We Put One of Our Writers in a Room with Black Mold to Watch Them Become Transphobic

So, what a summer, huh? I was too busy bratting it up to watch the Olympics, but apparently it was quite a controversial event, and not just for the usual steroids-related reasons. This year, a stir was caused by everyone’s least favorite girlboss, J.K. Rowling, who emerged from her haunted cavern to attack a female boxer on Twitter for being transgender.

Ignoring the fact that the boxer was not transgender, the most damning thing about this situation, to me, was that people were bringing back an older article to seemingly explain away Rowling’s horrible transphobia. Said article, about Rowling’s walls growing black mold, was being shared around this time with captions like, “No wonder she’s such a hateful, misinformed bitch. Her brain’s probably molding away as we speak!”

While I do have some issues with people making excuses, even jokingly, for Rowling’s actions, it did get me to start thinking. Are these jokes purely being made to explain away systemic discrimination influencing discussions of sex and gender, or is it really just because she forgot to get her house inspected?

In order to test the validity of the claim, I forcefully volunteered one of my coworkers to perform an experiment for me. He was resistant to the idea at first, but after I knocked him out with a baseball bat, he was much more willing to go where I wanted. My second order of business was to find a location with the proper amount of black mold to effectively infect his mind with. I had a lot of on-campus options, to be sure, but in the end, I decided to go with the damp storage unit I had rented over the summer for seventy-five dollars.

Although my plastic bags of wet clothes had been the birthing ground for the mold, it had spread to the other bags and crawled its way up the walls. At this point, you could barely see the walls past all the mold. I made sure to leave some food for my coworker, seeing as how the storage unit would be acting as his home for the foreseeable future. For optimal results, I made sure there was also mold on the food too. You can never be too thorough!

Over the next week, I monitored my coworker’s actions to see how the mold was impacting him. The first couple days were kind of boring, he mainly just whimpered and dry heaved. A bit more happened on the third day when he realized the bread he was eating was moldy, so he tried to throw it up. It didn’t end up working, which meant that I didn’t have to clean it up later! I didn’t appreciate him pissing on my couch, though. By the third time he tried to peel away the deteriorating walls to get out, I decided I might as well check his process.

“Hello, [NAME WITHHELD AT THIS TIME], how is your brain feeling?” I asked him over a loudspeaker.

“Please, I’m suffocating in here! Let me out, I’ll do anything!”

“Have you noticed any new changes in your worldviews? Do you dislike certain people that you were once tolerant of?”

“I hate you now, does that count?”

“I’m cis, so no. How about Caitlyn Jenner? How does she make you feel?"

“You mean the basketball player? She doesn’t even go to this school anymore!”

“Just be honest with me, here. How do you feel about the transgender community?”

He paused, looking a little confused, then replied, “Didn’t you know? I think they’re spawns of Satan. I always have, and nothing about the past week has changed that for me.”

Hmm. I probably should’ve checked that the person I abducted wasn’t already transphobic. That might conflict with the data somewhat. Should I keep him in the unit for longer to see if it makes him accepting? Would chopping off his balls change anything? As of now, I’ve decided to leave him in the storage unit until I know what to do with him. I’m not going to waste anymore food on him in the meantime, but I might go and recover my clothes and my couch. 

By the way, does anyone know what kind of detergent removes black mold and piss stains? I’m asking for a friend.