LGBTQ+ Rights Worldwide

Well that’s not at all frightening.

Of course. Page topper.

Edited by Hodor2 on Dec 21st 2020 at 5:37:28 AM

Which is doubly ironic considering that Have I Got News for You is kind of the only reason people knew who Boris was for a long time.

Edited by Deadbeatloser22 on Dec 22nd 2020 at 8:01:26 PM

Speaking of the UK and transphobia (okay this is being posted way later, but whatever), earlier today the topic of Graham Linehan came up. I told my folks that he was a dick who said some questionable things about Trans people, but I was trying to recall a specific incident from 2019, I think? Didn't he harass and try to dox a Trans activist and then get pissy when he got in trouble with the police for it?

I need to know for sure what exact dickery he was perpetuating, because my dad said he was gonna look him up, and I'm worried he's gonna get suckered into more people whining about cancel culture. I've had enough bullshit arguments about 'cancel culture' with my family for a lifetime.

Lineham spent years harassing trans women via twitter, for one.

For another, he tried to defraud a trans charity called Mermaids by getting them denied lottery money they’d won.

Edited by smokeycut on Jan 8th 2021 at 5:25:11 AM

Yep, he started off as a well regarded writer of classic sitcoms.

His main gig was falling into TERF circles and slowly pushing every non-TERF out of his life. Culminating in arranging an astroturfing campaign (basically having multiple people send them bogus "concerns" about the charity) to get the national lottery to retract funding it offered Mermaids^note A charity which helps trans and gender nonconforming children — primarily via anti-bullying.

This lead to the H.Bomberguy charity stream which not only raised more money for Mermaids than the actual grant, but attracted the attention of multiple celebrities (including AOC, who now streams semi-regularly to fund her political campaigns), started the "X says Trans Rights!" meme, and will cause Graham to be taunted with "Do you know how to beat Beaver Bother?" until the end of time.

And on top of that, Lotto's own investigation caused them to conclude the "concerns" were sent to them in bad faith and give them the grant anyway.

Aside from appearing on a few talk shows as an "expert", he's not done much else but bully people on twitter. The TERF community basically dropped him when they got Rowling on side and left him with a tattered reputation and no friends. It'd all be very sad, if he wasn't a bigoted twatmuffin.

Edited by Bisected8 on Jan 8th 2021 at 10:48:20 AM

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/smol-man-rips-off-lgbt-pride-flag-lau-pa-sat-13994250

Not that big on an issue in Singapore, but there's some anti-LGBT stuff in the country that's known if you live/work there very long...

The Gamer: homosexual romances and party member Jack being pansexual were cut from Mass Effect 2 after a Fox News panel decrying the one homosexual romance in the first game.

Edited by tclittle on Jan 22nd 2021 at 1:14:20 PM

Release the "Go eat a dick Fox News" cut.

Bioware's cowardice offends me about as much as Fox's bigotry, it's to be expected that reactionaries are going to be bigoted trash but the people who capitulate to them are just the worst.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jan 23rd 2021 at 9:24:43 AM

Well, we shouldn't celebrate just yet: The "Observatory of Words" seems to be more like suggestions to include in the official language, rather than sanctioned additions. Keep in mind that, in order to include new words in Spanish language, especially something as delicate as including new terminology that could affect the whole language, RAE's approval isn't enough. It will need the approval of both RAE's local chapters in Latin America AND their respective governments, since they are the ones who have to adopt those changes in their legal codes and terminology. Since many Latin American governments are against both same-sex relationships and gender ideology regarding non-binary people, being forced to include neutral language from their European parent source would be interpreted by many goverments as foreign meddling in their internal affairs from Spain, and I doubt the either the Spaniard RAE and the Spaniard government had the will or interest to press the matter.

Short of literal colonization and kidnapping children like the romans used to do, language isn't formed by how stuffy linguists say it should be.

Well a linguists job isn’t to decide how a language works, but rather to observe how a language works. So, good job RAE and anyone who takes issue with “elle” can fuck off. Evolutions gonna happen regardless.

Edited by TheAirman on Jan 25th 2021 at 8:00:37 AM

Yeah, people in the business of telling others how to speak are emphatically not linguists. Usually, linguists fight against that sort of nonsense. Unfortunately, people in power who try to make such decisions often don't consult actual linguists, but grammarians and writers, who often more concerned in how a language "should be", than what it actually is.

