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makeuptips- · 3 years

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Combination Skin: What To Use and How To Use It

Updated Feb 25, 2021 - Originally Posted: Nov 29, 2019

Combination skin is a real thing. Not quite dry, not quite oily; knowing how to care for it isn’t always easy. This common but sometimes confusing skin type marries areas of the face that are in oil production overdrive with areas that are dry, forming a patchwork-like texture on the skin’s surface. Simply, combination skin is out of balance, so sourcing beauty products to cater to it requires a little vigilance.

Alina Roytberg - co-founder of skincare company, Fresh - laid down the facts on this very skin type. She described the main indicators to include: “an oily T-zone (forehead, down the nose to the chin) with dry cheeks, or skin that’s [generally] oilier in summer and drier in winter.” If you ever wondered how your skin came to be this way, Roytberg will tell you that genetics plays a leading role, above environmental factors and personal lifestyle. Each step of your skincare regime can be curated to work in favour of both surfaces at play, where harmonising your skin’s hydration levels is key.

FACT: According to Roytberg, normal and dry skin types tend to lean more toward a combination skin type when you’re on your period.``

Your cleanser should serve as the backbone of your regime by manipulating the condition of your skin regardless of what products are placed on top. Choose cleansing products that work with, not against, your multi-faceted skin type; products that replenish and balance your skin’s natural oils. “Using a good, gentle cleanser twice a day,” Roytberg suggests, “will help cleanse the skin without over-drying or leaving any residue behind.”

Replacing oil with oil is also an effective way to rebalance moisture levels across the board – I love Frank Body’s Anti-Makeup Cleansing Oil. Alternately, opt for a gentle cream solution like Clarins’ Cleansing Milk containing extracts of soothing yellow gentian. Avoid cleansers that contain high levels of salicylic acid because this additive can further dry out the skin. On the contrary, cleansing balms that boast a thick, buttery consistency may feel a little over the top against areas that are producing generous amounts of sebum as it is.

TIP: “I recommend using a cream cleanser like Fresh’s Soy Face Cleanser after an oil-based [one] as a double cleansing ritual… to ensure skin is fully cleansed,” Roytberg says.

To provide an even deeper clean to the skin, throw in an exfoliating product once or twice a week. By doing so, you’ll relieve the build-up of oil and bacteria, reducing the likelihood of developing acne. It’s a common misconception that the larger the pores, the more sebum secreted. Roytberg instead says this theory probably works in reverse, in that the secretion of sebum itself can enlarge pores. “If sebum can’t discharge freely, pores can become wider and more clearly visible, and pimples may form.” Regardless of whether you opt for an acidic exfoliant or granular liquid, skin will look and feel more even with the removal of surface-level grime and dead skin cells. LUMA’s Crushed Pearl Facial Polish boasts botanical grape seed oil – an ingredient praised for its nourishing and protective abilities when used on the skin. A toner can also be a great addition to your cleanser routine when the correct product is used. Moisten a cotton pad in your toner of choice and mark out the most oil-prone areas of your face only. Naturally hydrating ingredients, like cucumber in Mario Badescu’s Special Cucumber Lotion, will act as a suitable replacement. Even the oiliest of T-zones can still hide underlying dryness.

Tip: The further up an ingredient is listed on a product, the higher the content level of that ingredient will be. You can ensure you’re getting the most out of key ingredients before buying.

You’ll be misguided in believing a rich cream will act as a cure-all, since your oiliest areas need no such thing. When it comes to moisturiser, a lightweight formula containing hydrating hyaluronic acid should cover all bases (oily or otherwise). Prior to sleep, apply a refreshing gel cream that will sooth the skin and absorb in a flash, like Tarte Cosmetics Rainforest of The Sea Drink of H2O Hydrating Boost Moisturizer or Glow Recipe’s Watermelon Glow Pink Juice Moisturizer. Come morning, opt for a shine controlling moisturiser like Bioderma’s new Sébium Shine-Control Moisturiser or La Roche-Posay Effaclar Mat.

TIP: Combination Skin or not, it’s important to always apply sun protection. Prior to makeup application, apply an SPF. Invisible Zinc’s Sheer Defence Facial Moisturiser SPF50 is great for combination skin as it sits incognito under foundation without the greasiness or scent of a traditional sunscreen.

As with moisturiser application, multi-masking is the way to go. Apply residue-removing charcoal, like that in FORMULA 10.0.6’s Take Back Control Oil-Controlling Mud Mask, to oily areas. This charcoal and cacao hybrid is designed to decongest pores and hydrate the skin respectively. Likewise, Fresh’s Umbrian Clay Purifying Mask can be applied to the T-Zone, while the brand’s hydrating Rose Face Mask be applied along the cheeks. If you’d prefer a sheet mask, The Body Shop’s Seaweed Balance Sheet Mask is an easy one-size-fits-all option that contains refreshing aloe vera your whole face will benefit from.

TIP: If acne is a concern, manage your combination skin first before reaching for acne-targeted solutions. Until then, minimise your use of silicones to allow pores to breathe easily.

Originally posted Nov 29th, 2019. Updated Feb 25, 2021 Story by: Hannah Gay

Photography: Evangeline Sarney

#skin care #skin #oily skin #combination skin #skin care tips #beauty tips #beauty advice #skincare advice #moisturizer #combo skin #balancing skin #balanced skin #congested skin #cleansing oil

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hellomynameisbisexual · 3 years

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I’d go so far as to say that the nomination probably saved the site, in fact. For those who need a little background: despite being a small voluntary project the site was nominated for the 2014 Publication of the Year award by Stonewall, the UK’s largest LGBT charity, just nine months after its inception. This was a landmark step in Stonewall’s positive new direction on bi issues. To the best of my knowledge, this was the first time Stonewall had specifically nominated a specifically bi publication or organisation for an award. At this point my co-founder, who was taking care of the business side of things, had recently jumped ship and I was seriously considering packing the whole thing in. I won’t lie, I was astonished to read the email.

I’d worked on a publication which won the award under my editorship a few years previously. Unlike Biscuit, however, g3 magazine – at the time one of the two leading print mags for lesbian and bi women in the UK – had an estimated readership of 140,000, had been going for eight years and boasted full-time paid office staff and regular paid freelancers. Biscuit, by contrast, was being dragged along by one weary unpaid editor and a bunch of unpaid writers who understandably, for the most part, couldn’t commit to regularly submitting work.

Little Biscuit’s enormous competition for the award consisted of Buzzfeed, Attitude.co.uk, iNewspaper and Property Week. We didn’t win – that accolade went to iNewspaper – but the nomination was nevertheless, as I say, a huge catalyst to continue with the site. I launched a crowdfunder, which finished way off target. I sold one ad space, for two months. Then nothing. I attempted in vain to recruit a sales manager but nobody wanted to work on commission. Some wonderful writers came and went. There were periods of tumbleweed when I frantically had to fill the site with my own writing, thereby completely defeating the object of providing a platform for a wide range of bi voices.

The Stonewall Award nomination persuaded me to keep going with the site

The departure of the webmaster was another blow. Thankfully by this point I had a co-editor on board – the amazing Libby – so I was persuaded to stick with it. And here we are now. I don’t actually know where the next article is coming from. That’s not a good feeling. But, apart from for Biscuit, I try not to write for free anymore myself, so I understand exactly why that is. As a freelance journo trying to make a living I’ve had to be strict with myself about that. I regularly post on the “Stop Working For Free” Facebook group and often feel a pang of misplaced guilt because I ask my writers to write for free, even though I’m working on the site for free myself, and losing valuable time I could be spending on looking for paid work.

Biscuit hasn’t exactly been a stranger to controversy, in addition to its financial and staffing issues. Its original tagline – “for girls who like girls and boys” – was considered cis-centric by some, leading to accusations that the site had some kind of trans/genderqueer*-phobic agenda. Which was amusing, as at the height of this a) we’d just had two articles about non-binary issues published and b) I was actually engaged to a genderqueer partner, a fact they were clearly unaware of. Now the site is under fire from various pansexual activists who object to the term “bisexual”. To clarify – “girl and boys” was supposed to imply a spectrum and, no, we don’t think “bi” applies only to an attraction to binary folk. The site aims the main part of its content at female-spectrum readers attracted to more than one gender because this group does have specific needs. But there is something here for EVERYONE bisexual. Anyway, it’s a shame all of this gossip was relayed secondhand, and the people in question didn’t think to confront me about it (which at least the pan activists have bothered to do). We damage our community immeasurably with these kinds of Chinese whispers.

Biscuit ed Libby, being amazing

Whilst trying to keep the site afloat, I’ve also been building on the work I started right back when I edited g3, and trying to improve bi visibility in other media outlets. I’ve recently had articles published by Cosmopolitan, SheWired, The F-Word, GayStar News and Women Make Waves and I’m constantly emailing other sites which I’ve not yet written for with bi pitches. Unfortunately, although I am over the moon to be writing for mainstream outlets such as Cosmo about bi issues, it’s been an uphill struggle trying to persuade some editors out there that they have more readers to whom bi-interest stories apply than they might think. It’s an incredibly exhausting and frustrating process.

Libby and I are doing our best with Biscuit. I can’t guarantee that I would be doing anything at all with it if Libby hadn’t arrived on the scene, so once again I would like to mention how fabulous she is. But we desperately need more writers. We need some help with site design and tech issues. We need a hand with the business and sales side of things. We can’t do it without you. And if you know any rich bisexual heiresses who read Biscuit, please do send them our way. 😉

Grant Denkinson’s story

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Grant speaks on a panel chaired by Biscuit’s Lottie at a Bi Visibility Day event

So first of all, explain a little about the activism you’re involved/have been involved in.  

“I’ve been involved with bisexual community organising for a bit over 20 years. Some has been within community: writing for and editing our national newsletter, organising events for bisexuals and helping others with their events by running workshop sessions or offering services such as 1st aid. I’ve spoken to the media about bisexuality and organised bi contingents at LGBT Pride events (sometimes just me in a bi T-shirt!). I’ve helped organise and participated in bi activist weekends and trainings. I’ve help train professionals about bisexuality. I’ve also piped up about bisexuality a lot when organising within wider LGBT and gender and sexuality and relationship diversity umbrellas. I’ve been a supportive bi person on-line and in person for other bi folks. I’ve been out and visibly bi for some time. I’ve helped fund bi activists to meet, publish and travel. I’ve funded advertising for bi events. I’ve set up companies and charities for or including bi people. I’ve personally supported other bi activists.”

 What made you get involved?

“ In some ways I was looking for a way to be outside the norm and to make a difference and coming out as bi gave me something to push against. I’ve been less down on myself when feeling attacked. I’ve also found the bi community very welcoming and where I can be myself and so wanted to organise with friends and to give others a similar experience. There weren’t too many others already doing everything better than I could.”

How do you feel about the state of bi activism worldwide (esp UK and USA) at the moment?

“There have been great changes for same-sex attracted people legally and socially and these have happened quickly. Bi people have been involved with making that happen and benefit from it. We can also be hidden by gay advances or actively erased. We still have bi people not knowing many or any other local bi people, not seeing other bisexuals in the mainstream or LGT worlds and not knowing or being able to access community things with other bis. We are little represented in books or the media and people don’t know about the books and zines and magazines already available. The internet has made it easy to find like-minded people but also limited privacy and I think is really fragmented and siloed. It is hard to find bisexuals who aren’t women actors, harmful or fucked up men or women in pornography designed for straight men. We have persistent and high quality bi events but they are sparse and small.”

What’s causing you to feel disillusioned?

