tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/gay-pride-23220/articlesGay Pride – The Conversation2023-10-24T10:55:14Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2154862023-10-24T10:55:14Z2023-10-24T10:55:14ZHow substance use services can better support LGBTQ+ people<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555281/original/file-20231023-29-56xt8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C9504%2C6331&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Many LGBTQ+ people do not access drug and alcohol support services because they fear stigma and discrimination.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/pride-rainbow-flag-balloon-flies-high-2312602051">Old Town Tourist/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>LGBTQ+ people in the UK face significant barriers to accessing substance use services, due to a number of <a href="https://clok.uclan.ac.uk/9598/1/POTP%204th%20Year%20Report.pdf">factors</a>, including fear of discrimination and stigma. Our <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09687637.2023.2238118">research</a> has shed light on these barriers and offers ideas for better helping this community.</p>
<p>We asked 38 LGBTQ+ people about their experiences of using alcohol and other drugs, getting treatment and how they think support and treatment services could improve.</p>
<p>Some LGBTQ+ people face challenges like rejection, stigma and abuse that can negatively impact their self-esteem. Lacking other social outlets, commercial venues like pubs and clubs may become their only connection to community, potentially leading to substance use. </p>
<p>Participants noted challenges such as the normalisation of drinking and clubbing culture within the community. As one explained: “Being part of the LGBTQ+ community can, for some people, be stressful in itself. The club scene in some areas is very drug/alcohol fuelled and focused”.</p>
<p>Another participant also pointed out: “Historically I think recreational drugs have been associated with the queer community, especially among men, this could lead to people thinking that since ‘everyone takes drugs’ they should too”.</p>
<p>Many respondents did not access support services because they feared stigma, discrimination and barriers to treatment. Some also doubted the effectiveness of treatment services or had negative experiences seeking help in the past.</p>
<p>One participant told us: “I didn’t think I would get any help if I sought it because I didn’t get help for other things when I sought and needed it, and because I wasn’t as bad as some other people”.</p>
<p>An important aspect of this research was to listen to the voices of those with lived and living experience of substance use and engagement with drug treatment services. In doing so we identified five suggestions for improving LGBTQ+ engagement:</p>
<h2>1. Training</h2>
<p>Training staff on LGBTQ+ identities, experiences and needs could help to ensure that treatment services are more welcoming and sensitive. This may reduce fears of stigma or discrimination that deter LGBTQ+ people from accessing support.</p>
<h2>2. Recruitment</h2>
<p>Feeling uncomfortable talking about sex or gender identity was cited as something which prevented people from accessing services.</p>
<p>For example, one participant explained the difficulty of talking to heterosexual professionals about <a href="https://www.shwales.online/chemsex.html">chemsex</a>, which is the use of drugs before or during planned sexual activity to enhance, disinhibit or facilitate the experience. Chemsex typically takes place at parties or gatherings organised specifically for this purpose. </p>
<p>Treatment providers need to understand LGBTQ+ culture to help people to feel more comfortable discussing intimate issues like chemsex, which many heterosexual or straight professionals may be less familiar with.</p>
<p>Employing LGBTQ+ staff members from diverse backgrounds could also help make services feel more inclusive and supportive.</p>
<h2>3. Cultural competence</h2>
<p>While some people valued existing inclusive services, more than half of participants said they still faced barriers when trying to access them. Many of our participants suggested that having tailored LGBTQ+ services would be helpful. </p>
<p>But it would also help if existing treatment providers learned more about LGBTQ+ cultures. This is called “<a href="https://www.e-lfh.org.uk/programmes/cultural-competence/">cultural competence</a>”, which means being aware of your own cultural beliefs and values, and how they may differ from those of people from other cultures. It also means being open to learning about different cultures so you can understand and meet the needs of the community. </p>
<p>Group services designed for and by LGBTQ+ people could reduce the risk of feeling marginalised in mixed groups. An LGBTQ+ culturally competent provider would be educated about LGBTQ+ experiences, mindful of their own potential biases, and able to offer a welcoming space for open discussion without judgement or misunderstanding.</p>
<h2>4. Outreach</h2>
<p>Attending Pride events and community spaces could help to build trust and make better connections with LGBTQ+ people. This could also make services more visible, approachable and accessible to the people who need them.</p>
<h2>5. Advertising</h2>
<p>Visible signals of LGBTQ+ inclusion was also important to our respondents. Symbols like rainbow flags and explicitly stating “LGBTQ+ welcome” in promotional materials could help to communicate that services affirm LGBTQ+ identities and are safe spaces. </p>
<p>One person told us: “Generally, if they were vocally welcoming of LGBT people, it would maybe lessen any worry”.</p>
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<img alt="An LGBTQ+ flag hangs out of a bag" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555280/original/file-20231023-15-tij0b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555280/original/file-20231023-15-tij0b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555280/original/file-20231023-15-tij0b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555280/original/file-20231023-15-tij0b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555280/original/file-20231023-15-tij0b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555280/original/file-20231023-15-tij0b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555280/original/file-20231023-15-tij0b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Everyone deserves compassionate and inclusive care for substance use issues.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/york-england-united-kingdom-june-3-2312590215">Old Town Tourist/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>We now need to work much harder to understand these complex issues with bigger and more diverse groups of LGBTQ+ participants.</p>
<p>All people deserve affirming, compassionate care for substance use issues. Thoughtfully engaging with LGBTQ+ communities and listening to their perspectives is crucial for providing equitable services. Implementing LGBTQ+ inclusive practices requires commitment but is entirely feasible.</p>
<p>Substance use services willing to learn, adapt and grow can successfully create welcoming environments for LGBTQ+ people. Small steps towards inclusion ultimately enable greater access to support for communities that have felt left out for far too long.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215486/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shannon Murray received funding from the University of South Wales' Knowledge Exchange Innovation Fund (KEIF) and was awarded funding through the Civic Action Fund for this research. Shannon works for the University of South Wales as a research assistant in the Substance Use Research Group (SURG) and is a doctoral student at Cardiff University researching gay and bi men's experiences of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV). </span></em></p>LGBTQ+ people face barriers to accessing substance use services, but research shows there are ways to make them more inclusive and supportive.Shannon Murray, Research assistant at the Substance Use Research Group and PhD Candidate, University of South WalesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2112392023-09-07T20:01:32Z2023-09-07T20:01:32ZFriday essay: homosexuality was still illegal when Frank Moorhouse started writing – but it was there from his earliest fiction<p>Frank Moorhouse had been having sex with men since the age of 17 but did not openly identify as gay or bisexual.</p>
<p>David Marr, who edited Moorhouse’s work at The National Times in the early 1980s, told me in an interview about Moorhouse: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>He was seen as a straight writer, no doubt about that […] it was really only with the publication of <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-everlasting-secret-family-9781742746586">The Everlasting Secret Family</a> [in 1980] that I began to think, ‘Oh maybe Frank’s a poof, maybe he’s bi, whatever.’ </p>
</blockquote>
<p>According to Marr, there was often a lag between what men who had sex with men did in private and what they wrote about, prior to the era when “coming out” was acceptable.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In Patrick White’s words, the lag is disgraceful, and Patrick, of course, tended to make homosexuals figures of ridicule in his works for a very long time. I said to him once: “Why didn’t you write [positively about homosexuality or being homosexual] earlier?” […] He said: ‘It’s been impossible, my publishers told me it would be completely impossible.’</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-literary-life-of-frank-moorhouse-a-giant-of-australian-letters-185862">The literary life of Frank Moorhouse, a giant of Australian letters</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Queer literature in Australia</h2>
<p>The history of gay and what is now known as queer literature in Australia has been fraught with debates over how homosexual characters and their desires are represented. </p>
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<p>When Moorhouse was writing his first collection of short stories, <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/futility-and-other-animals-9781740511384">Futility and Other Animals</a>, in the late 1960s, he was deeply immersed in his first serious homosexual relationship – and it was a time when homosexual acts were illegal and outing himself as bisexual would have put him at risk of becoming a social pariah.</p>
<p>In the 1970s, the nascent gay liberation movement largely focused on changing laws that criminalised homosexual acts between men, and on “normalising” the notion of gay and lesbian relationships. The notion of “<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-gay-nazis-to-were-here-were-queer-a-century-of-arguing-about-gay-pride-78888">gay pride</a>” came later; the positive use of the term “queer”, let alone “queer fiction”, was not in existence.</p>
<p>A number of scholarly literary critics writing in the 1980s took issue with the way Moorhouse represented homosexual characters and acts in his early work. </p>
<p>Chelva Kanaganayakam writes, for instance, that the narrative voice in Moorhouse’s work is “instrumental in transforming a celebration of homosexuality into a castigation of it”. Stephen Kirby <a href="https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/C413555">argues</a> that “the question of self-censorship within apparently ‘liberated’ texts has considerable application to Frank Moorhouse’s work”.</p>
<p>With his characteristic clarity, Dennis Altman <a href="https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/C252074">refutes</a> this kind of hunting down of an “appropriate” representation of homosexual desire and makes the following point about Moorhouse’s portrayal of homosexuality: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>To speak of “lesbian/gay” writing is to raise problems of boundaries and definition: the boundaries of politics are not those of literature, which tends to be more concerned with the ambivalences and ambiguities of individual lives than with the sociological construction of individual identities.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Altman is alluding to the way that the shifts in political and social frameworks for understanding and advocating on behalf of LGBTQI identities are historically nuanced. </p>
<p>Essentially he is arguing that it is a misreading to project contemporary
notions of queer identities back onto earlier literary texts. He also opens up the question of whether it is ever appropriate to critique a work of literature on the basis that it somehow fails an ideological test.</p>
<p>Gay liberation was a movement of personal as well as political interest to Moorhouse. For all their espousal of unfettered sexual relationships, the men of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Push">the Push</a>, a loose collection of libertarian thinkers who gathered to drink, eat and talk about politics in the 50s, 60s and early 70s in Sydney, had little interest in opposing the oppression of homosexuals. </p>
<p>The only openly gay man in the Push for many years was a man known as Della. Anne Coombs <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3202961-sex-and-anarchy">writes</a> in her history of the Push that: “The men of the Push delighted in his stories. He sometimes fucked straight Push men when they were drunk.” Sandra Grimes hung out with a group of younger gay men from Sydney’s Northern Beaches; Coombs reports that they found the Push too straight for them.</p>
<p>Moorhouse said he never talked about homosexuality with the Push men. But he was writing about it in his earliest fiction and had been having sexual and romantic relationships with men since he arrived in Sydney in the late 1950s. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-hidden-in-plain-sight-australian-queer-men-and-women-before-gay-liberation-155964">Friday essay: hidden in plain sight — Australian queer men and women before gay liberation</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘The police persecuted gays’</h2>
<p>I have chosen not to name any of the men with whom Moorhouse had multiple casual and long-term sexual relationships throughout his life, although the chronology and character of some of these relationships can be pieced together from letters in his archive. And I have steered away from using that material, because to do so would be to “out” a number of men who have lived outwardly heterosexual lives. </p>
<p>More importantly, the quotidian details of Moorhouse’s sex life are beside the point here. The interesting thing is how he grappled with his own anxieties about his sexuality in print – an act of astonishing commitment to self-interrogation and
to writing.</p>
<p>Moorhouse recalled that he seduced an older man, a work colleague, when he first arrived in Sydney, and that their sexual as well as personal relationship continued for many decades, crisscrossing the relationships he had with other women and men.</p>
<p>For Moorhouse, the relationship was a hinge in his sexual life. His parallel homosexual life, which continued after he married, was something that he “compartmentalised”. But in relation to his early writing, he reflected: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The word “gay” came a lot later. When I was writing about – drawing on – my own homosexual experiences there was no support system, and it was illegal and it was persecuted. I mean, the police persecuted gays. So it was a very different milieu to the world of the gay movement, and so it was much more furtive and dangerous, and dangerous in terms of one’s occupation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Moorhouse drew on his homosexual experiences in his work nonetheless, observing: “I think when I was writing fiction, I had numbed myself to the risks I was taking.”</p>
<p>In his <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Graham-Willett-Living-out-Loud-9781864489491">history of gay and lesbian activism in Australia</a>, Graham Willett writes that the gay community in this era </p>
<blockquote>
<p>differed most strongly from the later gay community in its nocturnal nature. It was a scene of the night and was very largely invisible to the rest of society. It was also, and most obviously, a radically apolitical scene. Its members hoped for nothing more than to be left alone.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In an Australia where same-sex marriage is legal, as it is in most Western democracies, it is difficult to imagine the violent institutionalised prejudice that gay men and lesbians faced so recently. There was scant history of organised gay politics in Australia until the <a href="https://www.pridehistory.org.au/camp-ink">Campaign Against Moral Persecution</a> (CAMP) was established in 1970 by John Ware and Christabel Poll. </p>
<p>Robert Reynolds <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/318853">writes</a> about the shifts that were occurring in gay identity and politics at the time:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>From 1970 to 1973, the first generation of CAMP activists participated in a remaking of Australian homosexuality. More specifically, it is possible to mark off these three years as a crucial phase in the creation of a homosexual who was, in CAMP’s own words, “open” and “proud”.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Prior to this era, homosexual life was lived clandestinely and was, for some men and women, a source of shame and conflict. In a short story published in <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-americans-baby-9781740511377">The Americans, Baby</a>, Moorhouse writes about a series of sexual encounters between the narrator, Carl, and an American journalist named Paul. After they first have sex, Carl leaves the American’s flat abruptly in disgust. But he agrees to drink with him again and returns to the same apartment.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This time they went to Paul’s bed. Afterwards, he lay there bewildered, wanting to run from the flat. The distance between himself in the bed and the clothes crumpled on the floor beside the bed, was too great. He could not make the move.<br>
‘Christ,’ he said bitterly, ‘you said we wouldn’t.’<br>
‘We’re too attracted,’ said Paul hopelessly.<br>
‘I didn’t want it. I didn’t want to do it. I’m not like this.’<br>
‘I’m not homosexual either,’ said Paul defensively, ‘we have affinity – it happens to people sometimes.’<br></p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Experimental times</h2>
<p>Moorhouse grew up in a world where “passing” as straight was a basic necessity if you wanted to keep the love and approval of your family and the ability to earn a living and basic social acceptance. </p>
<p>The fact that he openly wrote homosexual characters into his first book of short stories is a mark of his commitment to his life as a writer, in the face of the undeniable pull his middle-class and conformist upbringing exercised on him. </p>
<p>In one story in <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/futility-and-other-animals-9781740511384">Futility and Other Animals</a> he writes about a young man who develops a sexual crush on a visiting American: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>There in the alcove of the pub our hands gripped. Mine partly the grip of a mate and partly the grip of a lover. Mark’s? How did Mark’s hands grip? And then a blush. And then a laugh.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Despite the growing visibility of the gay liberation movement in the Balmain milieu, straight men, even self-professed radicals, were not always comfortable with homosexuality, according to Moorhouse. He once told me that “there’s a difference between politics and what men in an intensely homosocial society
were prepared to acknowledge”. </p>
<p>Michael Wilding remarks on Moorhouse’s homosexuality in his memoir, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/91335622-growing-wild">Growing Wild</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Frank’s homosexuality was something it took me a while to realise […] Gillian and his other ex-girlfriends joked about our friendship, but I thought that was merely a joke and didn’t detect the dark undercurrents. His proud announcement that he had opened the dancing at the Purple Onion [a gay club] meant nothing to me, night clubs were never part of my world. As far as I knew his late-night runs in Rushcutters Bay park were just part of his exercise routine.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>After this slightly anxious reflection on Moorhouse’s homosexual side, Wilding recounts that, “drunk or stoned after the pub or a party”, he once gave into the “experimental times” and decided to “experiment” with his friend.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I climbed into his bed. He lay there inert. I reached out in the direction of his genitals but encountered nothing. Significant absence, as the literary theorists put it. Then one of us fell out of the bed. It was a narrow one. I don’t know whether it was then that peering over the side to see where he had fallen, or lying on the floor looking under the bed, I saw the rifle.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s an interesting segue from the penis to the gun, and one guaranteed to waken the Freudian in Moorhouse. Wilding goes on to say that seeing the rifle caused him to harbour oddly unspecified “grim suspicions”. </p>
<p>Moorhouse was open about keeping a gun at the time of this incident. Indeed, as he recounts in the documentary A Writer’s Camp, made by director Judy Rymer in 1987, he bought a Winchester rifle with his first publisher’s advance, “to satisfy a boyish dream”. </p>
<p>In the film, which details the 19 years he spent at Ewenton Street in Balmain, where he had his writer’s studio, Moorhouse is interviewed by his desk and goes to the corner of his office to take the rifle out of its carrying case. He used the rifle for hunting with his friend and patron Murray Sime. </p>
<p>Moorhouse goes on to say that it played a number of parts in his life: “If it was under the bed, it scared away the phantoms of anxiety” and that “in very low periods it’s been the rifle I’ve considered using to end it all”.</p>
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<p>It seems unlikely that Wilding, who was a close friend of Moorhouse’s at the time, would have been unaware that his fellow author owned at least one gun. Wilding’s anecdote about the fumbled sexual encounter and the gun under the bed is, however, illuminating on another count. </p>
<p>Moorhouse always juggled an apparent but central contradiction in his personality and his interests. On one hand, he was a man with a strong sense of his feminine side. Moorhouse had a lifelong interest in cross-dressing in private, and he talked openly in interviews about it. On the other, he always enjoyed traditionally masculine pursuits such as going bush and hunting. </p>
<p>This apparent contradiction in his own personality and persona is connected to his lifelong fascination with crossing borders – including the borders of gender and sexuality. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>This is an edited extract from <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Catharine-Lumby-Frank-Moorhouse-9781742372242/">Frank Moorhouse: A Life</a> by Catharine Lumby (Allen & Unwin).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211239/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catharine Lumby does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Frank Moorhouse had a lifelong fascination with crossing borders – including the borders of gender and sexuality. It was reflected in both his life and his writing.Catharine Lumby, Professor of Media, Department of Media, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2099492023-07-24T22:41:35Z2023-07-24T22:41:35ZMuslims protesting against LGBTQ+ pride are ignoring Islam’s tradition of inclusion<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538666/original/file-20230721-15-blqc6r.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C38%2C8640%2C5703&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A woman gives a thumbs-down as she takes part in a protest against LGBTQ+ Pride in Ottawa, June 9, 2023. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/muslims-protesting-against-lgbtq-pride-are-ignoring-islams-tradition-of-inclusion" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Each summer, Pride is celebrated across the world in support of LGBTQ+ inclusion, diversity and human rights. Given the <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-must-all-speak-out-to-stop-anti-lgbtq-legislation-204805">recent backlash</a> against LGBTQ+ communities in Canada and elsewhere, Pride is more important than ever to promote visibility and challenge discrimination.</p>
<p>In recent months, some Muslim communities in Canada and the United States have protested against LGBTQ+ inclusion. Socially conservative Muslims have criticized what they see as growing LGBTQ+ “indoctrination” in schools and society more broadly. </p>
<p>In Michigan, a Muslim majority city council <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/17/hamtramck-michigan-muslim-council-lgbtq-pride-flags-banned">banned Pride flags</a> from being flown on city property. In Ottawa, young children at an anti-LGBTQ+ protest <a href="https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/adam-ottawa-muslims-should-think-twice-about-criticizing-pride-at-schools">stomped</a> on Pride flags. </p>
<p>Similar protests also took place in <a href="https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/protesters-rally-against-pride-month-activities-at-calgary-schools-1.6445237">Calgary</a> and <a href="https://edmonton.citynews.ca/2023/06/07/teacher-muslim-students-skipping-pride/">Edmonton</a>, where one teacher was surreptitiously recorded lecturing Muslim students about skipping school as part of a national protest movement against Pride month activities. The <a href="https://twitter.com/nccm/status/1666255330207059968">National Council of Canadian Muslims</a> cited the teacher’s comments as Islamophobic.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538799/original/file-20230721-8651-2flzrr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Kids stomp on pride flags." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538799/original/file-20230721-8651-2flzrr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538799/original/file-20230721-8651-2flzrr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538799/original/file-20230721-8651-2flzrr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538799/original/file-20230721-8651-2flzrr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538799/original/file-20230721-8651-2flzrr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538799/original/file-20230721-8651-2flzrr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538799/original/file-20230721-8651-2flzrr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Children step on Pride flags during a protest against Pride in Ottawa, June 9, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Pride and protest</h2>
<p>This year the Christian anti-abortion group <a href="https://www.campaignlifecoalition.com/clc-blog/id/272/title/national-pride-flag-walk-out-day">Campaign Life Coalition</a>, organized a National Pride Flag Walk-Out Day on June 1 designed to target Pride month celebrations in public schools. The walk-out protests were also supported by a series of “pray-ins” held at Catholic school boards and dioceses across Canada.</p>
<p>Given their vast financial resources and faith networks, Christian evangelicals have redoubled their efforts targeting LGBTQ+ communities, which have been buoyed by recent political lobbying successes in <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/03/19/africa-uganda-evangelicals-homophobia-antigay-bill/">Uganda</a>, which saw the government pass some of the harshest anti-LGBTQ+ laws in the world. </p>
<p>In Canada, conservative religious groups are also trying to <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/9185095/parentsvoice-bc-school-board-elections/">take over school boards</a> by having candidates run in elections under the guise of “parent voice” and anti-LGBTQ+ platforms. </p>
<p>Much of this rhetoric is couched within language about parental rights and protecting kids, which is inherently premised on the belief that teaching about LGBTQ+ identities is wrong.</p>
<p>These tactics are not new but harken back to the days of gay rights opponents like <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/1970s-christian-crusader-anita-bryant-helped-spawn-floridas-lgbtq-cult-rcna24215">Anita Bryant</a>. Her 1970s “Save Our Children” campaign sought to roll back anti-discrimination laws and prohibit gay and lesbian people from teaching in schools or working in public services. </p>
<p>These campaigns branded gay and lesbian communities as pedophiles who posed a direct threat to the moral fabric of society and helped launch the careers of noted homophobic televangelists such as <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/assault/interviews/falwell.html">Jerry Falwell</a>, <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/pat-robertson-dead-obituary-1234766208/">Pat Robertson</a>, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna6074380">Jimmy Swaggart</a> and others.</p>
<p>Today’s right-wing talk show pundits and politicians use similar language and tropes that link LGBTQ+ identities with odious terms like “<a href="https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/new-report-anti-lgbtq-grooming-narrative-surged-more-than-400-on-social-media-following-floridas-dont-say-gay-or-trans-law-as-social-platforms-enabled-extremist-politicians-and-their-allies-to-peddle-inflamatory-discriminatory-rhetoric">groomer</a>.” What’s old is new again, but with a twist in logic and strange new alliances.</p>
<h2>Building new coalitions</h2>
<p>Seeking to build new coalitions of support, far-right evangelicals have been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/16/opinion/conservatives-muslims-lgbtq.html">courting conservative Muslims</a> to jump on their homophobic bandwagon against LGBTQ+ rights and inclusion. </p>
<p>Sadly, some conservative Muslim leaders are now fanning the flames of hatred against sexual and gender minorities. For example, some <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylUAgl6oUJY">conservative imams</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDbiV4VqEug">Muslim think tanks</a> have latched onto similar narratives about the moral decay of Western societies and the dangers of Pride movements. They <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57rRT3O5tB0">warn against allying</a> with the “progressive left” and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LURR5oUAsJs">against supporting LGBTQ+ equality</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538667/original/file-20230721-38392-7sbh1p.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A person in a green shirt holds a paper that reads: hate is not holy." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538667/original/file-20230721-38392-7sbh1p.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538667/original/file-20230721-38392-7sbh1p.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538667/original/file-20230721-38392-7sbh1p.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538667/original/file-20230721-38392-7sbh1p.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538667/original/file-20230721-38392-7sbh1p.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538667/original/file-20230721-38392-7sbh1p.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538667/original/file-20230721-38392-7sbh1p.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A counter-protester carries a sign confronting a protest against Pride in Ottawa, June 9, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Muslim accommodation of gender diversity</h2>
