Fino a qualche anno fa erano una nicchia, se non un vero e proprio tabù. Oggi le serie Tv queer realizzate in Asia si sono trasformate in prodotti culturali di tendenza. Con la crescente – anche se ancora lenta e graduale – accettazione sociale della comunità Lgbtq+ nel continente, infatti, le opere cinematografiche che rappresentano, esplorano e raccontano esperienze legate a persone lesbiche, gay, bisessuali e transgender stanno riscontrando un successo clamoroso.

C’è un sottogenere, in particolare, che è finito sotto i riflettori internazionali. È conosciuto come Girls’ Love (Gl), un termine usato per lo più in Asia per indicare storie romantiche o sessuali tra donne. L’epicentro del suo successo è in Thailandia. Il motivo è semplice: è da Bangkok che questo genere è partito fino a raggiungere un giro d’affari stimato in decine di milioni di dollari.

Tutto è iniziato come una specie di esperimento. Gli autori della serie televisiva Bad Buddy, che racconta la storia di due ragazzi che frequentano la stessa scuola e le cui famiglie sono rivali nel business locale, hanno introdotto nella trama anche una coppia lesbica. Il risultato è che questo drama romantico thailandese, risalente al 2021, ha dato vita a un genere completamente nuovo che, appunto, ha lentamente attirato appassionati in tutto il mondo.

L’ascesa di un nuovo genere

La Thailandia, come detto, è il cuore di questo movimento in rapida crescita, che sta rimodellando l’immagine della comunità Lgbtq+ nell’industria dell’intrattenimento. In Bad Buddy tutto cambia quando una ragazza, Ongsa, si trasferisce in una nuova scuola. Inizialmente timida e insicura, si innamora subito di Sun, una delle ragazze più popolari dell’istituto. Non avendo il coraggio di confessare i suoi sentimenti, le scrive di nascosto tramite un account Instagram, facendo però credere di essere un ragazzo. Le due diventano amiche nella vita reale, ma mantenere segreta la loro relazione online diventa troppo stressante. Alla fine, si allontanano, entrambe sopraffatte dalla pressione, salvo poi ritrovarsi e iniziare una storia d’amore.

“All’inizio non eravamo sicuri. In seguito, come regista, ho provato a includere una coppia lesbica in un dramma Bl (Boys’ Love, un genere che racconta una storia d’amore fra uomini), le stesse attrici di Milk-Love in Bad Buddy”, ha dichiarato alla Bbc Noppharnach Chaiyahwimhon della casa di produzione thailandese GMMTV.

Successivamente, la coppia, interpretata dalle attrici thai Pansa Vosbein e Pattranite Limpatiyakorn, è diventata virale sul web e centrale nella trama della serie. “Abbiamo notato una tendenza: le persone stavano iniziando a discutere seriamente di queste ragazze e chiedevano una serie con una coppia lesbica”, ha aggiunto lo stesso Chaiyahwimhon.

Il successo delle fiction Girls’ Love

Il risultato? GMMTV ha commissionato la produzione del suo primo lungometraggio lesbico, The World Tilts 23.5 Degrees, tratto dall’omonimo romanzo e interpretato dalle attrici comparse in Bad Buddy.

Quando la serie andò in onda nel 2024, Channel 3, la principale rete televisiva thailandese, aveva già anticipato questa tendenza trasmettendo il primo drama Gl mainstream, GAP The Series: Pink Theory, sia in tv che su YouTube. È stato un successo clamoroso: la fiction sfondò rapidamente il tetto delle 300 milioni di visualizzazioni.

Secondo la società di analisi Rocket Media Lab, alla fine del 2025 erano stati completati 21 drama Gl, con 51 coppie lesbiche protagoniste. Come se non bastasse, i biglietti per assistere ai numerosi incontri con i fan organizzati dai registi delle serie thai a Taiwan, nelle Filippine, in Giappone, a Singapore, in Cambogia e persino negli Stati Uniti sono andati esauriti.

Molte di queste fiction sono disponibili su YouTube, spesso con sottotitoli in più lingue per consentirne la visione ai fan dei Paesi con rigide normative sui media (tra cui Cina e Indonesia).

