Johnny Weir: To Russia With Love

In the media frenzy leading up to the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, LGBT athletes and activists must choose whether to risk their own safety by speaking out against Russia's anti-gay laws. Cameras follow the experiences of outspoken figure skater and commentator Johnny Weir, tennis legend and official U.S. Olympic delegate Billie Jean King, as well as several openly gay Olympic hopefuls and Russian LBGT activists.

You can watch it here - Fagburn has no idea what it's like.

PS Unfortunately EPIX is only available in the United States and its territories.

Update: 'I wanted to have more of a complicated perspective on Russia from a gay sports celebrity who loves Russia and didn’t think of Russia in terms of binaries, like ‘Russia = bad for gays’ and leave it at that,” director and activist Noam Gonick on the Daily Beast.

AMERICAN GAYS NOT LIKE COMPLICATED! MUST BOMB RUSSIA! BURN JOHNNY WEIR! UGG! 

Johnny Weir: It Is With Great Sadness...

It is with great sadness that I announce that my husband and I are no longer together. My heart hurts, and I wish him well.
— Johnny Weir (@JohnnyGWeir) March 19, 2014

Love you lots, Johnny!
My thoughts are with you both at this difficult time. x

Johnny Weir: Sponsored Content

Gotta love Johnny Weir.
Bashing bigots, and winding-up all those butt-hurting queer nation ny masc fascists, and making the otherwise frigid Winter Olympics all worthwhile.
Go Johnny go!
x

Sochi Olympics: Media Message Board Bingo!

Guardian.

When leaving comments about this story on any social media don't forget you win points for using any of these words and phrases...

Hitler (10 points)
Nazis (9)
Death Camps/Auschwitz (8)
Apartheid/South Africa (7)
Johnny Weir/Quisling (6)
Jesse Owens/Munich Olympics (5)
Imagine if this had happened to black people! (4)
Boycott/Vodka (3)
Backwards/Uncivilised (2)
Wibble (1)

If you need any help in how to sound like a mad gay hysteric online, have a look at this masterclass after a recent Queerty story about Johnny Weir!
First they came for the American figure skaters...

PS Interesting report by BBC Monitoring on the rise of homophobia in the Russian media.

Sochi Olympics: Take That Putin!

In a move interpreted as a protest of Russia's antigay laws, neither the president, the vice president, nor their wives will be in the U.S. delegations to Sochi, but some out athletes will.

President Obama sent a strong message to Russia today with the announcement of the U.S. delegations to the Winter Olympics in Sochi — they will not include the president, the vice president, their wives, or any current cabinet member, but it will include some openly gay athletes...

Legendary tennis star and former Olympic coach Billie Jean King, an out lesbian, will be part of the opening ceremony’s delegation. Caitlin Cahow, a two-time Olympic medalist in ice hockey who recently came out as lesbian, will be at the closing ceremony....

The lineup is being seen as a protest against Russia’s antigay laws and general climate of homophobia. “This marks the first Olympics since the 2000 Sydney Summer Games that a U.S. president, vice president, first lady or former president has not been a member of the delegation for the opening ceremony,” USA Today notes. 

Obama did not address the matter in the announcement of Olympics attendees, but he has previously expressed strong disapproval of Russia’s antigay policies...

The Advocate.

Bit confused here.

If "Obama did not address the matter in the announcement of Olympics attendees", then how does that send "a strong message to Russia"? *

It's great that Bille Jean King is going, and of course the legendary Caitlin Cahow!
Though gold medal-winning gay Winter Olympian, Johnny Weir, would have been a far more appropriate choice, no?
And I'm sure Barack Obama does think homophobia is a bad thing, but maybe Obama isn't going cause it's just not that important.

The opening of a Winter Olympics is hardly the funeral of Nelson Mandela - nobody expected half of the world's leaders and heads of state to be there.

Obama didn't attend the 2012 London Olympics either, maybe that was one of these "secret protests", too?
And if "this marks the first Olympics since the 2000 Sydney Summer Games that a U.S. president, vice president, first lady or former president has not been a member of the delegation for the opening ceremony", can someone remind me what the huge diplomatic row between the USA and Australia was then?
Must have been pretty serious.
It should be obvious even to the most braindrowned that the US has been highlighting and foregrounding Russian homophobia over that of all other countries for crude propaganda reasons - the 'civilised' west takes on the 'backwards' Russian bear etc - but don't you think President Obama's actual beef with Putin right now is not the gay thing, but new Cold War battles like Snowden, Syria, Iran and Ukraine?