<p>Muslim societies have historically accepted gender diversity. Even today, despite societal discrimination, there exists a variety of diverse gender identities like the <a href="https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/religion-context/case-studies/gender/third-gender-and-hijras">hijras</a> of South Asia and the <a href="https://brian-whit.medium.com/transgender-issues-in-the-middle-east-9f40d0559afa">khanith</a> of the Middle East. </p>
<p>In South Asia, multiple gender identities such as the <a href="https://medium.com/@QueeristanPK/transgender-non-binary-and-khawaja-serai-b562570bd426">zenana, chava, kothi</a> and so on exist. On the Sulawesi Island of Indonesia there is also recognition of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20210411-asias-isle-of-five-separate-genders">multiple gender traditions</a>.</p>
<p>There is also Islamic scholarship on the accommodation of gender and sexual minorities in Islam. This includes work by one of us <a href="https://roam.macewan.ca/items/52ecbcdd-86a6-43a7-b3f5-c7cea519fa37">(Junaid B. Jahangir)</a> on the issue of Muslim same-sex relationships. This research offers an invitation to traditionally trained Muslim scholars to revisit the issue with a renewed perspective. </p>
<p>Moreover, this scholarly work builds on the seminal contributions of researchers like Islamic studies scholar <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Homosexuality-in-Islam/Scott-Siraj-Al-Haqq-Kugle/9781851687015">Scott Kugle</a> and writer <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/islam-and-homosexuality-2-volumes-9780313379000/">Samar Habib</a>. </p>
<p>In addition, gender identities are well recognized in Islamic jurisprudence. The <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/603399">mukhannathūn (effeminate men) of Medina</a> inhabited the social space during the time of the Prophet. Muslim jurists derived laws of inheritance, funeral and prayer for the <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/jmews/article-abstract/14/2/152/135014/Intersex-Bodies-in-Premodern-Islamic">khuntha mushkil (indeterminate gender)</a> individuals.</p>
<p>Traditional Islamic texts offered such individuals <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fs10508-016-0754-y">prayer space</a> between the rows of men and women. The <a href="https://shamela.ws/book/11430">Encyclopedia of Islamic Jurisprudence</a> documents rulings on the marriage of such persons. </p>
<p>In 2016, a group of clerics in Pakistan issued <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/pakistan-clerics-issue-fatwa-on-third-gender-rights/a-19360321">religious edicts</a> permitting third-gender individuals to marry. </p>
<p>There have also been edicts <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15532739.2016.1250239">permitting gender reassignment surgery</a> issued from the highest bodies of both Sunni and Shia Islam. </p>
<p>However, allowance of gender reassignment surgery does not automatically translate into acceptance. For instance, while Iran is deemed as <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9745420/">“the global leader for sex change,”</a> it remains heavily opposed to LGBTQ+ rights.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538800/original/file-20230721-25-urmb7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Trans women, some wearing hijabs, sit around a table reading from copies of the Quran." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538800/original/file-20230721-25-urmb7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538800/original/file-20230721-25-urmb7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538800/original/file-20230721-25-urmb7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538800/original/file-20230721-25-urmb7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538800/original/file-20230721-25-urmb7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538800/original/file-20230721-25-urmb7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538800/original/file-20230721-25-urmb7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trans women attend a Quran reading class in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, Nov. 6, 2022. Muslim societies have historically accepted gender diversity.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Dita Alangkara)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Avoiding the anti-LGBTQ+ bandwagon</h2>
<p>Nonetheless, when Muslim groups in Western democracies jump on the anti-LGBTQ+ bandwagon, they act against the longstanding accommodation of sexual and gender diversity in their own tradition.</p>
<p>Our main worry is for LGBTQ+ Muslim youth who may be isolated without support from their families and communities. Thankfully, there are <a href="https://hearttogrow.org/">Muslim community groups</a> providing important sexual health education which embraces Islamic laws and traditions.</p>
<p>This community education is especially important when youth struggle with their sexuality and gender in an environment where they cannot be open about their identities. Muslim leaders like the late Maher Hathout <a href="http://www.straighttalkpodcast.com/when-homosexuality-hits-home/">acknowledged</a> and offered a compassionate view on Muslims struggling to reconcile sexual and religious identities. </p>
<p>Islamic teachings on sexual and gender diversity are far more diverse than what many conservative groups would like us to believe. Discrimination based on religious dogma undermines and threatens the individual freedoms essential to secular and democratic societies. Building more inclusive societies means we must all challenge prejudice and hate from both within and outside our communities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209949/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Muslim teachings on sexual and gender diversity are far more diverse than what many conservative groups would like us to believe.Junaid B. Jahangir, Associate Professor, Economics, MacEwan UniversityKristopher Wells, Associate Professor, Faculty of Health and Community Studies, MacEwan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2067312023-06-30T12:39:52Z2023-06-30T12:39:52ZFrom Stonewall to Pride, the fight for equal rights has been rooted in resistance led by Black transwomen<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534655/original/file-20230628-4980-adwtxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=215%2C26%2C982%2C777&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An unidentified participant in a New York City Pride March during the 1980s. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/portrait-of-an-unidentified-participant-dressed-in-a-blue-news-photo/1250531142?adppopup=true">Mariett Pathy Allen/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Its unclear who threw the first brick at Stonewall Inn on that night in New York City that arguably launched the gay rights liberation movement. </p>
<p>As part of queer lore, <a href="https://ucnj.org/mpj/about-marsha-p-johnson/">Marsha P. Johnson</a>, a Black transwoman at the forefront of gay liberation, or <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sylvia-Rivera">Sylvia Rivera</a>, a Latina transwoman, was the first. But based on their accounts of that night of June 28, 1969, neither threw that first brick. </p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=-llnDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA135&lpg=PA135&dq=I+was+uptown+and+I+didn%E2%80%99t+get+downtown+until+about+two+o%E2%80%99clock.+When+I+got+downtown,+the+place+was+already+on+fire,+and+there+was+a+raid+already.+The+riots+had+already+started.&source=bl&ots=ZXLgGQdf90&sig=ACfU3U1okjsWKzcQQk4czZfJjSKqPSEtcA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiTlNGh_6nqAhU4mnIEHbymCuUQ6AEwAHoECAsQAQ#v=onepage&q=I%20was%20uptown%20and%20I%20didn%E2%80%99t%20get%20downtown%20until%20about%20two%20o%E2%80%99clock.%20When%20I%20got%20downtown%2C%20the%20place%20was%20already%20on%20fire%2C%20and%20there%20was%20a%20raid%20already.%20The%20riots%20had%20already%20started.&f=false">Johnson admitted</a> to arriving after the riots had started, and Rivera <a href="https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/riverarisingandstronger.html">explained in an interview</a>:</p>
<p>“I have been given the credit for throwing the first Molotov cocktail by many historians, but I always like to correct it. I threw the second one; I did not throw the first one!”</p>
<p>The most likely scenario does not involve a brick or Molotov cocktail but rather the pleas of <a href="https://www.thepinknews.com/2020/05/27/who-threw-the-first-brick-at-stonewall-uprising-riot-pride/">Storme DeLarverie</a>, a mixed-race lesbian.</p>
<p>While she was being thrown into the back of a police car, she asked her queer brothers and sisters, “Aren’t you going to do something?”</p>
<p>Because of <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/stonewall-why-did-mafia-own-bar/">Mafia ownership</a> and stringent liquor laws, the Stonewall Inn, a popular night spot for the queer community, was an <a href="https://www.baruch.cuny.edu/nycdata/disasters/riots-stonewall.html">easy target for police raids</a> during the 1960s.</p>
<p>At approximately 2 a.m., New York police officers arrived to clear out the bar at its closing time. Initially, most patrons were cooperative, but as harassment and arrests increased, the mostly queer patrons fought back.</p>
<p>Though the details of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/31/us/first-brick-at-stonewall-lgbtq.html#:%7E:text=The%20gay%20rights%20movement%20was,tactical%20police%20in%20riot%20gear.">the origins of that night</a> remain murky, what is clear is that both Johnson and Rivera were there and would later become anchors of gay rights and queer resistance.</p>
<p>Their protests, as well as the actions of other Black gay people in an earlier and little-known act of defiance, demonstrate how queer women of color were often overlooked but at the forefront of gay liberation. </p>
<p>Despite some social progress, Black transwomen continue to pay the price, sometimes with their lives. </p>
<h2>Misperceptions of the Stonewall Riots</h2>
<p>As a first-generation Black American and gay professor who <a href="https://emerson.edu/faculty-staff-directory/deion-hawkins">researches the intersection</a> of <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9843143/">race and health</a>, <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2020.00026/full">HIV</a> and <a href="https://journals.upress.ufl.edu/rhm/article/view/1775">queer activism</a>, I look for ways to better teach queer activism during my <a href="https://professional.emerson.edu/search/publicCourseSearchDetails.do?method=load&courseId=1010305&selectedProgramAreaId=1009727&selectedProgramStreamId=1009758">rhetoric of social movements course</a>. </p>
<p>I have learned that the story of Stonewall became popularized when a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGEJmPwB4yI">movie was released</a> in 2015. But the “Stonewall” movie was met with <a href="https://people.com/movies/stonewall-movie-roland-emmerich-and-jeremy-irvine-defend-whitewashing-criticism/">harsh criticism</a> for whitewashing the story and omitting the role of Black and Latina queer people.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A queer Black man is wearing an outfit that has shiny black crystals." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534677/original/file-20230628-27-xv7gek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534677/original/file-20230628-27-xv7gek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534677/original/file-20230628-27-xv7gek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534677/original/file-20230628-27-xv7gek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534677/original/file-20230628-27-xv7gek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534677/original/file-20230628-27-xv7gek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534677/original/file-20230628-27-xv7gek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gay liberation activist Marsha P. Johnson wears a black sequined jumpsuit during a 1982 Pride March.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/american-gay-liberation-activist-marsha-p-johnson-along-news-photo/1392246163?adppopup=true">Barbara Alper/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the movie, a gay white man throws the first brick, but almost every public account of the night <a href="https://www.them.us/story/who-threw-the-first-brick-at-stonewall">discredits this version</a>.</p>
<p>Instead, it was <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-black-and-brown-activists-who-started-pride/">queer people of color</a>, especially gender nonconforming individuals, who led the charge. These individuals and other examples of queer resistance are often erased and forgotten in popular culture. </p>
<h2>An overlooked act of defiance</h2>
<p>Stonewall was not the first act of public defiance by a gay community.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.advocate.com/transgender/2018/8/02/dont-let-history-forget-about-comptons-cafeteria-riot">Compton’s Cafeteria riot</a> took place about three years before Stonewall and nearly 3,000 miles away in San Francisco. </p>
<p>Compton’s Cafeteria, located in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, was a popular late-night gathering spot in the 1960s for transgender people, particularly transwomen. </p>
<p>But the cafeteria’s management and the police subjected these marginalized communities to harassment and constant mistreatment. Transwomen were often arrested under <a href="https://www.glbthistory.org/newsletter-blog-2020/08-feature">female impersonation laws</a> and faced public humiliation and enduring physical violence. </p>
<p>In August 1966, a pivotal incident at Compton’s Cafeteria sparked the flames of resistance. </p>
<p>The documentary “<a href="https://itvs.org/films/screaming-queens/">Screaming Queens</a>” highlights the injustice faced by the trans community at the time, which was <a href="https://sfstandard.com/arts-culture/trans-history-comptons-cafeteria-riot-transgender-remembrance-day-tenderloin/">mostly women of color</a> engaging in sex work.</p>
<p>After years of enduring mistreatment, a group of transwomen, drag queens and gender-nonconforming individuals decided they had endured enough. </p>
<p>When a police officer attempted to arrest one of the transwomen, she defiantly threw her cup of hot coffee in his face. Within a few moments, patrons overturned a police car. </p>
<p>This act of resistance ignited a spontaneous uprising within the cafeteria and on the streets. By the time it was over, police had arrested dozens of people and beaten countless others.</p>
<p>Although the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jun/21/stonewall-san-francisco-riot-tenderloin-neighborhood-trans-women">Compton’s Cafeteria riot</a> did not receive the same level of national attention as other events, it had a profound and lasting impact. </p>
<h2>Hate still runs rampant</h2>
<p>Despite these acts of public defiance and growing public acceptance,
transwomen of color repeatedly report higher <a href="https://www.thetaskforce.org/new-analysis-shows-startling-levels-of-discrimination-against-black-transgender-people/">rates of unemployment</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/26895269.2020.1848691">elevated rates of stigma</a> from health care providers, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/03/25/981309903/theres-a-backdrop-of-historic-distrust-in-police-to-solve-murders-of-trans-peopl">shattered trust with law enforcement</a> and <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/p0414-trans-HIV.html">disproportionate rates of HIV</a> and other ailments.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A demonstrator holds a sign a that supports Black transsexuals." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534682/original/file-20230628-19349-ow06qu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534682/original/file-20230628-19349-ow06qu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534682/original/file-20230628-19349-ow06qu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534682/original/file-20230628-19349-ow06qu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534682/original/file-20230628-19349-ow06qu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534682/original/file-20230628-19349-ow06qu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534682/original/file-20230628-19349-ow06qu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A demonstrator takes part in the Queer Liberation March on June 28, 2020, in New York.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/an-estimated-20-000-demonstrators-take-part-in-the-queer-news-photo/1223412024?adppopup=true">David Dee Delgado/Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>In addition, the murder of transpeople <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/transgender-community-murder-rates-everytown-for-gun-safety-report/">nearly doubled from 29 deaths in 2017 to 56 in 2021</a>, according to the nonprofit <a href="https://everytownresearch.org/report/remembering-and-honoring-pulse/">Everytown for Gun Safety</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.hrc.org/resources/fatal-violence-against-the-transgender-and-gender-non-conforming-community-in-2022">The Human Rights Commission</a> notes that Black and Latina transwomen are at the highest risk of violence, with some assailants being able to skirt jail time due to “<a href="https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/press/gay-trans-panic-press-release/">gay/trans panic defense </a>,” which enables a suspect to blame their violent reaction on the victim’s sexuality.</p>
<p>So far in 2023, the murders of <a href="https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/crime/2023/03/06/neenah-man-charged-in-milwaukee-homicide-of-cashay-henderson/69975920007/">Cashay Henderson</a>, a Black transwoman and <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/arrest-made-killing-koko-da-doll-atlanta-rcna81904">KoKo Da Doll</a>, the lead actor in “Kokomo City,” <a href="https://deadline.com/2023/03/kokomo-city-sundance-berlin-award-winning-documentary-magnolia-pictures-director-d-smith-subjects-daniella-carter-dominque-silver-interviews-1235275833/">a Sundance Award-winning documentary</a>, serve as tragic reminders of the ongoing violence and discrimination targeting queer people.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206731/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Deion Scott Hawkins does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As violent attacks against gay people continue to increase in the US, Black transwomen face ongoing battles against discrimination in the workplace and over receiving health care.Deion Scott Hawkins, Assistant Professor of Argumentation & Advocacy, Emerson CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2059152023-06-01T12:29:34Z2023-06-01T12:29:34ZIsraeli protesters fear for the future of their country’s precarious LGBTQ rights revolution<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528676/original/file-20230527-15-3k7zwo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C4%2C1017%2C676&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Demonstrators lift Israeli flags and LGBTQ pride flags during a protest against the proposed judicial overhaul in Tel Aviv in May 2023. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/demonstrators-lift-flags-and-banners-during-a-protest-news-photo/1256499783?adppopup=true">Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Demonstrations against the Israeli government’s efforts to <a href="https://theconversation.com/israels-judicial-reform-efforts-could-complicate-its-relationship-with-us-but-the-countries-have-faced-other-bumps-along-the-road-203104">radically overhaul the country’s judicial system</a> have become a weekly occurrence. Often rainbow pride banners pop with color amid the sea of blue and white national flags.</p>
<p>LGBTQ allies are hardly the only groups protesting the new government: Secular Jews, liberals and people concerned that the plan will erode democracy have come out to the streets in droves since early 2023. But among other concerns, many Israelis fear that hard-line conservative ministers will <a href="https://www.jta.org/2023/01/17/politics/israel-has-been-an-lgbtq-haven-in-the-middle-east-its-new-government-could-change-that">roll back LGBTQ rights</a>. And LGBTQ issues are a potent symbol of a chasm fueling debate over the judicial overhaul: <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2018-07-26/ty-article-opinion/.premium/the-secret-of-the-lgbt-protests-success/0000017f-dc5c-d856-a37f-fddc43a30000">secular and religious Israeli Jews’</a> very different visions of the Jewish state.</p>
<p>Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition is the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/netanyahus-government-takes-a-turn-toward-theocracy">most religious</a> and <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2023/1/20/23561464/israel-new-right-wing-government-extreme-protests-netanyahu-biden-ben-gvir">nationalist</a> in the country’s history. His supporters claim that Israel’s Supreme Court, whose rulings guaranteed many of the rights LGBTQ people have today, is interventionist and <a href="https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/article-732567">needs to be reined in</a>. Opponents, however, fear that Israel’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/on-its-75th-birthday-israel-still-cant-agree-on-what-it-means-to-be-a-jewish-state-and-a-democracy-204770">balance of being a democratic state and a Jewish one</a> is tipping away from democracy.</p>
<p>But how did Israel become relatively accepting of LGBTQ people in the first place – especially given the ways religion and state are <a href="https://main.knesset.gov.il/en/activity/pages/basiclaws.aspx">entangled in its laws</a>? The answer does not rest solely with the Supreme Court. The legislature, popular culture and activist organizations were key – <a href="https://nyupress.org/9781479810031/queer-judaism/">including Orthodox groups known as the Proud Religious Community</a>, a focus of <a href="https://www.fordham.edu/info/20855/faculty/4979/orit_avishai">my ethnographic research</a>. I believe the lack of separation between law and religion has at times actually helped advance LGBTQ Jews’ rights. Activists’ carefully picked agenda and its convergence with national interests have also aided the movement.</p>
<h2>The ‘gay decade’</h2>
<p>Chronicles of Israel’s LGBTQ rights often focus on changes that occurred during the so-called “gay decade” that began in 1988, when the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, <a href="https://www.upi.com/Archives/1988/03/23/Parliament-legalizes-homosexuality-in-Israel/1523575096400/">repealed sodomy laws</a>. The groundwork for that, however, began decades earlier.</p>
<p>Israel’s first LGBTQ organization, <a href="https://www.lgbt.org.il/english-new">The Aguda</a>, was founded in 1975 as a grassroots, volunteer-based human rights nonprofit. In its early years, many members were closeted, but by the early 1980s some LGBTQ activists were willing to put a public face on the movement by sharing their stories in interviews, public hearings and lobbying efforts. A groundbreaking 1983 Aguda pamphlet appealed to scientific evidence and international legal precedents to make the case for <a href="https://www.mako.co.il/pride-news/local/Article-16dfa68babbbf71027.htm">ending prejudice and discrimination</a>. </p>
<p>A dizzying array of rights were achieved during the gay decade and beyond. Sexual orientation was declared a protected employment category in 1992, and openly gay women and men were <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127131403">allowed to serve in the military</a> in 1993. Same-sex partners were recognized for welfare in 1994, national insurance benefits in 1999 and pension benefits in 2000. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529132/original/file-20230530-21-opja7d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman in sunglasses and a tan military uniform smiles and holds a rainbow-striped flag." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529132/original/file-20230530-21-opja7d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529132/original/file-20230530-21-opja7d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529132/original/file-20230530-21-opja7d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529132/original/file-20230530-21-opja7d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529132/original/file-20230530-21-opja7d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1098&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529132/original/file-20230530-21-opja7d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1098&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529132/original/file-20230530-21-opja7d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1098&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An Israeli soldier during the 2007 Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem, with heavy police presence to prevent clashes with protesters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/an-israeli-female-soldier-holds-the-multi-colored-gay-pride-news-photo/74847632?adppopup=true">Gali Tibbon/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Because religious authorities have monopoly over marriage and divorce in Israel, <a href="https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/11/israel-wont-legalize-gay-marriage-heres-why.html">same-sex marriage is not legalized</a>. Nevertheless, over the past 20 years, same-sex couples and their families have won many other legal protections, <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/committee-okays-inheritance-between-same-sex-partners/">including inheritance</a>, stepchild adoption, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israeli-court-grants-gay-divorce-even-though-same-sex-marriage-flna1c7425785">divorce</a> and <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/israel-lifts-restrictions-sex-surrogacy-rcna10859">surrogacy rights</a>.</p>
<h2>Uneven gains</h2>
<p>Beyond the law, LGBTQ Israelis have also benefited from increasing cultural visibility and public acceptance. Municipal and state investments have made the Tel Aviv Pride Parade a <a href="https://www.afar.com/magazine/the-worlds-biggest-lgbtq-pride-celebrations">top destination</a> for Pride month travelers around the world. Israeli <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/may/10/viva-la-diva-how-eurovisions-dana-international-made-trans-identity-mainstream">transgender singer Dana International</a> won the Eurovision contest in 1998, and gay characters began to appear in <a href="https://www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/soldiers-rebels-and-drifters">mainstream movies</a> and popular TV by the turn of the millennium. The late 1990s and the aughts also saw a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1295">significant expansion</a> of organizations to support LGBTQ people and their families.</p>
<p>Still, access to protections has always been uneven. The early gay “revolution” was predominantly secular, and remains so. It is mostly an urban, Jewish, Ashkenazi affair – referring to <a href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/who-are-ashkenazi-jews/">Jews whose families were from Europe</a>. Transgender people won <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-lgbt-victory-court-bans-transgender-workplace-prejudice/">employment protections</a> and <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/israel-s-first-openly-transgender-soldier-paves-way-others-n742876">the right to serve in the military</a> more than a decade after gays and lesbians won the same rights.</p>
<p>Attitudes toward LGBTQ Israelis have been slower to change in conservative religious communities, and same-sex relationships remain taboo in ultra-Orthodox circles. Since the turn of the 21st century, however, Orthodox activists have begun to organize, as I document in my recent book “<a href="https://nyupress.org/9781479810031/queer-judaism/">Queer Judaism</a>.”</p>
<h2>Path to acceptance</h2>
<p>Although a minority, religious conservatives have been power brokers and members of government coalitions for most of the state of Israel’s history. Yet certain aspects of the country’s political landscape help explain the LGBTQ movement’s successes – as do activists’ strategic choices.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529135/original/file-20230530-21-j68l6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two men embrace as they stomp drinking glasses on the ground. One wears a black suit and one wears a white suit." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529135/original/file-20230530-21-j68l6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529135/original/file-20230530-21-j68l6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529135/original/file-20230530-21-j68l6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529135/original/file-20230530-21-j68l6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529135/original/file-20230530-21-j68l6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529135/original/file-20230530-21-j68l6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529135/original/file-20230530-21-j68l6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Yohay Verman and Yotam Ha'Cohen smash glasses during their marriage during the 2016 Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/israeli-gay-couple-yohay-verman-and-yotam-hacohen-smash-news-photo/578336518?adppopup=true">Gali Tibbon/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>First, the lack of separation of state and religion means that Israel does not offer a civil marriage option, even for opposite-sex couples. The legal system developed alternatives for heterosexual Jewish couples who did not want to or could not marry through the Jewish rabbinate, such as extending many of marriage’s civil benefits to cohabitating couples. These alternatives were relatively <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3065040#">easy to extend</a> to same-sex couples.</p>
<p>Second, the goals that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2717-0_101-1">the Israeli LGBTQ movement</a> has prioritized – equal rights to parenthood, family and military service – aligned well with Jewish Israeli common values and national priorities. They often <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3065040#">avoided alliances</a> with other causes that were considered controversial, especially Palestinian rights.</p>
<p>Third, Tel Aviv’s fun façade as a thriving gay scene served national interests. Politicians from across the political spectrum have used Israel’s liberal record on LGBTQ rights to bolster its democratic credentials while ignoring criticism over systemic human rights violations toward Arab citizens of the state and Palestinians in the occupied territories – <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/israelsolpalestine-and-the-queer-international">a phenomenon sometimes called “pinkwashing</a>.”</p>
<h2>Pivotal moment?</h2>
