“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
Tag Archives: LGBTQ
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
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
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
The Erdoğan Solution: Gender and Sexual Minorities Targets in Turkish Culture War Battle
Imagine being on holiday in one of the world’s most beautiful and historic countries, one that you have longed to visit for as long as you can remember. While asking for directions from police officers, you are placed under arrest. You have unwittingly stumbled into a sweep. The reason for your arrest? You look Gay!Continue reading “The Erdoğan Solution: Gender and Sexual Minorities Targets in Turkish Culture War Battle”
Living Nightmare: Former Shanghai Resident Arrested in Turkey for “Looking Gay”
As thousands take to the streets of Istanbul and Izmir in defiance, they risk facing tear gas and rubber bullets. The authorities should allow LGBTI Pride Marches in Türkiye to go ahead safely and without interference.
– Nils Muižnieks, Amnesty International’s Europe Director.
BL Chronicles: The Birth of a Genre and Intellectual Claims
“So you can like girls, but I can’t like boys? Is your love bigger than the love I give? Tell me, what’s the difference between your love and mine? Help me go to hell then.”
– Your Name Engraved Herein, Taiwan
Phobia: Spike in Confirmed Mpox Cases Risks a Repeat of COVID Period Social Panic
“Really, however, it is doubtful if this could be called a victory. All that could be said was that the disease seemed to be leaving us as unaccountably as it had come. Our strategy had not changed, but whereas yesterday it had obviously failed, today it seemed triumphant. Indeed one’s chief impression was that the epidemic had called a retreat after reaching all its objectives; it had, so to speak, achieved its purpose.”
― Albert Camus, The Plague
All Press is Good Press: Prominent Asian Public Figures and Their Impact on Queer Discourse
“In these our cowardly times, we deny the grandeur of the Universal, and assert and glorify our local Bigotries, and so we cannot agree on much. In these our degenerate times, men bent on nothing but vainglory and personal gain- hollow, bombastic men for whom nothing is off-limits if it advances their petty cause- will claim to be great leaders and benefactors, acting in the common good, and calling all who oppose them liars, envious, little people, stupid people, stiff, and, in a precise reversal of the truth, dishonest and corrupt.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Golden House
A Step Backward: What the Shariat Ruling Means for Pakistan’s Trans Community
A vicious misinformation campaign conflating the rights of transgender people with homosexuality has created a permissive
environment for the challenges to the legislation. In a bid to justify the inclusion of a medical board to “approve” of the
person’s gender , speaking to the media, 17 Mushtaq Ahmed Khan claims that a person should not be able to choose their
gender and must adhere to the gender assigned at birth.18 He went on to claim that instead, these people should seek
“psychological help” – Amnesty International
Slow Start: Japan’s Watered-down LGBTQ Understanding Bill a Step in the Right Direction
“Why do people have to be this lonely? What’s the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?”
― Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart
Brick by Brick – Scholar Dismantling Misconcemtpions about Queer China
The story of Queer Comrades brings together several interrelated issues
central to this book: community media, queer activism and an increasingly politicized queer identity, represented by the term tongzhi used in the Chinese name of the webcast. Literally ‘comrade’, tongzhi is one of the most popular terms to refer to sexual minorities in China today. Despite the numerous other terms that circulate in China, including tongxinglian (homosexual) and ku’er (queer), tongzhi is the most widely accepted term for self-identification by queer people in early 21st century China. – Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Tongzhi Activism
in Postsocialist China – Dr. Hongwei Bao
Colorsplained – The Struggle of Being Mixed-Race in China’s Queer Dating Market
“Intimacy lies in the body and the soul, in scent, in touch and taste and sound. A man whose name you don’t know can tell you a tale to move you to tears, just by filling and emptying his lungs, by moving his tongue and lips, his fingers. Even after, you might never know him.”
― Indra Das, The Devourers
In the Weeds: Finding Community in Times of Crisis
“Most people think the closet is a small room. They think you can touch the walls, touch the door, turn the handle, and walk free. But when you’re inside it, the closet is vast. No walls, no door, just empty darkness stretching the length of the world.”
― S.J. Sindu, Marriage of a Thousand Lies
Fake-cation – Tracing Illusions of Black, Queer Luxury in China
“To subject to scrutiny the mechanisms which render life painful, even untenable, is not to neutralize them; to bring to light contradictions is not to resolve them. But, as skeptical as one might be about the efficacy of the sociological message, we cannot dismiss the effect it can have by allowing sufferers to discover the possible social causes of their suffering and, thus, to be relieved of blame.”
― Pierre Bourdieu, The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society
Queer Sexual Economics: Tracing Shame and other Fun Activities
“What we have invented, Hans, is a new religion. Oh, not the moralistic and old-fashioned theological kind with that God who does not want us, but one with brutal splendours, magnificent contemporary rites and rituals, scenes, gestures, sacrifices, humiliations, terrors, tremblings, mortifications, degradations, phantasmagoric transfigurations into other realms of feeling, new realisations that will come from this cleansing purge, and then transcendencies unto a New World of our own making, with our own new rules and rewards and justifications.”
― Larry Kramer, Faggots
Queer Covid Chronicles: Where Were You When it Started?
“Genghis Khan said the hand Is the first thing one man gives To another. Not in this war. A gesture of limited distance Now suffices, a nod, A minor smile or a hand Slightly raised, Not in search of its counterpart, Just a warning within The acknowledgment to stand back.”
― Ilan Stavans, And We Came Outside and Saw the Stars Again: Writers from Around the World on the COVID-19 Pandemic
Domino Effect: What Lumumba’s Murder Mean’s to Queer Kenyans Abroad
“Today I wore a pair of faded old jeans and a plain grey baggy shirt. I hadn’t even taken a shower, and I did not put on an ounce of makeup. I grabbed a worn out black oversized jacket to cover myself with even though it is warm outside. I have made conscious decisions lately to look like less of what I felt a male would want to see. I want to disappear.”
― Sierra D. Waters, Debbie.
Double-edged Sword: Enduring Misconceptions About Bisexual Men
“Many bisexuals might indeed feel comfortable and well represented by [creating images of ‘stable, monogamous, appropriately sexual’ bisexuals], but what of the many people who don’t fit in this standard of the “normal” or “good” bisexual? Some bisexuals are sluts (read: sexually independent women), some bisexuals are just experimenting, some like people of certain genders only sexually and not romantically, some like to have threesomes and perform bisexuality for men, some are HVI and STI carriers, some don’t practice safer sex, some are indeed indecisive and confused, some cheat on their partners, some do choose to be bi, as well as many other things that the “myth-busting” [or simplifying/sanitizing] tries to cast off. A very long list of people is being thrown overboard in the effort to “fight biphobia.” In this way, the rebuttal in fact imposes biphobic normative standards on the bisexual community itself, drawing a line between “good” and “bad” bisexuals.
Either way, benign docility and unthreatening citizenship are not exactly what I would want my bisexuality to be associated with.”
― Shiri Eisner, Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution
It’s All Just Drag: What’s the Tea on the Drag Scene In China? – Podcast Episode 4
“Barry prided himself on his ability to keep his lives separate. . . He was Bianca on two Saturday nights a month, and otherwise, he pushed her out of sight, even though he thought about her, shopped for her, planned for her eventual return. Barry went to faculty meetings and family reunions and church, Bianca always lingering on the edge of his mind. She had her role to play and Barry had his. You could live a life this way, split. As long as you knew who was in charge.”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half
Piquing Duck 