Queer Struggles Abroad, Trans Struggles in the U.K., and Gay Perspectives
Prism & Pen Weekly Digest — July 7, 2024
By James Finn
This week in Prism & Pen … I’m back!!! (Feels good.)
For those who don’t know, I was hospitalized for six days with a serious illness. In fact, it almost took my life just as Joe Biden was putting in his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump. I’m home now, but I can focus on work only in short stretches. Thanks to Kaylin Hamilton, Tucker Lieberman, Esther Spurrill-Jones, and Jonny Masters, we’ve continued to publish four outstanding stories every morning. Go, team!
Thanks to Kaylin Hamilton, the Digest went out as normal last Sunday, and it’s about to go out again now. (She did all the heavy lifting.)
I don’t have a lot to say, except that our lovely friend Torshie Torto has just started serializing a super-cool, queer, supernatural thriller. I urge you to scroll down to the bottom and check it out!
Prism & Pen brings you authentic queer voices every morning…. Come read with us!👇
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* Discover P&P Diversity in Three Stories *
Lefties and Lesbians: You Have No Excuse for Your Anti-Trans Crap
Posing as scientifically inclined rescuers of young people and women, several of my friends have recently embraced a full-time campaign against transgender people.
Citing studies that go against the majority of legitimate research, and raising issues that are not issues — the dangers of transgender people to women, children, lesbians, single-sex bathrooms, and school sports — these activists keep me awake at night. And I know I am not alone.
It has become too easy, really, to dismiss the ravings of the Right: the thoughtless prejudice of everyday people legitimized by powerful, wealthy interest groups who find it convenient to bundle transphobia into their pet causes of racism, nationalism, and economic piracy.
But this new surge from the Left? I don’t get it. I find it unforgivable.
Interview with Fares: Growing Up Gay in a Religious Minority in Iran
Growing up in the US with the freedom and acceptance of Western society, it’s easy to take for granted the liberties that come with being able to express one’s identity openly. For many, like myself, who have roots in places where these freedoms are not afforded, understanding the harsh realities faced by those who share our heritage is both eye-opening and heart-wrenching. My dad’s side of the family is Iranian and Bahá’í, having escaped Iran in the 70s due to religious persecution.
The Bahá’í Faith, a religion focused on unity and equality, has faced ongoing oppression in Iran. The 1979 Iranian Revolution further intensified restrictions on religious minorities and LGBTQ+ individuals, severely limiting their rights and freedoms.
My journey led me to meet Fares (pronounced Fah-Res) in 2022, a man whose story is strikingly similar yet different from mine. Fares grew up in Iran, a Bahá’í and gay, facing unimaginable challenges. This is his story.
Beyond the Binary Brain: Exploring the Depths of Neuroqueerness
I always sensed my mind worked a little differently than the minds of those around me.
As a kid, I had a quirky sense of humor and out of the box way of thinking. Though generally quiet at school or in larger groups, I could become talkative and passionate about topics that interested me. There were relatively few people I felt comfortable engaging with in this way, though.
At 18 I came out as gay, and at 21, I received my ADHD diagnosis — but it wasn’t until recently that I came across the term “neuroqueer.”
* This Week’s Essays & Creative Non Fiction *
PRIDE 🏳️🌈: My Personal Memories of How HIV/AIDS Changed Us, 1970s–2024
In the beginning, HIV/AIDS (first clinically reported in 1981) affected mostly homosexual men and was called the “Gay Disease”. It was also called the “Gay Cancer“ because Kaposi sarcoma was one of the first presenting symptoms. Not much was known about it, and many men began to show a range of symptoms and died from this mysterious malady.
People of other sexual orientations and genders began to die too: drug addicts (if only because of messy needle use), sex workers, people of lower socio-economic groups, people of color, women.
A Gay Writer and His Lover in Penang, 1921
The novel opens with the arrival on the island of the writer Somerset Maugham, known to his friends as Willie, and his secretary, and lover, Gerald Haxton, whom Willie supports financially. They are to stay for two weeks at the home of Willie’s old friend Robert Hamlyn, a lawyer, and his wife Lesley. It becomes apparent early in the story that Robert, who is older and suffers from serious respiratory problems, and Lesley no longer sleep together.
