LGBTQ+ Activism in Central and Eastern Europe: Resistance, Representation and Identity [1st ed. 2020] 978-3-030-20400-6, 978-3-030-20401-3

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xix
Introduction: LGBTQ+ Activism and the Power of Locals (Radzhana Buyantueva, Maryna Shevtsova)....Pages 1-19
Front Matter ....Pages 21-23
Beyond Western Theories: On the Use and Abuse of “Homonationalism” in Eastern Europe (Roman Leksikov, Dafna Rachok)....Pages 25-49
Visibility, Violence, and Vulnerability: Lesbians Stuck Between the Post-Soviet Closet and the Western Media Space (Masha Neufeld, Katharina Wiedlack)....Pages 51-76
Mы нe oшибкa (We Are Not an Error): Documentary Film and LGBT Activism Against the Russian Anti-“Gay Propaganda” Campaign (Clinton Glenn)....Pages 77-100
“I’m Gay, but I’m Not Like Those Perverts”: Perceptions of Self, the LGBT Community, and LGBT Activists Among Gay and Bisexual Russian Men (Cai Weaver)....Pages 101-124
Front Matter ....Pages 125-126
Negotiating Uncertainty: Sexual Citizenship and State Recognition of Same-Sex Partnerships in Estonia (Kadri Aavik)....Pages 127-151
The Localization of Sexual Rights in Ukraine (Thorsten Bonacker, Kerstin Zimmer)....Pages 153-183
Trends of Homophobic Activism in Romania, or ‘How to Turn Religious Convictions into a Referendum and Still Fail’ (Ramona Dima)....Pages 185-208
Putin as Gay Icon? Memes as a Tactic in Russian LGBT+ Activism (James E. Baker, Kelly A. Clancy, Benjamin Clancy)....Pages 209-233
Front Matter ....Pages 235-237
The Latvian LGBT Movement and Narratives of Normalization (Kārlis Vērdiņš, Jānis Ozoliņš)....Pages 239-264
Framing Queer Activism in Poland: From Liberal Values to Solidarity (Justyna Struzik)....Pages 265-288
Polish Asexualities: Catholic Religiosity and Asexual Online Activisms in Poland (Anna Kurowicka, Ela Przybylo)....Pages 289-311
Activism for Rainbow Families in Hungary: Discourses and Omissions (Rita Béres-Deák)....Pages 313-340
Gender and Class Tensions in Hungarian LGBTQ Activism: The Case of Ambiguous Bisexual Representation (Ráhel Katalin Turai)....Pages 341-368
Conclusion (Radzhana Buyantueva, Maryna Shevtsova)....Pages 369-377
Back Matter ....Pages 379-403

Citation preview

LGBTQ+ Activism in Central and Eastern Europe Resistance, Representation and Identity Edited by Radzhana Buyantueva · Maryna Shevtsova

LGBTQ+ Activism in Central and Eastern Europe

Radzhana Buyantueva · Maryna Shevtsova Editors

LGBTQ+ Activism in Central and Eastern Europe Resistance, Representation and Identity

Editors Radzhana Buyantueva Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

Maryna Shevtsova Gainesville, FL, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-20400-6 ISBN 978-3-030-20401-3  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20401-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Maram_shutterstock.com This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Foreword

All of us working on LGBTQ+ politics understand the importance of giving voice to scholars and activists who are local to the communities they study, yet often little effort is made to elevate those voices. Radzhana Buyantueva and Maryna Shevtsova have done just that in this volume on the activism and experience of LGBTQ+ people in Central and Eastern Europe countries and the Baltic states. They problematize the import of Western ideals and norms into the post-socialist space and highlight the specificity of LGBTQ+ identity and experience across contexts and states. Their efforts refine existing knowledge and shed light on the sometimes overlooked dynamics of the study of contentious politics concerning LGBTQ+ movements. The overarching goal of the volume is to chart the experience of LGBTQ+ movements in post-socialist European countries. Caught in a complex geopolitical space, including multiple poles of external influence and housing states with different histories and ideas around queer people, the countries of this region make a fascinating study of the complexity of championing queer visibility and/or LGBT rights. At the same time, they constitute a part of Europe that is often “othered” as backward to “enlightened” neighbors to their West (Chetaille 2013; v

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Kulpa and Mizielińska 2011). Despite these challenges, innovative activists from the region have developed protean methods of brokering the complex and interconnected world we live in, as well as securing a presence in global queer activism more generally. The authors chart this reality by giving voice to activists and scholars who often also have a local positionality in the debate on queer issues in the post-socialist space. Such voices are paramount in any debate on queer politics in the region; this volume brings several together in a productive and fruitful way. The volume is divided into three parts that chart and problematize (1) the applicability of Western discourses on sexuality and gender identity in post-socialist and post-Soviet countries, (2) the relationship between the state and LGBTQ+ people in these countries, and (3) the emergence and struggles of LGBTQ+ movements in the region. Many of the themes span and cut across the three parts, as in any well-curated volume. The introduction provides a helpful short overview of much of the LGBTQ+ political science literature on Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltic region (for an encompassing overview of such work Europe-wide, see Paternotte 2018), followed by an invitation to discuss the three thematic areas. The rest of the book reflects on the many core debates of the LGBTQ+ politics field, through the lens of countries in the post-socialist space. This helps to broaden and sometimes refine our understanding of a plethora of issues, including the positive and negative implications of visibility (and the recurring necessity and utility of invisibility), the value and over-extension of the concept of homonationalism (and the risk of applying it as universal and without specificity), and the varied underrepresentation of marginalized subgroups within the LGBTQ+ umbrella. None of this means that the focus on Central and Eastern Europe makes the book irrelevant for scholars working outside the region. There are many synergies, not just in rectifying and/or expanding understandings developed in the West, but also speaking to scholars of other regions. Sa’ed Atshan’s (forthcoming) important critique of homonationalism in occupied Palestine, for example, links well to various chapters in the book, particularly to Chapter 2. Expanding on the question of visibility and its implications (Ayoub 2016), such as in Chapter 3, connects well to critical debates in many contexts,

Foreword     vii

for example, Ashley Currier’s (2012) work on (in)visibility in Africa. Many concerns addressed in the book are ones we have to keep thinking about, in the West too, where visibility is more or less available to LGBTQ+ individuals, depending on their relationship to privilege. This has much to do with the differential axes of oppression many queer people face, for example, among queer people of color and migrant communities (Adam 2017; Murib and Soss 2015; Strolovitch 2007). In sum, insights from Central and Eastern Europe also offer theoretically rich ideas for connections across contexts. Yet, coming from a field that often gives more value in looking at patterns across many cases—and there surely is value in that—the effort to root our knowledge and refine our theories in the careful study of place is also welcome in its own right. We have contributions from scholars of the post-socialist/post-soviet space, and this book adds to that knowledge by grounding us in valuable case studies. This will help explicate the mechanisms behind the correlations that scholars comparing across many cases have and will continue to chart. We can move forward alongside each other, or within mixed-method studies. There has also been a tendency, largely attributable to the limited room for maneuver in quantitative analyses, to homogenize the post-socialist space in its relationship to LGBT rights, as well as start tracking it only in after the fall of the Berlin Wall, which many scholars have rightly critiqued (e.g., Szulc 2018). This volume further builds on that work. The tension and difficulty in untangling the local from the external/global/international in the world in which we live (Europe, of all places, an unusually interconnected region for many reasons) is inherent in much of the volume. The complexity of the insider and the outsider is worthy of careful thought in work on contemporary queer politics. This includes acknowledging the role that activists from Central and Eastern Europe have played in shaping transnational activism and dispelling common notions of them as powerless, weak, or victimized. Their contribution to the work of transnational activism is readily apparent to those doing fieldwork on cross-border activism in Europe (Ayoub and Bauman 2018), or to anyone observing movement conferences organized by international NGOs like ILGA-Europe. Activists in some of the countries of the region are also among the most organized

viii      Foreword

and active in Europe (see O’Dwyer 2018). Queer activism from Central Eastern Europe is not new; we can look as far back as the 1860s, when the Hungarian Karoly Maria Kertbeny and the German Karl Heinrich Ulrichs coined the term ″homosexuell″ in the first place (Takács 2004). Cross-border interaction has much to do with the complexity of identities (ones that are national and ones around sexual orientation and/or gender identity) and that queerness has brought communities into dialogue across nations and regions for much of the history of organizing around LGBTQ+ politics. While power and privilege shape the influence of Western LGBTQ+ ideas in many contexts, we must also caution against the portrayal of a homogenous global movement that is always out of touch with the local. We do not live in domestic vacuums and ideas can travel whether or not a movement champions them. The challenge is to identify the spaces in which the two—global and local—can interact. This allows us to recognize the agency of domestic activists, as this volume rightly argues, who are left to do the hard work of navigating LGBTQ+ ideas when they are out-of-sync and ill-informed for local contexts. Furthermore, evidence around the causal notion that international activism leads to a uniform backlash and response is mixed. While it certainly does in some cases, the evidence also suggests that domestic opportunists jump the gun by politicizing homophobia in advance of local or global demands by LGBTQ+ activists (Weiss and Bosia 2013). There are many layers to LGBTQ+ movement politics, and they are often more reciprocal and reflexive than we acknowledge. No book has all the answers, but this volume is an important call to the work that needs to be done on understanding LGBTQ+ activism in the post-socialist and post-Soviet region. Areas that will surely preoccupy future iterations of scholarship include thinking further about intersectionality in Central and Eastern Europe (a term coined by the experience of black feminists in the US context, Crenshaw 1991), which has much applicability to the region (Ayoub 2019) yet features only in Chapter 11. The intersection between LGBTQ+ activism and other marginalized communities (such as migrants to Europe, see Chapters 2 and 6) are areas that we also need to continue to explore in the context of the region.

Foreword     ix

Growing scholarly attention has been given to LGBTQ+ activism in the post-socialist space. Outside observers, including myself, have looked at patterns across states. What this volume offers is special: It consciously takes us onto the ground and gives voices to those in the varied countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltic states. Observing patterns in global LGBTQ+ politics is not the ambition of this volume; instead, it is to celebrate the differences and specificities across localities. Buyantueva and Shevtsova, alongside their collaborators, have done us all a great service by bringing together talented and important voices in the discourse on queer liberation in the post-socialist space. The field continues to grow richer thanks to efforts such as this. Los Angeles, USA

Phillip M. Ayoub

Phillip M. Ayoub  is Associate Professor of Diplomacy and World Affairs at Occidental College. He is the author of When States Come Out: Europe’s Sexual Minorities and the Politics of Visibility (Cambridge University Press, 2016), and his articles have appeared in Comparative Political Studies, the European Journal of International Relations, Political Research Quarterly, Mobilization, the European Political Science Review, the Journal of Human Rights, Social Politics and Social Movement Studies, among others.

References Adam, E. M. (2017). Intersectional Coalitions: The Paradoxes of Rights-Based Movement Building in LGBTQ and Immigrant Communities. Law & Society Review, 51(1), 132–167. Atshan, S. (forthcoming). Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Ayoub, P. M. (2016). When States Come Out. Europe’s Sexual Minorities and the Politics of Visibility. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/european-government-politics-and-policy/when-states-come-out-europes-sexual-minorities-and-politics-visibility?format=PB (April 25, 2016).

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———. (2019). Intersectional and Transnational Coalitions During Times of Crisis: The European LGBTI Movement. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, 26(1), 1–29. Ayoub, P. M., & Bauman, L. (2018). Migration and Queer Mobilisations: How Migration Facilitates Cross-Border LGBTQ Activism. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 1–21. Chetaille, A. (2013). L’Union Européenne, Le Nationalisme Polonais et La Sexualisation de La ‘division Est/Ouest’. Raisons Politiques, 49(1), 119–140. Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299. Currier, A. (2012). Out in Africa: LGBT Organizing in Namibia and South Africa. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Kulpa, R., & Mizielińska, J. (2011). De-centring Western Sexualities: Central and Eastern European Perspectives. Surrey, UK: Ashgate. Murib, Z, & Soss, J. (2015). Intersectionality as an Assembly of Analytic Practices: Subjects, Relations, and Situated Comparisons. New Political Science, 37(4), 649–656. O’Dwyer, C. (2018). Coming Out of Communism: The Emergence of LGBT Activism in Eastern Europe. New York: New York University Press. Paternotte, D. (2018, July). Coming Out of the Political Science Closet: The Study of LGBT Politics in Europe. European Journal of Politics and Gender, 1(1–2), 55–74. https://oxy.library.ingentaconnect.com/content/bup/ ejpg/2018/00000001/f0020001/art00004 (May 2, 2019). Strolovitch, D. Z. (2007). Affirmative Advocacy: Race, Class, and Gender in Interest Group Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Szulc, L. (2018). Transnational Homosexuals in Communist Poland: Cross-Border Flows in Gay and Lesbian Magazines. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Takács, J. (2004). The Double Life of Kertbeny. In G. Hekma (Ed.), Present and Past of Radical Sexual Politics (pp. 26–40). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Weiss, M. L., & Bosia, M. J. (2013). Global Homophobia: States, Movements, and the Politics of Oppression. Urbana-Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Contents

1

Introduction: LGBTQ+ Activism and the Power of Locals Radzhana Buyantueva and Maryna Shevtsova

1

Part I It’s New for Them? Imagining Post-socialist LGBTQ+ Activism from the ‘Western’ Perspective 2

Beyond Western Theories: On the Use and Abuse of “Homonationalism” in Eastern Europe 25 Roman Leksikov and Dafna Rachok

3

Visibility, Violence, and Vulnerability: Lesbians Stuck Between the Post-Soviet Closet and the Western Media Space 51 Masha Neufeld and Katharina Wiedlack

4 Mы нe oшибкa (We Are Not an Error): Documentary Film and LGBT Activism Against the Russian Anti-“Gay Propaganda” Campaign 77 Clinton Glenn xi

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5

“I’m Gay, but I’m Not Like Those Perverts”: Perceptions of Self, the LGBT Community, and LGBT Activists Among Gay and Bisexual Russian Men 101 Cai Weaver

Part II Outlawing Rainbows: LGBTQ+ Rights, Activism and the Role of State in Central and Eastern Europe 6

Negotiating Uncertainty: Sexual Citizenship and State Recognition of Same-Sex Partnerships in Estonia 127 Kadri Aavik

7

The Localization of Sexual Rights in Ukraine 153 Thorsten Bonacker and Kerstin Zimmer

8

Trends of Homophobic Activism in Romania, or ‘How to Turn Religious Convictions into a Referendum and Still Fail’ 185 Ramona Dima

9

Putin as Gay Icon? Memes as a Tactic in Russian LGBT+ Activism 209 James E. Baker, Kelly A. Clancy and Benjamin Clancy

Part III Giving Voice to Locals: LGBTQ+ Movement and Queer Politics in Central and Eastern Europe 10 The Latvian LGBT Movement and Narratives of Normalization 239 Kārlis Vērdiņš and Jānis Ozoliņš 11 Framing Queer Activism in Poland: From Liberal Values to Solidarity 265 Justyna Struzik

Contents     xiii

12 Polish Asexualities: Catholic Religiosity and Asexual Online Activisms in Poland 289 Anna Kurowicka and Ela Przybylo 13 Activism for Rainbow Families in Hungary: Discourses and Omissions 313 Rita Béres-Deák 14 Gender and Class Tensions in Hungarian LGBTQ Activism: The Case of Ambiguous Bisexual Representation 341 Ráhel Katalin Turai 15 Conclusion 369 Radzhana Buyantueva and Maryna Shevtsova Index 379

Notes on Contributors

Kadri Aavik is an Associate Professor of Gender Studies at Tallinn University, Estonia, and a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Her research has mainly focused on understanding gender and other inequalities in the labor market and in the education system. In addition, Kadri conducts research in the fields of critical animal studies and vegan studies. James E. Baker  is a doctoral student in Geography at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln. His present research examines the role of visual research methods in understanding the signifying power of the image in a comparative study of the everyday practices of celebrating the 100th anniversary of nationhood in post-socialist and diasporan Latvian communities. James earned a M.A. from University of Nebraska at Omaha. Rita Béres-Deák has a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology and got her Ph.D. in Gender Studies at the Central European University. After teaching one term at the Gender Studies Department of CEU, she is currently an independent researcher. She is actively involved in LGBTQ and human rights activism. xv

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Thorsten Bonacker is a Professor for peace and conflict studies at the Center for Conflict Studies and the Institute for Sociology at the University of Marburg. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Oldenburg. He is a board member of the research center on “dynamics of security” at the Universities of Marburg and Gieße. Radzhana Buyantueva  is a Teaching Assistant at Newcastle University (UK) from where she has Ph.D. in Political Science. Her publications include LGBT activism and homophobia in Russia in Journal of Homosexuality and a review of Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi by Dan Healey in Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics. Benjamin Clancy is a doctoral student and Teaching Fellow in the Department of Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has his Masters in Communication from Texas State University. His research sits at the meeting point between rhetoric and media studies. Kelly A. Clancy  is an Assistant Professor and Chair of Political Science at Nebraska Wesleyan University. Her previous book, The Politics of Genetically Modified Organisms in the United States and Europe, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) studied social movements against GMOs on both sides of the Atlantic. She earned her Ph.D. from Rutgers University. Ramona Dima has background in Language and Literature, Communication, and Migration studies. Since 2009, she has been actively involved in anti‐discrimination, feminist, and queer projects, and since 2014, she has been working with her life partner, Simona Dumitriu, as an artist duo. In 2018, she received her Ph.D. title from University of Bucharest. Clinton Glenn is a Ph.D. candidate in Communication Studies at McGill University and is currently a visiting Ph.D. student at Tallinn University in Estonia. Glenn’s work has been published in Third Floor, Synoptique: An Online Journal of Film and Moving Image Studies, Unmediated, and esse: Arts+Opinions.

Notes on Contributors     xvii

Anna Kurowicka is an Assistant Professor at the Department of English at Maria Curie-Sklodowska University. She received her Ph.D. in cultural studies at the University of Warsaw. She has published on the representation of asexuality in popular culture, the intersections of asexuality and disability, and Polish asexualities in Polish and international journals. Roman Leksikov  is currently a master’s student and a teaching assistant at the University of Alberta. Currently, he is studying policing of hate crimes, cultural violence and gendered violence, its patterns and ways of justice accomplishment. He is also interested in power, violence, intimacy, and sexuality in total institutions and gender-segregated spaces. Masha Neufeld  holds a diploma degree in psychology and works on her Ph.D. project on the topic of alcohol consumption and health in Russia at the Institute of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy at TU Dresden and the Institute for Mental Health Policy Research, at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto. Jānis Ozoliņš  is a Ph.D. student at the University of Latvia. He is also a Researcher there at the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art. He co-translated Roland Barthe’s Le plaisir du texte. He has published articles on “Theories of Narratology” and on Latvian contemporary fiction. He also co-edited Queer Stories of Europe. Ela Przybylo  is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Illinois State University. Her work has appeared in GLQ, Sexualities, Psychology & Sexuality, Feminism & Psychology, and in Asexualities. Her forthcoming book Asexual Erotics: Intimate Readings of Compulsory Sexuality draws on Audre Lorde’s conceptualization of the erotic to rethink the role of sex for feminist and queer thought and practice. Dafna Rachok  is a Ph.D. student in Anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington, and received her M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Alberta and M.A. in Critical Gender Studies from Central European University. Her current research examines how Ukrainian sex workers legitimize sex work as an acceptable way of earning.

xviii      Notes on Contributors

Maryna Shevtsova  is a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Florida, USA. She has Ph.D. in Political Science from Humboldt University, Germany. Her recent publications include an edited volume, with A. Guler and D. Venturi LGBTI Asylum Seekers and Refugees from a Legal and Political Perspective: Persecution, Asylum and Integration published in 2019 with Springer. Justyna Struzik  is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the project “Disentangling European HIV/AIDS Policies: Activism, Citizenship and Health.” She received her Ph.D. in sociology from the Institute of Sociology at Jagiellonian University in Krakow with the thesis Queer Movements in Poland. Her research interests include social movements, sexuality, health, and gender. Ráhel Katalin Turai  is a sociologist and gender expert. With a Ph.D. from Central European University, Budapest, Hungary, she holds courses and seminars on gender studies and qualitative methodologies. She has worked as researcher in international projects about elderly and childcare, gender inequality in school, and partnership violence. Kārlis Vērdiņš  is a Ph.D. student in Comparative Literature at Washington University in St. Louis, USA, and a Researcher at the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of the University of Latvia. His publications include monographs The Social and Political Dimensions of the Latvian Prose Poem (2010) and The Bastard Form (in Latvian, 2011). Cai Weaver  is a Political Science Doctoral Candidate at the University of Helsinki and a researcher in the Academy of Finland project “Biopolitics and Democracy in Global Governance.” His Ph.D. explores the Biopolitical Governance of Sexuality in Contemporary Russia. He has published in the Finnish Review of East Studies. Katharina Wiedlack  is a Postdoc Research Fellow at the University of Vienna and visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins University. She has conducted research and lectured in the fields of cultural, gender, queer, and disability studies at the University of Berkley, Yale, University of Vienna, State Technical University Novosibirsk and State University of Saint Petersburg.

Notes on Contributors     xix

Kerstin Zimmer is a Senior Lecturer at the Center for Conflict Studies and the Institute of Sociology, Marburg University, Germany. She received her Ph.D. at Frankfurt University. Her research interests include social and political change in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, with a focus on social and ethnic identities, migration, and the politics of history.

