I expect that from Qatar with it being an officially Islamic state that specifically draws legislation from religion, but I don’t expect it from an atheist, communist country like China. Anti-LGBT rhetoric is steeped in reactionary thought. The only justification against it is religion and when that doesn’t work, they come up with conspiracy theories like the whole grooming thing or trans panic. I’ve seen more breathless coverage about puberty blockers than fucking safe drinking water, but that’s reaction for you; take an edge case and make it seem like it’s everywhere.
It’s like that clip of that Walsh guy on Rogan getting fact checked. Walsh asserted without evidence that there were “millions” of kids on puberty blockers, but Rogan’s producer fact-checked him and told him it’s less than 5,000 over years. But hey, if we’re doing wall-to-wall coverage of issues that effect 5,000 people, I’ve got some potholes on my work commute that need a fucking act of Congress to be filled, I guess.
Being officially an Islamic state does not mean one has to take this stance. Just a hundred years ago, gay men fled from the UK to Morocco because they could live in peace there. It’s a classic orientalist cliché to paint the middle eastern man as effeminate and suspicious of being queer, one that carries over until the present day when western commenters joke about how soft Saddam Hussein’s handshake was. The ostentatious homophobia we can now sadly see in many societies in the Islamic world is historically a backlash against such racial stereotypes, a compensatory act that cannot be explained without the deep shame about the brutal subjugation of the rich, ancient cultures of the greater middle east at the hands of western colonizers.
To an even greater extend, this goes for transphobia in the global south. It is a result of gender norms violently imposed on indigenous cultures that very frequently, on all continents, recognized more than the western gender binary. Indonesia used to have cultures with 5 different genders, now it is one of the few places worldwide were being trans is illegal.
When we look at who is most ardently supporting and spreading queerphobia in the global south, it is evangelicals and catholics. Colonizer religions that tell the colonized they must hate the gays lest they continue to accept western supremacy.
Queer liberation can and must be a decolonization project.
we’re in this new horrible era of imperialism where the justification for imperialism has become the ghosts and consequences of previous generations of imperialism. every desperate imitation of the west to avoid colonization (genocide, anti-lgbt, poor labor rights, pollution) becomes a new casus belli from the children of the people who showed the global south ‘that’s how you get strong’.
we so desperately need to reclaim the language of liberation from the cynical evil people in power :yes-honey-left:
I expect that from Qatar with it being an officially Islamic state that specifically draws legislation from religion, but I don’t expect it from an atheist, communist country like China. Anti-LGBT rhetoric is steeped in reactionary thought. The only justification against it is religion and when that doesn’t work, they come up with conspiracy theories like the whole grooming thing or trans panic. I’ve seen more breathless coverage about puberty blockers than fucking safe drinking water, but that’s reaction for you; take an edge case and make it seem like it’s everywhere.
It’s like that clip of that Walsh guy on Rogan getting fact checked. Walsh asserted without evidence that there were “millions” of kids on puberty blockers, but Rogan’s producer fact-checked him and told him it’s less than 5,000 over years. But hey, if we’re doing wall-to-wall coverage of issues that effect 5,000 people, I’ve got some potholes on my work commute that need a fucking act of Congress to be filled, I guess.
Being officially an Islamic state does not mean one has to take this stance. Just a hundred years ago, gay men fled from the UK to Morocco because they could live in peace there. It’s a classic orientalist cliché to paint the middle eastern man as effeminate and suspicious of being queer, one that carries over until the present day when western commenters joke about how soft Saddam Hussein’s handshake was. The ostentatious homophobia we can now sadly see in many societies in the Islamic world is historically a backlash against such racial stereotypes, a compensatory act that cannot be explained without the deep shame about the brutal subjugation of the rich, ancient cultures of the greater middle east at the hands of western colonizers.
To an even greater extend, this goes for transphobia in the global south. It is a result of gender norms violently imposed on indigenous cultures that very frequently, on all continents, recognized more than the western gender binary. Indonesia used to have cultures with 5 different genders, now it is one of the few places worldwide were being trans is illegal.
When we look at who is most ardently supporting and spreading queerphobia in the global south, it is evangelicals and catholics. Colonizer religions that tell the colonized they must hate the gays lest they continue to accept western supremacy.
Queer liberation can and must be a decolonization project.
we’re in this new horrible era of imperialism where the justification for imperialism has become the ghosts and consequences of previous generations of imperialism. every desperate imitation of the west to avoid colonization (genocide, anti-lgbt, poor labor rights, pollution) becomes a new casus belli from the children of the people who showed the global south ‘that’s how you get strong’.
we so desperately need to reclaim the language of liberation from the cynical evil people in power :yes-honey-left:
This is a really great comparison.
millions of kids drinking dirty water