Taking My Country Off to Reveal My Deeper Self
A week ago, during the Pride parade in my country’s capital, singer Mila Robert took her dress off on stage to reveal another dress. The first dress, colored in white, green and red like our national flag, was dropped and left on the stage in the process. The dress that was revealed was basically the Progressive Pride flag. Nationalist feathers got so ruffled that one political party filed a lawsuit the next day against the singer — for offending a national symbol.
Are You a Transgender Man or a Transgender Woman?
I noticed that the person helping me was wearing a transgender button on the shirt collar. The person was young about college age. There was no one behind me so I pulled back my shirt sleeve and displayed my transgender bracelet.
I assumed that she preferred female because she physically looked and sounded female, wearing a bra under her shirt as well as light make up but I wasn’t sure. I made a gender assumption and I wasn’t trying to clock her at all. I didn’t want to insult her and kept my assumption to myself.
It turned out she wasn’t sure about me either.
Working While Gay in the World of Toxic Masculinity
Whether it is your soul, your psyche, or your body, any encounter with the socially ‘toxic’ will kill you.
The only question is, how fast?
The toxic intersection in my head where my gay identity collides with Western capitalist notions of human value, ideas of masculinity, anti-LGBTQ narratives, and mental health, is epically chaotic. There are times when the collisions of forces are so powerful that I feel like a self-sustaining fusion reactor of emotion; they go on and on, the energy of the inputs creating a greater output.
It’s killing me. It’s killing us.
The Art of Camp: Expressive Text and Image Say ‘Gay, Gay, Gay’ My Way!
From the 1950s to the ’70s, the in-the-closet gays were raging their voices on screens everywhere. Yes, it was “don’t say gay” all of the time, yet doing a gay song and dance was perfectly acceptable, from Audrey Hepburn dancing in a smoky gay bar with sleek and slender men in Funny Face to the flair of Liberace’s galloping fingers gliding up and down a grand piano’s keys with a pink boa swaying along with his marvelous figure.
This was the other side of manhood. You could be tray gay, yet couldn’t declare it in words.
Being Queer is Like A Bowl of Magic Soup
Pride month is coming to a close, and I wish I could feel like things weren’t coming full circle. Last year, I compared straight and Queer people doing identical things. The only difference was that when Queer people did it, it suddenly became flaunting sexuality.
I’ve spent far more time than I would like to admit answering people who ask me why Queers need to flaunt it. After all, if we just toned it down, we would be more like everyone else.
The obvious problem with that idea is that we would be less like everyone else.
The Ups and Downs of a Multilingual Gay Relationship
Being from a South American, Latin American, third-world country comes with a very specific set of ingrained tools in our brains. Most of us are very aware that we come from a different culture, shaped by circumstances that turned colonies into countries.
Brazil was a colony of Portugal for most of its history, and when we gained independence, most of our cultural institutions were already there.
And by that I mean the language, some of the food and customs, some of the attitude — many of the things that make us Brazilians.
But we were also shaped by much more than that.
Are Gargoyles Non-Binary? Why Not?
Many years ago, I made up a story for our young nephew (who is now 30) about a young gargoyle named Gunther, based on a stuffed gargoyle that had scared him a little. I told how Gunther never quite fit in as a gargoyle, and how the other gargoyle kids teased him, and how one day he learned he had a special gift… only it wasn’t very useful, until one day it was, and he could be a guardian gargoyle like his parents, protecting their building. I named it The Story of Gunther (yes, I know, I need a snappier title — I’m not good with titles).
My Genderjello Journey
I lay a trail of yarn to leave the closet. I keep it in my sight with a neutral name, old clothes, old voice, and Lord willing, a hat. Do these tools keep me safe or drive me mad?
I live in Idaho, so the answer is: probably both.
Carrie Bradshaw’s Bisexual Prejudice is Worse Than I Thought
Revisiting the quintessentially New York show as a working actor in the city, I spotted (much younger versions of) at least three actors I’ve worked with Off-Broadway, in background, co-star, and recurring roles.