<p>The same forces that facilitated Israel’s LGBTQ rights revolution, however, may now undo hard-won gains.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529134/original/file-20230530-19-fnmyth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Angry-looking men holding signs in Hebrew shout during a protest." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529134/original/file-20230530-19-fnmyth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529134/original/file-20230530-19-fnmyth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529134/original/file-20230530-19-fnmyth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529134/original/file-20230530-19-fnmyth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529134/original/file-20230530-19-fnmyth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529134/original/file-20230530-19-fnmyth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529134/original/file-20230530-19-fnmyth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Israelis take part in a protest against the Gay Pride parade in Jerusalem on July 21, 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/israeli-right-wing-religious-jews-take-part-in-a-protest-news-photo/578328184?adppopup=true">Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Jewish religious conservatives have long viewed acceptance of LGBTQ people’s rights <a href="https://apnews.com/article/politics-israel-middle-east-jerusalem-religion-260e59484c89b5f19cee67a5ca0ceb50">as an affront to the state’s Jewish character</a>. In the past, ruling coalitions with both political moderates and Orthodox parties guaranteed some modicum of compromise, including on LGBTQ rights. But the current ruling coalition rests on the support of religious ultranationalists, including ministers who have <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/smotrich-my-voters-dont-care-im-a-homophobic-fascist-but-my-word-is-my-word/">openly opposed LGBTQ rights</a>. </p>
<p>Another factor is the current right-wing government’s unambiguous territorial ambitions. <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/judicial-reform-boosting-jewish-identity-the-new-coalitions-policy-guidelines/">Its guiding document</a> declares that “The Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel,” and one senior minister has even <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/smotrich-appears-to-post-support-for-expulsion-of-arab-israelis/">hinted at his support for Arab expulsion</a>. With such <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-05-20/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/israel-is-hurtling-toward-a-new-kind-of-illiberal-regime/00000188-35a8-d7fd-adec-ffebca370000">nationalistic aims</a> out in the open, the state may no longer feel as much of a need to use LGBTQ rights to defend its human rights record.</p>
<p>During research for my book about Orthodox LGBTQ activism in Israel, I noticed how efforts to change conservative communities’ ideas about equality and acceptance were grounded in claims of a shared Jewish experience. However, LGBTQ activists I talked to did not challenge other aspects of far-right politics.</p>
<p>Critics of LGBTQ activists’ approach warn that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1295">prioritizing narrower interests</a>, rather than a broader social justice platform, fails to rein in <a href="https://www.brandeis.edu/crown/publications/middle-east-briefs/pdfs/101-200/meb150.pdf">Israel’s broader shift</a> away from liberal democratic norms – which could jeopardize their own hard-won gains as well.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205915/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Orit Avishai receives funding from the Association for the Sociology of Religion, The Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, The Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, The Global Religion Research Initiative (Notre Dame and Templeton Trust), Fordham University</span></em></p>LGBTQ rights are not the main issue bringing Israeli protesters to the streets, but they do symbolize the country’s stark divide.Orit Avishai, Professor of Sociology, Fordham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2048862023-05-31T12:39:02Z2023-05-31T12:39:02ZSummer reading: 5 books that explore LGBTQ teen and young adult life<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528449/original/file-20230526-19-zowllg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C38%2C5137%2C3350&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Coming of age brings new challenges for central characters who are discovering their own sexuality.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/reading-at-the-beach-royalty-free-image/102491237?phrase=summer+reading&adppopup=true">Chris Hackett via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In recognition of LGBT Pride Month, The Conversation reached out to <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=uBrR7S0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra">Jonathan Alexander</a> – an English professor with a scholarly interest in the interplay between sexuality and literature – for recommendations of young adult fiction books that feature LGBTQ characters. What follows is a list that Alexander, who has just stepped down as the children’s and young adult fiction section editor for the <a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/">Los Angeles Review of Books</a>, considers as “must-reads” for this summer.</em></p>
<h2>1. Darius the Great Is Not Okay</h2>
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<img alt="Two boys sitting and looking at an urban landscape" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527550/original/file-20230522-19-alwc0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527550/original/file-20230522-19-alwc0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527550/original/file-20230522-19-alwc0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527550/original/file-20230522-19-alwc0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527550/original/file-20230522-19-alwc0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527550/original/file-20230522-19-alwc0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527550/original/file-20230522-19-alwc0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">‘Darius the Great Is Not Okay’ by Adib Khorram.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/573023/darius-the-great-is-not-okay-by-adib-khorram/">Penguin Random House</a></span>
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<p>Written by Adib Khorram, “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/573023/darius-the-great-is-not-okay-by-adib-khorram/">Darius the Great Is Not Okay</a>” is told from the perspective of a Persian American teen battling an anxiety disorder while navigating the complexities of growing up in a culturally mixed household. Darius’ parents – an Iranian immigrant mother and a white father – are kind and sympathetic, even as they are dealing with their own issues, including the dad’s struggle with mental health issues and the mother’s attempt to maintain family relations with relatives in a country that is not only halfway around the world but whose government is viewed with suspicion by many Americans. Still, Darius’ family pulls together, even making a trip to Iran to visit relatives. While there, Darius learns about his cultural background as Persian, makes a lifelong friend in an Iranian cousin, and considers his own sexuality. He might be gay. How will that complicate his life? </p>
<p>Khorram beautifully handles the challenges – and pleasures – of growing up in a culturally mixed but rich and loving household while also dealing with mental health challenges and identity exploration. And there are a lot of sweet touches throughout, including a love of tea and “Star Trek.” Highly recommended for its sensitivity and authenticity. </p>
<h2>2. Lark & Kasim Start a Revolution</h2>
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<img alt="Two teenagers holding hands and smiling." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527556/original/file-20230522-23-49gxsv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527556/original/file-20230522-23-49gxsv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527556/original/file-20230522-23-49gxsv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527556/original/file-20230522-23-49gxsv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527556/original/file-20230522-23-49gxsv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527556/original/file-20230522-23-49gxsv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527556/original/file-20230522-23-49gxsv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Lark & Kasim Start a Revolution’ by Kacen Callender.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/lark-kasim-start-a-revolution_9781419756870/">Abrams Books</a></span>
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<p>Kacen Callender, whose groundbreaking “<a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/felix-ever-after-kacen-callender?variant=32280909578274">Felix Ever After</a>” delighted readers with its tale of a Black trans boy learning how to navigate being in and out of love, returns with a new book just as compellingly real. Lark and Kasim are old friends whose relationship has seen better days. Lark is working hard at being a writer while also trying to help Kasim figure out how to handle the complexities of living at least part of their young lives in the shadows of social media. Ultimately, the book is as much about forging friendships – and learning how to handle their evolution – as about crushes and teen love. </p>
<p>With richly drawn nonbinary and queer characters, “Lark & Kasim Start a Revolution” joins Callender’s previous award-winning books in contributing beautifully written and deeply imagined Black, queer and trans characters that readers of all kinds will come to love. </p>
<h2>3. Last Night at the Telegraph Club</h2>
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<img alt="An empty city street with two people holding hands under a lamppost." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527560/original/file-20230522-14801-xyo5r1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527560/original/file-20230522-14801-xyo5r1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527560/original/file-20230522-14801-xyo5r1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527560/original/file-20230522-14801-xyo5r1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527560/original/file-20230522-14801-xyo5r1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527560/original/file-20230522-14801-xyo5r1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527560/original/file-20230522-14801-xyo5r1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">‘Last Night at the Telegraph Club’ by Malinda Lo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/565819/last-night-at-the-telegraph-club-by-malinda-lo/">Penguin Random House</a></span>
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<p>Malinda Lo’s<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/565819/last-night-at-the-telegraph-club-by-malinda-lo/"> National Book Award-winning novel</a> is set in mid-20th-century San Francisco, in a Chinese American immigrant community in which Lily Hu has to learn to deal with racism, the “Red Scare” and the possibility that she might be a lesbian. A masterwork of historical young adult literature, “Last Night at the Telegraph Club” introduces readers to how lesbian communities formed – and thrived – even during some of the most repressive and homophobic moments in U.S. history. </p>
<p>Lo’s novel joins her previous works, such as the groundbreaking “<a href="https://www.malindalo.com/ash">Ash</a>,” a retelling of Cinderella from a lesbian perspective, in creating exciting and affirming work for young queer readers, as well as for anyone who cares for those questioning their sexuality and sense of belonging in the world. </p>
<h2>4. Café Con Lychee</h2>
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<img alt="Two boys making eye contact in front of sugary snacks and drinks." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527562/original/file-20230522-15-b7kh5t.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527562/original/file-20230522-15-b7kh5t.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527562/original/file-20230522-15-b7kh5t.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527562/original/file-20230522-15-b7kh5t.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527562/original/file-20230522-15-b7kh5t.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527562/original/file-20230522-15-b7kh5t.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527562/original/file-20230522-15-b7kh5t.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Café Con Lychee’ by Emery Lee.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/cafe-con-lychee-emery-lee?variant=40682132668450">Harper Collins Publishers</a></span>
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<p>Emery Lee’s delicious novel centers on the rivalry between an Asian American café and a Puerto Rican bakery in a small Vermont town – with both eateries facing competition from a new fusion restaurant that has just opened. The families that own the cafés each have a young son working in them – Theo and Gabi, respectively – who have to learn to overcome their own rivalry and help their families survive the precarities of operating a business in a world of cutthroat capitalism.</p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.harpercollins.ca/9780063210271/cafe-con-lychee/">Café Con Lychee</a>” shows how love survives economic challenges and family foibles as the two young men move from rivalry to romance. A sweet and nourishing tale, the book offers readers a relatable glimpse into making it – and making out – during a time of economic upheaval.</p>
<h2>5. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe</h2>
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<img alt="A red truck parked on grass at night." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527563/original/file-20230522-17128-jkclqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527563/original/file-20230522-17128-jkclqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527563/original/file-20230522-17128-jkclqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527563/original/file-20230522-17128-jkclqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527563/original/file-20230522-17128-jkclqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527563/original/file-20230522-17128-jkclqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527563/original/file-20230522-17128-jkclqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">‘Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe’ by Benjamin Alire Sáenz.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Aristotle-and-Dante-Discover-the-Secrets-of-the-Universe/Benjamin-Alire-Saenz/Aristotle-and-Dante/9781665925419">Simon & Schuster</a></span>
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<p>I want to conclude this year’s summer reading list with an older work – Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s still beautiful, still vital and still very necessary paean to young gay love. Ari and Dante, from two different walks of life, learn to find love and self-acceptance in this beautifully written book. At the start of the book, Ari is dealing with family trouble, including a brother in prison, and Dante is perhaps a bit too smart for his own good. The two meet at a swimming pool one summer, setting the stage for a steamy exploration of friendship that might turn into something more. If you haven’t read “Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe,” catch up this summer with this classic of contemporary LGBTQ young adult fiction, and then check out its recently published sequel, “Aristotle and Dante Dive Into the Waters of the World.” Happy reading!</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204886/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Alexander does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A scholar of young adult fiction presents a fresh list of LGBTQ ‘must-reads’ for the summer of 2023.Jonathan Alexander, Professor of English and Gender & Sexuality Studies, University of California, IrvineLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2016592023-03-20T01:39:12Z2023-03-20T01:39:12Z‘A place to dance and a place to cry’: Pride (R)evolution is an authentic exhibition for queer communities<p>Sydney World Pride and Mardi Gras 2023 were a huge success. Sydney was activated in a way rarely seen – block and street parties, cultural festivals and dance parties for all tastes. Now that the beats have diminished and the glitter has settled, viewing Pride (R)evolution at the State Library of New South Wales made it all the more richer and remarkable for me. This show is an astonishing survey of the importance of difference. </p>
<p>Pride (R)evolution is one of just five serious, in-depth exhibitions about queer culture held in Sydney during Pride: the others were curator Margot Riley’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/illegal-sydney-warehouse-parties-lives-lost-to-aids-and-gay-liberation-photographer-william-yang-captured-it-all-199181">William Yang’s Sydneyphiles Reimagined</a>,
University of New South Wales’ <a href="https://www.events.unsw.edu.au/event/party">The Party</a> – about the rich seam of Sydney’s club and dance parties from the 1970s to the 1990s, National Art School’s <a href="https://nas.edu.au/sydney-worldpride-2023/braving-time-contemporary-art-in-queer-australia/">Queer Contemporary</a>, including Richard Perram’s major exhibition, and the Powerhouse’s <a href="https://www.maas.museum/event/absolutely-queer/">Absolutely Queer</a>, with a focus on non-binary dressing and the current generation. It was the smaller, more agile spaces that held these significant shows, and not the larger, prominent galleries, such as has been happening in <a href="https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/exhibition/queer/">Melbourne</a>.</p>
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<span class="caption">Pride (R)evolution at the State Library of New South Wales is an astonishing survey of the importance of difference.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photography by Zoe J Burrell, courtesy of State Library NSW</span></span>
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<p>Libraries and archives are incredibly important spaces as they can actively work to reflect the diversity of their constituents. The State Library of NSW has been collecting and analysing <a href="https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/stories/queering-archive">queer stories</a> for decades. As gay life in NSW was criminalised until 1984 and policed much longer, much of the story survives in court records, sensationalist reporting, and traces left behind by queers themselves. Pride (R)evolution is remarkable for seeking out new voices via the queer community and reconnecting a whole series of broken threads.</p>
<p>It also tells the story of “good people” who are queer-friendly or queer-adjacent and who believed these stories deserved to to be saved. At the height of the AIDS crisis, many gay men died without a legal will and their life records were often destroyed. Some of those trailblazers include former Mitchell Librarian Margy Burns, an out lesbian who believed in “<a href="https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/historical-reflections/47/1/hrrh470106.xml">voices from below</a>”, and library curator <a href="https://sallygray.com.au/?portfolio_page=the-david-mcdiarmid-creative-legacy">Sally Gray</a>, who developed protocols to preserve the work of creatives. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/lidia-thorpes-mardi-gras-disruption-is-the-latest-in-an-ongoing-debate-about-acceptable-forms-of-protest-at-pride-200713">Lidia Thorpe’s Mardi Gras disruption is the latest in an ongoing debate about acceptable forms of protest at Pride</a>
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</em>
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<h2>Archives and memories</h2>
<p>Since Margot Riley lead-curated <a href="https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/coming-out-70s">Coming Out in the 70s</a> in 2019, State Library staff have been involved in a major push to bring in new collections and voices in time for World Pride. At the same time, the queer community itself has become intent on conserving its archives and memories – such as a <a href="https://queerarchives.org.au">major archive</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/jul/29/were-back-baby-how-this-australian-first-pride-centre-is-restoring-the-hope-of-a-neighbourhood">building</a> opened in Melbourne in 2021. </p>
<p>A curatorial collective worked with a consultation group of 30 community figures, activists and creators to bring in stories from across Sydney, including western suburbs and South Asian voices. </p>
<p>Curators such as Bruce Carter distilled the most powerful words and images from <a href="https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/research-and-collections/lgbtqi-collections">hundreds of metres</a> of archives and thousands of images.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516220/original/file-20230319-22-djw31z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516220/original/file-20230319-22-djw31z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516220/original/file-20230319-22-djw31z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516220/original/file-20230319-22-djw31z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516220/original/file-20230319-22-djw31z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516220/original/file-20230319-22-djw31z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516220/original/file-20230319-22-djw31z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516220/original/file-20230319-22-djw31z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Exhibit from Pride (R)evolution.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library NSW</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Queering the State Library</h2>
<p>The exhibition opens by queering the whole organisation: we have a section on <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/leeson-ida-emily-7157">Ida Leeson</a>, the sapphic-appearing Mitchell Librarian (1932-46) who was the first woman to hold a senior post in an Australian library and who lived openly with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Leeson">Florence Birch</a>, YWCA official – Leeson’s private papers were burned by her family.</p>
<p>A multi-path layout allows visitors to take any path they wish, complex and tracking in different directions like many queer lives. Bright, primary colours reflect the energy and activism of the lives we are about to meet.</p>
<p>How did we meet before apps? We learn about communication in the pre-digital age with the formation of both gay and lesbian presses, examples of classified ads, phone lines, and computer dating services.</p>
<p>Who was present? We learn about Indigenous Australian involvement in Mardi Gras: Malcolm Cole, who featured as Captain Cook in the 1988 Mardi Gras, and who was the first Indigenous man to be commemorated with a death notice in the gay press in 1995. </p>
<p>What about anti-violence initiatives? I had forgotten we were encouraged to wear whistles, as the violence had become so bad by the early 1990s. The whistle necklace became a fashion cue, an example of resistance merged with <a href="https://news.stanford.edu/2021/02/10/dress-codes-reveal-politics-social-change/">style politics</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516223/original/file-20230319-20-djw31z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516223/original/file-20230319-20-djw31z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516223/original/file-20230319-20-djw31z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516223/original/file-20230319-20-djw31z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516223/original/file-20230319-20-djw31z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516223/original/file-20230319-20-djw31z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516223/original/file-20230319-20-djw31z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516223/original/file-20230319-20-djw31z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Whistle culture remains at pride marches today.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Authentic and domestic lives</h2>
<p>How was all this social change cobbled together in the pre-internet age? Original painted and collaged designs for Mardi Gras posters highlight a messy materiality. </p>
<p>There is a strong “Do it yourself” and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agitprop">agitprop</a> aspect to much of the work that meshes with <a href="https://assets.cambridge.org/97805216/79572/excerpt/9780521679572_excerpt.pdf">postmodern</a> irreverence and the blurring of boundaries. </p>
<p>Art, craft, design, jewellery, performance, fashion, fun: labels didn’t matter, and no one really cared what they were doing or wearing so long as it enabled them to better live an authentic life.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/illegal-sydney-warehouse-parties-lives-lost-to-aids-and-gay-liberation-photographer-william-yang-captured-it-all-199181">Illegal Sydney warehouse parties, lives lost to AIDS, and gay liberation: photographer William Yang captured it all</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Gay lives are also domestic lives. There is that great rarity, a 1938 photo album of the modern furnished <a href="https://dictionaryofsydney.org/building/the_astor">Astor</a> apartment of <a href="https://collection.sl.nsw.gov.au/record/9qoQEAQ1">Fred James and George Anderson</a>, a couple who had met in Hollywood and were in the beauty business. </p>
<p>There is also a terrific section on 1970s gay share houses as spaces for “reinvention and kinship”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516227/original/file-20230319-28-yvz5st.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516227/original/file-20230319-28-yvz5st.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516227/original/file-20230319-28-yvz5st.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516227/original/file-20230319-28-yvz5st.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516227/original/file-20230319-28-yvz5st.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516227/original/file-20230319-28-yvz5st.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516227/original/file-20230319-28-yvz5st.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516227/original/file-20230319-28-yvz5st.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The apartment of Fred James and George Anderson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of NSW</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Sound and voices</h2>
<p>Sound features strongly in the exhibition. There are voices drawn from <a href="https://guides.sl.nsw.gov.au/oral-history-sound/gay_lesbian">oral histories</a> and even soundbites from gay community radio and helplines. We can listen to a recreated lecture by important gay activist and historian <a href="https://www.positivelife.org.au/blog/garry-wotherspoon/">Garry Wotherspoon</a>. These digital assets allow for <a href="https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/blogs/sense-wonder">intergenerational understanding</a> and transfer.</p>
<p>Drag queens have been called the “social workers” of the gay community for the work they undertook advocating for queer people during the AIDS crisis. Their stories, including of the sex work they often undertook, are told respectfully with reference to figures including famous Whanganui Mâori trans woman <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Rupe">Carmen Rupe</a> (I miss her darting around on her motorised scooter, tropical flowers in hair). </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516232/original/file-20230320-28-waat96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516232/original/file-20230320-28-waat96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516232/original/file-20230320-28-waat96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516232/original/file-20230320-28-waat96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516232/original/file-20230320-28-waat96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516232/original/file-20230320-28-waat96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516232/original/file-20230320-28-waat96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516232/original/file-20230320-28-waat96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Carmen Rupe was a New Zealand drag performer, anti-discrimination activist, would-be politician and HIV/AIDS activist.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Not alone in history</h2>
<p>Incredible 1970s photographs of the transfeminine community of Kings Cross taken by the theatrical designer <a href="https://barry-kay-archive.org">Bary Kay</a> are shown for the first time. We learn about Roberta Perkins, a trans woman who advocated for sex workers’ rights. NSW was the first jurisdiction in the world to decriminalise sex work in 1995.</p>
<p>“Predecessors confirm that you are not alone in history”, notes <a href="https://archiebarry.com">Archie Barrie</a>. Pride (R)evolution is a live example of how collections and archives enable citizenship. </p>
<p>People have a right to be seen and find themselves in public institutions: “you are each living your own stories”. This intergenerational dialogue permits us to see how far we have come, how the “personal is always political, and the private often becomes public”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201659/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter McNeil does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Pride (R)evolution at the State Library of New South Wales is an astonishing survey of the importance of difference.Peter McNeil, Distinguished Professor of Design History, UTS, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1905812022-09-14T14:07:22Z2022-09-14T14:07:22ZSerbia banning EuroPride 2022 shows hard-won progress for LGBTQ+ rights is under threat<p>Four days before the streets of Belgrade were to host EuroPride 2022, LGBTQ+ activists were handed a letter from Serbia’s interior ministry informing them that the proposed route for the Pride march <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/13/serbia-bans-its-first-staging-of-europride-rally-at-late-notice">had been rejected</a> and telling them to submit a revised route. The catch? The request needed to have been handed to the police the previous day to be considered. So it amounted to an effective ban. </p>
<p>Serbian LGBTQ+ activists have told me that despite this they will march along the original route as planned. In more ways than one, it feels like history is repeating itself. </p>
<p>In 2019, Belgrade <a href="https://www.epoa.eu/belgrade-wins-europride-2022-in-landslide-vote/">was elected</a> by the European Pride Organisers Association members to host EuroPride, a pan-European Pride event which is held annually in a different European city. This was a major first for EuroPride: the first time the event would be held outside the European Economic Area (EEA) and a major recognition of how Belgrade Pride has overcome a history of violence and bans to become a regular and safe event each year since 2014. </p>
<p>The decision to effectively ban the march <a href="http://www.koenslootmaeckers.com/blogs/to-ban-or-not-to-ban-how-uncertainty-around-europride-only-benefits-the-serbian-president">has echoes</a> of 2009, when Belgrade Pride was first banned. Then – as now – the interior ministry informed activists that they would not be allowed to march through central Belgrade, but that they could use a route through Ušće park on the outskirts of the city. </p>
<p>The march was allowed the following year but was <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11507253">met by riots</a> and extreme violence from homophobic protesters, with more than 100 people injured. The violence was subsequently used as an excuse to ban the event between 2011 and 2013. </p>
