The Golden Days Walrus Is Bigger Than the Chamber of Commerce

By Zeke Shomler

The Golden Days Parade was lovely this year… mostly. The Best Political Float prize, awarded by the Chamber of Commerce, put a nasty taste in my mouth, and I’m not alone. To some, school board candidate Michael Humphrey’s blow-up walrus may have just seemed like a fun Alaskan animal, or even a joke about Humphrey’s own mustache, but the sign indicating its name was “Johnny” made the float take on an entirely different meaning.

The float was created as a reference to Johnny the Walrus, a picture book written by The Daily Wire columnist Matt Walsh. Purportedly a children’s book, it features a boy who imagines himself to be a walrus being forced by his mother (who is coaxed by “internet people”) to eat worms and visit a doctor with a saw ready to turn his hands into fins. Clearly targeting transgender children, the book perpetuates a very common, dehumanizing form of transphobia: comparing a gender transition to changing species. Walsh has gone on record comparing gender-affirming healthcare to “mutilation” and “pedophilia,” and proudly proclaims himself to be a “theocratic fascist” in his Twitter bio.

Humphrey himself was very clear about the float’s hateful intention: he wrote for the Daily News-Miner that “the point is to illustrate the absurdity (or if you prefer, uncertainty) of gender ideology and ensure that it does not get taught in schools. It is commonsense to say that we should not create an environment where girls must endure boys who believe they are girls in their bathrooms and in their sports.” He writes that anyone who thinks they may be transgender is “sincerely wrong”--and backs himself up by claiming it’s “the Christian view.” I’m particularly taken aback by the suggestion that the mere presence of transgender people must be “endured.” I wonder if he’d be willing to say that to my face.

That the Chamber of Commerce tacitly supported transphobic, fascist-affiliated rhetoric did not go unchallenged. Several letters to the Editor in the Daily News-Miner directly took on the float award, including one written by former UAF faculty member Dr. Sine Anahita, who wrote that “the Chamber of Commerce should acknowledge the incident with a frank and meaningful apology for awarding the prize to a float that displayed hate speech.” She also suggested that they remove the political float category moving forward.

While apparently the transphobic intentions of the parade float were not known to the judges at the time of granting it an award, the Chamber of Commerce still has not issued an apology. 

And while I hope that they do, to show Fairbanks residents that transphobic rhetoric is taken seriously and not acceptable in our community, I believe the issue is bigger than that.

I’m most concerned about the fact that a School Board candidate is seeking success in Fairbanks by punching down at transgender children and, even worse, that he has a lot of support. Though Dr. Anahita writes that the float was an attempt “to import one of the most distasteful elements of the outside culture wars into Fairbanks,” I think it’s important to view this not as rhetoric that’s necessarily foreign to Fairbanks, but as a worryingly hateful, and very real, aspect of our own community. 

It’s disappointing that at this point it looks like we won’t ever get an apology from the Chamber of Commerce–but beyond a statement from one institution, I want a Fairbanks where we don’t accept hate speech and dog-whistles as normal. Somebody who calls transphobia “common sense,” and who demonstrates an appalling inability to maintain the separation of church and state, should not be a serious school board candidate--not only because his candidacy is directly dangerous to transgender children (not to mention the ways anti-trans rhetoric can harm cisgender children as well), but also because it harms all of us when this kind of intolerance goes unchecked. 

I believe that the walrus float is representative of a kind of hatred that should not be acceptable in Fairbanks, one that is bigger than just a single float. During the same parade, a gay colleague marching with PFLAG attempted to give a handful of candy to a parade-going child–and their mother said they weren’t allowed to accept it. Under the guise of “protecting children,” we’re allowing the dehumanization of the LGBT+ community to go unchecked. 

It’s not just about the walrus. It’s about making Fairbanks a safe place for members of the LGBT community. I’m less concerned about one idiotic man running for school board, and more concerned about all the people who may feel empowered by his campaign to be openly hateful. 

I don’t think Humphrey and Johnny the Walrus are representative of Fairbanks as a whole–but we can’t ignore the influence of transphobia in our community. What does it mean when somebody runs a successful campaign by vilifying transgender children? 

While UAF itself is (mostly) welcoming and comfortable, Fairbanks still has a lot of growing to do.

As a final note: if you support the parade float, I hope you take a long look at your own beliefs and really ask yourself why. Is it because you really believe that every transgender child is a danger to their peers? Or have you fallen into the trap of scapegoatism?

Look, I get it: when the world is as messed up as it is, it feels good to point at one group and proclaim that they’re the cause of all our problems. When you point at transgender people and call them dangerous, it feels like you’re getting somewhere, that you have actionable steps to make the community better. But I promise that any danger to the Fairbanks community is not coming from transgender children or the teachers who provide a safe place for them. The real problem is with hatred–and that’s something that can only be solved by looking at oneself, and finding compassion there.

The walrus was a stain on my summer, but I’m going to keep proudly being my transgender self. I hope Fairbanks will be able to grow to accept me, because I’m not going anywhere just yet.