I admit I’d forgotten most of the plot. Season 3 is the one where Charlotte meets her first husband, Miranda struggles to label her relationship with Steve, and Carrie meets Aidan, her second most significant boyfriend.
And in one episode, Carrie dates Sean, a gorgeous young 20-something man who turns out to be…wait for it…make sure you’re sitting down…
Bisexual!
“There Is No Such Thing as a Gay Person,” says ex-Political Lesbian
Rosaria Butterfield’s story is very strange. Back in the 90s, she was a “tenured professor of English who identified as a lesbian and worked to advance the cause of LGBT equality.” Then, in 1999, she became a Christian and broke up with her girlfriend and, in 2001, she married a man.
Since then, she has been ingratiating herself with anti-LGBTQ+ Christians, becoming more and more anti-queer in her ideology. In 2023, she repented for using “transgendered pronouns”, calling it a sin to do so. She used to call conversion therapy “a heresy”, but later declared that “people are not harmed by change-allowing therapies.”
Now Butterfield is claiming that there is no such thing as a gay person.
Transgender Election Candidate Receives Death Threats, Media Are Silent
Despite Sophie’s attempts to raise her story with mainstream media outlets, the death threats against her have been ignored. Compare this to the media attention given to abuse and threats against prominent gender critical transphobes like Rowling or Duffield and a picture of the media’s transphobic double standards begins to emerge.
While the media were quick to report on Sophie’s offensive Tweet, no mention was made of the ongoing transphobic abuse that Sophie and her partners have faced. Sophie explains, “when I contact the media to get my side of the story/talk about the abuse I’ve received from [gender critical activists] it is tumbleweed. Complete silence from the media”.
An Open Letter to a Cousin About My Being Gay
I do know, from following you on Facebook, that many of our views are not the same. You voted for Trump and I did not. I believe I know that you are a strong Republican and I am not.
Enough said. But witnessing, in your posts, your attitudes towards life and your place in it, I knew our views continued to differ greatly. I will not discuss life ideologies, politics and candidate preferences here.
I might be correct in saying that your religious beliefs were as strong as you and that you followed many of your church’s expectations and beliefs.
Big City or Small Town… At Pride, Dignity Triumphs Over Shame
Admittedly, I was way late to the Pride party… physically, emotionally, and intellectually.
I have no way of knowing if I was the oldest first-timer at Portland’s 2022 Pride. But certainly, at 72, I had to be among the celebration’s most seasoned newbies.
I’d been out as queer for more than a decade. Yet, I’d never seen the importance of attending a Pride event. Quite frankly, it didn’t seem worth the effort… the traffic, the parking, the crowd, the inevitable chaos, not to mention the threat of falling victim to a hate-inspired attack.
Admittedly, my reluctance also had to do with an initial general impression about Pride imprinted on my psyche years ago, a pervasive notion that continued to be reinforced year-after-year by coverage in the media.
Are Transgender People Concealing Weapons of Mass Destruction?
On Tuesday, another conspiracy theory about trans people appeared in the media. This time, it wasn’t about LGB kids being “transed” as a form of conversion therapy. Fox News has always been known for high-quality, fact-checked and unbiased reporting (I’m being sarcastic). This time, the healthcare industry is convincing people they are trans and raking in billions — according to the right-wing news outlet.
Their source? A report titled “The Gender Industrial Complex” from the American Principles Project (APP), a far-right, pro-life think tank that has campaigned against equal rights for LGBTQ+ people. Their leader has openly stated that one of the goals of the organisation is an outright ban on gender-affirming healthcare.
My neurodivergence was keeping me awake, and I found myself downloading APP’s report at 3 am. I felt like I was grading a substandard dissertation in my day job.
The Good and the Dark Side of LGBTQ Pride
Pridefest is a time dedicated each year to social and self-acceptance. It’s an event where people in the LGBTQ+ community can feel welcomed and even celebrated for who they are.
Can you think of a good reason to halt such a celebration? What if one of the major sponsors of this festival was involved in something you don’t support? Would you be justified in trying to stop the event?
