Interesting Read! The Future of LGBTQ Community

[Ronlop 6,882]

 

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which were a turning point in the LGBT revolution.In these 50 years there was an amazing change.In 1969, when the New York Police raided the Stonewall Club and encountered unexpected resistance from LGBT demonstrators, homosexuality was defined as a crime by a majority Countries of the world. Even in countries where it was legal, getting out of the closet could have destroyed your social connections and career. Today, however, the Serbian prime minister is a declared lesbian, the Irish prime minister is a proud gay and so is the CEO of Apple and a long line of politicians, businessmen, artists and scientists.

In the United States of 1969, the public debate dealt with the question of "Should the state imprison LGBTs?" In the United States of 2019, public debate has already moved to the question "Should the state recognize one-sex marriages?" Most Americans, including nearly half of the Republicans, Should recognize such a marriage, and Republican voters today are more liberal than LGBT members in 1969.

Spoiler

 

There has also been a tremendous change in Israel. Two years after the Stonewall riots, on June 2, 1971, MK Uri Avnery proposed a first bill to repeal the ban on homosexual sex. In the Knesset hearing, he read a suicide letter from a young gay man who wrote to his mother: "Since I was 16, I knew that I was different from all the boys my age ... I tried to hide it from all over the world, I'm sick of everything ... I do not know what my crime is, and why do I deserve a punishment ... I never did any harm to anyone, but I feel like I'm a criminal, that I have to constantly escape and hide, even from you. I do not blame anyone, I just can not do it anymore, Mom, forgive me. "

Members of the Knesset responded to this letter and Avneri's speech with utter contempt. They did not have a single word of empathy for the young man who committed suicide or his mother. They believed that revoking the ban on gay sex could corrupt the youth and Israeli society as a whole and criticized Avnery, who dared to waste the precious time of the Knesset on such nonsense. Fifty years later, five out of the country's Jews are members of the Knesset, and one of them is also the justice minister.

There are those who dismiss Amir Ohana's appointment to the justice minister as a political maneuver by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, intended to gather a few votes in the next elections or to beautify Israel's image in the eyes of the world. Even if it is true, it is still a considerable achievement. In 1969, no political maneuver would have caused Golda Meir to appoint a declared gay minister to the justice minister, and this certainly would not have brought votes to the government or points in world public opinion.

 

In retrospect, of course one can wonder why the LGBT revolution needed to be carried out, why thousands of years of oppression had to take place until people realized that there was nothing wrong with love, whether two men loved each other, or two women wanted to build their lives Even if there is a God, I am pretty sure that he does not punish people for love, and certainly the laws of nature do not punish anyone for love, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual and all other human beings do not violate any law of nature. It is impossible to violate the laws of nature, which violates the laws of nature can not exist, everything that exists is necessarily natural, it is so simple.

Unfortunately, while the state has nothing against LGBTs, hatred and fanaticism are much more serious enemies.In 2019, some 70 countries still prohibit homosexuality in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Brunei and several other countries, Even in the most tolerant countries, LGBT people suffer from discrimination, persecution, and violence.

A survey from May 2018 revealed that 63% of Russian citizens are convinced that there is
 A global LGBT organization that wants to undermine its traditional values
 Of the state and thus weaken it. The Elders of Zion - behind you!

Moreover, the achievements of the past 50 years are not an insurance policy for the future. History never goes in a straight line. The laws of nature do not punish any kind of love, but the laws of nature do not work for the benefit of the LGBT community, there is no reason to think that the LGBT revolution will spread in the world and eventually reach Saudi Arabia or Brunei. On the contrary, even in Western countries, the United States and Australia, homophobia may again be fashionable again. Politicians such as Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matthieu Salvini and US Vice President Mike Penns openly declare homophobic positions, and two weeks ago a British Guardian study revealed that there has been a 100 percent increase in homophobic hate crimes in the last five years.

