“So, you’re gay.”
#121
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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This edition:
Essay/Opinion
Links, Quotes & Things
Essay/Opinion
The past two weekends have been wonderful (despite that 49ers heartbreaker). I’m settling into a new social groove in this COVID-constant world, developing friendships old and new now that I’m experiencing financial stability I haven’t felt since the end of 2018.
Of course, even in a period of light, the Universe will always supply some reminders both gentle and harsh to keep you grounded. Mine came in the form of a drunken German techie in the Mission last Sunday night, following the aforementioned Niners loss to the LA Rams. He stumbled up to our group to start talking up my friend, and when I finally spoke for the first time, he cut me off mid-sentence to say:
“So, you’re gay.”
It was an interaction I hadn’t had in quite a long time, and I was disappointed in how I handled it. I had no witty retort. Instead, I defaulted to rushing the joke/punchline of his unnecessary observation. “Yes, I’m a fag, your point?”
I am intimately familiar of what my voice sounds like. On top of being born to New England parents, but raised in Germany and the Deep South, I have a thick of layer of faggotry laced into my vocals. So, it’s not necessarily that I forgot, but that I had allowed myself to feel a certain comfort I wasn’t even aware of before then. I didn’t know there was a self-conscious mental state for him, or anyone, could pull me back into with a pointed declaration. It was a reminder of otherness I wasn’t prepared for.
We continued to have a good night after the minor interruption. The bartenders had to keep asking if he was being nice, so I’m fairly certain he makes a habit of harassing anyone who comes into that particular bar after a certain time of night. When we switched bars, a friend of the drunk German showed up there and bought us drinks because his friend had been such an asshole.
Unfortunately, I’m the anxious Queer that I am and I found myself analyzing my voice on work calls more than I had before. There was no reason. No one at my job or anyone I work with has ever made me feel anything other than included and respected, but I was viscerally aware of the bubble it was.
I felt ridiculous for the anxiety because I spend a good portion of my week reading about how Queer people are attacked and demonized around the world. In the last week alone – Iran executed two gay men for sodomy, Honduras saw three gay men killed on the same day across the country, Ghana is hellbent on passing the most anti-LGBTQIA+ law possible, the Taliban continues to hunt down Queer Afghans, South Dakota passed the first anti-trans law of 2022 and compared trans kids to terrorists, Florida is fasttracking its “Don’t Say Gay” bill, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Instead, because of all that – this weekend – I leaned into the social bubble I crafted.
A trans masc friend of mine came over for brunch on Saturday while a mechanic in Bayview worked on their tires, I had an amazing night at a few SoMa leather bars with queer men from a mutual group chat I had never gone out with before, and on Sunday, I met up with my spectulative fiction writing group in the backyard of a baby blue Victorian on Castro street.
It was queer and lovely. Just what I needed it to be.
Kind of like my voice.
As always, thanks for reading, beautiful people.
Kyle (@kgborland)
Links, Quotes & Things
16 queer Black trailblazers who made history (NBC News)
17-year-old confesses to murdering man lured by gay dating app (Brussels Times)
40 Years of Coming Out, Being Out, and Staying Out as a Gay Man (The Good Men Project)
A unique program in Philadelphia aims to decrease LGBTQ homelessness (NPR)
Anti-trans rhetoric and the prison complex (Genderf*ucked)
Arnie Kantrowitz, Pioneer of Gay Liberation, Dies at 81 (New York Times)
Banned Books and Other Conservative Hysterics in 2022 America:
Anti-LGBTQ zealots are literally burning books in Tennessee (LGBTQ Nation)
Books on race and sexuality are disappearing from Texas schools in record numbers (NBC News)
Comedians get Trumpers to agree to ban the Bible from schools by telling them what’s in it (LGBTQ Nation)
Conservative crusade to ban queer books is having a resurgence (Mic)
Inside Mississippi’s only class on critical race theory (Mississippi Today)
LGBTQ book ban proponent faces felony child molestation charge in Missouri (NBC News)
New rules are limiting how teachers can teach Black History Month (Axios)
Oklahoma bill would fire teachers for offending Christian morals by teaching biology (LGBTQ Nation)
Republicans keep trying to erase history (LA Times)
Biden has promises left to keep on his LGBTQ agenda (Washington Post)
Britain’s Equalities Watchdog is Bleeding Staff Due to Transphobia (Vice News)
British Gay man ‘shocked’ after vile homophobic tirade from London bus driver for kissing another man (Pink News)
Busted police in London made homophobic and racist comments over the messaging app WhatsApp, while also joking about raping and beating women (LGBTQ Nation)
Court Revokes Oil and Gas Leases, Citing Climate Change (New York Times)
February 2022 Research Roundup: the Best in LGBTQ+ Research (Out Leadership)
Data Highlights:
1 in 10 LGBTQ+* employees experienced discrimination at work last year. (Williams Institute)
More than 1 in 3 LGBTQ+ employees have left because of mistreatment at a job. (Williams Institute)
31% of employees are willing to take a pay cut to move to a more inclusive place. (Out Leadership, AllyUP)
57% of LGBTQ+ individuals are not out at work. The #1 reason is not wanting to make others uncomfortable. (Out Leadership, AllyUP)
For Black queer femmes, redefining Blackness and queerness are revolutionary acts (Prism)
Former Human Rights Campaign president alleges racial bias in his firing after Andrew M. Cuomo scandal (Washington Post)
The lawsuit puts David in the odd position of attacking the culture of an organization that he ran for more than two years, a fact that was not lost on some current and former employees.
