An anonymous viewer asks Bill whether homosexuality makes sense from an evolutionary and genetic standpoint. Bill's response? Homosexuality exists across species and throughout nature. Bonobo monkeys, for example, exhibit homosexuality. And Bonobo monkeys aren't going anywhere anytime soon. In short, Bill says we should just live and let live. Read More
This weird and amazing video wants to encourage gay men to use condoms
An HIV charity and the NHS have produced a strange and amazing film to encourage men who have sex with men to use condoms when they have anal sex. The film, titled ‘That Awkard Moment’, was released last week, and hopes to use humour to encourage gay and bi men to talk about issues around using condoms and lube.
Created by the British Association for Sexual Health, HIV funded Terrence Higgins Trust Scotland and NHS Tayside, the film hopes to “help [men] overcome these issues with the facts in a fun, innovative and engaging way.” Read More
Puerto Rico: Swimmer on how life has changed since he sent out this tweet: ‘Yes… I AM GAY… Who cares?’
My name is Javier Ruisanchez and I'm 18. I was born and raised in Puerto Rico, but I currently live in Northern Virginia. I just graduated from West Springfield High School. I have two sisters and I live with my mom. I've always been involved in sports. Baseball, volleyball, dancing, basketball – I've always been an athlete, but I didn’t discover my passion for swimming until I was 9. I made my first Junior National Team for Puerto Rice at age 11, so I fit into the world of swimming.
But I always felt the need to fit in with everyone else. I knew at an early age I was gay, but I was too scared to come out because I was afraid of bullying or how those around me would treat me. Read More
Australia: The importance of LGBTI indigenous inclusion
Does LGBTI solidarity exclude Indigenous people? Andrew Farrell urges non-Indigenous LGBTI people to look to inclusion: We live in a diverse system of social and cultural worlds, all of which are performed on Indigenous land. On a practical level, what can you — as non-Indigenous LGBTI people — do to support racially-diverse minorities?
As an Indigenous person first and foremost, I am obliged to be aware of the land I am standing on. As a queer-identified person, I have often felt that I have had to forfeit my cultural identity and its conventions in order to belong. Minority inclusion, awareness, and representation are important for mediating that space.
I shouldn’t have to adjust or calibrate my cultural identity in order to exist in the LGBTI community. The LGBTI community prides itself on being diverse. That diversity is not limited to our sexual and gendered identities.
US: What’s marriage equality got to do with intersex?
Professor and author Georgiann Davis describes the challenge many intersex people go through in discovering and identifying with a gender and how marriage plays a part. excerpt:
Intersex people have, consciously or not, been queering marriage long before activists were fighting for marriage equality. Some intersex people, encouraged by medical providers who wanted to make sure our gender identity aligned with the sex they surgically constructed, looked to heterosexual partnering to validate their gender identity.
As it was in my case, marriage was a path by which intersex people learned to accept themselves as “real” women, or in some cases “real” men, while also pleasing their parents, medical providers, and others in their lives by assuring them they made the correct medically unnecessary and irreversible surgical decisions.
When the Supreme Court ruled same-sex marriage was a constitutional right, my social media exploded with excitement. Many of my intersex friends from around the world also shared these celebrations. But marriage has historically functioned as a heteronormative institution, and one of the primary ways intersex people have validated their gender assignment and normalized their selves. So I wasn’t surprised that the marriage equality ruling also seemed to cause some uneasiness among a few, albeit a minority, of intersex people and parents of intersex children. Read More
Macedonia: Interview with Antonio Mihaylov: the LGBT community is at the margins of society in Macedonia
Antonio Mihajlov, president Subversive Fronts an association for a critical approach to gender and sexuality in Macedonian capital Skopje spoke in an interview about the position of the LGBT population in Macedonia. He discusses LGBT people's place in society and the government's position towards the community. He also discusses the impact of the current socio-political situation in the position of the LGBT population, same-sex marriage, and plans of LGBT activists for the future. Read More
Asians respond to question: ‘Would you tell your parents if you were gay?’
Asian adults have revealed how their parents would respond if they came out as gay, in a video created to educate others about Asian culture and values. Titled ‘Would You Tell Your Parents If You Were Gay’, in English, Chinese, Korean and Japanese, a range of adults of all ages answer three important questions: ‘What do Asians think of same-sex marriage?’, ‘Would you you tell your parents if you were gay?’ and ‘What would you do if your son or daughter was gay/lesbian?’
Despite many negative attitudes, some video participants were more accepting. ‘It’s up to the younger people to do their research and see if they can change the minds of the generations before them,’ one woman explained. Read More
Is there a ‘gay voice’?