For the sake of comparison, think about the situation of European Jews in the 1920s and 1930s. After centuries of persecution and discrimination, Jews in countries such as Germany, Poland, France and Italy enjoyed political and legal equality and unprecedented opportunities. As the LGBT community now boasts of the prime ministers of Serbia and Ireland, a hundred years ago, Jews were satisfied that German Foreign Minister Walter Rathenau and French Prime Minister Leon Blum were Jews, and as now gay, lesbian, and transgender people insist on their right to serve in the army Of the national community, so during World War I served 100,000 Jews in the German army and 12,000 of them lost their lives for the homeland.

Even homosexuals and lesbians who feel so confident that they now support extreme right-wing parties were Jewish counterparts a hundred years ago. Mussolini's fascist party initially avoided open anti-Semitism, and thousands of Jews supported Mussolini and even joined as members of the Fascist Party. Mussolini's mistress and finance minister in the mid-1930s were Jews. We all know how this story ends. Leon Blum barely survived Dachau, and the Jewish war heroes met the Jewish fascists in Auschwitz.

 

World Conspiracy

Spoiler

 

There are disturbing signs that the LGBT era may make way for unprecedented periods of persecution, in particular LGBTs may become targets of extreme nationalist regimes. For example, in Eastern Europe, nationalist leaders avoid antisemitism because of the memory of the Holocaust, but scare the local population with stories about "an international gay conspiracy."

In both Poland and Hungary, LGBTs are being cast as "public enemy number one." The governments in Budapest and Warsaw describe gays and lesbians as foreign agents and as an existential threat not only to the nation but also to Western civilization as a whole. , And claim that homosexuals are plotting to lower birth rates in the country to open the door to a flood of foreign migrants.

The Russian regime also claims that there is an international LGBT plot to eliminate Russia, and the official press tends to portray the revolution in Ukraine and the anti-government demonstrations in Russia as the work of a Western-gay plot. The common claim is that homosexuality is completely alien to Russian tradition, and the very fact that someone or a person is gay or lesbian is enough to prove that they are foreign agents. A survey from May 2018 revealed that 63% of Russian citizens are convinced that there is a global LGBT organization that aims to undermine Russia's traditional values and thus weaken the country.

In order to combat this terrible threat, in 2013 the Russian parliament enacted a law against "gay propaganda" which led to the arrest and persecution of many people. For example, in August of 2018, Maxim Nevarov, a 16-year-old high school student, was arrested and charged with a "crime" of uploading a few pictures of guys hugging the online social network Vkontakte. The student is fined 50,000 rubles (NIS 2,700) - more than the average monthly salary in Russia.

The homophobic wave is not confined to Eastern Europe. Nationalist regimes and extremist politicians in many countries, from Brazil to Uganda, are spreading conspiracy theories about LGBT schemes and promising to protect the nation from the grave danger.T LGs are tempting targets for such witch hunts for two main reasons:

First, authoritarian and conservative regimes tend to complain about the fluid and complex nature of reality and promise to return us to an imaginary golden line in which everything was simpler, borders were clear, identities fixed, and there was no room for personal elections. In that golden age men were men, women were women, strangers were enemies, and no one had to think too much about complicated things like gender or identity. But ETs blur the boundaries, confuse identities and force people to think and choose, no wonder despots hate them.

Second, it's easy to scare people with horror stories about gays, lesbians and transgender people, but the truth is they do not have much power in the world, so it's easy to chase them. Throughout history tyrants who went hunting for witches always preferred to go for sure. This, for example, was the situation with the original witch hunt, which gave the phenomenon its name. Think of a power-hungry priest in some medieval village who wants to strengthen his position. The peasantry in the village suffers greatly from poverty, so one way to get their support is to take land from the richest aristocrat in the area and distribute it to the poor peasants. Unfortunately the rich nobleman holds not only a lot of land, but also a whole gang of hardened warriors, and the priest may desire power, but he wants to keep his head connected to the body.

