Global Hostility Grows for LGBTQIA+ People
#TC113
Welcome to Third Cultured, a newsletter covering all things cannabis, queer, and world politics from Kyle Borland. My goal is to highlight all the ways today is different (and not so) from yesterday.
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This edition:
Essay/Opinion
Links, Quotes & Things
Essay/Opinion
The world is getting more hostile for LGBTQIA+ people by the day.
375 trans people have been murdered in 2021 so far, the deadliest year since records began.
The Taliban’s “hit list” on queer Afghans. Luckily, NGOs like Rainbow Railroad are working every day to discreetly get people out of Afghanistan and into a nation they have a chance at life, including the UK which just accepted its second group.
Britain’s trans panic led the BBC to not renew its membership in a workplace inclusion program run by the UK LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall – despite an increase in LGBTQ-targeted hate crimes in the UK, which led to its recent listing alongside Hungary Russia, and Poland as a country where it is getting harder to be LGBTQ. The fallout isn’t relegated to the BBC though. The Guardian is trying to censor and intimidate independent journalists for accurately reporting the transphobia rampant in its newsroom.
Ghana is tearing itself apart debating one of the world’s strictest anti-queer law.
Saudi Arabia banned the “Eternals” for including a gay couple and, unlike when China stares down Hollywood, Marvel stood its ground.
China’s crackdown on LGBT Rights Advocacy China. Despite that and a country-wide suppression of all “sissy man” content, hundreds still gathered in Hong Kong to celebrate Pride even though they organized an indoor market rather than a march supposedly due to Covid-19 restrictions on gatherings. (Related: AP, Axios)
Russia labeling the Russian LGBT Network a “foreign agent” (Related: The Post)
The stateside Republican culture war hysteria trying to ban any books or materials that mention LGBTQIA+ people. Not to mention Trump’s judicial appointments going out of their way to expand the “religious exemption” to discriminate. Of course, while the powerful use trans kids and adults as pawns and thousands of people’s lives are ruined by their actions. In Tennessee, a 14-year old trans boy is suing the state to play golf on his school’s team. (Related: ABC News, The Washington Post)
A global anti-LGBTQIA+, traditionalist backlash is feasting on the chaos wreaked by COVID, multipolarity, and digital authoritarianism. In almost every case, neither the left nor the liberals have an answer to the red meat the right is serving its base.
There are clusters of progress. For instance, in the US, more than 1000+ queer people will serve in elected office come January 2022. However, I can’t shake the feeling that the next two decades will be one of regression for LGBTQIA+ and it will take a herculean, internationalist movement to push back the tsunami.
Stay safe and get vaccinated, beautiful people.
Thanks for reading, and Roll Tide.
Kyle (@kgborland)
Links, Quotes & Things
“I still believe that the unexamined life is not worth living: and I know that self-delusion, in the service of no matter what small or lofty cause, is a price no writer can afford. His subject is himself and the world and it requires every ounce of stamina he can summon to attempt to look on himself and the world as they are.”
— JAMES BALDWIN, Nobody Knows My Name
Anne Carson’s Obsession with Herakles (The New Yorker)
Announcing the new Sinocism podcast and the first three episodes (Sinocism)
The Atlanta Lesbian Feminist Alliance, 1972–1975 (Southern Cultures)
Black LGBTQ+ leaders call for elimination of economic barriers at Congressional hearing (Yahoo! News)
Cedric Robinson and the Black Radical Tradition (JSTOR)
Challenging Israeli Narratives About Queer Palestinian Culture (Hyperallergic)
Construction Begins on LGBTQ-Inclusive Affordable Housing in Harlem (Gay City News)
The Dawn of Everything Is Not a Book About the Origins of Inequality (LitHub)
To give just a sense of how different the emerging picture is: it is clear now that human societies before the advent of farming were not confined to small, egalitarian bands. On the contrary, the world of hunter-gatherers as it existed before the coming of agriculture was one of bold social experiments, resembling a carnival parade of political forms, far more than it does the drab abstractions of evolutionary theory. Agriculture, in turn, did not mean the inception of private property, nor did it mark an irreversible step towards inequality. In fact, many of the first farming communities were relatively free of ranks and hierarchies. And far from setting class differences in stone, a surprising number of the world’s earliest cities were organized on robustly egalitarian lines, with no need for authoritarian rulers, ambitious warrior-politicians, or even bossy administrators.
