This is What We Get After 40 Years?

#TC112

Nov 01, 2021

Welcome to Third Cultured, a newsletter published by yours truly, Kyle Borland. My goal is to highlight the unique role Queer people play in the United States and the world-at-large, and all the other ways today is different from yesterday.

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This edition:

Essay/Opinion
Links, Quotes & Things

Essay/Opinion

I have a lot of thoughts about the last several weeks, which is typically one of the most festive times of year for Queer people, but also was one of the most volatile months in a long time for LGBTQIA+ people all over the world. Even here in San Francisco, a friend of mine was trans bashed in Hayes Valley downtown.

Rightify Ghana @RightifyGhana

🚨 TRIGGER WARNING Another gay man has been assaulted, videotaped and video released online The assault * They hit him with their hands, legs, canes * One of them heated a pressing iron, nearly burnt him * Another guy also picked a machete, nearly cut him See weapons below 👇🏾

Mark Joseph Stern @mjs_DC

Judge Reed O'Connor thinks he has found a brilliant workaround to Bostock: Employers just have to say they're firing gay workers *for having gay sex,* not for being gay—and then it's totally legal! storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…

Adam @pulvinator

A Texas federal judge just held that RFRA and the First Amendment exempt private employers from Title VII if they dont like LGBTQ people for religious reasons...like, all of them across the country...because Title VII has other exemptions. https://t.co/3nDMrVDxsQ /1

Politicians and public figures want to believe their own lies that their legislation and rhetoric don’t actively contribute to this surge in interpersonal violence, but they also know the truth is their targets don’t have enough power to make them care. In so many ways, it feels like the bar is in hell, just look at the watered down bills in Congress that don’t even attempt to meet the moment. After 40+ years of failed neoliberalism, our leaders have learned nothing about what the average American family needs.

Stay safe and get vaccinated, beautiful people.

Thanks for reading, and Roll Tide.

Kyle (@kgborland)

Links, Quotes & Things

8 LGBTQ candidates who could make history in November (NBC News)

15% minimum tax rate agreed to by 136 countries to start in 2023, reallocating more than $125 billion of profits (OECD)

24 specific proposals for how to fix California (Sex and the State)

85% of the world’s population affected by human-induced climate change (WaPo)

120,000+ US kids had caregivers die during pandemic (AP)

Comment: I just attended a funeral for a 50-year old father who left behind two sons aged 21 and 16. Americans need to reckon with what continues to happen to us.

Across Africa, major churches strongly oppose LGBTQ rights (Washington Post)

Comment: How does using a colonizing god to oppress your own people make sense…?

Alabama’s Next Poet Laureate Writes Searingly About Race (NYTimes)

Buy her books! Magic City Gospel (2017) | dark // thing (2019) | Reparations Now! (2021)

America’s 50,000 monuments: More mermaids than congresswomen, more Confederates than abolitionists (Washington Post)

An Oral History of Queen of the Damned: How an Anne Rice novel became a Hollywood saga involving Aaliyah and the guy from Korn. (Variety)

Another Buffalo Is Possible (New Yorker)

Archbishop of Canterbury criticises Ghana anti-LGBT bill (BBC)

BBC slammed for failing LGBT+ people – especially trans lives – in damning open letter (Pink News)

Before Stonewall, LGBTQ+ activists recall the fight for equality in Houston (ABC 11)

Biden to LGBTQ Americans on National Coming Out Day: 'You are loved and accepted just the way you are' (CNN)

China’s LGBT community caught up in Xi Jinping’s widening crackdowns on big tech, education and celebrities (SCMP)

Amid the flurry of new regulations, restrictions and directives were a number specifically targeting China’s LGBT population; including the banning of LGBT social media accounts, increased censorship of discussion of LGBT issues online, gay university groups have been placed under pressure on campuses, attacks on gender identity with demands that men be macho alongside bans on “sissy” boys on television, and regulators being directed to ban “gay love” in video games.

Dave Chappelle’s Betrayal (GQ)

Watching Chappelle contort himself to justify ashy ideas about gender, queerness and identity is harrowing, because the only thing more brutal than someone saying hurtful shit is someone saying hurtful shit moments after making you laugh, moments after cracking you up in a way that’s both fun and deeply needed, moments after making you feel like you all got free together. America has only gotten better at trying to kill me. Laughter is no joke, which makes the betrayal, years in the making at this point, all the more devastating. I feel like a fool to have rooted for Dave Chappelle for so long. Things were easier when the men who wanted to hurt me just said so at the jump.