“I’m fed up of bi things just not happening if I don’t do them. Not everything should be in my style and voice and I shouldn’t be doing it all. I and other activists campaign for bi people to be more OK and don’t take care of ourselves enough while doing so. People are so convinced we don’t exist they don’t bother with a simple search that would find us. We have little resources while having some of the worst outcomes of any group. I don’t want to spend my entire life being the one person who reminds people about bisexuals, including our so-called allies. I’m not impressed with the problem resolution skills in our communities and while we talk about being welcoming I’m not sure we’re very effective at it. I’m fed up with mouthing the very basics and never getting into depth about bi lives and being one who supports but who is not supported. I’m all for lowering barriers but at a certain point if people don’t actively want to do bi community volunteering it won’t happen. Some people are great critics but build little.”

What do you want to say to other activists about this?

“Why are we doing this personally? I’m not sure we know. How long will we hope rather than do? Honestly, are there so few who care? Alternatively should we stop the trying to do bi stuff and either do some self-analysis, be happy to accept being what we are now as a community, chill out and just let stuff happen or give up and go and do something else instead.”

Patrick Richards-Fink’s story

085d4de So first of all, explain a little about the activism you’re involved/have been involved in.

“Mostly internet – I am a Label Warrior, a theorist and educator. Here’s how I described it on my blog: “One of the reasons that I am a bisexual activist rather than a more general queer activist is because I see every day people just like me being told they don’t belong. It doesn’t mean I don’t work on the basic issues that we all struggle against — homophobia, heterosexism, classism, out-of-control oligarchy, racism, misogyny, this list in in no particular order and is by no means comprehensive. But I have found that I can be most effective if I focus, work towards understanding the deep issues that drive the problems that affect people who identify the same way that I have ever since I started to understand who I am. I find that I’m not a community organizer type of activist or a storm the capitol with a petition in one hand and a bullhorn in the other activist — I’m much better at poring over studies and writing long wall-o’-text articles and occasionally presenting what I’ve gleaned to groups of students until my voice is so hoarse that I can barely do more than croak.” So internet, and when I was still in school, a lot of on-campus stuff. Now I’m moving into a new phase where my activism is more subtle – I’m working as a therapist, and so my social justice lens informs my treatment, especially of bi and trans people.”

What made you get involved?

“I can’t not be.”

How do you feel about the state of bi activism worldwide (esp UK and USA) at the moment?

“I feel like we made a couple strides, and every time that happens the attacks renewed. I hionestly think the constant attempts to divide the bisexual community into ‘good pansexuals’ and ‘bad bisexuals’ and ‘holy no-labels’ is the thing that’s most likely to screw us.”

What’s causing you to feel disillusioned?  

“It is literally everywhere I turn – colleges redefining bisexuality on their LGBT Center pages, news articles quoting how ‘Bi=2 and pan=all therefore pan=better’, everybloodywhere I turn I see it every day. The word bi is being taken out of the names of organisations now, by the next group of up-and-comers who haven’t bothered to learn their history and understand that if you erase our past, you take away our present. Celebrities come out as No Label, wtf is that. Don’t they make kids read 1984 anymore? It’s gotten to the point now that even seeing the word pansexual in print triggers me. I’m reaching the point now that if someone really wants to be offended when all I am trying to do is welcome them on board, then I don’t have time for it.”

What do you want to say to other activists about this?

“Stay strong, and don’t give them a goddamned inch. I honestly think that the bi organizations – even, truth be told, the one I am with – are enabling this level of bullshit by attempting to be conciliatory, saying things that end up reinforcing the idea that bi and pan are separate communities. We try to be too careful not to offend anyone. Like the thing about Freddie Mercury. Gay people say ‘He was gay.’ Bi people say ‘Um, begging your pardon, good sirs and madams and gentlefolk of other genders, but Freddie was bi.’ And they respond ‘DON’T GIVE HIM A LABEL HE DIDN’T CLAIM WAAHHH WAAHHH!’ And yet… Freddie Mercury never used the label ‘gay’, but it’s OK when they do it. And he WAS bisexual by any measure you want to use. But we back down. And 2.5% of the bisexual population decides pansexual is a better word, and instead of educating them, we add ‘pan’ to our organisation names and descriptions. Now, this is clearly a dissenting view – I will always be part of a united front where my organization is concerned. But everyone knows how I feel, and I think it’s totally valid to be loyal and in dissent at the same time. Not exactly a typically American viewpoint, but everyone says I’d be a lot more at home in Britain than I am here anyway.”

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theredlanternavenger · 4 years

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Various relationships in the Indrajala universe

Taishakuten & Deku

Let’s begin with these two, our beloved protagonists. Their love for fanfiction brought them together and they’re different yet similar, and there sure are moments that they have something going on. Tai, being the gay disaster he is, actually considers telling him how he feels, but Deku is of course goddamn straight as an arrow and doesn't notice anything between him and his unlikely new ally(although Uraraka does). And sometime later, the events of the Two Heroes movie occur and Taishakuten realizes he is no match for Melissa Shield, so he ends up as Deku's wingman in getting Melissa.

And of course, Taishakuten’s love for Lord Ashura is still as strong as ever, and thus so, the co-founders of the Special Task Forces decide to remain friends.

Also, what makes the difference between Indrajala Taishakuten and Main Universe Taishakuten is whether one (1) Izuku Midoriya wandered into his little corner of the world. Many tragedies caused by Taishakuten in RG Veda canon could be averted in the Indrajala universe thanks to Deku. (ex. Karyoubinga’s death and her body being fed to ferocious beasts, Rasetsu and Shara’s deaths, etc etc...)

Ashura-oh & Melissa

Of course, they never even interacted, not even once, but being the love interests of the main protagonists, a double date might have occured during the whole timey-wimey fiasco, don’tcha think? Yeah, while the Special Task Forces time-travel to various periods before and during the Holy War, they have a few chances to see each other. Ashura-oh uses his illusion powers to figure out everything, but for some STRANGE reason, he can’t see what happens to Deku and Melissa in the end. The reason? Well, you’ll just have to wait 'till the last chapter.

Katchan & Kisshoten

In the Indrajala universe, Katchan is actually a grandson of the former Celestial Emperor. His mother, Mitsuki, had a flaming affair with Kisshoten’s late younger brother Surya, the Sun God. Noticing this, Kisshoten takes Katchan under her wing, revealing the truth about his birth. Katchan is shocked to learn that Masaru Bakugo isn’t his birth father, and that Bishamonten is responsible for his birth father’s death.

At first, Katchan just thinks of Kisshoten as another authority figure in his life, but as time passes, he comes to recognize her as his aunt and legal guardian.

Tenoh & Deku

No matter how many times Deku attempted to reach out to his pardner’s son, there was no place for the little hero in Prince Tenoh’s kind heart. The reason? Taishakuten hated Tenoh, his own son, with the candor of a million trillion Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Laganns, but to Deku, he displayed deep affection and they weren’t even related. In order to get even a tiny amount of his father’s love, Tenoh attempted to get rid of Deku so many times, even going so far as making a deal with Kai Chisaki AKA Overhaul, his mother’s paramour.

After Deku takes Overhaul's quirk, Tenoh, realizing what he has become, deeply apologizes to Deku(and Mirio and Eri). He is then disowned by Taishakuten, stripped of his status as Prince of the Heavens and thrown in Tartarus along with his mother and a now-quirkless Overhaul.

Yasha & All For One

Straddling the fine line between friendship and romantic love, these two are past meagre boundaries. In the earlier days, Yasha(Prince Yama back then) was the only one who didn't fear All For One, hell, he even thought of him as an elder brother and called him "sensei"! Yasha was also All For One's wingman in wooing Inko.

And since Yasha is thaaaat close to All For One, after he becomes Lord Yasha, he offers him the position of Secondary King and even swears that All For One's child will be his successor(thus severing the royal Yama line)! But before Deku is even presented to Yasha, an incident occurred and their relationship becomes strained, but some time after, they begin to mend broken bonds and develop feelings for each other(which will be explained further in later chapters).

Kaminari & Taishakuten

They’re both electricity users(Taishakuten is basically a darker, danker, sword-wielding cross between Simon The Digger and Thor, and Kaminari’s quirk allows him to shoot lightning at others), and Kaminari’s crush on Enji Todoroki(a teenaged Endeavor), the most prestigious student in UA, reflected Taishakuten’s love for Ashura-oh. The two have some alone time during the Special Task Forces’ unauthorized “field trip” to America and confess everything, and this causes them to become close friends.

At some point, they combine their powers to cause a blackout in Toriten during the time travel mission to 2074.

All Might & Rasetsu

Rasetsu wanted his big brother to be Lord Yasha, so he left to become a Pro Hero and became known as the Obsidian Hero Rakshasa. He became one of Toshinori Yagi/All Might’s mentors after Nana Shimura’s death, and saved the young Symbol Of Peace so many times before.

Some time after he retired, Rasetsu was introduced to Shara, one of Toshinori’s old friends and it was love at first sight. Despite their huge age gap, Rasetsu and Shara quickly tied the knot after a comical 147 dates and Toshinori was the best man. Rasetsu was also there for Toshinori when he challenged Taishakuten, and congratulated him when he won. Despite not being able to see each other frequently, their bond as teacher and student is still as strong as ever, and it becomes even stronger after Deku comes into the scene.

#indrajala #izuku midoriya #taishakuten #ashura ou #melissa shield #tenou #katsuki bakugo #kisshouten #yasha #all for one #all might #denki kaminari #rasetsu

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the-little-crime-writer · 5 years

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Lake, Leonard, and NG, Charles Chitat

A native of San Francisco, Leonard Lake was born July 20, 1946. His mother sought to teach him pride in the human body by encouraging Lake to photograph nude girls, including his sisters and cousins, but the “pride” soon developed into a precocious obsession with pornography. In adolescence, Lake extorted sexual favours from his sisters, in return for protection from the violent outbursts of a younger brother, Donald. By his teens, Leonard displayed a fascination with the concept of collecting “slaves.” Lake joined the Marine Corps in 1966 and served a non-combatant tour in Vietnam, as a radar operator. He also underwent two years of psychiatric therapy at Camp Pendleton for unspecified mental problems before his ultimate discharge in 1971.

Back in civilian life, Lake moved to San Jose and got married, developing a local reputation as a gun buff, “survivalist,” and sex freak. His favourite high school was filming bondage scenes, including female partners other than his wife, and he was soon divorced. In 1980, Lake was charged with grand theft after looting building materials from a construction site, but he got off easy with one year’s probation. Married a second time in August 1981, he moved with his wife to a communal range at Ukiah, California, where a “Renaissance” lifestyle was practised complete with period costumes and surgical alteration of goats to produce “unicorns.” A few months after his arrival in Ukiah, Lake met Charlie Ng.

Hong Kong born in 1961, Charles Chitat Ng was the son of wealthy Chinese parents. Forever in trouble, Ng was expelled from school in Hong Kong and then from an expensive private school in England, where he was caught stealing from classmates. A subsequent shoplifting arrest drove him to California, where he joined the Marine Corps after a hit and run incident, falsely listing his birthplace as Bloomington, Indiana. An expert martial artist and self-styled “ninja warrior,” Ng talked incessantly of violence to his fellow leathernecks. In October 1979, he led two accomplices in stealing $11,000 worth of automatic weapons from a marine arsenal in Hawaii and found himself under arrest. During psychiatric evaluation, Ng boasted of “assassinating” someone in California, but never got around to naming the victim. He escaped from custody before trial and was listed as a deserter when he answered Lake’s ad om a war gamer’s magazine, in1981.

