Dazed: Intimate photos explore Iran’s hidden gay community

In February 1979, the Persian Empire came to an end. After 2,500 years of a continuous monarchy, Iran became an Islamic Republic governed by Sharia Law – making homosexuality a crime subject to the imprisonment, corporal punishment, and execution.

At its core the issue is intercourse. Any activity outside heterosexual marriage is viewed as a violation of religious law. Interestingly, transgender people are considered heterosexual and will not be persecuted if they complete gender confirmation surgery, which may be partially funded by the state. As a result, Iran ranks as second in the world, following Thailand, for gender realignment surgeries. Many gay men have been pressured by their families to become transgender – or are forced to flee the country in order to save themselves.

Many come to Denizli, an industrial city in southwest Turkey that acts as a transit zone, allowing Iranian refugees to live in a state of purgatory while they wait patiently for a visa to live in yet another country. Since the U.S. travel ban was implemented and Canada stopped accepting Iranian refugees, their circumstances are becoming increasingly dire and difficult. While homosexuality is legal in Turkey, homophobia remains an issue that all LGBTQI people must face. Although free from the Kafkaesque struggles of their native land, the Iranians must remain anonymous in order to protect themselves. [...]

“The city of Denizli is an important part of the story as well. It plays an important role in their lives as they must wait here indefinitely – until they are able to get a visa to live in another country. I wanted to show this town where time is like being on pause. We tried to find a place that could echo their life while hiding in Iran or simply places they liked. Even though homosexuality is allowed in Turkey, there are still lots of homophobia and taking some of the couple pictures outside wasn’t easy because we had to wait until no one was around.”

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Dazed: Unravelling porn’s obsession with faux lesbian sex

Money, power and sex are the three pillars of modern life, so it’s no surprise that the porn industry and society at large plays on this relationship like a dog with a bone. The adult industry’s explosion after a fractured sexual revolution in the late 70s and early 80s gave rise to big businesses with even bigger wallets, and a core audience was identified: the straight male who will pay hard cash to get his jollies. “During the 80s the porn industry became institutionalised and big production companies were cashing in on female sexuality,” Dian explains. “Unrealistic standards for women became the norm and it became the bloated industry it is today.” Porn and erotica helps assist a fantasy, so the more you want to be the man with his head in two girls’ crotches, the more money you’ll pay (at least before the internet that is). [...]

The commander of the gaze is unequivocally male even if there’s no man in sight. For Dian, faux lesbian sex is straight male fantasy without the phallic panic of couple-led porn. “Men will explain it to you in different ways,” she says. “Some don’t want another man there because it’s competition, and others will tell you it’s the idea that these women are so sexually excited they will do it with each other and if he walked into the room they would just leap on him. I don’t think they’re really seeing them as lesbian girls but as opportunistic and sexually liberal women who will do anything.”

According to Dian, studies have shown that men aren’t really interested in real, loving sex acts between lesbian-identified women, therefore the power lies within ambiguity. On top of this, woman-on-woman porn is also one of the most popular genres for straight females, perhaps because this elusion of adventure is scrambled up with conflicting social scripts. A distortion of constructed sexual binaries creates a meta-narrative about identity politics in a larger sense; sex becomes so muddled that we’re not sure exactly what or who gets us wet (or hard). “It’s all a manipulation of desire,” adds Dian, “and there is a lot of power in this.”

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Dazed: People are protesting Russian censorship by narrating porn

Government censorship agency Roskomnadzor blocked access to the sites, and now anyone trying to access them gets an error message that says they’ve been blocked “by decision of public authorities”. Last year, the watchdog banned 11 other porn sites, citing that they were failing to protect children “from information harmful to their health”. Court rulings were able to bring in the ban due to very vague, extreme legislation based around child protection.

And although sexually explicit content isn’t necessarily illegal in Russia, “the illegal production, dissemination and advertisement of pornographic materials and objects” is.

In an act of protest, people are uploading videos of themselves to social media watching porn and narrating what happens. They can be found underneath the hashtag #rospornobzor. [...]

Another protestor, Natalia Istomina, asserted her issues with porn as a whole, while also drawing attention to the dangers of government censorship. “While mainstream pornography is abusive as fuck, we’re not talking about that right now, but about the fact that censorship is an even greater violence and the way to total hypocrisy and isolation, where no honest conversations are possible, not just about sex, but about anything at all,” she said.

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