<p>Political tension between Kosovo and Serbia was also <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsee/2014/09/17/belgrade-pride-2014-another-blow-to-the-head-or-will-it-go-ahead/">used as an excuse</a>. But following the signing of the <a href="https://www.srbija.gov.rs/cinjenice/en/120394">Brussels agreement</a> between the two countries in 2013, the EU <a href="https://www.euractiv.com/section/enlargement/news/ban-on-gay-rights-march-could-hurt-serbia-s-eu-candidacy/">put pressure on Serbia</a> over LGBTQ+ issues, warning the ban could affect the country’s candidacy for membership and the Belgrade Pride resumed in 2014.</p>
<h2>The ban as a delicate political game</h2>
<p>But this year the Serbian president, Aleksandar Vučić, called for the event to be cancelled, again blaming <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/serbian-president-cancels-europride-in-belgrade-citing-kosovo-tensions/">tensions with Kosovo</a> as well as food and energy shortages as reasons. Vučić <a href="https://www.danas.rs/vesti/politika/vucic-imam-u-porodici-zenu-koja-je-gej-ne-bih-je-se-odrekao-za-sve-one-koji-bi-da-je-tuku/">insists he is not homophobic</a>, citing his choice of openly gay Ana Brnabić as prime minister and a gay family member as proof of his bona fides:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If I thought Ana Brnabić was evil, she wouldn’t be where she is. I have a woman in my extended family who is gay and I would never trade her for anything else, I don’t think there is any evil. Many of my co-workers are gay and they help me so much I can’t tell you.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Vučić also <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/27/serbian-government-europride-event-belgrade-lgbtq">blamed anti-Pride marches</a> over the past few weeks for his decision, saying that: “It’s not the question of whether they [extremists] are stronger, but you just can’t do it all at the same moment, and that’s it. I am not happy about it, but we can’t manage.” </p>
<h2>What happens now?</h2>
<p>EuroPride’s organisers said they would “<a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/serbia-bans-europride-march-lgbt-threats-violence/32032041.html#:%7E:text=The%20organization%20vowed%20to%20%22%20use,same%20day%20was%20also%20banned.">use all available legal means to overturn this decision</a>”, insisting that no matter what the outcome activists would gather on Saturday in front of the parliament building. This will effectively present the Serbian police with the thorny question of “when does a gathering become a march?” And there can be little doubt that any LGBTQ+ gathering will be met with counter protests and the threat of violence. </p>
<p>The intense levels of public homophobia in Serbia and the decision to effectively ban this year’s march are a setback for LGBTQ+ activists who have worked hard to establish Pride as an annual event in Belgrade since it was reinstated in 2014. </p>
<p>As I discussed in depth <a href="https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526159342/coming-in/">in my book</a>: Coming in: Sexual politics and EU accession in Serbia, this fight has come at a cost, where activists felt that they had to essentially put pro-LGBTQ+ political reforms to one side, as the battle of simply being able to openly declare their sexual identity at a Pride event took all their effort.</p>
<p>For the government, meanwhile, the issue of LGBTQ+ rights means more in terms of Serbia’s candidacy for membership of the EU – a form of “<a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/serbian-civil-society-calls-pinkwash-over-first-lesbian-premier-1.3162884">pinkwashing</a>” to present the country as tolerant and fully accepting of minorities without fundamentally improving their rights. But critics say that, while having an openly gay prime minister gives the appearance that Serbia is becoming more open and tolerant, Brnabić herself has said she doesn’t want to be “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/28/ana-brnabic-serbia-prime-minister-interview">branded Serbia’s gay PM</a>” and has said she wants to <a href="https://www.euronews.com/2019/09/23/away-from-the-media-s-gaze-ana-brnabic-is-failing-to-advocate-for-lgbt-equality-in-serbia">prioritise other policy reforms</a> over equal rights for LGBTQ+ people.</p>
<p>There is also little evidence that anti-discrimination legislation – adopted in <a href="https://crd.org/2009/03/26/serbia-adopts-law-against-discrimination/">2009</a> as part of the EU visa liberalisation process – are taken seriously. Implementation of the law remains minimal with very few legal cases and LGBTQ+ people still reluctant to report. Additionally, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/sp/article/29/1/1/6032869">little is being done</a> to improve court practices regarding anti-discrimination cases or to improve treatment of LGBTQ+ victims by police officers. </p>
<p>Since the annual Pride march was restored in 2014, activists have worked hard to put LGBTQ+ rights and politics front and centre. Now the ban has undermined this. And if there’s violence on when activists meet to defy the ban, it hands political opponents an excuse to ban it again next year, if politically convenient.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190581/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Koen Slootmaeckers is affiliated with ERA — LGBTI equal rights association for Western Balkans and Turkey. </span></em></p>Despite an openly lesbian prime minister, Serbia’s deep-seated problems with homophobia remain.Koen Slootmaeckers, Senior Lecturer in International Politics, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1682262021-09-29T09:54:21Z2021-09-29T09:54:21ZHow Dolly Parton’s Coat of Many Colors became an LGBTQ+ anthem<p>Dolly Parton has many LGBTQ+ fans and has long been considered an enduring queer icon. Parton has <a href="https://www.advocate.com/music/2018/12/07/8-times-dolly-parton-cemented-her-status-lgbtq-icon#media-gallery-media-1">spoken out</a> on multiple occasions in support of LGBTQ+ rights and has also been vocal in <a href="https://www.advocate.com/music/2017/10/14/dolly-parton-backs-marriage-equality-australia-love-love">support of marriage equality</a>. She has also called out Christians for <a href="https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/12/25/dolly-parton-wants-christian-homophobes-to-stop-shaming-gays-judging-people-is-gods-job/">judging gay people</a>, saying: “If you’re gay, you’re gay. If you’re straight, you’re straight. And you should be allowed to be how you are and who you are.”</p>
<p>Parton’s outspoken <a href="https://countryqueer.com/stories/article/dolly-partons-all-embracing-country-vision/">support for the LGBTQ+ community</a> can first be seen way back in 1991 on the album Eagle When She Flies, which features the song <a href="https://youtu.be/rIkVlyrIaHo">Family</a>, with its lyrics: “Some are preachers, some are gay, some are addicts, drunks and strays. But not a one is turned away when it’s family.”</p>
<p>But it is the title track on her Coat of Many Colors album, released 50 years ago this September, that resonates with <a href="https://phdolly.blogspot.com/">so many LGBTQ+ fans</a>. The song describes an episode from Parton’s childhood growing up in rural poverty where her mother sews her a coat out of different coloured rags. For the young Parton, this gives her a sense of pride in herself as well as helping her stand out and <a href="https://dollyparton.com/life-and-career/books/dolly-my-life-and-other-unfinished-business-autobiography/1419">receive attention</a> from her parents (which with 12 siblings was no mean feat). But upon going to school the other children just see the rags and make fun of her. </p>
<h2>From Shame To Pride</h2>
<p>Parton from through feeling proud wearing the coat to shame at the hands of the other school children. She attempts to resolve this by reasserting a sense of pride: “One is only poor only if they choose to be.” Far from blaming those who have no money for their misfortune, this line is about redirecting shame.</p>
<p>The song’s reworking of shame is what enables it to travel and resonate with so many different listeners. In the recent BBC biopic, Dolly Parton: Here I Am (later released on Netflix), Parton <a href="https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81204624">describes</a> the song as her “philosophy”, saying: “It’s OK to be different. You know, it’s OK to not be like everybody else. In fact, it’s not only OK, it’s wonderful that you are who you are.” </p>
<p>This transformation of shame into pride has long been a strategy used throughout <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Queer-Attachments-The-Cultural-Politics-of-Shame/Munt/p/book/9780754649236">LGBTQ+ history and politics</a>. And the wearing of the coat of many colours has striking visual similarities with the LGBTQ+ pride flag – an image that has become increasingly resonant as Parton’s LGBTQ+ advocacy has become more pronounced. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LQjMCKq87N0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>50 years on</h2>
<p><a href="https://dollyparton.com/life-and-career/music/coat-of-many-colors-album/908">Coat of Many Colors</a> has now reached the ripe old age of 50, but it’s still as relevant now as when it was released in October 1971. Nominated for album of the year at the 1972 Country Music Association Awards, it also appeared at Number 257 on Rolling Stone’s 2020 list of the <a href="https://www.rs500albums.com/300-251/257">500 Greatest Albums of All Time</a>. </p>
<p>The album was released when Parton was still heavily connected to her musical partner Porter Wagoner. And Coat of Many Colors showed she was fast <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/album/coat-of-many-colors-mw0000244403">outgrowing him</a>. The album was a defining moment for Parton to assert her agency and independent identity as an artist. </p>
<p>Coat of Many Colors continues to be one of Parton’s most popular songs, as shown by the <a href="https://iupress.org/9780253031556/dolly-parton-gender-and-country-music/">enthusiastic response</a> to it during live shows. </p>
<p>The song also connects with audiences worldwide – Parton has a lot of fans in <a href="https://www.internationalcountrymusic.org/schedule-1">Nigeria</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/country-music-is-hugely-popular-in-africa-but-its-nearly-all-imported-84448">Kenya</a> – due to its relatable story of family, struggle and acceptance. But as wonderful and historically significant as this song is, the Coat of Many Colors album has more than just one song of note. </p>
<h2>Further gems</h2>
<p>Parton wrote <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/album/coat-of-many-colors-mw0000244403">seven out of the ten songs</a> on the album. All of them showcase the refinement and evolution of Parton’s craft from the comic representations of sexuality in Traveling Man, where a young girl falls in love with her travelling man only for him to <a href="https://www.chroniclebooks.com/products/dolly-parton-songteller">abandon her for her mother</a>, to the evocative pastoral imagery of the mountain landscape where she grew up in Early Morning Breeze and <a href="https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Cash-Box/70s/1971/Cash-Box-1971-10-09.pdf">My Blue Tears</a>. </p>
<p>A key song that captures the essence of Parton’s philosophy is Here I Am, which Parton recently re-recorded with Sia for the Netflix film <a href="https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/80201490">Dumplin’</a>. A gospel-inflected country song, Parton’s vocals and lyrics enable its message to travel wide. Parton acknowledges the hardship of people’s situations so that her message of belief is not invalidating.</p>
<figure>
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</figure>
<p>Through Parton’s storytelling, others from all walks of life that are facing difficulties can identify with the emotional content of the song and hear the resounding message of hope.</p>
<p>Indeed, Parton’s crossover appeal, from country music fans to pop audiences, and her <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=47erc5fp9780252043529">solid songwriting core</a> set a precedent that artists today who straddle multiple genres still build on – artists like <a href="https://outsider.com/news/country-music/taylor-swift-overjoyed-dolly-parton-mentions-her-acceptance-speech-need-nothing-else-birthday/">Taylor Swift</a>, <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/kacey-musgraves-icons-and-influences-1127708/">Kacey Musgraves</a> and most recently <a href="https://tressie.substack.com/p/the-dolly-moment">Lil Nas X</a>. </p>
<p>Parton has herself indicated that she would like to be remembered <a href="https://theboot.com/dolly-parton-unreleased-music-after-death-afterlife/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral&fbclid=IwAR3BVZySmfE7weaw9uIn0-2Gbv0i-N8snwgyp5OA-JI3aYIpH4fLdj9WaH0">foremost as a songwriter</a>. Not to disregard the significant impact Parton has had on the LGBTQ+ community via her <a href="https://iupress.org/9780253031556/dolly-parton-gender-and-country-music/">media persona and image</a>, but an understanding of Dolly is much more enriched by a deeper understanding of her songwriting.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/168226/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Barker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The imagery of the title track holds striking similarities with the LGBTQ+ pride flag.James Barker, PhD Candidate in Music, Newcastle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1621502021-06-04T12:28:06Z2021-06-04T12:28:06ZAre companies that support Pride and other social causes ‘wokewashing’?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404362/original/file-20210603-15-1ck70sr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People with the Pride Alliance Network, sponsored by Starbucks, walk along Ocean Drive during the 11th annual Pride Parade as part of Miami Beach Pride week on April 7, 2019, in Miami Beach, Florida.
</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Consumers increasingly want companies to <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dangingiss/2019/02/11/study-consumers-blame-government-for-dividing-the-nation-but-look-to-brands-to-fix-it/#2c91af526ac4">address society’s big problems</a>, such as <a href="https://www.marketingweek.com/erin-lyons-ad-industry-address-climate-change/">climate change</a> and <a href="https://www.marketingdive.com/news/53-of-consumers-believe-brands-can-do-more-to-solve-social-problems-than-g/538925/">crumbling infrastructure</a>. And polls suggest <a href="https://www.accenture.com/_acnmedia/Thought-Leadership-Assets/PDF/Accenture-CompetitiveAgility-GCPR-POV.pdf">more than half</a> say they want to buy from <a href="https://sproutsocial.com/insights/data/social-media-connection/">brands that take stands on social issues</a>.</p>
<p>At the same time, consumers are <a href="https://marketingland.com/brands-strive-for-authenticity-as-audiences-turn-a-skeptical-eye-toward-ads-236295">increasingly skeptical about these partnerships</a> – such as <a href="https://twistedfood.co.uk/food-drink-support-pride-month">corporate</a> <a href="https://taggmagazine.com/corporate-pride-support/">sponsorships</a> of LGBTQ Pride Month – and instead see them as marketing stunts rather than acts of genuine activism. This is called “wokewashing.”</p>
<p>I’m a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=gOU_fuEAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate">professor of brand responsibility</a>, and my forthcoming research investigates brands and their relationships with social issues, including the importance of both corporate allies and advocates.</p>
<h2>Allies or advocates</h2>
<p>In marketing terms, allies are members of a dominant social group that <a href="https://doi.org/10.33043/JSACP.8.1.17-33">bring attention to important social issues</a>.</p>
<p>A company can serve as an ally when it works to increase awareness about issues affecting marginalized groups. Advocates take a more active role, working to change <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20100402225054/http://www.npaction.org/article/articleview/76/1/248">political, economic and social systems</a>.</p>
<p>Companies can be advocates when they create campaigns to promote institutional change and provide financial support for groups engaged in creating social change. </p>
<p>Yoplait’s campaign to address <a href="https://econsultancy.com/five-brand-campaigns-that-took-a-stand-on-social-issues/">patronizing attitudes toward moms</a> is an example of corporate advocacy. Another is <a href="https://water.org/stellaartois/">Stella Artois’ partnership with Water.org</a> to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHnVMfjFMVs">end the global water crisis</a>, which has provided clean drinking water to over 2 million people so far.</p>
<h2>Pride Month</h2>
<p>However, corporate adventures into social issues aren’t always well-thought-out or -received.</p>
<p>For example, consider corporate involvement in annual Pride Month celebrations. In 2019, the number of brands participating in Pride reached <a href="https://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/how-brands-are-showing-their-pride-month/2176256">an all-time high</a>. Brands including <a href="http://www.sfpride.org/">T-Mobile, Alaska Airlines</a> and MasterCard featured <a href="https://twitter.com/WunThompson/status/1138187421009436672">supportive messages</a> and <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/these-30-brands-are-celebrating-pride-giving-back-lgbt-community-1441707">announced donations</a> to support the queer community.</p>
<p>Some don’t welcome large-brand sponsorships to Pride, arguing that sponsorships take the focus away from <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/02/brands-rainbow-queasy-but-bring-lgbt-lives-into-mainstream-skittles-gay">issues of LGBTQ marginalization</a>. These brands are not seen as authentic advocates, as they were not contributing directly to LGBTQ causes but instead portrayed as paying for exposure.</p>
<p>These critics argue that brands don’t really care about the community, pointing to a lack of supportive messages <a href="https://www.redstate.com/brandon_morse/2019/06/04/dear-lgbt-community-corporations-dont-care/">throughout the rest of the year</a>.</p>
<p>There are also concerns from members of the community that brands support Pride while taking political <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/06/28/pride-marketing-benefits-lgbtq-community-corporate-america/1511433001/">stances that harm the LGBTQ community</a>. For example, <a href="https://www.equinox.com/poweredbypride">Equinox</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4K-K4dxh84">SoulCycle</a>, which have sponsored Pride, faced a consumer boycott in August 2019 after the chairman of their parent company said he was <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/equinox-boycott-calls-customers-threaten-equinox-and-soulcycle-boycott-over-trump-fundraiser/">hosting a fundraiser for then-President Donald Trump</a>, who advocates say is anti-LGBTQ.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1159187673388670983"}"></div></p>
<h2>The importance of allies</h2>
<p>Some companies may <a href="https://www.marketingdive.com/news/the-year-of-woke-washing-how-tone-deaf-activism-risks-eroding-brands/557606/">use causes to pander to consumers</a> and <a href="https://thesocialelement.agency/brand-purpose-woke-washing/">deserve to be called out</a>, but my research shows that corporate allies and advocates can have an important role in society.</p>
<p>Engagement through both allyship and advocacy continue to be important to keep issues in the spotlight to effect significant social change.</p>
<p>I’m finding in my research that brands’ connecting with social issues can be a win-win: Consumers become aware of important social issues that may lack media exposure, and brands connect with like-minded consumers in a more authentic way.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article originally published on <a href="https://theconversation.com/companies-promoting-causes-can-be-accused-of-wokewashing-allying-themselves-only-for-good-pr-120962">Aug. 19, 2019</a>.</em></p>
<p>[<em>Over 106,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162150/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kim Sheehan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>While many companies promote social causes, advocates are skeptical of how genuine their commitment is.Kim Sheehan, Professor of Journalism and Communication and Director of the Master's Program in Brand Responsibility, University of OregonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1472382020-10-21T12:21:43Z2020-10-21T12:21:43Z19th-century political parties kidnapped reluctant voters and printed their own ballots – and that’s why we’ve got laws regulating behavior at polling places<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364016/original/file-20201016-21-19srsci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=33%2C28%2C3118%2C2055&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A sign keeping campaigners at a distance in the New Hampshire presidential primary election at the Town Hall in Chichester, New Hampshire, Feb. 9, 2016. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/voters-walks-into-a-polling-station-past-the-poll-distance-news-photo/541820484?adppopup=true">Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Author <a href="https://www.poemuseum.org/who-was-edgar-allan-poe">Edgar Allan Poe</a>, the 19th-century master of American macabre, may have died of dirty politics. According to legend, a gang of party “poll hustlers” kidnapped and drugged him. They forced him to vote, then <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/mlr/vol26/iss3/3/">abandoned him near death</a>. Details are murky, but we do know Poe died in Baltimore days after an election.</p>
<p>The story, though likely untrue, is certainly possible. Election Day in 19th-century America was a loud, raucous, often dangerous event. Political parties would offer food, drink and inducements ranging from offers of bribes to threats of beatings to encourage voters to cast the party’s official ballot.</p>
<p>Reforms at the end of the century – particularly after an <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-vote-that-failed-159427766/">especially dirty 1888 presidential election</a> – aimed to stop the shenanigans, assure the safety of voters and elevate the act of voting. </p>
<p>This is why we now have secret, government-printed ballots rather than party-provided ballots. And all 50 states have laws <a href="https://www.nass.org/resources/2018-election-information/electioneering-boundaries">that ban potentially intimidating behavior</a> at polling places. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Men fighting at the polls in 1857" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364020/original/file-20201016-21-1avfuu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364020/original/file-20201016-21-1avfuu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364020/original/file-20201016-21-1avfuu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364020/original/file-20201016-21-1avfuu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364020/original/file-20201016-21-1avfuu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364020/original/file-20201016-21-1avfuu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364020/original/file-20201016-21-1avfuu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Elections in the 19th century were sometimes wild affairs; this cartoon is from 1857.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3c18012/">Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Vestigial laws?</h2>
<p>The idea behind these laws is to prevent the kind of “poll hustling” to which Poe may have fallen victim. </p>
<p>Party tough guys cannot follow (or drag) helpless voters into the polling place, watching them to make sure they vote the correct ballot with the implicit threat that a “wrong” vote could result in a beating. </p>
<p>These laws generally prohibit campaign activities – wearing campaign paraphernalia, shouting slogans, even loitering inside polling places. Distance requirements for campaigners, ranging from <a href="https://www.pa.gov/guides/voting-and-elections/">10 feet from a polling place in Pennsylvania</a> to <a href="https://www.sos.la.gov/ElectionsAndVoting/Vote/Pages/default.aspx">600 feet away in Louisiana</a>, help to assure that secret ballots are actually cast in secret.</p>
<p>But these vestigial laws meant to purify 19th-century elections may be ill equipped for hyperpartisan 2020. </p>
<p>If voters come to the polls wearing symbols like the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-shifting-symbolism-of-the-gadsden-flag">Gadsden “Don’t Tread on Me” flag</a> that has evolved into an anti-government symbol, a <a href="https://www.history.com/news/how-did-the-rainbow-flag-become-an-lgbt-symbol">rainbow pin</a> associated with gay pride, or even a <a href="https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2020/02/26/spicing-up-the-political-discourse/">sticker from a spice company</a> whose owner detests Trump, those symbols can take on a perceived political meaning. Under these laws, these people could be accused of illegally campaigning where people vote.</p>
<p>How can anti-electioneering laws keep politics out of the polling place when politics already suffuses so much of life? And this year, polling places for many may be the kitchen table or a ballot drop-off box. In that context, do these laws still have relevance?</p>
<h2>‘Purifying’ elections</h2>
<p>Political reformers in the late 1880s <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-vote-that-failed-159427766/">saw elections as too closely tied to party machines and their Election Day carousing</a>. Much of the reform around this time was focused on “cleaning up” politics and destroying the nefarious influence of party machines. </p>
<p>In fact, our current popular understanding of party machines as being universally corrupt and lowbrow might be because “good government” activists won, so <a href="https://www-jstor-org.pitt.idm.oclc.org/stable/2151546?seq=5#metadata_info_tab_contents">they got to write the history</a> </p>
<p>Yet in 2020, these reforms meant to purify 19th-century elections may not have the effect the authors intended. </p>
<p>For example, a New Hampshire woman <a href="https://www.nbcboston.com/news/politics/decision-2020/nh-woman-votes-topless-over-anti-trump-shirt-dispute-report/2192282/">opted to vote topless</a> in that state’s primary in September after election officials told her that her anti-Trump T-shirt ran afoul of New Hampshire laws forbidding campaigning within a polling place. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364024/original/file-20201016-19-tgjw4b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A screenshot of a Penzey's spice company order page for a sticker that says 'I will vote 11.3.20'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364024/original/file-20201016-19-tgjw4b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364024/original/file-20201016-19-tgjw4b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=298&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364024/original/file-20201016-19-tgjw4b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=298&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364024/original/file-20201016-19-tgjw4b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=298&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364024/original/file-20201016-19-tgjw4b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364024/original/file-20201016-19-tgjw4b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364024/original/file-20201016-19-tgjw4b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The owner of the spice company offering this sticker is known for being anti-Trump; will wearing the sticker to the polls count as campaigning?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.penzeys.com/online-catalog/i-will-vote-2020-sticker/c-24/p-3182/pd-s">Penzeys</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In fact, <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/electioneering.aspx">10 states</a> currently have laws on the books regulating the kinds of clothing voters can wear to the polling place. </p>
<p>These laws may violate the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment prohibition on limits to free speech, but not all have been tested in court. In the 2018 opinion <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/minnesota-voters-alliance-v-mansky/">Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Mansky</a>, the Supreme Court ruled that the state’s laws to create an “orderly and controlled environment” around the polling place were overly vague. A similar lawsuit is underway <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/468593-free-speech-rights-dont-stop-at-the-voting-booth">in Texas</a>.</p>
<p>According to the Minnesota opinion, “a rule whose fair enforcement requires an election judge to maintain a mental index of the platforms and positions of every candidate and party on the ballot is not reasonable.”</p>
<p>Poll workers, then, do not need to keep abreast of <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/28/business/fred-perry-proud-boys-intl-scli-gbr/index.html">what a black and yellow polo shirt means</a> or which spice company has engaged in political advocacy.</p>
<p>As early voting continues across the United States, though, more disputes should be expected. <a href="https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/miami-dade-early-voting-black-lives-matter-shirt-causes-stir-11680906">Elections officials in Florida</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/20/memphis-blm-shirt-voters/">and Tennessee</a> have already confirmed that clothing bearing the phrases “Black Lives Matter” and “I can’t breathe” do not constitute illegal electioneering. But an armed and uniformed police officer in a Trump 2020 mask patrolling a Miami polling place <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/10/21/miami-cop-trump-mask/">likely violated department policy</a>, if not electioneering laws.</p>
<h2>‘Bad things happen in Philadelphia’</h2>
<p>Even so, teasing out what constitutes a “political message” in 2020 seems easy compared with teasing out what constitutes a “polling place” when so many voters will cast their ballots before Election Day.</p>
<p>In the Sept. 29 presidential debate, President Donald Trump warned that <a href="https://www.phillyvoice.com/president-donald-trump-bad-things-happen-philadelphia-presidential-debate/">“bad things happen in Philadelphia</a>.” Earlier that week, a paid Republican poll watcher was denied entry into a building that was handling, among other things, voter registration and pickup and drop-off of mail-in ballots. Poll watchers are allowed in Pennsylvania but must follow <a href="https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/whats-a-poll-watcher-everything-you-need-to-know-after-trumps-debate-comments/2549054/">a strict set of rules</a> aimed at distinguishing between watchers protecting the integrity of the election and party toughs intimidating voters as they fill out their ballots.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://whyy.org/articles/trump-campaign-says-it-plans-to-sue-over-poll-watchers-in-philly-satellite-offices/">Trump campaign is suing</a> to be allowed access to the Philadelphia site. But the county Board of Elections argues that ballot pickup and drop-off sites are not polling places, and COVID-19 restrictions preclude people from loitering in public buildings all day. </p>