Filmmaker David Thorpe's documentary, “Do I Sound Gay?" explores the gay voice. The subject sounds slight, but Thorpe digs surprisingly deep, asking questions about stereotypes and self-loathing that are seldom asked. Putting himself on camera, Thorpe visits a speech therapist who points out his “upspeak,” his “nasality,” and his “singsong pattern.” He talks to a linguistics professor, a film historian, and a Hollywood voice coach who trains actors to sound straighter. He interviews gay public figures, who have had to listen to themselves for a living. He even asks people on the street if they think he sounds gay. “I woulda just maybe lumped you in with the artsy-fartsy,” one woman tells him.
The subject turns out to be a minefield, because what’s more connected to personality than the way we speak? Gay adolescents, Thorpe points out, often learn that the “tell” of their sexuality is their voices, even more so than physicality—a limp wrist is easier to straighten out than an inflection. The world’s homophobia becomes internalized homophobia.
Any marginalized group faces its own version of this dilemma, whether it’s immigrants straining to erase their accents, the debate over Ebonics, or women of the “Lean In” age redefining what it means to be assertive without imitating men. As gays and lesbians gain cultural capital, helped along by equality victories like the one just handed down by the Supreme Court, “gay voice” will surely evolve, too. For more and more people, there will be less need to hide it, at school, at work, or on television. On the other hand, it could assimilate into oblivion. Read More
US: New app 'MyTransHealth' will help trans patients find healthcare
MyFitnessPal, Uber and CityMapper are all apps which make things a little easier. However, a soon-to-be released app MyTransHealth is set to change life as we know it for trans people everywhere. The crowdsourced program will allow people to see reviews on doctors before attending an appointment, so they can choose the most trans-friendly.
Users will be able to see how healthcare professionals match up in terms of inclusiveness under the categories medical, legal, mental health, and crisis. They can then delve even deeper and work out their score in terms of language and insurance issues. Read More
South Korea: Samsung & Google censor LGBT content in some App stores
Samsung, one of South Korea’s largest business conglomerates and the largest maker of smartphones worldwide, rejected an application from gay hookup app Hornet to be listed in its app store in 2013. In a memo sent from Samsung to Hornet’s CEO, said the app could not be listed because, “due to the local moral values or laws, content containing LGBT is not allowed” in places like the Middle East, parts of east and south Asia, and LGBT-friendly places like the U.S. and the Nordic countries.
This kind of censorship of LGBT content — sometimes under government order and sometimes under internal corporate policies — reveals the paradox of South Korea: It is a hub of international industry, one of the most wired nations in the world, and a democracy closely allied with the United States. But it also has a government that has created an extensive censorship regime in the name of protecting the state from North Korea, with which it is technically still at war, and has extended that apparatus to monitoring “obscenity” and “material harmful to minors” in a way that often silences the LGBT community. Read More
Ethiopia: LGBT activist banned by facebook under real name policy
An Ethiopian LGBT activist and leader who runs multiple Facebook groups for gay Ethiopians has had his account blocked by Facebook for not using his real name. The activist, who goes by the pseudonym HappyAddis, used the social network to create and administrate some of the most popular groups for gay Ethiopians, including Zega Matters, which has more than 1,000 members.
The East African country considers homosexuality a crime and those convicted of same-sex relations can face 15 years in prison. For that reason, many LGBT citizens use an alias to interact with others online in order to avoid punishment from the authorities and anti-gay violence.
A Facebook representative, who could not speak about HappyAddis’s situation since the company does not comment on specific accounts, said that users who require anonymity can either use a secret Facebook group or a different platform that allows anonymity.
But HappyAddis says neither of those options would work in his situation. Secret groups still require users’ real names, a non-starter for those who fear physical violence if their identity is revealed. Using a real name is “like outing yourself." “People will go and attack you. Even other gay people, you don’t trust them. How can you find out whether they’re real gay people using a real account?” Read More
Vietnam: Navigating the streets of Ho Chi Minh City
I’ve always been rather skeptical of those who claim to be on Grindr to ‘network’ or ‘look for a room’. Like – really? But having now used Grindr to find a tour guide in Vietnam, I’ve been forced to review my cynicism.
I was in Ho Chi Minh City – formerly known as Saigon, and now often abbreviated to HCMC – with one of my best friends from London. All the organized tours seemed rather expensive. There’s also that feeling of being on a tourist hamster wheel when being shown around a city by an official guide.
My friend suggested I ask the cute Vietnamese guy I’d been flirting with on Grindr if he would be interested in being our guide for the day. A few of the familiar bleeping purrs of Grindr later and the deal was done. Read More