Friday LGBTQ+ Link Round-Up
#134
Welcome to Third Cultured, a newsletter covering all things queer and techno-politics from the perspective of Kyle Borland. My goal is to highlight all the ways today is different (and not so) from yesterday.
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No essay today but plenty of queer news around the world linked below.
As always, thanks for reading, beautiful people.
Kyle (@kgborland)
This edition:
Donate to an Abortion Fund
Links, Quotes & Things
Donate to an Abortion Fund
Alabama: Yellowhammer Fund, Access Reproductive Care-Southeast
59 percent of Alabama women live in counties with no access to an abortion provider. In 2019, Alabama enacted a total ban on abortion — currently blocked from taking effect — that would criminalize providing abortion care.Florida: Florida Access Network, Access Reproductive Care-Southeast
In 2022, Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law banning abortion after 15 weeks, which does not make exceptions for cases of incest, rape, or human trafficking.Georgia: Access Reproductive Care-Southeast
55 percent of Georgia women live in counties with no abortion clinic. Georgia enacted a six-week abortion ban that, once it becomes enforceable, would effectively prohibit all abortion.
Links, Quotes & Things
60 LGBTQ Afghan refugees arrive in Canada (Bay Area Reporter)
As Emhoff visits South Korea, gender and LGBTQ issues come to the fore (Washington Post)
Anti-LGBTQ+ Laws in the US
A Haven for LGBTQ Students in the Heart of Alabama (NYTimes)
Alabama doctor: ‘Panicked energy’ at clinic in last days before transgender youth treatment ban (AL.com)
Florida's 'Don't Say Gay' Bill Is Part of the State's Long, Shameful History (TIME)
GOP Lawmakers Now Demanding LGBT Content Warnings for TV Shows (Daily Beast)
Inside the first year of the Alabama school where LGBTQ students are celebrated (AL.com)
Justice and joy: Black, trans-led nonprofit uses joy to fight hate in Alabama (Reckon)
Texas librarians face harassment as they navigate book bans (Texas Tribune)
The Orbanization of America: Florida shadows Hungary’s war on LGBTQ rights (The Washington Post)
The Right’s War on Queerness Is Placing Teachers in Danger (them)
Britain's Royal Mint releases rainbow-colored coin to mark 50 years of Pride (CNN)
Experiences of LGBTQ People in Four-Year Colleges and Graduate Programs (Williams Institute)
Nearly one-third of LGBTQ people (32.6%) experienced bullying, harassment, or assault at college, compared to 18.9% of non-LGBTQ people. Specific forms of adversity were experienced by twice as many or more LGBTQ than non-LGBTQ people. Nearly one in five (19.1%) LGBTQ people experienced in-person bullying or harassment, 12.5% of LGBTQ people experienced online or other indirect bullying or harassment, 17.6% experienced sexual harassment, and 11.8% experienced sexual assault in college. Each of these was reported by fewer non-LGBTQ people, including in-person bullying or harassment (5.4%), online or other indirect bullying or harassment (5.3%), sexual harassment (5.8%), or sexual assault (2.0%). Other students were the most frequently identified perpetrators of bullying, harassment, or assault of LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ people.
George W. Bush called Iraq war ‘unjustified and brutal.’ He meant Ukraine. (Washington Post)
Greece bans LGBTQ conversion therapy (Reuters)
Here’s the Quick and Dirty on Foot Fetishes (LitHub)
How Anxiety Evolved Through the Middle Ages and Early Modern Europe (LitHub)
How did trans people become a GOP target? Experts say it’s all about keeping evangelicals voting (19th News)
“They have an interest in keeping the base riled up about one thing or another, and when one issue fades, as with same-sex relationships and same-sex marriage, they’ve got to find something else,” Balmer said. “It’s almost frantic.”
While many people believe that abortion was the issue that first galvanized evangelicals to the polls in the 1980s, Balmer points to a different issue. Paul Weyrich, an evangelical Christian who helped initially organize the “religious right,” had been testing out issues that would drive other evangelicals to the polls in the 1970s, Balmer says. Weyrich found it in Bob Jones University, a religious institution that was facing the loss of its tax-exempt status for refusing to racially integrate.
Weyrich’s strategy worked. In 1980, evangelicals – a group of denominations separate from mainline churches like Colby’s – flocked to the polls to back what had been billed as the freedom of a religious school to operate without government interference. Reagan backed Bob Jones University, with two-thirds of the evangelical vote, denied President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat and an evangelical himself, a second term. It cemented White evangelicals as the key ingredient to Republican wins.
Any Republican who wanted to cross the finish line would have to kneel at the feet of the evangelical base, Balmer says. Decades later, Donald Trump would initially campaign on welcoming LGBTQ+ people into his Republican platform, only to later adopt the ideology of the far-right evangelical base he needed to win.
How Greenwich Village Bohemians Found Their Way to Provincetown (LitHub)
How online games are empowering Asia’s LGBT and queer folk, from The Sims to Coral Island (South Morning China Post)
How Queer Was Ludwig Wittgenstein? (The New Yorker)
How the New York Times Helped Keep People in the Closet (Politico)
Hundreds of children died in Native American boarding schools, report finds (Axios)
The systematic "identity-alteration methodologies" employed by these schools included:
Forcing Native American children to use English names
Cutting their hair
Requiring standard uniforms
Barring cultural and religious practices as well as use of Native languages
These rules were often enforced through punishments that took the form of solitary confinement, whipping, withholding food and slapping.
