Ukraine just held its first Pride event in years despite Russia's continued invasion
Ukraine just held its first Pride event in years despite Russia's continued invasion
The military and a secret whisper campaign helped ensure the event's success.
You're viewing a single thread.
And it got attacked by a ton of fascists. The videos are horrible. Not only that, but due to security threats the parade had to be limited quite a lot.
That really, really sucks.
However, in Russia, the fascists attacking them would be police and the people marching would all be in prison now, if not dead... so as awful as it is in Ukraine, it's even worse for the queer people in the country invading them.
So let's hope it continues to be legal to be queer in Ukraine, hard as it is.
Being queer in Russia is worse, that's true. But I don't see the point here. Ukraine has a lot of work left to do. One can't always look at worse places and deflect the criticism. You could've very well mentioned Qatar or Brunei. Doesn't make it any better.
Ukraine used to be part of the Soviet Union with Russia. They have a lot in common culturally. That's why people are comparing them.
This is progress in the right direction, but people's minds don't change just because lines on a map do. But this is progress.
They are comparing them because Russia's justification for the war was that Ukraine is full of fascists and Russia isn't (bs). We should be able to criticise bad stuff without comparing it however.
Standing up in the face of oppression and bigotry is the point.
The point is exactly that they're trying. Despite the parade being attacked, the democratically elected government, and the police as an institution are supporting them. That is the essence of working towards freedom of expression and progress: The fact that the people in the parade are permitted by the government to express themselves, and protected by the government when they do so, even if popular opinion may be against them.
I could have mentioned Qatar or Brunei, but the article mentioned Russia, so I was talking about it.
Edit: I can't fucking spell today.
Back in the day there existed Current TV and before Vice documentaries were a thing there was Vanguard — out of which came some awesome investigative journalists. One of the pieces they did was From Russia, With Hate which documented the rising neo-nazi anti-immigrant sentiment in Russia. In essence we knew Russia was a shit-hole then, and it's of course an earlier stepping-stone to compare to in terms our own nation's direction.
And it got attacked by a ton of fascists.
Literally had to be protected by the military. It's weird how that lead got so heavily buried. Imagine if this story had been written about Mexico or Brazil or China.