David Wojnarowicz’s 1990 “One day this kid…” piece uses the pathos of a kid done harm in an attempt to get the audience to take a hard look at how their and others actions effect homosexuals, and whether its warranted. The artist goes through a long list of trials and tribulations that effect homosexuals, and then uses the picture of a kid to put it in the context of not just supposed problems a gay person could encounter, but of wrongs done to this kid specifically. This is then reinforced when David gets to the second column where he addresses specific responses his opposition might think of such as laws, repression, which he phrases as being forcibly silenced and evokes thoughts of unhealthiness, or psychology in all of the horror its practice
can entail. To cap the whole presentation off the artist, rather than using varyingly charged words and phrases such as simply stating the boy is gay, expresses the state of homosexuality in the very blatant and simplistic terms: “he desires to place his naked body on the naked body of another boy.” This sentence brings up thoughts of how simple and inconsequential homosexuality is, or of revulsion, or of both. All while walking the line between blatantly descriptive and obscene. Overall the piece uses the ethos of this child’s plight to evoke sympathy in the viewer and get them to reconsider what they think from the new perspective of how it effects homosexual children, helped along by the added authority of personal anecdote if the viewer realizes the kid depicted is the artist himself.
Heck’s admissions of his experience with the Hitler Youth lend the autobiography a unique perspective. A Child of Hitler blatantly points toward how the Nazi regime victimized not only jewish men and women, homosexual, or asexual citizens, but also how it devastated and destroyed a whole generation of children. Childhood was revoked an the burdens of war were placed directly on the shoulders of boys and girls just like Heck. This develops a new understanding of World War II that is not often disclosed. By addressing Nazi Germany from an insider’s view, Heck develops an argument against propagandizing children.
The topic of homosexuality has become a constant issue throughout our society for many years. Many people believe that being gay is not acceptable for both religious and moral reasons. Because being gay is not accepted, many homosexuals may feel shame or guilt because of the way they live their everyday lives. This in turn can affect how the person chooses to live their life and it can also affect who the person would like to become. Growing up, David Sedaris struggled to find the common ground between being gay as well as being a normal teenager. He often resorted to the conclusion that you could not be both. Sedaris allows us to see things through his young eyes with his personable short story "I Like Guys". Throughout his short story, Sedaris illustrates to the reader what it was like growing up being gay as well as how the complexities of being gay, and the topic of sexuality controlled his lifestyle daily. He emphasizes the shame he once felt for being gay and how that shame has framed him into the person he has become.
Gay begins her article by first mentioning how her parents took her on an unexpected trip which educated her for the future. Since Gay was a child when she witnessed all the poverty and uncleanliness of the
The tragicomic Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel, is generally considered one of the most important pieces of the modern LGBTQ canon of literature. The graphic novel tells the story of Alison Bechdel’s attempt to find the truth about her father’s sexuality and what lead him to possibly commit suicide. Along the way, Bechdel finds her own sexuality. Bechdel’s choice to write about her and her father’s simultaneous journey to finding their sexuality was revolutionary at the time. Very few authors were writing openly about their own sexuality, and something even more revolutionary that Bechdel addressed was mental illness.
Gay rights has always been a controversial issue in Russia. Russia has anti-gay laws that cause big conflict in the country. Some of the laws that were passed include the gay propaganda law which is against exposing children to any gay media. Another big law which is on its way to being passed is they law against gay people adopting children. Because of this big issue going on, Fareed Zakaria a CNN news reporter investigates the situation. Zakaria interviews Valery Gergiev, an artistic and general director of Mariinsky Theatre. Zakaria makes sure to get Gergiev's point of view on the situation. By asking for Gergiev’s opinion, he is hoping it will gain the people of Russia’s attention. Gergiev states “I myself question very much why the country needed something like this law” which shows that he believes the new law is unnecessary. Gregiev also says. “ I myself hate any form of discrimination. I would never allow any sort of discrimination to take place”. By Zakaria asking this, he is trying to persuade the audience that discrimination will rise from this new law and gay people will no longer be treated equally.
In the short story "Two Kinds," by Amy Tan, the mother in the story tries to do what is best for her daughter to become a world-renowned prodigy. This issue could also be connected to the short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," by Ursula K. LeGuin, where the people of Omelas are happy in their lives but also see that there is this person sleeping in a closet and being treated like an animal, but still carry on with their lives. There are people who speak up against these hateful laws towards homosexual people, but there is also the group of people that keep silent and do not say anything with fear that they might be labeled with words such as "gay" or "faggot." The two stories have a deep connection with each other in the sense that they affect the different reactions that citizens have to laws that limit the lives of others. Confo...
When the Nazi party came to power Paragraph 175 was put in place. This law was adjusted to include further punishment for homosexual men and the code was used as the main tool to arrest both known homosexuals and men suspected of homosexual a...