So instead of going against the rich nobleman, the priest marks the weakest link in the village: a lonely old woman who lives in a hut near the forest and likes to feed cats. The peasants know this old woman as a harmless eccentric. But the priest is now beginning to spread rumors that she is actually a terrifying witch who controls an army of demons. All the recent disasters in the village-in droughts, illnesses, sudden deaths-were caused by the witch's curses. When the peasants tremble with fear, the priest offers to protect them from the witch if they only follow him and give him the power to judge and burn people. From the priest's point of view, it is much safer to face this imaginary witch and her non-existent army of demons than to attack the rich aristocrat and his very real warrior gang.

This is the logic behind what is happening today in places like Russia. Russia suffers from a long list of serious problems. The economy is in a state of stagnation, corruption is rampant everywhere, and education, welfare and health services are in a bad state. But to fight corruption should be attacked some of the most powerful people in Russia. It is very tempting to forget these headaches, and instead protect the pure Russians from the global gay octopus. Try to think about it in monetary terms. How much rubles will cost to improve Russia's collapsing health system? How many rubles would it cost to protect Russia from the non-existent gay plot?

 

Disassemble the closet

Spoiler

 

If LGBTs do become the main purposes of witch hunting, it is unlikely that we will see a return to the days before Stonewall when the vast majority of LGBTs were hiding in the closet. The situation is likely to be much worse. People will not be able to escape from persecution into the closet, because new technologies will dismantle the closet. Even if there are people who would like to take down a profile (in Grindr) and fly under Gaydar, it will not help them, because the Gaydar is going to go everywhere. The combination of information technology and biotechnology is giving birth to new surveillance tools that will soon be able to keep track of all the people.

It is well known that Israeli security services also use a variety of methods - including online surveillance - to identify Palestinian homosexuals. Not to convert them, but to squeeze them and make them informers. Since Palestinian society is highly homophobic, and in the Gaza Strip there are still laws against homosexuality, one of the easiest ways to recruit agents and collaborators is to blackmail gays in the closet. When in fact this risk is a product of Hamas' own homophobia.)

In 2016, the Chinese company Conlon bought the Greinder application, but in March 2019 the US government informed Conlon that its ownership of Greinder was "a danger to national security." So Conlon now has to sell Greinder. No explanation can not be made why Chinese ownership on a dating site for gay men is a danger to the national security of the United States, but I guess you can guess the answer alone.

On July 14, 2017, several members of the Russian cabinet, including Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, gathered to listen to a lecture by a Stanford University professor who specializes in developing algorithms that can identify personality traits by analyzing network operations. The professor was published in 2017 when he was working on an algorithm that could identify exactly 91% if a man was gay or straight by analyzing some facial images. The professor himself did this to warn the public of the danger this technology poses to our privacy, but Russian officials were probably more interested in the possible uses of technology than in protecting the privacy of people. The algorithm may have identified differences in cultural ideals rather than sexual orientation. Since the algorithm was developed based on images that people themselves chose to upload to dating sites. This does not mean that gays have different facial features. But men who upload a picture to a gay dating site choose a picture that will fit cultural ideals from the ideals of straight dating sites. But it is still disturbing that such an algorithm can be developed and that some regimes are interested in it.

 

The TV is watching you

Spoiler

 

Even if you have never had an account with Greinder, you have never watched a gay ****o on the Internet and never clicked on a LGBT news story, in the not too distant future it may be enough to give freedom to your eyes so that your freedom will be denied. "Companies and companies like Netflix are now busy developing more and more sophisticated tools to know what their customers love, and if you watch a TV series, producers want to know which characters and scenes captured your attention to make future episodes more addictive. Viewers directly what they like - it's annoying and not It is much better to follow involuntary biometric signs such as eye movement and blood pressure, and tracking such signs can tell the television network that 63% of the viewers identify with some minor character, and that it would therefore be a good idea to turn this character into a central heroine .

