Gay men holding hands
What happened when two men walked through Moscow... holding hands?
The latest "social experiment" video to take off globally shows an apparently gay couple holding hands in downtown Moscow - and receiving harsh homophobic abuse.
The two new men stride hand-in-hand past some of Moscow's best-known landmarks. But it's far from a relaxed stroll - instead they are bombarded with a string of insults, culminating in a confrontation with very aggressive men who manifest ready to beat them up.
International gay rights campaigners have frequently used the internet to object Russian policies, including during last year's Sochi Winter Olympics. But this wasn't a campaigning video: rather it was made by popular Russian YouTube pranksters. The video by ChebuRussiaTV, external has been watched more than 3 million times since it was posted on Monday.
"I was shocked by the reactions... They were just irrational . Every five minutes we would get a horrible reaction," Nikita Rozhdesev, one of the filmmakers behind the video, tells BBC Trending. "We didn't recognize that so many people would watch it, but we knew that our subscribers would be interested in
I watched him lift his partner’s hand over the garbage can at the edge of the pavement as they walked briskly along the street. I was sitting outside a café in Hamburg’s “gay street”, Lange Reihe. A gay man myself, I couldn’t help watching these two twenty-something guys as they walked past hand-in-hand. Would I have noticed if they’d been a straight couple? Probably not.
In his book Picturing Men: A Century of Male Relationships in Everyday American Photography, John Ibson remarks that physical closeness between men used to be probably just a autograph of close friendship. This collection of photos depicts affection between men of various ages and from various social classes between the years 1850 and 1950. The men are shown with arms and legs entwined around each other. It’s a defended bet that not all them were gay or would have considered themselves gay. Here’s further evidence that a taboo on same-sex male physical attachment is a relatively recent phenomenon. Social customs transform with time, and will certainly change dramatically again, whatever people think or want to think.
There seems to be some mistrust about when adult males routinely stopped holding hands in the UK as a s
Gay men 'afraid to grip hands in public', survey finds
More than half of gay men in Britain do not feel cozy holding hands with a partner in the highway, a survey of 5,000 LGBT people has revealed.
One in five lesbian, same-sex attracted, bisexual and transgender respondents to Stonewall's poll, external said they had experienced a hate crime in the past year.
They ranged from abuse to assault, but 81% of victims did not go to police.
The Home Office said all hate crime was "completely unacceptable" and "should be met with the full force of the law".
Stonewall said the UK had much to perform before all LGBT people "can feel safe, included and free to be themselves".
While hate crime was more effectively recorded than in the past, the charity said there had undoubtedly been "a sincere increase" in incidents since its last major survey in 2013.
The 2017 poll - timed to coincide with a major new campaign, Come Out for LGBT - also found:
Gay men’s experiences of holding hands in public: psychosocial dilemmas and the discourse of homophobia
On any typical day or evening walking in urban, suburban or rural environments, it is not uncommon to see what seems, from appearances, to be a heterosexual or straight-passing couple holding hands as they walk, or engaging in similar gestures that portray themselves to be in a loving and intimate relationship. Typically, such general displays of affection arrive carefree and spontaneous. The picture is different however for members of the LGBTQ community. According to the 2017 UK National LGBT Survey (UK Government Equalities Office, 2018), more than two thirds of respondents reported that they never hold hands with their partner in common, out of a dread of possible negative or abusive reactions from others. We have contributed elsewhere to furthering qualitative study on this topic (Rohleder, Ryan-Flood, Walsh 2023). Extending this work, the current article develops an account of the role of homophobia and internalised homophobia in gay men’s exposure of navigating the execute of holding hands with their partners across distinct landscapes. We take a
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