mwaki06:

RT AND SPREAD THE WORD!!!

Audio may only work in UK.

Most of us think we’re pretty good at guessing when somebody’s gay or straight, but what signals are we using to make our decision, and how often are we right ?
Psychologists at Queen Mary University of London are, for the first time, trying to isolate the individual signals and patterns in somebody’s face, in order to work out exactly what motivates us to make a snap decision about sexuality.
Using cutting edge computer imagery, researchers have found a way of transferring male facial expressions onto female faces and vice versa, which means they can work out exactly how our “gaydar” works.

Dr Qazi Rahman, assistant professor in Cognitive Biology, and PHd student, William Jolly, are hoping that their research will challenge stereotypes and prejudice by increasing awareness of how quickly, and often inaccurately, people classify each other.

caregall:

The law will broaden the criminalization of same-sex relationships by dividing homosexuality into two categories; aggravated homosexuality and the offense of homosexuality.

‘Aggravated homosexuality’ is defined as gay acts committed by parents or authority figures, HIV-positive people, pedophiles and repeat offenders. If convicted, they will face the death penalty.

The ‘offense of homosexuality’ includes same-sex sexual acts or being in a gay relationship, and will be prosecuted by life imprisonment.

Dispicable! The Ugandan “Kill the Gays” bill has reared its ugly head again after previous attempts to stop it worked; its return needs to be noticed.

What can we do about this? I feel my home country, the UK, could do something. Uganda used to be a commonwealth. Perhaps threatening cutting off foreign aid, but if foreign aid were to be cut off, the poor and minorities would be the first to suffer; and they’re not the ones passing these laws. I suppose just protest it whilst offering asylum to evacuating LGB/T* Ugandans.

I urge everyone who can to try and see what can be done about this. Are there petitions up? Can you contact MPs, senators, whatever your country’s equivalent would be? Can we donate to fund the care of evacuated LGB/T people?

*I don’t know whether transgender Ugandans would be affected by this, but many places consider gender non-conformity and homosexuality to be linked, so it’s not unlikely there’d be a knock-on effect?

Real time count of the times ‘faggot’, ‘so gay’, ‘dyke’ and ‘no homo’ was used on Twitter today.

feministmedia:

jellybeing:

predditor:

TW: RAPE, MISOGYNY, TRANSPHOBIA, VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN, SEXUAL ABUSE, ABUSE, ABLEISM, HOMOPHOBIA, RAPE PROMOTION 

Reddit Refusing To Remove Popular Subpages That Promote Harmful Behavior 

I’m writing in an attempt to bring awareness to a current petition going on trying to enforce Reddit to actually act on their own User Agreement and remove all their pages (subreddits) that do not follow these guidelines. 

“You agree not to use any obscene, indecent or offensive language… [material must not be] defamatory, abusive, bullying, harassing, racist, hateful, or violent….further agree not to use any sexually suggestive language…” - taken from Reddits User Agreement

Unfortunately right now Reddit is ignoring their own rules and letting pages like the following exist with little to absolutely no moderation:

/r/MorbidReality

r/HotRapeStories

r/KillingWomen

r/SexyAbortions

r/RapingRetards

r/beatingwomen

r/BeatingFaggots

r/beatingtrannies

r/ChokeABitch

r/NecoPorn

r/BeatingCripples

r/BeatingNiggers

r/Nazi

/r/RapingWomen/

These all exist on Reddit~ one of the most popular social networking sites that has had 34 MILLION UNIQUE VISITORS. Reddit gets around 1.8 billion page views every month. These subreddits are not that unknown either. If you go through the top subreddits on Reddit you will find almost every single one of these within the first 10-20 pages. This is simply something that everyone that uses Reddit, including their own moderating team, turn a blind eye too. 

Recently one of the most popular subreddits on Reddit “creepshots” that was dedicated to users taking suggestive pictures of woman without their consent and putting it online without their knowledge was taken down. Users of this subreddit were known for posting pictures of underage girls, a teacher was even fired from taking pictures of his students and posting it on creepshots. This subreddit was deleted by the creator of creepshots because someone was blackmailing him and threatening to expose his identity. It was not taken down by Redditors moderators even after all the media backlash and arrests made that have come from Creepshots.

