'Did he kill himself?'

Hi 👋 

Welcome back to The Lazy Reader, where we round up some of the best longform journalism from across the Web ✨

Really down to the wire here, so I’m keeping this intro super short. Hope you enjoy this week’s list!

Some standouts from last week:

• The New Yorker The Man Who Refused to Spy

• Medium (Human Parts) Friend of the Devil

• Harper’s The Malaysian Job

As always, please let me know what you think of the list this week by voting in the poll below.

Happy reading and see you again next Monday!

A warning upfront: This one has some rough language and can get violent and graphic in some spots. It uses the f-slur liberally. There are gratuitous depictions of murders perpetrated by some twisted people. Definitely be mindful of your wellbeing while reading through.

Buzz Bissinger here takes his cue from a woman named Dianne Hardy-Garcia, who follows the titular Killing Trail—a series of cities and towns and neighborhoods across Texas where gay men have been killed simply for being gay. In many cases, the crimes were committed by teenagers. Young boys by any measure who had been so indoctrinated in violence and who feel such sadistic impulses that they end up tormenting and torturing gay men who aren’t even out. Buzz doesn’t hold back here and gives this horror the space and time—and language—it deserves.

Something that really stands out to me is how none of this was ancient history. These killings were happening in the 90s, and they were getting away with it. People hated (and still hate) queerness so much that they found it forgivable to take the life of another person over it.

I live in a country where something like this has happened before. A U.S. serivceman killed a transwoman he hooked up with, but he walked free. For years, I thought this was just a sign of how colonized my country still is (despite claiming independence). I’m surprised to learn that it also happens in powerful countries. Makes you wonder how much gall the U.S. has to disrespect the laws of other nations like this, no?

In this piece, The Guardian looks at the case of Sarah Steele, who was drugged and then assaulted by an American soldier stationed in England. Despite this being such a heinous, disgusting crime committed overseas, he was instead tried by a panel of his fellow soldiers following American laws, customs, practices. Is it a surprise that he got away with something that amounts to a slap on the wrist?

A bright spot of a story in what is an otherwise depressing newsletter (my bad—I don’t typically plot these out; it just so happened that this lineup of articles turned out so grim.)

Porn is sneakily one of the biggest forces shaping our social fabric these days. It’s such easy propaganda to fall for, and it strikes at the most intimate part of our lives. This story largely proves that, and shows that it’s possible to intervene and teach children that porn is, actually, harmful. That it’s not actually pleasure, but exploitation. An unusually hopeful take for this newsletter, I know.

This story also partly challenges the truism that sex work is work. That’s true, of course, but I’d argue only to a limited extent. The sex work industry is so extremely skewed against women and against gay men especially femmes. It’s a way to make a livelihood, sure, but you have to put your body and safety and dignity at such big risk for it. Is it a legitimate way for women who have no choice to make money? Sure. But there are deeper, more uncomfortable questions there that we should be asking.

I’ve always known—and it’s been established many times over—that the glitz of showbusiness hides a very depraved, disgusting underbelly. Diddy is maybe an extreme version of this, but maybe not even. It’s likely that there are many other high-powered, high-profile celebrities who are even more craven than Diddy. They just haven’t been exposed yet. It’s likely that Diddy is an emblem of how Hollywood trades in bodies and vices.

Of course, alongside such a degenerate culture, equally degenerate enterprises will sprout. That’s what this WIRED story gets at: The ecosystem of lawyers, PR professionals, and well-connected leeches trying to earn off of people’s shame and mistakes. People who know the value of using a sex tape as leverage, as a means to control someone. Truly an awful industry all around.

Let me be tangential for this blurb: To my eyes, there has been a sweeping and aggressive worldwide backslide in the fight for gender equality. This story hits at the heart of women’s rights, of course, their bodily autonomy and how men (and states) are fighting to exert power over them. But the trend against progress extends to the queer community, too. Transphobia is at an all-time high, even from inside the community. But I digress.

The U.S., self-professed bastion of liberty and freedom, is at the bleeding edge of this conservative backslide. Some key Supreme Court rulings have made women ever more vulnerable to their abusive partners, and have severely weakened their agency over their bodies. It’s really depressing to see how far we’ve fallen.

This is but another facet in how women are degraded, and how these assaults—on their bodies and dignity—have been ramping up in recent years.

There’s something extra evil, extra insidious about deepfakes. Men who are so meek, so spineless, such massive losers want to exert some semblance of power and control over women. But they are so incredibly inept that they have to resort to environmentally ruinous technologies (most likely developed by the same loser men like they are) to conjure up their twisted fantasies.

This story focuses on and tries to track down one of the lords of these losers.

Thanks for reading! Please, please reach out if you have feedback, suggestions, or questions. Alternatively, you can fill out this super quick survey form. I promise it won’t even take five minutes of your time, and it’ll be a HUGE help!

ALSO: I know some of the stories I recommend might be behind paywalls, and maybe I can help you with access to those. Send me a message and let’s see what we can do 😊

Until next Monday! 👋