The case of “the Girl in the Closet” involves a young child named Lauren Kavanaugh along with her mother Barbara and her stepfather Kenneth Atkinson. Young Lauren spent five years living in a closet starting at the age of three, during this time the abuse and torture occurred. In addition, Lauren was deprived of food and water and left in the darkness with no other interactions other than with her abusive parents. When she was rescued on June 11th, 2001 at the age of eight, she was rushed to the hospital because her body attempted to shut itself down. Lauren had the appearance of a “Holocaust survivor – bloated belly, protruding ribs…she weighed 25.6 pounds, the size of an average 2-year-old, and damaged in ways doctors had never seen” (Farewell,
Last year, Andrew Hozier Byrne challenged an ongoing battle of human rights by creating a four minute music video of his first single, “Take Me To Church”. Hozier’s initial message of this song is to address that sexuality is natural, and is part of human life. The song alone denounces church principles and promotes a new form of worship, something that is tangible and real (Canon). This message found its way into the gay community and their struggle against public bigotry. Hozier created this video to display Russian abuse and torture of the gay community that still exist today. Due to a compelling demonstration of brutality and strong connection of faith, the video gained mass attention on YouTube. This video helps to communicate to the
In the “Preface” and a chapter of Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights called “The New Civil Rights,” Kenji Yoshino, the Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law at NYU, questions the traditionally accepted idea of assimilation by bringing about the new idea of ‘covering.’ Covering, as Yoshino, describes it, is ‘to tone down a disfavored identity to fit the mainstream’(540). He recounts how he covers in his everyday life because he is homosexual and how even with the shift in societal views towards his sexuality, he still feels the need to cover due to what he calls ‘covering demands.’ The fact that Yoshino still perceives it necessary to cover his sexuality reflects on how there is wrongly a difference between our civil
The 2017 Finnish biopic by Dome Karukoski, with the help of brilliant and exceptionally convincing Pekka Strang, portrays the life and work of one of the most celebrated and influential figures of twentieth century gay culture, Touko Laaksonen, better known as Tom of Finland. The film follows Touko’s personal development from the battlefield of World War II, where a young lieutenant first finds his sexuality among his comrades in arms in the darkness of war blackouts, to the late 80s, when Tom of Finland is exposed to the world following, with thousands of men, dressed in leather, praising him as their hero. And though the film centres around one figure, depicting him through relationships with his closest people, it also reflects the impact of Laaksonen gradually finding his ground on the changing of self-image of gay men of those days. In this essay, I will
Modernist writings have always been hailed for its nuanced relationship with sexuality. This paper looks at the ways E.M. Forster, one of the modernist writers on the fringes, deals with the discourses of sexuality different in ways different from other high modernists against the backdrop of the socio-cultural milieu which was extremely intolerant to homosexuality through his novel Maurice, written in 1913-14 and published posthumously in 1971. To what extent Forster’s homosexuality and his novel on same sex love negotiate with other homosexual writers and activists of the period? The mere fact that Maurice was published posthumously shows the grim situation of homosexual men and women of the time. Now our job is to closely look at the novel and situate its transgressions and liberation in the larger context of same-sex writings of the early twentieth century.
For my community event paper, I decided to go to the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and observe the various works of Mel Roman in his exhibition, Coming Out Under Fire. Mel Roman was a civil rights activist, clinical psychologist, and artist. He served during World War II in the US Navy and was honorably discharged in 1950. During his time in the military, Roman noticed that there was a rather large discrimination against homosexuals. Later in life, he became an artist and activist who put together the collection of art pieces that constitute Coming Out Under Fire. The exhibition shares its name with a 1994 documentary, which is an account of the military policy during World War II in regards to homosexuals. The documentary is shown
While taking a course in college I learned about various issues that America is facing today, and has faced before, some being the viewing of the film Milk and discussions on brave acts Harvey Milk and others demonstrated to fight for what they believed in involving same sex marriage. I believe that adults have the right to be with whomever they would like, and that there is an issue with love vs. law today in society. Many people have been through Joseph Campbell’s theory The Hero’s Journey to have same sex marriage legalized and acknowledged. “It's fair to say that Milk spoke out as an advocate for gay rights, prompting more and more gays and lesbians to come out of their closets and thus increasing their visibility enormously. Whereas before, the gays were attacked helplessly by crazy people”(McCarthy). If it were not for Milk and him being an openly gay elected official fighting for the LGBT community, some of the gay rights we have today may not have been acknowledged. In this paper, I will examine the brave acts of Harvey Milk to Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey concept.
“A Glimpse of Reality” is a part of the effort to achieve true democracy in a society that has ignored minorities, in this case, the homosexual population, under the utilitarian political system. The dialogue is primarily an article that tackles the prejudice on the homogenous population. By doing so, the writer of the article makes sense of the unfamiliar in an attempt to let the public first acknowledge a problem.