Fasten your seatbelts, racers, because this week’s Write That Down is queer as hell.

Quickfire Round

• For all the millennials in the audience, the YouTuber Errant Signal has put out an excellent breakdown of TikTok and its culture. It’s a long one — put it on as a podcast or watch it in chunks.

• Sasha Velour’s op-ed in The Washington Post has me shook.

  • “If these conservatives knew anything about queer history, they would know that despite the pain they might cause us, their demonization of queer people and our culture will never actually make us disappear.”

• On repeat: Rina Sawayama’s This Hell.

Read This 📖 “I Don’t Want to Change Myself”: Anti-LGBT Conversion Practices, Discrimination, and Violence in Malaysia

Last Monday, I posted this TikTok, ranting about the government’s approach to banning LGBTQ+ content, even the bare-minimum representation in Marvel‘ latest Thor movie, as we. One comment in particular bothered me (enough to post a response, at least), where the user essentially said: “What oppression?”

Let’s be 100% clear: Malaysia systematically oppresses queer and gender non-conforming people. This isn’t something that should have to be said given how painstakingly clear it is. It’s so clear that I can’t begin to fathom how someone could deny it.

The Human Rights Watch’s latest report on the conversion therapy practices here goes into it well, but there’s this one part that really sums it up.

But the battles regarding the use of the law to subject LGBT people to criminal prosecution are only part of the story in Malaysia. In the background is overt state hostility and tacit acceptance of socio-cultural antipathy toward sexual and gender diversity. This pervasive animus influences law enforcement, judicial outcomes, family behavior, and public discourse in media toward and about LGBT people.

A ‘pervasive animus’ isn’t how I would’ve thought to describe the hostility and challenges faced by us in this godforsaken country, but it’s a perfect description.

Watch This 📺 Drag Race France

If you’re a fan of Drag Race and you’re coming off of All Stars 7 craving more, check out the latest international season in RuPaul’s drag empire. The queens are great, with an entertaining spread of talents filling in our well loved Drag Race archetypes, and Nicky Doll (from S12 of the American series) is a surprisingly capable host, her comfort in her native tongue letting her have a lot more fun onscreen.

If you’ve never seen Drag Race, or if you’re — shock and horror — completely unfamiliar with drag as a form of performance, check out this video first, as well as the seminal cult classic documentary Paris is Burning.

Listen to This 🎧 Shamir – Heterosexuality

To be queer in Malaysia is to swing between queer hopelessness and queer optimism, so let’s indulge both today: Shamir’s 2022 album Heterosexuality is the perfect encapsulation of both those feelings as well as their intersection: queer rage. Some days I don’t know how to exist without feeling angry, and Shamir captures that angry defiance perfectly.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedYou wanna see me but you just can’t get past How I look or talk or think or walk, and it’s fucking sadText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedI don’t wanna be a girl, I don’t wanna be a man I’m just existing on this God-forsaken land