The two men hit it off at once, om spite of Lake’s racism, which seemed to encompass only African Americans and Hispanics. They began collecting automatic weapons from illegal sources, and a team of federal agents raided the Ukiah ranch in April 1982, arresting Lake and Ng for firearms violations. Released on $6,000 bond, Lake promptly went into hiding, using a variety of pseudonyms as he drifted around norther California. His second wife divorced him after the arrest, but they remained on friendly terms. As a fugitive, Ng was denied bail, and he struck a bargain with a military prosecutor in August, pleading guilty to theft in return for a promise that he would serve no more than three years of a 14-year sentence. Confined to the military stockade at Leavenworth federal prison, Ng was paroled after 18 months, avoiding deportation with a reference to the phoney birthplace shown on his enlistment papers. On release from prison, he returned home and again teamed up with Leonard Lake.

By that time, Lake had settled on two and a half acres of woodland near Wilseyvile in Calavera’s County, enlisting the help of neighbours t construct a fortified bunker beside his cabin, where he stockpiled illegal weapons and stolen video equipment. His every thought was recorded in various diaries, including details of “Operation Miranda,” entailing the collection of sex slaves to serve his needs after the anticipated nuclear holocaust. On the subject of females, Lake wrote “God meant women for cooking, cleaning the house and sex. And when they are not in use, they should be locked up.” An oft-repeated motto in the diaries advised, “If you love something, let it go. If it doesn’t come back, hunt it down and kill it.” On February 25, 1984, shortly before his reunion with Ng, Lake described his life as “Mostly dull day to day routine, still with death in my pocket and fantasy my major goal.” If authorities are correct the first death In Lake’s pocket may have claimed his brother Donald, reported missing by their mother and never seen again after he went to visit Lake in July 1983.

On June 2, 1985, employees of a lumberyard in South San Francisco called police to report a peculiar shoplifting incident. An Asian man had walked out of a store with a $75 vise, placed it in the trunk of a Honda auto parked outside, and then escaped on foot before they could detain him. The car was still outside, however, and officers found a bearded white man at the wheel. He cheerfully produced a driver’s licence in the name of “Robin Stapley,” but he bore no resemblance to it photograph. A brief examination of the Honda’s trunk turned up the stolen vise, along with a silencer equipped .22 caliber pistol. Booked on theft and weapons charges, “Stapley” evaded questions for several hours, then asked for a drink of water, gulping a cyanide capsule removed from a secret compartment in his belt buckle. He was comatose on arrival at the hospital, where he would linger on life support equipment for the next four days, finally pronounced dead on June 6.

A fingerprint comparison identified “Stapley” as Leonard Lake, but the driver’s licence was not a forgery. Its original owner was the founder of San Diego’s Guardian Angels chapter and he had not been seen at home for several weeks. The Honda’s license late was registered to Lake, but the vehicle was not. Its owner of record, 39-year-old Paul Cosner, was a San Francisco car dealer who had disappeared in November 1984, after leaving home to sell the car to “a weird guy.” Lake’s auto registration led detectives to the property in Wilseyville, where they discovered weapons, torture devices, and Lake’s voluminous diaries. Serial numbers on Lake’s video equipment traced ownership to Harvey Dubs, a San Francisco photographer reported missing from home along with his wife Deborah and infant son Sean on July 25, 1984. As detectives soon learned, the stolen equipment had been used to produce ghoulish “home movies” of young women being stripped and threatened, raped and tortured, at least one of them mutilated so savagely that she must have died as a result. Lake and Ng were the principal stars of the snuff tapes, but one of their “leading ladies” was quickly identified as the missing Deborah Dubs.

Another reluctant “actress” was Brenda O’Connor, who once occupied the cabin adjacent to Lake’s with her husband, Lonnie Bond, and their infant son Lonnie Jr. They had known Lake a “Charles Gunnar,” an alias lifted from the best man at Lake’s second wedding (and another missing person, last seen alive in 1983). O’Connor was afraid of “Gunnar,” telling friends that she had seen him plant a woman’s body in the woods, but rather than inform police, her husband had invited a friend, Guardian Angel Robin Stapley to share their quarters and offer personal protection. All four had disappeared in May 1985. Another snuff tape victim, 18-year-old Kathleen Allen, made the acquaintance of Lake and Ng through her boyfriend, 23-year-old Mike Carroll. Carroll had served time with Ng at Leavenworth and later came west to join him in various shady enterprises. Allen abandoned her job at a supermarket after Lake informed her that Carroll had been shot and wounded “near Lake Tahoe,” offering to show her where he was. Her final paycheck had been mailed to Lake’s address in Wilseyville.

Aside from videocassettes, authorities retrieved numerous still photos from Lake’s bunker, including snapshots of Lake in long “witchy” robes, and photos of 21 young women captured in various stages of undress. Six were finally identified and found alive; the other 15 have remained elusive, despite publication of the photographs, and police suspect that most or all of them were murdered on the death ranch. Gradually, the search moved outward from Lake’s bunker into the surrounding woods. A vehicle abandoned near the cabin was registered to another missing person, Sunnyvale photographer Jeffrey Askern, and Lake’s vanishing acquaintances. On June 8, portions of four human skeletons were unearthed near the bunker, with a fifth victim and numerous charred bone fragments, including infant’s teeth discovered on June 13. Number six was turned up five days later and was the first to be identified. A 34-year-old drifter, Randy Jacobson had last been seen alive in October 1984 wen he left his San Francisco rooming house to visit Lake and sell his van. Two of Jacobson’s neighbours, 26-year-old Cheryl Okoro and 38-year-old Maurice Wok, also on the missing list, were linked to the Wilseyville killers by person contacts and cryptic notes in Lake’s diary.

Three more skeletons were sorted out of scattered fragments on June 26, and authorities declared that Lake and Ng were linked to the disappearance of at least 25 persons. One of those was Mike Carroll, who reportedly agreed to dress in “sissy” clothe and lure gays for Ng to kill, then died himself when Charlie tired of the game. Donald Giuletti, a 36-year-old disc jockey in San Francisco, had offered oral sex through published advertisements, and one of the callers was a young Asian man who shot Giuletti to death in July 1984, critically wounding his roommate at the same time. Lake’s wife recalled that Ng had boasted of shooting two homosexuals, and the survivor readily identified Ng’s mug shot as a likeness of the gunman.

Two other friends of Ng and occasional co-workers at a Bay Area warehouse were also missing. Clifford Parenteau, age 24, had vanished after winning $400 on a Super Bowl bet, telling associates that he was going “to the country” to spend the money with Ng. A short time later, 25-year-old Jeffrey Gerald dropped from sight after he agreed to help Ng move some furniture. Neither men were seen again, and Ng was formally charged with their deaths in two of the 13 first-degree murder counts filed against him. Other victims named in the indictment include Mike Carroll, Kathleen Allen, Lonnie Bond and family, Robin Stapley Don Giuletti, and three members of the Dubs family. (Remains of Stapley and Lonnie were found in a common grave on July 9, bringing the official body count to 12.) Ng was also charged as an accessory to murder in the disappearance of Paul Cosner.

On July 6, 1985, Ng was arrested while shoplifting food from a market in Calgary, Alberta. A security guard was shot in the hand before Ng was subdued. Charges of attempted murder were reduced to aggravated assault, robbery, and illegal use of a weapon, with Ng sentenced to four and a half years’ imprisonment upon conviction. On November 29, 1988, a Canadian judge ruled that Ng should be extradited to the United States for trial on 19 of the 25 felony counts filed against him. Ng’s appeal of that decision was rejected on August 31, 1989, but further legal manoeuvres stalled his extradition until 1991. Even that was not the end, however, as Charlie Ng pulled out all the stops, using every trick and legal loophole in the book to postpone his trail for another seven years. He fired attorneys, challenged judges, moved for change of venue (granted, to Orange County), lodged complaints about jailhouse conditions, in short, used the cumbersome California legal system to hamstring itself.

In October 1997, Ng’s stubborn refusal to cooperate with his latest court-appointed attorney won yet another delay in his trial, with jury selection pushed back to September 1, 1998. Police in San Francisco, meanwhile, grudgingly admitted “accidentally” destroying vital evidence in one of the 13 murder counts filed against Ng, but 12 more still remained for his trial. In May 1998. Judge John Ryan permitted Ng to fire his lawyers and represent himself with a stern warning that the trail would begin on September 1, whether Charlie liked it or not. On July 15, Ng tried for yet another postponement, claiming that his glasses were “the wrong prescription” and his personal computer was not fully programmed, thus hampering his defence.

Judge Ryan, unmoved, denied the motion and scheduled pretrial hearings to begin on August 21. Ng’s trial was the longest, most expensive criminal proceeding ever in a state notorious for courtroom marathons, finally ending on May 3, 1999, when Ng was convicted and the jury recommended death. He was formally condemned on June 30, 1999.

#Charles Chitat Ng #Leonard Lake #serial killers #true crimes #serial killer blog #ttccommunity #I do not condone #tcc blog #tcc love #tcc post #tcc crime #tcc family #serial killer #male serial killers #reblog

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sesamesaysme · 5 years

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BOOKS FINISHED IN AUGUST 2019 + word cloud of their subjects

(listed in the order that I finished reading them)

Most of this month’s books were so good that I wouldn’t be surprised if half of them make end up making my Top 10 books that I read within this year.

BAD FEMINIST by Roxane Gay / July 21, 2019 - August 1, 2019 / audiobook version / Summary - Essays exploring being a feminist while simultaneously loving things that could seem at odds with feminist ideology. / Reaction - Roxane Gay’s writing is SO RELATABLE! She allows that we may have principles we strongly support but we are human. Sometimes we find ourselves grooving to songs while knowing the lyrics are degrading or that are made by artists whose actions we don’t agree with. Sometimes we enjoy shows or movies that we know are mediocre and whose messages are flawed. Sometimes we believe in strong women but we want a man to lean on. These are the kinds of things she discusses in this collection of essays. I also previously read her book Hunger and loved that one too. I need to credit her as the writer who made me start enjoying essay collections.

ANCILLARY JUSTICE by Ann Leckie / July 29, 2019 - August 6, 2019 / Summary - A sci-fi book set thousands of years in the future in a time and place where the empire uses AIs to control human bodies as soldiers. First book of a trilogy. / Reaction - The reason I was drawn to reading this book is because I heard that it really makes you think about our use of binary pronouns. There are some characters in this book who do not distinguish between gender. Sometimes the same character will be referred to as she by someone and he by someone else and then she again by another person. Furthermore children are not referred to by gender. It disoriented me and I really appreciate that! Sadly that was the only aspect of the book I really liked. The world and characters felt cold to me. I couldn’t feel anything for any of them and I won’t be reading the rest of the trilogy.

SHOE DOG by Phil Knight / July 23, 2019 - August 6, 2019 / audiobook version approx. 13hrs / Summary - Memoir by Nike co-founder Phil Knight which chronicles the story of the Nike company from even before it was named Nike. / Reaction - I didn’t realize I’d be so interested in a book about how the Nike brand was developed but now I think it’s probably going to end up in my Top 10 books I read this year. How was I supposed to know that Shoe Dog would turn out to be an underdog story? In fact, you can even think of this as following the format of one of those heartwarming sports team movies or anime in which one team member after another is recruited into the fold, each with their own quirks. They meld and develop, then defeat their opponents against all odds. Phil Knight writes that these guys are all losers in some way or other, himself included, and almost none of them are athletic, yet they end up being the perfect team to build one of the top athletic brands in the world. They tackle all sorts of business-y problems with gumption and perseverance and are constantly trying to top their rivals adidas. Of course, since the author is one of the Nike owners, it is all from his POV, so you gotta be careful not to come out of reading it thinking the entire company is right in all of its actions. I’m sure there are criticisms about Nike that are still very valid. But that doesn’t take away from the book being a good read.

