Edmund ford Sr. – Memphis Flyer

As reported last week by Erik Schelzig of The Tennessee Journal and the On the Hill news blog, the General Assembly’s Democrats are gamely offering their version of a fair and balanced redistricting map for Tennessee’s nine congressional districts.

“This map proposal is a reflection of real people and the concerns that are shared by underserved communities across the state,” said state Rep. Karen Camper, the leader of the Democratic minority in the state House. “We look forward to presenting their ideas and policy priorities to the General Assembly.”

The map attempts to make minimal changes in the state’s current political topography. Although Middle Tennessee’s rampant population growth is accounted for by routing several of Nashville’s fastest-growing suburbs into a reconstructed 4th Congressional District, the state capital itself would remain intact and whole, as at present, within lines that would continue its status as one of the state’s two dependably Democratic districts — the other, of course, being the 9th Congressional District, which now encapsulates most of Memphis. In the Democrats’ recommended version, the 9th would include all of the city plus Bartlett.

Shelby County’s other suburban municipalities — Germantown, Collierville, Lakeland, Arlington, and Millington — would be included in an expanded 8th Congressional District that would stretch from the Tennessee River to the Mississippi River. Millington’s inclusion in this hypothetical 8th District would remove it from its current coupling with Memphis in the 9th.

Of course, it is the legislature’s Republicans, a supermajority, who will determine the final outlines of Tennessee’s congressional districts, regardless of what Democrats or the Assembly’s nominally bipartisan advisory committee should advise.

And, while the 9th District could hardly be anything but Memphis-centric and majority-Democratic, the state’s demographic contours being what they are, it is otherwise with the status of Nashville. The city is not only Democratic in its history and voting habits; it is probably the most focused Democratic area in Tennessee, an irony, given the frequent use of “Nashville” as a synecdoche denoting the ultra-right doings of the predominantly rural legislators who control the actions of the General Assembly, which meets there.

And such word, as has come from legislative Republicans, indicates that the final redistricting of Middle Tennessee will slice and dice the capital city and its environs into an assortment of gerrymandered districts that would give Republicans good chances of winning all of them.

And, the good intentions of the Democrats’ redistricting proposal notwithstanding, such an outcome would make Memphis’ 9th District a last, lone Democratic preserve in a solid red Republican state.

• Last week’s verbal mistreatment of two county government emissaries by City Councilman Edmund Ford Sr. was essentially a spin-off of the continuing feud between firebrand County Commissioner Edmund Ford Jr. and County Mayor Lee Harris. The feud continues despite valiant efforts by Commissioner Van Turner and others to arrange a truce.

• State Senator Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown), fighting campaign finance charges, has engaged Jerry Martin, the attorney who previously assisted former Nashville Mayor Megan Barry, dealing with misconduct allegations, in negotiating her resignation.

At Tuesday’s Memphis City Council meeting, city council member Edmund Ford Sr. berated Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris’ special assistant, Alex Hensley.

What prompted his ire? Hensley’s inclusion of their pronouns — she/they — in a letter calling for a ban on oil pipelines being located close to schools, churches, and parks.

“This is so irrelevant,” Ford said, as he drew attention to it on the record in a public city council meeting, mocking the inclusion and calling it “gender mess.”

Ford’s words were an assault not only against an individual public servant but against an entire marginalized group of people. While everyone uses pronouns, the push for normalizing open identification of your pronouns recognizes the diversity of gender identity. By sharing our pronouns, we indicate how we would like others to refer to us without making assumptions about our gender identity. A person’s gender identity may or may not align with the sex they were assigned at birth and may not neatly align with common understandings of masculinity or femininity. While language cannot fully capture the wide spectrum of gender identity and expression, many who fall outside of male and female categories or don’t conform to gendered expectations often use pronouns other than she or he, such as they.

To hear an elected representative use his platform as an anti-trans weapon invokes a long history of government and power using their might to oppress and erase queer people. From sodomy laws to President Ronald Reagan’s inaction on AIDS when it was prevalent in the gay community to more recent legal assaults such as the Tennessee legislature’s harmful Slate of Hate, including five anti-trans laws passed this year, the queer community has historically seen more harm at the hands of government than protection.

Ford was right about one thing he said: “We work for the people of the city of Memphis.” Council members are charged by the electorate to act in our best interest. They are in a position of power, power that comes with a responsibility to be thoughtful about how they wield that power. It is an abuse of power to target a marginalized and vulnerable group.

Mockery of pronoun transparency is a common weapon in the arsenal of culture war politics. The issues that face queer and trans people include high rates of violence, a high prevalence of adolescent suicide, and the lack of healthcare access and protections.

Yet, as a way of minimizing these legally entrenched inequalities, reactionaries have created myths about threats to youth sports, fabricated fears about parents or other trans people forcing children to transition or take hormones, and use pronouns as a scare tactic to undermine the serious project of trans liberation.

As a Black man, Ford is unquestionably subject to systemic discrimination and individual bigotry himself. Yet as a member of a multi-generation political family, he’s benefited from the status quo. He can choose to denigrate trans people and further entrench the status quo and unjust systems, or fight them. His mockery of pronoun inclusion does not reflect any inconvenience or oppression but serves to consolidate power behind transphobia.

As someone who uses he/they pronouns, I can attest to the erosion of your mental and psychological health when others repeatedly refuse to acknowledge your humanity by simply using your correct pronoun.

I also know what it is to be pigeonholed in your identity, as if all of your accomplishments and passions are secondary to your outsider status as a queer person.

Hensley did not ask to have gender identity — theirs or anyone’s — mocked at a council meeting. They were there as a county government representative and advocate for safe communities.

Instead, Ford’s comments remind all queer and trans people that our competence and access to a space can be questioned at any time and in any context, using the shorthand language of anti-trans or anti-gay culture war politics.

At a time when we trans people are under attack statewide and nationwide, we could use the support of those in power. Yet only George Boyington, who works in the Shelby County property assessor’s office, came to Hensley’s defense, only to endure verbal abuse from Ford, too. Not one council member, progressive or otherwise, challenged Ford. This is reminiscent of the lack of opposition by many local Democratic state legislators in the face of the anti-trans docket, which caused an outcry from the LGBTQ caucus.

When queer Memphians see a pattern of those we elect refusing to take a stand for us, we are definitionally unrepresented. Those who consider themselves supporters of equal rights for all, regardless of gender identity or expression, must speak up when they see these abuses of power — whether by their council colleague or in institutions that perpetuate the idea that civil rights and protections do not extend to those who express their gender and normalize gender difference.

Memphis must raise our standards about who we allow to represent us. If elected officials are serious about representing all of their constituents, including the LGBTQ community, they must treat us with respect, understand our identities aren’t pawns in the culture war, and speak up for our legal and social protections.

Trans, nonbinary, and queer people deserve better, and the people of Memphis deserve better.

J. Dylan Sandifer (he/they) is a writer and human rights advocate.
This story first appeared in MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, a nonprofit Memphis newsroom focused on poverty, power, and public policy.