The Pink Line by Mark Gevisser should become pretty much essential reading on the challenges that LGBT+ people are faced with around the world. Alongside the challenges, Gevisser celebrates recent progress and success. It was great reading so many stories from across the world and Gevisser really conveys the impact of geography on identity and one’s life in general. The book is clearly well-researched and I was also pleasantly surprised by the theoretical background in the book. It’s just enough...

This book has made me further think about my perspective as a Western LGBT person. While I definitely had some qualms with it, which I'll talk about, it is more thought-provoking than anything. I saw a lot of confirmation that the Western imposition of gender on the world is more colonialism in action today. You would wonder why certain individuals were once revered (though, at the same time, this came with certain sometimes demeaning gendered expectations anyway) and then Gevisser would add in

Really fascinating look at LGBTQ issues across the world. I wasn't expecting such great foreign affairs analysis, but it was there. Wish there was more representation of bi people though.

The stories of individual LGBTQ people from a variety of countries were very compelling, though I found myself wanting more analysis of policy and economics (that’s very much about my brain and what I want from queer nonfiction). There are a few threads that felt like misses, though. The book asserts the idea that some of the battles around the pink line are about the idea of homosexuality as a colonial export. It doesn’t quite affirm that view but also doesn’t have the analysis that, actually,

This was a fascinating book. I would have given it 5 stars except that in an entire book on the politics of sexuality and gender identity there is barely a single mention or acknowledgement of bisexuality or of any bisexual communities.

Gevisser has been writing this book for many years, and this is really a comprehensive look at queer lives and the religious, cultural, and governmental jurisdictions under which they live across the world. I found the discussion of these jurisdictions impressive and the effects on peoples lives under these to be very effective and so well documented. The individuals' stories were necessary, but they needed serious editing. The fact that a character list is provided before each of these chapters...

Profound, fascinating, incredibly well researched and deeply moving, this study of the many continued struggles faced by the LGBTQ+ community around the world is a must-read for anyone with an interest in the subject. Vast in scale and providing sharp analysis of the global state of sexuality- and gender-related human rights issues interspersed with the personal narratives of a diverse range of interview subjects the author visited while working on this book, this is an immensely important work

In The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World's Queer Frontiers, South African journalist and writer Mark Gevisser pulls together years of research, reflections. He looks how global and local discourses and practices affect and shape queer lives all over the world – and asks how these different discourses and practices influence each other, how they are co-opted, policed. This is a book which interrogates how “LGBTQ rights” are used to draw lines between supposedly advanced places and the rest, bu...

The Pink Line provides the reader with a combination of analytical chapters that situate the LGBTQ struggle for human rights in the ongoing story of globalization and deeply moving personal vignettes of the queer folks the author encountered on the Pink Line's front lines in nine countries. These stories include a trans Malawian refugee granted asylum in South Africa and a gay Ugandan refugee stuck in Nairobi; a lesbian couple who started a gay café in Cairo after the Arab Spring, a trans woman

Very interesting discussions of how LBGTQ+ rights issues are playing out in various parts of the world outside the USA and Western Europe. The book alternates between essay chapters and interview or biography chapters of individual people. The most interesting parts are the ones about cultures I know the least about, for example hijras and kothis in India or bakla in the Philippines. Sadly for many individuals "It Gets Better" isn't quite true, but I'm overall hopeful for the long run.This is ra...

This incredible and well-researched cross-borders collection of queer stories should be essential reading. Examining how different parts of the world have addressed gender identity and sexual orientation, Mark Gevisser's highlights the vastly different paces of queer emancipation in the latter half of the 21st century. Each chapter looks at gender politics, socio-economic factors, and the multitude of ways in which family, friends and society converge to either support, tolerate, or at worst, op...

I was blessed with friends, family and a professional circle of people who give a rats ass who I love. That combined with living in western Europe, my "fight" for gay rights consists of equity on levels of running activity's for queer youth, ask attention for laws on alternative parenthood and all-round better acceptance for LGBTQIA who do not have the same experience as me. Of course, we have all heard about gays around the world not having such great lives as we do. But those are short news it...

I was given an ARC of this book from NetGalley. This book beautifully connects deeply personal accounts of queer people living all over the world with the facts and figures of the global fight for LGBTQ+ rights. I had many personal connections to this book and learned so much while reading it. Mark Gevisser writes it in a way that is accessible and impactful. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to expand their awareness of the global queer community and everyone who needs a reminder t...

This book is so necessary for queer studies today as it so thoroughly challenges the master narrative of steady worldwide affirming progress towards the whole world becoming a gay Valhalla al la The Castro, Christopher Street and Amsterdam. As Grevisser demonstrates again and again, to most of the world on the other side of the pink line, the terminology, rituals and politics of gay liberation can actually be harmful to queers and is often alienating. His privileged life as a highly educated whi...

I really needed this. For so many reasons.The Pink Line, and Mark Gevisser himself, traverses the globe in an effort to tell the stories of the people and communities who are at the forefront of the fight for gender and sexual orientation equality.This really opened my eyes to a lot of things. Most importantly is the way we, and I include myself, in the West have coined and promoted "LGBT" as a catch-all which has and continues to have detrimental effects in countries where the governments, in t...

[7.11/10]This was a comprehensive and thoroughly researched analysis of queer identity outside of the western world. And whilst there was a focus on how the western world has influenced thoughts on queerness in non-western places in a post-colonial world, I think it could have touched more upon colonial influences a bit more too, however I'm also not sure if Mark Gevisser is the right person to write about that particular subject.The biggest thing that I took away from this read was how much my

Bits:“In the twenty-first century, the Pink Line is not so much a line as a territory. It is a borderland where queer people try to reconcile the liberation and community they might have experienced online or on TV or in safe spaces, with the constraints of the street and the workplace, the courtroom and the living room. It is a place where queer people shuttle across time zones each time they look up from their smartphones at the people gathered around the family table; as they climb the steps

Towards the end of this deeply moving and impeccably researched book, Mark Gevisser comments: “As a journalist and biographer, I had always held that the best way to understand change was to tell people’s stories …” This is a sure-fire means to “effect social and political change”, mainly because it influences and inspires people by talking to both their heads and their hearts.Honing in on such different stories from around the world in order to give a meaningful and comprehensive overview of th...

This is a really smart, thoughtful, complex book. I think it should be more lauded than it is.

Meticulously researched, deeply empathetic, thoughtful, well-told.