CARRY ON, WARRIOR: THOUGHTS ON LIFE UNARMED by Glennon Doyle Melton / August 7, 2019 - August 10, 2019 / audiobook version approx 8hrs / Summary - Glennon Melton believes that if we stop striving to project a mirage of perfection we can get closer to people and build better lives. / Reaction - From the title alone, I thought this would be a book about gun laws! It wasn’t. It’s a nonfic by a mother who is a recovered substance abuser and now shares her struggles with friends/neighbors/readers to connect with them. I’m not a mother or a wife yet but I could still relate to many of the things she talked about. One part I particularly liked was when she described step by step how to get through your day(s). It felt like much of the advice could help anyone whether they are struggling with addiction, depression, or just having a really bad day.

THE ARTIST’S WAY by Julia Cameron / August 7, 2019 - August 16, 2019 / Summary - An international bestseller which millions of people have found to be an invaluable guide to living the artist’s life./ Reaction - I would say this is like a textbook or workbook for how to unblock your creativity. A lot of creativity, motivation and productivity gurus these days use morning pages and this is the book from which morning pages originated. I’ve already been doing morning pages for about half a year prior to reading this so I’ve been interested in this book for awhile now. This time I borrowed it using the Libby app so I just read it without doing any of the activities. But I plan to get my own physical copy and go through the program in the book. I have a feeling this’ll turn into like a creativity bible for me that I’ll come back to over and over until it’s dog-eared and in rough condition.

A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW by Amor Towles / August 15, 2019 - August 24, 2019 / audiobook version approx. 18hrs / Summary - Count Alexander Rostov is sentenced to house arrest at the grand hotel Metropol in 1922 Russia. The book then spans several decades of his life there. / Reaction - As I listened to this, it was so easy to picture everything that happened. If you like books that cover a long period of time this is a great one. Rather than trying to tell about every month and every year, the story is formed out of perfectly crafted little vignettes that represent different times in his life and they are all so charming. For example, testing out the sounds that different objects make when they are dropped from the floor above and hit the ground, or subtly helping out a young man on a first date by subtly stepping in to suggest the perfect wine that will neither bankrupt him nor make him look like a cheapskate, sneaking in ingredients to cook the perfect dish behind the back of your enemy, or trying to outsmart a 5 or 6-yr-old in a game of hiding. It’s not a particularly quick read, but it’s so freakin’ charming. And the ending turns unexpectedly thrilling as you find out if our Count makes it out of the hotel or not.

THE COLLECTOR by John Fowles / August 16, 2019 - August 24, 2019 / Summary - A story of obsession about a young butterfly collector who kidnaps a young art student and traps her in the cellar of a house. /Reaction - I guess this would be categorized as a psychological thriller. The setup is very simple but the character development and interaction digs very deep. Essentially you take two very different people, put them in a small space together and watch the interactions. One is male, the other is female. One knows less culture (as in books, art, music etc.) while the other loves those things passionately. One has no relationship experience while the other does. At times you think, ok, this person’s motives are understandable, and at other times you find their actions incredibly disturbing. Then you start wondering what’s wrong with yourself because of those earlier moments when you found the person kinda relatable. Great read. And you can’t predict at all if the girl will survive. At least I couldn’t.

BAD BLOOD by John Carreyrou / August 24, 2019 - August 30, 2019 / audiobook version approx 12 hrs / Summary - Wall Street Journal writer John Carreyrou goes in depth into how it was possible for young entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes to build a multibillion-dollar biotech startup (Theranos) that deceived countless people even though its supposedly revolutionary blood-analyzing device didn’t even work. / Reaction - Man, it really makes you realize how far money and connections can get you. People were fooled and bullied so easily. Throughout the whole book I was like I can’t believe this happened and I can’t believe that happened and holy crap, they seriously got away with that? The second I finished the book I was online googling what happened to Elizabeth Holmes and apparently she’s happily engaged like nothing even happened.

WHAT AM I READING IN SEPTEMBER?

- currently halfway done with The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith (but really JK Rowling)

- To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey

- Somewhere Only We Know by Maurene Goo

and the rest will just depend on what becomes available from my holds list on Libby

#books #books read #august 2019 #bad feminist #roxane gay #ancillary justice #shoe dog #nike #carry on warrior #the artist's way #a gentleman in moscow #the collector #bad blood #elizabeth holmes #word cloud #currently reading #audiobooks

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elizadoolittlethings · 5 years

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Mark Gatiss: ‘The League of Gentlemen was a premonition of Brexit’

After a turn on stage as George III, the co-founder of the League is returning to horror to recreate Dracula for TV. What he finds ‘frightening and debilitating’ now, though, is leaving the EU

by Arifa Akbar

Mark Gatiss is recalling an early memory, rocking back and forth on the sofa as he talks. It is an “extraordinarily vivid” moment from when he lived opposite a psychiatric hospital in County Durham. The institution was central to his childhood, a “colony” in which his mother and father worked, where he went to swim, to trampoline, to see films. Except, on this occasion, he was left on one of the wards with his brother to wait for his parents. “I must have been around five. There was a boy rocking on a bed. As I remember it, he had an empty eye socket. He had his thumb in it and he was just rocking – like this.”

Gatiss takes his thumb to his eye and rocks some more. It is a baroque vision, creepy enough to make you squeal, and befitting for one of the creators of the stage show and TV series The League of Gentlemen. As Gatiss says: “You can’t get more northern gothic, can you?”

It is clear he enjoys playing up the northern gothic. His Twitter tagline reads: “Actor. Writer. Strangler.” In person, there is no hint of gloom. He is sweet and sunny, an optimist by his own admission. Still, an unprosperous northern childhood and those years of observing mental illness – and the world’s responses to it – continue to serve him at the age of 52. He is currently in Nottingham, in rehearsals to play the titular lead in Alan Bennett’s 1991 play, The Madness of George III, at the Nottingham Playhouse. The play – which was adapted for a 1994 film, The Madness of King George, starring Helen Mirren and Nigel Hawthorne – dramatises the monarch’s mental illness.

“It was very interesting [to grow up opposite the hospital]. I have a lot experience to draw on for this play. And it’s interesting to think about mental health in the 18th century … It’s a challenge to chart the king in his ‘normal’ state, as it were, and then what happens to him. You have to make sure there’s a journey into his condition, so you have somewhere to go.”

Brexit is like slitting your own throat and going to bed saying: ‘I’ll see how I am in the morning’

Since the TV version of the League – which followed the tormented outcasts and oddballs of the fictional town of Royston Vasey – landed in 1999 and earned Gatiss and his co-stars a legion of fans, he has helped to create some of the most popular shows on TV. These include the revived Doctor Who (as a writer and an actor) and Sherlock, a reimagining of Sherlock Holmes as a 21st-century detective, which he co-created with Steven Moffat and in which he stars as Holmes’s brother, Mycroft. In between, he has worked on films and written books and plays. His stint in Nottingham follows a nationwide tour ofthe League, an Oscar-tipped film (The Favourite) and The Dead Room, a yet-to-be-aired Christmas ghost story starring Simon Callow, which he wrote and directed. After The Madness of George III, he will team up with Moffat again for a BBC/Netflix adaptation of the vampire classic Dracula. “I do work hard and I think that’s a good thing,” he says. “Work hard, be kind, that’s my motto.”

Filming for Dracula will start next year, but Gatiss does not plan to act in it. He will not be drawn on who will be cast as the vampire, but says he and Moffat thought carefully before deciding to set the series in its original period, the 19th century: “We said when we started Sherlock that we briefly got custodianship of the keys to Baker Street and we felt: ‘It’s our go.’ So, we wanted to have ‘our go’ at Dracula and with that we wanted to do all the treats – a big, spooky castle and the rest of it.”

Sherlock was set in the modern day for the opposite reason: “We felt it had become so swamped with Victoriana that people had lost sight of what it was – which is essentially a flat-share story of two unlikely friends, one of whom solves crimes. That was the really exciting thing, to just go back to basics.” While the series has been a runaway success, there have been criticisms: one Guardian article lamented that his Sherlock was morphing into James Bond; it vexed Gatiss so much that he sent the Guardian a rejoinder in rhyme, outlining the differences between his hero and Ian Fleming’s.

There have been other charges of “unfaithfulness” in Gatiss’s adaptations, but he is adamant about his right to play with an original story. “I feel very strongly about not just drearily reproducing the book. You are duty-bound to think: ‘Here’s an idea, why don’t we flip this round,’ especially if people know it well. It doesn’t spoil the original. No one burns the manuscript … the Tardis would never have left the junkyard in the 1960s if it wasn’t about change.”

And what greater change than a female doctor? The new series is the first with which Gatiss has not been involved since Doctor Who relaunched in 2005. How does he feel about Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor? “First, it’s lovely that I’m enjoying watching it on a Sunday night and not knowing anything about it. I have even tried to avoid the trailer for the next time. And I have said for a very long time that there should be female Doctors. As soon as you watch it, you say: ‘Of course, why not?’ All you need, ever, is for the right person to be playing the part. Jodie is instantly likable, funny, delightfully odd.”

If that is the case, can we – should we – stop at Doctor Who or extend a gender-blind, colour-blind policy to all period dramas? It depends how literal we want to be, Gatiss says, but he balks at the prospect of a female Bond. “Doctor Who is an alien with two hearts who lives in a dimensionally transcendental phone box and can periodically change his or her appearance. James Bond is a man. There’s no way out of that. It becomes a very reductive argument. If you want to create a really kickass new heroine or hero, then do something else.”

If you were to create a female Bond, he adds, would you then follow Fleming’s blueprint of making her a sexist lothario? “What is it about James Bond you want to change? Is it just the sex or is it everything else? In which case, you’ve got a different character anyway.”

Gatiss was not long out of studying theatre arts at Bretton Hall College in West Yorkshire when he co-wrote the League with Jeremy Dyson, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, whom he met there. It has been a long, loyal partnership, even though they went their separate ways – and thrived – before returning after 13 years to take the show back on the road. “We never fell out, we just stopped doing it,” Gatiss says. “We had been doing it virtually day in, day out for 11 years. So, we decided to do other stuff. The extraordinary thing about the tour was that it felt like no time had passed, which is what great friendships are about.”

The League began as a stage sketch show in 1994, when standup was more dominant in comedy. Gatiss and the others were enlisted to fill a slot at a fringe festival. “We did it for five nights and it went down really well. I remember a friend of mine saying: ‘You should do something with this.’” They did – and won the Perrier award at the Edinburgh fringe in 1997. “We did what made us laugh. All the things we loved ranged from proper horror to the horror of embarrassment; Alan Bennett, Victoria Wood, Mike Leigh. It was very much about our northern upbringings, too – we were identifying our own experiences of the world of the north. It was real anger and despair and oddness.”

Bennett turned out to be a huge fan of the League. “It’s how I came to meet Alan and it was just astonishing to think that he liked The League of Gentlemen. We have always said what a major influence he was for us. I remember so well the first thing I saw of his was a play called Our Winnie [from 1982]. I only watched it because Winnie was my mother’s name. It’s a half-hour drama where Elizabeth Spriggs takes her mentally disabled daughter to the crematorium on a Sunday. I just remember looking at it and thinking: ‘How does he know all this?’ It was just like my life! The way people spoke, the colloquialisms and the amazing sense of oppressive Sunday tedium.”

Two decades on, Royston Vasey’s turned-in world seems to resemble Britain more than it did when it was conceived, I suggest – the local shop for local people, the suspicion of the outsider taken to its freakish, inbred, comic extremity. “Yes, I look at it and think: ‘It’s a bit like a premonition,’” he says. “The idea that: ‘There’s nothing for you here, go away.’ That’s why we pushed it a bit in the specials last year. We were never satirical, but we found it irresistible and deliberately got [the character] Edward to say: ‘It’s time we took back control.’”

