IF U CN RD THIS, shame on you !

Provocative Hungarian Poster for ‘Shame’ - A Bold And Anguished Look at Addiction

The addiction is sex, a fact which elicited an NC-17 rating, though it is shown here, while unavoidably gratuitous, as no different than an addiction to booze or pills or powders. It is all-consuming and painfully unpleasurable.

Iran bans necklaces for men and warns them about wearing jeans

Every year before summer rolls around Iranian authorities tighten clothing restrictions. Normally the “Moral Police” crackdown on the women forcing them to wear their hijab so that it covers all of their hair, for example.  But since last year, the "Moral Police" have been targeting the men too.

Last summer, the Iranian government issued a men’s hairstyle guide.

This year, they banned necklaces for men.

In addition, Iranian state TV has taken issue with jeans as well. A YouTube video from Iranian state TV features a discussion in which jeans are said to actually come from the word "jinn" - invisible creatures who know the unknowable (AKA "Genie"). The young man in the video says wearing jeans is also supposed to have a hazardous effect on a man's testicles because it raises the temperature. This, according to Iranian state TV, renders men infertile.

I thought they said Levi when I bought them!

Iran government issues style guide for men's hair

An official describes appropriate hairstyles for men at an official hairstyle show in Tehran Photo: REUTERS

In an attempt to rid the country of "decadent Western cuts", Iran's culture ministry has produced a catalogue of haircuts that meet government approval.

The list of banned styles includes ponytails, mullets and elaborate spikes. However,quiffs appear to be acceptable, as are fashioning one's hair in the style of Simon Cowell or cultivating a 1980s-style floppy fringe.

Most of the models are clean-shaven although one picture features a man with a goatee beard, previously frowned upon by Iran's conservative clerics. Using hair gel is also within the law, albeit in modest quantities.

The "journal of Iranian hairstyles approved by the ministry of [culture and Islamic] guidance" was previewed at a government-approved hairdressing show in Tehran.

Several barber shops have reportedly been shut down and penalised in recent years for offering Western-style haircuts.

Seeking Hidden Lives in Art

PBS's LGBT series In The Life produced a really interesting discussion of the Smithsonian Institute's groundbreaking exhibit Hide/Seek. The segment helped me understand the context that inspired the Smithsonian to put the exhibition together in the first place.




Controversy erupted recently surrounding the removal of David Wojnarowicz's video installation, "A Fire in My Belly," from the National Portrait Gallery's Hide/Seek show at the Smithsonian. The video, which represents the artist's anger as he faced death from AIDS ignited outrage among conservative lawmakers and religious leaders. READ MORE

Fire in My Belly was recently screened here in Ottawa:
About 100 people took in A Fire In My Belly by David Wojnarowicz during three successive screenings in the single-room exhibition space of Bank St's Gallery 101 on Saturday night. Two screenings were originally planned, but organizers added a third due to demand. Most people had come out to see for themselves what was creating so much controversy but couldn't understand what caused the United State's most well-known museum to remove the film.
READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE HERE


The film was subsequently purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. READ MORE
Read my previous post about the show.

Canada Border Services Agency are DINX

An award-winning film, on its way back to Canada from an international gay and lesbian film festival in October, was held up at the Canadian border for more than a month.

On Nov 24, Edmonton filmmaker Trevor Anderson received a letter from Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) informing him that his short film DINX had been detained on Oct 21 and was being investigated for obscenity. A few days later, the tape was returned to him in the mail.

"It concerns me that the determination of what gets into our country is in the hands of individual border guards," he says.

"How long does this battle have to go on?"

The fallout from the blocking of three gay films at the border has reverberated across Parliament Hill. Queer MPs are universally outraged by what they see as a return to the era of Little Sister's struggles.

On Nov 20, an official with the Canada Border Services Agency flagged three films destined for Inside Out's Ottawa screenings — I Can't See Straight, Clapham Junction and Patrik, Age 1.5. The material was approved after the festival was over, and the delay left organizers scrambling to find replacement copies of the films to screen.

"It just seems so spiteful, so intolerant," says Davies. "I'm shocked that still, in this day and age, we're fighting a government who's determined to censor material for the queer community. What right do they have to do that?"

Canada Customs up to dirty tricks again

Canada's border guards are holding prints of three films destined for a gay film festival in Ottawa, and they won't release them until they've had the chance to watch them from beginning to end.

That poses a problem for Inside Out, a Toronto-based film festival with an annual Ottawa satellite program. They intended to show all three films this weekend. Without the prints, they're left scrambling to find grainy lower-quality copies to show audiences.

The gay community and the CBSA (formerly Canada Customs) have a long and checkered past. Border cops spent two decades harassing gay bookstores, with books and magazines arriving in Canada delayed by months or even shredded.

Vancouver-based bookstore Little Sister's took them to court and in 2000 won a partial victory. At the time, the Supreme Court of Canada acknowledged that material was routinely being stopped at the border because of its gay content, and ordered the government agency to stop.

Buh-Bye Miss California!