Exactly the same technology you can tell the future gender police that you're off the beaten track. If the biometric sensors on the TV realize that a man watching the kiss scene between John Snow and Dainis Targrain focuses his gaze a little too much on the gnarled hero and a little too little on the dragon-the gender police will knock at his door at two in the morning to get to the bottom of it.

If you think you can protect yourself by not watching television, do not surf the Internet and throw your smartphone into the bathroom, what will you do when cameras are placed on every street corner and when sensors follow what people do at the coffee shop or at school? In 2013, the Iranian regime ordered owners of coffee shops to install surveillance cameras and hand over the photographs to the police on demand. In March 2019, Gwendong Guanya High School in China purchased 3,500 biometric bracelets to track students' physical activity, their heart rate, and even the number of times they voted. By cross-checking enough information points, future schools will be able to know not only those who fell asleep in math class, but also those who fell in love with a math teacher.

Now multiply this thought experiment by several million. In recent years, China has made the Xinjiang Province in the west of the country the largest laboratory in the world for the development of surveillance technologies. In an effort to fight alleged Islamic extremists, the Chinese authorities are constantly following the entire Muslim Uighur population of the province - about 10 million people. Uigurs are required to give DNA, blood, sound and facial scans, which allow the government to monitor their movements and actions with a complex network of cameras, mobile devices, face recognition software, and sophisticated algorithms. When the algorithms identify a suspicious pattern - such as using religious language, wearing traditional Muslim clothing, or visiting the mosque too frequently - the "criminals" are visited by the police or sent to "reeducation." Hundreds of thousands of Muslim Uighurs have already been sent to such camps.

At the moment, this monitoring regime is directed against the Muslim minority in Xinjiang, but it can easily be targeted against any other group the regime chooses to mark. What will happen, for example, if the agencies responsible for developing China's "social credit" system decide that a single-sex novel is anti-social behavior that should lead to a lowering of the social credit rating-a decision that could prevent LGBT students from gaining admission to prestigious universities flight?

Xinjiang sounds like a distant place, but we live in a global world. Agents of various regimes around the world make pilgrimages to Xinjiang to learn the methods and buy the technology. And Xinjiang is not the only place in the world where this technology is developed. Another huge laboratory for the development of new tracking technologies is much closer to here. It is called the "territories." In the territories, too, a network of cameras, sensors and algorithms has been deployed to keep track of millions of people - and Israeli technologies are being exported to darker and darker regimes around the world. Who knows if one day they will not be directed against the citizens of Israel?

The combination of innovative technologies and conservative ideologies may produce worse totalitarian regimes than we have ever seen before. Even worse than those of the 20th century.

 

Stop the Inquisition

Spoiler

 

Technology is not a bad thing in essence. I met my husband 17 years ago at one of the first gay dating sites, and I am very grateful to the engineers and entrepreneurs who developed this site. I lived in Kiryat Ata, and there was no place to meet guys except on the Net. LGBTs are especially vulnerable to network surveillance, precisely because LGVs have benefited so much from the new social possibilities created by the network. My message is not that we need to disconnect from the network and stop developing new technologies. The message is that technology gives even greater importance to politics.

In the 20th century, the same technological tools were used to build completely different political regimes. Some people used radio, electricity and trains to establish totalitarian dictatorships - while others used the same inventions to create liberal democracies. Even in the 21st century we can use new technologies to build heaven - or hell. It all depends on our political ideals.

 

 

Nothing has been decided yet, and as dismal as the future looks to some of us in 1969, when transsexuals, transsexuals, lesbians and gays dared to confront the New York cops, the future looked much bleaker. And in the end, most of the 1969 horror scenarios did not materialize. Because a lot of people have struggled so that they will not materialize.