The tour took Gatiss to 47 venues around Britain. Did he sense a change, post-Brexit? “Yes. Some places are rust-belt Britain. They’ve been abandoned. I thought constantly of Disraeli and ‘two nations’ [“Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy”]. It made me think that some people must look at the events in Westminster as if they’re taking place on the moon. That’s why, when they were finally given the chance, they kicked back. And that’s why we’re in this fucking mess.”

It is not just the rising intolerance of the “immigrant” outsider that he fears, but also the erosion of other liberal, humanist values. As a gay man – he is married to the actor Ian Hallard – he has never felt personally threatened in London, where he lives, “but you go out of London and it’s very different. You go to certain parts of the country and you think: ‘I would modify my behaviour here.’”

The regions around his birthplace were the heartland for leave voters, but Gatiss is proud to have grown up in the north and in a working-class household: his father was the chief engineer at the psychiatric hospital and his mother was a carer and secretary. “I think my background did me an awful lot of good. There’s a very good line from Doctor Who: ‘Never lose sight of your horizons.’ There’s nothing wrong with coming from one place and moving to another place, but it’s good to know that and honour it. And also to acknowledge its flaws – it doesn’t have to be perfect.”

Brexit upsets him immensely. He speaks of it in irate exclamations and bloody analogies: “Brexit, to me, is like slitting your own throat and going to bed saying: ‘I’ll see how I am in the morning.’ I’m a sickeningly optimistic person and that’s what worries me about how depressed I am about it all. The temptation is to totally disengage because it’s so frightening and debilitating, but if you do that they’ve won.”

The Madness of George III is at Nottingham Playhouse until 24 November

#MG #mark gatiss #saturday interview #the guardian #the man behind the genius #all things MG

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xtruss · 3 years

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Since 9/11, US Muslims Have Gained Unprecedented Political, Cultural Influence

— By Steve Friess | 09/01/21

It's been an impressive 2021 so far for Muslim Americans. The U.S. Senate, that bastion of partisan gridlock, overwhelmingly confirmed the nation's first Muslims as a federal district court judge and to chair the Federal Trade Commission. Legislatures in five states swore in their first Muslim members, including a nonbinary, queer hijab-wearing representative in, of all places, Oklahoma. Three Detroit suburbs are poised this fall to elect their first Muslim mayors. The New York Jets tapped Robert Saleh as the first Muslim head coach of any American pro sports team. CBS premiered, then renewed The United States of Al, the first broadcast network sitcom with a Muslim lead character. And Riz Ahmed, star of Sound of Metal, became the first Muslim nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor.

"Everywhere I look, I see firsts happening," says MLB Tonight sportscaster Adnan Virk, who in 2012 became the first on-air Muslim host on ESPN.

As the 20th anniversary of September 11 approaches, the recent rise of many Muslim Americans to positions of power and influence—in Washington and in statehouses, on big screens and small ones, across playing fields and news desks—is a development that few in the U.S. would have predicted two decades ago, Muslims included. In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks by the radical Islamic sect Al-Qaeda, anti-Muslim hate crimes exploded and the ensuing global "war on terror" to root out jihadists created a "climate of discrimination, fear and intolerance," as one think tank described it, that surrounded people of Islamic faith in this country and lasted for years. Then, just as heightened anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. seemed to be subsiding, Donald Trump was elected president in 2016 on an agenda overtly hostile towards Muslims, and revved it up again.

It is the experience of coming of age in this post-9/11 environment, experts say, that drew a new generation of young Muslims to activism, and motivated them to use their voices in political and cultural arenas to debunk misinformation. That they've found a receptive audience beyond the Muslim community suggests to some observers that many Americans now understand that the anti-Islamic rhetoric they've been served in recent years is based on myths and untrue. As Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who in 2007 became the first Muslim sworn in as a member of Congress, tells Newsweek, "The haters have been proven to be liars."

Maybe. But trend data suggests the answer is not that simple and anti-Islamic sentiment remains a factor 20 years after 9/11. Anti-Muslim hate crimes, for instance, are second only to anti-Semitic incidents, FBI statistics show. And in a Gallup poll, one-third of Americans, and a full 62 percent of Republicans, said they'd never vote for a Muslim candidate for president, by far the least support for people of any religion in the survey.

Anti-Islamic sentiment remains a factor 20 years after 9/11. President Donald Trump's ban on travel from seven Muslim-majority countries didn't help (here, protestors make their feeling about the ban known). Jack Taylor/Getty

Is the recent rise of Muslim Americans to positions of prominence a temporary surge forged during the backlash of the Trump era or a permanent change in American consciousness? Are the constant, often viciously personal attacks on Representatives Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan—the most famous Muslims in American politics as well as two of the nation's most strident progressives—a last gasp of Islamophobia or proof that, in some quarters at least, it's never going away? If, in fact, the political and cultural shift toward Muslims has staying power, what will the impact be?

The answers are still unfolding. "Muslims are becoming more a part of the American tapestry, but they are still a marginalized group," says political scientist Youssef Chouhoud of Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia. "The question now is, OK, so you have these Muslims in public office, in the public eye, on commercials, on TV shows. But does it stick? That's TBD."

Identity Forged in Adversity

When the attacks by Al-Qaeda occurred 20 years ago, the makeup of the Muslim community in the U.S. was much different than it is today: significantly smaller, older, more conservative, less organized, and made up of more Black Americans and far fewer recent immigrants.

In 2001, roughly 1 million Muslims lived in the U.S., according to the Association of Religious Data Archives, versus 3.5 million recently. As a group, they formed a solid Republican voting bloc, with the immigrant community in particular drawn to the GOP's messages of self-reliance, small government and conservative social policies on issues like abortion and gay rights. George W. Bush won 72 percent of Muslim votes in 2000, according to the Council on American Islamic Relations, or CAIR; other polls put the figure lower by still showed a big GOP tilt. After 9/11 that support plummeted, with just 7 percent backing Bush in his 2004 face-off with Democrat John Kerry.

Party affiliation wasn't the only shift among Muslims in the U.S. in the post-9/11 years. Before the attacks, Muslim Americans seldom saw themselves as a single community bound by a common faith as much as a disparate collection of distinct ethnic groups—Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, Pakistani and Egyptian among many others—that kept to and fended for themselves, says Niloofar Haeri, chair of Islamic Studies in the anthropology department at Johns Hopkins University. The other large bloc of Muslims in the country were Black Americans who saw the Islam of Malcolm X and boxer Muhammed Ali as both a religion and a political identity used to advocate for the poor and marginalized. That application of the faith, says Haeri, unsettled many immigrant Muslims who came to the U.S. to escape theocracies.

Many Black Americans saw the Islam of Malcolm X (pictured here) and boxer Muhammed Ali as both a religion and a political identity used to advocate for the poor and marginalized. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty

Then came the ferocious backlash after the September 11 attacks, marked by a wave of physical and verbal assaults on Muslims and anyone who "looked" Muslim. According to the FBI, there were 28 reports of anti-Muslim hate crimes in 2000; in 2001, that number had climbed to nearly 500. Although then-President George W. Bush had initially urged people not to take out their fear and anger Muslim Americans, his administration later went on to surveil mosques and college Muslim organizations looking for terrorists and invaded Iraq in 2003 on later-debunked claims of involvement with Al-Qaeda and plans to build weapons of mass destruction. Many Christian religious leaders during this period made harsh anti-Islamic remarks as well.

Conservative politicians also spent several campaign cycles in the post-9/11 period ginning up public fear that Muslims wanted to impose Sharia in America—that is, turn religious strictures of Islam into laws akin to those of some Middle Eastern theocracies. "For a while Republicans were all about banning Sharia law, which doesn't exist anywhere in America that I'm aware of," Ellison says. "In another way, every Muslim does 'Sharia law' every day. When I pray, that's Sharia. When I fast for Ramadan, that's Sharia. When I don't eat pork, that's Sharia. And these are the people who say they defend religious freedom."

All of this stoked fear of unwarranted reprisals among Muslim Americans and helped forge a generation of young activists who are now winning political office from city council to Congress, Chouhoud says. By 2007, 84 percent of 12- to 18-year-old Muslim Americans said they had experienced at least one act of anti-Islamic discrimination in the prior year, a New York University study found. In 2009, more than 82 percent of Muslims in the U.S. reported feeling unsafe, an Adelphi University survey found.

Muslim Americans faced a choice: Grin and bear it or band together and respond, Haeri says. "One of the most consequential changes that happened in various Muslim communities post-9/11 was that those Muslims who were not religious and did not identify as Muslim before 9/11 were suddenly being treated as Muslims whether they wanted to be or not and were asked questions about Islam," Haeri recalls. "Muslim communities filled with newly self-identifying Muslims. There was a lot of soul searching: Why are we shunning this heritage entirely?"

Meanwhile, more religious Muslim Americans, especially the ones who fled autocratic regimes and failed economies, baffled over questions about their patriotism. "We had to redefine ourselves and push back against injustice—from our country, from the government, from the media, from popular culture," says Nihad Awad, co-founder and executive director of CAIR. "We felt the pain about 9/11 that everyone felt but more pain than many because we were blamed for what happened—something we had nothing to do with."

Adversity fused a far-flung gaggle of nationalities into a coalition of necessity, says Democratic Representative Andre Carson of Indiana, who in 2008 became the second Muslim elected Congress. "This role was paved decades ago by the indigenous African-American Muslim community, but 9/11 allowed the immigrant Muslim community to see that the African-American Muslim community was right all along in calling out racial injustices, calling out governmental excess as it relates to violations of civil liberties and spying on fellow U.S. citizens," says Carson, who is Black.

At the same time, throughout the Bush and Obama years, the pace of immigration to the U.S. from Muslim-majority nations in the Middle East, Asia and Africa surged. Between 2002 and 2016, the number of Muslim refugees accepted into U.S. rose 627 percent—from about 6,000 a year to almost 40,000—which, along with the highest birth rate of any religious group, caused the sharp increase in the Muslim population. The influx has since stopped, as the Trump administration cut the number of refugees accepted into the U.S. to an all-time low of fewer than 12,000 in total, almost all of whom were Christian, according to State Department data.

During the period, Muslim visibility in everyday life increased for many because of where they live now: the suburbs. Nearly half of mosques are now in bedroom communities outside major cities, up from 38 percent in 2010, according to a July report from the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, which researches trends in American Muslim life. At the same time, the actual number of mosques rose dramatically, more than doubling from 1,209 to 2,769 since 2000.

The number of mosques in the U.S. has more than doubled, to 2,769, since 2000. Here, an outdoor prayer event at Masjid Aqsa-Salam mosque, Manhattan's oldest West African mosque. Spencer Platt/Getty

"The age-old pattern of immigrants achieving financial success and moving away from cities seems to be repeating itself in the American Muslim community," ISPU notes.

By the election of Trump, who as a candidate in 2015 called for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States," the American Muslim community was bigger, brasher and uniformly unwilling to roll over. Indeed, observes MSNBC anchor Ali Velshi, Trump's effort to ostracize Muslims, and a subsequent rise in anti-Muslim rhetoric and hate crimes to levels not seen since 2001, lit a spark.

"Something is happening right now," says Velshi, who is believed to be the first Muslim to helm a cable network news program. "It feels like a flourishing of Muslims across industries and across platforms."

Running While Muslim

The arc of Sadaf Jaffer's adult life—from college freshman at Georgetown during 9/11 to the nation's first female Muslim mayor in 2019—offers a useful road map of what has happened to Muslims in U.S. politics over the past two decades and, particularly, recently.

The 38-year-old, who was born in Chicago to immigrants from Pakistan and Yemen, had planned to be a U.S. diplomat and interned at both the State Department and the Marine Corps. But she became increasingly distressed by the anti-Islam sentiment rising across the U.S. and, in 2007, shifted her focus, enrolling at Harvard to pursue a doctorate in philosophy focused on Islamic cultures in South Asia. Her goal: "Understanding Muslim societies better so I could teach about Muslim societies in their complexity."

