“The degree of liberty or tyranny in any government is in large degree a reflection of the relative determination of the subjects to be free and their willingness and ability to resist efforts to enslave them.”
― Gene Sharp, From Dictatorship to Democracy
Category Archives: Blogs
Drinking Ourselves to Death: Alcoholism and the Queer Community
“I drink out of desperation. Life is too dreary to endure. The misery, loneliness, crampedness — they’re heartbreaking.[…] What feelings do you suppose a man has when he realizes that he will never know happiness or glory as long as he lives? Hard work. All that amounts to is food for the wild beasts of hunger.”
― Osamu Dazai, The Setting Sun
Pride Flags and Black Eyes: Intimate Partner Violence in Queer Relationships
“No amount of logic can usually move a battered woman, so persuasion requires emotional leverage, not statistics or moral arguments. . . .I have seen their fear and resistance firsthand . . . I believe it is critical for a woman to view staying as a choice, for only then can leaving be viewed as a choice and an option.”
― Gavin de Becker, The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence
Hiding in Plain Sight: What We Have Missed About State-Sponsored Homophobia
“By Hays’ reasoning, penetrating a rectum with a penis is a violation of how God meant humans to function. However, penetrating a human body with a sword, a common way to kill people in biblical times, is acceptable. Apparently human bodies were designed to be penetrated by metal implements, but not by flesh.”
― Hector Avalos
Justice Denied: Steven Kabuye Remains Committed to Human Rights Fight Months After Horrific Attack
“The attack on Kabuye goes against human rights. Every person deserves respect, dignity, and safety, no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation. This is non-negotiable. We cannot compromise on protecting the rights and freedoms of each individual.” – Kenya Human Rights Commission
“Like You’re Praying”: The Art of Humiliation and History of Forced Anal Exams
“I want the exams stopped, the practice discredited, the awards and certificates stripped from the doctors’ walls, the practitioners to lose their reputations for dispassionate expertise and sample a small measure of the humiliation they have inflicted on countless men. The doctors who do this must be recognized as torturers.” – Scott Long – When Doctors Torture: The Anus and the State in Egypt and Beyond
Femicide and Homophobia in Kenya: Women and Intersectional Struggles with galck+
“We have an abundance of rape and violence against women in this country and on this Earth, though it’s almost never treated as a civil rights or human rights issue, or a crisis, or even a pattern. Violence doesn’t have a race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Men Explain Things to Me
Entrapment: Middle East and North Africa No Safe Place for LGBT Online Dating
“The idea of a licentious West that many Arabs hold today closely mirrors the view that Europeans had of the Middle East a couple of centuries or more ago.”
― Brian Whitaker, Unspeakable Love: Gay and Lesbian Life in the Middle East
Double-Edged Sword: How Homophobia and Violence Against Women Coexist
“Truth: Rape does indeed happen between girlfriend and boyfriend, husband and wife. Men who force their girlfriends or wives into having sex are committing rape, period. The laws are blurry, and in some countries marital rape is legal. But it still is rape.”
― Patti Feuereisen, Invisible Girls: The Truth About Sexual Abuse–A Book for Teen Girls, Young Women, and Everyone Who Cares About Them
There Is No Safe Space for Women and Absolutely No Safe Space for Gay Women
“Beauty provokes harassment, the law says, but it looks through men’s eyes when deciding what provokes it.”
― Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth
I Ain’t Reading All That; I’m Happy For U Tho, or Sorry That Happened
“Doomscrolling is nothing new, people used to do the same with tv remote, switching channel after channel, rarely settling on any one program. And heads buried in social media news feed is nothing new either – before smartphone and internet heads used to be buried in actual physical newspapers. Only the means have changed, not the habit. This is not advancement, it’s recurring derangement. I’ll call it progress when you put down your phone or remote and actually listen to another person. Sure, phones can be a supplement to organic conversation, but never a replacement.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Rowdy Scientist: Handbook of Humanitarian Science
Profile in Courage: Let’s Walk Uganda Founder Champions Queer Ugandans’ Rights
The high number of Ugandan asylum seekers citing sexual orientation as grounds for seeking asylum reflects the harsh reality faced by LGBTQ+ individuals in Uganda. The Ugandan government’s history of persecution and discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community has forced many to flee in search of safety and acceptance.- Edward Mutebi, Founder of Let’s Walk Uganda
Caribbean Focus: Living in Jamaica as a Young, Queer Man
“By Hays’ reasoning, penetrating a rectum with a penis is a violation of how God meant humans to function. However, penetrating a human body with a sword, a common way to kill people in biblical times, is acceptable. Apparently human bodies were designed to be penetrated by metal implements, but not by flesh.”
― Hector Avalos
Permanent Recession: Homophobia’s Hefty Economic Pricetag
If government statistical agencies and economists saw a 1
percent drop in a country’s economic activity that lasted for a while, they
would eventually call it a recession. So in a sense, homophobia and
transphobia puts economies in a permanent recession, with economic output
below what the people of a country could produce.
– M.V. Lee Badgett- The Economic Case for LGBT Equality – Why Fair and Equal Treatment Benefits Us All
No Laughing Matter: Zambia’s Anti-LGBT Campaign Takes Serious Turn
“As is often the case, an individual who has been racially oppressed may be blind that the same mechanisms of exclusion and denigration are at work in gender oppression.”
― Chantal Zabus
Hateful East Africa: Burundi President Joins Regional Leaders to Declare War on LGBTQIA+
“In the society of humans, what is normal and what is not, is defined by not the reality or the truth whatsoever. It is defined by the society’s innate knacks and beliefs.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Either Civilized or Phobic: A Treatise on Homosexuality
No Safe Harbor: UK’s Rwanda Asylum Plan a Danger to LGBTQIA+ Migrants
“If I say that I’m educated and was jobless in Dhaka, that I want to work here, build myself a healthy, beautiful life, the kind of life that everyone dreams of, they’d just throw me out of the country. Political asylum they may just allow, but economical asylum – never!”
― Taslima Nasrin, French Lover
Violent Wakeup Call: Brutal Transphobic Attack Highlights Vulnerability of LGBTQIA+ People in Namibia
“There are few things more dangerous to a transgender woman than the risk of a straight man not totally comfortable in his sexuality or masculinity realizing he is attracted to her.”
― Sarah McBride, Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality
Ugandan Human Rights Activist Suffers Horrific Homophobic Attack
“As we wait for the Bill to come into force, . Amnesty International urges the international community to urgently put pressure on the Ugandan government to protect the rights of LGBTI persons in the country. We stand in solidarity with Ugandan LGBTI communities, and all Ugandans affected by this hateful legislation.”- Flavia Mwangovya, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director
Impasse: Ghana’s First Cardinal and Bishop’s Conference Break on LGBTQIA+ Rights
“Lesbian affairs were virtually universal among unmarried Akan women, sometimes continuing after marriage. Whenever possible, the women purchased extra-large beds to accommodate group sex sessions involving perhaps half-a-dozen women” – David Greenberg -Professor and Historian
Piquing Duck 