A proposito: negli ultimi anni Pechino ha chiuso decine di migliaia di siti web e account di social media che contenevano quello che i censori nazionali hanno definito “volgare” pornografia. Taiwan è stato invece il primo territorio in Asia a consentire il matrimonio tra persone dello stesso sesso, nel 2019, seguito dal Nepal nel 2023 e dalla Thailandia nel 2025.

L'articolo Film, serie tv, romanzi: in Asia esplode il boom delle Girls’ Love proviene da InsideOver.

Outside the Church of the Conversion of St. Paul in Lublin, Malgorzata holds her rosary in her hands. She would have never expected anything except to see her country still under attack. “I won’t stand idle and let these sodomites destroy our values,” avows the eighty-six year old. “I have seen Poland end up under Nazi and Soviet rule, it will not happen again.”

For this reason, she is here with dozens of other people in response to the “evangelical call” of Father Miroslaw Matuszny, at a meeting to pray for the conversion of the “enemies of Christ” and for families so that “children and young people can grow up in a homeland free of totalitarian ideologies, hostile to Christianity,” says the priest.

The reference is to what Jaroslow Kaczynski’s Law and Justice party (PiS) calls “LGBT ideology” a totalitarian view promoted by the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities to destroy the core of the nation: the traditional family and the Christian values ​​on which it is founded.

The PiS launched their campaign for the European elections in May, and for the election of the Polish National Assembly on October 13, based on their crusade against LGBT communities. It has proven to be a winning strategy as at the Sejm and the lower house of the parliament, the PiS gained 43.59% of the votes in the latter election. This percentage reached 55.39% in the region of Lublin, the heart of so-called “Poland B”, the poorer and more conservative part of the country.

Here in recent months, prayer meetings, like the one organized by Father Miroslaw, have become increasingly frequent. “The congregation are shown photos of gay pride marches or obscene images that have nothing to do with the LGBT. The priests explain to them that the LGBT want to sexualize children, abuse them, and take them away from their families, trying to scare them,” says Alina Pospischil, a journalist at the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper in Lublin.

This proselytism has also been condemned by a part of the Church. The long J’accuse by the Dominican priest Ludwik Wisniewski, published in the prestigious Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny, was a talking point in Lublin. In it, Father Ludwik attacks all priests who tolerate or openly support Kaczynski’s policy. It is they, according to the Dominican priest, who are killing Christianity in Poland – starting with Father Tadeusz Rydzyk, a Redemptorist priest who supports the anti-LGBT crusade on his channel Radio Maryja, one of the most popular stations in Poland.

A billboard stands out among Swidnik’s communist tower blocks. In the foreground, two half-naked men, with their backs turned, in a photo that seems to have been taken during a gay pride parade. And then a question: “Czy to jest milosc?”, “Is this love?” On March 26, Swidnik, a south-eastern suburb of Lublin, was the first powiat (district) to declare itself “free of LGBT ideology”, a macabre expression that brings to mind the term “Judenfrei” (“free of Jews”), used by the Nazis while carrying out the Shoah.

With an overwhelming majority of 15 votes out of 18, the powiat’s Council approved a declaration presented by Radoslaw Brzozka. Mr Brzozka is an elected PiS councillor standing against “the radicals who aim to establish a cultural revolution in Poland and who attack freedom of expression, the innocence of children, the authority of the family and the school, as well as the freedom of enterprise.” The latter refers to the story of a printer from Lodz convicted for refusing to print posters for an LGBT group. In the blink of an eye, “free of LGBT ideology” areas have multiplied throughout Poland: more than fifty municipalities, villages and regional assemblies are involved.

Like many in Swidnik, Maciej, a father of two, defends the decision to declare the powiat “free of LGBT ideology”. “They shouldn’t really exist, not even one of them. They are not normal – they are unnatural. Now they have decided they want to teach children to masturbate. It is not right, my wife and I decide the best way to educate our children.”