By 2017, she was a professor at Princeton University so alarmed by the election of Donald Trump that she decided to go into politics by running for a seat on the Montgomery Township Committee, the governing council for a wealthy, fast-growing New Jersey burg of 24,000 residents about 20 miles north of Trenton. Even on such a small scale, the notion terrified her family. "My parents told me, 'Shouldn't we lie low and not draw attention to ourselves right now?' but I felt like if we don't stand up for our rights now, who's to say that we'll even have rights moving forward," Jaffer says.

Jaffer won that seat and, in 2019, was elevated to mayor. Her status as the nation's first female Muslim mayor, she says, was blared in foreboding tones across pro-Trump news sites and Twitter. "That caused an avalanche of hate mail—violent ones, too, about how all of us should be removed from the planet," she says.

It didn't deter her from seeking higher office. This June, she won the Democratic nomination for a seat in the New Jersey Assembly; if she wins this fall, she'll be the first Muslim (and first Asian American) in the Garden State's legislature. She is bracing for some anti-Muslim sentiment but also views her campaigns as a chance to debunk constituents' misconceptions about Islam.

"Those person-to-person connections are really important," she says. "They're about getting to know people as human beings."

If Jaffer wins, she'll follow on the success in the 2020 election that brought the first Muslim legislators to capitols of Delaware, Oklahoma, Colorado, Florida and Wisconsin, and the first re-election of Omar and Tlaib. There are other firsts likely to come this fall too; the top vote-getters in the August primaries for mayor of Detroit suburbs Dearborn, Dearborn Heights and Hamtramck—enclaves with large Muslim populations—were all Muslims.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi administers the oath of office to members earlier this year, including Representatives Andre Carson, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, three of only four Muslims who have served in Congress. Erin Scott/Getty

In all, a record 170 Muslim candidates were on ballots in 28 states in 2020, up from 57 in 2018, and 62 of them won. Exit polling showed that more than 1 million Muslims voted last year, also a record.

"When Trump won, it was a wake-up call for the community," says Wa'el Alzayat, the CEO of Emgage, an organization promoting civic engagement among Muslim American communities.

Also notable: Almost all of these winners are Millennials; Tlaib, at 45 and slightly older than that cohort, is an exception. And most of these Muslim politicans report being the target of some form of anti-Islam sentiment while running.

"They sent out emails connecting me with Ilhan Omar and accusing all the Muslim candidates running across the country of being Islamist or Jihadists," says Delaware state Representative Madinah Wilson-Anton, 27, who ousted a 20-year Democratic incumbent in 2020 to become her chamber's first Muslim. "I was door-knocking and someone was like, 'Go back to your country.'"

Wilson-Anton is not the only Muslim candidate whose religion is used by opponents as grounds to call their qualifications for office into question. In June, GOP Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia sent a fundraising email attacking Omar as a "terrorist-supporting member of the Jihad Squad." Sam Rasoul, the first Muslim to run for lieutenant governor in Virginia, was asked in May by a debate moderator whether he could reassure voters he would "represent all of them, regardless of faith or beliefs." And Joe Biden's nominee for deputy administrator of the Small Business Administration, health care executive Dilawar Syed, is in confirmation limbo after two GOP senators objected to the fact that he is on the board of Emgage, the Muslim nonprofit. (He says he'll resign if confirmed.)

In each of these recent cases, though, a broad spectrum from various religious and ideological groups have joined Muslims to object to how the candidates are being treated. An opponent of Rasoul's, for instant, lambasted the debate moderator from the stage for asking the question and social media scorn was so swift that an anchor for the TV station, WJLA, apologized that night on the air. In Syed's case, several Jewish groups are rallying to his side.

"Overall," says Emgage CEO Alzayat, "things are moving in the right direction."

People protest the Muslim travel ban outside of the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC on June 26, 2018. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty

A Growing Impact

In office, many of these legislators can point to measures influenced directly by their Muslim backgrounds. Wilson-Anton in June pushed through a new law requiring schools to excuse student absences for religious observances such as Muslim or Jewish holidays. Saqib Ali, who at age 31 in 2006 was elected Maryland's first Muslim state legislator, co-sponsored a law with a Jewish colleague allowing for the licensure of funeral directors who do not embalm bodies because observant members of both faiths do not do so. After someone left a slab of pork on a Muslim family's car in her town, Jaffer started the Montgomery Mosaic, a monthly series of community-wide events to combat hate crimes.

More broadly, Chouhoud says, having more Muslims in the halls of power has changed some conversations. In May, when violence erupted between Israel and Palestine, for example, several Democratic leaders in Washington expressed concern about Israel's aggressive response and the plight of Palestinians. That, he says, was due in part to the activism of Omar and Tlaib. "It's pretty undeniable that the presence of Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib in Congress has given voice to opinions that other Congresspeople in the past have either shied away from or found to be outside of the bounds of what they can actually say, even if they personally held those positions," he says.

Indeed, the congresswomen, both of whom declined Newsweek's requests for interviews, are considered inspirational trailblazers by many within the American Islamic community who see them exploding myths about Muslim women being docile and submissive, Haeri says. Even their differences—Omar wears a hijab, Tlaib is famous for her penchant for swearing—shows "the diversity of Muslim women in a way that surprises and educates a lot of people," Haeri says.

Democratic Representatives Rashida Tlaib of Michigan (left) and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota are considered inspirational trailblazers by many within the American Islamic community. Tom Williams/Getty

Virtually every Muslim elected to state legislatures—and all four who have ever been elected to Congress—are progressive Democrats; Carson, the Indiana congressman, was among the first elected officials to endorse Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a Democratic Socialist, for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. Sanders held firm to that support four years later; a CAIR survey in February 2020 found 39 percent of Muslim Democrats supported Sanders versus 27 percent for Biden. For many Americans, this alignment defies well-worn stereotypes about Muslims as extreme social conservatives who would not support a pro-choice, pro-LGBTQ Jewish candidate.

Yet the Omar-Tlaib approach is offensive and troubling for some politically conservative Muslims, who object to what they say is an underlying message that Muslims are badly-treated victims of bias. "The experience of American Muslims is one that's overwhelmingly positive," says Omar Qudrat, 40, of California who in 2018 was the first Muslim to win the GOP nomination for a seat in Congress. (He lost by 23 points.) "Many of us reject the victimhood narrative. Do we have problems? Absolutely. But it would be tragic for any young American Muslim to believe all they amount to is being a victim of this great country."

Qudrat and prominent Muslim conservative Zuhdi Jasser defend Trump's policies as being in the interest of national security and praise him for brokering treaties between Israel and Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. "I'm not embarrassed of my faith," says Jasser, a Phoenix physician appointed by Republican Senator Mitch McConnell in 2012 to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. "But I understand the mindset of a country that was attacked. Those wounds are still very deep."

Gold medalist, Dalilah Muhammad of the United States, poses on the podium during the medal ceremony for the Women's 400m Hurdles on Day 14 of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games at the Olympic Stadium on August 19, 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. David Ramos/Getty

There is an audience for this view: Trump modestly increased his share of the Muslim vote in 2020 to 17 percent from 13 percent in 2016, CAIR reports.

"Muslims are still a relatively socially conservative population," Chouhoud says. "Certain values and priorities do overlap between Muslims and Republicans. It's just that there's the sense that there is no place for Muslims within the Republican Party."

Jasser maintains the GOP is not as anti-Muslim as progressives believe, citing the confirmations earlier this summer of Lina Khan to chair the FTC and Judge Zahid Quraishi to the federal bench, by wide bipartisan margins. Awad, of CAIR, counters by citing Republican opposition to other Muslims nominated by Biden for positions within the administration, such as Reema Dudin as deputy director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs, and the long GOP-led delay on Syed's bid for an SBA post.

"To dismiss the rest of the Muslim community's concerns about discrimination, they must be living on the moon," Awad says. "I have not met a Muslims since 9/11 who has not experienced some form of discrimination."

Alzayat of Emgage, for one, hopes the GOP does, in fact, become more hospitable. "There will come a day when we have Muslim Republicans running, Muslim Democrats running, Muslim independents running, and they can have healthy disagreements about policies," Alzayat says. "That would be good for the community and good for democracy."

The Stars and the Crescent

This moment of ascendence for American Muslims is not only about political achievements. Popular culture, too, is seeing a sharp increase in Muslim representation, and the two trends feed each other. Movies and television offer familiarity that helps fuel acceptance, allowing many non-Muslim Americans who don't personally know anyone who practices Islam to see Muslim characters woven into the fabric of everyday life.

"It's an opportunity to create greater empathy for and less prejudice towards Muslims off-screen," says Arij Mikati of Pillars Fund, a Muslim philanthropy that next year will award $25,000 grants to 10 Muslim TV or movie storytellers.

Among those helping to drive this new level of cultural visibility: Ramy Youssef, who won a Golden Globe and a Peabody Award in 2020 for Ramy, a half-hour Hulu dramedy about a first-generation Muslim-American millennial struggling with his faith. Also in the cast for the show's second season was Mahershala Ali, the first Muslim actor to win an Academy Award, for his supporting roles in Moonlight (2016) and Green Book (2018). Disney+ is due this fall to drop Ms. Marvel, introducing Marvel's first Muslim superhero, a shapeshifting, bubble-gum-chewing Pakistani-American teen from New Jersey. And there are past and present recent series like Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj and United States of Al, a CBS sitcom about a U.S. war veteran who helps his Afghan interpreter move to Ohio.

The Netflix series "Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj" is one of a number of shows that helped to bring Muslim actors and storytellers a new level of cultural visibility. Matt Doyle/Getty

Jaffer, the Montgomery Township mayor, says she's also noticed greater Muslim visibility on kids' shows like Sesame Street and Peg Plus Cat, and it's extended to her daughter's first-grade classroom, where the teacher this spring read a book about Ramadan to students. "Those things seem like little victories, that our celebrations are being recognized as part of America,'" she says. "It's nice, because as a child, I had to explain everything. Just imagine asking a six-year-old to answer, 'What is Christmas?'"

Some Muslim actors and celebrities say they try to advance the ball, talking openly about their faith and cultural identity when asked—or not asked. Adnan Virk, while still at ESPN in 2016, recalls being asked to help anchor coverage after boxer Muhammed Ali died. "One of our producers called and said, 'Hey, we don't know anything about Islamic funerals. Could you come in?'" Virk recalls. "That made sense. They wouldn't know. Open casket, closed casket? What prayers are they reciting? Why is he draped in white? That was a cool moment."

Comic Negin Farsad, a frequent panelist on the NPR quiz show Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!, says she takes "any occasion I can when it fits organically in the joke to make mention of being Muslim. I do that to let people know that one of their favorite radio comedy shows has a Muzz on it and it's cool."

And MSNBC's Velshi says he intentionally tries to bring on guests and experts who are Muslims and of other marginalized communities to talk about topics unrelated to their identities. "It's the simplest thing in the world to do to break down barriers, to cause people to open their minds," Velshi says. "I want my roster of guests to look like the full breadth of America. Familiarity breeds understanding."

But while there are undeniably more Muslims in higher visibility and breakthrough roles, experts in and outside of the American Islamic community note that the numbers and depictions still don't come close to fair representation. A USC Annenberg study this June of 200 popular global movies from 2017 to 2019 found that just 1.1 percent of the speaking characters in U.S. films and 1.6 percent overall were Muslim, still frequently stereotyped as outsiders, threatening or subservient, particularly to white characters.

"More than half of the primary and secondary Muslim characters were immigrants, migrants, or refugees, which consistently rendered Muslims as 'foreign,'" says Al-Baab Khan, one of the study authors. "Film audiences only see a narrow portrait of this community, rather than viewing Muslims as they are: business owners, friends and neighbors whose presence is part of modern life."