The provision of care was "grossly inadequate." The Interior identified several "well-documented" instances of physical, sexual and emotional abuse; disease; malnourishment; overcrowding; and lack of health care.
Manual labor was also a common feature — in 1903 at the Mescalero Boarding School in New Mexico, Mescalero Apache boys sawed over 70,000 feet of lumber and made upward of 120,000 bricks.
Many children tried to escape but were found, brought back and punished, according to the report. The damage had long-term health effects.
Worth noting: "The deaths of Indian children while under the care of the Federal Government, or federally supported institutions, led to the breakup of Indian families and the erosion of Indian Tribes, Alaska Native Villages, and the Native Hawaiian Community," the report states.
"The Department must fully account for its role in this effort and renounce forced assimilation ... as a legitimate policy objective."
“I’m Tired Of Being Accepted”: John Waters Is Only Getting Grosser (BuzzFeed News)
Israeli man subjected to gay 'conversion therapy' (DW)
‘It’s made me increasingly paranoid:’ LGBTQ-themed library in Waltham reports books stolen for fourth time this year (Boston Globe)
Jake Daniels coming out as gay sets an example for football (The Guardian)
Motherhood is a Cult (Crime Reads)
Oregon lesbians win gov primary, lead in House contest (Bay Area Reporter)
Pete Buttigieg: Hungry Babies, Regrettably, Are Just the Price of the Free Market (Jacobin)
Queer camp counselor was told not to come back. So they opened their own camp. (Washington Post)
Remembering Urvashi Vaid, an LGBTQ activist who spent decades fighting for equality (Global Equality Today, NPR)
Safest, most dangerous destinations for LGBTQ travelers in 2022 (USA Today)
‘That’s not the devil. That’s America.’ (Washington Post)
“Somebody that is four hours away knows where to come to target Black people. You don’t even live in this community but you know where to come to get all Black people. That’s sad,” said Shirley Hart, carrying a plate with one of Marshall’s freshly grilled hot dogs. “It’s the experience of the Black person in America. We all deal with it, in some facet or another. It may not be to this extent on our hands, but we experience it.”
“Everybody goes to Tops because it’s in the ‘hood,” said Tara “Judy” Clark, 58, standing outside the Buffalo Community Fridge food pantry. She carried a tote bag of produce she had just picked up at the site.
“The only time we can enjoy ourselves, or meet other people, is going into stores,” Clark said. Now, she is afraid to go, worried that a shooter might once again target her community.
“The devil was really, really busy in that man,” she said.
Baldwin quickly replied: “That’s not the devil. That’s America. They made him, they brought him up, they put him there.”
The angry White populist who paved the way for Trump (Washington Post)
The Classics Are Whatever We Want Them to Be (Counter Craft)
The Fibers of My Black Queer Feminist Urbanism (Black Urbanist Weekly)
The good and bad news about housing for LGBTQ Americans (Vox)
The Queer History Of The Women's House Of Detention (NPR)
UK falls down Europe’s LGBTQ+ rights ranking for third year running (The Guardian)
Violence Against Queer People Worldwide
Cameroon: Rising Violence Against LGBTI People (Human Rights Watch)
Gay Man Allegedly Beaten, Blinded by Family Speaks Out (Advocate)
Hope and Fear for LGBTQI Asylum-Seekers at the U.S.-Mexico Border (Global Equality)
TV News Networks Spent Less Than 45 Minutes Covering Anti-Trans Violence in 2021 (them)
Who owns Einstein? The battle for the world’s most famous face (The Guardian)
Einstein’s work as a humanitarian, philosopher, pacifist and anti-racist continued throughout his life. After Adolf Hitler came to power, the émigré Einstein renounced his German citizenship and never returned to his homeland. (His summer house in Caputh, Brandenburg was used by the Hitler Youth.) He worked to help refugees escape Nazi oppression, campaigned for the civil rights of black Americans and, after his theories helped build the atomic bomb, became a vociferous pacifist. Today Einstein’s fingerprints can be found on many of the technologies that make the modern world work, from lasers to the semi-conductors that power your smartphone. But in the public eye at least, it is Einstein’s image that has most conspicuously endured.
After the passage of the Celebrity Rights Act, Richman began to collect clippings of advertisements that featured Einstein. He sent a folder of this material – everything from ads for cars to ads for hair salons – to Einstein’s executor, Otto Nathan, with a letter asking whom he should contact to, as he put it, “prevent this kind of abuse”. Nathan forwarded the clippings to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Seeing an opportunity to exert some influence over the use of Einstein’s likeness, on 1 July 1985, the university appointed Richman as Einstein’s “exclusive worldwide agent”, as he described his role. The Princeton-based newspaper US1 had another name for Richman’s function, later describing him as “the Hebrew University’s designated gorgon-watchdog”.
The deal tilted in the university’s favour. It took a 65% cut from every licence deal, or 50/50 for the proceeds of successful legal actions against infringers. Where others perceived Richman as an opportunist, he considered his work a moral campaign to protect the legacy of the 20th century’s defining icon. Richman drew up a set of guidelines, which the university agreed to: Einstein would not be associated with tobacco, alcohol or gambling. There was to be no fabrication of quotations or formulas. No advertiser could draw a thought bubble on to a picture of Einstein and seek to fill his mind with their words or ideas. “Those were the basics,” wrote Richman. He claimed his personal connection to Einstein strengthened his resolve to only allow affiliations “befitting a physicist, humanitarian, philosopher and pacifist”.