At any rate, I kinda envy Spanish for the "elle". In Portuguese we use "a" and "o" the same way as Spanish, so using "e" for a neutral mark works, but "ele" is already the masculine pronoun, so that is out of question. The alternative is then "elu", but that sounds exactly the same as "elo", which doesn't sound right to me.

I probably just need to get used to it, but I kinda wish we could have a consistent vowel to make it more understandable and easier to sell.

yeah, my mistake. It's more people on the side of grammar than linguists who do that.

That's not as simple as it sounds. Keep in mind that the Spanish language adds grammatical gender to almost all words, including inanimate objects and animals, so it is not as simple as just using a different pronoun as in English as using "they" in singular when dealing with a single person.

Per example, there's the word for "cat", which is gender-neutral in English, but not in Spanish, as we have "gato" (male) and "gata" (female). Adding a gender-neutral word would risk making many words sound strange in Spanish (as "gate"), and that without mentioning that it could make translations from Spanish to other languages and viceversa a real nightmare.

New stuff will always seem weird at first. The weirdness will probably fade away as people get used to the new stuff. On the other hand, translations already depend on context: to use your example, a reference to a cat might be "gato" (for a male cat or, presumably, one whose gender is unspecificied) or "gata" for a female one; should the -e ending come into general usage, "gate" would be used for unspecified gender.

You know I speak Portuguese, right?

Yeah, it sounds weird, but it is a matter of getting used to it. What I was talking about is that in Spanish you can use the same vowel, "e", for pretty much all cases, including pronouns. That doesn't work in Portuguese because even if you get used to place an "e" at the end of a gendered word (as many do), you can't do the same for pronouns, you need a different vowel for that.

Also, I am not sure how a new neutral gender would make translation harder than it already is.

Yeah, but good luck trying to convince a whole continent on changing the whole language just to fit a social change and even more when many people could feel that change was because either Spaniards or Anglo-saxons doesn't like the way how Spanish works just because, at least in the English language case, they use neutral pronouns and Spanish doesn't, and they could interpret that as an attack against their culture.

Considering there's whole countries with deep-seated resentment against the U.S. and the Anglosphere, like Mexico with the Mexican-American War, Argentina with the Falklands Island War and Central America also with the States due to their role in many of the wars that happened there, a continent-wide language change will probably meet with opposition, not only from their local governments, but also from people itself, especially very conservatives mindsets.

Adding Spain in the whole mess would make the things even worse.

Well, again, the “continent” doesn’t change the language. Language changes based on how it’s speakers use it.

If “elle” catches on in Spain but not in Latin American countries; all that ultimately means is it has become a feature of the relevant European dialects of Spanish, but not at this time in Latin American dialects.

Languages ain’t monoliths.

Edited by TheAirman on Jan 28th 2021 at 1:35:32 PM

Agree, but the main problem is anything of this will worth squat if the authorities doesn't allow to use the new pronouns and language changes in legal documents, or the school systems teach them.

Right now, using "elle" and gender-neutral writing is considered incorrect writing, at least here in Mexico, nor is allowed in legal documents, so it will need more that just a social change for being admitted anytime soon.

And while there's nothing that would prevent to use "elle" and gender-neutral language exclusively in Spain, that would make the Spaniard dialect to sound even more alien for both other Spanish-speakers and people learning Spanish, and there's the risk that European Spanish speakers would be an even bigger target of ridicule and mockery from the rest of the Latin American Spanish-speakers, considering how archaic that dialect sound for many people here in Latin America, something that the RAE is supposed to prevent.

And yeah, I also agree that it sucks that the whole language is being held hostage by a single organization, their local chapters and their respective governments and populations to boot.

...So apparently not only is the UK government trying for a Bathroom Bill they also want to make the provision of gender-neutral toilets and changing rooms illegal. At least that's the takeaway I'm getting from the consultation document.

Well, damn. v-v

For Latin American communities, it doesn't help that after decades if not centuries of agressive cultural impositions from richer foreign countries, now even well intentioned cultural influences trying to come from those very countries will be met with backlash regardless.

"Esos gringos diciendonos como debemos hablar."

Edited by AmazingSpiderHam on Feb 1st 2021 at 5:12:36 AM

Disgusting but entirely unsurprising, TERF Island gonna TERF.

It didn't come across as that strong to me, but maybe I'm just bad at reading legal-ese.