Even though I don't agree with her, I was willing to defend this woman's right to express her opinion against same-sex marriage when asked during the Miss USA competition. But, she has subsequently ignored her responsibilities to the public 'office' to continue speaking out against it every chance she got.

This is one time I agree with you Donald Trump. I won't be shedding any tears over her de-crowning at all.

Movie about *BLEEP*s and *BLEEP*s wins Academy Award

Some television viewers in Asia are angry after the annual Academy Awards broadcast in the region censored the words "gay" and "lesbian" from acceptance speeches.

Pan-Asian satellite TV network STAR carried the glitzy Hollywood ceremony in full during the live telecast.

However, viewers who watched subsequent repeat broadcasts noticed that the sound periodically disappeared during the acceptance speeches of Oscar winners Dustin Lance Black and Sean Penn, the screenwriter and lead actor of the drama Milk, respectively.

Puck U : "Pansy" no more

Hockey commentator Ron MacLean faced off against a gay-rights advocate over the use of the word "pansification" during Saturday's Hockey Night in Canada broadcast.

Hockey Night commentator Mike Milbury coined the expression to describe how the NHL would lose its edge and go soft should the league heed calls to ban fighting.

Helen Kennedy, the executive director of Egale Canada, told MacLean the group was "inundated with emails and phone calls who were upset and offended by the use of the word."

"It's used in a derogatory fashion to bully young, effeminate, gay men. It's a word that was coined to basically bully young men in Britain, many years ago," Kennedy said, adding that the word is also used to bully "kids who are perceived to be gay."

A VIDEO OF THE INTERVIEW IS AVAILABLE AFTER THE LINK

Eve's worst nightmare

TV Censors in Italy gut Brokeback Mountain

IMHO: Removing the two scenes described below would make it completely impossible for a viewer to either understand or feel the emotion of this film.

Gay rights groups and free speech advocates have taken Italian state broadcaster RAI TV to task for cutting two sex scenes from Brokeback Mountain when it aired the Oscar-winning movie late Monday evening.

The expurgated version of the 2005 cowboy romance did not include the scene in which the two main characters, played by Jake Gyllenhaal and the late Heath Ledger, make love in a tent, and a later scene showing the two men kissing.

Working on your tan - for women

A common sight in beach resorts in the 19th century, bathing machines allowed women to change their clothes in private, reach the waters without parading through open stretches of beach in their bathing suits, and then frolic about in relative privacy and without violating contemporary notions of modesty.

Queen Victoria certainly had one, and like it, these caravans of propriety, of social mores too foreign for our own eyes, were simple wooden structures. Lest they invite voyeurs, they were built without windows, otherwise there were little ones inaccessible to prying eyes. Some were made of canvas and still others were very luxurious affairs, but all of them were on wheels, pulled in and out of the surf by horses or brute human power.

Prisoner of conscience in Myanmar, released after 19 years in jail.

U Win Tin, Amnesty International's longest serving prisoner of conscience in Myanmar, has been released after spending 19 years of his life in jail.

While we celebrate the release of U Win Tin and six other political prisoners, there is still a long way to go.

Approximately 2,000 political prisoners remain in jails in Myanmar, and there are tens of thousands more in other countries. Support Amnesty International with a donation. Help draw the world’s attention to the plight of these prisoners, and strengthen pressure on regimes that are denying their human rights.

Believe it or not: Some People Live Without TV

Some give it up to avoid exposing their families to the excessive sex, violence, and consumerism they feel are promoted onscreen. Others object to the medium itself, claiming television intrudes too much into their lives, interferes with conversation and takes time away from the family. Finally, some people have a beef with the power and values of the television industry and don't want its influence in their homes.

A fetishistic approach to security

We spend far more effort defending our countries against specific movie-plot threats, rather than the real, broad threats. In the US during the months after the 9/11 attacks, we feared terrorists with scuba gear, terrorists with crop dusters and terrorists contaminating our milk supply. Both the UK and the US fear terrorists with small bottles of liquid. Our imaginations run wild with vivid specific threats. Before long, we're envisioning an entire movie plot, without Bruce Willis saving the day. And we're scared.

Gay is the new Black

A routine trip to the Social Security office Monday turned into 30 minutes of shock, disbelief and irritation for Lapriss Gilbert, who was forced to leave the federal building by a guard who objected to her "lesbian.com" T-shirt.

As she headed for a line to pick up a Social Security card for her son, Gilbert was stopped by a guard who said her T-shirt, naming an educational and resource Web site for gay women, was offensive.

You don't have to speak English to play golf

Under a new LPGA Tour policy effective next year, players might be suspended or prevented from playing at all if an official deems the player is ineffective in English.

"You don't have to speak English to play golf," Cabrera said Thursday in Spanish, joining a chorus of male players perplexed by the LPGA Tour's decision to punish women golfers for not speaking English in pro-ams, trophy presentations and media interviews.

Olympic Organizers Hiding Logos That Aren't Official Sponsors

To ensure that only the companies that pay millions of dollars to be official Olympic sponsors enjoy the benefits of exposure in Olympic venues, organizers have covered the trademarks of nonsponsors with thousands of little swatches of tape.