It's politically illiterate and ridiculously homocentric to claim Obama's no-show as a great victory for #teamgay.

Oh well, at least the whole "Obama's not going! But he's sending a delegation!" conundrum will make the "Boycott Sochi!" berks brains EXPLODE!

* Update: 'A statement from the White House said President Obama's schedule doesn't allow him to travel to Sochi "President Obama is extremely proud of our U.S. athletes and looks forward to cheering them on from Washington," the statement said. "He knows they will showcase to the world the best of America - diversity, determination and teamwork."' USA Today. 

Graham Norton: Notes On Camp

Does he think of himself as camp? “Yeah.”

Has he always been? “Yes. But I didn’t always see myself as that. It’s a much harder thing to accept than being gay. Gay is easy. Being camp is difficult in that it comes with judgment all round. That moment when you realise that you are quite fey and quite camp, it’s a difficult one because these are not qualities that are admired by anybody. As you move forward you can own it and camp it up to the hilt or you can try and tone it down.”

When he started doing stand-up he played up to it. Norton remembers seeing a programme where young gay men in Brighton criticised him for not being a very good role model. “Bless these boys, they were so camp and it broke my heart because I kind of thought, 'I was you’. And in a way it’s about self-loathing, the dislike of campness. Because actually the people who dislike it are normally quite camp. And it’s sad that every gay personal ad is all 'straight-acting’. That’s a weird thing for a sexuality to be based on. Something else.”

Graham Norton profiled in the Telegraph.

Compare and contrast to self-styled "masc" gay and all-purpose pouty right-wing shitbag, Michael Lucas writing recently...

Russians love Johnny Weir. He’s their kind of gay: Liberace of the ice. He’s the “fabulous” gay, the mascot, the gay who knows his place and stays in it. (Weir waited until publishing a memoir in 2011 to admit that he was gay at all, which everyone already knew.) The Russians don’t mind token flamers like Weir; what scares them are everyday people who happen to be gay. They’re scared of homosexuality becoming normal, not staying outrageous like Weir.

Oh Michael, who wants to be "normal", if it means being boring and annoying like you?

PS Seriously thinking about starting a new Twitter account, From The Gay Media Message Boards... 

Just seen on Queerty; "WTF so many feminine creatures? Gay=/=woman".

Russia: The Empire Strikes Back!

L: Bad but unboring Russian activist holds easily comprehensible sign, Moscow, September 25; R: Good but boring Russian activists hold signs nobody cares about, Moscow, September 24. Police equally unimpressed.

John Aravosis published an article about Nikolai Alekseev’s latest Moscow protest on his blog today. It’s interesting how he excuses doing this. He objects to other media covering Alekseev (“I’ve noticed some top gay ‘news’ sites continuing to go to the anti-Semite Alexeyev for comment”) but not to himself covering Alekseev. He squares the circle by pretending that Alekseev wasn’t behind the demonstration (“it’s unfortunate that the protesters included in their group known anti-Semite, Nikolai Alexeyev“) when of course Alekseev didn’t simply happen along for the ride, he organized the whole thing. It’s all a bit like: I didn’t want to show you Britney Spears’ privates on my blog, people, it’s just that they walked right onto my computer screen.

The truth is, it’s much more sexy and clickworthy, from an American perspective, to run photos of Alekseev holding an catchy English-language sign (no Google Translate needed!) and getting chased by police, than photos of other Russians holding up Russian slogans about substantive things like the fate of Russia that only Russians care about. It would be nice if Aravosis would admit this — and admit there’s a symbiotic relation between the Alekseev lust for controversy and the Aravosis lust for blog hits. It would spare us all the denials...

Bull-fighter Scott Long - the writer and campaigner who's worked together with LGBT Russians for Human Rights Watch - writes perceptively, yet again, on his excellent blog, A Paper Bird, on the strange priorities of the US/UK media in the debate about LGBT Russians, and the hypocrisies of the likes of AmericaBlogGay's Michael Aravosis - brave champion of the far-right, racist and Zionist, Michael Lucas.
In a companion piece yesterday, In Russia They Resist Too, Long asks why a one-man shouty interruption at an opera house in New York "in solidarity with LGBT Russians" got so much media coverage here, while a protest in Moscow against homophobia in schools got next-to zero.

"There was a demonstration in Moscow too yesterday – even if nobody in New York paid much attention. You can demonstrate in Moscow: the LGBT and democracy movements in Russia may be in retreat but are not silent or submissive. This is important to understand, since the tendency now is to paint them as pure victims who can’t say anything for themselves."