<p>The state court <a href="https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/politics/decision-2020/judge-rejects-trumps-suit-over-philly-satellite-elections-offices/2559325/">rejected the Trump campaign’s argument</a>, explaining that watchers are allowed only at polling places on Election Day, not Board of Elections offices at other times. The campaign has promised to appeal.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364555/original/file-20201020-15-fbdhly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An election worker puts mail-in ballots collected from vehicles in a ballot box" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364555/original/file-20201020-15-fbdhly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364555/original/file-20201020-15-fbdhly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=760&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364555/original/file-20201020-15-fbdhly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=760&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364555/original/file-20201020-15-fbdhly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=760&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364555/original/file-20201020-15-fbdhly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=955&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364555/original/file-20201020-15-fbdhly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=955&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364555/original/file-20201020-15-fbdhly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=955&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An election worker puts mail-in ballots collected from vehicles in a ballot box at the Clark County Election Department on Oct. 13 in North Las Vegas, Nevada.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/clark-county-election-department-worker-kelley-george-puts-news-photo/1280091056?adppopup=true">Ethan Miller/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How clean is too clean?</h2>
<p>In her 2004 book <a href="https://www.oupress.com/books/9779895/diminished-democracy">“Diminished Democracy</a>,” political scientist <a href="https://sociology.fas.harvard.edu/people/theda-skocpol">Theda Skocpol</a> describes 19th-century reformers as working “for measures that would emphasize an unemotional, educational style of politics.” </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Demanding the protection of the purity of the polling place and politics, Skocpol argues, “treats politics as if it were something dirty and implicitly holds up the ideal of an educated elite safely above and outside of politics.” </p>
<p>Certainly, few Americans would advocate allowing the country’s literary greats – or anyone else – to fall prey to roving political gangs. But determining how to protect the integrity of elections is difficult when elections are everywhere. </p>
<p>And if 2020 is any indication, it may not be as easy as relying on rules meant for a different time, a different means of voting and a different electorate.</p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect recent incidents regarding the clothing worn at polling places.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147238/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kristin Kanthak does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Laws that have long kept campaigners away from voters at polling places may not work in a world where a T-shirt symbol can be interpreted as campaigning.Kristin Kanthak, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of PittsburghLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1161162019-06-11T12:10:20Z2019-06-11T12:10:20Z23% of young Black women now identify as bisexual<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278701/original/file-20190610-52785-staqj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A marcher waves a flag during the Capital Pride Parade in Washington, D.C. on June 8, 2019.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/washington-dc-usa-june-8-2019-1419999281?src=kQxQ40Mhs12m7_XC52SmQA-1-21">Nicole S. Glass/Shutterstock.com </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since 1972, social scientists have studied <a href="http://gss.norc.org/About-The-GSS">the General Social Survey</a> to chart the complexities of social change in the United States. </p>
<p>The survey, which is conducted every couple of years, asks respondents their attitudes on topics ranging from race relations to drug use. In 2008, the survey started including a question on sexual identity. </p>
<p>As sociologists who study sexuality, we’ve noticed how more and more women are reporting that they’re bisexual. But in <a href="http://gss.norc.org/">the most recent survey</a>, one subset stood out: 23% of black women in the 18 to 34 age group identified as bisexual – a proportion that’s nearly three times higher than it was a decade ago.</p>
<p>What forces might be fueling this shift? And what can learn from it?</p>
<h2>Bisexuality among women is on the rise</h2>
<p>In the 10 years that the General Social Survey has included a question on sexual identity, rates of identification among gay men, lesbian women and bisexual men in the U.S. haven’t changed much.</p>
<p>Bisexual identifying women, on the other hand, account for virtually all of the growth among those who say they’re lesbian, gay or bisexual. Of all of the women who responded to the 2018 survey, <a href="https://inequalitybyinteriordesign.wordpress.com/2019/04/12/2018-gss-update-on-the-u-s-lgb-population/">more than 1 in 18 identified as bisexual</a>. One decade ago, only 1 in 65 did.</p>
<p><iframe id="P5UmZ" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/P5UmZ/4/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>The most dramatic shift among bisexual identifying women is happening among young people. In the 2018 sample, more than 1 in 8 women from the ages of 18 to 34 identified as bisexual. There were more than twice as many young female bisexuals as there were young lesbians, gay men and bisexual men combined.</p>
<p><iframe id="8VLc8" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/8VLc8/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>That’s a large shift – and it all happened in a relatively short period of time.</p>
<p>Add race to the figures and you’ll see that young black women, in particular, account for a disproportionate share of this shift.</p>
<p>A few years ago, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1536504218767125">we wrote about</a> how approximately 18% of young black women identified as lesbian or bisexual in the 2016 General Social Survey sample. That rate was more than two times higher than for white women or other racial groups – and almost four times higher than for men of any racial group.</p>
<p>By 2018, more than 25% of young black women identified as lesbian or bisexual. And the majority of that change can be accounted for by bisexual-identifying black women.</p>
<p><iframe id="oJ4rk" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/oJ4rk/8/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>In other trends, black women also led the way</h2>
<p>Data like these help us to establish a shift is occurring, but they don’t really explain why it’s happening. </p>
<p>Exploring the “why” requires different methods of analysis, and existing studies – <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520269521/invisible-families">like Mignon Moore’s research on gay identity and relationships among black women</a> – can provide some clues.</p>
<p>But beyond this, other demographic research shows that black women have led the way in other trends related to gender.</p>
<p>Consider the gender gap in college attendance. As early as 1980, <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/reeves_education_race_gap1.png">black women began to outpace black men in completion of a four-year college degree</a>. It wasn’t until a decade later that white women started earning college degrees at a higher clip than white men.</p>
<p>And in the first half of the 20th century, <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=10&ved=2ahUKEwiSorDAqaPiAhXEqp4KHd3NDSwQFjAJegQIBRAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fnchs%2Fdata%2Fnvsr%2Fnvsr48%2Fnvs48_16.pdf&usg=AOvVaw0nN51ln7CNRvSrLKX8cZrM">more unmarried black women started having children</a>. Eventually, more unmarried white women started having children, too. </p>
<p>Perhaps when it comes to sexuality, black women are also ahead of the curve. If that’s the case – and if this trend continues – we might expect women of other races to follow suit.</p>
<h2>A shortage of men?</h2>
<p>Cultural forces might also play a role.</p>
<p>Sociologists Emma Mishel, Paula England, Jessie Ford and Mónica L. Caudillo <a href="https://nyuad.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyuad/academics/divisions/social-science/working-papers/2018/0014.pdf">also analyzed the General Social Survey</a>. Rather than study sexual identities, they studied sexual behavior. Yet they discovered a similar pattern: Young black women were more likely to engage in same-sex sexual behavior than women and men in other racial and age groups. </p>
<p>They argue that these shifts speak to a larger truth about American culture: It’s more acceptable for women to spurn gender norms because femininity isn’t valued as highly as masculinity. Since masculinity and heterosexuality are closely intertwined, men might believe they’ll suffer a higher social cost for identifying as bisexual.</p>
<p>Others have pointed to <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2378023118791084">the shortage of men hypothesis</a> to explore young black women’s decisions about relationships and marriage. This too might explain why young black women, in particular, seem more willing to explore bisexuality. </p>
<p>According to this argument, fewer “marriageable” men create a need for women to consider options beyond heterosexual relationships or marriage. A traditional marriage isn’t as necessary as it once was; since women have more educational and economic opportunities, they can afford to be pickier or, possibly, to explore same-sex relationships. </p>
<p>Another aspect of the hypothesis involves the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/18/mass-incarceration-black-americans-higher-rates-disparities-report">disproportionately high rates of incarceration</a> of black men in the U.S. It’s possible that because black women are, as a group, more likely to live in areas with smaller “<a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo13375722.html">pools of marriageable men</a>,” they’re more open to bisexuality. </p>
<p>We’re less convinced by the shortage of men argument because it ignores the fact that incarceration rates of black men <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/30/shrinking-gap-between-number-of-blacks-and-whites-in-prison/">haven’t increased over the past decade</a>. Yet over this period of time, the percentages of young black women identifying as bisexual have grown substantially.</p>
<h2>The challenge of surveying sexuality</h2>
<p>Finding reliable ways of measuring sexual identity on surveys is <a href="https://inequalitybyinteriordesign.wordpress.com/2019/05/30/urbanicity-and-lgbt-demographics/">more difficult than you might think</a>, and the trend could have been spurred by something as simple as the way the question is phrased in the General Social Survey:</p>
<p>“Which of the following best describes you?”</p>
<ul>
<li>gay, lesbian or homosexual</li>
<li>bisexual</li>
<li>heterosexual or straight</li>
<li>don’t know</li>
</ul>
<p>Of the roughly 1,400 people who responded to this question on the 2018 GSS survey, only six responded “don’t know.” Another 27 didn’t respond at all. </p>
<p>But everyone else selected one of those three options. </p>
<p>Perhaps some respondents didn’t want to neatly tie themselves to the category of “gay” or “straight.” If this is the case, “bisexual” almost becomes a default fallback. </p>
<p>Either way, one thing seems clear: Young people – especially young black women – are more willing to explore their sexuality. And the ways they are sexually identifying themselves on surveys is only one indicator of this change.</p>
<p>[ <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=thanksforreading">Thanks for reading! We can send you The Conversation’s stories every day in an informative email. Sign up today.</a></em> ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116116/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>According to the General Social Survey, the percentage of men and women who identify as gay or lesbian has held firm. But the share of women who say they’re bisexual has skyrocketed.Tristan Bridges, Assistant Professor, Sociology, University of California, Santa BarbaraMignon R. Moore, Professor and Chair of Sociology, Barnard CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1054372019-02-17T09:27:03Z2019-02-17T09:27:03ZWhat the Village’s People’s leather-clad singer can teach heterosexual men<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258699/original/file-20190213-90479-ewbbfa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Village People's Glenn Hughes (second from left) epitomised the leatherman look.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mario Casciano</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Leathermen” are gay men who wear leather clothes that draw inspiration from masculine institutions like the military, the police, and motorcycle gangs. They also take great pride in their muscular bodies, dressing in leather to cultivate an image of “hypermasculinity” – a term that’s usually used to describe how some heterosexual men look and behave to prove that they are “manly”.</p>
<p>Leathermen are attached to a thriving subset of gay and lesbian subcultures all over the world. The “leathermen look” is often referenced in popular culture: think Glenn Hughes from the 70s disco group, the Village People; Robert Mapplethorpe’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/gallery/2017/oct/28/robert-mapplethorpe-the-male-gaze-in-pictures">photographs</a>; Lady Gaga’s video for “Bad Romance” and Madonna, who is the most ubiquitous referencer of the “leathermen look”, from videos to world tours.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qrO4YZeyl0I?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Leathermen in Lady Gaga’s ‘Bad Romance’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Leathermen are tacitly accepted by the gay and lesbian “movement” because, after all, they are gay. However, mainstream gay and lesbian communities tend to be more sceptical about leathermen’s sexual practices. These are rooted in Bondage, Discipline, Sadomasochism and Masochism (BDSM); this kind of sex is generally viewed as abnormal by society at large, bar the “gentle whip” and “naughty spank” popularised by the <em>Fifty Shades of Grey</em> series.</p>
<p>In a recent piece of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10130950.2018.1498238?journalCode=ragn20">research</a> I show how leathermen in South Africa finally became visible with the advent of Facebook in 2009. Prior to the advent of Facebook they were hidden from society at large but thrived as an underground subculture. Academic John K Noyes <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26304332?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">argued</a> that historically in South Africa, the most active BDSM community was the white gay male community. </p>
<p>They were allied to the gay and lesbian movement (they were participants in Pride marches from the outset). But it became complicated. That leathermen enjoy “men only” spaces and the most visible leathermen communities are white men does not sit well with South Africa’s non-racial rainbow gay and lesbian movement. </p>
<h2>Marlon Brando</h2>
<p>Internationally, the leathermen “look” can be traced to post-World War Two motorcycle clubs in the US. Returning servicemen, who were homosexual, resented homosexuality being <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17135117">associated with femininity</a>. They started dressing like members of motorcycle gangs. Over time other leather objects from the military and police were incorporated to achieve the “leatherman look”. These include biker’s jackets, breeches, chaps, pants, knee-high biker boots, harnesses, cuffs (biceps and wrists), belts adorned with motorbike insignia, Sam Browne belts, shirts, ties, gloves and Muir caps (also known as the Master’s hat). </p>
<p>A young Marlon Brando dressed in biker leather in the 1953 American film, <em>The Wild One</em>, <a href="https://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/art/photography/2014/05/14/photos-pioneers-leather-and-biker-scene-la">epitomised</a> the look best.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258702/original/file-20190213-181612-1lqm6tv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258702/original/file-20190213-181612-1lqm6tv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=772&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258702/original/file-20190213-181612-1lqm6tv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=772&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258702/original/file-20190213-181612-1lqm6tv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=772&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258702/original/file-20190213-181612-1lqm6tv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=971&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258702/original/file-20190213-181612-1lqm6tv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=971&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258702/original/file-20190213-181612-1lqm6tv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=971&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Actor Marlon Brando, shown in this undated handout picture in a scene from his 1953 film ‘The Wild One’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These leathermen did not want to be associated with other gay men and managed to pass as “real” men at a time when homosexuality was outlawed. Homosexuality was only “legalised” in 2003, and in a post-war America homophobia was particularly virulent. </p>
<p>The HIV crises of the late 1980s and 1990s decimated many leathermen communities in the US, most specifically in San Francisco.</p>
<p>One way for the community to show unity was by holding a pageant where the presentation of leather was foregrounded. This has become an institution in leathermen subcultures worldwide, South Africa included; it is the cultural highlight of the year for these communities.</p>
<h2>Rainbow pageant</h2>
<p>However, back in 2015 South African leathermen’s annual leather pageant was seen as being too white and too male. A breakaway pageant group was set up to reflect the diversity of the country’s gay and lesbian movement. The breakaway group held its own rainbow pageant, where the winners were a white leatherman and a black leatherwoman respectively.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259247/original/file-20190215-56229-1xwxqaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259247/original/file-20190215-56229-1xwxqaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259247/original/file-20190215-56229-1xwxqaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259247/original/file-20190215-56229-1xwxqaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259247/original/file-20190215-56229-1xwxqaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259247/original/file-20190215-56229-1xwxqaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259247/original/file-20190215-56229-1xwxqaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The leathermen pageant on Facebook.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The winners were lauded in popular gay and lesbian websites as Africa’s first “true” leatherfolk. However, “rainbow leather” lasted but a moment and has never been heard of again. </p>
<p>The reason for this I argue is that the strong contestation over the image of “gay leather”, as reflected in the pageant posters on Facebook, is about “the public” consumption of these images and what they say – not about leathermen, but about the gay and lesbian community by association. The gay and lesbian movement did not want to be associated with the “underbelly” of the leathermen scene, the sex, the drugs, the cruising and the promiscuity. </p>
<p>The purist leathermen, however, thrive on members’ only social media cites. They’re once again hidden from view and disowned by the gay and lesbian movement.</p>
<p>It’s true that leathermen in South Africa are mostly white, male and hypermasculine. But internationally, the leathermen community is the same – despite its membership being open to all gay men. And just because leathermen of colour are not visible doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Leatherwomen worldwide have also set up their own pageants and chapters, often <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/from-drag-queens-to-leathermen-9780195390186?cc=us&lang=en&">in alliance</a> with leathermen. </p>
<p>So why are leathermen in South Africa sidelined and even rejected? In my research I argue that this group is a source of shame to the assimilationist and lifestyle orientated gay and lesbian movement in South Africa, where <a href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/splp/article/view/125208">marriage</a> is viewed as the pinnacle of citizenship. The leather, the weird sex, the men only spaces, the bulging muscles and crotches are just too much for the larger queer community.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WyhdvRWEWRw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Madonna often referenced the ‘leatherman look’ in her videos.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Archaic culture</h2>
<p>The leathermen subculture is not understood in mainstream communities (perhaps only as part of deviant BDSM). It’s also misunderstood in gay and lesbian communities. That’s because it is seen as an example of an archaic culture that no longer has a place in mainstream gay and lesbian communities in post-apartheid South Africa. </p>
<p>This is a pity. There is much to be learnt about masculinity and gender from leathermen.</p>
<p>As a subculture, leathermen achieve their “manliness” in opposition to heterosexual hypermasculinity. They conduct their sex in safe and consenting environments, develop muscular bodies to attract other men and wear leather clothes that draw inspiration from the most masculine of heterosexual cultures – all without enacting the violence often associated with such cultures. </p>
<p>Leathermen actually expose the myth of hypermasculinity by refusing the violence and aggression which is normally attached to it. Instead, they produce their own cultural meanings of masculinity and gender.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105437/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>TL McCormick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Leathermen expose the myth of hypermasculinity by refusing the violence and aggression which is normally attached to it.TL McCormick, Lecturer of Applied Linguistics, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1049302018-11-15T00:06:53Z2018-11-15T00:06:53ZRainbow pride flag’s still flying, taking on new forms and meanings in our cities<p>A year ago, on November 15, the Australian Bureau of Statistics <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/1800.0">announced</a> the result of the postal survey on same-sex marriage equality, a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/nov/15/australia-says-yes-to-same-sex-marriage-in-historic-postal-survey">resounding Yes</a> with 61.6% of the vote. Leading up to the announcement, the LBGTQIA+ community endured agonised tension. They had to argue fiercely for the legitimacy of their relationships as well as their identities.</p>
<p>During that debate a new visual landscape of signs and interventions became part of many urban environments. The rainbow pride flag began to appear at both public and private sites as a very visible sign of pride and affirmation.</p>
<p>In the past year the flag has clearly escaped the pole or the street bunting of pride festival times to become ever present. Post-plebiscite, we are reminded of the same-sex marriage vote, and that issues for queer people continue. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-year-since-the-marriage-equality-vote-much-has-been-gained-and-there-is-still-much-to-be-done-106326">A year since the marriage equality vote, much has been gained – and there is still much to be done</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://www.biography.com/people/gilbert-baker-112517">Gilbert Baker</a> originally designed the rainbow flag in 1978 for the San Francisco Pride Parade. Its purpose was to express the visibility and values of the gay and lesbian community. The flag’s colours represent healing, serenity, sex and nature. </p>
<p>Since then, the flag has undergone many remixes by different parts of the queer community to create further visibility for the diversity inherent in it. </p>
<p>Transgender woman and activist Monica Helms designed the transgender pride flag in 1999, retaining the stripe motif, but focusing on blue, pink and white to illustrate a spectrum of gender. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UJ-Rq3Bl_UY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Monica Helms talks about designing the trans pride flag.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A more recent design is the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pansexual_pride_flag">pansexual pride flag</a>, designed by a Tumblr user known as Jasper in 2010. First disseminated on the site, it has become the most widely seen specific flag of the community, reused across the internet. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-does-it-mean-to-be-cisgender-103159">Explainer: what does it mean to be 'cisgender'?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What’s in a flag?</h2>
<p>Cloth flags are significant cultural spatial markers. Affected by air, wind and light, static cloth is transformed in the slightest breeze, becoming alive and suggesting change as well as permanence. </p>
<p>The rainbow pride flag’s emphatic stripes activate a sense of colour and change, evoking new narratives and possibilities. The flag took on new cultural, social and political meaning as it moved from the air and onto homes and commercial premises.</p>
<p>Some flags, like one hung in the window of The Bank pub in Newtown, were emblazoned with YES in the centre. This left no questions about what the flag was supposed to represent – it was very specific about its contemporary political motivation. </p>
<p>An example of the flag leaving the fixed place of the pole is at 73 Liberty Street in Stanmore in Sydney’s inner west. Originally painted a shade of yellow beige, the house was transformed into a radiant spectrum of rainbow pride colours, with a black and white flag emblazoned with “Yes!” hung on the front. Visit it today and the colours remain as vibrant as ever.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245176/original/file-20181112-194509-14i42f8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245176/original/file-20181112-194509-14i42f8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245176/original/file-20181112-194509-14i42f8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245176/original/file-20181112-194509-14i42f8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245176/original/file-20181112-194509-14i42f8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245176/original/file-20181112-194509-14i42f8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245176/original/file-20181112-194509-14i42f8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">73 Liberty Street in Stanmore.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tom Stoddard</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The boldness of the flag’s colours radically alters the experience of moving past the generally bland facades of inner-city Sydney. We are now confronted by an eye-catching spectrum, the aesthetic energy of colour and space. </p>
<p>Bold colour, often spurned and even banned in some heritage suburbs such as <a href="https://www.woollahra.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0014/150530/Chapter_C1_Paddington_HCA.pdf">Paddington</a>, takes on a new uplifting vision. At stake is visibility. LGBTQIA+ communities do not appear and disappear at moments of political debates, but continue to actualise and make visible pride in their existence. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/coming-out-at-work-is-not-a-one-off-event-101118">Coming out at work is not a one-off event</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>A politicised existence necessitates this, as the fight for equality is ongoing. The painted house is a visible urban marker that the queer community is here to stay.</p>
<p>So what is the significance of these persistent visual markers? On the one hand, their visual presence indicates the importance of a political debate undertaken more than one year ago. </p>
<p>More subtly it marks a cultural shift, where expression, be it personal or as a collective, affirms a community. Design and activism in these forms can become expressions of civic values, as space and place become the mouthpiece for cultural and social sentiments and statements.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245184/original/file-20181113-194519-ko9asd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245184/original/file-20181113-194519-ko9asd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245184/original/file-20181113-194519-ko9asd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=237&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245184/original/file-20181113-194519-ko9asd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=237&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245184/original/file-20181113-194519-ko9asd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=237&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245184/original/file-20181113-194519-ko9asd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=298&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245184/original/file-20181113-194519-ko9asd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=298&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245184/original/file-20181113-194519-ko9asd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=298&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The flag leaves the pole: stickers around Marrickville, Sydney.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tom Stoddard</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That isn’t to say that the static flag does not possess power in its own right. Various activist-designers have transformed it into other forms that create direct dialogues with the public. The rainbow flag stripes become a framing device for statements and declarations that are intrinsically tied to the language of the debate. </p>
<p>Stickers have long been used as spatially flexible political objects, free from flagpoles or other prerequisite structures. From letterboxes to window frames, remixed versions of the flag take a message or sentiment to any place, public or private. </p>
<p>This rethinking of the hierarchy of designated spaces for communication is an exciting evolution for the form and intention of the rainbow pride flag. As it evolves from one icon into a variety of others, it populates the city with queer statements and traces. </p>
