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QueerTips Says: Some Stuff We Know About Smoking

Here’s something we all know: LGBTQ folks smoke at a higher rate than their straight/cisgender counterparts. In fact, LGBTQ folks are twice as likely to smoke as their straight peers.

Here’s something else we know: the tobacco industry is completely, unbelievably evil.

Here’s how these two things align: In the 90’s and early 2000’s, people were smoking less. The health risks were more obvious and well-known, doctors weren’t bumming smokes off their patients in movies anymore, and then there’s the matter of smoking killing you, leaving fewer people to buy cigarettes. So the marketing folks at major tobacco companies realized it was time to appeal to some more niche markets. Namely, LGBTQ people.

From Slate:

“Researchers have blamed queers’ higher smoking rates on a variety of factors, including the daily stress of coping with prejudice and stigma. Yet while stress has indeed been correlated to tobacco use, it’s not the entire story. Over the last 25 years, several major cigarette companies have also launched strategic ad campaigns aimed at the LGBTQ community. By positioning themselves as allies to the gay rights movement, these corporations have worked relentlessly to make smoking an accepted part of queer culture.”

(To be fair, Suburu did this appeal-to-LGBT-people-as-marketing-tactic at around the same time, but Suburus don’t cause lung cancer.)

So, yes, the stress of dealing with prejudice can cause marginalized communities, like LGBTQ people, to smoke or seek other less-than-healthy forms of relief at higher rates than those who don’t deal with these same issues, but there was a concerted push on the part of Big Tobacco to make sure smoking was a mainstay among LGBTQ people. Which isn’t to say that anyone that smokes is super gullible, but that it’s an easy habit to pick up and a notoriously difficult addiction to kick - and the industry specifically spent time and money to hurt you. (Total assholes, right?) 

Enter This Free Life, a surprisingly decent anti-smoking campaign from the FDA aimed at combating smoking in the LGBTQ community. It’s good to see the federal government taking a stand for the health and wellness for LGBTQ people.

Look, you don’t need us to tell you — smoking is expensive and incredibly detrimental to your health, and the health of those around you. If you’re trying to quit, there’s also the Smoke Free app which, anecdotally, has helped some people in our lives kick the habit once and for all.

If you or someone you care about is struggling with quitting we hope these might help. It’s hard work. If you have any tips or things that really helped share ‘em, eah?

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If the new common wisdom that hotly overt homophobes are men who are “insecure about their masculinity” supplements the implausible, necessary illusion that there could be a secure version of masculinity (known, presumably, by the coolness of its homophobic enforcement) and a stable, intelligible way for men to feel about other men in modern heterosexual capitalist patriarchy, what tighter turn could there be to the screw of an already off center, always at fault, endlessly blackmailable male identity ready to be manipulated into any labor of channeled violence?

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, The Epistemology of the Closet (via sexistentialisms)

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…I finally, with some eagerness, asked Patton what she thought of these sinister rumors about [HIV’s] origin. “Any of the early steps in its spread could have been either accidental or deliberate,” she said “But I just have trouble getting interested in that. I mean, even suppose we were sure of every element of a conspiracy: that the lives of Africans and African Americans are worthless in the eyes of the United States; that gay men and drug users are held cheap where they aren’t actively hated; that the military deliberately researches ways to kill noncombatants whom it sees as enemies; that people in power look calmly on the likelihood of catastrophic environmental and population changes. Supposing we were ever so sure of all those things—what would we know that we don’t already know?”

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading, Or, You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think this Essay is About You  in Touching Feeling (2003)

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Queer is a continuing moment, movement, motive—recurrent, eddying, troublant. The word “queer” itself means across—it comes from the Indo-European root -twerkw, which also yields the German quer (transverse), Latin torquere (to twist), English athwart.

