Quickies: Gambia’s Anti-LGBT Crackdown, HRC Founder Arrested, Winnie the What?
By - Gambian President Approves Life Sentences for Homosexuality – Gambian security forces are rounding up suspects and attempting to extract confessions via threats and torture.
- Trans Woman Misgendered in Own Funeral – Jennifer Gable, who died at age 32 after suffering an aneurysm, was presented as a man, misgendered and misnamed throughout the funeral services. Friends and allies are understandably upset.
- Facebook Real Names Policy Still Hurting Trans Users – A trans woman details the anguish of having her identity invalidated by multiple suspensions of her Facebook account via the “real names” rule, which has been weaponized by homophobic bigots and TERFs.
- HRC Founder Arrested, Charged with Sexual Assault of a Minor – Terry Bean has been charged with assaulting a 15-year-old boy he met on Grindr.
- Gay Former Actor Named Chief Medical Officer of Canada’s First Nation’s Health Authority – Evan Adams first became known for his role in the 1998 film Smoke Signals. Since completing his medical degree in 2002, Dr Adams has worked in HIV/AIDS prevention and substance abuse treatment, in addition to serving as director of the Aboriginal Health program at UBC.
- Touching Story of Lesbian Coming Out to Her Pakistani Family – Watch this touching coming out story of a lesbian coming out to the Muslim side of her family – from Critical Dragon1177.
- “Winnie the Pooh banned from Polish playground for being ‘inappropriate hermaphrodite’” – City council members objected to the children’s book and cartoon icon on the grounds that he lacked both pants and genitalia. I hope one of our European readers can confirm for me whether or not Polish stuffed animals come equipped with plush genitalia.
- Nintendo: Toad and Toadette are Actually Genderless – “Koichi Hayashida, the director of a number of games in the Mario series, made the revelation to Gamespot ahead of spin-off puzzle game Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker.” We can only speculate on how this will effect their Polish market.
Featured image: Winnie the Pooh via Disney
Jac,
So let me get this straight, Whinny the Poo is somehow inappropriate for children because you actually don’t see any genitalia on him? Wow, because I would think actually seeing sex organs on an anthropomorphized cartoon animal would be what would freak social conservatives out. Also what about other cartoons like Mickey and Minnie Mouse? Mickey doesn’t wear pants, and without their clothes and Minnie’s eyelashes you couldn’t tell which one is supposed to be a boy or a girl.
Mickey wears pants, but Donald Duck does not, nor do most of the Warner Brothers cartoons like Bugs and Daffy. What makes it all the more ridiculous is that the Pooh pals aren’t supposed to be real animals. They’re plush toys brought to life by Christopher Robbin’s imagination. They have seams. Eeyore’s tail is always falling off and needing to be pinned back on. So of course they don’t have genitalia. If all Polish plushies wear clothing as implied by that city council member, is that because they’re sewn to be anatomically correct?
Jac,
Sorry can’t believe I made that mistake. I remember what Mickey looks like. I must have gotten him confused with Donald Duck somehow.
No biggie. I had to do an image search to find out which cartoons wore clothing. My childhood saturated by cartoon and stuffed animal nudity has inured me to it. Maybe I wouldn’t have grown up to be a godless queer if all of my toys and cartoons had been properly attired.
Jac
Yes its a scientific fact that watching adorable bipedal, talking cartoon animals turns you gay. Those things are such evil perverts. I wonder how many nut jobs would support banning them on those grounds. Never mind that I love and still remain a cis gendered heterosexual male.
” “This is very disturbing but can you imagine! The author was over 60 and cut [Pooh’s] testicles off with a razor blade because he had a problem with his identity,” she said.”
This is… this is so absurd that I can hardly believe it.
Regarding toads (the mushroom folk of Mario), the general consensus is that they’re genderless because they’re fungi, though some Mario games have gendered them to some extent. (For instance, they clearly marry in Super Mario RPG—there’s a whole town that’s a tourist attraction for marriage—even though, again, they’re fungi and therefore don’t actually have sex per se.)
Congrats to Evan Adams! I remember him as Thomas Builds-the-Fire. “Now that’s a fine example of the oral tradition.” Sherman Alexie is an ally, though he’s straight himself; he has written stories featuring gay content, including explicit sex, though. (Note that it depends, but among more traditional Indians, the ‘mostly straight’ types are more common than among mainstream society, though I can only speak for my personal experience as a Sioux in that regard.)