<p>Last year the pride flag was used as an effective rallying call to express outwardly, publicly and explicitly that same-sex relationships (marriage or otherwise) are as valid as any heterosexual relationship. It will be interesting to see where the pride flag takes the Australian queer community next and, in turn, where the community takes the flag.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104930/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Stoddard works for the University of Technology Sydney and receives funding and support for his research and writing.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Lee works for the University of Technology Sydney and at times receives funding and support for his research and writing. </span></em></p>In the year since the resounding Yes vote in the same-sex marriage survey, the flag has clearly escaped the pole or the street bunting of pride festival times to become ever present in our cities.Thomas Stoddard, PhD Candidate, School of Design, University of Technology SydneyTom Lee, Senior Lecturer, School of Design, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1016612018-08-30T18:54:14Z2018-08-30T18:54:14ZMore than just lip service: done right, awareness-raising days can pack a punch<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233034/original/file-20180822-149487-u5u08i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The first Sydney Mardi Gras in 1978 was a defining moment in the history of LGBTIQ rights in Australia.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Through the year there are now countless awareness-raising days for a range of causes. Whether you’re sending your child to school with a gold coin for <a href="https://rednoseday.com.au/">Red Nose Day</a> or wearing a pink ribbon on your lapel to work for <a href="https://canceraustralia.gov.au/healthy-living/campaigns-events/breast-cancer-awareness-month">Breast Cancer Awareness Month</a>, these initiatives are now common in Australian daily life. But what’s the purpose of these events and do they actually work? </p>
<p>In a time of social media “<a href="https://theconversation.com/slacktivism-that-works-small-changes-matter-69271">slacktivism</a>” from behind computer screens, there has been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/may/22/why-awareness-raising-campaigns-backfire">much criticism</a> of the practical ability of awareness-raising campaigns to bring about real social change beyond superficial <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/31/health/breast-cancer-awareness-pink.html">feel-good politics</a>. </p>
<p>There’s no hard data to suggest days such as <a href="http://wearitpurple.org/">Wear It Purple Day</a> this week actually have a long-term effect. But there is some evidence similar events provide important visibility for complex social issues and can create social change. </p>
<h2>Wear It Purple</h2>
<p>Wear It Purple Day is celebrated on the last Friday in August each year. It’s an annual event to raise awareness about same-sex attracted and gender diverse young people’s experiences of bullying and harassment, particularly at school. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/making-schools-safer-and-more-welcoming-for-lgbtqi-students-39858">Making schools safer and more welcoming for LGBTQI students</a>
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</em>
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<p>Wear It Purple was founded in 2010 in response to high rates of young people taking their lives as a result of homophobic bullying. This event is now an international movement. Many Australian workplaces and schools will host bake sales and encourage staff and students to wear purple clothes to support their lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) peers. </p>
<p>The Queensland Police Service have even issued officers and staff with <a href="https://www.qnews.com.au/queensland-police-officers-to-lace-up-for-wear-it-purple-day-2018/">purple bootlaces</a> to wear on the day. </p>
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<p>But while these celebrations of diversity and inclusion send an important message, it’s unlikely they’ll have any real effect if they don’t give people practical things they can do to help the cause, or if they don’t engage the broader community in a meaningful way.</p>
<h2>R U OK? Day</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.ruok.org.au/">R U OK?</a> Day, held annually in September, is dedicated to reminding people to ask others “are you OK?”, in terms of their mental health. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623730.2016.1209423">Researchers from across Australia</a> used a population survey to find out what impact this event was having in the community. They found people who were aware of R U OK? Day were more willing to talk with others about their troubles and to hear the troubles of others. </p>
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<p>Melbourne-based researchers reviewed suicide prevention media campaigns more broadly and found they create positive impacts in the community, including <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29190128">boosting help-seeking behaviours</a> and improvements in attitudes about suicide. </p>
<h2>White Ribbon Day</h2>
<p>White Ribbon Day has become a global movement to end violence against women. Its <a href="https://www.whiteribbon.org.au/about/our-history/">history in Australia</a> is one example of how an awareness-raising day can be the platform for building a broader movement. Starting as an annual White Ribbon Day on November 25, the organisation now delivers education programs and bystander initiatives. </p>
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<p>Although it continues to attract <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com.ezproxy.utas.edu.au/doi/10.1177/0004865817722187">critics</a>, White Ribbon Day demonstrates the potential for one-off awareness-raising days to have a broader social impact when expanded into an ongoing movement, organisation, or initiative.</p>
<h2>Mardi Gras</h2>
<p>This year marked the 40th anniversary of the first <a href="http://www.mardigras.org.au/history">Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras</a> march in Sydney. It began in 1978 as a protest against police brutality of gay men. The 1978 Sydney Mardi Gras became a defining moment in the history of LGBTIQ rights in Australia and remains symbolic for the LGBTIQ community. The Sydney Mardi Gras marches put <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616680902827092">Sydney on the map</a> as an <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/glq/article/8/1-2/81/69408/MARDI-GRAS-TOURISM-AND-THE-CONSTRUCTION-OF-SYDNEY">international gay and lesbian city</a>. </p>
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<p>A <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/089124101030004003">study</a> found Pride marches such as Mardi Gras are important for raising awareness of social injustice for event participants. They also enhance participants’ sense of identity in everyday life through collective experiences of resistance and the shared identity. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-histories-of-mardi-gras-and-gay-tourism-in-australia-are-intertwined-92733">How the histories of Mardi Gras and gay tourism in Australia are intertwined</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>More than just lip service</h2>
<p>Taken together, these examples show how raising awareness is only the first step in creating social change. The impact of awareness-raising days is in their power to start conversations about important issues and provide visibility to causes that might otherwise be absent in the public sphere. </p>
<p>While there is a real danger of equity and diversity days reducing the issue to a local or individual concern, there’s also the potential for such events to create dramatic change in policy if communities get behind the cause. </p>
<p>Practical strategies that help give awareness-raising days momentum include having a clear call for action, such as R U OK? Day, which aims to promote conversation between individuals and raise awareness of mental health. Or by leveraging the passionate people invested in the cause, similar to Mardi Gras. Or to work strategically with key stakeholders to build longer term awareness-raising programs into organisations, such is the work of White Ribbon.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101661/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ruby Grant receives funding from the University of Tasmania's Institute for the Study of Social Change.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kim Beasy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Research shows awareness-raising days can have long-term impact if they have a clear call to action, leverage the passion of those involved, or target policy-makers.Kim Beasy, Lecturer in Curriculum and Pedagogy (Equity and Diversity), University of TasmaniaRuby Grant, PhD Candidate in Sociology, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1006382018-08-01T22:59:07Z2018-08-01T22:59:07ZGay men: Finally, sex without fear<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230083/original/file-20180731-136664-10ogeog.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">PrEP is effective as a protection against HIV -- though condoms can still be used to prevent STDs. Why can't we celebrate the idea that men can have sex without fear of death?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Have you heard of the anti-AIDS drug PrEP? Most straight people are unaware of it. In 2015, the World Health Organization said “<a href="http://www.who.int/hiv/topics/prep/en/">the efficacy of oral PrEP has been shown in four randomized control trials and is high when the drug is used as directed.</a>” </p>
<p>PrEP (Pre-exposure Prophylaxis) is a drug that allows you to have as much sex as you want, without a condom, and remain HIV-negative. If you use it, you probably won’t catch HIV. <em>POZ</em> magazine says that it has “<a href="https://www.poz.com/article/iPrEx-OLE-results-25922-2484">100 per cent efficacy for those who stick to the treatment.”</a></p>
<p>Doctors recommend everyone use condoms, because although PrEP is very effective as a protection against HIV, it does not guard against the transmission of other sexually transmitted diseases.</p>
<p>Recently, Patrick William Kelly — a gay academic from Northwestern University who is writing a “global history of AIDS” — <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/26/opinion/gay-men-sex-condoms.html">sounded the alarm about PrEP</a>. For many straight people, Kelly’s discussion of PrEP may be the first they have heard of this revolutionary drug. </p>
<p>Kelly’s concern is that the popularity of PrEP will cause gay men to stop using condoms. He worries:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“An entire generation of gay men has no memory or interest in the devastation [AIDS] wrought. AIDS catalyzed a culture of sexual health that has begun to disintegrate before our eyes. What is there to be done to bring it back?…The nonchalant dismissal of the condom today flies in the face of the very culture of sexual health that gay men and lesbians constructed in the 1980s.”</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230071/original/file-20180731-118933-wy6jwp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230071/original/file-20180731-118933-wy6jwp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230071/original/file-20180731-118933-wy6jwp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230071/original/file-20180731-118933-wy6jwp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230071/original/file-20180731-118933-wy6jwp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230071/original/file-20180731-118933-wy6jwp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230071/original/file-20180731-118933-wy6jwp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Doctors still recommend that everyone use condoms because although PrEP is effective as protection against HIV, it does not guard against the transmission of other sexually transmitted diseases.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is one sentiment that is missing from Kelly’s article. Why doesn’t he celebrate the fact that gay men — and everyone else — can now have sex without fear of death? PrEP makes sex safer for everyone. It is just one new tool in the “safe sex arsenal.” Why not be happy about the fact that PrEP will undoubtedly save many lives?</p>
<h2>Not a lethal illness anymore</h2>
<p>Some might ask — isn’t AIDS still a lethal illness? Not so much. </p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/dr-julio-montaner/treatment-as-prevention_b_7848906.html">The gold standard in HIV treatment</a>” (highly active antiretroviral therapy or HAART) was first introduced at the 1996 Vancouver International AIDS Society (IAS) Conference. According to Dr. Julio Montaner, director of the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, “<a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/dr-julio-montaner/treatment-as-prevention_b_7848906.html">this was a pivotal moment, when HIV infection became a chronic manageable condition.</a>” </p>
<p>In 2014, <em>The Globe and Mail</em> reported that <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health/aids-by-the-numbers/article20290612/">worldwide deaths from AIDS were massively decreasing</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“In 2013, 1.5 million people died from AIDS-related causes worldwide, compared with 2.4 million in 2005, a 35 per cent decrease.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This state of affairs seems particularly significant when one considers hysterical <a href="https://liamscheff.com/2010/05/five-false-predictions-of-the-aids-establishment/">early predictions</a> concerning the effects of the disease. In 1987, Oprah Winfrey stated confidently that “research studies now project that one in five — listen to me, hard to believe — one in five heterosexuals could be dead from AIDS at the end of the next three years.” </p>
<p>This never happened.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230101/original/file-20180731-136679-116vq4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230101/original/file-20180731-136679-116vq4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230101/original/file-20180731-136679-116vq4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230101/original/file-20180731-136679-116vq4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230101/original/file-20180731-136679-116vq4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230101/original/file-20180731-136679-116vq4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230101/original/file-20180731-136679-116vq4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">In this 1989 photo, protesters lie on the street in front of the New York Stock Exchange in a demonstration against the high cost of the AIDS treatment drug AZT. The protest was organized by ACT UP, a gay rights activist group.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Tim Clary)</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>It’s absolutely true that AIDS affects different demographics, ethnicities and geographies differently, and that gay men are not the only population to be affected by it worldwide. But the improvement in the lives of HIV-positive people everywhere is only in part due to the tireless efforts of doctors, researchers and health-care workers. </p>
<p>It is also due to the tireless efforts of gay men everywhere — many of whom became safe-sex activists during the last 35 years, distributing pamphlets, marching and just generally spreading the news. </p>
<p>So why would a gay professor characterize PrEP as a bad thing? Why is he worried that gay men — en masse — will suddenly start practising unsafe sex?</p>
<p>Kelly is the victim of another kind of infection — the notion that gay men are criminals whose desires must be controlled. </p>
<p>This criminalization of homosexuals goes back as far as the notion of sodomy. </p>
<h2>Viewing homosexuality as criminal</h2>
<p>In the England of Henry VIII, the <a href="http://www.famous-trials.com/wilde/329-homosexual">punishment for sodomy was death</a>; <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/4328511/india-homosexuality-ban-section-377-supreme-court/">India today is still struggling</a> to legalize same-sex encounters. </p>
<p>In 1972, gay liberation theorist Guy Hocquenghem flatly stated in his book <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/homosexual-desire"><em>Homosexual Desire</em></a>: “Homosexuality is first of all a criminal category.” </p>
<p>Hocquenghem went on to suggest that even though the late 19th century brought a tendency to view homosexuality through the more “tolerant” lens of illness, the human need to view homosexuality as criminal is persistent.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Certainly as we shall see later, psychiatry tends to replace legal repression with the internalization of guilt. But the passage of sexual repression from the penal to the psychiatric stage has never actually brought about the disappearance of the penal aspect.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Both the sexuality of gay men and the sexuality of women are a threat to the primacy of patriarchal male heterosexual desire. Heterosexist culture believes this threat must be controlled. The LaBouchere Amendment in England (1885) <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-criminal-law-amendment-act-1885">was used to incarcerate Oscar Wilde for his homosexuality</a> as a crime of “gross indecency.”</p>
<p>But Labouchere was an <a href="https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1140&context=lawineq">amendment to legislation designed to control female prostitution </a> — a law that angered many 19th-century trailblazing feminists. </p>
<p>When AIDS appeared in the early 1980s, some heterosexuals saw it as primarily a gay disease (<a href="https://www.avert.org/professionals/history-hiv-aids/overview">AIDS was first called GRID — gay-related immune deficiency</a>). They worried that gay men might infect straight people, especially children. </p>
<p>In his influential book of essays, <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo8273971.html"><em>Is The Rectum A Grave?</em></a>, Leo Bersani suggests that when small-town Americans wanted to ban HIV-positive hemophiliac children in schools, what they actually feared was the spectre of “killer gay men” acting too much like women:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Women and gay men spread their legs with an unquenchable appetite for destruction. This is an image with extraordinary power; and if the good citizens of Arcadia, Florida could chase from their midst a very law-abiding family it is, I would suggest, because in looking at three hemophiliac children they may have seen — that is unconsciously represented — the infinitely more seductive and intolerable image of a grown man, legs high in the air, unable to refuse the suicidal ecstasy of being a woman. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230073/original/file-20180731-136646-5wqgpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230073/original/file-20180731-136646-5wqgpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230073/original/file-20180731-136646-5wqgpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230073/original/file-20180731-136646-5wqgpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230073/original/file-20180731-136646-5wqgpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230073/original/file-20180731-136646-5wqgpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230073/original/file-20180731-136646-5wqgpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A doctor holds Truvada pills, shown to help prevent HIV infection.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>AIDS was not the first thing to make straight people think gay men had to be controlled. It simply fit like a glove on a fear of homosexuality that was already culturally endemic. </p>
<p>Our society seems addicted to the notion that homosexuality is something uncontrollable and potentially lethal. So when AIDS came along, as the long-time AIDS worker <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/policing-desire">Simon Watney</a> wrote, it was “effectively being used as a pretext throughout the West to justify calls for increased legislation and regulation of those who are considered to be socially unacceptable.”</p>
<p>The concern over gay male imagined libidinal insanity is a throwback to an old trope. Gay men don’t need to be controlled; at least not any more than anyone else. And if you think otherwise? Well, it’s based on prejudice. Not fact.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100638/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sky Gilbert does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Recently PrEP, an effective drug against HIV, was in the news with some concerns that gay men are no longer using condoms. But is the issue about condoms or control?Sky Gilbert, Professor, School of English and Theatre Studies, University of GuelphLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/927332018-03-02T02:12:22Z2018-03-02T02:12:22ZHow the histories of Mardi Gras and gay tourism in Australia are intertwined<p>Today, Mardi Gras is framed, at least in part, within a global gay and lesbian tourism industry that craves a bigger and better parade each year. It’s unlikely that any of the heroic individuals caught up in <a href="http://www.mardigras.org.au/history">the brutal riot on the night of 24 June, 1978</a> would have had much of an inkling that Mardi Gras would become one of the world’s most spectacular and enduring gay pride parades.</p>
<p>Nor would they have likely imagined that the parade and the festival would attract thousands of tourists from across Australia and the world making it one of the most attended annually occurring special events in the country.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/essays-on-air-on-the-sydney-mardi-gras-march-of-1978-91905">Essays On Air: On the Sydney Mardi Gras march of 1978</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In the late 1970s gays and lesbians were a marginalised and oppressed community struggling for law reform and social acceptance. We were still a decade or so away from becoming <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=89595&page=1">a recognisable market segment</a> to be strategically targeted by companies selling top-shelf alcohol, boutique holidays and hair remover. </p>
<p>Yet within a little more than a decade following the 1978 riot, the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival and Parade nourished the emergence of a budding gay and lesbian tourism industry, paralleling the emergence of the “gay consumer”. Mardi Gras has played a crucial role in the emergence of Australia, and, in particular, Sydney, as an internationally recognised <a href="http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:1420">gay and lesbian tourist destination</a>. This led to the successful bid, and hosting, of the International Gay Games in 2002. </p>
<h2>How the festival inspired others</h2>
<p>In 1999, Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Ltd, which was the entity organising the festival at the time, launched its own gay and lesbian travel agency - Mardi Gras Travel. This development, although short lived, nevertheless strengthened the sometimes contradictory connection between Mardi Gras as a grassroots community festival and the tourism industry with its overtly commercial preoccupations. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.iglta.org/unwto-report">United Nations World Tourism Organisation report on LGBT tourism</a> describes the market as robust and resilient, comprising relatively cashed up consumers with deep pockets and a strong desire to travel. And who like to party.</p>
<p><a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/10584161?selectedversion=NBD10334771">A study from the early 1990s</a> estimated the economic impact of Mardi Gras to Sydney to be around A$30 million. Acknowledging its significant social, cultural and economic impact, the City of Sydney recognised Mardi Gras as a hallmark event in the early 1990s. </p>
<p>These hallmark events and festivals are <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616680902827092">powerful drivers for LGBT tourism</a>. LGBT destinations are linked globally by an extensive calendar that includes more than 1,000 pride events, film festivals, circuit-parties, International Gay Games, and the <a href="https://www.gaydays.com/">Gay Day phenomenon</a>. This is where gays, lesbians and their friends descend on theme parks, the largest being GayDayS Orlando which is now a seven day “vacation experience” attracting <a href="https://www.gaydays.com/guide-to-gay-days">about 180,000 participants</a>. </p>
<p>Festivals and events can also be significant tools in regional economic and community development. If intelligently managed, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261517798800162">festivals attract substantial</a> numbers of LGBT tourists to regional and rural destinations, injecting additional income into the local economies. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sustainable-shopping-take-the-litter-out-of-glitter-91063">Sustainable shopping: take the 'litter' out of glitter</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>The success of Mardi Gras as a distinctly Australian LGBT festival has spawned similar, if smaller festivals, in most of Australia’s capital cities and a range of regional areas as well. </p>
<p>LGBT festivals of varying scales now take place in <a href="http://www.chilloutfestival.com.au/">Daylesford</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/cairnstropicalpride/">Cairns</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/AliceSpringsPrideCarnivale">Alice Springs</a>, <a href="https://pokolbinpride.com.au/">Hunter Valley</a>, and <a href="https://tropicalfruits.org.au/nye/whats-on">Lismore</a>. The newest of these is the <a href="https://www.bhfestival.com">Broken Heel Festival</a>, a homage to the film, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, hosted in Broken Hill. In fact, it seems almost all tourist accommodation <a href="https://www.wotif.com/Hotel-Search?#&destination=Broken%20Hill%2C%20NSW%2C%20Australia%20(BHQ)&startDate=07/09/2018&endDate=09/09/2018&regionId=5326914&latLong=-31.999342,141.471291&adults=2,2,2">has already sold out</a> there for early September, when the Heel festival occurs. </p>
<p>The growth of peer-to-peer accommodation platforms, such as Airbnb, and the gay men’s equivalent, <a href="https://www.misterbandb.com/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIlK7t8qjM2QIVwhWPCh1abQd6EAAYASAAEgKexvD_BwE">misterb&b</a>, diversify accommodation options, further increasing the appeal of these regional places to LGBT travellers. </p>
<p>For the past 40 years, the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade has meandered its glittering way up Oxford Street, Sydney, captivating the thousands of onlookers lining the route. Simultaneously, defiant and celebratory, the parade and the festival that has grown up around it have been pivotal in shaping and reshaping relationships between the LGBTQI community and the broader Australian community.</p>
<p>The demonstration of Mardi Gras, and of LGBT tourism, to contribute significantly to the nation’s economy I think has been a useful strategy to advance social and political “acceptance” of the LGBT community. But Mardi Gras contributes far beyond economic benefit and the social, cultural and political impacts have been profoundly important in the construction of LGBT identities in Australia.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92733/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kevin Markwell received funding from the Australian Research Council in 2004-7 for an ARC Discovery Project DPO 342731 titled 'Rethinking social intolerance: lessons from the suspension of homophobia at public gay and lesbian events.' </span></em></p>If intelligently managed, festivals attract substantial numbers of LGBT tourists to regional and rural destinations, injecting additional income into the local economies.Kevin Markwell, Professor in Tourism, Southern Cross UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/817112017-08-08T10:18:22Z2017-08-08T10:18:22ZWhy you should think twice before you talk about ‘the LGBT community’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180410/original/file-20170731-22134-1kyzepl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Living in a rainbow of chaos.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>What does the phrase “LGBT community” mean to you? Chances are if you don’t identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or trans yourself, you might think about what you’ve seen on TV – so <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0185102/">Queer as Folk</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2372162/">Orange is the New Black</a>, or <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0330251/">The L Word </a>, to name a few TV hits. It might also bring to mind images of brightly coloured rainbow flags or Pride parades.</p>
<p>But just stop for a minute and think about how often you’ve heard someone talk about “the heterosexual community”? Rarely I imagine – but the term “LGBT community”, or sometimes “gay community”, is frequently used by pretty much everyone. </p>
<p>This might not sound like a big deal – after all it’s just a phrase used to identify a large group of people, right? But herein lies the problem, because after carrying out <a href="http://www.gaytimes.co.uk/news/82107/research-suggests-that-the-term-lgbt-community-can-be-problematic/">my latest research</a>, which involved over <a href="http://www.lgbtcommunityresearch.co.uk/">600 LGBT participants</a> from across the UK, I’m not sure that community is a very suitable word for such a diverse group of people.</p>
<p>And as I explain in my new book, <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Exploring-LGBT-Spaces-and-Communities-Contrasting-Identities-Belongings/Formby/p/book/9781138814004">Exploring LGBT spaces and communities</a>, the term “LGBT community” can be understood in many different ways, and can mean many different things to many different people.</p>
<h2>A sense of place</h2>
<p>In <a href="http://www.lgbtcommunityresearch.co.uk/">my research</a>, people often said they experienced the “community” part of the phrase as an actual physical space. This could be a particular geographical area such as Brighton or San Francisco, or could relate to places frequented by LGBT people – such as bars and clubs – often referred to as “the scene”.</p>
<p>People I spoke to also reported experiencing this community aspect as part of a virtual space – such as online, or even in an imagined sense – in that LGBT people were thought to share “something”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180413/original/file-20170731-22126-1nz2cdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180413/original/file-20170731-22126-1nz2cdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180413/original/file-20170731-22126-1nz2cdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180413/original/file-20170731-22126-1nz2cdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180413/original/file-20170731-22126-1nz2cdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=664&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180413/original/file-20170731-22126-1nz2cdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=664&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180413/original/file-20170731-22126-1nz2cdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=664&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Gay disco: the heart of a community?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shuttertstock</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>People revealed how they often had fears or negative expectations of wider society. And that this is in part why they invest in the idea of an LGBT community – as somewhere where they could feel safe and understood. </p>
<p>But the term does not capture differences and complexities of experience.
