While a gay YouTuber in the US asks his fans to donate money to an anti-LGBT bullying charity, YouTube Japan is filled with homophobic content like "let's go inside a gay bathhouse" and stuff. In this video I invite Kody, born in Japan and currently residing in the UK, to talk with me about the differences between YouTube Japan and YouTube US/UK. (more…)
For those in the progressive circles who've always seen the radical queer left and their anti-(gay)marriage politics as mere hindrance, or even a pain in the ass, the news of gay marriage legislations (possibly) lowering LGB suicide rates among the youth probably comes as a belated surprise Valentine's Day gift. Now that gay marriage has proven to deliver real benefits to not just upper- and middle-class working-age gay elites but also young lesbian, gay, and bisexual folks in general, we can finally say that gay marriage was the right cause, that it was just as good a priority as it had been proclaimed and advertised, right? No? (more…)
As I was going through the daily routine of browsing Facebook & Twitter, I found a NYT article, Gay Couples, Choosing to Say ‘I Don’t’, the title of which caught my eye, as I oppose the institution of marriage, and the like-minded people who shared the link in FB/TW seemed content with anti-marriage opinions circulating at last in the mainstream media. Excited, I read on, only to be disappointed, but in a way that was quite unexpected, by the elitist tone of the article. (more…)
Edit (May 2): If you are using Google Translate or a similar service in order to read this, please do not trust the translation. If you think that Tokyo Rainbow Pride is the main topic of this article, that is not true. The main topic is English-language LGBT journalism.
I have always been sick of the born-this-way rhetoric that mainstream gay activism has so proudly spread all over the U.S. I don't have anything against those who were born gay or born whatever, but feeling that one was born gay and saying so are two different things. (more…)
Beaten and burned, a gay man was found dead in Cumnock, Scotland, possibly for being gay, although the attacker's motive has yet to be investigated. I have seen some online responses to this incident describing how it was shocking. This reminds me of the now-almost-vanishing stereotype of Scots being brutal, savage monsters. (more…)
Updated May 25, 2011 The Saferide Program at the University of Chicago provides free transportation for its students, employees, faculty members and other affiliated individuals from 5 p.m. through approximately 3 a.m. To take Saferide, one has to either call the operator or find one of the vehicles running around the campus. Last year, some UChicago students put together a petition to the Saferide Program, asking for service improvements to further ensure students' safety. They explained that there had been instances where the Program operator did not pick up the phone at all, put a caller on hold for so long that the caller gave up and walk to her or his destination, and took more than 30 minutes to pick a student up when the student had been told to wait for only 15 minutes. The petition was in fact more or less a reaction to the neighborhood's recently heightened security alerts due to recent violent incidents on and near the campus. (more…)
So the passage of Proposition 8 (which I do not think needs any explanation since many people are talking about it, even here in Japan, which makes me feel that a disproportionate amount of attention is being paid to one proposition of one state of one country——not that I don’t Read more…
Found this article on Alas, a blog, and I have nothing against the idea that women on maternity leaves should be paid, but one thing I wanted to comment on was the use of the kind of rhetoric that I happen to find in many anti-US arguments and the like including this one. Which is, in this case, saying that:
Indeed, a study from Harvard University last year found that of 168 nations worldwide, the United States is one of only four whose government doesn’t require employers to provide paid maternity leave. The others are Lesotho, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland. Tapped; Having a baby? Put it in writing(more…)