Islamic Center Of America on July 17, 2014 in Dearborn, Michigan. Raymond Boyd/Getty

A Long Road Ahead

The challenges Muslim Americans face in popular culture in many ways mirror the political environment: The gains are real, increasingly visible and more prominent, but for now at least, still relatively modest—and, Muslim activists worry, too easily at risk of being erased.

They point out, for instance, that there's never been a Muslim in the U.S. Senate, elected as governor or appointed to a Cabinet position. Another major terrorist attack involving extremist Muslims, a successful White House comeback for Trump or the election of a similarly-minded candidate could once again sour public opinion or create new dangers.

"Trump was able to capitalize on bigotry, on ignorance and racism, on fear," said CAIR's Awad. "He mobilized it, weaponized it, made it official. His impact is still with us. And he might come back."

Still, the progress thus far has Muslim leaders cautiously optimistic and thirsting for more. Haeri hopes to see more taught in schools about Islam's history, noting the contributions of Muslim scientists and artists are absent from the education of most American children. Carson, the Indiana congressman, looks forward to the day he can donate to the first Muslim to run for president. Farsad just wants better roles to play. "I'm both ashamed and unashamed to admit that I have auditioned for the wife of a terrorist," she says. "That's what was available."

"We've been so underrepresented for so long, we're just working to even out the odds," Emgage's Alazayat says. "The question is not, 'Wow, look at how much we've done.' We should expect more."

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ladystylestores · 4 years

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Why gay-friendly Taiwan is a creative haven for LGBTQ art

Written by Oscar Holland, CNN

Around this time last year, Taiwan was gearing up to host Asia’s largest ever Pride parade having just become the first place on the continent to legalize same-sex marriage.

More than 4,000 gay couples have since taken advantage of the landmark legislation. But beyond being able to tie the knot, the island’s LGBTQ communities are feeling the positive effects of the law in various other ways.

For Taiwan’s LGBTQ visual artists, for instance, the past year has heralded new forms of creative expression, according to photographer Su Misu, whose explorations of gender identity, sexuality and bondage range from candid nudes to fantastical subversions of religious imagery.

“More and more people are exhibiting their own self-identity, using their creative voice to express individuality,” she said over email. “People are also beginning to construct the histories of the LGBTQI movement in Taiwan, calling for others to participate and study it. All this can help the gay community, which focuses on different issues, to thrive.”

“I am a fake but my heart is true,” a 2016 image by Taiwanese photographer Su Misu, whose work explores gender identity, sexuality and bondage. Credit: Su Misu/Chi-Wen Gallery

Even before the marriage legislation, LGBTQ artists in Taiwan enjoyed a level of creative freedom denied to their counterparts in many parts of Asia.

Beyond the legal rights of expression enshrined in its constitution, Taiwan ranked 34th in the world (and 2nd in Asia, after Thailand) in a gay happiness index based on the experiences of 115,000 men from around the world. A recent report on workplace equality by the island’s oldest registered LGBTQ organization, Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association, found that the territory’s art sector was among the industries in which respondents felt “most comfortable” about coming out to co-workers.

Coupled with the island’s generous public arts funding, this atmosphere has produced a welcoming environment for LGBTQ art. And in 2017, just months after Taiwan’s constitutional court paved the way for the marriage law by declaring same-sex marriage a legal right, the gay art scene was afforded rare mainstream attention with the exhibition “Spectrosynthesis — Asian LGBTQ Issues and Art Now.”

Ku Fu-Sheng’s 1983 “The Room at the Top of the Stairs,” on show at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, in 2017. Credit: Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei/Sunpride Foundation

Billed as Asia’s first major LGBTQ art show, the program featured over 50 works by 22 artists (from places including Hong Kong, mainland China and Singapore, as well as the Asian diaspora) addressing a range of topics, from forbidden love to sexual violence. Staging the show at a large public institution, Taipei’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), meant that LGBTQ art had a rare opportunity to reach mainstream audiences, according to Patrick Sun, founder of the non-profit organization behind the show, Sunpride Foundation.

“If we do a show at a private gallery then I’m sure all my friends would come,” he said in a phone interview from Hong Kong, where he’s based. “But we want to talk to the general public.”

A ‘political victory’

For one of the show’s participants, 44-year-old avant-garde filmmaker Su Hui-Yu (no relation to Su Misu), the show represented a “political victory” that proved especially heartening for young artists.

“In Taiwan, it represented the changing of the wave (that) even a public museum would love to curate the show. It’s more symbolic in a political dimension than in (an) artistic one. But I think it encouraged art students a lot.”

A still from “Nue Quan” by Su Hui-Yu, an artist who explores LGBTQ issues and themes in his work. Credit: Su Hui-Yu / Double Square Gallery

For Su’s generation, however, the gay art scene has long been flourishing. Although straight, his work has often explored LGBTQ topics. One of his most recent projects saw Su film unrealized scenes from “The Glamorous Boys of Tang,” a homoerotic fantasy movie featuring orgies, killings and an exorcism, that was released without parts of the original screenplay, as Su believes they were deemed inappropriate in conservative 1980s Taiwan.

“There was already a strong tradition of queer study (and) queer art in Taiwan since the 1990s (and) since the lifting of martial law,” he said, over email, of the repressive military rule that formally ended in 1987.

A still from filmmaker Su Hui-Yu’s project “The Glamorous Boys of Tang,” which was based on unrealized scenes from the screenplay of a 1985 homoerotic fantasy movie of the same name. Credit: Su Hui-Yu

It was this decade that saw the opening of LGBTQ-friendly venues like IT Park and the Gin Gin Bookstore, which has housed a gallery space in Taipei for more than 20 years, alongside an explosion in gay literature, nightlife and academic discourse. But while gay artists were free to practice their art, conservative attitudes persisted.

When same-sex marriage legislation was first proposed in Taiwan in the early 2000s, it faced vociferous opposition. So-called conversion therapy, a pseudoscience that attempts to “treat” homosexuality, remained prevalent (it was only formally banned in 2018). Organizers of a 2003 exhibition of works made by gay artists during consensual art therapy even felt it necessary to clarify in the show’s notes: “This exhibition is not to show LGBT people need to be cured.”

Participants at Taiwan’s annual gay pride parade pictured outside the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei in October 2019. Credit: Sam Yeh/AFP/Getty Images

In the euphoric aftermath of the passing of the same-sex marriage bill in 2019, it was easy to forget that 67% of voters had, in fact, rejected the idea in a referendum a year earlier. The Taiwanese government pressed ahead with the law, though some rights enjoyed by heterosexual couples, such as cross-national marriage, are still prohibited.

A scene from digital artist Wang Jun-Jieh’s “Passion,” which was screened at the “Spectrosynthesis” show in Taipei in 2017. Credit: Wang Jun-Jieh

For 36-year-old photographer 526 (a pseudonym pronounced “five two six”) it was family pressures rather than societal ones that stopped him from openly practicing his art, which includes intimate portraits of trans and LGBTQ subjects taken in their own bedrooms (pictured top).

“Even today, my parents are still afraid to tell their friends what I am doing,” he said over email. “It’s frustrating that even your parents can’t see your value, or tell others that their son is gay. I hope they can be brave, because … we need stand out and let all the people know: We are here.”

Nonetheless, he said that visibility of LGBTQ art is getting “better and better,” and that Taiwan’s progressive environment “makes it a good place to make art.” He pinpoints the legalization of same-sex marriage as not only a landmark in his artistic identity, but in his life more generally.

“I couldn’t have imagined that (the law) would happen in my lifetime,” he said. “If I’d known this would happen, I would probably not have stayed in the closet for 31 years.”

A beacon for Asia

The relative freedoms of Taiwan’s LGBTQ artists come into sharp focus when compared to their Asian neighbors. In Japan and South Korea, there are no real legal restrictions, though conservative attitudes prevent their respective scenes from thriving in quite the same way. At the other end of the spectrum, homosexuality remains a punishable crime in parts of Southeast Asia, including Malaysia, Brunei and some areas of Indonesia.

In between, there are a number of places that ostensibly allow gay art to be displayed, but where censorship remains a significant barrier. In mainland China, for instance, authorities have been known to periodically close down LGBTQ exhibitions without explanation.

Meanwhile in Singapore, where artists are permitted to exhibit LGBTQ-themed work despite the fact that gay sex is illegal (a law that is rarely enforced), censorship is also common. In 2016, authorities removed a number of items, including sex toys, from artist Loo Zihan’s exhibition “Queer Objects,” at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, due to obscenity laws. (A few years earlier, Loo responded to an age restriction placed on one of his shows by photocopying visitors’ ID cards and incorporating them into the displays.)

The idea that Taiwan can serve as a beacon for the rest of Asia was a key idea behind “Spectrosynthesis.” Speaking to CNN at the time, curator Sean Hu expressed his hope that the Taipei show would have “a ripple effect across Asian society.”

Installation view of Hou Chun-Ming’s “Man Hole” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, for the show “Spectrosynthesis.” Credit: Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei/Sunpride Foundation

Indeed, a second edition of the show has since been held in Thailand — again at a mainstream, publicly-funded venue, the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre — featuring almost three times the number of artists. A third is planned for Hong Kong in 2022, with Sun expressing hopes for them becoming a “new normal” in other Asian cities.

With Taiwan attempting to establish itself as a commercial arts destination (the launch of the Taipei Dangdai art fair in 2019 signaled that the island may hope to challenge Hong Kong’s domination of the Asian market), the island’s gay artists could, in turn, benefit from the growing international profile.

One such artist, Tzeng Yi-Hsin said she experienced an uptick in international inquiries after two of her images were featured in “Spectrosynthesis.”

“I didn’t get a lot of response or feedback from inside Taiwan, but right after the show, I received more interest and approaches from people outside,” she said, citing interest from Japanese collectors and Western media.

Tzeng Yi-Hsin’s “Olympia,” based on a Édouard Manet painting of the same name, is one of a series of pictures that saw the artist and photographer reenact famous paintings from art history. Credit: Tzeng Yi-Hsin

Another shot from Tzeng’s series recreates Manet’s “Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe” (The Luncheon on the Grass). Credit: Tzeng Yi-Hsin

However, Tzeng also expressed reservations about the exhibition’s heavy focus on male artists. Only three of the 22 participating artists were female, with just one identifying as transgender. (Sun welcomed the critique, saying he “took it to heart” and is ensuring that his foundation makes “a conscious effort to include female and transgender artists.”)

For the 41-year-old artist and photographer, this curatorial decision represents a wider problem facing the arts in Taiwan: That gay male artists continue to take a disproportionate chunk of the limelight.

“The majority of curators and collectors are male, and, from my perspective, they are more interested in gay male art,” she said, adding: “We all notice that there are a lot of gay artists (in Taiwan), but if a curator asks, ‘Who’s a lesbian artist?’ No one knows.”

Eschewing labels

According to Su Misu, an oversimplification of LGBTQ issues is another obstacle facing Taiwan’s gay artists. She identified a variety of difficult or challenging topics that remain hard to address in mainstream forums.

“Issues deemed ‘taboo’ need more visibility, including drug abuse, AIDS, sex workers, transgender people, disabled people and BDSM practitioners,” she said, adding that exploring these topics could help challenge “inaccurate stereotypes about sex and gender.”

Art that conforms with the public’s existing ideas about LGBTQ communities will, she said “only reinforce labeling minority groups.”

Pride 2020: A history of the rainbow flag

Even the concept of LGBTQ art itself may be a generalization said Tzeng, who doesn’t recognize the existence of a gay art “scene,” per se, in Taipei. While some of her work directly addresses LGBTQ themes, much of it is unrelated to her sexuality, such as her iconoclastic images defacing classic paintings or photographs of pop cultural and political figures like former Taiwanese leader Chiang Kai-shek.