Note also how on the day of the #Russia4Love protests earlier this month, an action outside the Russian Embassy in London, and ones in other cities around the world, got massive coverage - while the infinitely more meaningful and important protests in 14 Russian cities by your actual LGBT Russians was ignored.

Scott Long reprints this photo from the NYC Met protest and comments...

"We all know Pastor Niemoller’s moving message. Yet here it isn’t true. They didn’t come for the gays first. Putin came for the Chechens first (actually, Yeltsin did before him); for the journalists; for the odd oligarch and whistleblower; for the punk rock feminists and the environmentalists; for the protest marchers; and then, somewhere down the list, he came for the gays. Where were we when the truth-seekers were slaughtered, when Pussy Riot went to prison, or when Grozny burned? Would things be different now, if some of that emotion had been transmuted into actions back when the right-wing thugs were mainly killing black people; or when the “foreign agents” law was first bruited about; or when cops were beating up Muscovites in the street after a faked election?"

All too often we have seen acts of "It's all about ME!" solipsism masquerading as acts of solidarity.

To complete a stunning, damning quintent* of recent articles, Long writes here about the sudden volte face over fallen idol Nikolai Alekseev, by those who knew of his dodgy political leanings and anti-semitic outbursts, but were silent about them until he began criticising the tactics of US/UK campaigners...

"[who] had all the evidence years ago of the man’s instability and hatred. It’s important to tell the truth. It’s important, because the Alekseev story reveals a lot about the potential pathologies of gay activism: the cult of celebrity, the belief in saviors rather than social movements, the way Westerners project their desires and fantasies onto other countries. Why did Doug [Ireland] and others keep promoting Alekseev, and actively denigrating other Russian activists? They damaged the whole Russian LGBT movement in the process. They shouldn’t get off the hook. And we need to learn lessons from how they went so wrong..."

Quite.

And finally.. Fagburn read today about a fundraising and awareness event, To Russia LGBT With Love, held in London next month - where apparently all money raised is going to the Peter Tatchell Foundation - ie to Peter, who pays himself £29,000 a year from kind donations - and oddly not to LGBT Russian groups, who surely need it more.

If true it would make the whole event look ridiculous and hypocritical, and another example of "The West knows best" gay cultural imperialism we witness above.

I've asked the organisers to confirm this, and will let you know when they reply...

A very nice man from Dalston Superstore told me they haven't decided which charities yet, and they're now working on organising video speakers from Russia.

* "Queer Quislings": Getting Russia Wrong and Top Guns: Last Words On Johnny Weir.

Selena Gomez: Gay Rights Hero And Brave Martyr To The Cause!

Pop star Selena Gomez was forced to cancel two concerts in Russia today after government officials denied her visa, reportedly related to stricter transit laws for foreign artists linked to the country's controversial anti-gay legislation.
The singer had been slated to perform at St. Petersburg's Ice Palace on Sept. 23 and Moscow's Olimpiisky Stadium on Sept. 25.
Prior to the cancellation of these two shows, Gomez was facing pressure to take a stand on LGBT rights in the former Soviet Union as the subject of a Change.org petition. The petition called on Gomez to speak out and "let LGBT folks in Russia know that we stand with them, and that they are not alone." It reached over 1,000 signatures before the news of Gomez's denied visa became public.
John Becker, petition author and LGBT blogger at Bilerico, said in a statement to The Huffington Post: 

Huffpost Gay Voices.

BZZT!!!
There is no evidence that Selena was denied a visa because of her support for gay rights.
This would be more than a little odd as her vocal support of gay rights is somewhere between hardly-anything and fuck-all.
Yet, Elton John's playing in December.
Okay, that figures...
Maybe it's true - Russia certainly has its fair share of nutty politicos and bureaucrats - but Fagburn somehow doubts the Russian visa office or security services closely monitor and taks notice of online petitions - even one with a whopping 1,000 signatures.
John Becker's argument is circular and nonsensical; he claims this shows Russia is now on the defensive after criticism of its "anti-gay crackdown" - which by his bizarro logic is proven as they've "banned" an American singer who might (but probably wouldn't) say something pro-gay.
Wouldn't the reverse be true?
Hilariously, Becker recently slagged off Johnny Weir for saying he'd compete in Sochi in a disgusting article for Bilerico - yet here he doesn't mention that #sobrave Selena was gagging to go and play.
Vaingloriously, Becker says this is all due to his e-petition.
Just as he claims that the boycotts are working whenever the Russian government don't do something they weren't planning on doing anyway.

