Being Gay in Iran
August 10, 2014 9:27 AM   Subscribe

 
Farhad commented on the first link:
hello guys
thanks for your lovely comments
i'm Farhad , writer of the piece
you can contact me by sending your emails to : f.dolatizadeh@gmail.com
and please please please do not share that video
you are bringing it up again by doing so and you will put lives of the ones who are still in Iran in danger again. and if you have shared it please remove your post. don't let the ones who wanted to do harm to me and the others be successful.
posted by infinitewindow at 9:41 AM on August 10, 2014 [11 favorites]


Maybe remove those last liveleak links?
posted by infinitewindow at 9:42 AM on August 10, 2014


Let's hope this isn't another "Gay Girl in Damascus" style fraud.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 9:46 AM on August 10, 2014 [1 favorite]


If what he said about not consenting to being filmed is true, then that's just remarkably shitty of the filmmakers.
posted by johnofjack at 9:56 AM on August 10, 2014 [1 favorite]


I'm curious about whether the CBC or other news outlets (not to mention organizations that represent journalists and documentary filmmakers) have guidelines about this kind of thing. It seems like the CBC and the documentary filmmakers committed a pretty egregious breach of ethics when they filmed and broadcast patrons at an Iranian gay cafe without the people's consent.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 9:58 AM on August 10, 2014 [2 favorites]


Mod note: direct links to video removed at the request of the poster
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:00 AM on August 10, 2014 [4 favorites]


Farhad's boyfriend Darius, the only other named character, left the narrative suddenly after the forced outing. Hope he's okay.

Turkey seemed better than Iran only by a degree—Farhad's legal status was safer, but not his social status. Very sad, only a little hopeful now that he's in Canada.

I hope Farhad's in touch regularly with his family and that his family's safe.
posted by infinitewindow at 10:08 AM on August 10, 2014 [2 favorites]


Hmm, I think I may have to write a letter to whoever the relevant person at the CBC is, because if they've been complicit in outing people in a place where it's physically dangerous to be out, that's kind of an enormous problem.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:56 AM on August 10, 2014 [9 favorites]


Yeah, I came in after the video link was removed, but if it is still on the CBC's website, I would be interested in writing them about taking it down.
posted by deludingmyself at 1:29 PM on August 10, 2014


It's not up on the CBC website as far as I can tell, but it is available in other places. I don't know if the CBC could get the other sites to take it down.

And yeah, they show identifiable shots of men in a cafe, with a voice-over saying "the men in this cafe are risking their lives. They could be arrested, tortured or killed." It really didn't occur to anyone that showing their faces made it much more likely that they would be arrested, tortured or killed? I wonder if, back in 2007, it didn't occur to anyone that the media could be so globalized that people in Iran would be able to see a segment that aired on Canadian TV.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 1:51 PM on August 10, 2014


> It really didn't occur to anyone that showing their faces made it much more likely that they would be arrested, tortured or killed?

I'm pretty sure the only ethical consideration on the CBC's part would have been 'they're Iranian, so they probably won't be able to sue us'.
posted by nangar at 3:26 PM on August 10, 2014 [1 favorite]


nangar, that is a seriously gross misrepresntation of how the CBC usually operates, and betrays an understanding only of how corporation in the USA make decisions, not how the public broadcaster (funded by government, same as the BBC) of Canada works most of the time.

Shame.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 5:38 PM on August 10, 2014 [2 favorites]


I remember reading a long article (can't remember where) about gay culture in Iran, not long after the infamous Ahmadinejad speech in NYC, in 2007. The article went into great detail about Iran's gay subculture; it's very large and well established, but so is discrimination. It appeared that you could get away with being gay in Iran as long as you were discreet, but the minute you made noise or started to demand gay rights, they would jail, torture, or kill you.
posted by Vibrissae at 7:10 PM on August 10, 2014


What an astounding breach of ethics. I don't know how anyone could do that, or live with themselves afterwards.
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:36 PM on August 10, 2014


Hey CBC, there are these cool modern technologies called "pixelate" and "blur." Jesus fuck. What were they thinking?
posted by en forme de poire at 11:22 AM on August 11, 2014


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