It can also wrongly suggest some form of shared experience, which for some people can be frustrating because it seems to ignore their experiences of inequality or discrimination within – or exclusion from – so-called “LGBT community”.</p>
<h2>LGBT and beyond</h2>
<p>Then there is also the issue of the acronym “LGBT” itself, as it excludes a lot of people – such as those who identify as queer or intersex. And it was clear in my research that some people feel less welcomed within this acronym. Even those who do feature within these four letters – notably bisexual and trans people – can often feel marginalised by lesbian and gay people, and like that they don’t really belong to such a “community”. </p>
<p>People also spoke about their quest to find this “community” – with many trying and failing to discover such a thing. The idea of an LGBT community suggests that people who identify in this way should feel part of something. If they don’t it can compound negative experiences. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180415/original/file-20170731-22136-16axubm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180415/original/file-20170731-22136-16axubm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180415/original/file-20170731-22136-16axubm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180415/original/file-20170731-22136-16axubm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180415/original/file-20170731-22136-16axubm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180415/original/file-20170731-22136-16axubm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180415/original/file-20170731-22136-16axubm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Not everyone’s experience of sexuality or gender is the same.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many participants in my research also talked about experiencing discrimination from other LGBT people relating to their age, body, disability, ethnicity, faith, HIV status, or perceived social class. So although the phrase implies that LGBT people somehow automatically belong to a ready made community – this is simply not the case. </p>
<h2>A group of people</h2>
<p>It is clear then that community belonging is not a given just because people share a gender or sexual identity. And this is why the notion of “LGBT community” is problematic. As someone I interviewed argued:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The idea doesn’t exist, it’s a kind of big myth – a bit like saying there’s a brown-eyed community or a blonde community.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In this way, then, the use of the term “LGBT community” could alienate some people and even risks deterring LGBT (and other) people from engaging with services aimed specifically at them. As another participant said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I find anyone who uses this language dubious and with doubtful intention. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is not to say that we should abandon the phrase altogether, but often using “LGBT people” would be more accurate – and would not risk alienation felt by an already (at times) marginalised group of people.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81711/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eleanor Formby receives funding from, currently, the Government Equalities Office and the British Academy/Leverhulme, and previously the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Department for Education.</span></em></p>The term ‘LGBT community’ can be understood in many different ways, and can mean many different things to many different people.Eleanor Formby, Senior Research Fellow in Sociology and Education, Sheffield Hallam UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/785872017-06-30T00:04:01Z2017-06-30T00:04:01ZWhy do so many gay and bisexual men die from suicide?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173670/original/file-20170613-30067-hp6q6t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A photo entitled "Apprehension" is part of the Still Here project at the University of British Columbia's Men's Health Research Program. The project uses photos to engage gay and bisexual men who have previously struggled with suicide.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Gay and bisexual men are <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2016.303088">four times more likely</a> to attempt suicide in their lifetime than heterosexual men. Researchers now estimate that <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09581596.2014.946887">suicide kills more gay and bisexual men than AIDS</a>. Despite this well-documented inequity, there are no targeted suicide prevention programs in Canada. Gay and bisexual men are rarely mentioned in mental health policies.</p>
<p>Homophobia — within families, schools, communities and even in doctors and counsellors offices — is a key cause, according to the <a href="http://www.stillhereproject.ca">Still Here</a> project within the Men’s Health Research Program at the University of British Columbia.</p>
<p>As a postdoctoral research fellow in nursing at the University of British Columbia, I work on the Still Here project to engage gay and bisexual men who have previously struggled with suicide (or who have lost another gay or bisexual man to suicide) to tell their stories through photographs.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174101/original/file-20170615-24962-o4z1xy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174101/original/file-20170615-24962-o4z1xy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174101/original/file-20170615-24962-o4z1xy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174101/original/file-20170615-24962-o4z1xy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174101/original/file-20170615-24962-o4z1xy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174101/original/file-20170615-24962-o4z1xy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174101/original/file-20170615-24962-o4z1xy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A photo entitled <em>No answers – but occasional evidence of beauty in non-conformity</em>.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Still Here Project)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Twenty-nine gay and bisexual men have participated in Still Here thus far, contributing more than 300 photographs. Each participant met with a research team member to describe his photographs and to share his story. Together, these photos and stories are helping us better understand the multiple factors that lead gay and bisexual men to consider suicide.</p>
<h2>Homophobia a common theme</h2>
<p>Each story is unique and we are finding that the reasons gay and bisexual research participants consider suicide are varied. Homophobia is, however, a common theme uniting all the stories and photos. </p>
<p>Most of the men in our study spoke of experiences of violence, bullying and family rejection because of their sexuality. Others learned to internalize society’s negative view of gay and bisexual people.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174102/original/file-20170615-24971-1wr13mm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174102/original/file-20170615-24971-1wr13mm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174102/original/file-20170615-24971-1wr13mm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174102/original/file-20170615-24971-1wr13mm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174102/original/file-20170615-24971-1wr13mm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174102/original/file-20170615-24971-1wr13mm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174102/original/file-20170615-24971-1wr13mm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The photo <em>Washing the fear away</em>.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Still Here project)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many Still Here participants also described how they were confronted with homophobia and stigmatizing attitudes when they opened up to talk about their feelings to their doctor or counsellor.</p>
<p>Because of homophobia, men described feeling isolated, lonely and invisible. These feelings often led to depression, sentiments of helplessness and thoughts of suicide. </p>
<p>Homophobia is not the only reason these men contemplated suicide. It was often coupled with mental illness, financial problems or losing a job. For some, it was an abusive relationship, or the end of a relationship, that contributed to their thoughts of suicide.</p>
<h2>Breaking the silence</h2>
<p>We need to break the silence around suicide. There is a pervasive myth that talking about suicide encourages it. But not talking about it perpetuates shame and stigma. Many Still Here participants described how they felt very alone with their suicidal thoughts because it is not something that people openly talk about. This silence made it harder for them to ask for help.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174099/original/file-20170615-24971-2kvr0g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174099/original/file-20170615-24971-2kvr0g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174099/original/file-20170615-24971-2kvr0g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174099/original/file-20170615-24971-2kvr0g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174099/original/file-20170615-24971-2kvr0g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174099/original/file-20170615-24971-2kvr0g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174099/original/file-20170615-24971-2kvr0g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A photo called <em>I am locked in the closet and hope to free myself. But I am scared</em>.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Still Here project)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To spark a conversation on suicide, the Still Here participants worked with the research team to host several exhibits of their photographs. These exhibits have had a powerful impact on those who viewed them, and provided space and inspiration for people to share their own stories and discuss prevention.</p>
<p>To extend the reach of these photographs, the Still Here project launched an online gallery at <a href="http://www.stillhereproject.ca">www.stillhereproject.ca</a> that has now been visited by thousands of individuals worldwide.</p>
<h2>Prevention strategies</h2>
<p>The first prevention strategy is to improve mental health services for gay and bisexual men. Accessing mental health services is difficult. The barriers are numerous and include cost, long wait lists and the fact that many health professionals have difficulty discussing suicide. Also, men are often offered pills to deal with their depression when they would rather talk to someone.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174104/original/file-20170615-24962-17r1igb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174104/original/file-20170615-24962-17r1igb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174104/original/file-20170615-24962-17r1igb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174104/original/file-20170615-24962-17r1igb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174104/original/file-20170615-24962-17r1igb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174104/original/file-20170615-24962-17r1igb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174104/original/file-20170615-24962-17r1igb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A photo called <em>Left behind</em>.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Still Here project)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Mental-health professionals and doctors also need better training to address the complex needs of gay and bisexual men, and to reduce homophobic and stigmatizing attitudes.</p>
<p>As a society we need to work harder to resist stigma. Legal progress has been made in Canada for sexual minorities but homophobia continues to impact the lives of many gay and bisexual men. A study published in 2015 found that <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-015-1961-5">half of gay and bisexual men have been harassed or bullied because of their sexuality</a>. One in 10 has been gay-bashed. </p>
<p>If we do not eliminate homophobia and if we fail to change perceptions of mental illness, gay and bisexual men will continue to endure high rates of suicide.</p>
<p><em>If you are feeling distressed or are concerned about a friend, family member or work colleague, visit <a href="http://www.suicideprevention.ca">www.suicideprevention.ca</a> to find a crisis centre near you.</em></p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174105/original/file-20170615-24943-26it92.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174105/original/file-20170615-24943-26it92.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174105/original/file-20170615-24943-26it92.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174105/original/file-20170615-24943-26it92.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174105/original/file-20170615-24943-26it92.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174105/original/file-20170615-24943-26it92.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174105/original/file-20170615-24943-26it92.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A photo entitled <em>Bad day</em></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Still Here project)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174106/original/file-20170615-24971-18c1agw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174106/original/file-20170615-24971-18c1agw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174106/original/file-20170615-24971-18c1agw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174106/original/file-20170615-24971-18c1agw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174106/original/file-20170615-24971-18c1agw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174106/original/file-20170615-24971-18c1agw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174106/original/file-20170615-24971-18c1agw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A photo entitled <em>A way out</em>.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Still Here project)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78587/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The Still Project was funded by the Movember Foundation. </span></em></p>Pride Month: It’s time to talk about the shockingly high rate of suicide among gay and bisexual men. Photos and stories in the Still Here project document the complex reasons.Olivier Ferlatte, Postdoctoral Research Fellow of Men's Health Research, University of British ColumbiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/790892017-06-28T23:58:27Z2017-06-28T23:58:27ZBlack Lives Matter, police and Pride: Toronto activists spark a movement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174092/original/file-20170615-24999-zy3aq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People from the Black Lives Matter lead the annual Pride Parade in Toronto on Sunday, July 3, 2016. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.cpimages.com/">(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Mark Blinch)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It only took 30 minutes. Thirty minutes to plunge Toronto’s queer community into a Queer Civil War. </p>
<p>Last July, Black Lives Matter Toronto (BLM-TO) held up the Toronto Pride Parade for 30 minutes. BLM-TO made a number of demands of Pride Toronto in order for the parade to get moving again. Among them was a ban on police forces marching in uniform or full regalia and carrying guns at the parade. All of BLM-TO demands were agreed to and later endorsed by Pride’s membership and board. But since then, Toronto’s queer community has been in a raging civil war. </p>
<p>The war rages between those who believe all gay rights are now secure and those who understand that rights are parsed out according to privileged identities.</p>
<p>On the one side, many are white male queers, and on the other side many are Black, Indigenous and bisexual people of colour (BIPOC), including poor queers, sex workers and people with disabilities. Those in the second group are still collectively fighting for fully accorded rights to be their full queer selves; to them, the police still represent a clear and present danger.</p>
<p>BLM-TO has emerged as the <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/black-lives-matter-toronto-pride-2017-1.4177554">leading activist voice on anti-Black policing in North America</a>. As a result of their work, Pride marches across Canada and the United States are being forced to have difficult conversations about how police participation represents a fundamental political contradiction. Just this week, the New York City chapter of BLM stated their full solidarity with the Toronto chapter and <a href="https://medium.com/@blmnyc/not-like-this-notopride-8b3f414a3d5a">called for the removal of uniformed police from the NYC Pride Parade</a>. </p>
<h2>The vicious debate</h2>
<p>The debate has been vicious: racist, transphobic and anti-sex worker. <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016/07/05/black-lives-matter-toronto-flooded-with-hate-mail-after-pride-protest.html">The mainstream queer community has been brutal</a> in its insistence that police marching in the parade represents progress and change that should be welcomed by all queers. </p>
<p>BLM-TO and other activist groups from Boston to Washington to Winnipeg to Vancouver offer a different perspective. These activists have long worked against policing abuses and other state interventions into their lives; they refuse to concede to business as usual. </p>
<p>The organization understands the importance of intersectionality as the philosophical and practical foundation of its organizing. They work together with queers, trans people and sex workers, people with mental health issues, poor people and people who are marginalized in a white capitalist heteropatriarchal society. These are also the people that modern policing most often subject to its brutal mechanisms of control, arrest and incarceration.</p>
<p>Within these groups, there is no debate about ongoing police discrimination and brutality. These constituencies have made clear to the queer communities of which they are a part that police and policing represents a clear and present danger for them and that police participation in parades contravenes their full participation as queer community members. </p>
<p>It is with these issues in mind that BLM-TO engaged in the direct action of July 2016 that resulted in a ban on police marching in uniforms in the Pride parade.</p>
<h2>A new direction in contemporary politics</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175923/original/file-20170627-24786-1krhwzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175923/original/file-20170627-24786-1krhwzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175923/original/file-20170627-24786-1krhwzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175923/original/file-20170627-24786-1krhwzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175923/original/file-20170627-24786-1krhwzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175923/original/file-20170627-24786-1krhwzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175923/original/file-20170627-24786-1krhwzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alexandria Williams, of Black Lives Matter Toronto, speaks at a news conference to discuss the Pride Parade controversy in Toronto on Thursday July 7, 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christopher Katsarov)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I participated in the sit-down protest last July. Invited as an OG (BLM-TO’s word for older Black queers), I did not know their plans for action, but I knew that I would support whatever they did. I knew I would because since 2014, BLM-TO has demonstrated in no uncertain terms that political organizing, direct action and community building could be immediately complex, queer-centred, trans-centered, sex-work positive and hold all these together without privileging one over the other. </p>
<p>BLM-TO began and retains an honest and complex rendering of the Black community and beyond. It began in recognizing that colonization is land theft, (near) genocide and stolen bodies from Africa simultaneously. BLM-TO began in a place that many Black and Indigenous activists had long worked for. </p>
<p>Last year, on the streets of Toronto as we approached the main intersection of College and Yonge, BLM-TO slowed us down so that the Indigenous drummers could come forward, form a circle and lead us into a sit-down protest. I was there for all of it.</p>
<p>The co-ordination between BLM-TO and the Indigenous community signalled a different relationship to contemporary politics. It signalled that Black and Indigenous activists and thinkers are seeking ways to work together that bridge white liberal divides that seek to separate us. And what more powerful way to demonstrate that bridge than to come together around policing at Pride? The power of the continuous Indigenous drumming kept us centered in the righteousness of demands within our sit-down protest. </p>
<p>Policing continues to have a significant impact on the lives of Black and Indigenous peoples across Canada. It would be insincere to believe that those impacted by the brutalities of policing are not Black queer and Indigenous Two-Spirit peoples, because they are. As I write, <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/inquest-anniversary-1.4178539">Indigenous peoples in Thunder Bay are revealing the significant stories of police brutality</a> that shapes their lives. And the <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/loku-inquest-closing-arguments-1.4178077">Andrew Loku</a> inquest continues in Toronto. </p>
<p>The queer civil war happening now is about Black, Indigenous, trans people and sex workers insisting that what we bring to queer communities is valuable, necessary and worth protecting. That some “mainstream” white queers and others want to insist that police marching in uniforms represents a progressive change is a repudiation of our very lives. </p>
<p>Police marching in Pride parades represents — both symbolically and otherwise — the ongoing colonial project of violently interdicting into the lives of Black and Indigenous peoples by making us less than human. </p>
<p>What BLM-TO started last July — and continued this June by refusing to register as a float but taking up space to march nonetheless — is a powerful movement. It is a statement that says: sub-human existence will no longer be tolerated by those of us most marginalized for the price of entry into something that will not have us anyway.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79089/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rinaldo Walcott is the director of the Women and Gender Studies Institute, University of Toronto. </span></em></p>It took only 30 minutes to plunge Toronto’s queer community into civil war. All across North America, Pride parades are debating police brutality.Rinaldo Walcott, Director of Women and Gender Studies Institute, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/788882017-06-22T19:12:46Z2017-06-22T19:12:46ZFrom gay Nazis to ‘we’re here, we’re queer’: A century of arguing about gay pride<p>This month, hundreds of thousands of people around the world will join gay pride marches in cities big and small. In many cities, pride marches are controversial. In some – <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/06/not-the-onion-moscow-bans-gay-pride-for-next-100-years/258296/">like Moscow</a> – they are even banned. But for many people in North America, parts of Europe, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/12/world/gallery/pride-parade-latam/">Latin America</a> and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tokyo-pride-parade_us_57335fa3e4b0bc9cb048cd6f">elsewhere</a>, attending the local pride march has become an unremarkable ritual of summer. </p>
<p>There are still good reasons to march. Few countries around the world have <a href="https://theconversation.com/most-countries-score-an-f-on-our-lgbt-human-rights-report-card-78732">robust protections for gay and transgender rights</a>. And pride marches, the LGBTQ political rallies that take the form of exuberant, outrageous parades, often meet hostile <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/this-is-what-happened-when-christian-groups-tried-to-shut-do?utm_term=.huvYrkypx#.sl42EvKVp">counterdemonstrators</a>. </p>
<p>But such expressions of pride have faced another sort of opposition: from within the queer and trans communities themselves. One reason is that gay and trans rights doesn’t describe a single, unitary political movement.</p>
<p>I am a historian of queer and trans politics. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/907565880">My research</a>, together with that of <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/505131967">James Steakley</a>, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/5183378194">Katie Sutton</a>, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/950959961">Robert Beachy</a> and many others, shows that there are several traditions of gay and trans activism. These traditions have not always gotten along. And some of them hate what pride is all about. </p>
<h2>A history of multiple movements</h2>
<p>Gay and trans rights movements are quite old. For more than 100 years, political groups have been fighting on behalf of same-sex desires, gender nonconformity and transition from one gender to the other – although the terms “gay rights” and “trans rights” are <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-in-a-word-the-challenges-of-transgender-38633">relatively recent inventions</a>. </p>
<p>By the late 1800s, a movement that called itself “homosexual emancipation” formed in Germany. It <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-forgotten-origins-of-the-modern-gay-rights-movement-in-wwi-76691">boomed after World War I</a> and flourished in the 1920s under <a href="http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/section.cfm?section_id=12">the democracy</a> that existed before the Nazis took over. The movement included people who called themselves “transvestites.” Were they alive today, many would probably use the term transgender. </p>
<p>From the beginning, gay and transgender activists split into a dizzying array of factions. All were in favor of greater legal and social tolerance for same-sex relationships. But beyond that narrow common ground, they were a political hodgepodge.</p>
<p>Some were leftists. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/907565880">One prominent leader</a> of a gay rights group was also an important player in Berlin’s communist party. Others were middle-of-the road, calling for the end of Germany’s law against sodomy but otherwise content with the status quo. There were even <a href="https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1137017">right-wing</a>, explicitly racist gay rights activists. </p>
<p>The Nazi Party itself was zealously anti-gay. Once in power, the Nazis murdered thousands of men <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005261">for the “crime” of male-male sex</a>. Yet, the historical record shows that a small number of men quietly belonged to both the homosexual emancipation movement and the Nazi Party, though they were not open about their sexuality within the party. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/362546906">Historians</a> are still <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/927276394">debating</a> the <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/907565880">significance</a> of homosexuality in the Nazi Party. The small faction of gay fascists lauded erotic relationships between manly, “Aryan” soldier types while loathing feminists, Jews and leftists.</p>
<p>As you might imagine, these different camps within the homosexual emancipation movement did not agree on lots of things. </p>
<h2>A debate about discretion</h2>
<p>One of their big disagreements was about discretion: Was it acceptable for same-sex couples and gender nonconformists to cavort in view of the straight public? </p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The 1972 film ‘Cabaret’ is set in Berlin prior to the Nazi seizure of power. The story deals with homosexuality and the rise of Nazism.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Fifty years before pride marches began, 1920s Berlin had <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/946218131">a jumping nightlife of gay male, lesbian and transvestite establishments</a> featuring clubs like the <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_ph.php?ModuleId=0&MediaId=3162">Eldorado</a> – known for its cross-dressing wait staff – and dance palaces like the Magic Flute. There was even a yearly all-women moonlight cruise. The pre-Nazi government’s approach was <a href="https://youtu.be/moOamKxW844">live and let live.</a> </p>
<p>Not all advocates of gay rights, however, liked this public culture. </p>