Defunding the reconciliation bill to fund the Pentagon (Speaking Security)

‘Don’t Punish Me For Who I Am’: Huge Jump in Anti-LGBTQ Hate Crime Reports in UK (Vice News)

Dorottya Rédai on the Importance of LGBTQ Fairy Tales (LitHub)

Eric Cervini’s New Book Is a Toast to Queer Bars Throughout History (New Now Next)

Gay and trans Afghans running out of time to escape Taliban, campaigners warn (Morning Star)

Ghana Anti-LGBTQ Bill: Why high profile Ghanaian professors, lawyers dey fight against anti-gay bill (BBC)

Has Witch City Lost Its Way? (Boston Magazine)

Have Sperm, Will Travel (Esquire)

How Lil Nas X, Lena Waithe and 'Sex Education' are championing Black, queer love stories (USA Today)

How MEL Tells Fascinating Male-Focused Stories (Forbes)

‘I Was Raped By The CIA Medics,’ Says Black-Site Survivor (Forever Wars)

Sexual assault runs throughout the Forever Wars. Enforced nudity was a post-9/11 torture technique that both the CIA and the military employed. The Abu Ghraib guards led naked detainees through the prison blocks by dog leashes. Women guards at Guantanamo smeared fake menstrual blood on detainees and touched themselves in front of the prisoners. The CIA took nude photos of detainees, a humiliation Khan remarks upon. Mohammadou Slahi remembered his Guantanamo interrogator, the Chicago police detective Richard Zuley, threatening to bring his mother there, which he understood as a rape threat. Khan said at his sentencing that his interrogators threatened to rape his sister. To frighten Omar Khadr, a wounded 15-year old boy in custody at Bagram, Sgt. Joshua Claus made up a story about a kid in an American prison being raped “by four big black guys.”
Whether as an official torture technique or as an improvisation, the CIA and others reached for tools that America has frequently put to use. Sexual assault is obviously not uniquely American, nor is the War on Terror the first time Americans (or anyone else) have employed sexual violence as a tool of war. But that is no exoneration when Americans utilize it, nor even particularly valuable context. Claus’ threat to Khadr pointed, however unintentionally, to how white supremacy has wielded sexual assault throughout American history.
Khan’s statement is full of recollections of what his chains did to him. They cut into his wrists. They swelled his ankles. They left persistent physical reminders of their presence even when he was unrestrained.
The restraints, the rape, the stress positions, the confinement, the prolonged darkness, the isolation, the ubiquitous dangers to his body and mind—these have been American practices not just since 9/11, but since 1619. Only the contexts change. A CIA official who restrained Khan during a drive from one black site to another kept his foot on Khan’s neck and asked, “Can you breathe?”

I Wish I'd Had JoJo Siwa When I Was a Queer Kid, but I'm Glad Today's LGBTQ+ Youth Do (Pop Sugar)

Issuance of the First U.S. Passport with an X Gender Marker (State.gov)

It’s crucial to remember the U.S. origin of Ghana’s deadly anti-LGBT bill (76 Crimes)

Jon Gruden is done — in Las Vegas, in football and anywhere decency matters (WaPo)

LGBTQ Afghans land in Britain as Taliban official says no space for gay rights (WaPo)

LGBTQ History Month: Dutch gay man defied the Nazis and saved thousands (BAR)

“The Liberty Way”: How Liberty University Discourages and Dismisses Students’ Reports of Sexual Assaults (Pro Publica)

North Carolina lieutenant governor faces calls to resign for calling LGBT+ people ‘filth’ (Pink News)

‘Not Completely Me:' Transgender Workers Fight for Health Care (Bloomberg News)

Orbitz Maps Queer Civil Rights Trail Road Trip for LGBTQ History Month (Yahoo!)

Philadelphia's role in LGBTQ+ history far predates Stonewall uprising (ABC Chicago)

Police unions fight vaccine mandates despite COVID killing far more law enforcement officers than any other work-related cause in 2020 and 2021 (NYTimes)