LGBTQA+ issues

This forum is the place to have more serious discussions about politics and religion, and your opinions thereof. Be courteous!

Moderator:Forum Administrators

Forum rules
When a registered user insults another person (user or not), nation, political group or religious group, s/he will be deprived of her/his permission to post in the forum. That user has the right to re-register one week after s/he has lost the permission. Further violations will result in longer prohibitions.

By default, you are automatically registered to post in this forum. However, users cannot post in the politics forum during the first week after registration. Users can also not make their very first post in the politics forum.
User avatar
md0
Posts:8188
Joined:2010-08-08, 19:56
Country:DEGermany (Deutschland)
Contact:
Re: LGBTQA issues

Postby md0 » 2015-06-26, 21:01

I'm actually a bid saddened by the news. I used to be neutral towards marriage equality, but I now cannot stop feeling that an oppressive institution is getting stronger and more legitimate by including a small subgroup of non-hetero people.
Marriage was slowly dying before gay men and women made it their priority. Those privileges the society awards to married people should be returned to all people who are being denied them, no matter of their relationship structure or lack therefore.
"If you like your clause structure, you can keep your clause structure"
Stable: Cypriot Greek (el-cy)Standard Modern Greek (el)English (en) Current: Standard German (de)
Legacy: France French (fr)Japanese (ja)Standard Turkish (tr)Elementary Finnish (fi)Netherlands Dutch (nl)

User avatar
linguoboy
Posts:25540
Joined:2009-08-25, 15:11
Real Name:Da
Location:Chicago
Country:USUnited States (United States)

Re: LGBTQA issues

Postby linguoboy » 2015-06-26, 21:05

Prowler wrote:
linguoboy wrote:My Facebook right now is a disco inferno of rainbows, equality flags, and animated gifs of drag queens.

What about all those people saying that it's further proof that Obama is a an un-American terrorist trying to destroy the moral fabric of America? Have you seen any of that?

Only when someone shares a screencap out of schadenfreude. Seems all the people I know personally who believe that are lying low.

I have several friends who are like, "Finally, now we can get started on the real work!" And I understand where they're coming from--this fairly assimilationist cause has sucked up a lot of activist energy. But I don't think it's quite as much of a distraction as they think it is. When sex is not longer relevant to filling out a marriage application, trans status becomes moot as well. Married people are a protected class, so this provides addition support in the battle for workplace protections. More broadly, it becomes harder to argue against those protections when the SCOTUS has just cited the 14 Amendment in affirming our right to marry. And so on.
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

User avatar
md0
Posts:8188
Joined:2010-08-08, 19:56
Country:DEGermany (Deutschland)
Contact:

Re: LGBTQA issues

Postby md0 » 2015-07-02, 18:24

.
Last edited by md0 on 2017-06-04, 8:42, edited 1 time in total.
"If you like your clause structure, you can keep your clause structure"
Stable: Cypriot Greek (el-cy)Standard Modern Greek (el)English (en) Current: Standard German (de)
Legacy: France French (fr)Japanese (ja)Standard Turkish (tr)Elementary Finnish (fi)Netherlands Dutch (nl)

User avatar
linguoboy
Posts:25540
Joined:2009-08-25, 15:11
Real Name:Da
Location:Chicago
Country:USUnited States (United States)

Re: LGBTQA issues

Postby linguoboy » 2015-08-06, 17:41

I really hope this new Stonewall film sinks without a trace, and not only because I have a soft spot for the 1995 film. It's not perfect by any means--it also makes a White cis-man the central character, but it gives almost as much screen time to a Nuyorican drag queen. (The lesbians, as always, get shafted.) When I saw that Roland "10,000 BC" Emmerich was at the helm of this project, I knew the new once was going to suck even before the completely whitewashed cast was announced. Maybe I'll find out for myself just how much when I watch a pirate copy someday.
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

User avatar
Lauren
Posts:3581
Joined:2012-04-09, 7:50
Real Name:Lauren
Gender:female
Location:Seattle, WA
Country:USUnited States (United States)

Re: LGBTQA issues

Postby Lauren » 2015-08-06, 21:49

Don't forget the trans women at the forefront of Stonewall who always get erased!
Native:            (en-US)
Advanced:       (eu)
Just started:    (cs)
Trans woman  Image

vijayjohn
Language Forum Moderator
Posts:27056
Joined:2013-01-10, 8:49
Real Name:Vijay John
Gender:male
Location:Austin, Texas, USA
Country:USUnited States (United States)
Contact:

Re: LGBTQA issues

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-03-18, 7:09

I'm just reposting two videos in Malayalam that I'd already posted earlier in this thread but said I wanted to try translating later. This time, I've tried to make good on my promise and provided an attempted translation for each of them. The first video shows Malayalee trans women being interviewed and sharing a bit about the kind of discrimination they face and what their lives are like. I have attempted to translate this video in its entirety:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5kU0tvcavM
Dr. Gireesh: Is homosexuality illegal or legal? Even at a time when so many discussions are horribly tormenting our society, what is the personality of homosexuality? We have four friends here today who experience homosexuality, who have become homosexual individuals. Let's find out about their personality through this mutual discussion.