It seems as likely that Selena Gomez's people filed for a visa too late.
I have no idea if she hadn't actually sold many tickets, and to suggest this could be the reason for the no-show would be pure speculation.
The billion-dollar Sochi Olympics spectacle shows that Russia is desperate to normalise its cultural relations with other countries - to seethe that they'd ban former Disney kid Selena Gomez cause she might paint her toenails in all the colours of the rainbow or something sounds just plain dumb.

  
'Nobody and nothing will stop Russia on the road to strengthening democracy and human rights and freedoms," Vladimir Putin once declared. He didn't literally add "NOT EVEN CHER" – but as opposition to Russian's anti-gay legislation grows, it becomes increasingly clear that he was thinking it.
And so to the burgeoning of a cultural boycott of sorts. Sooner or later, every last celebrity will be required to show their hand on this one – get researching, Helen Flanagan! – but in the interests of keeping you up to date, Lost in Showbiz is pleased to offer a rundown of who has declared thus far...

Marina Hyde in Friday's Guardian cruelly mocks the latest craze amongst Team Celebrity. 
Contains all your favourites; Stephen Fry, Cher, Lady Gaga, George Takei, Elton John, and Heather Mills!

PS The Sochi organising committee have issued a statement saying; “There have never been negotiations with Cher about her possible participation in the ceremonies." Surprise!

Sochi Olympics: Cher Speaks Out!

I can’t name names but my friend called who is a big oligarch over there, and asked me if I’d like to be an ambassador for the Olympics and open the show. I immediately said no. I want to know why all of this gay hate just exploded over there. He said the Russian people don’t feel the way the government does.

Via Queerty et al. 

A few thoughts...

1. “I immediately said no” – might have been an idea for Cher to stop and think about it for a bit, no?
It could have been such a wonderful and positive thing if she was there.

2. Why didn't Cher consider what LGBT campaigners in Russia think would be best?
Are there any who support a boycott, or think it would help gay people there?
I asked this rather mundane question in the comments section below the Queerty story, as so many of their well-informed American readers supported a boycott and Cher's apparent no-show ("HOORAY for Cher! The Russia Olympics should be boycotted by the entire WORLD!!!!!" etc).
A typical considered reply; "Die you you crazy a hole and Jonny wier is a self serving just like your self".

3. Erm, this oligarch friend of yours, Cher, who is apparently booking acts for the Sochi Olympics opening ceremony, do you not name his name because - perchance - you haven't really been asked?

• To read more of Cher's sober and informed reflections on political issues of the day please follow her on Twitter.

Update: The Sochi organising committee later issued a statement saying; “There have never been negotiations with Cher about her possible participation in the ceremonies." Surprise!
  Surprise!

Russia: 'Queer Quislings'

Readers of the gay media - and in particular their ever-sane message boards - will know that what's happening to The Gays in Russia right now is every bit as bad - nay worse - than what happened in Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa.
It must be, 'cause that's what everyone says, and anyone who thinks differently (independently?) is a quisling, as evil as a holocaust denier.
Got that, you little Eichmann?

"Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune" - Noam Chomsky.

Here's a brilliant and important article on that whole Russia thing by Scott Long, 'Queer Quislings', which says everything I'd have liked to have said about the current climate of hysteria and hypocrisy, if only I was smart, literate and not such a "cynical", "bitter", "snarky", and "grotesque Soviet-lover".
Enjoy!

Update: The frighteningly rightwing gay porn mogul Michael Lucas attacks Johhny Weir - unsurpringly - in a shitty little op-ed for Out.
And - again - Scott Long replies, destroying Lucas and that other far right gay goon, Jamie Kirchick, in a brilliant and very funny piece.

Russia: On Sense & Nonsense

"I live in New Jersey, so I'm not even still considered an equal human. I wasn't considered an equal in this country, so why should I stay away from another country that doesn't consider me equal, and why should I not show the world what I worked hard for?"

Ice-skater Johnny Weir on a US chat show yesterday.
A quite reasonable statement that sends the host and the good ole American patriots in the gay media predictably mentalist!
Hang the traitor!

If you want a thoroughly depressing reminder of how thought-control works in democratic societies, read any of the readers' comments sections on stories about Russia on gay blogs and websites.
See, for example, the utterly odious, threatening ones about Johnny on Queerty and lose a little more hope for queer humanity.
(Update: Or witness this confederacy of dunces on Pink News).
Little parlour game; try asking a question as obvious as "Do you think we should consider what Russian LGBT campaigners think?" and see where that gets you.
AMERICAblog - "A great nation deserves equality" (!) - now has a dedicated Gay Russia section; a wonderful round-up of misinformation and madness.
As ever, it's instructive how this issue so animates the gay right.
And anyone who dissents from the standard spoonfed "Worse than Hitler! Boycott 'em! Ban 'em! Bomb 'em!" line gets virtually lynched by the pink pitchfork mob.