“I never identified myself as a gay artist. I know my identity, but I’m just doing my own work.”

Tzeng’s “My Dear Lovers” series saw her “defacing” various images and photographs. Credit: Tzeng Yi-Hsin

It’s a point also raised by Sun who, despite organizing LGBTQ-themed exhibitions, said that artists’ primary concern is “not to be labeled in expressing what they want to say.” But whether that means organizations like his might, in an ideal future, no longer need to exist, is a moot point given the widespread challenges facing Asia’s gay artists, he said.

“In the next 10 or 15 years we have a lot of work to do,” he said. “So we can worry about that when the world has changed!”

Top image: An intimate portrait by Taipei-based photographer 526.

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wineanddinosaur · 4 years

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14 Things You Should Know About Stolichnaya Vodka

Stolichnaya (stow-LEECH-na-ya), better known simply as Stoli, is a familiar bottle on the liquor store shelf, and one of the top-selling spirits brands in the world. But there’s a lot more to the clear spirit than meets the eye — such as a murder mystery, a Russian or not-so-Russian heritage, and a checkered past with the LGBTQ community.

Below, here are 14 more things you should know about Stolichnaya.

Yes, it’s Russian.

Stolichnaya was trademarked in 1938, but it’s origins are a bit mysterious, and also austere (having a period of rigid state control in its past). The brand was born sometime around the turn of the 20th century, when the Russian government took control of vodka production and started distilling Stolichnaya in the Moscow State Wine Warehouse No. 1, also known as the saddest name for a distillery in the world. It didn’t stay in the state’s control. By 1999, it was being produced privately.

Born in Russia, made in Latvia.

Stolichnaya is Russian by name, but it’s not totally Russian. It’s produced both in and outside of Russia. The wheat used to make the spirit is grown in Russia at a place called Tambov, and partially distilled at a facility called Talvis. However, the major work is done at a distillery called Latvijas Balzams in Riga, Latvia.

Stoli is produced by an anti-establishment Russian billionaire.

You know how Whole Foods is owned by Amazon, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, who is in turn owned by one of the Kings of Jupiter (or probably something like that)? That’s somewhat similar to how Stolichnaya works.

The brand falls under Stoli Group, which in turn functions under the SPI Group, which is owned by Yuri Shefler. Shefler is a billionaire who has had some colorful vocal disagreements with the Russian government, including with Vladimir Putin himself. (When you’re that rich, you can get into arguments with governments and dictators, instead of the guy who made your sandwich wrong.)

Stoli’s parent-company founder may have been framed for murder… by Putin.

SPI Group purchased Stolichnaya in 1999. SPI Group is owned by Russian billionaire Yuri Shefler. Over the course of his opinionated billionaire-ship, Shefler came into the crosshairs of the Russian government, including none other than Vladimir Putin. Shefler even stepped down from the rolls of his own company, SPI, because of all the heat thrown his way by Putin and crew. Among the (maybe apocryphal) accusations: that Shefler had once “[threatened] to kill the former Russian Agriculture Minister.”

The LGBTQ community once boycotted Stoli, but it was kind of by accident.

Not very long ago, there was a big, misplaced anti-Stolichnaya boycott on behalf of LGBTQ rights. In 2013, Vladimir Putin passed the so-called “gay propaganda” law, supposedly “aimed at protecting children from information promoting the denial of traditional family values,” a very thinly veiled tactic to enforce the heteronormative lifestyle by banning visibility (and viability) of the LGBTQ lifestyle.

LGBTQ activists rightly responded with protests and product boycotts, but incorrectly included Stoli on the list, considering it a Russian product — when in fact it’s been made in a historic distillery in Latvia since 1948 and is owned by a man who is Russian but constantly at odds with Putin himself (see: framed for murder, above).

Stoli made it right, anyhow.

It co-sponsors a next-level LGBTQ bartending competition. Founded in 2013 by Stoli’s LGBTQ ambassador Patrik Gallineaux, the Key West Cocktail Classic has grown into a nationwide LGBTQ bartending competition yes, but it’s also a massive declaration of presence and pride for the LGBTQ/gay-bar community at large. The competition takes place over the year, with bartenders nationwide competing for a chance to make it to the finals at Key West Pride.

And while no bartending competition is ever easy, the Key West Classic adds elements of stagecraft and also asks participants to incorporate elements of an annual theme. (This year: The Stolimpics.) Add precision timing, humor, glamor, a Real Housewives of Dallas and Lance Bass, and it’s a next-level competition. Now we just have to hope we’re de-quarantined by the time Key West Pride rolls around this June (alternately, we’re happy to watch remotely as bartenders do their thing, as long as at-home Stoli supplies don’t go the way of TP).

Like delicious Borodinsky bread, it’s made with wheat and rye.

When you take a bite of traditional Russian Borodinsky bread, you absolutely taste the wheat and rye, and its magical mixture of dark and sour and spicy flavors. However, considering how vodka is made, it’s arguable whether Stoli’s base material of wheat and rye has an impact on the final flavor of the distillate. But in the spirit of pairing food and beverage with ties to the same region, this is the only time we’ll recommend vodka as a possible pairing for toast.

With all that wheat, it’s still gluten-free.

Yes, this vodka is made from wheat and yes, like Smirnoff, Stolichnaya likes to tout the fact that it’s gluten-free. How can that be? Since the distillation process involves repeatedly stripping away everything but ethanol, what remains in a bottle of wheat-based Stoli has as much to do with a grain of wheat as something Blue Razzberry-flavored has to do with a raspberry bush.

That said, although it’s generally accepted to be gluten-free, some gluten-sensitive people still report negative effects after drinking gluten-free booze, so it’s best to steer clear if it’s a sensitive issue. Remember, you can make vodka with anything.

Speaking of Blue Razz…

Stoli’s lineup of flavors reads like a tipsy trip to the produce department that trails off into the candy aisle. There’s Lime, Cucumber, Blueberi, Razberi (their spelling); and there’s also Salted Caramel and “Stoli Hot” (which has smoky Jalapeno heat and kind of begs to be tested out in some sort of Slavic spicy Margarita). Stoli also has a new gluten-free vodka, which it’s calling “THE Vodka,” certifiably gluten-free with 88 percent corn and 12 percent buckwheat in the grain bill. (Stoli also makes non-alcoholic Ginger Beer, which is presumably for the next day’s hangover cure.)

We once traded a bunch of Pepsi for a bunch of Stoli.

In the 1970s, PepsiCo penned an agreement with the Soviet Union to ship its cola concentrate to be bottled there in exchange for increasing U.S. imports of Stoli vodka. The deal was signed in 1972, and bottling began in 1974. PepsiCo later doubled down on the deal when, in 1990, the trade agreement expanded and increased retail sales of Pepsi in the Soviet Union and Stoli vodka in the U.S. According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, PepsiCo called it “the biggest, longest-running agreement ever concluded by the Kremlin with a U.S. firm.”

And so, that’s how Pepsi became the first American product to be made and sold in the Soviet Union. It’s also how Stoli made massive inroads into the U.S. market in the 1970s (which might explain the emergence of the terrycloth bodysuit).

It was the first Russian vodka export.

Witness this uber-Russian Stoli ad which, despite appearing like Cold War-era propaganda, apparently aired in 2007. According to the ad, Stolichnaya was the first exported Russian vodka; per the above PepsiCo agreement, Stoli was shipped to the U.S. beginning in 1974 in exchange for Pepsi.

It’s made with artesian water. That’s not really important.

OK, to clarify: Artesian water is a real thing. Geology.com describes it as water that’s more the result of “an interesting geological situation” than anything chemically unique or delicious. However, considering artesian water has tremendous interaction with Russian rock and soil, there’s something to be said for the idea that it transmits elements of the strong, hard Russian turf to the finished vodka. (Is there a Russian word for terroir?)

Its many cameos include a James Bond movie, and a very uncomfortable Eminem/Rihanna music video.

Not every Bond favors Stolichnaya (we get it, Craig, you’re smoldering and different). But the one who did — Roger Moore — liked it a lot. In “A View to Kill,” he drinks some Stoli in an iceberg submarine, because that’s a thing, after taking a microchip out of the body of his fellow agent in Siberia (and that’s all within the first 10 minutes). AbFab fans already know that Stolichnaya is Patsy’s favored 11 a.m. tipple.

A bottle of Stoli also gets a (fun?) cameo in Eminem and Rihanna’s “Love the Way You Lie” music video (it’s around 2:00 when a former Hobbit goes to steal a bottle).

Stoli makes regular, anachronistic appearances in ‘Mad Men.’

Roger Sterling was a fan of Stolichnaya (he even listened to the stuff). But the action of “Mad Men” took place in the 1960s and Stolichnaya didn’t make it to America until the great Pepsi-Stoli swap of 1974 (see above). So every appearance of the bottle was a little delicious oopsies. Or else, like so many characters involved in the making of “Mad Men,” they just stopped caring.

The article 14 Things You Should Know About Stolichnaya Vodka appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/stolichnaya-vodka-elit-stoli-guide/

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isaiahrippinus · 4 years

Text

14 Things You Should Know About Stolichnaya Vodka

Below, here are 14 more things you should know about Stolichnaya.

Yes, it’s Russian.

Born in Russia, made in Latvia.

Stoli is produced by an anti-establishment Russian billionaire.

Stoli’s parent-company founder may have been framed for murder… by Putin.

The LGBTQ community once boycotted Stoli, but it was kind of by accident.

Stoli made it right, anyhow.

Like delicious Borodinsky bread, it’s made with wheat and rye.

With all that wheat, it’s still gluten-free.

Speaking of Blue Razz…

We once traded a bunch of Pepsi for a bunch of Stoli.

It was the first Russian vodka export.

It’s made with artesian water. That’s not really important.

Its many cameos include a James Bond movie, and a very uncomfortable Eminem/Rihanna music video.

A bottle of Stoli also gets a (fun?) cameo in Eminem and Rihanna’s “Love the Way You Lie” music video (it’s around 2:00 when a former Hobbit goes to steal a bottle).

Stoli makes regular, anachronistic appearances in ‘Mad Men.’

The article 14 Things You Should Know About Stolichnaya Vodka appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/stolichnaya-vodka-elit-stoli-guide/ source https://vinology1.tumblr.com/post/617552308339949568

0 notes

johnboothus · 4 years

Text

14 Things You Should Know About Stolichnaya Vodka

Below, here are 14 more things you should know about Stolichnaya.

Yes, it’s Russian.

Born in Russia, made in Latvia.

Stoli is produced by an anti-establishment Russian billionaire.

Stoli’s parent-company founder may have been framed for murder… by Putin.

The LGBTQ community once boycotted Stoli, but it was kind of by accident.

Stoli made it right, anyhow.

Like delicious Borodinsky bread, it’s made with wheat and rye.

With all that wheat, it’s still gluten-free.

Speaking of Blue Razz…

We once traded a bunch of Pepsi for a bunch of Stoli.

It was the first Russian vodka export.

It’s made with artesian water. That’s not really important.

Its many cameos include a James Bond movie, and a very uncomfortable Eminem/Rihanna music video.

A bottle of Stoli also gets a (fun?) cameo in Eminem and Rihanna’s “Love the Way You Lie” music video (it’s around 2:00 when a former Hobbit goes to steal a bottle).

Stoli makes regular, anachronistic appearances in ‘Mad Men.’

The article 14 Things You Should Know About Stolichnaya Vodka appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/stolichnaya-vodka-elit-stoli-guide/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/14-things-you-should-know-about-stolichnaya-vodka

0 notes