We warned you that Arianna Laureano is unstable. We said he was a chaos agent and a threat to your gender critical organizing. We are now vindicated by the actions of Mr. Laureano, for he has brought disrepute to an important gender critical action with his poor impulse control. He is exactly what we said he is. He proved it himself.
A group of people, mostly women, attended a Portland Thorns FC game on Friday wearing XX-XY Athletics shirts and sat together in a section where another group of team fans regularly wave transgender flags. Some of the women in XX-XY Athletics shirts were allegedly struck with flags and shoved over the stadium seats. Rather than remove the attackers, security removed the women who had been attacked.
Importantly, Providence Park, the home field venue for the Thorns, is a publicly-owned and operated facility that is subject to state and federal laws against viewpoint discrimination. Moreover, the facility has already established a pattern of that very conduct when it removed a group led by Amy Sousa in September. Now the Department of Justice is reportedly looking into the incident as a potential case of viewpoint discrimination.
If only Mr. Laureano had not aggressively moved towards a woman with a flag, making physical contact with her, there would be absolutely no questions about this incident. But he did do that. Today, the apologists for viewpoint discrimination are blasting video of his actions all over social media to shape public perceptions against everyone else who was with him.
In this video clip of the incident, you can hear Mr. Laureano shout that he is a “castrated gay man”, a point that he inserts into every conversation. He is very upset at being touched by a transgender flag and becomes violent, striking out at strangers. One woman, apparently journalist Brandi Kruse, even tries to hold him back, but Mr. Laureano returns to the confrontation anyway.
Laureano recorded and posted this video moments before in which he is becoming increasingly agitated with someone over their flag touching him. This is exactly the sort of behavior that segregationists used to display during civil rights events. During demonstrations and lunch counter sit-ins, hecklers and counter-protesters frequently tried to harass, insult, and otherwise provoke the participants.
This is exactly why the civil rights movement trained and prepared for actions with a strict, nonviolent discipline. It was a core element of the movement, essential to their effectiveness: Don’t hit back. Sit up straight. Face the lunch counter. If they knock you off the stool, get right back on it.
The late John Lewis recalled one confrontation at a Woolworth’s in Nashville. “They jabbed us as we passed and chided us for not fighting back. ‘What’s the matter? You chicken?’ they teased, trying to force the situation onto terms they were comfortable with — fists and fighting.”
“Hitting someone who does not hit back can last only so long”, Lewis also noted. “Fury spends itself pretty quickly when there’s no fury facing it.” The composure of the civil rights demonstrators always contrasted sharply with their antagonists, creating public sympathy for their cause.
Mr. Laureano has achieved the opposite. He has muddied the waters. Either he has no discipline or training, or else he was only paying half-attention. For when he was removed from the stadium with the rest of the participants in the Portland Thorns action, Laureano laid down at the fire exit, refusing to leave. He says he was afraid that they would be attacked in the street. We rather suspect Mr. Laureano was just trying to make up for his violence by showing us what he thinks nonviolence looks like.
Note that, while Mr. Laureano shouts about himself (“I have a right to exist in public!”), others, including apparently Ms. Kruse, ask why they are the ones being removed, or call out “Save women’s sports!” He is not behaving as a part of this group, but as a self-obsessed individual.
In this clip, which was apparently recorded either moments before or after he lay down, Mr. Laureano is highly excited. He shouts that he is “The wrong kind of gay!” He is still amped up, full of adrenaline from the confrontation. Which is the point, for him, because Arianna Laureano needs drama to feel alive.
In a video that he apparently recorded just before the event, Mr. Laureano explained why he chases thrills. “If I’m not home at my desk and I don’t have a riot or a crisis to manage, or something like that, I’m fucking bored”, he said. “I get bored so fucking easy, and then all interest is gone. It’s just malaise.” We suggest he was speaking the truth, here.
Apparently taken moments before Mr. Laureano lashed out, this video shows what ought to be the only subject of conversation about this incident. Everyone involved in the action appears to be peaceably watching the game while the flag-waving antagonists gather around them, cursing and shouting and crowding them. This is exactly the kind of behavior that lunch counter protesters were trained to ignore in 1960.
Someone also caught this video on Mr. Laureano’s Facebook page. About five days before the Portland Thorns game, he was visualizing himself punching a woman in the head hard enough to “break her fucking skull.” Now, one might argue that he was making a point about the unfairness of pitting women against men in sports, except that he says this sort of thing all the time, and clearly seems to relish the mental image.
As we explained months ago, we consider these messages to be revealing of the true, unstable character of Mr. Laureano. He is discussing his desire to ‘curb stomp’ a Jewish woman and break all of her teeth.
Perhaps the reader will recognize his imaginary scenario from the movie American History X, in which a neo-Nazi played by Edward Norton commits this exact act of violence against a Black man. The similarity might not be a coincidence, for as we noted in March, Mr. Laureano has at least one “National Socialist” alt account on the X app.
We did that reporting to let organizers in the gender critical space know what he is, so they would avoid and exclude him from sensitive activities. We wanted everyone on our side in this issue zone to have fair warning of what Arianna Laureano has done to every ‘community’ he has ever been part of. Perhaps we were too optimistic. We expected that the ‘ultras’ shouting in all caps that radical feminists should have “NO PET TROONS!” would actually live up to their words.
Instead, some of the most unexpected women have adopted Mr. Laureano as a pet transsexual. Organizers have believed his lies and fallen for the soft voice he uses when he is trying to seem innocent. It is strange that a movement which has so much discourse around autogynephilia somehow misses that this man is deep in its throes. Attention women: this man gets off on getting you to include him. It is his thrill.
Sadly, we expect to report more about Arianna Laureano. Not because we want to, but because too many people are too kind to him, too nice, too trusting. He will not stop until he has entirely disrupted gender critical organizing at every level, wherever people fail to see him for what he is.
Finally, the debate over nonviolent tactics in gender critical organizing has to change. If 50 people take part in an action, and just one of them lashes out in anger, that person will always be disproportionately ‘visible’ compared to the other 49. Some people resist a commitment to nonviolence because they fear assault, but this incident highlights exactly why it exists in the first place.
Defending yourself against a brutal assault is one thing. Letting hecklers and counter-protesters goad you into violence is quite another. Every organizer must understand the difference and explain it to everyone they organize.
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