This is one of the many warped views that have been around since this story started. On February 18, Warsaw’s liberal mayor, Rafal Trzaskowski, signed a joint declaration against homophobic discrimination with several LGBT associations. Among the twelve points of the declaration, one in particular, triggered a reaction from the sovereignists – that which stipulated the introduction of a sex education programme in schools, based on the guidelines of the World Health Organization (WHO).

The statement approved by the Swidnik powiat states that “the authorities will do everything possible to prevent entry into schools by the politically correct and the depraved, who are seeking the early sexualisation of Polish children according to the so-called WHO standards.” Although it has no legal value, the declaration has given official status to the accusations made against the LGBT.

Now the communities live in fear that one day the “paedophiles”, “sodomites”, or  “deviants” may snatch their children and grandchildren from them, and that is why, during marches for equality in LGBT rights, it is often ordinary people (not just hooligans) who verbally and physically attack the demonstrators.

“First it was the migrants’ turn, now we are the enemy. All for a few more votes in the elections. I thought that after the death of Pawel Adamowicz – progressive mayor of Gdansk, stabbed during a public event in January this year – that things would change. The PiS has instead raised the level of confrontation, they will stop at nothing.”

Bart Staszewski, the gay activist of the Love does Not Exclude association, voices his frustration at length. Bart is one of the most famous faces in the LGBT world in Poland. Originally from Lublin, it was his idea to organize the first two marches for equality in his home city, as a challenge to a conservative society not only to ask for more rights, but also to reiterate that Poland also belongs to them, to the LGBT.

Yet Bart is paying a high price for his activism. Not a day goes by without his social media channels being flooded with insults and threats. The latest one arrived by post, a few days before a march on September 29: “Don’t organize that parade or you’re a dead man.” The rainbow march could literally have been stained red. A few days after the parade it was discovered that among those arrested was also a couple, a man and a woman, stopped shortly before the start of the march. The police found a rudimentary explosive device in the woman’s backpack. Now the pair will have to face charges of attempted mass murder.

“This has been going on for months,” says Bart, “I’m now constantly paranoid. The paranoia of being attacked on the street, phone calls hacked, spied on via Facebook, checked up on by the police. It doesn’t take much to end up in the propaganda machine, it’s scary.”

Suicide among boys belonging to sexual minorities has also increased since the start of the PiS crusade. Like that of Milo Mazurkiewicz, 23, transgender, who ended his life by jumping off a bridge in Warsaw. “There are frequent stories,” continues Bart. “A 15-year-old boy who lives in a village near Lublin called me in tears. He is homosexual, but is afraid to tell anyone and often has suicidal thoughts. There you go, that is what being gay in Poland means today.”

Bart calls it a pogrom-type atmosphere, which was impossible to imagine until recently, especially in this corner of Poland, where the entire Jewish community (about a third of the population of Lublin) was exterminated during the Second World War. It feels like you can still hear the echo of its past coming from the Majdanek concentration camp, on the hills surrounding the city. The fear is that this echo goes unheard.

L'articolo The Polish crusade against “LGBT ideology” proviene da InsideOver.

The first Monday in October is the single most important day in American jurisprudence. It’s the day the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) convenes to begin hearing legal arguments that will go on to shape every facet of American life.

As each court is known by the Chief Justice’s name, 7 October began the 15th year of the Roberts Court marking the first time in 50 years that the court has had a “reliable” conservative majority.

After the tumultuous appointment of President Trump’s nominee Brett Kavanaugh, the court has come under close scrutiny. It’s been thought that many of the cases from 2018 weren’t too controversial, presumably to help Justice Kavanaugh get his footing.

For the cases on the 2019 docket, the training wheels are off. The court will be hearing and deciding upon a number of critical cases this year.

The Roberts Court wasted no time in flexing its conservative muscle by vacating the decision of a lower court in Michigan who had ruled that “34 of the state’s voting districts were specifically designed to disadvantage Democratic voters, deliberately diluting the power of their vote to ensure a particular partisan outcome.” This is legalese for what is known as gerrymandering. The Michigan lower court also stated that gerrymandering was a “pernicious practice that undermines our democracy.”