1 Introduction: LGBTQ+ Activism and the Power of Locals Radzhana Buyantueva and Maryna Shevtsova

The idea to create this book came to us due to the limited number of pieces of scholarly literature dedicated to the analysis of LGBTQ+ activism in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). It is by no means caused by scant academic attention toward the situation with the rights of LGBTQ+ people in the region. Quite the opposite, the last two decades have seen a growing interest in the topic. A paper examining LGBTQ+ movements in Romania or Hungary would, without any doubt, be more than welcome in a number of well-respected academic journals and specialized conferences. There are, however, certain obstacles often difficult if not impossible to circumvent. First, in some of the post-socialist countries, LGBTQ+ movements themselves are barely institutionalized and often remain an inclusive circle of semi-secret meetings and events to which only those who belong to the community R. Buyantueva (*)  Newcastle upon Tyne, UK e-mail: [email protected] M. Shevtsova  Gainesville, FL, USA © The Author(s) 2020 R. Buyantueva and M. Shevtsova (eds.), LGBTQ+ Activism in Central and Eastern Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20401-3_1

1

2     R. Buyantueva and M. Shevtsova

or its close allies can have access. Second, in many CEE countries, state sponsored or at least not addressed by the state homophobic context also prevails in domestic academia which makes the analysis of gender or LGBTQ+ issues less acceptable scholarly topics. The mission to conduct this kind of studies, therefore, often goes to an outsider, a scholar that comes equipped with an elaborate toolkit for high-quality academic research cultivated in Western academia. However, in multiple cases, such Western perspectives and approaches are often unable to distance themselves from the well-established paradigms. That (in addition to often limited knowledge of the local languages or absence of such), in turn, might limit scholarly attempts to understand specific local contexts. Having said so, this book brings together scholars from several CEE countries in an attempt to get a better understanding of the emergence and development of LGBTQ+ movements in the region. The question of which particular countries should be included in this book was a difficult one. The volume includes the analysis of LGBTQ+ activism in Estonia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine. These particular cases were selected because they have common socialist past but different directions in domestic and foreign policies in regard to LGBTQ+ rights and activism. For example, Estonia is a member of the European Union and is one of the most progressive CEE countries in terms of LGBTQ+ rights. Poland, Hungary, and Romania, on the other hand, are also EU members but demonstrate conservative tendencies and resistance toward LGBTQ+ rights and activism coming from conservative political and religious elites. In turn, Ukraine pursues deeper political and economic ties with the EU and aims to adopt nondiscriminative legislation regarding LGBTQ+ people. However, Russia promotes conservative and anti-Western discourse and shows growing discrimination toward LGBTQ+ people and activists. Thus, the volume aims to examine differences in policies and the impact those policies have upon LGBTQ+ activism in the region. The analysis of CEE LGBTQ+ movements provides a useful contribution to comparative politics and queer studies. Furthermore, as the recent wave of nationalism has spread across the CEE region, national governments and/or political elites seem to

1  Introduction: LGBTQ+ Activism and the Power of Locals     3

have become keener on emphasizing their differences from the EU/ West, Russia, or even both by emphasizing their own national uniqueness. Thus, in October 2018, the Hungarian government under Prime Minister Viktor Orban removed accreditation for national universities’ gender studies programs claiming that there are only two genders, ‘female and male,’ in spite of the wide criticism by the European Parliament and international organizations (Kent and Tapfumaneyi 2018). In Poland, starting from 2016, policymakers from the ruling Law and Justice party have been regularly attempting to ban abortion that facilitated enormous mass mobilization (Santora and Berendt 2018). In October 2018, Romania held a referendum regarding constitutional changes to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman exclusively (Buyantueva 2018b). Not to mention the adoption of the law banning gay propaganda to minors in Russia and attempts to pass similar bills in other former socialist countries (i.e., Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan). While these events can be seen as a backlash against LGBTQ+ rights and gender equality in CEE countries, the present collection of chapters is aimed at presenting the current state of affairs in the region as one of the unintended consequences of democratization and Western norm diffusion in the region. There are a growing number of works analyzing non-heterosexual sexualities in CEE countries (Baer 2009; Essig 1999; Healey 2018; Kulpa and Mizielińska 2011; Szulc 2018; Stella 2015; Vērdiņš and Ozoliņš 2016). In recent years, LGBTQ+ activism in the region also started to attract increasing scholarly attention. Scholars have analyzed various specific aspects such as the role of international and transnational actors, networks, and tools (Ayoub 2016; Belavusau and Kochenov 2016; Binnie and Klesse 2014; O’Dwyer 2012), employment of Western ideas and values and other tactics and strategies (Bilić 2016; Bilić and Dioli 2016; Butterfield 2016; Caudwell 2018; Holzhacker 2012; Kondakov 2013; Moss 2014; Rexhepi 2016), issues and tensions within LGBTQ+ communities and among activists (Batričević and Cvetić 2016; Hodžić et al. 2016; Hura 2016), and state and public backlash against LGBTQ+ activists (Gould and Moe 2015; Gruszczynska 2009; Kajevska 2016; O’Dwyer 2018). O’Dwyer, for example, is one of the few scholars analyzing LGBTQ+ movements

4     R. Buyantueva and M. Shevtsova

in the region. In his study of the Eastern European countries, he provides an extensive analysis of factors affecting the emergence and development of LGBTQ+ movements in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia. In line with some other scholars (Gruszczynska 2009; Kajevska 2016), O’Dwyer argues that an increase in anti-LGBTQ+ public and political rhetoric, sentiments, and even violence had a positive effect on LGBTQ+ activism. Instead of causing civic and political submission of LGBTQ+ activists, backlash brings more resourceful, outspoken, and organized movement. In turn, Gould and Moe (2015) and Mole (2016) argue that the growing visibility of LGBTQ+ activists and/or increased pressure by the Western actors such as the EU had a negative impact on attitudes toward LGBTQ+ people and activists among political elite and wider population in countries like Russia, Latvia, and Serbia. This book contributes to this literature by offering in-depth perspectives into a various dynamics of the emergence and development of LGBTQ+ movements in CEE countries. Notwithstanding the geographical and thematic range of the authors’ foci, the volume has uniting elements. The book discusses the applicability of Western ideas and concepts to the post-socialist context, their ability to fully understand local nuances and complexities in regard to sexuality and, thus, the dynamics of LGBTQ+ activism. Furthermore, when nowadays some CEE political elites and public become increasingly supportive of nationalist ideas while others argue for closer relations with the ‘West,’ the book provides important insights into the impact of Western actors in promoting liberal democratic values in the region and possible domestic political and social backlashes that might be caused by it. The authors of this volume investigate domestic forms of LGBTQ+ activism that developed in post-socialist CEE. We explore various issues faced by LGBTQ+ activists, tactics, and strategies they develop and adopt in pursuit of their goals. LGBTQ+ movements in these countries have different levels of development depending on political and social contexts. At the same time, some issues are similar, and yet so different, for many LGBTQ+ activists across the globe such as issues of identity, discrimination, and homophobia. LGBTQ+ movements of the region frequently experience backlashes from state and society.

1  Introduction: LGBTQ+ Activism and the Power of Locals     5

In the Introduction to this book, we discuss the impact of social and political environments on local LGBTQ+ activists and communities in the CEE region. Then we provide an outline of the content of the volume according to the three thematic areas: (1) Western perspectives and local context, (2) the role of the state in affecting LGBTQ+ activism, and (3) the development of LGBTQ+ movements in CEE.

LGBTQ+ Activism, Society, and the State in Central and Eastern Europe This section provides a brief overview of the emergence and development of LGBTQ+ activism in the CEE countries. It examines how state policies affected same-sex relations and LGBTQ+ identities, what impact they had on the formation of local LGBT communities, networks, and activists. Against the popular belief that criminalization of homosexuality was one of the by-products of Stalin politics (Alexander 2018, p. 31), the cases of trials of homosexual men and lesbian couples from the 1920s show that, already starting from the earlier years of the Soviet rule, the regime viewed homosexuality as the ‘product of capitalist decadence’ (Engelstein 1995, p. 155). Voluntary sexual relations between men could be penalized for up to five years of imprisonment while being in a lesbian relationship could result in incarceration in a psychiatric clinic (Essig 1999; Healey 2001). In the better case, instead of incarceration people could lose their jobs if their homosexuality was revealed (RivkinFish and Hartblay 2014, p. 99). Even though the first voices in favor of decriminalization of homosexuality started to be heard as early as in the 1950s–1960s, it was only in the 1990s, when the Soviet Union collapsed that some of the newly independent states started the process of decriminalization of consensual homosexual relations between men with Ukraine being the first in 1991, followed by Estonia and Latvia in 1992, and Russia in 1993. It is still defined as a crime in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Talking of the extended socialist block includes CEE countries that have never been part of the Soviet Union. Most of them decriminalized homosexual acts decades before former Soviet countries.

6     R. Buyantueva and M. Shevtsova

Czechoslovakia and Hungary legalized same-sex relations in 1962, Bulgaria and East Germany in 1968, Poland, being an extreme case, in 1932, with only Romania being an exception and legally punishing both male and female same-sex acts until 1996 (Szulc 2017). In all of the cases, however, decriminalization of homosexual relations did not ensure immediate or even prompt liberalization of the social and political environment with more tolerant attitudes toward LGBTQ+ people. As the scarce historical account demonstrates, LGBTQ+ communities in all of these countries have been facing regular backlashes from political and religious elites and the broader public. The role of local LGBTQ+ activists and their political and human rights allies in decriminalization of homosexuality in post-socialist countries cannot be overestimated. Most of the scholars (Ayoub 2014; Slootmaeckers and O’Dwyer 2018) agree, however, on the centrality of the role of Western institutions and Western examples in certain shifts and transformations with regard to LGBTQ+ rights across the CEE region. Since the Iron Curtain fell and the socialist space disintegrated, cross-border connections and presence of such actors as the EU and its institutions as well as other international organizations such as ILGA Europe has largely contributed to the increasing visibility of nonheterosexual sexualities. The post-socialist states went in different political directions concerning Western influence. Some countries (i.e., Poland, Estonia) joined the EU or seek membership in the EU (i.e., Ukraine) and, thus, were and are willing to fulfill anti-discrimination and equal rights requirements. Others like Russia decided to articulate their own political and social course independent from the Western influence. Multiple emerging LGBTQ+ groups and organizations started working on development of identity, community, and networks, struggling against discrimination and homophobia and fighting for recognition of their rights. Needless to say, that their activities would be either impossible or severely complicated without the presence of substantial financial, technical, and political support from the foreign sources (Buyantueva 2018a; Shevtsova 2017). Moreover, in many of the cases, support and promotion of LGBTQ+ rights by Western actors was used as an argument for or against Western influence by various domestic political elites in their political competition. The Russian-speaking

1  Introduction: LGBTQ+ Activism and the Power of Locals     7

audience of the region is by now well familiar with a mocking term ‘Gayropa’ (gay + Europe) introduced by the Russian media and used by political, religious, and public supporters of the so-called traditional values arguing that LGBTQ+ rights are a perversion imposed by the EU on their Slavic neighbors (Riabov and Riabova 2014). As the multiple cases discussed in the present volume will demonstrate, the issue of LGBTQ+ rights has become instrumentalized and extensively used in order to gain voters’ support and oppose Western influence. At the same time, LGBTQ+ activists across the region started to extensively employ the argument of ‘European’ and/or ‘Western values’ (including LGBTQ+  rights) in their claims (Ayoub 2014; Shevtsova 2018). Finally, a note regarding the terminology employed in the volume is necessary. Scholars recognize various umbrella terms such as ‘LGBT,’ ‘LGBT+,’ ‘LGBTQ+,’ or ‘queer’ when referring to non-heteronormative identities and sexualities. The authors of this volume consciously engage with a variety of terms (i.e., ‘LGBT+’, ‘LGBTI+’, and ‘LGBTQ+’) when analyzing a particular case. The choices were directed by the local contexts, activists’ preferences, and the (in) visibility of particular groups (i.e., intersex) among activists and wider imagined communities. That allows us to emphasize shifts in self-understanding and selfidentification of CEE activists. It also helps highlight the development of and tensions between various identities.

This Volume The volume analyzes LGBTQ+  issues in the CEE countries from political, historical, legal, sociological, and feminist perspectives. The chapters offer in-depth insights on factors shaping recent social and political developments in the region and investigate the impact of those on local LGBT+ movements and communities. The book is structured as follows. It includes three parts, each addressing different themes. Part 1 examines Western discourses regarding sexualities and applicability of them to the local contexts. Part 2 analyzes the role and impact of the state on LGBTQ+ activism and communities in the CEE region.

8     R. Buyantueva and M. Shevtsova

Finally, Part 3 explores the questions of the emergence and development of LGBTQ+ movements in the region. The first part of the volume—It’s new for them? Imagining postsocialist LGBTQ+  activism from the ‘Western’ perspective—analyzes CEE sexualities and temporalities while de-centering Western sexualities. The authors of this book aim to do justice to local histories and voices and privilege local perspectives. Roman Leksikov and Dafna Rachok ponder the question of the limited applicability of queer theory and its concepts such as homonationalism to the analysis of Eastern European space in the case of Ukrainian LGBT movement. Both scholars came to academia after years of involvement in LGBT activism in Ukraine. They discuss the complex logic behind the concepts of Western theories and argue them to be inadequate for the analysis of Eastern European cases. Focusing on the term ‘homonationalism’ that during the last decade seemed to have employed substantially by scholars and activists across the world the authors conclude that while it could be used for the analysis and critical reflection on LGBTQ+ movements in the Western/developed countries, its application for the analysis of and reflection on LGTQ+ movements in Eastern Europe is rather problematic, theoretically as well as normatively. From a theoretical perspective, attempts to apply the concept of homonationalism to explain developments surrounding LGBTQ+ rights in Ukraine is a good demonstration of how imported concepts might prove to be insufficient in the CEE context. Moreover, from the normative point of view, the use of such concepts might be harmful to the development of LGBTQ+ movements in the CEE countries and even set obstacles for it. Leksikov and Rachok point out that continuing to employ Western models of LGBTQ+ identities and movements as mainstream and dominant is essentially harmful as it reproduces and reaffirms the juxtaposition of tolerant and progressive ‘West’ and traditional and backward ‘East,’ or ‘Orient.’ Moreover, it ‘privatizes’ these identities and movements by the West. Somewhat in line with this argument Masha Neufeld and Katharina Wiedlack address the issue of Western visibility politics for LGBTQ+ people as a model for claiming rights, inclusion, and recognition. The authors argue that in the post-Soviet space LGBTQ+ visibility

1  Introduction: LGBTQ+ Activism and the Power of Locals     9

may not be a useful tool to gain social acceptance. The authors view the Western narrative of visibility within the Western identity discourse as a sort of obsession. They claim that visibility paradigm used by the Westerners cannot account for the native Russian concepts. Neufeld and Wiedlack discuss in detail various Russian forms of lesbian community building and spaces appropriation usually overlooked by the Western media and academic literature. They suggest that ignoring those forms of spaces and concepts of community and belonging creates the wrong idea of less developed gay and/or lesbian life in Russia. That implies that Russia ‘needs to be taught to do better on its way to queer emancipation’ (page number). Neufeld and Wiedlack also critically assess the recent solidarity wave in the West that created an image of Russian LGBTQ+ people being in a constant need of support and rescue by their Western peers presented as ‘teachers’ of activism and tolerance. To the Western public and allies, visibility for LGBTQ+ Russians is the political visibility juxtaposed against the Russian government. However, that is not necessarily the visibility that local LGBTQ+ people desire for themselves. Neufeld and Wiedlack, thus, propose a shift of paradigm that would allow viewing non-visibility as a political concept that does not carry sad or negative connotations but rather opens a possibility for protection, alternative form of resistance, or resilience. Cai Weaver continues this discussion by introducing us to the voices of gay and bisexual men who are not involved in LGBT activism. His analysis revealed that gay and bisexual Russians often draw on and reinforce the dominant discourses of hegemonic masculinity and display anti-LGBT attitudes toward other members of LGBT community. By doing that, they construct homosexual hybrid masculinities. Somewhat in line with the state discourse, they juxtapose themselves against what they perceive Western gay influence and forms of activism it brings with it. That affects their views on visibility of local LGBT activists to become negative. At the same time, Weaver argues that such a rejection of LGBT activists’ visibility does not imply non-visibility of gay and bisexual men per se. The author suggests that the resistance might be present not only in the form of LGBT protests but also in the form of education of friends and families. In the long run, such strategy might change public attitudes to become more tolerant and gay-friendly.

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In turn, Clinton Glenn questions Western perspectives in the artistic representation of CEE queers. He analyzes political and social claims made by the films united by the central theme of LGBT rights and a legal ban on ‘gay propaganda’ to minors in Russia. The author comes to a conclusion that Russian LGBT community is portrayed in them as being in immediate danger and under a siege in the virulently homophobic state. While it is common to see documentaries on such topics as a form of visual activism, the author is rather critical of the impact of the analyzed films and of reaction they were aimed to provoke from the intended audience. Glenn questions the potential of the films ‘Children-404’ and ‘Campaign of Hate’ as objects of activism. He argues that certain voices are predetermined by the production crew’s choices. However, such choices shape a somewhat one-sided imagery of both the Russian LGBT movement and its opponents. At the same time, the films give a very fragmented, superficial overview of Russian LGBT organizations emphasizing their inability to use more efficient tactics while omitting historical, political, and social contexts behind Russian LGBT activism. Similar to Neufeld and Wiedlack, Clinton Glenn questions the usefulness of imagined perfect political visibility for Russian LGBT people and activists. Thus, he doubts the fairness of the political and social price LGBT Russians have to pay for such visibility. The second part of the volume—Outlawing rainbows: LGBTQ+  rights, activism, and the role of the state in CEE— examines the role of the state in affecting direction and dynamics of LGBTQ+ activism. It also explores the impact of international developments on domestic political and social environments and its overall effect regarding LGBTQ+ communities and activists. Thus, Kadri Aavik focuses on Estonian LGBTQI activists’ claims for the state recognition of same-sex partnerships. She analyzes the legislation on same-sex partnerships to have a better understanding of how that affects LGBTQI lives and how more inclusive forms of citizenship could be imagined for Estonia. Aavik suggests that there are three dimensions to sexual citizenship in Estonia. The first dimension is symbolic that could de facto increase visibility of LGBTQI lives functioning as a basis for claiming (further) rights. The second dimension she connects to gendered and sexed bodies and identities in the context of heteronormative

1  Introduction: LGBTQ+ Activism and the Power of Locals     11

understandings of citizenship. Finally, the third dimension relates to parenting and shapes a vision for future citizenship (i.e., related to LGBTQI families and aging). The author argues that these dimensions create an image of desired citizenship that is not yet fully granted by the Estonian state. She contemplates imagined belonging that has not yet materialized. Through the analysis of these dimensions, the state is presented as slow, ineffective, and lacking vision and imagination. Thorsten Bonacker and Kerstin Zimmer analyze the disputation by the Ukrainian state of Western norms on sexual citizenship. The authors consider LGBT rights as a global liberal norm that is contested at both international and domestic levels. They argue that by challenging ‘imposed’ liberalization of LGBT rights local political actors, or ‘norm antipreneurs,’ legitimize their own discourses such as national self-determination, nationalism, and public moral order. The authors emphasize the centrality of the idea of struggle for national identity to better understand reasons behind successful resistance against norm localization and diffusion in non-Western states. The authors examine the role of international actors in supporting anti-LGBT campaigns in the region. As an example, they draw on the post-Euromaidan events in Ukraine where a large anti-LGBT rights campaign was substantially backed by the Russian government. At the same time, Bonacker and Zimmer claim that actions of ‘norm antipreneurs’ prompted LGBT activists to develop more indirect strategies. Since the government took the EU-oriented foreign policy direction, such strategies helped to build new alliances by using a political argument of strengthening cultural and political links between Ukraine and Europe. Following Bonacker and Zimmer’s discussion, Ramona Dima’s chapter focuses on homophobic propaganda in Romanian mass media to understand what the key factors are that currently shape the debate around LGBTQ+ rights in the country. She identifies conditions under which homophobic rhetoric could be most efficient. Namely, Dima discusses certain elements of queer Romanian identities and how they are portrayed in the national media and misused in propagandistic discourses by mixing true and unreliable facts about non-heteronormative sexualities. Unlike most of the chapters in this book concerned with LGBT+ movements themselves, Ramona Dima has chosen to analyze

12     R. Buyantueva and M. Shevtsova

Romanian counter-movement, Coalition for Family in Romania, and its online tactics. Her research proposes a valuable insight on how the concepts like ‘civil society,’ ‘non-governmental/non-profit organization,’ ‘mass mobilization,’ and ‘human rights’ can be used against human rights and freedoms (in the present case, LGBTQ+ rights) with the same or a similar set of tools and approaches that are traditionally used for promotion of ‘universal’ human rights. Dima argues that, provided the right-wing groups remain on the rise and gain more power, it may result in significant backlash for local vulnerable groups. Furthermore, James Baker, Benjamin Clancy, and Kelly A. Clancy focus on the symbolic and material ways of manifestations of sexuality in Russia. They examine the governmental attempts to shape the country’s global representation and sexual politics and to regulate ‘the sexual status of Putin’s globally recognizable media celebrity’ (page number). They argue that similar symbolic manifestation of queerness can serve to support LGBT+ rights in Russia and to be critical of Putin’s regime. If the other authors in this part of the volume analyze legal and institutional aspects of states, Baker et al. view the Russian state as an actor concerned with promotion of its hegemonic masculinity that emphasizes a hypermasculine image of Putin and challenges the regime opponents by implying their homosexuality. The authors’ central claim, however, is that the same tool, namely, a meme (the image of Putin as a gay clown) created by certain actors with a certain objective can travel across time and space and, thus, change its spatial-political implications. As they demonstrate, politicization and criminalization of this meme has led to the emergence of a new set of norms, rules, and patterns of how social movements mobilize under pressure. The authors invite the audience for further research that would address interactions between Russian LGBT+ community, Russian state, and pro-Putin ‘autonomous agents’ as well as implications of such interactions within contested virtual and material spaces for future development of the Russian LGBT+ movement. The third part of this volume—Giving voice to locals: LGBTQ+  movements and queer politics in CEE—is dedicated to analyzing the emergence and development of LGBTQ+ activism in the CEE countries. The authors explore tactics and strategies employed by local activists in

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order to achieve their goals. The section also analyzes issues, struggles, and obstacles faced by LGBTQ+ movements in the region. Thus, Karlis Verdins and Janis Ozolins examine the development of LGBT movement in Latvia and analyze the tactics developed by Western LGBT movements and adopted by Latvian LGBT activists. The authors argue that the following reasons—moral, demographic, and nationalistic— might prompt the society to accept non-heteronormative sexualities. In Latvia, the public sees LGBT rights as a ‘radical departure from the “traditional” values’ (page number). National policymakers tend to share such views as there is institutional and state sponsored, albeit silent, homophobia in the country. The authors suggest that, in this situation, a solution or at least support could come from the EU and its institutions by influencing local politicians. They also propose the need of societal transformation through education. The new generation of Latvian citizens could be educated with a better understanding of concepts of civil society, human rights, gender, and sexuality. Such changes in the educational system, however, would require, first, a change of the national institutions. The authors offer a good illustration of heterogeneity regarding the situation with LGBT rights in Baltic countries which are often seen by external observers as a ‘more progressive’ block of post-Soviet countries. The authors refer to the Latvian LGBT community as looking up to Estonian achievements regarding LGBT rights. The authors emphasize that when it comes to LGBT rights, Latvia ‘has to meet the contemporary challenges in its own peculiar way’ (page number). The discussion is followed by Justyna Struzik who examines issues of kinship and solidarity within the Polish LGBTQ movement. Similar to Leksikov and Rachok, she emphasizes the role of economic inequalities in regard to actions and projects of LGBTQ activists. Struzik also analyzes intersectionality of the Polish LGBTQ movement. The author proposes to use the frame analysis of ideas employed by the Polish LGBTQ movement and negotiations related to them among LGBTQ activists. This allows us to distinguish between ‘old,’ well developed, and deeply rooted in the movement frames and newly developed ones. She argues that the old frames used by the Polish LGBTQ movement were focused on diversity, equality, visibility, and self-development. Within the modern framework, however, Struzik identifies the key significance

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of kinship and solidarity. In other words, the author claims that Polish LGBTQ activists came to be more aware and self-conscious of class, social, and economic inequalities that might have a stronger effect on their claims and goals as compared to political goals framed by the Western neoliberal discourse. Such a shift might be affected, on the one hand, by public debates on negative or ambiguous results of Poland’s economic transition, changeable political climate, and weakness of the Polish left wing. On the other hand, it might be a result of internal differentiation and development of the LGBTQ movement. In turn, Anna Kurowicka and Ela Przybylo examine the topic that is less discussed within the context of non-heteronormative sexualities, namely, asexual community. They offer useful insight on asexuality in the non-Western, post-socialist, neoliberal, and Catholic context of Poland. The authors focus on online activism examining Polish asexual community with a focus on visibility, discussions, and challenges of compulsory sexuality. They demonstrate that, in large cities with significant sexual minority populations, asexuals created a space for themselves in the LGBTI+ movement. However, organizing online is often the only possibility for them, either due to their small numbers and lack of visibility or because of tensions with lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and other sexual minorities. Kurowicka and Przybylo also raise such questions as to how homonationalism operates in line with other sexual identities, and how queer and progressive politics are engaged with sexual minorities’ communities online. They introduce the term ‘asex-nationalisms’ and discuss how it can be used to account for the sometimes surprising ways in which asexuality, as a marginalized sexual orientation and identity, can be utilized to advance the interests of a religious nation-state. They offer, thus, insights on the Polish perspectives on asexuality that refer both to the Western-influenced understanding of asexuality as a sexual orientation and to the religiously motivated approaches to the concept of sexual restraint. Rita Béres-Deák analyzes a similar problem in the Hungarian context and employs the concept of intimate citizenship to examine Hungarian LGBTQ+ community’s claims for the intimate citizenship of rainbow families, and whether it produces any possible exclusions in regard to the various forms same-sex parenting can take. She also analyzes

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LGBTQ+ activists’ understanding of the concept of rainbow family. Or rather what the ‘ideal’ rainbow family is to them and what elements are included (or excluded) in the concept. As author states, in Hungary, the only legal discrimination LGBTQ+ people face is related to rainbow families, which includes the ban on same-sex marriage and the lack of access to second-parenting, joint adoption, fostering, surrogacy, and artificial insemination. This puts the question of intimate citizenship of rainbow families as a human right in the center of public discussion. Béres-Deák analyzes strategies of LGBTQ+ organizations in regard to intimate citizenship of rainbow families. Some organizations pursue legislative changes through lobbying and building a dialogue with policymakers. Others choose to appeal to a wider audience. Activists also target LGBTQ+ community in order to raise awareness on the issues of intimate citizenship of rainbow families. Finally, Ráhel Katalin Turai examines yet another underrepresented or misrepresented group in both heteronormative and queer discourses in the Hungarian LGBTQ+ community, namely, bisexuals. Turai provides clear illustrations on how the national media in Hungary pictures bisexuality as something infidel, inauthentic, apolitical, and sex-centered. It also involves sexual objectification of women as compatible or reconcilable with male heteronormative desires and lifestyles. In turn, apart from acknowledging the existence of bisexuality the Hungarian LGBTQ+  movement barely addresses its specificity and avoids its public discussions, presumably, due to a possible controversy it might entail. The author draws on the interviews with gay activists in Budapest to show how bisexuals are perceived as cowards, weak, and without active political position. Turai examines the implications of such representations for Hungarian bisexuals and argues that due to conservative ideas on gender and sexuality as well as homophobia in the Hungarian society most men with bisexual desires are forced to hide their non-heterosexuality. At the same time, most women with bisexual desires have access mainly to same-sex encounters inside frameworks that concentrate around heterosexual men’s desires, which leaves women’s sexuality to be defined by these needs. The author uses her fieldwork data to illustrate what kind of inclusivity is nowadays possible for Hungarian LGBTQ+ community and who are those people

16     R. Buyantueva and M. Shevtsova

LGBTQ+ activism involves in and who are those who stay excluded. Turai’s key conclusion is that due to the movement’s lack of resources it is impossible to reach many people with bisexual or non-heterosexual lives and address their interests. Acknowledgements   We would like to express our deepest gratitude to Amelia Derkatsch, Gender Studies Commissioning Editor at Palgrave Macmillan Publishing, for her support and help with this project, to Phillip Ayoub for his valuable comments, and to the Center for European Studies at the University of Florida for hosting Maryna Shevtsova as she worked on this volume during her Fulbright fellowship in the USA.