‘Love, Simon’: A Gay Movie for Straight People?
I remember when ‘Love, Simon’ came out in 2018. It wasn’t particularly new to see a movie coming out with a gay character in it, but a movie focused on the struggles of coming out and being gay in high-school? That’s something you didn’t see that often, so I was honestly stoked to go see it.
Around that time I, myself, was in high school and I was just starting to come out to my friends, so I knew right away that I would have a soft spot for this movie. I went to see it with a friend, and I remember being nervous that somebody I knew would see me enter the cinema room where this specific movie was playing. Looking back at it now sounds so silly to me, but it was still a big deal to me back then.
A Gay Writer’s Nostalgia for a Teenaged Love Affair
Lie With Me (2017) is a melancholy coming-of-age story in which two teenage lovers, who happen to be gay males and whose tender affair brings them into a kind of tortured adulthood, are delicately and convincingly portrayed.
Even Women Shouldn’t Comment on Women’s Sex Appeal
I hate making mistakes.
Whenever mistakes are made, I have such an intense visceral reaction of the most pure self-hatred you can imagine. I’m aware of the problem, it is something I’m actively working on, but it still sucks.
Especially when that mistake was something I perceived as being nice.
* Fiction Shorts *
The Gay Detective: The Queens’ Last Dance
Everybody loved Dani and Delilah. Everybody said the day they met was fated — destiny. They were meant to be together. “Such a darling couple. So perfect for each other.”
Except Destiny’s darlings had ended up dead on the dance floor. Somebody didn’t love them.
The giant mirror ball at center stage was grinding to a halt. Splinters of light chased across empty tables in the darkened night club. Glinted off the sequin-clad figures sprawled on the water-soaked floor beside an overturned chair.
Near the chair, a live electrical cable buzzed and sparked.
The Gay Detective: The Dying Detective
Dark alleys in the wee, small hours — dead body magnets, according to Harry. My work partner of twenty-odd years has some definite ideas. Like what makes for a good blues bar. And the best place to find dead bodies. If there is a best place.
I’d have to give him that one, though. Because here we were in another grungy, dead-end, back street standing over a corpse. Well, I was standing over the corpse. Harry was talking to the first-on-scene detective, Geoffrey Ranse.
Ranse was the last of a dying breed. A staunch believer in the value of shoe leather and leaning hard on your CIs for information. Often, harder than department policy allowed. But with a solve rate like Ranse’s, no one in his squad shed any tears over a few bruises.
* Fiction Series *
The Medellan Conspiracy
More tracking devices are discovered by Andreesen and the others, confirming that the Society of Sevens has advanced technology, as suspected. In the wake of this discovery, the Society of Sevens attempts to discredit Andreesen.
This called into question so much of what Jevan believed about everything, as the one thought foremost on his mind tumbled past his lips. “If they’re this advanced, why did they oppose building a planetary defense grid? Or why didn’t they build one of their own already?”
“That’s a good question. Once we finally flush out their leadership, I will have many such questions for them.”
“What do we do now?” Ardyn asked.
Andreesen’s eyes went wide.
Read Episode 79: Surveillance
Read Episode 80: Disinformation
Her Witch, Her Demon
A waitress wearing nothing but red lingerie strolled by with a serving tray full of red wine. Instead of carrying the tray in her hand, the silver saucer levitated over her palm. The waitress served two pale women a glass of red wine each. The women grinned at each other, revealing a pair of long upper canines.
Meredith raised her brows, reminding herself to stay away from the red wine. A man with the head of a goat sat by himself. He smoked something from a long glass pipe. His black eyes glazed over as he puffed green smoke out of his muzzle. A sinking feeling drilled into Meredith’s core. Never in her twenty-five years of life had she seen vampires and werewolves, witches and demons all in the same place at the same time. What the hell was going on?
That’s it for P&P this week, y’all. I enjoyed finding a few gems to read, which felt funny, since I usually read every story BEFORE they’re published. Maybe this perspective will help me become a better editor or Digester?
In any case, I wish you all happy reading and writing as I continue to convalesce at home.
Til next Sunday!
❤️
Jim