“I don’t think that Alphonso is wrong in saying that there is a culture of racism and white supremacy, as well as across the board pay inequities, at the Human Rights Campaign,” Michael Vazquez, an Afro-Latino activist who was HRC’s faith program director until August, said in a statement. “At the same time, we have to recognize that a lot of these issues were reported to Alphonso, to human resources and general counsel while Alphonso was in charge of the organization and nothing seemed to change.”
Gang of Men Threaten to Stab Gay Man and Trans Woman in Viral TikTok (Advocate)
Gay, lesbian adults report higher COVID vaccination rates, 85% vs 76% (ABC News)
Gay man receives outpouring of support after being ignored by 6’5 top on Grindr (Queerty)
Comment: We are so ridiculous. I love us.
Greece’s first queer opera pays homage to deceased LGTBQ activist (DW)
He started an LGBTQ magazine during the pandemic. Here’s what he learned. (Poynter)
Hide and seek: Being LGBT and Chinese Indonesian (The Jakarta Post)
Inside the 'Horrific' Reality of LGBTIQ Refugees — and Their Fight to Remain 'Resilient' (People)
Is a serial killer that targeted gay men still alive in San Francisco? (LGBTQ Nation)
‘It gives me joy’: the LGBT Colombians embracing visibility in town with a legacy of abuse (The Guardian)
Joe Rogan, Who Is Literally On Testosterone, Says Trans People Will Cause Societal Collapse (them.)
Lessons Learned as a Gay Son of Holocaust Survivors (Advocate)
LGBTQ advocates regroup on paid parental leave after Biden's safety net bill stalls (NBC News)
Mobile, Alabama appoints first-ever LGBTQ liaisons (AL.com)
More LGBTQ athletes than ever will compete in Beijing's Winter Olympics – but China has banned 'sissy men' from TV, censors sexual expression and is a country where seven out of 10 people don't want 'a homosexual' as a neighbour (Daily Mail)
Nation mourns out mayor after he dies by suicide (LGBTQ Nation)
Nearly half of LGBTQ+ people of color live in low-income households (LA Blade, The Hill)
Netflix cut from LGBTQ corporate equality report over Dave Chappelle’s ‘The Closer’ (NBC News)
New French law to criminalize 'conversion therapy' (BBC)
Philly’s Queer Doula Collective Is Helping LGBTQ Parents Navigate the Health System (Next City)
Pope Urges Parents to ‘Never Condemn' Their Gay Children (Reuters)
Queer Retellings Coming Out in 2022 (Book Riot)
Reading Is a Competition Now (The Cut)
“Counting how many things you consume is a really weird way to measure how much you enjoy a hobby: If you’re managing a garden, you don’t count how many times you put your Wellies on and got out there, you look at how much enjoyment you got, how many potatoes you grew. It’s not how many pages you turned or how many bits of soil you flipped over, it’s like, what came out of that for you? What grew in you? What soil did you turn over in yourself? I think that’s something that’s hard to put a number against but also way more important than how many books you read.”
Comment: That said…add/follow me on Goodreads!
Repeated bomb threats rattle U.S. Black colleges and universities (Reuters)
SCOTUS’ love for religious freedom won’t just affect LGBTQ people (LGBTQ Nation)
Talking About Care and Craft With Bryan Washington (The Atlantic)
The Book of Queer offers song-filled lessons on LGBTQ+ folk throughout history (EW)
The Cry to Be Included (The Cut)
The Marxist Who Antagonizes Liberals and the Left (The New Yorker)
Cornel West, at times one of Reed’s targets (Reed once denounced him as “a freelance race relations consultant and Moral Voice for whites”) and lately an ally, told me, “Brother Adolph has three deep hatreds. He hates the ugly consequences of predatory capitalist processes. And he hates the neoliberal rationalization for those predatory capitalist processes. And he hates the use of race as a construct that promotes the neoliberal rationalization of predatory capitalist processes. A trinity of hatreds—you could almost put that as the epitaph on his grave.” Among the left-of-center, this puts Reed at odds with just about everyone, which means that there are few more interesting developments in intellectual politics than the news that Adolph Reed is on the warpath.
The Putin Doctrine (Foreign Affairs)
Putin’s essay: “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” (Kremlin)
Top Hungarian court rules it’s fine to compare homosexuality with pedophilia (Pink News)
Trans teens who get gender-affirming hormones are healthier, happier as adults (Today)
We Still Can’t See American Slavery for What It Was (New York Times)
Where's the Whimsy? (Hola Papi)
You can thrive and be yourself in ‘Queer Kentucky’ (Reckon)