Queer Notes columnist Elise presents a bird’s-eye view of the advances and retrogressions in the struggle for freedom of LGBTQI+people worldwide, from Uganda and South Africa to Indonesia, from Poland and Czech Republic to the U.S. and Canada.
homophobia
How women’s trauma is used against them
May 11, 2022Review of ‘Sexy but Psycho’: Taylor is trying to change how institutions and the public view the effects of trauma. Drawing upon years as a feminist therapist in rape crisis, domestic violence, and child trafficking centers, she describes staff’s success calming distressed clients and helping them live their lives after abuse.
Review: ‘Sexy but Psycho: How the Patriarchy Uses Women’s Trauma Against Them’
April 29, 2022Taylor is trying to change how institutions and the public view the effects of trauma. Drawing upon years as a feminist therapist in rape crisis, domestic violence, and child trafficking centers, she describes staff’s success calming distressed clients and helping them live their lives after abuse.
A Review: ‘Men Who Hate Women…’
July 4, 2021Adele favorably reviews “Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists: The Truth About Extreme Misogyny and How It Affects Us All by Laura Bates. The book exposes the extreme damage caused to society by online misogynist communities, or the “manosphere.”
Voices From the Inside Out: Debating Trumpism
February 2, 2021Prisoner Robert Taliaferro explores what it is like to argue with white racists immersed in Trumpist propaganda.
Editorial: Catholic Church’s sins laid bare
September 17, 2018Editorial that takes up the evil that the Catholic Church has imposed on children and women; how movements from below, especially by women, have challenged it; and how future church crimes will be revealed, signaling the beginning of the end of the Catholic Church.
World in View: Reaction rises in Brazil and Costa Rica
March 12, 2018Racist and homophobic politicians have moved from the fringes to contend for state power in Brazil. Fabricio Alvarado in Costa Rica and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil represent a further step down an anti-human path.
Readers’ Views: November-December 2017, Part 1
November 12, 2017Readers’ Views on: Puerto Rico:Trump’s Katrina; LGBTQ in Australia; Transgender in Texas; Women’s Liberation; Racism in Canada; Detroit and “Detroit”; Labor and Robots; Haitian Revolt; Why Read N&L?; and a Correction.
Readers’ Views: January-February 2017, Part I
January 31, 2017Readers’ Views on: environmental and social crises; Martin Luther King Day; healthcare crisis, Donald Trump and the election; brutal “justice”; and who reads News & Letters.
Mass Killing in Florida is a Measure of Society’s Dehumanization
June 14, 2016We stand in solidarity with those murdered and wounded in the attack on a Gay Florida nightclub, and their families and communities. The struggle for LGBTQI freedom must continue unabated. A response requires developing, practically and philosophically, the uncompromising assertion of human freedom and dignity common to the Black Lives Matter movement, the Arab Spring and the Syrian Revolution, which has long struggled against ISIS and its related ideologies. It means uncompromising solidarity with the LGBTQI community, the target of reactionary attacks across the world, from Trump’s America to Putin’s Russia to ISIS’s “caliphate.”
30 Years Later: AIDS activism and ACT UP Chicago
May 9, 2015ACT UP Chicago grew out of an organization that began in 1984 of Dykes and Gay Men Against Racism and Repression. We became an AIDS activism organization, first called Chicago For Our Rights, then by spring Chicago for AIDS Rights. We pushed for lowering the prices of AIDS drugs, and the release of more of them. By October and the national action in Washington, D.C., we had become ACT UP Chicago. AIDS is a global issue today. This time around, I’d like to see an AIDS activist movement that’s organized by poor, working-class, mostly people of color.
University of Minnesota homophobia
May 7, 2015From the May-June 2015 issue of News & Letters
Duluth, Minn.—Shannon Miller, the only women’s hockey head coach the University of Minnesota, Duluth (UMD) has ever known, has been fired after 16 seasons. “Discrimination rears its ugly head in many forms, and I feel I have been discriminated against because I’m a woman. [=>]
Women WorldWide, May-June 2015
April 30, 2015A roundup of women’s actions worldwide including: feminists jailed in China before International Women’s Day; the unfair and punitive jailing of Purvi Patel for having a miscarriage; the fightback against the increase in sexist, racist, homophobic and classist harassment in Sci-Fi fandom; and the women’s hunger and work strike against terrible conditions at the Karnes Detention Center in Texas for migrant women and children.
Queer Notes, September-October 2014
August 31, 2014From the September-October 2014 issue of News & Letters
by Dee Perkins
With the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected categories, going nowhere, President Obama signed an executive order July 21 prohibiting such discrimination by federal contractors, which employ some 28 million workers, and, further, [=>]
Review — ‘Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers’
August 29, 2014Review of the book “Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers” by Anne Balay.
