Tag: public opinion

As Ukraine’s LGBTQ soldiers fight on the front line, acceptance grows in the conservative country (not really)

Ms. Cat
Instagram.

As Ukraine’s LGBTQ soldiers fight on the front line, acceptance grows in the conservative country

“My fellow soldiers are really impressed with what I’ve done in Bakhmut, the massive scale of work that I did there, and after that they just don’t care about who I sleep with,” Honzyk, whose medical unit evacuates wounded soldiers and provides emergency first aid, said in a hip café in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, while on leave from the front line.

That doesn’t sound like what Ivan told the following publication, three days later:

Against Homophobia, For Women’s Rights: Ivan’s Lonely Struggle (original)

Ivan Honzyk came out as gay in March last year. His sexuality is a problem for others. In Russia, he keeps appearing on television for propaganda purposes. In Ukraine, many homosexuals have a hard time in the army. Many live in hiding, says Ivan Honzyk. Soldiers don’t want to meet him for fear of being mistaken for gay themselves.

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On The E-Girl Army Psyop Phenomenon

Ms. Cat

Video: On The E-Girl Army Psyop Phenomenon via Justin Taylor

Related:

Weaponizing e-girls: How the US military uses YouTube and TikTok to improve its image

How E-girl influencers are trying to get Gen Z into the military

But Haylujan isn’t the only E-girl using Sanrio sex appeal to lure the internet’s SIMPs into the armed forces. There’s Bailey Crespo and Kayla Salinas, not to mention countless #miltok gunfluencers cropping up online. While she didn’t document her military career, influencer Bella Poarch also served in the US Navy for four years before going viral on TikTok in 2020, and is arguably the blueprint for this kind of kawaii commodified fetishism in the military. An adjacent figure, Natalia Fadeev, also known as Gun Waifu, is an Israeli influencer and IDF soldier who uses waifu aesthetics and catgirl cosplay to pedal pro-Israel propaganda to her 756k followers. She poses to camera, ahegao-style, with freshly manicured nails wrapped neatly around a glock, the uWu-ification of military functioning as a cutesy distraction from the shadowy colonial context: “when they try and destroy your nation,” she writes in one caption.

Thousands in Italy protest West’s weapons supplies to Ukraine as war enters 2nd year

Ms. Cat

Thousands of Italians have demonstrated across the country in Rome, Florence and Genoa against Western sanctions imposed on Russia and transfer of lethal military hardware to Ukraine, a day after the first anniversary of the Ukraine-Russia war.

Thousands in Italy protest West’s weapons supplies to Ukraine as war enters 2nd year

Video via World Politics

Related:

Anti-NATO, Anti-EU, Anti-War, Protest Rallies Hit Germany, France, Italy