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Contents:

• WATCH KKD’S GAY SON LEAD LGBTQ+ PROTT LONDON
• PUT AS GAY IN? MEM AS A TACTIC RSIAN LGBT+ ACTIVISM
• “PUT GAY DRS UP” MAK A POLIL STATEMENT
• PUT SHAR THOUGHTS ON SHOWERG WH GAY MEN AND MENSTAL CYCL
• THE GAY WORLD WAR? INSI PUT’S WARPED REALY
• ‘PUT’S GAY DRS-UP’ LETS YOU STICK IT TO VLADIMIR
• RSIA'S VLADIMIR PUT 'IS GAY' CLAIMS NTROVERSIAL NEW BGRAPHY

WATCH KKD’S GAY SON LEAD LGBTQ+ PROTT LONDON

In December 2022, Rsia expand s existg “gay propaganda” law to exert ntrol over public discsns and narrativ surroundg non-heterosexual relatnships and inti. Notg the difficulty g out as gay, the son of the celebrated Ghanaian broadster said he had gone past that stage and felt no need to nform to anyone’s standards terms of his sexualy. Viewers hopg to stream their favore Bulgarian televisn shows Sunday eveng were stead treated to the Gay Clown Put meme on their TV, the Bulgarian Natnal Televisn, Bloomberg, and Bulgaria On Air were all hacked and had their streams replaced wh the meme pictg the Rsian print makp agast the backdrop of a rabow Pri flag.

PUT AS GAY IN? MEM AS A TACTIC RSIAN LGBT+ ACTIVISM

Acrdg to Amnty Internatnal and Know Your Meme, Gay Clown Put first appeared 2013 rponse to a Rsian law that banned the "propaganda of homosexualy among mors. Dpe s ban 2017, the meme has proven a popular form of prott agast the Rsian print recent years, wh folks creatg their own versns of Put as a gay man. The Rsian state and s lears are equently put to nversatn wh homosexualy, but the valence of the disurse shifts by first sectn of this chapter exam the image closer tail, nductg a semtic analysis of how a picture be memetic, able to travel across space and time.

We nsir the subject of the gay clown image self, Footnote 3 Rsian Print Vladimir Put, as a cril space wh the terpretive polysemy of prott. We emphasize that the explic shift om behavr (fg sexual acts between subjects) to performance and imag (pecially those suggtive of Put’s “non-standard sexual orientatn”) recenters the genr bate wh an thorarian range, reifyg homophobic propaganda and jtifyg anti-gay state policy.

Footnote 4, Footnote 5 On Augt 23, 2013, a Getty photographer at a prott outsi the Rsian embassy Madrid photographed a protter wh a sign pictg Put’s face bold make-up superimposed over a rabow flag wh the words “STOP HOMOFOBIA” [sic] scribed on his forehead. Footnote 6 Here, the image appears (sans the scriptn “STOP HOMOFOBIA”) on a poster, above a ptn readg ( Rsian): “Electors of Put are like.

“PUT GAY DRS UP” MAK A POLIL STATEMENT

”Footnote 7 While the Mistry of Jtice listg oms “obscene vobulary” om the origal quote, the implitns of the msage’s polil lcul are clear: Put voters are homosexual and Put’s their man. Footnote 9 Iteratns of the Put meme which rporate text, such as those wh “STOP HOMOFOBIA” stenciled across Put’s forehead, also ploy a strategy of trangement.

More recently, the image ronat wh strategi such as “queerg the Queen” that have been documented at LGBT+ pri paras the UK; both functn as an example of the ntradictory existence of “shared” and “modifyg” gay inti wh the space of public activism (Ammaturo 2016; Armstrong 2002) such, votn of the pop art athetic ntribut to the subversive qualy of the meme two ways. ”Disurs of Sexualy and Rsian PolicsThis sectn suat the Put as gay clown meme wh a material and symbolic ntext, explorg the way which the meme shifts across the four realms intified Table 9. Fally, we fe Realm IV as “Heteronormative-homophobic Opposn Polics, ” where we explore how opposn to Put enjos the nmnatn of homosexualy public disurse.