Women WorldWide, July-August 2014
July 6, 2014Oppression of women in tech industry; El Salvador demonstrations over miscarriage jailings; Brazilian Stop the Catcalls project.
Queer Notes, March-April 2014
April 2, 2014CeCe McDonald; Arizona’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act; Global Day of Action called by Solidarity Alliance in Nigeria.
Queer Notes, Nov.-Dec. 2013
November 30, 2013Queer Notes: Discrimination in Russia; Intersex in Germany; no prison for rape in Iowa; transition surgery in Iran; Lembembe murdered in Cameroon.
Anti-LGBT bigot sued in human rights trial
September 22, 2013U.S. preacher and bigot Scott Lively will have to face charges of human rights violations in a Massachusetts courtroom. Lively is best known as promoter of Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” bill. His homophobic preaching has led to persecution and death among African Gays.
Ex-Pope Benedict’s reactionary career
March 27, 2013World in View
by Gerry Emmett
Ex-Pope Benedict’s reactionary career
Pope Benedict XVI’s sudden resignation announcement on Feb. 11 took the world by surprise. It is the first time in almost 600 years that a Pope has decided to quit. He has announced that he will continue to live in the Vatican, bearing the title “Pope emeritus,” and [=>]
Queer Notes, January-February 2013
February 26, 2013by Elise
The newly signed law that would have protected all California Queer youth from “ex-gay” therapies and therapies to change gender expression has been suspended. Federal Appeals Court judges ruled that there must be a full review of the legality of the Bill (SB 1172). The therapists who administer “ex-gay” therapies claim the law [=>]
Queer Notes, November-December 2012
December 13, 2012by Elise
On National Coming Out Day this year, youth in particular showed the way. Texas Tech University’s Gay-Straight Alliance members told coming out stories. People wrote their sexual orientation or gender identity on a door provided by the University of Florida’s Pride Student Union. Virginia’s George Mason University held an ice cream social, a [=>]
Queer Notes, September-October 2012
October 10, 2012by Suzanne Rose
Yaounde, Cameroon—Human rights leaders from Africa united to denounce “Gay Hate Day,” which took place on Aug. 21 in Cameroon, and the ongoing arrests of people suspected of being Gay. The Archbishop of Yaounde contributed to this homophobic backlash calling homosexuality “shameful” and “an affront to the family, enemy of women and [=>]
Queer Notes, July-August 2012
August 8, 2012by Elise
Brave were the marchers in this year’s Pride Parades in Warsaw, Poland; Riga, Latvia; and Split, Croatia. Heavy police protection was required at each march. While the Roman Catholic Church’s anti-Queer stand remains strong, an openly Gay man and a Transsexual person were voted into Poland’s Parliament in 2011 and a number of [=>]
Queer Notes, January-February 2012
February 27, 2012by Suzanne Rose
After six days of 24-hour-a-day activism, LGBT occupiers, activists, and human rights groups in Seoul, South Korea, won the Seoul Student Rights Ordinance, with all clauses in the original draft included. The draft that calls for non-discrimination against LGBT students as well as their active protection passed the council with a vote [=>]
Pariah and Brother to Brother fire up Queer film
February 26, 2012Wherever the bird with no feet flew she found trees with no limbs. —Audre Lorde
It is audacious for Dee Rees to begin Pariah with an image of Black women that today’s film is all too comfortable with, a scantily-clad pole dancer, and then cut to her film’s protagonist, Alike, a character that has little precedent [=>]
‘A Survivor’s Story’
February 14, 2012‘A Survivor’s Story’
Reform at Victory: a Survivor’s Story by Michele Ulriksen (Pizan Media, 2008, 300 pages)
Reform at Victory is the memoir that sparked the creation of Survivors of Institutional Abuse (SIA), an organization of adult survivors of abuse at facilities that purport to help troubled teens. The organization’s main focus is fundamentalist Christian “treatment” programs. [=>]
Expose demonization of Black Gay youth
September 25, 2011Chicago—Editor’s note: News and Letters Committees hosted a forum in our Chicago office on Aug. 8 on the response within the Gay community to the Facebook page Take Back Boystown posting videos of Blacks fighting as a way to demonize “outsiders” coming to Gay institutions and bars. Below is part of the discussion among panelists [=>]
News and Letters panel on “Boystown: Class, Race and Public Space”
August 20, 2011Here are links to some local news coverage of a recent meeting of the Chicago Local of News and Letters Committees:
Windy City Times: Community groups continue to focus on Lakeview
Gay Chicago: Panel addresses Lake View’s summer turmoil
Here’s the flyer for the meeting:
News and Letters Committees invites you to a forum on:
The panel of [=>]