Alexander Kargaltsev, Russian artist and creator of the infamous “White Man Chair” in response to the controversial “Black Woman Chair,” is bringing his talent to New York City in order to protest Vladimir Putin’s fiercely antigay legislation in Russia and occupied Crimea.
Officially banned in Moscow, Kargaltsev’s performance art piece “Crematorium” observes four gay couples being forced to “turn straight,” and is meant “to bring together support and hope for the Russian LGBT and their friends in America.”
The show’s description paints a racy and controversial picture:
Former Ukraine. In the south of Putin’s Crimea, a giant factory with chimneys is built: a Crematorium for gays. Four couples are picked to test a new machine to turn them straight. Torture, interrogation, death and cleansing in the fiery furnace await them. Can you dare to join them in their ordeal?
Check out the trailer for Kargaltsev’s “Crematorium” below. Performances run late May through mid-June at NYC’s Gene Frankel Theatre. Visit Brown Paper Tickets for more info and ticketing options.
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photos courtesy Alexander Kargaltsev
murphy0071
Research shows changes in sexual orientation can result from viral attack of the human sex-behavior center, head injuries, and tumors. Psychosocial stressors leading to pseudo-sexuality and neurological insult or injury are apparently the only means of significantly altering the expression of sexual orientation. Excepting neurological changes, no credible sex researcher in the last fifty years has suggested sexual orientation changes after childhood. Most agree biological factors often mediate sexual orientation.
Psychophysiology.
Autonomic pupillary and penile reflexes, minimally controlled by conscious processes, reliably differentiate between male heterosexuals and homosexuals.56 Male homosexual behavior can be reduced or eliminated using painful electric shock or apomorphine vomiting with or without desensitizing male homosexual to females. Ego-dystonic homosexuals “self-referred” or sent by “government social service agencies” often have psychopathology and marked homophobia. “Homophobia” is best characterized as a revulsion related to homosexual practices or openly homosexual persons. Many “cured” male homosexuals continue to have powerful homosexual urges without erectile function with sexual partners. Despite protracted aversive intervention, male homosexuals continue to have autonomic pupil responses to male stimuli. Aversion therapy and other invasive treatments are punitive and pose serious ethical concerns.
Surgery and brain compromise.
Evidence from neurosurgery challenges the archetypic myth that persons, based on genital sex determination at birth, will exhibit “gender appropriate” or “heterosexual” behavior in adolescence and adulthood. The first such evidence comes from data on pre-frontal lobotomy patients , some being treated for agitated depression. Following surgery, some patients became “spontaneously” homosexual. In line with Money’s comments about sex hormone ratios in some depressives, many of these patients had significant depressive illness. Apparently, when the frontal area of the brain could no longer suppress underlying homosexual drives, these pseudoheterosexuals reverted to their normal homosexual preoccupation. In follow-up, patients reported being able to suppress homosexual urges over a long period. Clinical data shows that as the brain deteriorates with aging, some pseudoheterosexuals are unable to mask their underlying homosexuality.
In some countries, homosexuals have been “treated” surgically to force heterosexual behavior. Psychosurgery of the sex behavior center reduces or eliminates homosexual responding in some homosexual males. Many patients, without psychotherapeutic intervention, become heterosexually active after surgery. Some become asexual and have no sexual interest. Psychosurgery in lesbians results in fewer behavioral changes. After these psychosurgeries, failure to follow-up patients and adverse side-effects are reported, including death from infection.. A German government commission has called for the elimination of these surgeries. Psychosurgeries to change sexual orientation are not available in the United States.
Some males are accidentally mutilated during circumcision. Because of the ease of a male to female change, they are often sexually reassigned as females. Some of these “females” are masculine in behavior and many are “lesbian” during adulthood.
The Nazi references by Putin are absurd on face. Hitler was not homosexual and he hated them. He had Roem and others murdered for having sexual relations with men. The Nazi’s did not recognize lesbians as criminals and were not particularly successful in identifying male homosexuals for punishment under Paragraph 175.78 While not subject to the “final solution” as were Jews, homosexuals wore a pink inverted triangle and homosexual Jews wore a pink triangle over their Star of David. At Auschwitz, with four crematoria, homosexuals along with gypsies, Slavic peoples, political prisoners, and other “undesireables” were exclusively placed in crematoria No. 4–Juden Verboten. Homosexuals, considered beneath other non-Jewish concentration camp inmates, faced conspicuously vicious punishment, and died at a disproportionate rate.