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Enlargement on LGBT Rights, Activism and Prejudice. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Bilić, B., & Dioli, I. (2016). Queer Beograd Collective: Beyond Single-Issues Activism in Serbia and Post-Yugoslav Space. In B. Bilić & S. Kajinić (Eds.), Intersectionality and LGBT Activists Politics: Multiple Others in Croatia and Serbia. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Binnie, J., & Klesse, C. (2014). Transnational Solidarities and LGBTQ Politics in Poland. In P. M. Ayoub & D. Paternotte (Eds.), LGBT Activism and the Making of Europe: A Rainbow Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Buyantueva, R. (2018a). LGBT Rights Activism and Homophobia in Russia. Journal of Homosexuality, 65(4), 456–483. Buyantueva, R. (2018b, October 14). Romania’s Referendum Proves LGBT Rights Are Far from Protected. The Globe Post. Available at: https://theglobepost.com/2018/10/14/romania-referendum-lgbt/. Butterfield, N. (2016). Discontents of Professionalisation: Sexual Politics in Croatia in the Contexts of EU Accession. In B. Bilić (Ed.), LGBT Activism and Europanisation in the Post-Yugoslav Space: On the Rainbow Way to Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Caudwell, J. (2018). Configuring Human Rights at EuroPride 2015. Leisure Studies, 37(1), 49–63. Engelstein, L. (1995). Soviet Policy Toward Male Homosexuality. Journal of Homosexuality, 29(2–3), 155–178. https://doi.org/10.1300/ J082v29n02_06. Essig, L. (1999). Queer in Russia: A Story of Self, Sex, and the Other. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Gould, J. A., & Moe, E. (2015). Nationalism and the Struggle for LGBTQ Rights in Serbia, 1991–2014. Problems of Post Communism, 62(5), 273–286. Gruszczynska, A. (2009). Sowing the Seed of Solidarity in Public Space: Case Study of the Poznan March for Equality. Sexualities, 12(3), 312–333. Healey, D. (2001). Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia: The Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Healey, D. (2018). Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. Hodžić, A., Poštić, J., & Kajtezović, A. (2016). The (In)Visible T: Trans Activism in Croatia (2004–2014). In B. Bilić & S. Kajinić (Eds.), Intersectionality and LGBT Activists Politics: Multiple Others in Croatia and Serbia. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Hura, R. (2016). Against Bisexual Erasure: The Beginnings of Bi Activism in Serbia. In B. Bilić & S. Kajinić (Eds.), Intersectionality and LGBT Activists Politics: Multiple Others in Croatia and Serbia. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Holzhacker, R. (2012). National and Transnational Strategies of LGBT Civil Society Organizations in Different Political Environments: Modes of Interaction in Western and Eastern Europe for Equality. Comparative European Politics, 10(1), 23–27. Kajevska, A. M. (2016). Growing Oppression, Growing Resistance: LGBT Activism and Europanisation in Macedonia. In B. Bilić (Ed.), LGBT Activism and Europanisation in the Post-Yugoslav Space: On the Rainbow Way to Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Kent, L., & Tapfumaneyi, S. (2018, October 19). Hungary’s PM Bans Gender Study at Colleges Saying ‘People are Born Either Male or Female’. CNN. Retrieved from https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/19/europe/hungary-bansgender-study-at-colleges-trnd/index.html. Kondakov, A. (2013). Resisting the Silence: The Use of Tolerance and Equality Arguments by Gay and Lesbian Activist Groups in Russia. Canadian Journal of Law and Society, 28(3), 403–424. Kulpa, R., & Mizielińska, J. (Eds.). (2011). De-centring Western Sexualities: Central and Eastern European Perspectives. Farnham: Ashgate. Mole, R. C. M. (2016). Nationalism and Homophobia in Central and Eastern Europe. In K. Slootmaeckers, H. Toquet, & P. Vermeersch (Eds.), The EU Enlargement and Gay Politics: The Impact of Eastern Enlargement on LGBT Rights, Activism and Prejudice. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Moss, K. (2014). Split Europe: Homonationalism and Homophobia in Croatia. In P. M. Ayoub & D. Paternotte (Eds.), LGBT Activism and the Making of Europe: A Rainbow Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan. O’Dwyer, C. (2012). Does Europe Help or Hinder Gay-Rights Movements in Post-communist Europe? The Case of Poland. East European Politics, 28(4), 332–352. O’Dwyer, C. (2018). Coming Out of Communism: The Emergence of LGBT Activism in Eastern Europe. New York: New York University. Rexhepi, P. (2016). From Orientalism to Homonationalism: Queer Politics, Islamophobia, and Europanisation of Kosovo. In B. Bilić (Ed.), LGBT Activism and Europanisation in the Post-Yugoslav Space: On the Rainbow Way to Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Riabov, O., & Riabova, T. (2014, February 5). The Decline of Gayropa? How Russia Intends to Save the World. Eurozine. Available at: https://www.eurozine.com/the-decline-of-gayropa/.

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Rivkin-Fish, M., & Hartblay, C. (2014). Global LGBT Activism and the Resurgence of Cold War Hostilities: A Call for Examining Russian Queer Experience and Strategies. Brown Journal of World Affairs, 21(1), 95–101. Santora, M., & Berendt, J. (2018, March 23). Polish Women Protest Proposed Abortion Ban (Again). The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www. nytimes.com/2018/03/23/world/europe/poland-abortion-women-protest. html. Shevtsova, M. (2017). Friend or Foe: Foreign Donors’ Role in the Formation of Civil Society in Ukraine. Socio.hu. https://doi.org/10.18030/socio. hu.2017en.53. Shevtsova, M. (2018). Strategies to Fight Homophobia in Post-Euromaidan Ukraine: Constructing a Good Gay Citizen and Ukrainian Homonormative Patriotism. In O. Burlyuk & N. Shapovalova (Eds.), Civil Society in PostEuromaidan Ukraine: From Revolution to Consolidation. La Vergne: Ibidem Verlag. Slootmaeckers, K., & O’Dwyer, C. (2018). Europeanization of Attitudes Towards Homosexuality: Exploring the Role of Education in the Transnational Diffusion of Values, Innovation. The European Journal of Social Science Research. https://doi.org/10.1080/135116https://doi. org/10.2018.1536969. Stella, F. (2015). Lesbian Lives in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia: Post Socialism and Gendered Sexualities. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Szulc, L. (2017). Transnational Homosexuals in Communist Poland: Cross-Border Flows in Gay and Lesbian Magazines. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Szulc, L. (2018). Transnational Homosexuals in Communist Poland: Cross-Border Flaws in Gay and Lesbian Magazines. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Vērdiņš, K., & Ozoliņš, J. (Eds.). (2016). Queer Stories of Europe. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Part I It’s New for Them? Imagining Post-socialist LGBTQ+ Activism from the ‘Western’ Perspective

Introduction Radzhana Buyantueva Maryna Shevtsova In the following four chapters, the authors discuss LGBTQ+ identities and temporalities exploring the relationships between Western and local perspectives in the CEE region. Below we identify several common themes underlying these chapters. First, the authors question the employment of Western ideas and theories in regard to sexual and gender identities in Central and Eastern European countries. The authors argue that importing and adopting Western approaches and discourses might not necessarily be beneficial to local LGBTQ+ people and activists. The use of Western approaches reaffirms the views on the development of LGBTQ+ identities and activism dominating in the Western media and scholarship but discounts nuanced lives and experiences of LGBTQ+ locals. Second, the authors bring up the politics of visibility and possible issues related to it. Western scholarship has emphasized the importance of visibility politics for social movements, including LGBTQ+

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movements. The recurrent idea is that public visibility is essential since it attracts public attention to social injustice and challenges stereotypes. As Fraser (1999) argued, discriminated identities are to become visible. Closely connected to the politics of visibility are the ideas of ‘closet’ and ‘coming out.’ Four decades ago, gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk called for gays to ‘come out’ in order to ‘break down the myths’ facilitated by the dominant heterosexual rhetoric (Stern 1994). The term ‘closet’ was originally used by gay men. It symbolized their suppression, isolation, and concealment (Brown 2000; Sedgwick 1990). ‘Coming out’ is treated as a very important act for identity formation. It is a complex process that includes disclosure of one’s sexual orientation and/or gender identity to others and transformative nature to such exchange (Appleby 2001; Griffith and Hebl 2002; McLean 2007). Therefore, becoming visible implies expanding boundaries and challenging heterosexual hegemony. In this regard, public events such as Pride parades would serve as the embodiment of visibility. At the same time, as the chapters below will demonstrate, visibility for LGBTQ+ Central and Eastern Europeans might not be often welcome and essential in the local contexts. Finally, the authors emphasize the importance of local voices and experiences in building LGBTQ+ movements in the region. Perspectives and needs of local LGBTQ+ people and activists might drastically differ from Western strategies and practices of activism. Thus, it is crucial to switch focus to local understandings of what particular forms of activism would suit better taking into account cultural and political environments existing in the CEE region.

References Appleby, G. A. (2001). Ethnographic study of gay and bisexual working class men in the United States. Journal of Gay and Lesbian Social Services, 12(3/4), 51–62. Brown, M. P. (2000). Closet space: Geographies of metaphor from the body of the globe. London: Routledge.

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Fraser, M. (1999). Classing queer. Politics in competition. In V. Bell (Ed.) Performativity and belonging. London: Sage. Griffith, K. H. & Hebl, M. R. (2002). The disclosure dilemma for gay men and lesbians: ‘coming out’ at work. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(6), 1191–1199. McLean. K. (2007). Hiding in the closet? Bisexuals coming out and disclosure imperative. Journal of Sociology, 43(2), 151–166. Sedgwick, E. K. (1990). Epistemology of the closet. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Stern, G. J. (1994). A few tricks along the way: daily reflections for gay men, queer boys, magnificent queens, and the people who love them. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press.

2 Beyond Western Theories: On the Use and Abuse of “Homonationalism” in Eastern Europe Roman Leksikov and Dafna Rachok

Introduction Describing her preparation for fieldwork, Verdery noted that in the 1970s there was so little anthropological research done on Eastern Europe that it “was less known to anthropology than was New Guinea” (1996, p. 5). Eastern Europe was viewed by the discipline of anthropology as a mysterious and exotic Other. The situation started to change in the 1990s. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the disintegration of Yugoslavia, Western scholars hurried to fill in the gap, so Eastern and Central Europe saw a spike in research interest about so-called postsocialist space, as well as gender and sexuality after socialism (for an overview of the Western work on this subject until the beginning of the 2000s, see Baer 2002). Looking back almost thirty years later, it seems R. Leksikov (*)  University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada e-mail: [email protected] D. Rachok  Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, IN, USA © The Author(s) 2020 R. Buyantueva and M. Shevtsova (eds.), LGBTQ+ Activism in Central and Eastern Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20401-3_2

25

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now that some of these pioneering works on gender and sexuality were somewhat uncritical and often failed to understand the local realities. Moreover, the question of places that were studied the most under the umbrella term of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) or post-socialist space, and of places that were and still are underrepresented, is of interest and importance as it, time and again, reveals heterogeneity of a superficially monolithic CEE or post-socialist space and unveils its own spatial and cultural hierarchies.1 One issue that has grabbed the attention of scholars lately has been the question of temporalities, especially of sexual temporalities: how to theorize (homo) sexuality in the post-socialist space and whether it is appropriate to use “Western” sexual identities as points of reference. Writing in the 1990s, Essig (1990) declared incommensurability of the Russian and Western sexualities, arguing the absence of fixed sexual identities in Russia and emphasizing that Russian queers “demand public space for interaction but not for political action” (p. 80) and that their sexuality is “neither bounded nor fixed. It is not an identity but a practice” (p. 95). As seductive as they are, these observations, however, turned out to be premature (Moss 2001; Stella 2015) and most likely a result of a problematic translation (Stella 2015). Local scholars, however, also resorted to using Western sexual identities as points of reference, especially when discussing the legacy of socialism and its influence on contemporary sexual subjectivities (Kon 1997; Kondakov 2013, 2017; Martsenyuk 2012, 2016; Temkina and Zdravomyslova 2002). Attempting to de-center Western sexualities and to do justice to CEE sexualities and temporalities, Mizielińska and Kulpa proposed to abandon the narrative of “transformation” “through which CEE supposedly ‘has been going’” (2010, pp. 17–18) that allows the West to always be one step ahead, thus dooming CEE to the perpetual never-ending

1Not surprisingly, Russia, Poland, Hungary, and Serbia received the most scholarly attention and are best represented in the literature on post-socialist space. Whereas Moldova, Belarus, and Ukraine (the latter to a lesser degree) remain underresearched. Former Soviet Republics in Central Asia are similarly underresearched, and the situation with Transcaucasia is even less fortunate.

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struggle of catching-up. Enforcing such a linear narrative does not do justice to specific local histories but instead “elevate[s] American history to the status of a universal pattern” (Mizielińska 2010, p. 102). Building on the body of work that eschews Western sexualities and temporalities as points of reference, we instead attempt to analyze Eastern Europe on its own terms, privileging local perspective and emic categories (Burawoy and Verdery 1999; Mizielińska and Kulpa 2010; Stella 2015). This chapter ponders the question of limited applicability of queer theory and the concept of homonationalism to an analysis of contemporary Eastern European sexualities. We start by discussing the history of the concept of homonationalism and show that the logic of racial conflict that fuels it is inadequate for the analysis of postsocialist space. Further, we consider the genealogy of Ukrainian LGBTI movements and their position vis-à-vis the Ukrainian state. We do not claim that the case of Ukraine, analyzed here, is universally applicable to other CEE or post-Soviet countries. Still, by elaborating in detail on this case, we aim to start a conversation about how suitable and applicable the term homonationalism is for an analysis of this region. We have chosen Ukraine as the focus of this chapter for two reasons. The first reason is our background: Both authors come from Ukraine and thus know the context quite well. The second and the main reason is that since approximately 2015 it has become increasingly common to hear that the whole annual LGBTI festival KyivPride and the Pride March, in particular, are homonationalist. This critique has been mainly voiced by local left-wing and queer activists (Von Klein 2017; Spil’ne 2018). Though the discourse of homonationalism in Ukraine can be traced to earlier times (Martsenyuk 2015), this discourse has intensified since 2015. Though for the lack of space we are unable to elaborate on it in detail, we will, however, caution that this discourse, rather prevalent in local LGBTI and queer circles, subsumes too many different meanings and agendas. It functions as a floating signifier, not having any constant referent and any fixed sense. And it is precisely this blurriness in the meaning that makes this concept worthy of inquiry.

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Contextualizing Homonationalism It has been more than a decade now since scholars from the Second World and Third World started to have misgivings about the capacities of Western-produced theories to explain local contexts (Abu-Lughod 2002; Cerwonka 2008; Gqola 2001; Mohanty 1988; Petö 2001). The main point of these critiques had to do with the binary logic that is used by the First World authors. In short, the critiques cautioned that Western theories are of rather limited suitability in explaining the peculiarities of the non-Western world, as they often universalize the context which they come from and consequently regard non-Western populations as the Other. Building on this tradition that pays attention to local contexts, we propose that it is now time to caution against explanatory capacities of queer theory as well. While recognizing that it is impossible to cover it all, we limit our discussion here to Puar’s idea of “homonationalism” (Puar 2007, 2013, 2017) that has been quite well-received and put into use (and abuse) in CEE countries (Martsenyuk 2016; Pagulich 2016; Teteriuk 2016). Homonationalism, not an identity and not a descriptor, as Puar states, is rather “a facet of modernity and a historical shift marked by the entrance of (some) homosexual bodies as worthy of protection by nation-states, a constitutive and fundamental reorientation of the relationship between the state, capitalism, and sexuality” (2013, p. 337). Homonationalism is a cluster of forces that produces specific and onesided narratives of modernity and progress, where LGBTI rights and acceptance of LGBTI people by the state become a benchmark, against which the state’s “right” to modernity is measured (Puar 2007). Though homonationalism is a product of the concrete place and time—the USA after 9/11—Puar argues that homonationalism is constitutive of producing the dominant understanding of modernity and that we all are produced through homonationalism. But is homonationalism really inevitable? In order to answer this question, we consider two points: the context of the definition of homonationalism and the logic on which it is established. Firstly, homonationalism is a product of a very particular

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Northern American context: of a society that is structured around a racial conflict. Theorizing the US sexual exceptionalism, around which the whole concept of homonationalism revolves, Puar argues that this sexual exceptionalism, along with “liberal discourses of multiculturalism and diversity,” is “produced through racial and national difference” (2007, p. 77). Building on September 11 and continuous involvement of the US in the military conflicts in the Middle East (and on its support of Israel), she comes to the conclusion that “the history of EuroAmerican gay and lesbian studies and queer theory has produced a cleaving of queerness, always white, from race, always heterosexual and always homophobic” (Puar 2007, p. 78). To sum up, the existence of homonationalism is contingent upon the racially Othered (Muslim) body.2 This logic is even more evident in Puar’s later reflection (2013) on the concept and its use: Arguing that homonationalism represents a particular aspect of modernity, Puar uses an example of Israel to drive home her point about Western Islamophobia and Orientalism. This essay makes it even clearer that non-White Muslim bodies are the sine qua non of homonationalism, as it emerges in opposition to the alleged phantom menace that these bodies imply. Secondly, it is interesting to consider the logic that underlies this concept. The reader is presented with a binary of a white gay/queer versus abject colored Muslim (who is, ironically, also presented as a queer— but as a bad queer, as a queer because of his being racially and religiously Othered). These two categories are dependent on each other as the existence of one of them is the condition of possibility for the other. An incorporated into the global capital white queer (since “the seduction by global capital is conducted through racial amnesia, among other forms of forgetting” [Puar 2007, p. 26]) cannot exist without the counterpart—a not-yet-incorporated into the global capital racial Other. However, the trick is that this Other is not un-incorporatable but only not-yet-incorporated; as it is quite possible that these abject

2Though

the discussion of gender/sexuality regimes of settler colonialism is beyond the scope of this chapter, it is nevertheless useful to stress the importance of Native bodies for US sexual exceptionalism (Morgensen 2010).

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non-white Others will be incorporated at some point in time—and, of course, this likely will be done at the expense of some other underprivileged group. It was not too long ago that scholars were writing about the otherness of gay people and mandatory heteronormativity of capitalist modernity and nation-states (Nagel 1998; Peterson 1999; YuvalDavis 1997), emphasizing the potential emancipatory and liberating aspect of homosexuality, as it posed a potential threat to the nuclear family and reproduction (Rich 1980; Weeks 1980). However, in times of homonormativity, intense debates around the question of whether same-sex marriage is indeed a progressive step that queers need to advocate for (Warner 2000), and of constant dangers of pinkwashing, postulating emancipatory and liberating power of LGBTI movements seems at least ironic. The problem with homonationalism is deeper than it appears at first glance: It is the logic of binaries, which draws on race as its point of reference. How much explanatory power does the concept of “homonationalism” possess when a structuring force of a society is not a racial conflict but a class one, as is the case with some post-Soviet countries? We argue that when taken out of its context and pasted onto the realities of the Second World, homonationalism is of limited explanatory and theoretical use. Importing this very Anglo-Saxon narrative that fails to take into account local struggles, histories, and complexities leads to the narrative of homonationalism becoming depoliticizing. But before proceeding, we would like to answer a question about the inevitability of homonationalism. We claim that Puar’s proposition that “states not interested in homonationalism aren’t the dominant form of modernity” (2017) is a colonial statement in itself, as it does not account for the possibility of other modernities and presupposes that progress is always linear; just as an average philistine talks about their “gay phase” in college, the concept of homonationalism tacitly assumes that not being gay-friendly is just a phase that a state will eventually overcome on the path to the one true modernity. However, given that both concepts of homonationalism and queer are rooted in the specific Northern American context (Warner 1995), the modernities of the Second World might well exist without being queer, non-queer, or

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homonationalist.3 These concepts might be ill-suited to describe and analyze these modernities. Let us illustrate it with an analogy. Most of the feminist critique of militarism produced in the West is the critique of (American) imperialism and is thus addressed to the colonizer. It would be in vain to attempt to explain postcolonial war and violence using the lenses of the Western feminist critique—as these lenses do not allow postcolonial subjects to assess their realities. Explaining the postcolonial perspective by using the lenses of Western feminism inevitably distorts the perspective. It is not that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” (Lorde 1983), it is that the master’s tools are not suitable for the non-master’s house.

Homonationalism and the Questions of Class and Race We start with the claim that in Ukraine (as well as some other Eastern European countries), it is a class conflict and not a racial one that is the main structural force that organizes society. To support this claim, we look at Ukraine’s position within the world-system. Writing from the perspective of the First World, Puar and other proponents of the universal applicability of homonationalism assume the existence of steady migration flows to the country and a functioning state with a “panoptic gaze” (Foucault 1977), able to perform redistributive and disciplinary functions. However, both these conditions do not hold when applied to Ukraine. Regarding the existence of a functioning state, it has already become commonplace for scholars to theorize Ukraine as a weak state with high informality (Davies and Polese 2015; Polese 2016). It did not escape these authors’ attention that Ukraine is an example of a “welfare failure” (Polese 2016, p. 149): “individuals are exposed as bare life 3In

this chapter, we assume that modernity is a world-system in itself; thus, it is possible that there exist multiple modes of being modern (cf. Bonhomme 2009; Comaroff and Comaroff 1993). Approached from this perspective, Western modernity that requires LGBTI-friendliness is only one of the possible modes of being modern.