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Tendencies, 1993 (via queerquote)

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I feel compelled to share this page, because it sparked my interest in studying how queer studies at large is represented on Tumblr. Not that I believe that there is misrepresentation of queer studies or the LGBT+ community on Tumblr; rather, I felt that this page encompassed specific elements that made it a welcoming community. For instance, this page allows users to submit their own coming out stories and also offers them advice on how to come out to their family, peers, and other individuals. In doing so, this page essentially serves as an archive of the testimonies and lived experiences of LGBT+ individuals. Not to mention, it also serves as a reflection of the hostility inflicted on LGBT+ individuals within our heteronormative society. While I have never posted my own coming out story on this site, I have viewed many of the stories of others, and I have certainly viewed the tips on how to come out. I admire how it empowers the voices of those within the LGBT+ community, and I know it will continue to do so. Please, go check this page out. -N.D.

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ALOT is an archive that is dedicated to digitizing the oral histories and testimonies of lesbian women whose interviews are only found in physical formats (i.e. video tapes). The archive is led by Elise Chenier, an Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada. @eviemichal20, you might find this both intriguing and serviceable.

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For those of you who are interested in a blog that represents LGBT+ history (and LGBT+ archives, in general), you should all consider checking this page out.  They have some phenomenal historical photos of various pride events that are from around the world.  

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“THE END OF AIDS? Not Yet—But New Drugs Offer Hope,” Newsweek, December 2, 1996. On December 2, 1996, twenty years ago today, Newsweek explored the impact of the first drugs to give real hope to those with HIV. “Since 1983,” the article explained, “a diagnosis of HIV-positive has been an automatic death sentence…But, in the last year, a handful of drugs have dramatically changed that prognosis.” Noting the increased availability of effective protease inhibitors and drug “cocktails,” Newsweek made clear: “This is not the end of the plague.” Staggering costs, ineffectiveness in certain individuals, and other drawbacks gave reason for pause. Nonetheless, it was the end of an era, as “doctors are starting to consider HIV a chronic, manageable disease rather than a death sentence.” With the promise of the new drugs, a profound new question arose: “How does a population psychologically braced to die suddenly get on with the business of living?” Or, as Chuck Johnson, a San Francisco man who, in what he assumed were his final months, cashed in his life-insurance policy and bought his dream car, asked after a few weeks on an effective cocktail: “What the fuck am I supposed to do now?” And, while those fortunate enough to afford the new drugs navigated the new realities of life, less fortunate individuals remained in harm’s way. In fact, “though often associated with gay white men, the virus now hits hardest in poor and minority communities. The infection rate among African-Americans is five times higher than among whites.” Moreover, “as AIDS shifts to poor communities, it plays to the phenomenon known as compassion fatigue. At the AIDS support group PAWS/LA, for example, individual donations are down 25 percent in the last year.” In the midst of all the hopeful faces, Newsweek reminded readers of the “faces of others who will never get the drugs, or for whom they won’t work…[and] the faces of those who died too soon, never knowing the hope that even the most unproven remedies can offer. Some are our friends, our family, our loved ones. If this is the end of the beginning, bring on the beginning of the end.” #lgbthistory #HavePrideInHistory

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“GAY AND PROUD,” Gay & Lesbian Pride Parade, Atlanta, Georgia, June 24, 1990. Photo c/o @ajcnews. #lgbthistory #HavePrideInHistory #RollingIntoSaturdayNightLike (at Atlanta, Georgia)

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@eviemichal20

“PANSY PRIDE,” Gay Pride Day, London, United Kingdom, June 1976. Photo © Janine Wiedel. #lgbthistory #HavePrideInHistory (at London, United Kingdom)

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The island nation passed the bill that will mean any medical professional found guilty of prescribing the so-called ‘gay cure’ therapy could be jailed.

Politicians voted through the Affirmation of Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and Gender Expression Bill, labelling gay cure therapy as “deceptive and harmful”.

The new ban will see anyone found guilty fined up to $5,000, or even sent behind bars for up to five years in the most serious cases.

The new ruling will see Malta retain its position as one of the most progressive places in the world for LGBT rights.