The 5-4 decision cut right along ideological lines, and saw Chief Justice John Roberts invoke the “Political Question Doctrine” – which states that political questions are beyond the reach of the federal courts.

The conservative majority court determined that it was “constitutionally permissible for voting districts to be drawn with the specific intent to disadvantage voters of a particular political ideology.” At the same time, Chief Justice Roberts acknowledged that the “ruling may enable increasingly inequitable political representation.”

In a case that clearly indicates Justice Kavanaugh’s “honeymoon” period is over the court is set to review Louisiana abortion laws. Since abortion providers were still appealing the initial decision which said that providers of abortion in Louisiana must have admitting privileges to a nearby hospital, SCOTUS voted 5-4 in February to delay the law from taking effect until the appeals have been exhausted.

This Louisiana law is remarkably similar to the Texas law the Supreme Court struck down in 2016. At the time, the court found the driving distance between the abortion clinic and any nearby hospital posed an undue burden on a woman’s constitutional right to access an abortion.

Aside from the courts’ conservative majority today, the difference between the Louisiana law and Texas law is driving distance. Since Lousiana is a smaller state, the driving distances between the clinic and hospital wouldn’t be as burdensome as it was in Texas.

The court is expected to hear arguments for this early next year with their decision being rendered in July 2020. If that timing gives you pause, it should. This will be a hot button decision, delivered at the peak of what promises to be a fiery election cycle; all but ensuring it will become even more combustible.

While Roe v. Wade may still be the law of the land, this Louisiana case is opening the door for other states to sidestep around overturning Roe v. Wade. If SCOTUS votes along ideological lines, it would blast open the door for other states to follow suit and therefore making the procedure extremely arduous, if not impossible, state-by-state.

More succinctly, this decision alone will re-shape women’s reproductive rights for decades.

SCOTUS also faces its biggest Second Amendment case in ten years. At stake is whether or not New York City’s ban on transporting a “licensed, locked and unloaded handgun to a home or outside city limits is consistent with the Second Amendment.”

Shortly after New York City learned SCOTUS would hear the case, they reversed the ban and the state legislature immediately wrote a new law prohibiting New York City from reinstating the ban. Even though the city has asked the Court to dismiss the case, the fact that they decided against all the dismissal submissions is setting off alarms among gun-control advocates.

All of this prompted Justice Sonia Sotomayer to opine that the court is “bending rules in order to achieve conservative outcomes.”

Also at stake is the future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. This Obama-era program has helped over 700,000 immigrants avoid deportation and get them permits for work. It’s also been a thorn in President Trump’s side since he was sworn in.

Overturning this would fall right in line with his anti-immigration position and his delight at wiping out anything President Obama accomplished.

One of the first cases they heard this session was Ramos V. Louisiana, which questioned whether “the Fourteenth Amendment fully incorporates the Sixth Amendment guarantee of a unanimous verdict.” In other words, can juries convict criminals without a unanimous verdict.

The Fourteenth Amendment also appears in Kahler v. Kansas, which is asking whether the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments permit a state to abolish the insanity defense.

The court is also dipping its toe into the issue of LGBTQ rights. Since President Trump reversed President Obama’s protection of transgendered individuals its raised the issue of whether their protection falls under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Court must decide whether this 1964 act protects people from discrimination in the workplace if they are gay or transgender.

However, of the 44 cases the court will hear this session, perhaps none may be more important than the potential case facing Chief Justice John Roberts. Should the House of Representatives vote to impeach President Trump, it would then move to a trial in the senate. As Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Roberts would be responsible for presiding over the trial in the Senate.

If the Supreme Court of the United States continues to vote along ideological lines, as is expected, the conservative majority will have a profound impact on America. Not only will American progressives be in for a reckoning but so will all American citizens.

Regardless of what one may think of the way President Donald Trump governs, or doesn’t govern, his legacy will be how he and the Republicans have shaped The Supreme Court and the lower courts in the United States.

Without question, these appointments and their respective decisions will impact the way American’s live for decades.

L'articolo The Supreme Court and the Sculpting of America proviene da InsideOver.