OK Tasks Stochastic Terrorist With Censoring Children’s Education
Chaya Raichik, the lady with a social media account repeatedly linked to bomb threats to children’s schools and hospitals, is being tapped by the state of Oklahoma for their book banning committee.
by Alyssa Steinsiek
Between my weekly column and the Trans Data Library, I’ve written quite a lot about vile transphobic stochastic terrorist Chaya Raichik. If you’re trans or you keep up with news about trans people, there’s no way you haven’t heard about Raichik and the high precision weapon she uses to harm queer people, her Twitter (formerly known as X) account, ‘Libs of TikTok.’
There’s just so much I can say about Libs of TikTok, but the bottom line is this: For years now, Raichik has used her social media account—funded by millionaire conservative and owner of sad, unfunny right-wing satire website Babylon Bee, Seth Michael Dillon—to incite the violent harassment of children’s hospitals and schools who in any way associate with gay or trans people.
It cannot be overstated, Chaya Raichik is a serious threat to innocent queer people. It is, frankly, a miracle nobody has died to terrorism inspired by her behavior, but an unbelievable amount of harm and trauma can be traced right back to her flippant bigotry and single-minded hatred of LGBTQ+ people.
And she’s just been put in charge of what books kids in Oklahoma are allowed to read. Specifically, she’s been appointed to serve on the Education Department’s Library Media Advisory Committee.
In a better world, we might be shocked by this. Raichik has no training as an educator, she’s never worked with children, and she doesn’t even live in Oklahoma. Not to mention, oh yeah, she has directly placed Oklahoman children in harm’s way before by inciting bomb threats against Tulsa schools!
But if you know anything about the man who appointed her, Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters, none of this should surprise you.
Back in September, Walters announced a partnership between Oklahoma schools and Prager University, a media group who are in absolutely no way a university. PragerU are climate deniers, they are horrific racists, they are transphobes, and their goal is indoctrination rather than education. The founder of PragerU, Dennis Prager, once said that “the acceptance of homosexuality” signified “the decline of Western civilization.” In response to the first Muslim elected to congress deciding to swear upon a Quran, Dennis Prager said that “America is interested in only one book: the Bible,” despite himself being a Jew.
As a Jewish girl myself, I don’t love throwing around the phrase ‘bad Jew,’ but I feel comfortable saying that any Jew working with conservative evangelical Christians to promote the most intense bigotry you’ve ever seen in your life is not doing a great job at the whole Judaism thing.
Food for thought, Dennis.
We already know that Raichik is a big fan of banning books whose content she disagrees with, and 2022 was a big year for banning books in public schools, thanks to conservative anti-LGBTQ+ political organization Moms for Liberty. The group engaged in an organized nationwide campaign to ban as many LGBTQ+ books as possible, which they described as “pornographic,” in many cases for simply featuring any discussion of queerness whatsoever.
Mind you, Moms for Liberty has had their own sex-related scandals, involving accusations of sexual assault and working with a pastor who sexually abused a 14-year-old boy.
I’m starting to think these people can’t be trusted to have children’s best interests at heart.
Oklahoma itself has become a neverending font of transphobia, of late, rolling out a series of laws aggressively targeting Oklahoman trans youth as part of a reactionary culture war that’s forced Oklahoma families, like families in many other red states, to uproot their entire lives. Chaya Raichik, through Libs of TikTok, has become a large part of that war, and there’s no reason to think she won’t abuse her new position to harm yet more kids who don’t conform in the way she wants them to.
Chaya Raichik is dangerous, both to trans and gay kids, and to anybody who loves and supports them. I am so very scared for the families who can’t afford to flee a state whose elected officials desperately want them to believe that they are hated and unwelcome.
Alyssa Steinsiek is a professional writer and video games nerd who hails from Appalachia but lives, laughs, loves in Rapid City.