<p>One man, a self-professed gay Nazi, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/13139401">wrote</a> that Berlin’s clubs were “<a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/insalubrious">insalubrious</a>” places where people surrendered to their animal lusts, and that “the general public inevitably gets the impression that it” – that is, the gay rights movement – “is all about sex.” This man wanted to celebrate homoerotic comradeship, a spiritual love, as he described it, as well as a physical one. However, he wanted to celebrate this manly love with maximum discretion, and certainly not in public. He wrote: “What two men do in the barracks,” by which he meant the barracks of the Nazi Party militia, “is no one’s business.”</p>
<p>Such complaints were not limited to the far right. Moderate activists had their own doubts about the bars and dance halls. One leader of transvestites warned, “<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/5183378194">When we demand that the public acknowledge us, then we have the duty to dress and conduct ourselves publicly in an inconspicuous manner</a>.” Transvestites were told to <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/5183378194">avoid gaudy accessories like costume rings or oversized earrings</a>.</p>
<p>To admit that one was homosexual or a transvestite in public in the 1920s was to court serious social and legal consequences. Activists of that era probably could not have imagined that one day people would march in large groups down public streets celebrating their homosexual and transgender selves. </p>
<h2>‘We’re here, we’re queer’</h2>
<p>In 1970, activists organized the first pride marches to mark the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Those riots occurred the summer before when people fought back against a police raid of a queer bar called <a href="https://www.nps.gov/places/stonewall.htm">the Stonewall Inn</a> in New York’s Greenwich Village. </p>
<p>Pride exploded the old worries about discretion when it arrived in cities around the world in the 1970s.</p>
<p>Pride reveled in gaudy accessories. It had lots of scanty dress, too, from drag queens in slinky gowns to shirtless dykes with political slogans scrawled in marker across their chests. By bringing the party – along with the politics – into the streets in broad daylight, pride fought against homophobia. At the same time, it flatly rejected the old fears about overt public displays. </p>
<p>“We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it,” a favorite chant at pride, was not only directed at mainstream, straight society. It was also, in my opinion, an answer-back to the debate about discretion that had marked the long history of gay and trans activism.</p>
<h2>More debates about pride</h2>
<p>By the 1990s, pride marches had run into more controversy within activist circles. They were criticized as too commercial, too male-dominated, too devoid of a broader left-of-center political agenda and insufficiently inclusive of <a href="https://www.facebook.com/BlackCusePride/?hc_ref=SEARCH&fref=nf">people of color</a> – or indeed <a href="http://www.aviva-berlin.de/aviva/content_Interviews.php?id=1427323">downright racist and Islamophobic</a>. Alternative demonstrations cropped up, like Berlin’s <a href="https://xcsd.wordpress.com/">Alternative Pride</a> and New York City’s <a href="http://dykemarchnyc.org/">Dyke March</a>. Debates about pride continue to this day. </p>
<p>Pride is in part what people make of it. A pride march can have a social justice agenda. Or <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/06/10/its-discrimination-gay-man-says-hes-barred-from-pride-parade-for-supporting-trump/?hpid=hp_no-name_hp-in-the-news%3Apage%2Fin-the-news&utm_term=.ca13eff4109b">it can have a pro-Trump agenda</a>. </p>
<p>Yet pride’s history is a story of a radical break with right-wing and even middle-of-the-road gay and trans politics. Pride rejected respectability and discretion. </p>
<p>Traces of that history probably survive in your local pride march. Look for the people who are not worried about alarming the straights.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78888/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laurie Marhoefer has received funding from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.</span></em></p>Gay pride has many exuberant advocates. It also has critics in unexpected places.Laurie Marhoefer, Associate Professor of History, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/725992017-02-08T08:41:25Z2017-02-08T08:41:25ZA brief history of Polari: the curious after-life of the dead language for gay men<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155885/original/image-20170207-30915-izhvl6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Polari bible. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Joe Richardson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In early February, the Church of England College <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38863545">expressed regret</a> that in an evening liturgy in Cambridge, God was referred to as the Duchess. The service had been advertised as a Polari evening prayer in anticipation of <a href="http://lgbthistorymonth.org.uk/">LGBT History Month</a>, and was described as a liturgical experiment. So what was Polari and how did it end up in an evening prayer?</p>
<p>Polari is a secret language, which has now largely fallen out of use, but was historically spoken by gay men and female impersonators. <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Polari_The_Lost_Language_of_Gay_Men.html?id=kXmBAgAAQBAJ&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y">My research</a> has tracked how it grew out of the world of entertainment, stretching back from West End theatres, through to 19th-century music halls and beyond that to travelling entertainers and market-stall holders. </p>
<p>It developed from an earlier form of language called Parlyaree which had roots in Italian and rudimentary forms of language used for communication by sailors around the Mediterranean. Also associated with travellers, buskers, beggars and prostitutes, it found its way into Britain, especially London and port cities, and gradually became used by gay men and female impersonators, especially during the first half of the 20th century.</p>
<p>Polari itself had Parlyaree as a base, but once in Britain was supplemented with a wealth of slang terminology from different sources, including Cockney Rhyming Slang, backslang (pronouncing a word as if it was spelt backwards), French, Yiddish and American airforce slang.</p>
<p>In a period when homosexuality was illegal and heavily stigmatised, it was useful as a means of conducting conversations in public spaces, which would have alerted others to your sexuality. Many of the words allowed speakers to gossip about mutual friends or to critique the appearance of people who were in the immediate vicinity. </p>
<p>“<em>Vada the naff strides on the omee ajax</em>” meant look at the awful trousers on the man nearby. Inserting a Polari word – such as <em>bona</em> (good) or <em>palone</em> (woman) – into a sentence could act as a coded way of identifying other people who might be gay. The language itself, full of camp, irony, innuendo and sarcasm, also helped its speakers to form a resilient worldview in the face of arrest, blackmail and physical violence. </p>
<p>Polari speakers “christened” themselves with camp names like Scotch Flo or Diamond Lil, affording themselves alternative identities that reclaimed the representations of them as effeminate in positive ways.</p>
<h2>Surplus to requirements</h2>
<p>In the 1990s, I based my doctoral thesis around the study of Polari, examining its varied history and complicated etymology, the ways that it resembled a language, its social functions and the reasons for its eventual decline. I interviewed speakers of the language and analysed texts, including scripts of the 1960s comedy radio series <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00c7q4l">Round the Horne</a>, which had a regular sketch voiced by Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick, who played Polari-speaking actors. </p>
<p>The version of Polari that was used in Round the Horne was necessarily simplified and toned down for the British public, and by the 1960s, there was a feeling that Polari had already overstayed its welcome. Round the Horne spoiled the secret, rendering the language less attractive to its speakers. Meanwhile the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967 was round the corner, making it less necessary for a secret lingo in any case. </p>
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<p>Some younger gay men were more interested in concepts like gay pride, gay liberation and coming out and viewed Polari as a naff byproduct of a more repressive time. In the 1970s, in an early gay magazine called Lunch, activists branded Polari as ghettoising and it gradually became surplus to requirements. When I <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Polari_The_Lost_Language_of_Gay_Men.html?id=kXmBAgAAQBAJ&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y">carried out a survey</a> of 800 gay men in the year 2000, about half the respondents had never heard of it. </p>
<h2>Renewed interest</h2>
<p>While few gay men today actively use Polari, in recent years it has gained a kind of latent respectability as an historic language – similar to the way Latin is seen by the Catholic faith. From a political standpoint, Polari is now recognised as historically important, an example of the perseverance of a reviled group of people who risked arrest and attack just for being true to who they were. </p>
<p>In 2012 a group of Manchester-based artists used Polari to highlight the lack of LGBT inclusivity in education. They created <a href="http://uhc.org.uk/design-studio/exam-identity/">an exam</a> in LGBT studies, getting volunteers to sit it under strict exam conditions. The language portion of the exam was about Polari.</p>
<p>Another group of activists called the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence created a <a href="http://www.polaribible.org/">Polari Bible</a>, running a Polari wordlist through a computer program on an English version of the Bible. The Bible was bound in leather and displayed in a glass case at the John Rylands Library in Manchester. This was not to mock religion but to highlight how religious practices are filtered through different cultures and societies, and that despite not always being treated well by mainstream religions, there should still be space for gay people to engage with religion. </p>
<p>In 2012, I participated in a group effort to carry out the longest ever Polari Bible reading which took place in a Manchester Art gallery. In a nice touch of high camp we had to wear white gloves while touching the Bible, to ensure the oils from our fingers didn’t ruin the paper. We took turns reading lines such as: “<em>And the rib, which the Duchess Gloria had lelled from homie, made she a palone, and brought her unto the homie</em>.” Translation: “And the rib which God had taken from man was made into a woman and brought to the man.”</p>
<p>The Polari Evensong at Cambridge, carried out by trainee priests, however, took place in a more official context and provoked a range of conflicting opinion. Some people think it is hilarious, some are concerned about Church of England rules being broken and disrespect for religious tradition, while others think that God should be prayed to in any language and that the Evensong was perfectly valid. As someone who has spent 20 years documenting the rise and fall of Polari, I find it fascinating that even now, it is finding new ways to cause controversy. Never has a dead language had such an interesting afterlife.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72599/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Baker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>While few people use the language today, many cherish its history.Paul Baker, Professor of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/610852016-06-16T03:42:09Z2016-06-16T03:42:09ZWhy are we still scared of seeing two men kissing?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126844/original/image-20160616-19959-onrube.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gay men are sharing pictures of themselves kissing in an act of defiance in the wake of the Orlando shooting. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Twitter/@barbarosansalfn </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Although details remain uncertain, the father of Omar Mateen has claimed that his son’s murderous acts in Orlando’s Pulse nightclub last Saturday may have been inspired by <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-orlando-nightclub-shooting-live-omar-mateen-got-very-angry-seeing-two-1465749495-htmlstory.html">the sight of two men kissing</a>. </p>
<p>In response, a <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-14/orlando-shooting-social-media-responds-with-two-men-kissing/7507938">twitter campaign</a> with the hashtag #TwoMenKissing has encouraged men to tweet photographs of themselves kissing another man. This is an act of pride and defiance in the face of violent oppression. It also reveals the ongoing politics of men kissing in public.</p>
<p>In countries like the United States and Australia, where variant sexualities are increasingly accepted, showing affection in public continues to carry risk. A long <a href="http://www.utexaspressjournals.org/doi/10.7560/JHS24204">history of censorship</a> and erasure has weighted the gay kiss with meaning and often excluded it from view.</p>
<p>Those of us who grew up watching TV and going to the movies were fed a constant diet of heterosexual fare, in which the sight of straight couples kissing was so common as to go unmentioned. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"743183193222742016"}"></div></p>
<p>The entire premise of stories that became films like Snow White and The Little Mermaid is that a kiss from a man will save a woman (or girl). This is accepted as appropriate children’s entertainment because the desire these kisses convey is heterosexual. But similar acts between two men continue to be framed as something from which audiences must be shielded. </p>
<p>The growing presence of gay characters on television has not necessarily indicated growing comfort with displays of same-sex affection. Popular 1990s soap <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103491/">Melrose Place</a> (1992-1999) was known for its steamy romances, but gay character Matt only ever participated in an occasional manly hug.</p>
<p>Whenever it looked like he might be about to kiss, the camera panned away discreetly. Sit-com <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0157246/">Will and Grace</a> (1998-2006) went several seasons before gay character Will ever kissed a male partner. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1442437/">Modern Family</a>’s Cam and Mitchell live together and have adopted a child, but it wasn’t until season two that they exchanged even the most innocent of kisses. Australian television has been equally reticent. Long-running soap opera <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088580/">Neighbours</a> (1987-) waited 27 years before showing two of its male characters kissing. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126843/original/image-20160616-19932-1kzy9jm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126843/original/image-20160616-19932-1kzy9jm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126843/original/image-20160616-19932-1kzy9jm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126843/original/image-20160616-19932-1kzy9jm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126843/original/image-20160616-19932-1kzy9jm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126843/original/image-20160616-19932-1kzy9jm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126843/original/image-20160616-19932-1kzy9jm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126843/original/image-20160616-19932-1kzy9jm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Cam and Mitchell kiss for the first time on Modern Family, in the second episode of the second season.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">20th Century Fox</span></span>
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<p>In cinemas, the first gay kiss seen in Australia may well have been in the British film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067805/">Sunday, Bloody Sunday</a> (1971), released locally in 1972. But the arrival of that first gay screen kiss didn’t mean that things had changed forever.</p>
<p>As late as 1993, the film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107818/">Philadelphia</a> focussed on a gay male couple, one of whom was dying of AIDS. The lovers dance together and hug, but they never kiss. Director Jonathan Demme argued that a kiss might have repelled audiences, <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/features/the-rolling-stone-interview-jonathan-demme-19940324">telling Rolling Stone</a> in 1994:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s just shocking imagery and I didn’t want to shoe-horn it in. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In light of the horror of Orlando, discussing Will and Grace seems trivial. I certainly don’t mean to suggest some causal link between American sitcoms and the acts of a mass murderer.</p>
<p>Rather, my point is that a long history of excluding same-sex affection from public view and the refusal to see or reveal queer lives has had specific effects on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"742090304463872002"}"></div></p>
<p>If queer acts of affection on screen have been positioned as unseeable perversions from which children must be protected, what are the consequences when those acts are attempted in real life? What lessons have we taught queer kids about themselves?</p>
<p>Whatever <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/world/orlando-gunman-omar-mateen-political-extremist-or-repressed-homosexual-20160615-gpjooz.html">drove the violence</a> of Mateen – twisted fundamentalist beliefs, the fear of his own desires or something else entirely – his acts have brought to light on an horrific scale the bigotry which, in much smaller ways, continues to shape the lives of LGBTQ people.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.humanrights.gov.au/face-facts-lesbian-gay-bisexual-trans-and-intersex-people">study</a> by the Australian Human Rights Commission found that, through the year 2012, verbal abuse had been experienced by a quarter of all gay men and lesbians, 47% of trans men and 37% of trans women.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"742429129602158592"}"></div></p>
<p>In response to the threat of abuse, almost half of LGBTQ people had chosen to hide their identity when in public. This requires constant awareness of one’s behaviour. It means living your life like you’re in a 1990s soap opera, having to wait for the camera to pan away before you can kiss someone hello.</p>
<p>The point of homophobic, biphobic and transphobic violence is to enforce the continued invisibility of LGBTQ people. It is the rejection of our right to equal participation in public space. The #TwoMenKissing twitter campaign has responded with a refusal to hide. </p>
<p>LGBTQ people <a href="http://theconversation.com/orlando-shooting-is-the-latest-chapter-in-the-global-fight-for-lgbt-rights-61010">continue to fight</a> against stigmatisation, demonisation and bigotry. We’ll know we’re winning when the sight of two men sharing a simple kiss no longer looks like a political act. </p>
<p>Perhaps one day, a Disney prince will kiss his prince and they’ll live happily ever after.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61085/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott McKinnon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>On screen or in public, why does the sight of men kissing continue to provoke controversy, censorship and even violence?Scott McKinnon, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Urban Research Centre, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/519362015-12-11T09:38:24Z2015-12-11T09:38:24ZDrinking on the gay scene: why we need to take it more seriously<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105315/original/image-20151210-7434-1fpzhb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">We need to talk about booze</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=&searchterm=gay%20bar&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=192145985">exopixel</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Gay bars and clubs have been at the heart of LGBT culture in the modern era. But where chemsex <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/Chemsex/review/">has received</a> much of the attention in recent months, voices within the LGBT community have also raised concerns about levels of alcohol consumption. <a href="http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2015/12/02/gay-men-we-have-drinking-problem">Writing in</a> the oldest and largest LGBT publication in the US, the journalist <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tyler-curry/">Tyler Curry</a> has argued for a move away from this bar culture. He pointed out that LGBT people are more likely to drink, have higher rates of substance abuse and are more likely to continue drinking into later life than the general population. </p>
<p>Similar concerns have been raised in the UK. Lesbian, gay and bisexual populations are more likely to drink – and drink excessively – than the general population, <a href="https://www.stonewall.org.uk/sites/default/files/Gay_and_Bisexual_Men_s_Health_Survey__2013_.pdf">according</a> to <a href="https://www.stonewall.org.uk/sites/default/files/Prescription_for_Change__2008_.pdf">research by</a> gay rights group Stonewall. <a href="lgbt.foundation/downloads/123">As many as</a> 34% of gay and bisexual men in England reported binge drinking in the last week (more than eight units in a session), compared to around 18% of men in the general population. And 29% of lesbian and bisexual women reported drinking more than six units in a single session compared to around 12% of women in the general population. </p>
<p>In this context, we are presenting <a href="http://www.gcu.ac.uk/media/gcalwebv2/gcunewsroom/publications/shaap-glass-report-(web).pdf">new research</a> at the Scottish parliament on December 15 that explores how LGBT people perceive and experience drinking in the country. Scotland has a general reputation for excessive drinking, but we aimed to look at a group where surprisingly little is known about these issues. We asked groups of friends aged 18 to 51 to tell us about their experiences with alcohol, deliberately focusing on people who saw themselves as “normal” or “social” drinkers rather than those who thought they drank excessively. </p>
<h2>‘Get hammered and boogie’</h2>
<p>Most participants agreed there was a heavy drinking culture on the gay scene, coupled with a lot of peer pressure. The reasons they gave included the expectation that everyone would be drinking heavily; that it was cheaper than straight venues; that it was associated with big nights out and celebrations; and the need to drink to have the confidence to go out on the scene. </p>
<p>Here are a few of their comments:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s a culture thing to go on the gay scene [and] get drunk, so maybe people don’t realise they have an issue with alcohol.</p>
<p>If (I think) about being gay and on the scene, I was always pissed.</p>
<p>It’s a bit too manically drunk for my liking.</p>
<p>The only thing to do is get hammered and have a boogie.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The participants were wary of LGBT people as being branded as drinkers, though. They recognised they lived in a country with a heavy drinking culture which influenced people whatever their sexual orientation or gender identity. What many thought was different was that LGBT people were more likely to use bars and clubs because they had more limited options to socialise – and were less likely to have their drinking restricted by parenthood. </p>
<p>The drinks industry is well aware of links between drinking and identity. Many brands have become adept at positioning themselves as “gay friendly”. Bud Light <a href="http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2015/07/10/anti-gay-groups-pride-sponsors-are-sadomasochistic-and-perverted/">sponsors</a> New York City Pride, for instance, while brewer SAB Miller <a href="https://www.marketingweek.com/2014/05/16/barclays-seeks-greater-diversity-with-lgbt-sponsorship/">has sponsored</a> Pride in London. Smirnoff and Absolut vodka <a href="http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/smirnoff-and-absolut-show-their-support-gay-marriage-facebook-148171">both ran</a> social media campaigns supporting equal gay marriage. Our participants viewed drinks promotion on the LGBT scene as even heavier than elsewhere. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104668/original/image-20151207-3133-ut5qin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104668/original/image-20151207-3133-ut5qin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104668/original/image-20151207-3133-ut5qin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104668/original/image-20151207-3133-ut5qin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104668/original/image-20151207-3133-ut5qin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104668/original/image-20151207-3133-ut5qin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104668/original/image-20151207-3133-ut5qin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104668/original/image-20151207-3133-ut5qin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gay Pride.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/littlebiglens/11854425314/in/photolist-24em6V-24jEmC-24jWCC-24ezKF-5LDsTX-4YFhga-S4Pr7-o3tZfT-j4x2Dm-kMZZn-8esmV9-X9daw-WwxhT">Steve Baker</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Service barriers</h2>
<p>Our interviewees saw a number of barriers with alcohol support services. They thought the service providers tended to assume everyone was heterosexual and gender-assigned at birth. They saw the services as macho and intimidating for people who weren’t heterosexual men, and didn’t see self-help groups like Alcoholics Anonymous as safe spaces. None of our participants seemed to be aware of the existence of <a href="http://www.aa.org/assets/en_US/aa-literature/p-32-aa-and-the-gaylesbian-alcoholic">LGBT AA groups</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104670/original/image-20151207-3133-1jgs29n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104670/original/image-20151207-3133-1jgs29n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104670/original/image-20151207-3133-1jgs29n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104670/original/image-20151207-3133-1jgs29n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104670/original/image-20151207-3133-1jgs29n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104670/original/image-20151207-3133-1jgs29n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104670/original/image-20151207-3133-1jgs29n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104670/original/image-20151207-3133-1jgs29n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alcohol support meetings: safe space?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/lwpkommunikacio/16904900381/in/photolist-rKQ2VF-e9b7NF-fUkjHq-awbQqH-aweyDu-awbQzD-awexiw-aweyzU-awbQDx-aweyGL-aweyFu-awbQU8-awexkq-aweyBW-awbRbc-awexpQ-awbQGR-awbQrV-awbQvH-aweytU-uXdFCz-JoZ3G-7dfRP4-apJHAx-9ZQbb7-4SAGdV-Bi5sJc-61K8Ke-awbQkV-ZYLwo-ADX1H-ddXzML-ddXzka-awey8y-dB1Swr-awexU5-awbQSB-awey3m-awey7j-awbRpp-awbR3e-awbRnX-3fnCo6-cQJu4Y-xsDQu-65yCSP-fUkmTs-995gTn-foDkcs-foDmkE">Lwp Kommunikáció</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our findings hopefully provide some useful background to drinking in the gay scene. If gay people are wary of alcohol services and AA groups, the providers need to look at how inclusive they are perhaps reconsider their approach. When it comes to making sure that there are places to socialise where it is acceptable to drink moderately or not drink at all – and it is vital that LGBT people are not left out of the equation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/51936/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carol has received funding for research from NIHR, Cancer Research UK and the Medical Research Council and was a co-applicant on the £5,000 award from SHAAP (Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems) for the research connected with this piece.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jemma was a co-applicant on a £5,000 award from SHAAP (Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems) for the research connected with this piece.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lana was a co-applicant on a £5,000 award from SHAAP (Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems) for the research connected with this piece.</span></em></p>When most of us are asked to imagine an alcoholic and they probably think of a middle-aged straight man. But new research highlights the risks of heavy drinking on the gay scene.Carol Emslie, Reader / Lead Substance use & misuse research group, Institute for Applied Health Research, Glasgow Caledonian UniversityJemma Lennox, Pre-doctoral researcher, University of GlasgowLana Ireland, Lecturer in Social and Forensic Psychology, Glasgow Caledonian UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.