You have, uh, the body of a man but the mind of a woman. Are you at all happy to live this way? Do you feel sadness or difficulties in your mind?
Prem: Yes...
Dr: You have the body of a man, the mind of women.
P: Yes, we do. We're upset that we ended up being...being this way, being like men, so to speak.
Dr: You don't prefer to have the body of a man.
P: No, no. It's women's bodies that we prefer to have. I mean, if I can say this, I feel really angry whenever I see women walking around all dressed up, so to speak. Like "I can't do that; I can't walk around in a dress" - I have that worry in my mind.
Dr: What is (your) most important dream, the most important dream in (your) life?
P: It's to live with a good family, to live with a husband and a child adopted legally.
Dr: You're not interested in giving birth to a child.
P: That won't work for me. To adopt a child legally and live with a husband - that's a desire I really have. That is my only desire.
Dr: Are you a woman only for sex, or are you a woman in all the thoughts, experiences, and dreams you have had your whole life?
P: No, there's everything having to do with a family, that is, with a husband, kids...I have that sort of [desire].
Dr: No, but you're not interested in, like, getting married to a woman...
P: No, no.
Dr: ...married and living with her.
P: Oh no! I'm a woman, aren't I?
Dr: OK. (turning to Unni) What's a dream of yours?
Unni: Well, my dream is...if I was a good man, I'd go find a wife, marry a woman, and live happily with a family...
Dr: Is it a wife or a husband that you want now?
U: No, at that point...I'm saying if I was a man!
Dr (offscreen): Okay, (and) under the present circumstances?
U: Under the present circumstances, I want to marry a normal guy and live (with him).
Dr: One man is enough.
U: Yeah, one man is enough.
Dr: So do you want to bear his kids, and do you have dreams of trying to get pregnant by receiving his semen?
U: As far as that's concerned, all I can do is dream about it, isn't it? We can carry on with our lives through that sort of a thing, through dreams.
Dr: What's a dream of yours?
Akhilesh: For me now, whatever has happened, this is the way it's ended up. Now everybody asks, "Can't you get better?" When I was in sixth and seventh grade, everybody used to say, "Can't you get better?" I want to get better; society isn't letting me!
Dr: What is society doing?
A: What society is doing - now I, now I'm better alone. Y'all found a medicine and made me a man. I became a man - I became a man. I could tell you, I could tell everyone over there, I could tell everyone that I was a man, but I could never walk through that road alone. They'd see me exactly the same way they saw me before. All they'd say is "go away."
Dr: Do you hurt other men more often than these men hurt you, or the other way around?
A: They usually hurt me. Here's something that happened the day before yesterday: Somebody called me over saying, "Get over here, get over here." Then I realized he was a total fraud. I said, "I'm not coming. Let me go!" He said, "Hey, why aren't you coming?" while slapping me on the back. My body...my whole body was shaking.
Dr: Really?
A: Yes, my whole body was shaking! When I got halfway down that road junction and told a traffic policeman, this guy told him, "Sir, he's 'the other one'." Then the policeman said, "(slapping on back) Get out of here!" So then where does that pickpocket stand, and where do I stand? We...
Dr: Even the justice that a pickpocket gets...
A: We don't even get that! So what I'm saying is you should get rid of this...this law that's come out now.
Dr: What's a dream of yours, specifically?
Shaji(?): Well, I've decided that I don't particularly want to get married right now. It's a decision that a lot of us have already made.
Dr: Do you want to go to a nunnery?
S: No, no, no! All of us were sure that we wanted to be women. Now, while we're walking around like this...like this, we cut pens(?), and we're thinking we want to walk around as women. Now, as we thought this way, when we went for project, uh, training, we [saw] a lot of people, and people who did that, those things themselves gave us many opinions, [saying] don't do it whether you're aware of it or not. There are even people who did do it among us. They told us about the things that they're experiencing, that they're not getting married and not to continue to do this(?). Oh, and sometimes now, now, Prem has her mom. Now, I neither have a mom nor have a dad. So now I have to walk alone. Now, Prem has her mom. So Prem's mom, when my mom passed away, he and I - so at the time my mom died, Prem was with me. When he was with me, my mom had specifically said, "Never get mad at each other. No matter what problems come along, Shaj..." yeah, I was just in love with Lazar. So, "Shaji," uh, "any prob-" I get mad all of a sudden. If I get mad, Prem gets mad, too! So no matter what I say or what Prem says, Prem just...so no matter how mad we get at each other, if not today, the next day, either she'll call me or I'll call her. We're like twins, right...
Dr: These faces and these voices, we may see as strange or different. Perhaps beyond their voices, we may make people experience how different their bodies(?) are. When so many souls and so many people with (their own) personalities live in our society, and as common society debates whether the Supreme Court decision commenting on the new law should be implemented or not, we can think and grasp the reality that the creating of these faces, these voices, and these bodies(?) and these collective creations becoming part of us are not their fault.