We have Scott Lively who received his ordination from a trailer in the desert for spreading false information about the Nazis being supported by homosexuals. He also made certain that Uganda and other African nations were indoctrinated into his many lies. He is currently under indictment for his role in Uganda’s campaign to murder all homosexuals.
Facts never deterred Putin from blaming whoever he wanted for the woes that were brought on by him. Some believe that Putin is a pseudo-heterosexual and thus his hatred of homosexuals. Regardless, that the scientific community of Russia has remained silent on the subject is clear evidence of a threat to their lives by Putin.
Curtispsf
A Queerty post-doctoral moment above.
unreligious
Thanks Murphy I found what you wrote fascinating.
Mezaien
It`s all being done in the name of Christianity! go figure.
larajon
ok,,,,,
Matt1961
@murphy0071:
Up vote.
Throbert McGee
@murphy0071: I’d give this a DOWN vote, if I could, for the copy-and-paste logorrhea — why not say it in your own words instead of pasting this identical chunk of text all over the Innerwebs? (Google on text-strings like Autonomic pupillary and penile reflexes — Dr. Murphy has been spamming gay-related threads with this EXACT TEXT at least since 2011.)
Also, all the fancy scientific jargon may dazzle the proles, but it’s entirely unimpressive to those of us who actually have sufficient academic training to read and (more or less) comprehend the studies that are published in scientific journals.
Free Clue: Anything that can be said in long Greco-Latin words can also be said in short Anglo-Saxon words of 1 or 2 syllables — it may take a little longer to say it, but it makes things a lot easier for an audience of laypeople.
Finally, “Dr. Norman Murphy” may or may not have an actual doctorate in something or other, but he obviously has zero experience in classroom teaching.
Throbert McGee
Regarding the actual “Crematorium” performance-art piece — it’ll play very well in NYC and will do a lot to further Alexander Kargaltsev’s career and get him exposure among wealthy American art patrons…
…but will it actually do a single thing to change the minds of the reported 75% of Russians who told pollsters that “homosexuality should not be accepted by society”?
My Magic 8-Ball says “Nyet, absolutno, kategoricheski nyet”.
I’ve spent years now talking online with straight Russians as an openly gay American who can speak their language not-too-badly. And I can solemnly assure everyone here that Hitler comparisons and concentration-camp imagery WILL NOT WORK ON THE RUSSIAN MAJORITY, however much this sort of thing may delight American progressives who want to believe that they’re doing something vaguely useful by supporting Kargaltsev’s “edgy” performance art.
jabuka
@Throbert McGee: So what is your solution?
Throbert McGee
@jabuka: Part of my solution is what you see here: Trying to educate Westerners about how to have constructive dialogue with Russians, instead of just jerking off for the entertainment of other Westerners.
Apart from that, there really aren’t any quick and easy solutions, I’m afraid. Remember that All in the Family was talking to American viewers about homophobic prejudice way back in the 1970s; Dear Abby and Ann Landers were writing about the plight of gay teens by the 1980s; the gays-in-the-military debate spanned decades from Leonard Matlovich to Bill Clinton to the present.
In contrast, Russia’s “public conversation” about homosexuality did not even begin until the post-Soviet period in the early 1990s, but meanwhile they’re trying to cope culturally with the Western sensory overload from the Internet. (I can promise you that even though most Russians don’t know the “Folsom Street Fair” by name, a lot of them have seen Internet pictures of the FSF — and they think that this is what it means when people are “openly gay.”)
It’ll take time and patience, and it’ll also take some cultural sensitivity — i.e., what plays well to progressive Manhattanites won’t necessarily have a positive effect on straight people in Yekaterinburg and Volgograd.
Throbert McGee
By the way, the preliminary vote in the Russian Duma (Duma ? “House of Representatives”) about the national ban on “gay propaganda” occurred at almost the same time as the death of PFLAG founder Jeanne Manford.
At the time, I posted about Mrs. Manford in Russian on one of the bilingual Internet forums where I regularly hang out, and I’m sorry to say that even some well-educated Russians today don’t quite get the importance of PFLAG (“Why would a mother send a letter to the newspaper admitting that her son is a homosexual?”), although some of them “got it” and thanked me for the eye-opening post.
“Russia is an enigma inside a mystery within a riddle wrapped in a tasty puff-pastry crust.”
Throbert McGee
Apparently Queerty doesn’t like the wavy “approximately equals” sign. But anyway, the Duma is the lower house of the Russian Parliament, distinguished from the Federation Council that’s sorta/kinda like our Senate.