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, oppress, LGBT+ individuals. From a transgender refugee from Malawi, to a lesbian couple in Cairo, to the heartbreaking story of a Russian trans-woman fighting for custody of her child, "The Pink Line" charts the lines that define or break queer identity. 

Although analytical in its approach,"The Pink Line" was never dry, never stagnant. It was informative, moving and thought-provoking, reminding me of the chasm between countries with regard to LGBT+ acceptance. It was also the perfect addition to my LGBT+ reading repertoire, as it provides the "bigger" picture of how LGBT+ issues are handled in the world today - from laws to travel to social norms. Highly recommended.

Thank you Profile Books and Net Galley for a copy of this eBook in return for an honest review.

More than five years in the making, Mark Gevisser’s The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World’s Queer Frontiers is a globetrotting exploration of how the human rights frontier around sexual orientation and gender identity has come to divide—and describe—the world in an entirely new way over the first two decades of the twenty-first century. A blend of research, facts and figures with profound and personal stories. A truly excellent book.

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 the way that the gay rights struggle has developed globally (or not developed, or even regressed, as the case may be), and also how it has interacted with new flashpoints such as transgender rights, #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter, all resulted in Gevisser ultimately spending an astonishing six years on this book. That can only be described as a labour of love, as noted by author Colm Tóibín in his review for The Guardian:

“This is a valuable book not only for the quality of Gevisser’s analysis and the scope of his research, but because he spends a good deal of time with the people on whose lives he focuses. He does not just sail into such cities as Cairo, Nairobi, Kampala, Ramallah and Istanbul, interview a few gay locals, deplore their plight and depart. He sticks around; he finds people whose lives he can follow over a couple of years. He hangs out with them, enjoys their company; he renders them in all their complexity.”

It is this ‘lived-in’ quality that gives the book such a profoundly emotional impact, especially when, in some instances, months or even years have passed before Gevisser touches base again with his subjects, only to discover that relationships have ended, new problems arisen, or simply that things did not work out as planned.

But that is the nature of life and the real world. Gevisser notes his own influence on the many people he comes into contact with, and how he has to grapple with his inherent ‘saviour complex’, intertwined inextricably as it is with issues of neo-colonialism and white cis gay privilege (the book ends with Gevisser’s personal declaration in this regard that is so humbling and yet so transcendent that it brought tears to my eyes.)

It is impossible in this day and age of media saturation not to alter what one is observing and reporting on, and acknowledging this dichotomy adds both tension and melancholy to the wonderful and vibrant personal accounts documented here.

So what is the ‘pink line’? Gevisser describes it as “a human rights frontier that divided and described the world in an entirely new way in the first two decades of the twenty-first century.” He states that “no global social movement has caught fire as quickly as the one that came to be known as ‘LGBT’.”

However, the ‘movement’ (this is a highly ambiguous term, as forward progression is not always implicit) has seen a change of focus from gay marriage, largely a preoccupation of activists in the US and the West in general, to the new, potentially even more divisive line drawn in the sand between sexual orientation and gender identity.

What this implies is a fundamental change of focus from a ‘gender divide’ to a ‘gender spectrum’. Gevisser highlights: “If this book has one overarching agenda, it is to show that there is not only one way to be in the world.” This links back to the importance of telling individual stories:

“A primary tenet of this new generation of activism – for trans people, as well as for people of colour – was that it was time for people to tell their own stories, rather than to endure what was often called the ‘violence’ of misrepresentation or appropriation.”

In this regard, Sean – who is described as “petite and curvy and had a manga look” – schools Gevisser in the sexual and gender taxonomies of the day: “I am pansexual but homoromantic. This means I have no problem having sex with any gender, but in a relationship I would only date women or genderqueer people. I am genderqueer myself, which means I use ‘they’ and ‘their’ pronouns.”

What has had a profound impact on the transgender movement has been in the medical field, particularly endocrinology, where advances in cross-sex and puberty-arresting hormones have saved a lot of transgender people from complex and potentially dangerous early surgical intervention. (It also gives parents a bit of a breather to get to know their transgender offspring a bit better and thereby come to grips with the latest iteration of the ‘pink line’.)

Another factor shaping the current debate is the “rampant white heterosexual masculinity represented by Donald Trump, one that separated migrant children from their parents, that stood in the way of letting transgender children use the bathrooms congruent with their gender identities, that sneered at people who were different or weak, that seemed to care less about the destruction of the planet and what would be left for their children to inherit.”

Gevisser is also at pains to point out the dichotomy of a country like Israel championing gay rights, while ignoring the fundamental human rights of Palestinians, a phenomenon known as ‘pinkwashing’.

Similarly, many Asian, African and Islamic countries perceive the West’s foisting of a gay-rights agenda upon them, particularly when it is linked conditionally to receiving development aid, as a thinly veiled colonialist attempt to ‘Westernise’ them.

Many of these intolerant societies have no qualms to use the importation of ‘gay decadence’ from the West as an excuse to entrench their own dictatorial and conservative authority. Russia hosting the Olympics and simultaneously driving its gay and transgender citizens underground is another clear example of ‘pinkwashing’, combined with old-fashioned hate-mongering and gay panic.

As Gevisser notes towards the end: “We are forged by our contexts and, of course, we make our contexts, too.” I was especially moved by his statement: “And I have changed, thanks to this book. I no longer walk around in the certain box of my masculinity, and I find that immensely liberating.” It is a liberation that we can all share in by embracing the ever-shifting dichotomies of the ‘pink line’.

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 to provide a much needed critical context without becoming overly theoretical. Gevisser writes in a very accessible way, keeping it simple but without in any way ‘dumbing down’ any of his rich material for the book. Overall this is a very worthwhile read and highly recommended.

I was really interested and so excited about this book, however, I think for me personally the writing style was not engaging enough for me to enjoy it, reading this book felt like work and it really made for an unpleasant experience. I also found the information and discussions presented in the book hard to retain, I don't think this book is inherently bad and there is definitely an audience out there for this book, sadly that audience just wasn't me.

Incredibly well written, I read this over a few days and became engrossed in each chapter.  You do not need to identify under LGBTQ+ to fully appreciate this book.  I am a 41yr old married lesbian woman, been in my relationship 21 years and been married for 4 years and understand struggles as have gone through my own at school.  The world can be an incredibly cruel place at times and all down I believe to a lack of understanding and acceptance. 
Would highly recommend this and was extremely grateful for a copy to review.