Homophobia

• The explosion of user-created content on platforms like YouTube, Twitch and TikTok has unsettled traditional notions of authorship.
• Jessie Krahn, one of the authors of this story, has studied these “cancellation videos” as a unique sub-genre of YouTube apology videos.

Direct response to audience desire

• YouTube apology videos feature a YouTuber unequivocally taking responsibility for one accusation.
• These videos are created in direct response to audience desire.

Accepting, rejecting some criticisms

• One of the most famous examples of a cancellation video is YouTube beauty guru James Charles’s “No More Lies,” when Charles surveys criticisms levied against him.
• In Charles’s cancellation video, he stands by everything he said in an earlier apology video, but the cancellation video also refutes public criticisms of his character.
• She dismisses many of the criticisms as taking her tweets out of context and suggests that some of the criticisms were transphobic.

Moral discussions

• For audience members, cancelling is a way to negotiate their love for authors with their own values.
• Read more:
  Joe Rogan is at it again: Cancel culture can be harsh, but it can also help reduce harm

  When, in response, YouTubers reach out to their viewers through the format their audiences came to know them in, it is a way to be publicly forthcoming and engage viewers in moral discussions.

• Such videos also reinscribe the boundaries that restrict audiences to only knowing authors through their video content.

Pre-modern authorship

• The mode of authorship seen in YouTube cancellation videos combines the intense interest in the author as a singular creator that has long dominated popular conceptions of authorship with an older model of authorship that was popular in 17th-century England.
• Such texts directly responded to their readers’ desire for literature that invited public discussion and was socially oriented.

New access to information

• They were cheap places in which to conduct business and gain access to the latest newspapers and political gossip.
• These spaces expanded access to news and knowledge for men (and some women) at all levels of British society.

New public spaces, new texts

• Seventeenth-century readers had a new, more accessible forum for media consumption, and this influenced the texts being produced by authors at the time.
• Examining social media creation within the complicated history of authorship spotlights how new ways of consuming media shift the relationship between author and audience.

• This has happened with the tacit approval of a law enforcement apparatus that’s supposed to guarantee the right to equal protection.
• The continued criminalisation of same-sex sexual relations among consenting adults in Kenya worsens social disparities and inequalities.
• Research has shown that sexual and gender minorities are consistently targeted for unfair dismissal from jobs or business opportunities.

Inclusive development for economic growth

• This often leads to poorer outcomes in terms of income, human capital endowments and access to employment.
• People who are discriminated against tend to lack a voice in national and local decision making.
• The exclusion of minorities, therefore, means the loss of a workforce and their contribution to economic development.

Better health outcomes

• Social exclusion contributes to poor health among sexual and gender minorities.
• In a 2020 report, the group estimated that discrimination against sexual minorities costs Kenya up to Sh105 billion (US$782 million) annually in poor health outcomes.
• Our research shows, for example, better health such as decreased new HIV infections in societies that adopt laws that advance non-discrimination and decriminalise same-sex relationships.

Enhancing safety and security

• The resolution expresses grave concerns about increasing violence and other human rights violations – including murder, rape and assault – of individuals based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
• Safety and security are some of the biggest challenges facing sexual and gender minorities in Kenya.
• Kenya has seen an escalation of negative rhetoric and violence targeting sexual and gender minorities, and related organisations.

Acceptance of diversity

Sexual and gender minorities are socially excluded because of the criminal label the law imposes on them. This affects their self-acceptance and mental health. Homophobic acts are widespread even in countries where same-sex relations are legal. However, decriminalisation helps facilitate some level of acceptance among minority groups and within wider society. Studies have found that decriminalisation reduces societal violence.

The way forward

• Social exclusion constitutes perhaps the most serious challenge towards attaining sustainable and inclusive development.
• The criminalisation of same-sex relations among consenting adults in Kenya’s penal code exposes the weaknesses of the constitution in ensuring inclusivity.
• It would certainly open a new chapter in the lives of sexual and gender minorities.
• Lucy Wanjiku Mung’ala is affiliated with Hivos, where she works as the strategy and impact lead - gender equality, diversity and inclusion.

• Louise Casey’s review of the standards of behaviour and internal culture at the Metropolitan police makes for uncomfortable reading.
• It was commissioned following the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard by Wayne Couzens, who was a serving Met officer at the time.
• Crucially, in considering police culture she draws different conclusions on the existence of institutional racism than the position taken in 2021 by Boris Johnson’s government on race.
• Research shows that people from black and mixed ethnic groups have lower trust and confidence in the Met.

The scale of the task

• The Met’s response to scandals, the review says, often involves “playing them down, denial, obfuscation, and digging in to defend officers without seeming to understand their wider significance”.
• Casey also points to what many regard as a “hostile culture” within the force, with evidence of systematic racial bias against black, Asian, and ethnic minority staff.
• Mark Rowley, the Met commissioner, responded to Casey’s findings acknowledging that the racism, among other ills, is systemic.
• Individual offenders seeking to justify their actions will sometimes use what sociologists and criminologists call “neutralisation techniques” to minimise their guilt.
• Like many large institutions, the Met risks remaining in denial about the scale of its racism problem.

• LOS ANGELES, March 6, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The month of love wrapped with a flourish as leading global livestreaming platform Bigo Live (BIGO) hosted one of its most successful livestreamed shows – Game Changer with Milan Christopher (Game Changer) – the first original social media livestreamed LGBTQ+ dating reality show.
• Unlike other dating reality shows, Game Changer focuses on the unique experiences of queer individuals.
• Milan Christopher was a natural fit for Game Changer being a recurring name in TV and media.
• To watch and support Game Changer, download the Bigo Live app from the Apple App Store or the Google Play store, and subscribe to BIGO's YouTube Channel .