For Queer Palestinians Like Me, Intersectionality Isn’t Working (Haaretz)
Freeways force out residents in communities of color — again (LATimes)
Have Democrats reached the limits of White appeasement politics? (Washington Post)
At the same time, the limits and dangers of Democratic White appeasement are serious and substantial. Past policies adopted by party leaders to appeal to White voters have hurt people of color in deep and lasting ways. And many of those moves didn’t actually attract many White voters, either. Centering White voters now could push the Democrats away from a recent positive trajectory that includes increasingly embracing candidates of color and aggressive efforts to address racial inequality. Further, such a shift might not even be necessary. In 2020, Democrats won the House, Senate and presidency with their coalition of people of color and White Americans with more progressive views on racial issues.
Look for it, and you can see that many debates within today’s Democratic Party are at core about how much the party must appease moderate and conservative White people vs. how far those same Whites can be pushed to accept the goals and aspirations of people of color before switching their votes to Republicans.
Biden vs. the Squad. Infrastructure vs. preschool. The filibuster vs. voting rights. These aren’t cleanly White vs. Black, but these are racialized issues nonetheless. They capture a fundamental question: How White does the Democratic Party need to be?
Here and Queer in Rural America (Ms. Magazine)
Historic LGBT Confirmation Gives Biden Second Circuit Flip (Bloomberg Law)
How Britney Spears Got Free, and What Comes Next (The New Yorker)
How to Sack an Empire: On Goths, Huns, and the Fall of Rome (LitHub)
How Veterans Created PTSD (JSTOR)
Inside the Rise — and Surprising Crackdown — of the Country’s Hottest Weed Market (Politico)
It’s time for UA to recognize its queer past (The Crimson White)
Kim Cattrall Is Joining The 'Queer As Folk' Reboot And Fans Are Thrilled (HuffPost)
LGBTQ advocates sue Tennessee over anti-trans sports law (CNN)
LGBTQ American Indians report high levels of depression and abuse, study finds (NBC News)
Meet the Glasscos: Lesbian foster parents in the Bible Belt (Scalawag)
Meet the Queer Titans of Media Who Made This Year's Out100 (Out)
Michael Kearns, the godfather of LGBTQ authenticity (Washington Blade)
Michelle Wu is Boston's first woman and first person of color elected mayor (NPR)
More Americans understand LGBTQ people, but visibility has 'double-edged sword', GLAAD report says (USA Today)
Navy christens oiler named after gay icon Harvey Milk (Bay Area Reporter)
Pentagon quietly removed more than 130,000 Afghanistan War photos and videos from public view (Task & Purpose)
The Progressive Caucus gives up its leverage (Speaking Security)
Public Transportation Can Save the World – If We Let It (The Verge)
Progressive Michelle Wu becomes 1st Asian American elected Boston mayor (Axios)
Queer and trans parents could get own school board advisory group, the first of its kind in the nation (SF Examiner)
The Queer Mourning of Princess Diana (Harpers Bazaar)
Retiring is A Struggle for the Millennials (NYTimes)
Many millennials were thrust into adulthood circa 2008, during what was, at the time, the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Then, barely a decade after that meltdown, the coronavirus pandemic cratered commercial activity and sent unemployment soaring. With savings tapped out and retirement accounts drawn down, this generation is experiencing déjà vu, along with fresh worry that their window for achieving financial security in retirement has already begun to close.
‘Sadly, a trend’: Kansas City LGBTQ group wants answers on hate incidents at schools (Kansas City Star)
Salt Lake City makes history with its most diverse council ever, electing racial and LGBTQ majorities (Salt Lake Tribune)
Senate confirms first out LGBTQ woman to serve on federal circuit court (CNN)
Suicide risk among Black, LGBTQ youth is rising. A new center will study why (PBS)
Supporting Queer Youth as Life Moves Back to In-Person Spaces: “I Had to Conceal my Expression at Home” (Ms. Magazine)
The 1619 Project and the Long Battle Over U.S. History (NYTimes)
Truth about shoplifting in San Francisco (Popular Information)
US Navy launches ship named for LGBTQ rights activist Harvey Milk (Yahoo! News)
US ‘Striketober’ puts class struggle in the spotlight (Red Flag)
What Should an Artist Think About? (Hola Papi)
Why Lil Nas X Is the New King of Pop (Wall Street Journal)
