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Model Monday *88
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How the FBI secretly tracked gay activists in the 60s
A trove of previously buried documents tells the story of how anti-LGBTQ surveillance targeted queer people in the United States—and how those people pushed back.
Astory of queer liberation is concealed in a dystopian-looking crypt in Washington, D.C. You can’t find it under the gilded ceiling and marble columns of the Library of Congress’s Jefferson Building. Instead, you have to enter the mammoth, rectangular Madison Building next door. The harsh lights and linoleum floors make it feel morguelike. In its windowless manuscripts room, uniformed archivists slowly wheel out boxes of documents from the depths of the building.
Only in this austere setting can you begin to understand the sheer magnitude of the modern fight for LGBTQ rights in America, which resulted from the Lavender Scare, the government’s systematic persecution of “sexually deviant” federal employees in the 1950s and 1960s. Thousands of American citizens lost their jobs because the government learned they were “perverts,” morally inferior, and therefore susceptible to blackmail by Communists. But a decade before the June 1969 uprising against police harassment led by trans and gender nonconforming bar patrons that became known as the Stonewall Riots, one disgraced federal employee fought back.
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Working Garrett
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Tummy Tuesday *75
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Rain On Me
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No tears left
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Wet Wednesday *106
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Gynaecologist explains how science validates trans identities
An obstetrician-gynaecologist (OB-GYN) has perfectly shut down the idea that biology and science invalidate trans and non-binary people’s existences.
Dr Danielle Jones, an American gynaecologist known on her YouTube channel as Mama Doctor Jones, has dismantled the theory used by many transphobes that “science is made up of genetics, and genetics says your chromosomes can be XX or XY, and that means you are male or female, and you can’t change this”. Read on…
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Silver Fox
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Know Your Darkness
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Surrender Your Sons
Surrender Your Sons is Adam Sass’ debut thriller about a boy who’s sent to conversion camp on a secluded island. Connor isn’t about to roll over and take it, no matter what his religious mother thinks is best for him, and especially not when he sees what the other kidnapped kids have gone through. Together, they lead a rebellion against the forces that keep them trapped, and the hatred that sent them there to begin with.
The book will only come out later this year but you can pre-order it at the usual places.. I usually try to avoid posting about books that aren’t released yet because you probably forgot about them by the time they’re out but this one seemed too important to risk me forgetting to post about it later ;)
Described as a queer Lord of the Flies meets the TV series Lost, the novel follows gay teen Connor whose summer vacation becomes a nightmare when his extremely religious family kidnaps him and drop him off at a conversion therapy camp hidden on an abandoned island. Adam was inspired after watching a documentary called Kidnapped for Christ about a real-life conversion camp in the Dominican Republican that’s now closed.
“The place felt so impossible that it could even exist, and I wanted to see these kids not only escape but bring the whole place down,” Adam tells Teen Vogue. “I loved the idea of a group of desperate kids having no choice but to rely on each other, despite their differences.”
Connor has to work with other LGBTQ+ teens that have been left at the dangerous place as they uncover the secrets of the people who run it. There is no straight savior character in this story, and no adult can be trusted. These queer kids are saving and relying on each other.
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SevenGrox
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Face Friday *58
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Fiertés
The three-part French miniseries Fiertés, released in the United States as Proud in select cities’ virtual cinemas through Kino Marquee, tells one family’s story over 30 years against the backdrop of three important gay rights decisions in France. It’s a microcosm of struggle where the personal is very much political, and politics are gummed up in some very ugly — and unfortunately still relevant — human behavior.
We’re introduced to 17-year-old Victor in 1981, just as the left is coming to power in France, where they will decriminalize homosexuality and declassify it as a mental illness. He works on a construction site with his father Charles, the construction crew, and his friend Selim. Charles is a liberal who backs François Mitterand and progressive ideas, yet when he discovers his son on the construction site as he’s about to pleasure Selim, the ingrained homophobia of prior generations paralyzes him.
He uses a flimsy excuse to fire Selim from his job, outs the young Arab to his traditional father when confronted about the termination, and unwittingly sends Victor into the arms of an older man, Serge, whom Charles threatens to prosecute for statutory rape if he doesn’t leave the 17-year-old boy alone.
For the French miniseries’ episodes set in 1999, as the government granted civil unions to homosexual couples, and 2013, when same-sex marriage was legalized, the role of Victor is taken over by Samuel Theis. The subjects covered include gay adoption, AIDS, open relationships, sustaining life in a closet, and how the sins of the father come home to roost with the son.
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The Boyz
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California Dreamin’
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The Power
The power pic.twitter.com/qn3DNZqebB
— milkboys
(@milkboys) June 21, 2020
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Sporty Sunday *85
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Scandal at Helix Academy
After witnessing fellow student Ryker Madison getting intimate with new teacher Doug Acre before class, Evan Parker and Casey Tanner go back to their dorm room to plot.
…the NSFW parts of the Helix Academy videos can be found on Helix
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Wilson Cruz
in 1994, Wilson Cruz became the first openly gay actor to play an openly gay teen on American TV.
As Rickie Vasquez on ‘My So-Called Life,’ Cruz helped LGBT teens see themselves with the nuance they deserved.
shout out to this icon, one of TV’s most important queer characters
pic.twitter.com/pKhiGWxTqu
— Con Todo (@contodonetflix) June 14, 2020
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