If you want to help avoid the horror scenarios of the 21st century, there are many things you can do. The most important step you can take is to join an organization. Cooperation is the key to political power. Cooperation was at the heart of the Stonewall riots. Before Stonewall, LGBT men fought personal and isolated survival struggles against a system of outrageous injustice.After Stonewall, enough people had organized themselves to change the system itself.

The Stonewall lesson is as true today as it was in 1969, and it is relevant to all of us, not only to LGBTs.50 People who work together as members of the organization can make a much larger change than 500 single talkbackers, which presents humanity with a series of unprecedented challenges. I will not tell you which organization to join - there are quite a few good options - but please do not wait, do it again this week.

 

Source: https://www.haaretz.co.il/magazine/.premium-MAGAZINE-1.7409576

 

I know this is a long read but I thought it's really interesting and worth to post here It's transalated from Hebrew so I apologize if some words are not correct. 

The writer of this article is Yoval Noah Harari, mostly known for his succesful book: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. He's also openly gay and married. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Didymus 34,380]

I scrolled through and saw some really interesting bits (I didn't know there was such a widespread notion about an LGBT conspiracy; scary tbh) but please re-edit your post if you can It helps to put long pieces of texts like this in a spoiler and to highlight the most important passages in bold so it's easier to read.

It looks like a very important read for a lot of people here so if you tweak it a little bit a lot more people will actually read it and comment upon it

[Ronlop 6,882]

3 minutes ago, Didymus said:

I scrolled through and saw some really interesting bits (I didn't know there was such a widespread notion about an LGBT conspiracy; scary tbh) but please re-edit your post if you can It helps to put long pieces of texts like this in a spoiler and to highlight the most important passages in bold so it's easier to read.

It looks like a very important read for a lot of people here so if you tweak it a little bit a lot more people will actually read it and comment upon it

Yeah I probably should  Thanks for the suggestion!

I was just very excited to post it all because I found it really interesting. 

 

[Didymus 34,380]

Read it in full. Scary as ****. Thanks so much for posting this, this did inspire the hell out of me

[bloody g 31,746]

I will definitely be reading that book after this, thank you 

[Alii 2,039]

Kinda scary. Personally, I believe that LGBT rights will be remembered as an era. I don't think it will last forever.  

At least most homophobic countries are too poor to buy such technologies. 

[Curunir 7,510]

Les Misérables who

[Fantina 3,438]

It is definitely an interesting read, I started reading his books and I think he is a clever writer. Most people don't know, but these are really dangerous times we live in, with such technologies developing that can manipulate people (like deepfakes, that **** is ****ed up).

 

 

[Eighteen 5,430]

interesting read. but unless LGBTQIA+ issues are entirely singular among all other social issues (in other words, if there is no rubber band effect), then some kind of retrograde will eventually happen. that much i've been aware of since it's happened with every other issue i can think of, from women's rights, to persecution of jews and nazism, to people of color and racism, and so on. but as to how much things will whiplash, i'm not sure. it could be a lot bc the movement has gained a lot of ground in such a short time and perhaps the pushback could be just as swift, or it could be a little, who knows really. but i think whatever it may be, the overall trend--the long arc if you will--will be for the better because that's how all the other issues look in the USA. they get better, they get worse, but overall they don't go back to the stone age and stay there; the line is gradually bent toward justice. honestly, the first clue to what the future holds could be the straight pride parade. if that thing is packed and full of people, then the pulling back of LGBTQ+ issues might be just around the corner. 

 but what i've also learned since 2016 is that the unthinkable can always happen, so who knows, much of this article can come true one day in america for all i know. 

[bloody g 31,746]

2 hours ago, Bloody Grammys said:

I will definitely be reading that book after this, thank you 

@Curunir jokes on you sis I just purchased it 

[drunkygagaa 275]

I'll be reading that book.

Thanks!

[PunkTheFunk 125,703]

It's scary to think that society might suddenly go backwards on LGBTQ+ issues. Like the article says, we're seeing something like that happen right now with anti-semitism, fascism, women's reproductive rights, etc.