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through inadequate compensation and de facto state-abandonment” (Polese 2016, p. 149). Ukraine’s difference from the First World countries becomes even more obvious if one inspects macrosociological comparisons. Building on Wallerstein’s world-system analysis, Chase-Dunn et al. (2000a) analyze structural globalization and the integration of countries into the world order; they present a reader with a hierarchical core-periphery scheme that is invoked to explain the position of a certain country in the world order. The authors divide the countries into three groups: core, semi-periphery, and periphery, depending on the country’s level of economic, political, and military power. It is not unexpected that Ukraine, according to them, belongs to the periphery (2000b). Secondly, Ukraine’s position in the world-system can be illustrated by adopting the framework of structural violence. Galtung, introducing the term “structural violence,” argued that it should be defined as “the cause of the difference between the potential and the actual, between what could have been and what is” (1969, p. 168). Building on Galtung, Farmer famously argued that structural violence is “one way of describing social arrangements that put individuals and populations in harm’s way. The arrangements are structural because they are embedded in the political and economic organization of our social world; they are violent because they cause injury to people” (Farmer et al. 2006, p. 1686, italics in original). Farmer, arguing that “structural violence is the natural expression of a political and economic order” (2004), points out existing structural inequalities within the world-system (1996, 2004): In some places, people continue to suffer from preventable diseases and poverty, whereas some other places have either almost completely eradicated the incidents of certain diseases or substantially lowered the number of people exposed to these diseases. In brief, a country’s poverty correlates with the prevalence of preventable and/or treatable diseases. If one applies Galtung and Farmer’s insights to Ukraine, one can almost instantly see its place within the order of structural violence by simply looking at the outbreaks of preventable diseases such as tuberculosis, polio, measles, and diphtheria (Khetsuriani et al. 2017; MOZ 2018a, b; WHO 2016). Though we are unable to elaborate on this because of the lack of space, it becomes quite clear even from these examples that Ukraine ranks rather high on the list of countries that suffer from

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the incidents of structural violence. In other words, within the existing world-system, Ukraine is a poor peripheral country. Finally, we would like to emphasize the fact that Ukrainian society continues to display an extremely high level of social stratification. Though Ukraine shows good indicators for econometrics of social inequality (10:10 ratio, 20:20 ratio, Gini index), these are primarily affected by the high role of informality in labor relationships, taxation, the redistribution of benefits, and the impossibility of adequate statistical control. Thus, we argue that it is class and not race that is the primary force that structures Ukrainian society. Consequently, if we consider certain ways by which LGBTI movement(s) could support existing systems of power, current hierarchical order, or could incorporate themselves into the system of power institutions and norms, it would be more advisable to analyze and predict these risks from the perspective of the class inequality, rather than a racial one. Thus, some of the practices used by LGBTI activists that could be observed in contemporary Ukraine can be better classified as “homo-neoliberalism” rather than “homonationalism.”

Homonationalism in the Absence of a “Homonationalist Political Subject”: National and International Dimensions The term “homonationalism” has undergone some serious transformations in its meaning and use since 2007, when it was first coined by Puar. Schotten (2016) provides a comprehensive overview of these transformations and of the extension in the term’s meaning. She also analyzes the issue of political subjectivity of LGBTI communities as a criterion for homonationalism in the last ten years. In Terrorist Assemblages, Puar states that homonationalism is “a collusion between homosexuality and American nationalism that is generated both by national rhetoric of patriotic inclusion and by gay and queer subjects themselves” (2007, p. 39). One point that should be specifically addressed in this definition is “patriotic inclusion.” If we consider the ideas developed by Puar and her followers further, we can assume that the possibility of homonationalism as a political phenomenon requires,

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firstly, incorporation of a queer agenda into a patriotic/nationalist discourse and of tolerance toward queerness and queer people in the right-wing political environment. In this case, we can talk about the phenomenon of LGBTI normalization, which leads to the LGBTI community becoming a political subject at the cost of marginalization of the new “Others.” Thus, homonationalist politics becomes possible under the following political configurations: 1. The local LGBTI community in a certain country (or at least a certain part of a community—the most normative subgroups, citizens, and representatives of the hegemonic culture) becomes a totally normalized subject in an existing nation-state and furthermore becomes recognized as vulnerable and thus worthy of the state’s protection. In this case, this community can be involved in collaboration with both the nation-state with its institutes of monopolized violence and patriotic/nationalist political groups in order to consolidate the obtained power and to use it for marginalization of, for example, immigrant communities, who are suspected queerphobes. This scenario can be observed in the contemporary Netherlands: For instance, the Dutch Party for Freedom simultaneously appeals to the LGBTI community and the supporters of the immigration ban in order to protect them and “traditional Dutch values of tolerance” from “aggressive foreigners,” i.e., Muslims and Eastern Europeans (PVV 2010, p. 13). 2. The nation-state and patriotic/nationalistic groups which support its expansion exercise toleration (but not tolerance) toward LGBTI and, manipulating the anti-immigrant agenda, expect silent support from the LGBTI community in order “to not let it get worse.” An example of this would be the logic of LGBTI groups and individuals who supported the candidacy of Donald Trump during the presidential election in the USA in 2016 (Huang et al. 2016), and LGBTI people who sympathize with the alt-right politics (e.g., Milo Yiannopoulos). In this case, it is presumed that LGBTI people sacrifice a part of their identity, demands, and possibilities of further emancipation with the aim of strengthening the nation-state with its institutions and cultural biases (xenophobia) because of the fear of an increase in homophobia after an increase in immigration.

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Regarding this interpretation, it is necessary to highlight that sometimes Ukrainian queer criticism misuses the authentic meaning and capacity of the term “homonationalism,” confusing the phenomena which used to be theorized and described under different terms. For instance, in Ukraine, homonationalism often means a wide range of different phenomena and politics, from sexual nationalism (the phenomenon of racializing people with other cultural backgrounds as obscurantists, sexists, and homophobes/transphobes, as conceptualized by Eric Fassin [2011]) to homonormativity (policing of sexual and gender expression within LGBTI community intended to fit LGBTI subcultures within the mainstream and hegemonic culture [Kacere 2015]). Thus, the second interpretation provided above may be considered to be both homonationalism and sexual nationalism depending on the context of the criticized politics itself and the nature of its criticism. Thus, the ability of LGBTI groups and movements to be a subject of homonationalist politics, as Puar and Schotten understand it, is predetermined by (a) normalization or at least toleration of LGBTI people by the state, and (b) normalization or at least toleration of LGBTI people by the right-wing political actors. Only these conditions allow LGBTI movements to transform from the marginalized object to the marginalizing subject of policy. However, Ukrainian LGBTI communities have achieved none of these conditions yet: Thus, we cannot perceive them as power-exercising political subjects and therefore cannot conceive them as homonationalist subjects. The level of social acceptance of LGBTI people is three to four times lower than in most of the developed nations (Pew Research Center 2013). If only 19% of the population agree that homosexuality should be recognized by society, how can we perceive LGBTI communities as political subjects at all? On the level of the state, the issue of LGBTI people has been stuck somewhere in between discursive absence (tabooization, total misrepresentation) and formal consideration. However, all of the state’s actions toward LGBTI communities which could be perceived as little concessions were made under pressure by international obligations and (because of the selective law-enforcement) have no real consequences for LGBTI people. The state’s “support” for LGBTI communities and movements in Ukraine is limited to

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the following: (1) upholding international obligations (e.g., it was the European Commission that insisted that Ukraine prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation in the workplace) and (2) maintaining the “public order” in situations that can potentially incite a conflict: when LGBTI initiatives risk confrontation with the public (e.g., protection of the KyivPride March). The mere protection of the Pride March in Kyiv has become an occasion to accuse Ukrainian LGBTI movement of supporting homonationalist politics because of their collaboration with the state and its repressive institutions.4 However, most critics do not take into consideration the fact that for Ukrainian LGBTI activists such measures (i.e., occasional cooperation with the state) constitute the only way to struggle for elementary visibility against further marginalization and, at the same time, provide them with an opportunity to not fall victims to the necropolitics managed by the far-right political groups (Mbembe 2003). Moreover, protection of the March by the state is not characteristic of state policy in general: Many other requests for protection are denied, a lot of LGBTI initiatives face prohibition or quasi-legal obstacles, and hate crimes toward LGBTI people are not investigated but are rather justified and endorsed by the police, penitentiary, and judicial system (Gorchinskaia 2017; Nash Svit 2017). Moreover, legal recognition of same-sex relationships has not been established. The relationship between LGBTI communities and right-wing political subjects is even simpler. Firstly, to analyze this issue, it is important to note that the political landscape in Ukraine, as in almost all post-socialist states, is occupied mostly by the right-leaning political subjects (most of them are moderate right: conservative liberals and so-called respectable conservatives, though far-rights are also present on the political scene). Thus, some ideological principles and values like the glorification of the “traditional family,” traditional gender ideology, accompanied by denying LGBTI rights, xenophobia, anti-immigration sentiment, and pro-religious consensus constitute political mainstream

4Those statements were expressed by several participants of the “Multiculturalism, Gender, Identity: Queer Studies on the Post-Soviet Space” conference (16–17 June 2017 Kyiv, Ukraine).

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in contemporary Ukraine. Furthermore, systemic political parties (Braumoeller 2012) who claim to profess left-wing ideologies are not that dissimilar to right-wing groups regarding many cultural issues: For instance, they used to claim that the queer agenda is produced by Western capitalism and is therefore “unnatural” for Ukrainian society. But if almost all conservative, “non-ideological” and moderate right political parties adhere to the “silent homophobia,” far-right political subjects have put homophobic politics into practice (Myrnyi 2018). The sentiments mentioned above describe both Ukrainian nationalist and “Pan-Slavic” Russia-oriented nationalists. Both of these groups construe LGBTI communities as one of their primary enemies and a peculiar embodiment of sociopolitical changes like globalization and Westernization, which are resisted by nationalist, conservative political forces, and political subjects with “patriotic” (Druckman 1994) identity. Due to the fact that any representation of LGBTI communities in the public or political discourse is perceived as an attempt to impose a “cultural Marxist ideology” as hegemony (Sklyarov 2016), the efforts of the far-right are directed toward further political and discursive marginalization of LGBTI people and maintenance of their invisibility. The spectrum of their policies to achieve established goals varies from attacking political events of LGBTI communities (this is done, as a rule, by members of systemic, mainstream, and marginal right-wing political subjects) to hunting LGBTI people, torturing, and publicly humiliating them (a tactic used by neo-Nazi groups like Modnyi Prigovor [Fashion Verdict]) (Amnesty International 2013). Active resistance to LGBTI communities’ struggles prominently features in political programs of three major political subjects in Ukraine who present themselves as “patriotic” and/or “nationalist” forces: “Pravyi Sektor” (Right Sector), “Natsional’nyi Korpus” (National Corps), and V. O. “Svoboda” (All-Ukrainian Union “Freedom”). Thus, we can conclude that, firstly, the LGBTI movement in Ukraine cannot join nationalist and patriotic political subjects in order to promote their interests because of the extreme level of homophobia in the right-wing Ukrainian political environment. Secondly, the LGBTI movement in Ukraine cannot share political subjectivity of either nation-state or right-wing political groups because the efforts of the

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state as a political institution and right-wing/right-leaning political subjects are directed toward marginalization of LGBTI communities and maintenance of their invisibility. Further, these political actors do their best to prevent the formation of political subjectivity of the LGBTI movement.

Xenophobia, Racialization, and Ukrainian LGBTI Movement(s) Returning to the discussion of homonationalism as a white queers’ anti-immigration sentiment (Puar 2007, p. 83), there is yet another reason why applying this concept to Ukrainian LGBTI movements is ill-advised. In Puar’s primary work, as well as in further reflections on this topic, the homonationalist trend is described through both state LGBTI policies and strategies and tactics of LGBTI movements directed to support or at least tolerate (1) anti-immigration policies, (2) racialization, and (3) detention and deportation. Furthermore, “homonationalization” of queer movements is supposed to cause racialization of the part of LGBTI people. In this section, we discuss the topic of racialization and LGBTI, drawing on the data on migration flows to and from Ukraine, as well as on some hegemonic discourses that exist in the country and that contrast Russia and the West in order to create a simplified idea of progress. To analyze the potential of Ukrainian LGBTI movements to create anti-immigration sentiment and promote it, as well as to contribute to the nation-state’s regime of detention and deportation, we need to understand Ukraine’s place in the system of international migration. Comparing the data for every year since 1991, one can notice that if the Western countries always maintained positive net migration rate, Ukraine had a negative one (Migration Policy Institute 2016). It allows us to come to the first conclusion: Ukraine is a major donor but is in no way final destination in international migration flows. Instead, Ukrainians become racialized subjects themselves (when reaching their country of destination) rather than the subject of racialization in

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Ukraine. The number of foreign-born citizens in Ukraine is relatively high, but most of them are ethnic Ukrainians who were repatriated from other former Soviet republics after the disappearance of the USSR (e.g., the category of foreign-born citizens constituted about 90% of immigrants to Ukraine in 1993) (Osaulenko 2004), so the probability that they will become racialized subjects is low as well. The rest of the immigrant population consists of citizens of Transcaucasus, Middle Eastern and Central Asian states, Russia, Moldova, and Belarus. And these immigrants have higher chances of becoming racialized subjects. The term “homonationalism” could also be used to describe the construction of a racialized category of vata/vatniki in the Ukrainian LGBTI communities (Pagulich 2016). This word, vata, can be translated verbatim as “wadding,” “cottonwool,” or “quilted jacket.” However, metaphorically it is used as a racialized category to describe people who adhere to authoritarian political, social, and cultural values and admire the ideas of the “Russian World” (Eurasian geopolitical space), of restoration of modified Soviet or Tsarist (Russian pre-revolutionary) orders on the territories of all Eastern European countries, Russia, Transcaucasia, and Central Asia. Demographically, most people who are described by this term are Russian-speaking, and a good part of them have a minimal education and a low income. The main intention of this racialization is to publicly disqualify widespread homophobic narratives by attaching them to some marginalized political ideas, such as nostalgia for the Soviet Union, Pan-Slavism, Eurasianism and by appealing to anti-colonial sentiments. However, an important detail should be mentioned: This example of construction of the racialized “Other” (of vata ) is a rare case when the subject that creates this racializing distinction is a decolonized community itself—in this case this racializing discourse can be regarded as a response to attempts to restore a colonial relationship, undertaken by a former metropolitan nation. This racializing distinction is enabled by means of discursive and ideological war with the colonizer’s metropolitan/imperial identity, revanchist and neocolonial endeavors, and (the remains of ) language and cultural privileges. However, it is important to emphasize that if people who are now racialized as vatniki represent and embody abject and marginalized cultures and ideological attitudes, before 2013 their position

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was articulated and represented and was considered as one of the three main political, cultural, and geopolitical alternatives in the hegemonic political discourse. It is important to note that the racializing term vatnik was invented in Russia by a Russian blogger Anton Chadskii (2014) two years before the political events called Euromaidan5 and was primarily used by the liberal and pro-Western Russian bloggers and political activists to describe a major segment of people who express nostalgia for the Soviet Union and who have authoritarian, neo-Stalinist, or monarchist political preferences, combined with cultural and social conservatism (including anti-queer agenda). Due to the fact that in the relevant racializing discourse this segment of the population was represented as low-educated and low-income people only, we argue that this term could be included in the language of social racism, as well as used as a tool for ethnic/cultural racialization. A big discussion emerged because of the posters “Homophobia is vatnichestvo ” (doing something that makes you vata ) and “Transphobia is vatnichestvo ” which were observed on several LGBTI protests. Basically, this racializing term was used to promote the “progressive, Western, European values of tolerance” by contrasting them with the “Authoritarian, Russian, Soviet, backward norms and values” and creating the relevant dichotomy. Moreover, during the last few years a new derivative term vyshyvatnik appeared in the discourse of Ukrainian LGBTI communities. In this neologism, the word vatnik has the previous meaning and semantic load; however, the part vyshy- indicates an ethnic Ukrainian and cultural identity and appeals to the Ukrainian patriotic and/or nationalist sentiment. In brief, this neologism tends to describe people with Ukrainian patriotic or nationalist identity who adhere to and retranslate an ideology of cultural and social conservatism and have authoritarian political values. This term was used by both LGBTI activists and their allies but with different purposes. In a way, it can be understood as an attempt by liberal activists to disqualify Ukrainian nationalism. Due to the fact

5Mass protests that happened in Ukraine in November 2013–February 2014. As a result of these protests, then president of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych fled the country and a new government was voted in.

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that this term is used to describe “nationmates” and is not linked to certain (lower) social classes and strata, it would be premature to assume its racializing potential. However, it is fair to note that this term can be, to a certain extent, indicative of Ukrainian LGBTI communities’ homonationalist discourse due to the fact that it constructs a dichotomous imaginary of “good nationalism” (Western, gay-friendly, Anti-Russian, Anti-Muslim, etc.) versus “bad nationalism” (Russian, authoritarian, conservative, homophobic, transphobic) and because the term vyshyvatnik connotes the “bad Ukrainian nationalist” and refers to the pejorative term vatnik, analyzed above. Still, applying Western-produced theory of homonationalism to criticize Ukrainian mainstream LGBTI movements and discourses simplifies the local picture and universalizes the Western context.

Homonationalism and (Anti)Militarist Strategies of LGBTI Movement(s) A peculiar feature of the mainstream policies of contemporary Ukrainian LGBTI organizations and movements, which is often considered a homonationalist policy in the Western queer criticism, is these groups’ consensus on the military actions in Eastern Ukraine (since April 2014), their support of the Ukrainian army or volunteer battalions, and their backing of the engagement in the anti-terrorist operation (ATO).6 Sometimes, it is intertwined with accusations in promoting xenophobic and racializing politics as analyzed in the previous section. One of the main objects of this criticism is the process of negotiating a “patriotic” gay or lesbian identity which was happening in Ukraine

6War in Donbass is a military conflict that started on April 12, 2014, with the military seizure of Slovians’k, Kramators’k and Druzhkivka by the paramilitaries supported (or even coordinated) by the Russian Federation, or, in a broader sense, a military conflict which has begun after the range of Pro-Russian unrests, proclamation of non-recognized so-called “LPR” (Luhansk People Republic) and “DPR” (Donetsk People Republic) and Russian military intervention in April 2014. Due to the fact that the Ukrainian government has not declared martial law yet, from the legal point of view these military actions are called an anti-terrorist operation (ATO).

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since the military conflict had begun. For instance, the media of LGBTI organizations actively promote stories of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals who participated in the military actions in Eastern Ukraine (Koval’ski 2016) and use the support of veterans who do not belong to LGBTI community themselves but went through ATO and witnessed the presence of LGB people on the front line to legitimize the Pride March and LGBTI activities in general (Natsional’nyi LGBT portal Ukrainy 2018). Also, a lot of LGBTI activists were and are currently engaged in the volunteering activities to support Ukrainian military forces and promote those activities among the community. This criticism is strengthened by Puar’s theory of self-normalization of Northern American LGBTI community within the nation-state through the involvement in the “War on Terror.” Likewise, a pro-military attitude of LGBTI organizations is theorized as a particular feature of homonationalism in Spade’s Normal Life (2011, pp. 49–50). However, though trying to overcome Western-centrism and fighting neocolonialism, queer criticism reproduces neocolonial points of view by universalizing the experience of Western queer movements. Anti-militarist endeavors of the American queer movement are, first and foremost, conditioned by the fact that especially in the twentieth century, after World War II, the USA waged a lot of expansionist imperialist wars. Besides this, during the last century citizens of this country have not experienced any conquest by foreign states. However, the global system of military violence is not limited to the overseas expansion of Western states, nor by resistance to it. Instead, it consists of many actions which are not related to the USA imperialism and expansion. Furthermore, it is important to understand that the possibility of participation in anti-war activism instead of participation in war is also a privilege, extended only to those who associate themselves with the country-aggressor and not with the victim and who do not live in the territory, covered by intensive combat actions. Besides, since in the countries of the Second World and the Third World LGBTI communities can easily become one of the aggressor’s targets, their survival directly depends on the possibilities of resistance. For instance, LGBTI people who were residing in the area of intensive combat actions may have a grounded fear of being systemically bashed by the regimes of

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so-called Luhansk People’s Republic and Donetsk People’s Republic. It is impossible to deny though that backing pro-Ukrainian military rhetoric and actions can be perceived as an effective tool for self-normalization and assimilation of the LGBTI community. However, within these communities this strategy seems to be perceived more as a mechanism of collective survival rather than an imperialist and expansionist project.

Conclusions Despite the fact that the concept of homonationalism could be used for analysis and critical reflection on LGBTI movements in Western countries, its application for analysis of and reflection on LGBTI movements in Eastern Europe and Ukraine seems to be problematic for two reasons, one theoretical and one normative. From the theoretical point of view, as we argued in this chapter, this concept is insensitive to the context of Eastern Europe. From the normative point of view, it causes harm and sets up obstacles to the LGBTI liberation movements in Ukraine in particular and Eastern Europe in general. Obsolete theorizing of mainstream models of LGBTI identities and movements as the “Western” ones not only promotes an essentialized opposition between the “tolerant,” “individualist” West and the “traditional,” “communitarian” Orient but also promotes “privatization” of these identities and models of movements by the West, notwithstanding the fact that from the materialist point of view they are Modern rather than Western, and thus, universal rather than geographically and culturally limited. In the article that criticizes the perception of human rights as a “Western” concept, El Amine meaningfully argues that “the shared phenomenon of modernity should direct our thinking … beyond East and West, to avoid the continuing essentialization of East and West in comparative political theory and related fields” (El Amine 2016, p. 106). Thus, it is when we analyze mainstream LGBTI identities and movements from the perspectives of modernity and materialism that we are able to understand their genesis and the peculiarities of their development and transformation in a less normative way that is more sensitive to their context.

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Applying the lenses of postcolonial epistemology, we can problematize this issue further. “Homonationalism” and related categories of queer criticism emerged in Northern American and Western European social, political, intellectual, and cultural settings and were developed by Western academics. The hegemony of Western academia and the impossibility for non-Western academics to produce and spread influential insights and ideas about the societies they have been socialized and functioned in turns the process of knowledge production into an asymmetric system of power. In the condition of insufficient knowledge about the non-Western world, we experience the phenomenon of imposition of Western-produced and Western-oriented theoretical achievements which are insensitive toward the complexity and differences of the so-called Second World (in our case) and Third World countries. As we argue in this chapter, these principal differences may lie in the factors which structure and organize social inequalities, the political subjectivity of LGBTI communities, or the political settings shaped by military actions. Thus, post-socialist queer studies should develop its own basic categorical apparatus which will reflect the peculiarities of the social, political, and cultural landscape(s) in different post-socialist societies.

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Osaulenko, O. (2004). Naselennia Ukraiiny za mistsem narodzhennia i hromadianstvom. Za danymy Vseukraiins’koho perepysu naselennia 2001 roku. Kyiv: Derzhavnyi Komitet Statystyky Ukraiiny. Pagulich, L. (2016). Chy mozhlyvo kviryty natsiiu: intersektsiinist’ i kvir-polityky. Politychna Krytyka. http://ukraine.politicalcritique.org/2016/07/11/ chi-mozhlivo-kviriti-natsiyu-intersektsijnist-i-kvir-politiki/. Accessed 27 Jan 2019. Peterson, V. S. (1999). Sexing Political Identities/Nationalism as Heterosexism. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 1(1), 34–65. Petö, A. (2001). An Empress in a New-Old Dress. Feminist Theory, 2(1), 89–93. Pew Research Center. (2013). The Global Divide on Homosexuality. Greater Acceptance in More Secular and Affluent Countries. http://www.pewglobal. org/files/2013/06/Pew-Global-Attitudes-Homosexuality-Report-FINALJUNE-4-2013.pdf. Accessed 22 Jan 2018. Polese, A. (2016). Limits of a Post-Soviet State: How Informality Replaces, Renegotiates, and Reshapes Governance in Contemporary Ukraine. Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag. Puar, J. (2007). Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham: Duke University Press. Puar, J. (2013). Rethinking Homonationalism. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 45(2), 336–339. Puar, J. (2017). Homonationalism in Trump Times, Public Lecture. In IV European Geographies of Sexualities Conference. Barcelona, Spain, September 15. PVV. (2010). Partij voor de Vrijheid: De agenda van hoop en optimisme. Een tijd om te kiezen, Election manifesto, 2010–2015. https://www.parlement. com/9291000/d/2010_pvv_verkiezingsprogramma.pdf. Accessed 25 Apr 2018. Rich, A. (1980). Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 5(4), 631–660. Schotten, H. C. (2016). Homonationalism: From Critique to Diagnosis, or, We Are All Homonational Now. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 18(3), 351–370. Sklyarov, R. (2016). Vidrodzennia Marksyzmu v Liberal’nii Podobi. Dzerkalo Tyzhnia. https://dt.ua/HISTORY/tiha-revolyuciya-vidrodzhennya-marksizmu-v-liberalniy-podobi-_.html. Accessed 27 July 2018. Spade, D. (2011). Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law. Brooklyn, NY: South End Press. Spil’ne. (2018). ‘Vse bude Praid’, shchob tse ne oznachalo. Commons. https:// commons.com.ua/uk/vse-bude-prajd/. Accessed 27 July 2018.

