All the perfect parents

Are coming out to comment

Riley Dowell, the 23-year old daughter of minority whip Rep. Katherine Clark, of Massachusetts, was arrested by Boston police on Saturday at a street protest. Clark announced it in a tweet:

From local news reports, it appears that Dowell joined a group of protesters and allegedly spray-painted:

"NO COP CITY" and "ACAB," which is an anti-police acronym, onto the monument. When officers were arresting Dowell, police said that a group of around 20 protestors began to surround officers, "while screaming profanities though megaphones on the public street causing traffic to come to a standstill."

Another 27-year old woman was also arrested after the incident, and faces similar charges of assault by means of a dangerous weapon, destruction or injury of personal property and damage of property by graffiti/tagging.

From her LinkedIn page, Dowell is a jazz musician who has worked in the food service industry. She appeared in court Monday and pled not guilty. As Rep. Clark said, the courts will decide this case, but if you’ve ever been a parent, you can maybe appreciate the shit-storm of a Greek chorus — all perfect parents, one should suppose — who had something to say about this. Now magnify that by eleventy-million because Rep. Clark is a public official, and social media is a sewer.

I won’t post the worst ones, which mostly center around the fact that Riley Dowell was assigned a male at birth, but is a woman. That seemed to really, really, REALLY bother the Perfect Parents of Twitter. And a reminder: Dowell is 23, and if @BarbLuvsAlaska — with a bought-and-paid-for Twitter blue check — thinks a mom needs to go home to bake cupcakes for her young adult, then I must reexamine everything I ever thought about Alaska parenting.

Why does this reaction piss me off so very much? Because it’s transphobic and anti-woman, that’s why. Of course the outcry would center on Dowell’s gender, and on Rep. Clark’s parenting skills — of her adult daughter — because Rep. Clark is a woman and a mother, and therefore she is vulnerable to ignorant public commentary as shown above, and she is vulnerable to that forever. I offered my services on Twitter that Rep. Clark send the haters to me because I know a lot of words. She didn’t take me up on it, which is a pity because I cleared my calendar.

Sometimes? People will surprise you with their grace and beauty. And sometimes? People are assholes.