trump administration has been committed to terrorizing LGBTQ individuals. Like all things it deems “woke,” they are trying to remove it from our schools. His executive order even wants to persecute teachers who dare to support or accept their students’ identities. It’s sad that our school’s “I’m here badge” needs to exist. This administration has made love and living hostile, but cowering in fear is what empowers it. So do as I do: wipe your “liberal snowflake” tears, and be the cowboy.