In St. Petersburg, Russia, a new law banning “gay propaganda” has gone into effect, and its opponents are taking to the streets.
The law likens any positive mention of homosexuality in public, in the media or online to “gay propaganda” and therefore bans it, making it punishable by fines and jail time. But that hasn’t stopped a number of opponents, including straight allies, from protesting.
Sergey Kondrashov is one of them: he was arrested Sunday while standing on a street holding a sign that read, “A dear family friend is lesbian. My wife and I love and respect her… and her family is just as equal as ours.” Single person pickets are becoming a popular form of protest, with the goal of convincing the government to stop the law.
I do love when people go the distance to prove a message, but I also wish the conditions weren’t so harsh that something as simple as a statement could land you jail time. We have a ways to go.
Cruel and Unusual: Transgender Women in Prison (USA).
Documentary by Janet Baus & Dan Hunt. (2006)
Imagine being a woman in a men’s prison. For many individuals, this is a grim reality because the U.S. prison system decides where to place inmates based on their genitalia, not their gender identity. This award-winning documentary makes an unflinching examination of transgender women in men’s prisons. Ashley, Linda, Anna, Yolanda and Ophelia describe their experiences undergoing inhumane and humiliating treatment including rape, violence, solitary confinement and denial of medial care. One interviewee explains. “A lot of times I wake up, and I look around at my surroundings, and I see all these men. I think, ‘What am I doing here?’” The women in Cruel and Unusual don’t deny that they must serve their sentences, but their stories raise very important questions about their treatment.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0861699/
Great article. As a self-proclaimed feminist who identifies with queer subculture I find the fact that some gay men, who “know what it’s like to be judged on something that is intrinsically a part of them”, further entrench misogyny under the guise of ‘humour’ (or even worse, explicitly…)
Worth a read. Misogyny (be it against trans women or cis women) is a big problem in the gay male community, but people are so afraid of being called homophobic that few are willing to call it out.
The results of a recent study show that, among other factors, a person’s inner turmoil about their own non-heterosexuality could play a huge role in that person being homophobic.
In the April Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the study uses “modern methods” to explore a well-established Freudian concept that people block unconscious desires by adapting an opposite view of them (i.e. acting like you hate something you really love).
People who came from “controlling homes” where bias against LGBT people was rampant were more likely to suppress same-sex attraction, which therefore was more likely to manifest itself in outward homophobia. More on the methods:
Among those methods: studies that measure discrepancies between what people say about their sexual orientation and how they react during split-second timed tasks. Study subjects — four groups of about 160 college students each, in the USA and Germany — also rated the attractiveness of people in same-sex or opposite-sex photos and answered questions about the type of parenting they experienced growing up, from authoritarian to democratic, as well as homophobia at home.
Researchers also measured homophobia — both overt, as expressed in questionnaires on social policy and beliefs, and unconscious, as revealed in word-completion tasks.
Other experts have said this is hardly a way to measure sexual orientation, also saying it gives too much power to an individual’s parents and doesn’t pay attention to how they think about themselves. Still, this is fascinating and not at all shocking. What say you?
