Publisher drops children's illustrator for anti-trans notes
Source: Associated Press
Publisher drops children’s illustrator for anti-trans notes
By MARK THIESSEN and BECKY BOHRER
April 5, 2023
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — A children’s book illustrator from Alaska known for drawing mother-baby animal pairs like sea otters and wolves was dropped by his publisher this week after authorities allege he posted transphobic notes threatening children.
Mitchell Thomas Watley, 47, will have a preliminary hearing April 11 in Juneau on a single count of terroristic threatening for allegedly placing notes in businesses that included an assault rifle superimposed over the transgender flag. The text on the notes read: “Feeling Cute Might Shoot Some Children.”
The notes were found during a period of heightened rhetoric and laws targeting transgender people across the country and came just days after a shooting at a Christian school in Nashville that left six dead. Social media accounts and other sources indicate that the shooter identified as a man; police said the shooter “was assigned female at birth” but used male pronouns on a social media profile.
After the Nashville shooting, a false and baseless online narrative emerged that claimed there’s been a rise in transgender or nonbinary mass shooters in recent years. Some pundits and political influencers on social media went further, falsely suggesting that movements for trans rights are radicalizing activists into terrorists.
-snip-
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/alaska-transgender-threats-mitchell-watley-9306e7e85c9f432e7bd2c79c13498c15