Related reading on the awfulness that existed in creepshots that was allowed to be there by Reddit if you are not convinced by my words alone:

• Man drugs rapes sister in law and posts pictures of her on creepshots
• Teacher posts pictures of students on creepshots
• Example of an average underage girls photo posted on creepshots

Obviously, a lot of bad came from creepshots. Was this all really worth leaving it up for? Can we now learn from creepshots that getting like minded people talking about taking advantage of/raping/and even murdering is only going to lead to worse actions and encouragement of individuals to do harm to others.

for more examples of the TERRIBLE BEHAVIOR and related news articles about said behavior on these subreddits please visit: http://predditor.tumblr.com/

Please help spread the word and sign the petition here

I tried to make a masterpost because people DO NOT SEEM TO CARE ABOUT THIS and they really SHOULD. PLEASE. PLEASE help spread this.

yeahh…this is why I try to avoid Reddit.

gaywrites:

The Boy Scouts of America this week lost their largest corporate donor. Intel, which donated $700,000 to the Boy Scouts in 2010, announced it will no longer donate because the organization doesn’t comply with its anti-discrimination policy.

The Boy Scouts earlier this year decided to uphold a policy barring LGBT people from the organization, both as Scouts and as leaders in the organization. Zach Wahls, the Eagle Scout with two moms who has become an activist for LGBT rights, led a recent push to get Intel to stop donating to the BSA, resulting in an online petition gathering 30,000 signatures in just a day. 

Intel explained its change in position via a statement to ThinkProgress, clarifying that the company had not given the money directly to the national organization.

“The $700,000 in funding from the Intel Foundation was donated to local Boy Scout troops or councils where our employees volunteer their time, through our volunteer matching grants program,”  said Chief Diversity Officer Rosalind Hudnell in the ThinkProgress report. “Due to significant growth in the number of organizations funded, earlier this year we revisited our policies associated with the program, and applied new rigor that requires any organization to confirm that it adheres to Intel’s anti-discrimination policy in order to receive funding.”

BOOM. And that is how you get stuff done. 

gaywrites:

Dr. Una Coales, a senior member of the Royal College of General Practitioners in the U.K., is under investigation after writing a guide suggesting LGBT medical students tone down “overtly gay” behaviors in order to pass their exams. 

Coales has responded to the controversy by saying that the guide was not meant to suggest anyone change who they are, but instead to offer realistic advice relating to how examiners may show subjective bias against minority candidates. She offered the following guidance for LGBT students and others who fall outside the mainstream:

In one passage of the guide, Dr. Una Coales’s MRCGP CSA Book, she writes: “One candidate was facing a third sitting and yet no one had told him that his mannerisms, gait and speech were too overtly gay, and that he was sitting an exam administered by a right-wing conservative Royal College.

“So I advised him to lower and deepen his high-pitched voice and neutralise his body movements. He went back to his surgery, practised his speech until his voice went hoarse and modified his body language. Not only did he pass his exam, but he informed me he noticed a huge difference in the way patients interacted with him.”

She also advises candidates such as Nigerian and Asian trainees to “focus on emphasising the lyrical Scottish or Welsh accent” if sitting exams in these regions. Female candidates should not wear a floral dress as “if you dress like a nurse they [patients] have difficulty believing they are seeing ‘the doctor’…” Male students should “shave off” facial hair as it can project an “unclean, deceitful” image, she adds, in a chapter originally published in a medical magazine in 2009. Meanwhile, she advises overweight students to “project an image of Santa Claus. Put your hands on top of your protuberant abdomen, with your fingers interlocking but open.”

pansexualpride:

In an online flyer aimed at kids, a US Christian group says “most cultures long ago decided” that men who wanted to date men and women who wanted to date women “was very wrong.”

“First of all, two men can never create their own child. Neither can two women. And two men kissing — well, it just doesn’t seem right. That’s because it isn’t!” the flyer goes to say.

Those statements are among other anti-gay items and prescriptions in “Questions and Answers for Kids about Homosexuality,” whose author is listed as Linda Harvey on the Mission:America website. 

The document goes on to discuss bullying, noting that while making up “false stories that someone is ‘gay’” or calling boys names like sissy is “horrible,” neither is it “right to tell someone that being homosexual is okay.”  tell your friends, in a nice way, that no one needs to be ‘gay’ or pretend to be the other gender. It’s not the right thing to do,” Harvey advises. 

