INTO THE DANGER ZONE

Ever stressed over an outfit that you thought was ‘too gay’ for the office? ‘Are my trousers too tight?’ ‘Is my nail polish too much?’ ‘Is my Pride T-shirt too… political?’ (The answer, of course, should be ‘No.’ But it’s rarely that simple.) Now think about having a job that takes you to Iraq: a war-torn country in the Middle East where gay sex is punishable by up to six months in prison, or death, at the hands of militant Sunni Islamist group ISIS, under Sharia law.

Then imagine you’ve accidentally worn pink socks.

That’s exactly what happened to journalist Rupert Russell — despite buying a pair of “really ugly jeans” to look the part (“that was my big ‘passing’ thing”) — whose work has taken him to myriad unstable, and in many cases, anti-gay, countries in recent years. He recounts such surreal experiences in his new book, Price Wars: How Chaotic Markets Are Creating Chaotic Worlds, a project that saw the 36-year-old filming in anti-LGBTQ+ countries as far-flung as Ukraine in Eastern Europe and Somalia in Eastern Africa. In each one, not only was he needing to get a job done while negotiating perilous conditions, but he also had the added pressure of needing to ‘pass’ as straight if he was to avoid imprisonment or worse.