Lib Dem President Tim Farron has tabled a motion on the "deplorable" situation in Russia.

That this House deplores the recent legislation passed in Russia banning the promotion of non-traditional relationships; notes that this is akin to the former Section 28 legislation in the UK; further notes that the new law appears to be part of a wider crackdown on the freedoms of the LGBT community in Russia; believes that we must listen to those Russian LGBT groups and activists who urge very strongly that boycotts in any form or nature, from sporting, like the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, to drinking vodka, are not supported by them and only increase the likelihood of harm towards LGBT Russians; and calls on the Government to work through international and diplomatic channels, like the G20, the Council of Europe and the International Olympic Committee and commercial and business interests already involved in sponsoring the 2014 Winter Olympics, alongside indigenous LGBT campaign groups based in Russia itself, to stand up for the human rights of the Russian LGBT community.

Heaven forfend we might consider what gay people in Russia think best.
Surprisingly sensible stuff from an MP - though it's an early day motion, so no more than the parliamentary equivalent of sending out a press release.

And, just for fun, here's a short BBC TV News item on why the vodka boycott was pointless bollocks. 

In the interests of balance here's some of the usual gay hysterics over on Huffington Post Gay...

"It's high time to talk about asylum. The only way at this point that the US can help Russian gays and lesbians is get us the hell out of here!

"Russian gay activist" Masha Gessen, there (though she's actually an American citizen - and clearly more barking than Battersea Dogs' Home).
Let's organise a mass exodus of LGBT Russians to the 100% homophobia-free American holy state!!
Yay, you've clearly really thought that one through.
It's a sign of how completely debased this "debate" has become that such a laughable and ludicrous statement is taken seriously, and not even challenged.

And finally... Harvey Fierstein - who has already made the morally obscene comparison between Russia today and the Nazi holocaust - says what's going now on has all the hallmarks of a witch hunt.
Though the current climate of hysteria in the US and UK sounds rather like a witchhunt, don't you think, Harvey?
Just ask Johnny Weir.

Winter Olympics: None More Gay!

Back in 1976 when I edited the magazine Sportsworld, then the official publication of the British Olympic Association, I received a telephone call from a Melbourne radio station in the middle of the night following the British figure skater John Curry’s breathtakingly artistic gold medal-winning performance in the Innsbruck Winter games.

“Hi,” said an Aussie voice. “We’ve all been watching your guy John Curry win the Olympics. Isn’t he something? Understand you know him quite well.” I concurred that indeed I did.

“Great. Look, mate, would you mind telling us a bit more about him – we’re all keen to know. Can we go live with an interview now?” “No problem,” I replied.

“OK... We’ve got Alan Hubbard, editor of Sportsworld magazine live from London, who knows this Pommie skater John Curry we’re all talking about... Tell me Alan, is he a poofter?”

I recall I quickly mumbled something about his sexual orientation being his own business. “Well,” came the response, “he sure looks a poofter from here!”

Thankfully, things have moved on since then – even in Australia. But not, apparently, in Russia and, significantly, certain other discriminatory outposts, including Qatar, which follows Russia as World Cup hosts in 2022, and where being gay, as the late Curry eventually revealed he was, is still tantamount to being a pariah...

Alan Hubbard writing in The Independent leading into talking about you-know-what.
Illustrated with the above photo of the "flamboyant" American figure skater, Johnny Weir.

The article is quite accurately titled; For Sochi the future is gay, whether Vladimir Putin likes it or not One certainty is there will be no boycott neither will the games be shifted

Got that?

Regardless of how daft and counter-productive these "demands" were in the first place, they were objectively not going to happen.

It would make a nice change if, just for once, one person calling for people to "do something" about homophobia in Russia had stopped for four seconds and thought things through.

Not that I'm suggesting for one moment that this "debate" has been dominated by a load of idiotic gay hysterics waving their pink pitchforks, you understand.*
It's encouraging that some sane and rational voices are starting to be heard in this thoroughly depressing episode - here's Alice Arnold; Britain's homophobia needs to be tackled before we turn to Russia's.
Quite.

*Check out the usual avalanche of stupidity on Huff Post Gay, and remind yourself why the LGBT movement's fucked.
They've even run an article that asks; Imagine if they'd say that about race.
AARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!
Such sophisticated, original and radical political debate, HuffPo!