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has listed Mission:America as a hate group. 

Meanwhile, a so-called Values Voter Summit, hosted by the Family Research Council (FRC) in Washington, DC, begins today, Sept 14. The SPLC describes it as a “gathering of rightwing religious activists” and lists the scheduled speakers along with some of their past pronouncements about queer people.

In a letter, the SPLC and other advocacy groups urged a number of public officials, including Republican vice-presidential hopeful Paul Ryan, who is invited to speak at the weekend summit, not to attend.

“The FRC is far outside the mainstream,” the letter states. “It has engaged in repeated, groundless demonization – portraying LGBT people as sick, vile, incestuous, violent, perverted, and a danger to the nation. One of its officials has gone so far as to say that homosexuality should be criminalized.” 

The SPLC’s labelling of the FRC as a hate group led to a war of words following a recent shooting incident at FRC offices in Washington, DC. FRC president Tony Perkins said the SPLC’s branding of his organization as a hate group gave the shooting suspect Floyd Corkins “a licence” to shoot an unarmed guard.

But SPLC stood behind its listing, in the leadup to the weekend summit.

Nick Clegg is rejecting claims he was prepared to brand opponents of equal marriage “bigots” at a reception for the LGBT community. In an exclusive interview with PinkNews.co.uk the deputy PM also defended changes to the Government Equalities Office and the new Culture Secretary Maria Miller.

Shortly before yesterday’s address to a large audience consisting of campaigners, politicians and celebrities including Stephen Fry, Hugh Grant and the actor Simon Callow, the Lib Dem leader found himself engulfed in a political row.

It was after aides had to remove comments in the draft version of his speech that called opponents of the government’s plans to legalise same-sex marriage “bigots”.

Speaking, at the reception in Carlton Gardens, Westminster, Mr Clegg insisted that he never intended to use such language as it was “not the kind of word” he would use.

Mr Clegg told PinkNews.co.uk that the event was to “mark a really important step towards what I hope will be legislation which will give equal rights to marriage for same-sex couples.

“There has been a land mark, if you like, [the government] has had this public consultation, the deadline has closed…the government is now sifting through 228,000 responses, and we will be making our views known about where we are going to get to next on this by the end of the year.

Mr Clegg added: “My own personal view is of course extremely well known, I am a very staunch advocate of legislation to enshrine equal marriage for all, and that’s very much what I hope we will do.

When asked about last week’s decision to move the Government Equalities Office (GEO) from within the Home Office to the Department for Media, Culture and Sport (DCMS), Mr Clegg said:

“This happens from time to time, to be honest there is no hard and fast rule that it should stay in the Home Office…and we all felt the combination of Maria Miller, Helen Grant at the DCMS and the Liberal Democrat Equality Minister Jo Swinson from the Business department would be a very effective team to promote this agenda”.

The decision to hand over responsibility of the GEO to Culture Secretary Maria Miller caused widespread alarm from several equality campaigners due to the Conservative MP’s poor LGBT voting record. In a move designed to reassure the LGBT community Mrs Miller told last weekend’s Sunday Times that she fully supports the government’s position on same-sex marriage.

In a further display of cross-party unity, Mrs Miller attended last night’s reception that was widely seen as a Lib Dem organised event.

When asked if Mrs Miller would find it problematic dealing jointly with media policy and then turning attention to areas such as homophobic crime, Mr Clegg replied:

“I don’t think that is an issue at all. Frankly, whatever department these issues are located in, the fact that people at the top of the government, myself and others, are keen and advocate supporters of this agenda means it won’t fall off anyone’s radar screen no matter which department it’s located in”.

Mr Clegg was also asked about the departure from government of openly gay Conservative ministers Crispin Blunt and Nick Herbert. Mr Clegg rejected suggestions that it was lowering the profile of LGBT political representation and pointed to the cabinet return of gay Lib Dem MP David Laws:

“I don’t think cabinet should be judged exclusively by the number of openly gay cabinet ministers around the table.

Mr Clegg concluded: “I think it is incredibly important that the values of all ministers around the cabinet table are tolerant, liberal and open, and that’s exactly what I think is the centre of gravity around the top of the government”.