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Stella, F. (2015). Lesbian Lives in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia: Post/Socialism and Gendered Sexualities. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Temkina, A., & Zdravomyslova, E. (2002). V Poiskakh Seksual’nosti. Saint Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin. Teteriuk, M. (2016). Between ‘the Russian World’ and ‘the Ukrainian Nation’: Kyiv Pride Before and After Euromaidan. Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen. http://www.iwm.at/transit/transit-online/between-the-russianworld-and-the-ukrainian-nation-kyiv-pride-before-and-after-euromaidan/#_ edn15. Accessed 15 July 2018. Verdery, K. (1996). What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Von Klein, F. (2017). KievPride2017: Gomonatsionalizm na marshe. Commons: A Journal For Social Criticism. https://commons.com.ua/uk/kievprajd2017/. Accessed 21 Mar 2018. Warner, M. (1995). Something Queer About the Nation-State. In C. Newsfield (Ed.), After Political Correctness: The Humanities and Society in the 1990s (pp. 361–371). Boulder: Westview Press. Warner, M. (2000). Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Weeks, J. (1980). Capitalism and the Organization of Sex. In Gay Left Collective (Ed.), Homosexuality: Power and Politics (pp. 11–20). London: Allison and Busby. WHO (World Health Organization). (2016). Tuberculosis Country Brief 2016, Ukraine. http://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/335542/UKR_ TB_Brief_0223-AM-edits-D1-20-03-17.pdf?ua=1. Accessed 3 Apr 2018. Yuval-Davis, N. (1997). Gender & Nation. London: Sage.

3 Visibility, Violence, and Vulnerability: Lesbians Stuck Between the Post-Soviet Closet and the Western Media Space Masha Neufeld and Katharina Wiedlack

Russia’s relationship with (homo) sexuality has been a focus of both Russian and Western1 discourses since around 2012, when the so-called anti-homosexual propaganda law was introduced in St. Petersburg, followed by similar nationwide legislation in 2013. Russian state-controlled and state-influenced media used the topic to promote nationalism and to construct national values in opposition to the increasingly homotolerant West. At the same time, however, Western mainstream

1The

term “Western” signifies the hegemonic discourses, positions, and notions of the global geographical North/West; the categories of East and West are understood as constructed and do not refer to any essence or natural origin. Although our analyzed media examples stem from Englishspeaking news and magazine articles, we do not equate Western discourses only with American or British discourses.

M. Neufeld (*)  Dresden University of Technology, Dresden, Germany K. Wiedlack  University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 R. Buyantueva and M. Shevtsova (eds.), LGBTQ+ Activism in Central and Eastern Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20401-3_3

51

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media2 used Russian state-sponsored homophobia to signify Russia as backward and needing to catch up with the Western model of tolerance, which has become equivalent to modernity. American and Western European media platforms proliferated an enormous number of images and stories of LGBTIQ+ harassment in Russia, narrating stories of Russian homophobia and LGBTIQ+ dissidence and activism, and calling for acts of solidarity to support local communities. Most Western media (Nichols 2013; Nissen 2014; Fitzgerald and Ruvinsky 2015; Vinogradova 2015, etc.) chose to center young white gay men (Wiedlack 2017) as the victims of physical attacks that occurred mainly while performing visibility-oriented activism such as street protests. They rendered the entire discourse as a form of backlash against LGBTIQ+ visibility and posited public violence as the main problem (Wiedlack 2017, 2018). We do not intend to suggest that this form of violence is not problematic or that the affected persons do not deserve solidarity. However, we argue that through privileging those who comply with Western models of representation, i.e., Gay Pride and visibility politics, Russian lesbians, trans*people, and other gender non-conforming people become almost completely ignored. Not only do they receive less solidarity, but their recognition also becomes dependent on certain forms of LGBTIQ+ visibility—visibility their environment does not support or they simply do not desire. We engage with these Western forms of Russian LGBTIQ+ individual and community representations, focusing specifically on lesbian3 representations, support, and solidarity. First, we will discuss two of the rare media examples that center on lesbians, a report and a photo documentary. Second, we will explore two video projects by Russian lesbian artists and activists. We argue that the invisibility or non-visibility

2The discussed Western media samples are from (online) magazines, books, and newspapers/news Web sites. Similar images and representations can be found in television news broadcasts, printed newspapers, video, photo, and other documentaries, reports, discussion forums, etc. 3The term “lesbian” signifies lesbian self-identified people, regardless of their gender. Here, it is used in a broader sense, including same-sex desiring women in general. For further negotiation of lesbian and bisexual identities and terms in the Russian context, see: Stella (2015).

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of lesbians in post-Soviet Russia is as connected to the sociopolitical context and position of lesbians there, as it is to the Western LGBTIQ+ identity discourses’ “obsession” with visibility.

The Problem with the Western Visibility Paradigm and Its Globalization Western cultures, theories, and practices of identity and subject formation largely evolve around the concept of visibility (Schlossberg 2001, p. 1); people with stigmatized, non-normative sexualities, and genders historically used visibility in the form of Gay Pride or a public “coming out” in response to oppression, silence, and erasure. Visibility became “symbolic of a desire for justice as well as a [reclamation] and celebration of what has been condemned in them” (Chigudu 2016, p. 36). Global LGBTIQ+ and human rights discourses, along with international LGBTIQ+ rights organizations such as ILGA, all privilege and reproduce very specific and limited forms of visibility. Many activists and scholars (especially those from the Global South) or Westerners working with asylum seekers caution that visibility can put LGBTIQ+ people at “risk of individual and structural violence or even the threat of death” (Chigudu 2016; see additionally Rettman 2015; Taylor 2014; Kreeger and Lynn 2013; Alcoff 2006). Western LGBTIQ+ discourses use visibility and public participation based on LGBTIQ+ identities as a model or “barometer” (Puar 2013) against which “the rest” of the world can only ever be less progressive, less tolerant, and less modern. The non-compliance to Western LGBTIQ+ social inclusionism offers Western institutions and individuals the opportunity to exercise what Robert Kulpa calls “leveraged pedagogy” (2014, p. 432)—“a hegemonic didactical relation where the CEE [Central and Eastern Europe] figures as an object of the West/ European ‘pedagogy’, and is framed as permanently ‘post-communist’, ‘in transition’ (i.e. not liberal, not yet, not enough), and homophobic.” Although Kulpa’s term was developed to reflect the relationship between Western Europe and CEE, we argue that this concept is useful for the analysis of Western discourses on Russia in relation to (homo) sexuality

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and (in)visibility. Further, while certain aspects of Russian LGBTIQ+ communities and activism become visible and allow for the notion/ intervention of leveraged pedagogy, others remain overlooked and unaccounted for. An example of the latter would be native Russian concepts of covert forms and signifiers of non-normative belonging such as “тeмa/tema,” which emerged during the Soviet period. Different from the English term “queer” which was derogatory in origin, “tema” is a neutral and ambiguous expression. It can be translated literally as “the topic/the theme,” similar to the Polish “być z/w branży,” which can be loosely translated as “to be from/in the business.” Today, “Tema” is mostly, but not exclusively, used by same-sex desiring women in order to become visible and intelligible only in relation to those who are alike, separating “insiders” (“нaши/nashi”—“our people”) from the “outsiders” (Sarajeva 2011; Stella 2015). As a “secret code,” it enables the evasion of societal lesbophobia and the pornographic male gaze on female sexuality and female same-sex attraction. Various forms of lesbian community building and the value of commercial venues (e.g., night clubs) for lesbian gatherings are equally overlooked by the Western media coverage. The former exist in the form of friendship circles and hangouts, known as “тycoвкa/tusovka” (loosely translated as “in-crowd”). Seen against the Western standard of pride politics, these spaces and concepts of community and belonging are deemed insufficient; Russian queers appear to be in constant need of support from their Western peers, who are often stylized into teachers of tolerance by Western media discourses (Wiedlack 2017, 2018; Neufeld 2018). As we will show in our examples, the dilemma of queers in Russia is that the political visibility that would make them subjects of Western solidarity is the very visibility the Russian state and public repress, and is not necessarily the kind of visibility that the queers themselves would desire. In Russia, queer visibility does not seem to be a useful tool to gain societal acceptance. Francesca Stella notes in her study on queer space and the politics of Pride in Moscow that “[i]n the Russian context, the effectiveness of sexual politics that hinge on visibility, international solidarities, and naming and shaming strategies is at best uncertain and at worst counterproductive” (Stella 2013, p. 462). Other scholars note

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that queer visibility is not “always positive, progressive, necessary or even desirable” (Schlossberg 2001, p. 3), and that “covering” is not simply the denial or hiding of one’s sexual identity. Rather, it is the spatial and temporal “determined silencing for tactical reasons” (Yoshino 2006, p. 18). Although some non-visible lesbians and trans*gender people in Russia might wish to assimilate or choose to pass as heterosexual and/or as cis-men/cis-women, the negative perception of passing that persists (i.e., the wish to access heterosexual or gender-normative privilege, or self-hate) is not able to account for the Russian reality and must be interpreted in the context of more general discourses on sexuality and embodiment. Stella (2015) shows in her study on lesbian lives in Russia that many non-heterosexual women choose non-visibility to be able to continue participating in family life or in a work environment. This does not necessarily mean that their homosexuality is unknown. However, non-visibility allows their social environment to ignore this difference, to recognize the lesbians in their midst as part of the family, work cohort, or friend, without recognizing their sexuality. The Slovenian theorists Alenka Švab and Roman Kuhar (2005, 2014) coined the idea of the post-socialist “transparent closet” to describe the non-visibility of gays and lesbians within their familial and social circles. The transparent closet describes situations where “one’s homosexuality is recognized, but as a rule it is not discussed within the family any further or it is discussed with great discomfort” (Švab and Kuhar 2014, p. 19). The reason why lesbians in particular try to perform non-visibility or retreat to the transparent closet can be partially explained through the gender roles that most female-identified/assigned people have to perform. In the Slovenian post-socialist scenario men are most at risk in public spaces, while lesbians are often subjected to violence within their private spheres, especially from their parents and relatives (Švab and Kuhar 2005, p. 119). The same gendered geography of homophobia applies to Russia: Public visibility puts non-heterosexual men and women at high risk. However, the visibility of non-heterosexual women puts them not only at risk of experiencing homophobia, but also at risk of heterosexism and sexual as well as reproductive violence. Lesbian and non-heterosexual women are more invested in managing their identity, bodily performance, and sexuality appropriately across different social

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contexts, constantly monitoring and evaluating the dangers of “outness” (Stella 2015; Zelenina 2007; Omelchenko 2002; Barchunova and Parfenova 2010). Instead of valuing notions of authenticity, visibility, and the affirmation of one’s identity—notions commonly associated with the concept of “coming out”—non-heterosexual women use various gendered practices and strategies for negotiating everyday space and minimizing the risks (Stella 2015, p. 110). Invisibility should not only be seen as self-concealment and a retreat to the alleged safety of the private sphere, or as a binary notion in opposition to the notion of public visibility. The private sphere of a home environment, for example, often implies scrutiny and control of women, especially for those of a younger age who are economically dependent on their parents (Stella 2008, p. 12). The home environment poses a greater risk of exposure and inescapable violence than, for instance, a formal social interaction in the work environment where women are able to consciously regulate their level of in/ visibility in order to evade violence (Stella 2015, p. 110). This challenges the presumption of most Western research that the private sphere is a safer space for LGBTIQ+ people (Skeggs and Moran 2004; Valentine 2003). Due to the strong Western focus on public visibility, non-heterosexual women from non-Western spaces are not necessarily recognized as a high-risk population, especially when it comes to the question of seeking asylum on the grounds of sexual orientation. In Western countries, lesbians account for only a small fraction of all applications for asylum based on sexual orientation, although many lesbians throughout the world encounter discrimination and violence. The reasons for this are multifold, rooted in socioeconomic and cultural dimensions of sexism as well as in a Western/Eurocentric understanding of (homo)sexuality, “the” LGBTIQ+ community, and outness (National Center for Lesbian Rights 2013). Additionally, forms of psychological abuse and violence, especially within private environments, are much harder to prove in an asylum case. Stating this, however, does not mean that lesbians and trans*gender people are so oppressed that they have no form of recognition or resistance. On the contrary, we argue that it is necessary to move away from the hegemonic visibility paradigm in order to

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recognize additional forms of oppression as well as resistance. Following queer disability studies scholars such as Ellen Jean Samuels (2003) and queer theorists from the Global South such as Rudo Chigudu (2016), we suggest an understanding of non-visibility as a strategy of maneuvering, self-preservation, and passive resistance, as well as a radically queer existence in a hostile environment. What also allows for continued lesbian non-visibility is the very way in which homosexuality became visible publicly and within the media discourse. Since the law was named the “gay propaganda law” by the Russian media and the term “гeй/gej” (“gay”) only denotes male homosexual individuals in the Russian language, most of the official homophobic media narratives were focused on gay men. Therefore, lesbians, bisexuals, and trans*people remain subjects who are unidentified by society, who can to some extent enjoy alternative lifestyles and escape the disciplining power of the state which fuels societal homophobia. Often dismissed as “being in the closet,” these not (entirely) open lesbian lifestyles can however be considered forms of silent resistance, self-preservation, and self-care. An example of this was mentioned earlier on—lesbian community building in the form of the lesbian “тycoвкa/tusovka” (friend circles and hangouts). Of course, the “тycoвкa/tusovka” is not an intrinsically lesbian phenomenon but simply a form of community building; non-heterosexual men, closeted or not, have тycoвкa/tusovka of their own. We have argued that within the discursive fields of Western media and activism, it is physical violence against gay (cis-)men which is predominantly made visible due to its value as a media spectacle, while the physical as well as structural violence against lesbians, trans*people, and women is much less frequently addressed. An additional reason for the lack of lesbian representation in Western solidarity efforts and media examples lies within the existing collaborations between Western actors and Russian NGOs or other groups. Western allies often reach out to the most visible and relatable groups, which are mostly those who demonstrate a strong attachment to Western gay liberation politics—in large part due to Western sponsorship. This lack of representation and understanding of the discrimination and violence that lesbians face in Russia leads to their needs not being

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taken seriously in crucial situations; this can prove to be fatal, especially when one considers the situation of lesbian asylum seekers (National Center for Lesbian Rights 2013). While it would be inaccurate to say that there are no lesbians at all within the Western awareness-raising efforts (news articles, photo-projects, video documentaries, etc.), in most reports lesbians occupy the background, or in the best-case scenario, rank second among “the oppressed” (Sharlet 2014a; Nissen 2014; Fitzgerald and Ruvinsky 2015; Vinogradova 2015).

Russian Lesbians as a Western Media Spectacle: Visibility, Victimization, and Injury In this section, we discuss two prominent examples which demonstrate how visibility based on a specific type of lesbian identity constitutes the media spectacle of Russian lesbian victimhood. The first example is one of the early reactions to the implementation of the federal anti-gay propaganda law, Jeff Sharlet’s GQ article Inside the Iron Closet: What It’s Like to Be Gay in Putin’s Russia (2014a). His text opens with a large photograph of two young white men kissing in public in front of a Saint Petersburg church, conveniently symbolizing Russian Orthodoxy (read: backwardness). Like many other articles and photo series on the suffering of Russian LGBTIQ+ people, Sharlet exaggerated the dimension of the anti-gay propaganda law,4 talking about “how bad it really was to be gay in Russia” and claiming that “[w]hat the two men in this photograph are doing is now illegal in Russia. [B]eing out, or simply supporting gays and lesbians, can now get you thrown in jail, beaten up, or worse” (Sharlet 2014a).

4A

violation according to the anti-gay propaganda law leads to administrative penalties in the case of Russian citizens and deportation for foreign citizens. The penalties are, moreover, divided into different categories, accounting for the kinds of media (mass media, social media, etc.) that distribute the pro-LGBTIQ+ content. Although it is not completely impossible to be punished under this law for a simple kiss in a public setting, such as in the photograph Sharlet utilizes, it is in fact unlikely.

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The sensationalism of the article continues throughout the text. Sharlet makes no secret of his intentions; he “wanted to see what ordinary LGBT life was like in a nation whose leaders have decided that ‘homosexualism’5 is a threat to its ‘sexual sovereignty,’ that ‘genderless tolerance,’ in Putin’s words, is a disease of the West that Russia will cure” (Sharlet 2014a). Half of his article documents homophobic activists, their methods, and their activities. The problem is not that what he points out is inaccurate. However, his gaze follows the logic of Orientalism, locating the “exotic” queers—the “гoлyбыe/golubye,” which means “the blues,”6 as Sharlet knowingly explains the local terminology (ibid.)—as well as their homophobic opponents in a world not only completely and utterly different from the West, but also in a world that goes beyond common logic, against humanity. When Sharlet points out that the “ideas [at the heart of anti-gay discourses] are American,” this is not meant as a reminder that anti-gay discourses circulate globally, but rather to signify the great influence of American thought—hence a strong argument to support “the humanrights kind” of “globalization” (Sharlet 2014a), the Western-led fight for LGBTIQ+ rights. His “axis of evil”7 includes Russia and Eastern Europe, India, and countries “in a belt across Central Africa” (ibid.). Although the ideas and methods can be traced back to the US ultraright, Sharlet spares no words describing the “foreign” looks of some of his homophobic informants, offering a detailed depiction of one activist’s “sallow eyes and a mighty mustache, his head shaved on the sides and a sweep of black hair falling over his shoulders in a style traditional to Cossacks for hundreds of years before Canadians invented

5The

term “homosexualism” is used in Russian language in a pathologizing, derogatory sense. LGBTIQ+ people in Russia reject the term. 6This term is old-fashioned and is no longer used as a self-description in today’s Russia. Sharlet’s reference to the term here creates an anachronism, misplacing it in the evolutionary timeline of Russian queer terminology, and at the same time emphasizes the “exotic” location. 7The term “axis of evil” was first used by the US President George W. Bush in his State of the Union address in January 2002 in reference to the countries of Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, who allegedly supported terrorism. It has become a trope, signifying a conservative racist doctrine, including the falsification of facts and unjustified warfare within US-American liberalism.

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the mullet.” He emphasizes the Orthodoxy as part of what he calls “the Trinity” of homophobia: “that of the state, that of the Orthodox Church, that of the fringe.” The homophobic activism of the American ultra-right, which also includes some religious institutions, remains unmentioned. Unlike most other Western journalists, Sharlet does not exclusively feature gay men. His article also includes lesbians, but he focuses on their wounds and injuries afflicted by Neonazis during confrontations at pride parades or queer events. He offers a very detailed description of Elena Kostyuchenko’s suffering after she was hit on the head during a pride parade in Moscow. According to Sharlet, the openly lesbian journalist and activist temporarily lost her hearing and was hospitalized for several months. As if this description of homophobic violence was insufficient, Sharlet adds a personal story about Kostyuchenko that he obtained from other sources: “I talked to her for a couple of hours before I learned how much violence she’s endured since that first pride event in ’11, and she never did get around to telling me that when she was 9 she was given up for dead, warehoused in a cancer ward for kids her provincial hospital deemed ‘unlikely’ to survive” (Sharlet 2014a). He also mentions that besides having had cancer, she has another medical condition that causes her to faint and requires frequent hospitalization. Like the other women in Sharlet’s text, Kostyuchenko—a fearless reporter, famous for her investigative journalism for the independent newspaper Hoвaя Гaзeтa (Novaja Gazeta)—is described as petite young woman, with big eyes, “a pleasant smile,” a “droll” voice, and an “unassuming” presence. This description in no way reflects Kostyuchenko’s status and gravity as a reporter and human- and LGBTIQ+ -rights activist. The emphasis on her medical conditions evokes pity and benevolent admiration for her suffering, rather than respect for her work and achievements as well as for her courage and determination. Sharlet’s descriptions of all his female interview subjects follow the same pattern, emphasizing their suffering and providing intimate details from their personal histories. In the case of Saint Petersburg lesbian activist Sasha, he reveals not only private details about her encounters with domestic violence, but he also discusses her then 8-year-old son. He does not shy away from revealing his HIV-positive status and

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narrates at length how he suffered as an orphan in an institution prior to his adoption. Sharlet’s detailed account is further flavored with his personal emotions and dramatic phrases such as “it breaks my heart” (Sharlet 2014a). While Sharlet (2014a) freely shares his emotions and empathy for his informants and emphasizes his willingness to “help” the victims of homophobic violence, it remains an open question how he helped the people who were the subjects of his article. The visibility he gave to the lesbians he portrayed is not only victimizing; it misrepresents them. His entire article is written from the standpoint of Western male superiority that understands Russia as backward and brutish, constructs and presents lesbians as weak victims, and portrays homophobia as male aggression. Equally victimizing is Misha Friedman’s photo book Lyudmila and Natasha (2014). According to the preface, the book was commissioned by the “activist and philanthropist” Jon Stryker with the “ambitious goal to explore and illuminate the most intimate and personal dimensions of self, […] gender identity and expression and sexual orientation” (Stryker in Friedman 2014, p. 5; emphasis added). This preface sets the tone for the entire book, which is basically an assemblage of interview passages with the female-identified, Saint Petersburg-based couple accompanied by beautifully melancholic, mostly black-and-white photographs. Stryker sends Friedman on an expedition into unknown territory, in order to “reveal the amazing multiplicity in these core aspects of our being, played out against a vast array of distinct and varied cultures and customs from around the world” (ibid.). He is a new kind of explorer and navigator, a twenty-first-century Christopher Columbus. Stryker’s rhetoric is strikingly reminiscent of colonial discourses, seemingly motivated by a kind of benevolent curiosity or inquisitiveness, a will to knowledge. This othering is further emphasized in the book’s introduction by the same Jeff Sharlet, who presents the background context for the images of the two women. He describes the anti-gay propaganda law and the hardship it causes (Sharlet in Friedman 2014b, p. 7), and compares it to the authoritarianism of Soviet times and the GULAG system. The setting he creates places Lyudmila and Natasha in a contemporary version

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of a cruel, unjust, cold, and intolerant past. They are helpless damsels in a medieval country, and the exotic Others in a barbaric, alien world. This reference to the “dark age” or backwardness corresponds with the book’s intent to “illuminate”—in other words, give visibility to the lesbians Lyudmila and Natasha, and almost literally “enlighten” them into modernity. Sharlet and Stryker emphasize the visual as a “powerful medium for communication that can transform our understanding and awareness of the world” (Stryker in Friedman 2014, p. 5). The photographic illumination of the two women is supposed to bring “greater harmony” to “all the world’s peoples” (ibid.). Through exploring and illuminating a lesbian couple’s most intimate moments, Friedman’s images are supposed to enlighten the world’s people, teaching them (Western) tolerance and freedom. The idea behind these statements is not only that of a Western hegemony, but also shows a strong belief in the power of the visual. It suggests that if people were to see these representations, they would change their minds, understand that homophobia is wrong, and become more accepting. Despite the promise in the preface to explore the yet unseen, it seems that what Friedman is supposed to show is already familiar: (Russian) lesbians. Lyudmila and Natasha are different and exotic, but at the same time “normal,” which already signifies familiarity. Their difference lies in the fact that they are Russian, meaning that they live in an environment which does not acknowledge them (yet). Additionally, their social class makes them different—both are working class and “have no financial stability” (Friedman 2014, p. 144). The tone of the photographs matches the bleakness of their situation; the scenes are captured in the hard fluorescent lighting of a hospital ward and examination room, the dim lights of an overcast Saint Petersburg winter, and the artificial colors of a night club. Most of the images are in black and white, adding romance to the hardship. The overall impression of beautiful and intimate melancholia is supported by the women’s love narrative of failure and impossibility, which arouses feelings of pity in the viewer/ reader. These two examples of how the Western media represents lesbian lives and struggles in Russia show how the structures of othering, victimization, and marginalization operate. The Western gaze renders

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lesbians as familiar because they show signs of a lesbian identity and sexuality, and yet they are exotic because they survive in the hostile environment of Russia. What perpetuates their exoticism as well as their victim status is the economic hardship and violence that they endure. The two examples reveal the gross misrepresentations of lesbian lives in Russia, accomplished through selectively emphasizing, highlighting, coloring, and comparing information. Most importantly, the authors use visibility—the visibility of the victims—to argue for homotolerance. Yet, the result of this visibility is not agency or empowerment, but instead further victimizes the subjects it brings to the fore.