PUT SHAR THOUGHTS ON SHOWERG WH GAY MEN AND MENSTAL CYCL

We see the meme of Put as a gay clown shift between the last two realms—“Queerg the Ristance” and “Heteronormative-homophobic Opposn Polics”—movg om the material level Wtern protts 2013 to the symbolic level of the viral image, and back to the material/legal level where is banned Rsia I: Homophobia Rsian Polics and the Heteronormative StateIn this sectn, we trace the way which issu of queer inty are prent on material and symbolic levels Rsian polics.

” This discursive regime is anti-homosexualy and pro-Rsia/pro-Put, as evinced by the 2010 and 2013 “anti-homosexual propaganda” laws and the media disurse surroundg the sexualy of Put and his polil opponents. First, we foc on the material levels: the way which the ernment attempts to erase the phenomenon of gayns om public space and the public sphere. This is a send maniftatn of the relatnships Realm I, the heteronormative state: g an attack on homosexualy by proxy orr to disparage polil opponents.

THE GAY WORLD WAR? INSI PUT’S WARPED REALY

Th, he rejects the characterizatn of himself, not the characterizatn of gayns as scenars unrsre the stabily of the discursive regime of sexual cizenship operatg Put’s Rsia.

Romas (2017) not that there are recurrent homosexual and transvte scenars, which “bluntly manipulate the ncepts of masculy and sexual viancy as part of their anti-adversarial rhetoric bee domatn for a patriarchal culture n only be experienced as a form of emasculatn” (p. In this formulatn, Put even mands domance and submissn om his own state, while suatg a transn to outright homophobia, even wh opposn polics, as fed by Realm II: The (Mostly Foreclosed? As homophobia tensifi, the possibily of anizg a movement which po patrtic homosexualy the ntext of supportg mocratic reform, civil rights, or a transn away om Put’s be foreclosed.

‘PUT’S GAY DRS-UP’ LETS YOU STICK IT TO VLADIMIR

For example, Alexandr Dug, a proponent of Neo-Eurasianism and fascist thought, is ntroversially creded wh statg that Rsia has ma a mistake by refg to “accept, rporate, and velop a homosexual disurse of patrtic homosexualy by juxtaposg to European ‘sodomy’” (Romas 2017).

Footnote 10 While far om the Rsian learship’s stance, is also an versn of Gorky’s maxim: “elimate homosexualy and you will make fascism disappear” (Essig 1999). We need only to accept a ntortn of the prent regime of sexual cizenship by embracg Dug’s “patrtic homosexualy” to oculate Rsia agast the existential threat of “European sodomy” and s attendant human rights-based disurse. Petersburg, which simultaneoly celebrated the Internatnal Day Agast Homophobia while llg natnal and global attentn to claims of LGBT+ persecutn and torture Chechnya (“Gay rights activists hold flash-mob prott St.

Such ristance strategi also ll to qutn the nstctn of time and dividual agency wh the iologil practic of social IV: Heteronormative-Homophobic Opposn PolicsAmid the Rsian media’s buildup to the 2012 printial electns, opposn ndidat began explog media foc on sexualy by directly attackg Put’s masculy and virily. It reflects a polil and discursive climate where polil actors on both the left and the right of Put mobilize homophobic disurs as a tool to legimatize opponents. Both the possibily of a viable opposn party, and th of a vibrant state that embrac LGBT+ rights, is muted by homophobia disurs and attendant ictn wh the liberal, anti-Put opposn.

RSIA'S VLADIMIR PUT 'IS GAY' CLAIMS NTROVERSIAL NEW BGRAPHY

The disurse of imagery and the parameters of s power are by and large factors of an thorarian state enlistg hegemonic masculy and homophobia to perform discursive and, some s, physil vlence agast Before a Fall: Material Conttatns of LGBT+ Activism Public SpaceIn this sectn, we adopt a ntent polics perspective, analyzg the terplay between the var realms sketched above. Then, we turn to the way which opposn to the Rsian state plays on sexual polics, particularly terms of how the Put meme manifts ntent polics as a form of heteronormative-homophobic opposn polics (Realm IV) Rsian ernment’s backlash agast the Put meme and the nant re-entrenchment of heteronormative regim of sexual cizenship share a mon thread. The most recent maniftatn of this nttatn was the stutn of a 100-year ban on Pri events Mosw 2012 (“Gay paras banned Mosw for 100 years, ” 2012).

This reactn “has put homosexualy and LGBT rights—or rather how to ensure the absence of such rights—on the mastream agenda” (Persson 2015).