The second video is completely different (though still on topic for this thread). It's another interview but with a doctor, from my parents' hometown, possibly a former student of my grandmother's, where he talks about supposedly using a medical procedure to cure homosexuality (as he might put it). I did not translate this whole video; I got only up to about 5:50:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6sbYiiN5GY
I'm actually going to leave this one surrounded by spoiler tags:
► Show Spoiler

Because I stopped trying to translate it when I saw that there was a similar video that already has subtitles in English! The interviewee is the same and says pretty much the same things in this video as he probably did in the other one (I haven't seen the whole video yet :P):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Guxbnmyk2gc

הענט

Re: LGBTQA issues

Postby הענט » 2017-05-31, 16:57

Which Asian countries are most queer friendly and which are the most condemning ones? I'd say Japan and Thailand are in the top 3. What do you think?

User avatar
linguoboy
Posts:25540
Joined:2009-08-25, 15:11
Real Name:Da
Location:Chicago
Country:USUnited States (United States)

Re: LGBTQA issues

Postby linguoboy » 2017-05-31, 17:01

Dr. House wrote:Which Asian countries are most queer friendly and which are the most condemning ones? I'd say Japan and Thailand are in the top 3. What do you think?

Well, Taiwan's highest court just declared restriction of marriage to opposite-sex couples illegal: http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/24/asia/taiwan-same-sex-marriage/.
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

הענט

Re: LGBTQA issues

Postby הענט » 2017-06-01, 10:04

Totally forgot about Taiwan and Israel.

vijayjohn
Language Forum Moderator
Posts:27056
Joined:2013-01-10, 8:49
Real Name:Vijay John
Gender:male
Location:Austin, Texas, USA
Country:USUnited States (United States)
Contact:

Re: LGBTQA issues

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-06-02, 23:07

Dr. House wrote:Which Asian countries are most queer friendly and which are the most condemning ones? I'd say Japan and Thailand are in the top 3. What do you think?

Thailand is not a whole lot better than the Philippines, it seems. The worst seem to be Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and I suppose the UAE and/or Afghanistan. Most Asian countries seem to be pretty homophobic, though. (India definitely leans towards the worse end of the scale).

הענט

Re: LGBTQA issues

Postby הענט » 2017-06-04, 7:48

Well at least some countries like Indonesia let people change their gender. I wonder if a gay chess player would be executed in Brunei, or he would have to "commit sodomy" first to be trialed.

vijayjohn
Language Forum Moderator
Posts:27056
Joined:2013-01-10, 8:49
Real Name:Vijay John
Gender:male
Location:Austin, Texas, USA
Country:USUnited States (United States)
Contact:

Re: LGBTQA issues

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-06-07, 4:43

In the US, and perhaps elsewhere in North America and Europe (and South America?), it seems that people are more likely to be accepting of gay people than of trans people. In India, however, I kind of get the impression that it's the exact opposite. Don't get me wrong; of course trans people suffer lots of discrimination in it's kind of acceptable to violate the binary view of gender, and perhaps it even kind of makes sense to then fall in love with and marry someone from the gender that's not the same as the one you identify with, but it's incomprehensible to marry someone of the same gender especially if you're cis. It seems that often in Kerala, when news reports for example present examples of non-straight sexuality, they are largely or even all trans women. However, in the only Malayalam movies I've ever seen so far with gay characters, I feel they're presented as just normal (cis) people who deserve to be treated with dignity. I don't think that's anywhere close to how most Malayalees think of gay people.

I'm also pretty sure that I've heard at least one Malayalee LGBTQA person say that such people are discriminated against more/worse in Kerala than in any other state. I've always wondered why they might say this.