Lesbian (In)Visibility in Russia: Vulnerability and Violence In the following section, we move on to lesbian (self-)representations within the Russian context, and the way that lesbians navigate the tricky question of visibility within the film medium. We will show that although lesbian visibility does not necessarily conform to the Western visibility paradigm, it does exist. However, it is a form of visibility that is often overlooked because it does not aim for political visibility. Most importantly, the self-representations of lesbians in Russia do not follow the same sad tableau that Western journalists display in the previous examples. Lesbians, along with their desires and non-normative bodies, were quite visible in Russian mainstream culture in the beginning of the 2000s (Wiedlack and Neufeld 2015), and these representations did not follow the Western visibility paradigm. Singers such as Butch, Nochnye Snaipery, Zemfira or t.A.T.u. offered spaces for lesbian identifications, recognitions, and community building in and through their video clips and lyrics, and during their concerts and fan gatherings (ibid.). Leisure and literature clubs were important lesbian gathering places at that time, as well as a variety of lesbian festivals, magazines, and night clubs that existed (Miller 2004, p. 140). However, this lesbian visibility within the Russian mainstream was only tolerated by the authorities in the absence

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of “lesbian” as a political identity, and as long as the flourishing lesbian subcultures remained apolitical commercial venues (Essig 1999). The situation changed drastically in 2005 when the newly founded “Russian human rights LGBT project Gay Russia” announced the organization of a public Gay Pride event in Moscow for the following year, thereby introducing homosexuality within a human rights framework to the Russian public. The resulting nationwide controversies “turned the capital into a symbolic battleground for sexual citizenship rights in Russia” (Stella 2013, p. 470), and frequent outbreaks of anti-gay violence accompanied the public debates. In May 2006, three weeks before the Pride event, right-wing nationalists attacked patrons of the gay night club Tpи oбeзьяны/Tri obez’yany (Three monkeys). The lesbian club Teмaтик/Tematik (Themed) was burned down by skinheads the same night (SOVA 2006), and the festival of gay and lesbian culture Paдyгa бeз гpaниц/Raduga bez granic (Rainbow without Borders ) was canceled due to safety concerns after several threats were received from fascist and nationalist groups (Raduzhnye Novosti 2006; Gay.ru 2006). The first regional “propaganda ban” was also passed in Ryazan in April 2006 (pravo.gov.ru 2006), but this received little attention due to the ongoing Moscow Pride controversy. While these debates and conflicts surrounding the Pride event emerged in the Russian public sphere—including corresponding gay political discourses on homosexuality—there was also a shift in Russian foreign and domestic policies in the mid-2000s from a pro- to an anti-Western standpoint (Trenin 2006, p. 1). Russia’s leadership started “promot[ing] the vision of Russia as a culturally distinct power, committed to defending particular values and principles relative to those of the West and other civilizations” (Tsygankov 2016, p. 237). This vision included the neoconservative values of national unity, sovereignty, and traditional (heterosexual) families, and opposed liberal Western attitudes toward (homo)sexuality, tolerance, and the protection of individual liberty. Homosexuality became increasingly constructed as Western and as foreign to Russian culture and civilization. A national law against “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors” was adopted in June 2013, which was aimed at “protect[ing] children from information that rejects traditional family values” (Rg.ru 2013).

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Within the context of this increasingly homophobic political discourse, various lesbian projects and spaces disappeared in the 2000s and in the first half of the 2010s, and lesbian icons such as Diana Arbenina and Svetlana Surganova from Nochnye Snaipery or Elena Pogrebizhskaya, alias Butch, decreased their visibility as lesbian artists in order to avoid accusations of homosexual propaganda, and the legal and social consequences of this (Wiedlack and Neufeld 2015). We will now focus on lesbian self-representations (from artists, filmmakers, lesbian club employees as well as “ordinary” people) in the era after the propaganda laws and analyze their articulations of lesbian visibility, community, and belonging. Our first example is the web series Cтeклo/Steklo (The Glass  ), a “Russian non-commercial L-project,” directed by Evgeniya Maksimova, featuring a mainly female cast and all-female production crew. Cтeклo launched its first two pilot episodes in May 2013 on its (now defunct) Web site as well as on social media and announced a crowdfunding campaign to secure funds for continued production of the show. It premiered on the 25th of May 2013 in Moscow, and further public screenings were organized in Saint Petersburg and in Berlin in summer 2013; unfortunately, these were overshadowed by the federal “propaganda ban” (Maier 2013). According to its self-description, the series “destroys and partly ridicules the stereotypes of the lesbian subculture, telling stories about the most ordinary Moscow girls” (Kino.mail.ru 2013). Moreover, it aims “to educate the audience towards a more tolerant attitude towards representatives of sexual minorities” (ibid.). The story focuses on six lesbian women in their early twenties, who live quite different lifestyles in Moscow. While the main plot narrates a rather classic comingof-age story about the protagonist Lilya, a young artist, the most interesting story related to visibility evolves around the side character and music editor Sasha—a typical cynical Muscovite and a careerist living a middle-class lifestyle. Sasha lives in a beautiful apartment, drives an expensive sports car, is an avid partygoer, and enjoys frequent hookups with other women without any emotional involvement, until the night when she is seduced by her assistant Olya in her office. When Sasha is denounced and the affair revealed to her boss, he fires Sasha since “homosexual behavior is not to be tolerated at the workplace.”

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The episode ends with Sasha’s world falling apart: Along with her job she loses her luxurious lifestyle, since her expensive apartment and car belong to the company she was working for. Sasha’s character and plot are indicative of the social and political positioning of lesbians in contemporary Russia. Sasha lives in a transparent closet; she does not necessarily hide her sexuality, but considers it private and is not out at her workplace. Her transparent closet extends even to the viewers: Sasha is not referred to as a lesbian, as there is also no need for this marker. The problem only appears when her private life is brought into her workplace through this affair and consequent denunciation. Even then, it is not her lesbian lifestyle or identity that are named as reasons for her dismissal, but her “homosexual behavior.” The show received broad attention within the Russian LGBTIQ+ scene; several online articles were published about it and the show was watched by over 6000 people within the first three days of it being broadcast on the Internet (Terskii 2013). The reactions were rather mixed. While some dismissed it as a pale Russian parody of the American show The L Word, others praised the authenticity of the actors and the Muscovite flair of the show. However, the main issues discussed were questions regarding lesbian representation and the lesbian community. Viewers complained about the depiction of masculine/butch characters, claiming that the show misrepresented their community since “true lesbians” are feminine in Russia (ibid.). Others argued that the show damaged the image of the lesbian community because it featured frequent use of strong language and extensive scenes involving parties, sex, alcohol, and drug abuse. A couple of commentators suggested that the show be removed from social media as its content “was what homophobic politicians were just waiting for” (ibid.). Some went so far to suggest that the project was actually planned by conservative officials to further discredit the LGBTIQ+ community and gain more support for homophobic legislation. Whether it was due to the lack of support from the queer community or the homophobic pressure from outside, unfortunately Cтeклo never made it beyond the pilot. We find the show interesting for two reasons. First, it addresses the issue of lesbian visibility, not only claiming that lesbians do exist

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in Russia, but also that they desire some form of representation and visibility. Second, as discussed in the character Sasha’s case, the series also reflects the homophobic social fabric of contemporary Moscow and the consequences that may follow a public outing. Even if coming out is not a political act per se—i.e., even if it does not follow the Western visibility paradigm of gay liberation politics and pride—it is dangerous because homosexuality is politicized in the contemporary social climate and hence cannot be tolerated once it becomes signified as such. In other words, even if Sasha’s co-workers knew about her non-normative sexuality before, they could ignore it. Once her sexual relationship with her female co-worker was verbalized, however, it could no longer be ignored. Moreover, the reactions from the Russian LGBTIQ+ viewership show what is at stake if lesbian representations do become visible, even within the relatively safe and anonymous space of the World Wide Web. Current homophobic discourses signify lesbian sexuality as amoral, abject, and most importantly, politicized. A show that can be used to confirm the pre-circulating stereotypes arouses fear because it could draw attention to those who live in the comfort of the transparent closet. Depicting lesbians can raise awareness of their very existence and might encourage homophobes to harass and harm them (Zelenina 2007; Wiedlack and Neufeld 2015). The second example of contemporary lesbian self-representation in Russia that we want to discuss is the D.I.Y. web series Этo Пpoиcxoдит Pядoм c Baми / Eto Proishodit Ryadom s Vami (This Happens Next to You ), which was released in September 2013 (Film-online.club 2016). Interestingly enough, the title and description of the show itself points to the non-visibility of lesbian women and the secrecy surrounding lesbian existence in Russia: “In the Northern capital of Russia there are about 5 million people […]. However, most of them will never know that the minority, from which they have fenced themselves off, can also love and be loved” (Eto proishodit ryadom s vami 2016). The show is about “representative[s] of people of non-traditional sexual orientation (LGBT community), […] [t]he characters of all the heroines are based on real people, and some actors show their personal experiences on the screen, openly revealing to the viewer their inner world, which is usually kept secret from

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parents, colleagues and acquaintances” (ibid., emphasis added). The series was directed by Yulia Feel, a professional filmmaker, known for filming parties at the Saint Petersburg lesbian night club Infinity. Unlike Cтeклo, the show involves non-professional screenwriters and actors. The main story focuses on the friendship between three young lesbians living in Saint Petersburg: the filmmaker Yulia (played by Yulia Feel herself ), the hairdresser Olya, and the clerk Oksana. The three characters can be read as the three stereotypical classifications of “lesbian types” within the Russian lesbian subculture; the romantic feminine Yulia represents the “фэм/fem” (“femme”), the more masculine and womanizing Oksana represents the “бyч/buch” (“butch”) and the androgynous and funny Olya plays the “дaйк/daik” (“dyke”). Unlike the English term, “дaйк/daik” is completely neutral in Russian; it signifies androgynous lesbians and can be understood only by those who are familiar with the “secret language” of the queer/lesbian community or “tema.” Although both Yulia and Oksana are portrayed as more androgynous and not in a classically butch/femme binary representation, their gender significations remain quite distinct. The idea of differing gender expression within the lesbian subculture is addressed several times in the show, most prominently in the fourth episode when the androgynous Olya receives a feminine makeover because she finds out that her crush prefers “чикyли/chikuli” (“[feminine] chicks”). Beyond issues of gender expression, the show covers topics such as love and friendship, tusovka, coming out, homophobia in the family of origin, and the meaning of family and home. Many scenes were shot in the lesbian night club Infinity, highlighting the local lesbian party scene and promoting the club and other lesbian-owned businesses. The meaning of the show’s title (This Happens Next to You ) is addressed in episode five, when Yulia’s girlfriend Ira is confronted by her mother about their relationship. The mother reiterates homophobic statements which often appear in the conservative Russian mainstream; she understands her daughter’s homosexuality as “a fashion statement, a caprice, but for sure not [as] love.” When Ira defends her relationship, she is asked to leave the house. On her way out, Ira says to her sister and mother, “Now you know that this happens not only with unknown people or on TV. This happens next to you!” It is also worth mentioning that

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the word “лecбиянкa/lesbiyanka” (“lesbian”) appears explicitly in this episode, which is very unusual and might in fact be a first in a Russianbased production. The sixth and last episode of the first season is by far the most political one.8 The three heroines are about to go out dancing at their favorite club Infinity. At the entrance, they are informed that the club is currently closed because “an official took offence since he did not like the photo shoot with him.” Here, the show is referring to an actual incident that involved the club employee Kseniya Ivanova and other women from the Infinity community. In February 2015, Kseniya and her friends, some of whom also starred in the web series, were flying on the same plane as Vitaly Milonov, the prominent homophobic activist and member of the Legislative Assembly of Saint Petersburg. The women organized a spontaneous kiss-in flash mob and took selfies of themselves kissing in front of Milonov, who was sitting just one row behind them (BBC.com 2015). The pictures of the flash mob and the puzzled Milonov in the background were distributed over social media, and some online magazines also reported on the incident (Trushina 2015). In the following weeks, officials from the public prosecution office visited the club, and the club’s director was summoned to the prosecutor’s office for questioning (BBC.com 2015). The prosecutor’s office had received anonymous complaints—allegedly, minors had been present and drugs had been sold at parties. Furthermore, the Christian-Orthodox activist group “Moscow - Not Sodom! Petersburg - Not Gomorrah!” which is closely linked to Milonov and his activities was collecting signatures to shut down the club for good (ibid.). As portrayed in the episode, the

8Unfortunately,

the show also reproduces xenophobic stereotypes. For instance, there are two Polish female characters, who are constantly presented as incapable, stupid, and ridiculous. For instance, they are tricked into renovating Yulia’s apartment and wear outfits that strongly reference the racist representations of Tadjik labor migrants on the Russian show Наша Раша/Nasha Rasha (Our Russia), which is directly referenced in the episode. By reiterating the racist Russian stereotype of the uneducated non-white “Gastarbeiter” from Central Asia, the two are presented as lazy, incompetent migrants. Interestingly enough, this undeniably racist representation is a queered one; the girls wear mustaches and beards as well as тельняшки/tel’nyashki (striped sailor’s vest)—an iconic uniform garment mostly worn by the Russian Marines and a strong signifier of masculinity.

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director of the club decided to close it “until everything calms down.” Yulia’s reaction is surprisingly political and defiant: “What kind of government is that?” the character shouts in anger. “What about simple human rights? Is this really just a hollow expression in our country?” The episode ends with all the actors and cast members singing and rapping a song about homophobia in Russia. Overall reviews of Этo Пpoиcxoдит Pядoм c Baми were positive. The network surrounding Yulia Feel managed to engage a large part of the lesbian community in Saint Petersburg, gathering more than 7000 subscribers on the Russian social network vk.com. The show demonstrates not only the existence of a lesbian community in St. Petersburg, but also the desire of this community to become visible and recognizable. It shows the day-to-day struggle of young lesbians and their confrontations with homophobia, as well as the solidarity and friendship among lesbians. Due to internal conflicts, however, the second season was produced minus a few important actors/characters from the first season, who instead produced their own spin-off entitled Hить/Nit’ (Thread).9 The most fascinating aspect of Этo Пpoиcxoдит Pядoм c Baми is its progression from a relatively apolitical stance initially to a very political one. As described, the producers reflect on the real-life incident with Vitaly Milonov and the heroines of the show articulate political positions using the language of human rights, after they are confronted with the politician’s power and his homophobic actions. What started off as a spontaneous act of lesbian resistance against everyday homophobia provoked a wave of institutional violence against the lesbian community of Saint Petersburg, or, at least, the part of the community surrounding the club Infinity. Luckily, Infinity resumed operations shortly after the incident, most likely for the price of compliance and silence within the

9In

the following season, Yulia Feel drastically changed the concept of the series, which transitioned from comedy into a mystery-drama and love-thriller genre. The second episode of the season was produced as a professional full-length film, which focused on the topics of love and friendship and which was more escapist than political. The spin-off show Нить apparently ceased production in June 2016, but their group remains active on the Russian social network vk.com and is frequently used as a communication platform for lesbians in Saint Petersburg and beyond.

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current state of affairs and for the retreat of lesbians back into the realm of political invisibility. The show and its development shows that the visibility paradigm— one which promises a better future after the political coming out, following the slogans “the personal is political” and “we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it”—is not only not applicable to the context of the lesbian community in Saint Petersburg, but that lesbian visibility, even if relatively innocent like in the pictures with Milonov, can be harshly punished.

Conclusion In this chapter, we discussed four different examples of Russian lesbian representation, two from the Western context and two from the Russian context. Although the sources stem from rather different media—the Western examples from professional photographers and journalists and the Russian examples from poorly funded, semi-amateurish initiatives— they all share the goals of giving lesbians more visibility, raising awareness about homophobia and discrimination against lesbians in Russia, and encouraging people to be more accepting. At their core, all these examples demonstrate the high level of precarity associated with the visibility of non-normative genders and sexualities in general and with lesbians in particular. The lesbian film projects from Moscow and Saint Petersburg highlight how young lesbians from Russia negotiate their everyday encounters with homophobia in various spaces and how they use (non-)visibility in a strategic way to shield themselves from unwanted attention and abuse, while at the same time they attempt to inform the public about their existence and call for acceptance. The examples show how complete openness or political visibility puts lesbians at a high risk of losing their basic livelihood, their family ties, and other important resources as well as important spaces for socializing and community building. The dominant visibility paradigm common to Western media, activism, and solidarity efforts is poorly equipped to account for these nuanced and strategic forms of lesbian self-representation within

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the Russian context. It focuses on and promotes a type of visibility that renders Russian lesbians mere victims of homophobic violence, without much agency or resistance. The only forms of resistance the Western media examples account for are visibility-oriented Pride parades and other forms of public activism. In the Russian lesbian self-representation examples, however, we showed that lesbians often choose other forms of resistance and community building. Lesbians in this context often opt for a form of self-preservation, self-care, and a mode of non-visibility that corresponds to the term “transparent closet” coined by Švab and Kuhar. It is a form of living ones sexuality and relationships that walks the fine line of public appearance, recognizability, and privacy.

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Omelchenko, E. (2002). ‘Ne ljubim my geev…’: gomofobija provincial’noj molodezhi [‘We Don’t Like Gays…’: Homophobia in Rural Youth]. In S. Ushakin (Ed.), O muzhe(N)stvennosti (pp. 582–608). Moskva: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. Pravo.gov.ru. (2006). Zakon Rjazanskoi Oblasti O zashhite nravstvennosti i zdorov’ya detei v Rjazanskoi oblasti [Law of the Ryazan Region on the Protection of Morality and Children’s Health in the Ryazan Region]. http://pravo.gov.ru/proxy/ips/?docbody=&prevDoc=114083720&backlink=1&&nd=114016546. Accessed 31 Dec 2018. Puar, J. (2013). Rethinking Homonationalism. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 45(2), 336–339. Raduzhnye Novosti. (2006). Organizatori Festivalya gei-lesbi kul’turi “Raduga bez granic”: My ne pozvolim sebya zapugat’ [Organizers of the Gay Lesbian Festival of Culture “Rainbow Without Borders”: We Will Not Allow to Intimidate Us]. http://www.gay.ru/news/rainbow/2006/04/25-7269.htm. Accessed 31 Dec 2018. Rettman, A. (2015, May 27). Gay Rights Fall Victim to EU-Russia Geopolitics. Euobserver. https://euobserver.com/foreign/128842. Accessed 31 Dec 2018. Rg.ru. (2013). Federal’nyj zakon ot 29 ijunja 2013 g. N 135-FZ g. Moskva O vnesenii izmenenij v stat’ju 5 Federal’nogo zakona ‘O zashhite detej ot informacii, prichinjajushhej vred ih zdorov’ju i razvitiju’ i otdel’nye zakonodatel’nye akty Rossijskoj Federacii v celjah zashhity detej ot informacii, propagandirujushhej otricanie tradicionnyh semejnyh cennostej [Federal Law of June 29, 2013 N 135-FZ Moscow on Amendments to Article 5 of the Federal Law ‘On the Protection of Children from Information Harmful to Their Health and Development’ and Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation in Order to Protect Children from Information Propagating the Denial of Traditional Family Values]. https://www. rg.ru/2013/06/30/deti-site-dok.html. Accessed 31 Dec 2018. Samuels, E. J. (2003). My Body, My Closet: Invisible Disability and the Limits of Coming-Out Discourse. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 9(1), 233–255. Sarajeva, K. (2011). Lesbian Lives: Sexuality, Space and Subculture in Moscow. Doctoral dissertation, Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis. http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:432662/FULLTEXT01.pdf. Accessed 31 Dec 2018. Schlossberg, L. (2001). Rites of Passing. In M. C. Sanchez & L. Schlossber (Eds.), Passing: Identity and Interpretation in Sexuality, Race and Religion, 2018 (pp. 1–12). New York: New York University Press.

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Sharlet, J. (2014a). Inside the Iron Closet: Being Gay in Putin’s Russia. https:// www.gq.com/story/being-gay-in-russia. Accessed 31 Dec 2018. Sharlet, J. (2014b). Introduction. In M. Friedman (Ed.), Lyudmila and Natasha: Russian Lives. New York: The New Press (Kindle-Version, 6–12). Skeggs, B., & Moran, L. (2004). Sexuality and the Politics of Violence and Safety. Routledge. SOVA. (2006, May 2). Napadeniya na gej-kluby v Moskve [Attacks on Gay Clubs in Moscow]. http://www.sova-center.ru/racism-xenophobia/news/racism-nationalism/2006/05/d8057/. Accessed 31 Dec 2018. Stella, F. (2008). Homophobia Begins at Home: Lesbian and Bisexual Women’s Experiences of the Parental Household in Urban Russia. Kul’tura, 2, 12–17. Stella, F. (2013). Queer Space, Pride, and Shame in Moscow. Slavic Review, 72(3), 458–480. Stella, F. (2015). Lesbian Lives in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia: Post/Socialism and Gendered Sexualities. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Stryker, J. (2014). Preface. In M. Friedman (Ed.), Lyudmila and Natasha: Russian Lives. New York: The New Press (Kindle-Version, p. 5). Švab, A., & Kuhar, R. (2005). The Unbearable Comfort of Privacy: The Everyday Life of Gays and Lesbians. Ljubljana: Institute for Contemporary Social and Political Studies. http://www2.arnes.si/~ljmiri1s/eng_html/publications/ pdf/MI_gay_eng.pdf. Accessed 31 Dec 2018. Švab, A., & Kuhar, R. (2014). The Transparent and Family Closets: Gay Men and Lesbians and Their Families of Origin. Journal of GLBT Family Studies, 10(1–2), 15–35. Taylor, A. (2014, January 13). Why Western Outrage Could Make Things Worse for Russia’s Gays. Business Insider. http://www.businessinsider.com/ why-western-outrage-could-make-things-worse-for-russias-gays-2014-1. Accessed 31 Dec 2018. Terskii, N. (2013, June 4). V Seti poyavilis’ pervye serii rossiiskogo lesbi-seriala ‘Steklo’ [The First Series of the Russian Lesbian TV Show ‘The Glass’ Appeared on the Web]. Gay.ru. http://www.gay.ru/news/rainbow/2013/06/04-26173.htm. Accessed 31 Dec 2018. Trenin, D. (2006, July/August). Russia Leaves the Foreign Affairs. https:// www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2006-07-01/russia-leaves-west. Accessed 31 Dec 2018. Trushina, T. (2015, February 2). ‘My ochen’ schastlivi’. Milonov stal uchastnikom LGBT-fotosessii [‘We Are Very Happy’: Milonov Became a Member of a LGBT Photo Shoot]. Ura.ru. https://ura.news/news/1052200010. Accessed 31 Dec 2018.

