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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.

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

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. 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.

“PUT GAY DRS UP” MAK A POLIL STATEMENT

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 SHAR THOUGHTS ON SHOWERG WH GAY MEN AND MENSTAL CYCL

”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.

THE GAY WORLD WAR? INSI PUT’S WARPED REALY

Fally, we fe Realm IV as “Heteronormative-homophobic Opposn Polics, ” where we explore how opposn to Put enjos the nmnatn of homosexualy public disurse. 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.

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

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. 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.

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

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.

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).