I think perhaps the reason for both of these things is hijre. In most parts of India, it seems that just as there are well-defined social roles for (cis) men and women, there are also well-defined social roles for people who don't fit within a binary view of gender. If you're a third-gender person (hijra), then your role as I understand it is to perform songs and dances at houses where a baby was just born (in exchange for money IIRC). There is no such social niche for cis gay/lesbian people AFAIK. However, I have never seen or heard of hijre in a Malayalee context. Maybe they're not as common in Kerala as they may be elsewhere, and that leads to more discrimination against them in parts of India were they aren't

User avatar
mōdgethanc
Posts:10890
Joined:2010-03-20, 5:27
Gender:male
Location:Toronto
Country:CACanada (Canada)

Re: LGBTQA issues

Postby mōdgethanc » 2017-06-07, 22:49

vijayjohn wrote:I think perhaps the reason for both of these things is hijre. In most parts of India, it seems that just as there are well-defined social roles for (cis) men and women, there are also well-defined social roles for people who don't fit within a binary view of gender. If you're a third-gender person (hijra), then your role as I understand it is to perform songs and dances at houses where a baby was just born (in exchange for money IIRC). There is no such social niche for cis gay/lesbian people AFAIK. However, I have never seen or heard of hijre in a Malayalee context. Maybe they're not as common in Kerala as they may be elsewhere, and that leads to more discrimination against them in parts of India were they aren't
Reminds me of the North American attitude that was prevalent in the 90s and 00s and probably is still common today: those queers are tolerable as long as they stay in their lane as interior decorators and hairdressers and fashion experts, but as soon as they start violating my heterosexual bubble by demanding to get married, homosexualitas delenda est.
[ˈmoːdjeðɑŋk]

IpseDixit

Re: LGBTQA+ issues

Postby IpseDixit » 2018-07-20, 19:21

I can't fathom how it's possible that some gay guys are still afraid to come out to their friends and family* even when they are grown-ups in their late 20s or 30s with a job and a house of their own, especially if they live in a big (or relatively big) city. Like, what are you afraid of?

*well, I can understand this only if the family is from some batshit crazy cult like JW.

User avatar
linguoboy
Posts:25540
Joined:2009-08-25, 15:11
Real Name:Da
Location:Chicago
Country:USUnited States (United States)

Re: LGBTQA+ issues

Postby linguoboy » 2018-07-20, 20:22

IpseDixit wrote:I can't fathom how it's possible that some gay guys are still afraid to come out to their friends and family* even when they are grown-ups in their late 20s or 30s with a job and a house of their own, especially if they live in a big (or relatively big) city. Like, what are you afraid of?

Losing the love and support of your friends and family?

Depending on what your psychological needs are and what other means you have of meeting them, that's no small thing.
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

IpseDixit

Re: LGBTQA+ issues

Postby IpseDixit » 2018-07-20, 20:43

linguoboy wrote:
IpseDixit wrote:I can't fathom how it's possible that some gay guys are still afraid to come out to their friends and family* even when they are grown-ups in their late 20s or 30s with a job and a house of their own, especially if they live in a big (or relatively big) city. Like, what are you afraid of?

Losing the love and support of your friends and family?

Depending on what your psychological needs are and what other means you have of meeting them, that's no small thing.


Why would you want to be friends with people who wouldn't accept your homosexuality?

User avatar
linguoboy
Posts:25540
Joined:2009-08-25, 15:11
Real Name:Da
Location:Chicago
Country:USUnited States (United States)

Re: LGBTQA+ issues

Postby linguoboy » 2018-07-20, 20:49

IpseDixit wrote:Why would you want to be friends with people who wouldn't accept your homosexuality?

Because--as I said--they're meeting other needs that you are afraid you won't have met otherwise.

Moreover, some people really compartmentalise their lives. Sex is just something they do, not who they are. They wouldn't come out to someone they knew as gay any more than they would come out as a top or bottom or as a salirophile.
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

IpseDixit

Re: LGBTQA+ issues

Postby IpseDixit » 2018-07-20, 20:58

I still hate them nonetheless. :lol:

User avatar
linguoboy
Posts:25540
Joined:2009-08-25, 15:11
Real Name:Da
Location:Chicago
Country:USUnited States (United States)

Re: LGBTQA+ issues

Postby linguoboy » 2018-07-20, 21:09

IpseDixit wrote:I still hate them nonetheless. :lol:

That's your prerogative.

I feel sorry that we haven't yet created a world where they can feel totally comfortable being open about who they are and what they do.
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

IpseDixit

Re: LGBTQA+ issues

Postby IpseDixit » 2018-07-20, 21:16

linguoboy wrote:
IpseDixit wrote:I still hate them nonetheless. :lol:

That's your prerogative.

I feel sorry that we haven't yet created a world where they can feel totally comfortable being open about who they are and what they do.


I feel annoyed that they aren't doing anything whatsover to create such a world.


Return to “Politics and Religion”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 5 guests