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Tsygankov, A. P. (2016). Russia’s Foreign Policy: Change and Continuity in National Identity. London: Rowman & Littlefield. Valentine, G. (2003). Sexual Politics. In: J. A. Agnew, K. Mitchell & G. Toal (Eds.), A Companion to Political Geography (pp. 408–420). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Vinogradova, T. (2015). Days of Melancholy: Gay Russian Portraits, Lensculture. https://www.lensculture.com/articles/tatiana-vinogradova-days-of-melancholy-gay-russian-portraits. Accessed 31 Dec 2018. Wiedlack, M. K (2017). Gays vs. Russia: Media Representations, Vulnerable Bodies and the Construction of a (Post)Modern West. European Journal of English Studies, 21(3), 241–257. Wiedlack, M. K. (2018). Quantum Leap (1) 2.0 or the Western Gaze on Russian Homophobia. ADEPTUS, 11, 1–21. Wiedlack, M., & Neufeld, M. (2015). My ne rokeri, ne panki, my devchonki – lesbiyanki / Not Rockers, Not Punks, We’re Lesbian Chicks: Staging Female Same Sex Desires in Russian Rock and Pop. In K. Browne & E. Ferreira (Eds.), Lesbian Geographies: Gender, Place and Power (pp. 153– 168). Farnham: Ashgate. Yoshino, K. (2006). Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights. New York: Random House. Zelenina, G. I. (2007). «I nas po-inomu uzhe ne zastavish»: portret odnoi subkul’tury v yunosti [‘And You Can’t Force Us to Be Another Way’: A Portrait of One Subculture in Their Youth]. Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 88(6), 270–296.

4 Mы нe oшибкa (We Are Not an Error): Documentary Film and LGBT Activism Against the Russian Anti-“Gay Propaganda” Campaign Clinton Glenn

“This is Russia. This is hell for homosexuals.” This line from the 2014 documentary Hunted: The War Against Gays in Russia serves as a stark reminder of the continued pressure that LGBT people face in the Russian Federation, in particular in the period following the wake of the “gay propaganda” bill passed in the Russian Duma in 2013.1 Signed into law by President Vladimir Putin, the bill bans the promotion of non-traditional sexual and family arrangements under the guise of “protecting children.” It has had a devastating effect, particularly on public LGBT activism, from restricting the possibility of pride parades in major cities to forbidding positive depictions of homosexuality in

1Within

the context of this paper, I choose to place the term “gay propaganda” in scare quotes because of its nebulous nature. Elizaveta Gaufman notes that the word “propaganda” has negative undertones in the Russian context, referring to plots to destroy the state from within. This gay “fifth column” within the Russian nation “implies a centralized effort at promoting a certain sexuality that caters to the conspiracy theory minded.” I expand on this further in my analysis of the three documentaries central to this essay. See: Gaufman (2016, p. 149).

C. Glenn (*)  McGill University, Montreal, Canada © The Author(s) 2020 R. Buyantueva and M. Shevtsova (eds.), LGBTQ+ Activism in Central and Eastern Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20401-3_4

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mainstream media (Article 19 2013).2 The passing of this bill serves as the backdrop for the objects of study in this chapter: three documentaries from 2014 that examine the impact of the bill on the LGBT community in the Russian Federation. The first, Hunted: The War Against Gays in Russia (2014), documents the violent repression that gay men have faced at the hands of vigilantes emboldened by the “gay propaganda” bill. The second, gay porn star Michael Lucas’ Campaign of Hate: Russia and Gay Propaganda (2014), was filmed in the period before the bill was passed and features interviews with LGBT Russians, describing their fears and anxieties of being open about their sexuality in a homophobic society. Finally, Children-404 (2014) follows Pasha, a gay teenager, as he prepares to flee Russia to Canada. Juxtaposed with his narrative of flight is that of Elena Klimova, the founder of Children-404, a website and social networking group that reaches out to LGBT teenagers in Russia and gives them a platform to tell their stories. This chapter examines these films in order to address how LGBT people understood the “gay propaganda” bill before and after its implementation, as well as the impact it has had on their lives. The first approach I take to these films is through narrative and discourse analysis, examining their narration, interview questions and style, the subjects interviewed, and the types of external footage they intercut with the interviews. Here, I focus on the political and social claims that each film makes, and those that they clearly oppose: all three films portray the Russian state as virulently homophobic, while repeatedly characterising the Russian LGBT community as under a state of siege and in immediate danger. While it is not my intention to question these narratives, I contend that they lack nuance in addressing the complex experiences of LGBT Russian. Furthermore, they reinforce a binary where Western countries are positioned as progressive while Russia is seen as backward and repressive. In particular, Children-404 depicts Canada as a haven for LGBT individuals while failing to address the social

2A thorough analysis of the full social and legal impact of the legislation can be found in a legal opinion by the UK-based charity Article 19.

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inequalities that exist in the country as well as the long history of surveillance and persecution that activists faced until recently (Kinsman and Gentile 2010). My analysis proceeds as follows: first, I outline my particular research questions and how I apply them to the films. In particular, I engage in narrative discourse analysis in order to tease out how the documentaries discuss LGBT rights and activism in the Russian Federation. Here I give a clear context for the period of films’ production: the period before and after the notorious “anti-gay propaganda” bill passed in the Russian Duma in 2013. Next, I briefly discuss each film, their narrative structures, and how the interviewees in each film reflect on the impact of the bill.3 Finally, I analyse the films in the context of more extensive studies of the impact of the “gay propaganda” bill and broader claims of societal homophobia in the Russian Federation. Here, I will look at how the three films frame political, religious, and social homophobia and the impact this has on the interviewees’ lives and experiences. Here I engage with Swedish political scientist Emil Persson’s analysis of state-sanctioned homophobia in state-run media and official political discourse. In using Judith Butler’s concept of “hegemonic grammar,” he underlines which narratives are allowed to exist in the public sphere, and how that frames repression and silencing of discussions on LGBT rights.

Research Questions The main research question that anchors my analysis is: how do documentary films characterise anti-LGBT violence, homophobia, and societal repression in the Russian Federation? There have been several documentaries released over the past two decades examining diverse aspects of LGBT life in Russia. They examine the early pride marches in Moscow (Moscow Pride ’06, dir. Vladimir Ivanov 2006), the debates

3In

the context of this paper, I do not go into modes of cinematic production, documentary film theory, or the films’ circulations in film festivals and on streaming media platforms. In particular, their reception among Western audiences is an area for possible future research.

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over whether gay Olympians should attend the 2014 Winter Olympic in Sochi (To Russia with Love, dir. Noam Gonick 2014) and follow the controversial LGBT activist Nikolai Alexeev (Mr Propaganda, dir. Vladimir Ivanov 2013). However, these films either do not address the “anti-gay propaganda” bill or only tacitly address its impact internationally. In terms of this research project, I consciously decided to look at films that address the direct impact of the bill on the lives of ordinary Russians. I selected these films based on their relationship to the passage of the “anti-gay propaganda” bill in Russia in 2013. All three films entered the festival circuit in the year following the passage of the bill, and their narratives discuss in-depth its impact on LGBT individuals, from the mobilisation of state and societal homophobia to violence and repression. Furthermore, many documentaries on LGBT issues in Russia are difficult to locate or are not readily available via online viewing platforms such as Netflix or Vimeo, or easily sourced through public or university libraries. In order to make my project as accessible as possible, I felt it essential to select films that can easily be viewed by academics as well as the general public.

Context In briefly looking at the “anti-gay propaganda” bill that passed in the Russian Duma in June 2013, the bill’s main target is the promotion of “non-traditional sexual relationships” under the guise of protecting children from harmful material.4 The bill is by no means unique in Eastern Europe: a similar law currently exists in Lithuania, while attempts were made to pass similar legislation in Ukraine before the ousting of Russian-backed Viktor Yanukovich in 2014, though the law ultimately was withdrawn.5 While this topic demands a more thorough accounting 4Healey’s Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi (2017) opens with a concise description of the historical context for the bill, including precursor legislation that had passed in various regional governments and served as the model for the federal bill. 5The Lithuanian law, known as the Law on the Protection of Minors Against the Detriment Effect of Public Information, has resulted in three court cases, though it has not had an impact on public demonstrations in the country. For more information in the Lithuanian legislation, see: “LGBT*

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of how such bills come to be and what forms of foreign lobbying are involved in the process of proposing and passing such legislation, this remains out of scope for this paper. In the context of the Russian Federation, the amendments to the Criminal Code of Offenses, which fall under Article 6.21, make provisions for monetary penalties for the distribution of information, either in public, media, via telecommunications networks, or on the Internet that “promote” non-traditional sexual relationships. This legislation includes monetary penalties, ranging from fines from ₽50,000 to ₽100,000 (roughly $70 US to $17,500 as of early 2018) for individuals, ₽100,000–₽200,000 for government officials, and up to ₽1,000,000 or suspension of services for 90 days for businesses. For foreigners, the penalties include an administrative fine of ₽4000–₽5000 and deportation from the Russian Federation, or 15 days of administrative arrest and deportation; fines are higher if the foreigner has disseminated information via the Internet or mass media. The legislation defines “propagandising non-traditional sexual relationships” as the dissemination of information that promotes: non-traditional sexual relations among minors, manifested in the dissemination of information aimed at the formation of non-traditional sexual attitudes among minors, the attractiveness of non-traditional sexual relations, a distorted view of the social equivalence of traditional and non-traditional sexual relations, or the imposition of information on non-traditional sexual relationships that causes interest in such relations, if these activities do not contain a criminal offence. (Article 6.21, Criminal Code of Offenses of the Russian Federation)6

Here the main focus of the bill is any public discussion of “nontraditional” sexual relationships, in particular, those outside of the heterosexual family unit. Those that do not fit the mould are deemed not

Rights in Lithuania,” LGL, http://www.lgl.lt/en/?page_id=199; for the background on the situation for LGBT rights in Ukraine, including the withdrawal of the anti-gay propaganda bill, see: Martsenyuk (2016). 6Translation is the author’s own.

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worthy of protection and pushed into silence. As Elizaveta Gaufman (2016) describes the legislation in Security Threats and Public Perception: Digital Russia and the Ukraine Crisis, the law reinforces “a tendency to pathologize homosexuality, coupled with the promotion of a discourse of existential threat through ‘the ability to inflict harm’ on children” (p. 158). As I will illustrate through my analysis of the three documentaries discussed herein, while they make explicit the conservative political and religious rationales behind the bill, they rarely discuss the underlying political motivations for its passage.

The Films In order to give context to my analysis of these films, the following are brief summaries of the films’ narratives. Hunted: The War Against Gays in Russia, a British-American co-production that premiered in October 2014 on HBO in the United States, follows anti-LGBT groups in Russia, from Occupy Paedophilia vigilantes to Parents of Russia, an ultra-conservative group dedicated to eliminating homosexuality from all public discourse. Emboldened by the recent passage of the anti-gay propaganda bill, they attack what they perceive to be open expressions of “non-traditional” sexualities. Central to the narrative is the impact of the “gay propaganda” law, which has had the effect of silencing almost all forms of LGBT rights protest. However, some outspoken activists have found loopholes with the use of single pickets invoking the language of “human rights” rather than direct references to LGBT issues. Furthermore, the passage of the bill is linked to a form of political scapegoating, where the campaign against gay people is merely a distraction from the domestic issues that are plaguing Russia, from high levels of unemployment and poverty to the downward spiral of the economy because of low oil prices and sanctions because of the war in Ukraine. The film ends on the following bleak statement: “no one knows how far things will go.” In contrast, Campaign of Hate: Russia and Gay Propaganda is significantly less aggressive in terms of tone and narrative. Directed by gay porn star Michael Lucas and also released in 2014, it features interviews

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with several leading figures of the LGBT community in Russia as well as anti-gay crusaders including notorious Russian Member of the Duma Vitaly Milonov.7 Lucas uses the rhetorical device of posing questions to ordinary Russians throughout the film, testing their attitudes towards sexual minorities and contrasting them with LGBT Russians who face discrimination daily. In an interview promoting the film, Michael Lucas notes: “More than half the people I interviewed have left Russia and are now living in America, including [journalist] Masha Gessen […] They were the only openly gay family in Russia and became a target” (Nahmod 2015). This question is also posed to the ordinary LGBT people in the film, with many either ambivalent about leaving or having a strong desire to leave Russia. For many, they maintain the desire to stay and actively fight for their rights and a place for LGBT in Russian society, though many of them are visibly exhausted from the fight. In a similar vein, Children-404 (2016) addresses the question of staying and fighting for LGBT rights or emigrating to a more open and progressive country. Directed by Russian film-makers Askold Kurov and Pavel Loparev and supported by the Montreal, Canadabased political documentary non-profit Cinema Politica, the film depicts the Children-404 project that has given voice to LGBT youth in Russia through social media.8 As the film opening intertitle explains, Children-404 was created during the parliamentary debates on the “gay propaganda” bill as a way to remind the public that LGBT youth exist. The documentary is framed by the anonymous testimony of fortyfive LGBT Russian youths, discussing their hopes, fears, experiences with coming out, being outed, and their desires for the future.

7Milonov

is known for his frequent tirades against the LGBT community in Russia. Most recently, he called in a fake hostage report to the St. Petersburg police as a way to prevent the showing of the opening night film at the Бок-а-бок (Side-by-Side ) LGBT International Film Festival held in the city. See: “Anti-Gay Russian MP” (2018), “Russian Legislator” (2018). 8Cinema Politica notes in a short news release for the documentary’s premiere at the Hot Docs Canadian International Film Festival in 2014 that the filmmakers approached the organisation for support. Cinema Politica created a crowdfunding campaign “to raise essential funds for this project, whose financing would have been not only impossible but illegal within the Russian [F]ederation.” See: “CP Supported Children 404 to Premiere at HotDocs 2014,” Cinema Politica, https:// www.cinemapolitica.org/blog/network/cp-supported-children-404-premiere-hotdocs-2014.

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The central narrative focuses on one such story, that of Pasha, an out gay youth from Ulyanovsk, who has faced years of homophobic violence at the hands of schoolmates.9 The film follows him as he prepares to “be evacuated” to Canada, as he puts it, where he will learn English, study journalism, and hopefully find a loving boyfriend. The film also features interviews with the founder of Children-404, Elena Klimova, and her girlfriend. She discusses how they were both fired from their jobs at a newspaper after they were caught holding hands as well as the strain that running Children-404 has had on her. She reflects on how many LGBT people have left the country, but that she refuses. She reflects on the vast number of submissions she received from youth across Russia, noting that even though she wishes she could help them all, she cannot. Since the film was released, she has faced new charges, and the fate of Children-404 remains uncertain (Yalovkina 2016). Here, she has become a very real symbol of the legal repercussions of the “gay propaganda” bill.

Theory A particularly useful jumping-off point for my discussion of the three documentaries is political scientist Emil Persson’s 2015 article “Banning ‘Homosexual Propaganda’: Belonging and Visibility in Contemporary Russian Media.” Persson invokes Judith Butler’s concept of “hegemonic grammar” in his analysis of Russian media, which, he states, proscribes “what appears” in the public space (i.e. dominant narratives, official talking points, hegemonic forms of power) and “which images do not appear and what stories are not told” (Persson 2015, p. 260). He concurs with Butler’s contention that the “control of appearance is never fully achieved,” further stating: “[e]lite-driven projects of belonging are dependent on managing visibility, to manifest and spread their own narratives as much as possible, as well as to restrict the appearance of undesired images and stories.” Referring to the legal consequences of the “gay 9Ulyanovsk

is a small, provincial town on the Volga River, approximately 700 km east of Moscow.

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propaganda” bill in contrast with the power of Russian media, noting how the repression and scapegoating of the bill are central to its realworld effect, more than any monetary penalties that accompany prosecution (Persson 2015, p. 257). In the context of the discussion herein, I cannot decide either way as to whether the legal or media spheres are more “responsible” for anti-LGBT hysteria in Russia; however, this is an apt comparison when examining the films discussed here. Persson underlines how the power of media in shaping public perception of Russia’s LGBT community is a way to “manage the visibility of others,” specifically tied to the aims of the Russian political elite (Persson 2015). This managed visibility is particularly useful for the documentaries under consideration in this chapter because they use state-run Russian media as a framing device; throughout the films, clips from pro-Kremlin news sources such as Channel 1, NTV, and other major news outlets are intercut with interviews and footage from the street. Furthermore, Russia under the current regime of Putin claims moral authority through its position as a bastion of “traditional values” and conservatism, with the West, in particular, Europe, characterised as failing, morally degraded, and anti-democratic (Healey 2017; Moss 2017; Shekhovtsov 2018). However, Persson is careful to point out the disruptions that occur in the Russian political landscape, particularly when one looks at media stories that go against the dominant homophobic narrative. He gives a few key examples, from a series of stories in the pro-government Russian newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda, that critically examined to the repressions of LGBT people in Africa, to their reporting on an anti-gay murder in Volgograd to assert that despite the “hegemonic grammar” which positions gays as a threat, “if only for a short time, the limits of what can be seen, heard and said in the public space break down and can possibly be redefined” (Persson 2015, p. 270). In the context of the three films examined herein, there is little that points to a breakdown of the “hegemonic grammar” of the Putin regime; instead, I will examine how specific narratives are placed front and centre in each film and question what is left out. For example, while they draw on mainstream media sources as evidence of rampant homophobia and violence, independent media is rarely addressed. Similarly, specific voices are privileged, including prominent journalists

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Masha Gessen and Anton Krasovsky, while each film resorts to the most prominent anti-gay campaigner in Russia, Vitaly Milonov. This question of privilege I return to in my analysis.

Analysis As a way to bracket my analysis, one major question looms large but remains mostly unaddressed: how do the films represent Russia in comparison with Western Europe and North America, where LGBT people have equal rights on a number of fronts? Given that the documentaries I discuss have screened at numerous film festivals around the world and come to represent Russian LGBT activism and lived experience as a whole, the question of who is represented and how they are represented is particularly pertinent. Over the past two decades, there have been several scholarly publications looking at the history of homosexuality/ LGBT identities in Russia, including Dan Healey’s 2017 book Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi, which takes more contemporary case studies to complicate the question of why homophobia is so prevalent in Russian political discourse.10 Healey contends that political homophobia campaigns such as that present in Russia are frequently tied to “an economic or national security crisis threatening state stability,” such as the mass protests of 2011–2012 that accompanied the re-election campaign of Vladimir Putin. He further explains: “[a]t stake is usually a contest over national identity construction, in which the nation is said to be under threat from an external, often Western (and previously colonial) ideology of gender and sexual difference” (Healey 2017, p. 5). Central to this dynamic is the binary opposition between East and West, which is particularly prominent when it comes to discussions of LGBT rights. Emil Persson (2015) points out the location of Russia within this binary, stating: “As we see, the regulation of sexual deviance 10A

significant point of interrogation has been the supposition that there was no homosexuality in the Soviet Union. Work by scholars including Igor Kon (1993, 2009), Laurie Essig (1999), Brian James Baer (2012), Katja Sarajeva (2011), and Masha Gessen (2017a) have dismantled this myth and explained its symbolism in contemporary Russia.

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has had a peculiar relation to modernizations and Westernization: both progressive and repressive laws have been represented as markers of Russia’s relation to Western modernity” (p. 257). Here Persson refers to both the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Russia under Boris Yeltsin’s leadership in 1993 and the contemporary “gay propaganda” bill. While the implementation of the former facilitated Russia’s entry to the Council of Europe, the latter can be seen as a way of setting Russia apart, as conservative and traditional under the guise of “another modernity,” and counter to the progressive modernity that is offered by Europe (Persson 2015). Persson describes the rhetoric of conservatism in Russia through three critical characterisations: (i) LGBT rights as an imposition from the West; (ii) Europe as a form of decadent modernity that is prone to selfdestruction; and, (iii) The shoring up of Russian identity as strong, stable, patriarchal, and masculine as a contrast to weakening, “undemocratic” Europe (pp. 262–268). These contribute to the political and religious firestorm that has consumed discussion of LGBT rights in contemporary Russia. Persson describes this process as a vital tool for Putin’s regime, where the regime leverages mainstream media in campaigns of “othering” and “scapegoating” in order to direct public outrage towards perceived enemies of the state (Persson 2015). In Hunted: The War Against Gays in Russia, this is presented through the intercutting of homophobic clips from Russian television channels, as well as videos uploaded by anti-gay vigilantes to social media platforms and video streaming services. The central action of the film focuses on one such vigilante action by the organisation Occupy Paedophilia. As the accompanying voiceover narration explains, Occupy Paedophilia formed as a vigilante group targeting paedophiles. A female member of the group notes that they don’t hate gay people, though it is clear that she conflates “gay” and “paedophile” into a single subject position. They describe in detail how they entrap gay men and “interview” them: a gay man is baited

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via the Internet and lured to an apartment with the promise of sex. There the group members lie in wait. In a particularly violent and traumatic “interview,” the camera crew watches as they lure an unsuspecting man into an apartment filled with members of the group. There they proceed to “interview” him—this involves extracting personal details from him as a way to “destroy his life.” This destruction, as one of the group’s members explains, typically involves outing the victim to friends, family, and his employer. While the presence of the documentary crew stops the vigilantes from extreme violence in this particular instance, the crew fails to convince the vigilantes to let him leave unscathed. However, the film fails to address the link between media representation of homosexuality and vigilante violence: Is there a causal relationship between the two? Here the “making visible” of the homosexual subject through media discourse begs the question of what forms of stereotypes used in order to whip up public fervour against the invisible enemy that must be revealed. Persson refers to this as the “hegemonic grammar for seeing and hearing non-heterosexuality” that underpins the homophobic campaigns of Russian media and political elites. This “hegemonic grammar” involves the perpetuation of three key tropes. The first positions homosexuality as a threat to the nation’s children, who represent the reproductive future of Russia (Persson 2015). What appears on the surface as a return to stereotypical gender roles and the centrality of the nuclear family has inevitably been used as a blunt mechanism of “othering” of marginalised groups in Russia. As Christopher S. Swader and Vaide Obelene note, this “became a symbolic linchpin for those searching for a way to unite national and ethnic identities behind a powerful state […] At the same time, some of these sexualities have become targets, portrayed as representing foreign values” (Swader and Obelene 2015, p. 251). Thus, in labelling LGBT people as “non-procreative,” they are not afforded access to the “imagined community” of the nation (Persson 2015, p. 262). This first trope is present in all three documentaries. In Children-404, homophobia is linked directly to the implementation of the “gay propaganda” bill—in effect, the tacit approval of lawmakers has enabled such actions, though it gives no direct evidence of any incitement to

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violence. Instead, the impact it has on LGBT teenagers illustrates the chilling effect it has had on public discourse in the country. One testimony in particular notes how his schoolmates hacked his VK page, who subsequently outed him on his profile11; he states: “I’m basically propaganda myself.” Further examples are given of institutionalised homophobia in schools, with teachers saying violent and humiliating things about students. In one particular scene, the camera crew follows Pasha back to his former school, where students recognise him and repeatedly harass him as he walks the halls. In Hunted, the protection of children is linked to the “imagined community” mainly through the figure of Timur. The founder of the vigilante group Parents of Russia, he describes his experience of having a child as the catalyst for his desire to see the “purity” of Russia upheld. This is made particularly clear through a direct action he engages in during screenings as part of Бoк-a-бoк (Side-by-Side ), an international LGBT film festival held annually in St. Petersburg.12 His comrades hand out “gift” bags with soap and rope and a note urging participants to cleanse themselves and commit suicide. Soon after, bomb threats are called into the police, and the screenings cancelled. In another scene, a victim of a vigilante attack, Dima, describes how contemporary Russian society conflates homosexuality with criminality. Similarly, Campaign of Hate refers to a Soviet-era definition of homosexuality, which describes it as harmful, an import from the West, and a criminal act. This idea that homosexuality is an import from the West links to Persson’s second trope of “hegemonic grammar.” This trope focuses on the notion of democratic rights: the “gay propaganda” bill acts to enforce the democratic will of the majority. In this, LGBT existence in the public sphere is characterised as the work of globalisation, with homosexuality explicitly tied to a “global capitalist elite” (Persson 2015, p. 264). Furthermore, this reinforces a view of Europe as “degenerate” and “anti-democratic”; similarly, the political opposition 11VK

refers to VKontakte, a social network that is the Russian equivalent of Facebook. (Side-by-Side ) is held annually in St. Petersburg and Moscow, though smaller versions of the festival have occurred in other major Russian cities, including Perm, Tomsk, and Arkhangel’sk, among others.