Professional bodies welcomed the news, with The Malta Chamber of Psychologists, the Maltese Association of Psychiatry, the Malta Association of Family Therapy and Systemic Practice and the Malta Association for the Counselling Profession all expressing their satisfaction at the bill’s passing.

“[We] openly disapprove of practices are which are harmful to people in our community,’ they said in a statement.

“Not only does it reject a group of individuals on the basis of unfound prejudice and lack of tolerance for diversity, but also because it impinges on the international recognition of LGBTIQ rights.

“As a body we promote respect and equality for all persons, and are determined to continue working towards ensuring our clients can enjoy as safe a therapeutic experience as they deserve.”

Yes, go Malta! 🇲🇹 

It’s unbelievable that this “therapy” still exists in so many places – so thank you Malta for stepping forward and being so progressive, in comparison to other countries in Europe. 

LGBTQI rights are human rights. 

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An Introduction to Judith Butler’s Gender Troubles- A Macat Literature Analysis

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Judith Butler on gender and the trans experience:

“If she makes use of social construction as a theory to support her view, she very badly  misunderstands its terms.  In her view, a trans person is “constructed” by a medical discourse and therefore is the victim of a social construct.  But this idea of social constructs does not acknowledge that all of us, as bodies, are in the active position of figuring out how to live with and against the constructions  – or norms – that help to form us.  We form ourselves within the vocabularies that we did not choose, and sometimes we have to reject those vocabularies, or actively develop new ones.  For instance, gender assignment is a “construction” and yet many genderqueer and trans people refuse those assignments in part or in full.  That refusal opens the way for a more radical form of self-determination, one that happens in solidarity with others who are undergoing a similar struggle… 

I do know that some people believe that I see gender as a “choice” rather than as an essential and firmly fixed sense of self. My view is actually not that. No matter whether one feels one’s gendered and sexed reality to be firmly fixed or less so, every person should have the right to determine the legal and linguistic terms of their embodied lives. So whether one wants to be free to live out a “hard-wired” sense of sex or a more fluid sense of gender, is less important than the right to be free to live it out, without discrimination, harassment, injury, pathologization or criminalization – and with full institutional and community support. That is most important in my view.”

Too many amazing quotes to choose from. Click the link atop to read the whole piece, and to hear Judith Butler eloquently dismantle TERF ideologies.

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Revista CULT 195 : Dossiê JACQUES DERRIDA

Revista CULT 108 : GILLES DELEUZE

Revista CULT 191 : Dossiê MICHEL FOUCAULT

Revista CULT 200 : Dossiê ROLAND BARTHES

Revista CULT 174 : Dossiê JACQUES LACAN

Revista CULT 205 : JUDITH BUTLER

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Sexism is real, it exists, and we don’t even need to go into that. Now homophobia and transphobia exist as well, but they are not oppressions. They are punishments where sexism is the oppression. Susan Pharr wrote in her book Homophobia as a Weapon of Oppression that sexism is about gender; it’s about gender roles, and when you break those by being gay, lesbian, or transgendered you are breaking sexist rules and so you are punished. I think a lot of times people don’t acknowledge that sexism is the root of transphobia and homophobia.

Juma Blythe Essie

(via

genderqueer

) (via

qtia-blog

)

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You are not a man. You are not a woman. You are not a neuter. You are a construct. Maintaining your gender is a constant performance. These ideas don’t seem that radical now, but before Judith Butler adapted them from Foucault and laid them out in her 1990 book Gender Trouble, they seemed alien. “What do you mean getting hammered with your pals is a culturally ingrained performance? Are you saying I’m gay? Are you saying I don’t like pounding beers at the bar and then going to the club to throw up on my best friend, Steve, whom I fucking love?“ A bro might have said those very words to Judith Butler in 1990. Now, he’s read Gender Trouble, and is content as can be sitting around watching Sex and the City with his girlfriend.

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@eviemichal20

Roses are red,

gender is performative.

Mass market romance

is heteronormative.