12Бок-а-бок

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in Russia is labelled in similar terms, where they are accused of “sexual perversion” and “betraying the nation” (Riabov and Riabova 2014). In the context of the documentaries, there is little discussion of globalisation has impacted Russian conceptions of sexuality. Instead, globalisation stands in for the ability to escape to the West. Children-404 follows Pasha during his final days before leaving for Canada. In Campaign of Hate, Masha Gessen describes how emigration was the only possible solution in response to a legislative proposal that would have enabled the state to remove children from families headed by same-sex couples. However, the question of global flows into Russia, such as Western media depictions of LGBT individuals as well as activist connections between local and international organisations, is not addressed. Persson’s third trope makes explicit the image that Russia wants to portray on the international stage: that of the protector of “traditional” and conservative values. This trope, as he explains, is characterised by an East/West binary: “the curbing of LGBT rights is now narrated as a civilizational choice: as a symbolic action showing that Russia will not emulate Western modernity” (Persson 2015, 266). Integral to this choice is casting of Europe under the signifier of “gay,” with the epithet “Gayropa” common in Russian media. This concept is underpinned by the struggle to define Russia in the decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and in contradistinction to European society. The juxtaposition of a “traditional” Russia versus a “decadent” West reflects the Putin government’s “tendency to define the country’s place in the contemporary world by counterposing gender orders in Russia and Europe” (Riabov and Riabova 2014, n.p.). Part of this logic lies in what Russia sees as neo-colonialism in the guise of sexual permissiveness. Campaign of Hate contrasts images of “ordinary Russians” protesting for traditional values against images from the state-run channel Rossiya 1. In one particular shot, a man is depicted on a leather leash, evidence of Western perversion. However, this dominant narrative ignores Russia’s projection of military and economic power outward, particularly in countries that it sees within its sphere of influence such as Ukraine and Georgia. It also masks the deepening ties between the Putin regime and far-right political parties in Europe, parties that have become notorious for their homophobic

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and xenophobic rhetoric (Shekhovtsov 2018). Similarly, this campaign against “gay propaganda” serves as a smokescreen, distracting public attention from domestic issues, such as the advancement of the security apparatus, growing control over the private lives of Russia’s citizens, and the enforcement of a mentality of constant threat. Andrey Makarychev and Sergei Medvedev (2015) describe this as a form of biopolitical control, one that is not merely limited to the repression of LGBT citizens. This control includes the perpetuation of the image of Putin as a strong, virile man; the restriction of abortion; and, a ban on adoption by foreigners, among other policies. They describe these forms of control as a way to shore up support in the face of a “weakening legitimacy of the [Putin] regime and ahead of painful social reforms” including massive cuts to state welfare, health care, and education. Scapegoating also provides a diversion from widespread corruption, in government and business, fraudulent elections, and deepening inequality in the nation. Thus Russian identity is defined in large part by what it is not: “a positively ‘conservative Russia‘ with a supposedly malign ‘liberal West’” (Makarychev and Medvedev 2015, p. 50). Inherent to this discussion is the question of nationalism. While nationalism, and in particular patriotism, are rarely discussed in the three documentaries, one key exception lies in the figure of Pasha. As the date for his “evacuation” Canada approaches, he has nightmares of a perpetual return to Moscow. In his desire to flee Russia, he repeatedly idealises Canada as a nation of freedom and safety for LGBT people. His single picket in Moscow is another: there, he holds a sign that depicts the living standards in Russia versus those in Canada. By drawing a comparison between the two, he hopes that passersby will see that living standards are directly tied to political and social freedom, rather than scapegoating and “othering” of marginalised people. Here the negative form of nationalism, under the guise of Russian traditionalism and exemplified by the widening gap between rich and poor in the nation, is contrasted with a positivist form of nationalism, where sexual diversity is celebrated under the sign of the Canadian maple leaf. Reinforcing this image, Timur in Hunted repeats the claim “Russia is hell for gays” repeatedly, eliding the differences in Russian geographical, social, and economic location that would otherwise contradict his claim.

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Sociologist Robert Kulpa has criticised the binary between “progressive” West and “regressive” East. In his essay “Nations and Sexualities – ‘West’ and East’,” he states: “The hegemonic position of the ‘West’ in its supposed ‘advancement’ is taken for granted, a trajectory of modernist civilisation set up. All Eastern Europe needs to do is to ‘catch up’ with Western modernity, with the gracious help of the ‘West’” (Kulpa 2011, p. 46). Here the binary is based upon a Western form of paternalism, where the East is backward, regressive, and temporally “behind.” Instead, Kulpa proposes, Eastern Europe exists in an alternative form of modernity, one that is not necessarily aligned or compatible with Western human rights discourses. This is clear in the homophobic rhetoric of the Russian government. Far from existing as a form of regression, Persson describes how they are actively positioning themselves as an alternative to Western permissiveness: “Implicitly, by contrast to other countries, Russia emerges as a beacon of traditional values, a country where the battle against political correctness can still be won” (Persson 2015, p. 265). While this binary exists in all three films, they represent the single viewpoint of Russia, both looking inward at itself in search of domestic enemies while also outward at the decadent West. The films also do not question how national homophobic discourses are exported elsewhere in Eastern Europe (and, potentially to the West via far-right political parties). Despite the monolithic nature of homophobic violence and rhetoric in the wake of the “gay propaganda” bill, fissures in this dominant discourse can and do appear. Persson points to two examples as evidence of this: one, as evidenced by the media firestorm that erupted in the wake of an anti-gay murder in Volgograd in 2013; and two, in “alternate media space” outside state-run media organisations. In the first instance, he notes, the sheer violence of the murder provoked outrage and condemnations, creating a causal link between social and political homophobia and the crime. Persson notes how the position of homosexuals as scapegoats for persecution, as evidenced in the crime, versus the rhetoric of “gays threatening the nation” were contradictory, and stand as evidence of how the hegemonic grammar of public discourse in

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Russia does at times break down.13 While the murder did not catalyse a wholesale shift in social attitudes, it stands as evidence that violence will only be tolerated to a certain point. The second fissure or disruption, “alternative media space,” is considerably more powerful. As Persson notes, this space “challenges the limits of this regulation and makes sure there are always other realities, stories and images available beyond the mainstream” (Persson 2015, p. 261). Dominant narratives of normative sexuality, while omnipresent in mainstream Russian media, can be and are challenged on the Internet and in independent media sources.14 Children-404 serves as a clear example of this, though the group’s future remains bleak. Returning to the documentaries, while they are complicated in their portrayals of the impact the “gay propaganda” bill has had on LGBT Russians, several questions that remain. In particular, the films repeatedly portray Russia as a homogenous entity, with little consideration given to the specificity of geographical location. This repetition gives the impression that homophobia and violence are a clear and present danger no matter if the individual lives in a metropolis such as Moscow or a small town like Magadan. In a recent article for Open Democracy, Russian sociologists Alexander Kondakov and Evgeny Shtorn track the instances of homophobic hate crimes across Russia since the implementation of the “gay propaganda” bill, noting that a “sexual stratification” in terms of cities exists, with larger metropolitan centres such as Moscow and St. Petersburg being safer than smaller towns. They also touch on the ambivalent nature of pride parades, stating: “If our goal is to fight the silence, the data show exactly the contrary: as long as anybody suffers and is killed because of their sexuality, it is important to shout at the top of our voices to try and stop the murders and political climate in which they are tacitly tolerated” (Kondakov and Shtorn 2017). 13Similarly,

Dan Healey opens his introduction to Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi with a discussion of the murder. 14For this essay, I have consulted several independent Russian media outlets, primarily relying on Novaya Gazeta and Meduza. Of note, the latter is based in Riga, Latvia, though its primary focus is the Russian Federation.

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Furthermore, pride does happen in Russia, even under the charge of “gay propaganda.” For example, St. Petersburg Pride was held in August 2017 on the Fields of Mars, a city-designated designated “free speech” zone, though only under police protection. Unfortunately, this did not stop counter-protestors from harassing some of the participants after the event had concluded (Visser and Rossbach 2017). Another critical question the three documentaries fail to address is the question of socioeconomic status and the prevalence of homophobic violence. Through my screenings of the films, economic status and class are among the primary markers of social signification that draw my attention. For example, a number of the interviewees in Campaign of Hate talk about leaving Russia, but this assumes they have the financial ability to do so. The activists that protest in public, either through single pickets or in flash mobs, run the risk of arrest and fines. How are they able to support their activism? Occupation and city of habitation impact whether one can be open about their sexuality. For example, Sergey Khazov (2013), in his article “Rainbow Russia,” notes that people have an easier time in a big city such as Moscow, particularly in certain professions. Igor Kon’s (2009) study of homophobic attitudes in Russia in the mid-2000s reinforces this supposition. As he notes in his analysis of statistical survey data, condemnation of homosexuality was more prevalent in men, people without higher education, and those who live in rural areas. He rightfully points out that similar results exist in Western countries, and that “Russians’ degree of tolerance depends on a number of sociodemographic factors ” (Kon 2009, p. 51). Likewise, sociodemographic factors, including social mobility and economic status, should be taken into consideration when discussing the possibility of LGBT social life in major Russian cities. This latter point is all but invisible in the three films. In their analysis of narratives of self-blame and political acumen in interviews they conducted in the wake of the “gay propaganda” bill, Irina Soboleva and Yaroslav Bakhmetjev note that some of the respondents were able to insulate themselves from the bill’s repercussions through minimising “economic, political, and social dependence on the state” and maintaining their personal and professional lives within limited relationship networks (Soboleva and Bakhmetiev 2015, p. 288).

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The question here is this: can LGBT people who come from the politically and economic upper class or elite live more “successful” and open lives in Russia? Moreover, what does that say about the narrative of Russian homophobia? A project run through the Centre for Independent Social Research and conducted by Alexander Kondakov aims to address these questions, though his results are still in the preliminary stages.15 Here I want to briefly return to the Internet as a forum for LGBT organising and activism. While the future looks bleak for Klimova and Children-404, there are signs of life elsewhere. In my current research, I have been tracking “coming out” videos by young gay Russian men on YouTube and Instagram. In one particular example, YouTuber Zhenya Svetski prefaces his “coming out” with statistics about homophobia and suicide while holding a rainbow-coloured painting of Vitaly Milonov against his nude body.16 “Coming out” stories such as Svetski’s mimic the narratives of those from Western countries, though the impact of homophobia in Russian society is omnipresent. These videos also openly flout the “gay propaganda” legislation; it is possible they may further fines and legal action in the future. Another example is in the recent music video of Russian pop-star Sergey Lazarev. In his video for Taк кpacивo (So Beautiful ), he features a lesbian couple alongside straight couples of different shapes and sizes. However, preceding the video is an 18+ warning, a tacit reminder that even the mere appearance of lesbians means the video for adult consumption only. The impact of the Internet, particularly on the lives the youth depicted in Children-404, cannot be understated: it is vital to their survival. Likewise, researcher Radzhana Buyantueva (2017) notes the critical role that the Internet has played, both in the creation of LGBT communities in major cities across Russia, as well as in the way it has facilitated communication among activists. However, this remains a viable space of protest only if it remains relatively open and free from government censorship. 15Of note, the Centre for Independent Social Research receives foreign funding and has been registered as a “foreign agent” as required by the Russian Federal Ministry of Justice. The Heinrich Böll Foundation partially funds Kondakov’s project. 16See Svetski, “Я ГЕЙ! МОЙ КАМИНГ-АУТ | ЛГБТ революция в России /Zhenya Svetski coming out,” Youtube.com, 19 April 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy0brXrn_ Ak&t=17s.

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In their 2015 book The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia’s Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries, Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan (2015) document the technological struggle that is taking place within the space of the Internet in Russia, noting the all-encompassing security apparatus of the FSB (Federal Security Service). Current events continue to reshape the divide between state-controlled and alternative spaces on the Internet. In mid-December 2017, Roskomnadzor, the government agency that controls the media in the Russian Federation, threatened to block Twitter and Facebook unless they “remove allegedly unlawful content” in the form of accounts belonging to Open Russia, a group funded by exiled Russian politician and businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The agency currently has the power “to block anything they want, any time they want – without the hassle of getting a court order” (Gorbunova 2017). More recently, access to the gay website Gay. ru was blocked by Roskomnadzor, despite the website existing for more than twenty years (Besanvalle 2018). How long the Internet will remain a viable space for LGBT individuals via YouTube, VK, or Facebook remains an open question.

Conclusion By way of concluding, I want to briefly return to the three films to address the question of activism. While all three depict the lived realities of LGBT activists in Russia, the question of documentary as a form of visual activism must be interrogated further. Who are their intended audiences? As it stands, there have been no analyses of these films and their impact on viewing audiences, though they have screened around the world. For example, Children-404 premiered at the Hot Docs Canadian Documentary Film Festival in Toronto and has screened as part of the programming of Cinema Politica in Canada and the UK, while Campaign of Hate screened at festivals including Frameline Film Festival in San Francisco, the Belgrade Queer Film Festival, and the Hong Kong Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. While audience reviews cannot be conducted after-the-fact, film festival circuits and their

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impact on audience and their perceptions of LGBT rights in Russia remains a crucial area for further research. However, I do not want to overstate the importance of these three films, and I remain unconvinced of their value as objects of social activism other than through a purely documentary lens: they are limited by the directorial and editorial choices made by their production crews, and the stories left on the cutting room floor are not immediately available to the researcher or the viewer. Furthermore, the films foreground specific voices; in Campaign of Hate, this includes those of notorious homophobe Vitaly Milonov or the co-founder of Side-by-Side, Gulya Sultanova. In my view, it is relatively easy to understand why they were selected for inclusion, while what is less clear is the process by which the film-maker solicited and secured the participation of other Russians. As well, there is a distinct absence of many of the major LGBT rights organisations in Russia in all three films; while single pickets are present in all three films, there is little explanation of the history behind such tactics, the organisations that regularly use them, and their effectiveness.

References Article 19. (2013). Legal Analysis—Russia: Federal Laws Introducing Ban of Propaganda of Non-traditional Sexual Relationships. https://www.article19.org/resources.php/resource/37129/en/russia:-federal-laws-introducing-ban-of-propaganda-of-non-traditional-sexual-relationships. Baer, B. J. (2012). Now You See It: Gay (In)Visibility and the Performance of Post-Soviet Identity. In N. Fejes & A. P. Balogh (Eds.), Queer Visibility in Post-socialist Cultures (pp. 37–55). London: Intellect Books. Besanvalle, J. (2018). Russia Bans Popular LGBTI Site for Violating ‘Gay Propaganda’ Law. https://www.gaystarnews.com/article/russia-bans-popular-lgbti-site-violating-gay-propaganda-law. Accessed 31 March 2019. Buyantueva, R. (2017). LGBT Rights Activism and Homophobia in Russia. Journal of Homosexuality, 65(4), 456–483. Cinema Politica. (2014, March 10). CP Supported Children 404 to Premiere at HotDocs 2014. https://www.cinemapolitica.org/blog/network/cp-supported-children-404-premiere-hotdocs-2014. Accessed 31 Jan 2019.

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Essig, L. (1999). Queer in Russia: A Story of Sex, Self, and the Other. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. France 24. (2018, November 25). Anti-gay Russian MP Halts Start of LGBT Film Festival. https://www.france24.com/en/20181025-anti-gay-russianmp-halts-start-lgbt-film-festival. Accessed 27 Dec 2018. Gaufman, E. (2016). Security Threats and Public Perception: Digital Russia and the Ukraine Crisis. New York: Springer. Gessen, M. (2017a). The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia. New York: Riverhead Books. Gessen, M. (2017b, July 3). The Gay Men Who Fled Chechnya’s Purge. New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/03/the-gay-men-whofled-chechnyas-purge. Accessed 18 July 2017. Gorbunova, Y. (2017, December 15). Will Russia Block Twitter? Authorities Threaten to Block Twitter, YouTube Over Open Russian Accounts. https://www. hrw.org/news/2017/12/15/will-russia-block-twitter. Healey, D. (2009). Bolshevik Sexual Forensics: Diagnosing Disorder in the Clinic and Courtroom, 1917–1939. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press. Healey, D. (2017). Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Hollywood Reporter. (2018, October 25). Russian Legislator Disrupts Opening Ceremony of LGBTQ Film Fest. Hollywood Reporter. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/russian-legislator-disrupts-opening-ceremony-lgbtq-film-fest-1155143. Accessed 27 Dec 2018. Khazov, S. (2013, September 6). Rainbow Russia. Retrieved October 25, 2017, http://www.eurozine.com/rainbow-russia-2. Kinsman, G., & Gentile, P. (2010). The Canadian War on Queers: National Security as Sexual Regulation. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Kon, I. (1993). Sexual Minorities. In I. Kon & J. Riordan (Eds.), Sex and Russian Society (pp. 89–115). Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Kon, I. (2009). Homophobia as a Litmus Test of Russian Democracy. Sociological Research, 48(2), 43–64. Kondakov, A., & Shtorn, E. (2017, June 29). Charting Russia’s Most Dangerous Cities for LGBT People. https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/alexander-kondakov-evgeny-shtorn/charting-russia-s-most-dangerous-cities-for-lgbt-people. Accessed 30 June 2017. Kulpa, R. (2011). Nations and Sexualities—“West” and “East.” In R. Kulpa & J. Mizielińska (Eds.), De-centring Western Sexualities: Central and Eastern European Perspectives (pp. 43–62). Farnham, UK: Ashgate.

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Kurov, A., & Loparev, P. (2014). Children 404 [DVD]. Montreal: Cinema Politica. LGL. (2017). LGBT* Rights in Lithuania. http://www.lgl.lt/en/?page_id=199. Accessed 21 Nov 2017. Lucas, M. (2014). Campaign of Hate: Russia and Gay Propaganda [DVD]. Montreal: Breaking Glass Pictures. Makarychev, A., & Medvedev, S. (2015). Biopolitics and Power in Putin’s Russia. Problems of Post-communism, 62(1), 45–54. Martsenyuk, T. (2016). Sexuality and Revolution in Post-Soviet Ukraine: Human Rights for the LGBT Community in the Euromaidan Protests of 2013–2014. Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society, 2(1), 49–74. Moss, K. (2017). Russia as the Savior of European Civilization: Gender and the Geopolitics of Traditional Values. In R. Kuhar & D. Paternotte (Eds.), AntiGender Campaigns in Europe: Mobilizing Against Equality (pp. 195–214). London: Rowman & Littlefield. Nahmod, D.-E. (2015, April 23). Campaign of Hate: Gay Porn Superstar’s Documentary Offers a Look at LGBT Life in Russia. http://echomag.com/ campaign-of-hate/. One More Court Ruled to Block the Resources of the Group “Children-404.” (2016, April 13). Retrieved from https://lgbtnet.org/en/content/ one-more-court-ruled-block-resources-group-children-404. Persson, E. (2015). Banning “Homosexual Propaganda”: Belonging and Visibility in Contemporary Russian Media. Sexuality and Culture, 19(2), 256–274. Riabov, O., & Riabova, T. (2014, February 5). The Decline of Gayropa? How Russia Intends to Save the World. http://www.eurozine.com/the-decline-of-gayropa. Sarajeva, K. (2011). Lesbian Lives: Sexuality, Space and Subculture in Moscow. Stockholms Universitet. Shekhovtsov, A. (2018). Russia and the Western Far Right: Tango Noir. New York: Routledge. Soboleva, I. V., & Bakhmetiev, Y. A. (2015). Political Awareness and SelfBlame in the Explanatory Narratives of LGBT People Amid the Anti-LGBT Campaigns in Russia. Sexuality and Culture, 19(2), 275–296. Soldatov, A., & Borogan, I. (2015). The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia’s Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries. New York: PublicAffairs. Steele, B. (2014). Hunted: The War Against Gays in Russia [DVD]. New York: Home Box Office.

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Swader, C. S., & Obelene, V. (2015). Post-Soviet Intimacies: An Introduction. Sexuality and Culture, 19(2), 245–255. Visser, F., & Rossbach, A. (2017, August 15). Harassed LGBT Activists Rally in St. Petersburg. http://themoscowtimes.com/articles/marginalized-lgbt-community-comes-out-to-protest-in-st-petersburg-58646. Accessed 15 Aug 2017. Yalovkina, A. (2016, February 1). Russia’s Invisible Children. https://codastory. com/lgbt-crisis/children-404-invisible-in-russia. Accessed 5 June 2017. Youtube. (2017, April 19). Svetski Я ГEЙ! MOЙ КAMИHГ-AУT | ЛГБT peвoлюция в Poccии / Zhenya Svetski—Coming Out. https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=vy0brXrn_Ak&t=17s.

5 “I’m Gay, but I’m Not Like Those Perverts”: Perceptions of Self, the LGBT Community, and LGBT Activists Among Gay and Bisexual Russian Men Cai Weaver

Introduction The recent post-Soviet history of LGBT people in Russia has been far from the liberation expected by western observers in the 1990s (e.g. Tuller 1997; Essig 1999). While homosexuality was decriminalised in 1993, it took a further 6 years until it was officially delisted as a mental illness. What little progress was made in gay rights during the 1990s has since been eroded as the state embraced a conservative ideology and closer ties with a resurgent Orthodox church. Between 2006 and 2013, several Russian regions passed laws prohibiting “homosexual propaganda” culminating in the passing of a national prohibition by the Duma in 2013. These bans have been accompanied by a homophobic campaign in the media and by politicians demonising LGBT people as “paedophiles” and “deviants”. At the same time, any positive portrayals of LGBT people are

C. Weaver (*)  University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 R. Buyantueva and M. Shevtsova (eds.), LGBTQ+ Activism in Central and Eastern Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20401-3_5

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side-lined due to the fear of being tarred with the insidiously vague brush of “homosexual propaganda” and fined (Healey 2018; Sleptcov 2018). The research regarding LGBT people in Russia has been somewhat limited, although there has been renewed scholarly interest since the recent politicisation of homosexuality. Work by Healey (2018), Riabov and Riabova (2014), Sleptcov (2018), and Sperling (2015) examine the use of homophobia in Russia as political currency. In a similar vein, others (e.g. Persson 2015; Wilkinson 2014) focus upon the role of traditional values and cultural approaches in regard to the legislation prohibiting homosexual propaganda. Stella and Nartova (2015) examine the restrictions placed on sexual and reproductive rights more broadly as having biopolitical rationalities, i.e. motivated by the demographic crisis. Along similar lines, Makarychev and Medvedev (2015) examine how biopolitical governance renders heterosexual and reproductively fertile unions as the only legitimate sexual relationship, thus casting any other type of sexual relationship as being inferior and deviant. When it comes to examining the individual everyday realities of LGBT people, in both the western media and academia, much attention has focused on the struggles facing LGBT activists in Russia (Wiedlack 2017). This has lead Rivkin-Fish and Hartblay (2014) to lament that western allies ignore the specific character of Russian queer experiences and do not pay attention to local activists and their strategies for advancing LGBT issues. In terms of LGBT activism in Russia itself, Buyantueva (2018) examines the impact of the conservative discourse on LGBT peoples’ willingness to participate in activism. Soboleva and Bakhmetjev (2015) examine the political awareness of LGBT people in Russia, with particular reference to their narratives of self-blame, self-shaming, and internalised homophobia. However, as their research shows, what is often overlooked are the experiences and opinions of homosexual men who are neither part of the gay movement or engaged in activism. This chapter examines how non-activist LGBT people perceive themselves, the LGBT community and LGBT activism, and then goes on to explore their political viewpoints. On the basis of 25 interviews, the question is “how do these men resist (or accept) heteronormative boundaries and make sense of their sexuality, and how does their perception of themselves shape their (un)willingness to engage in LGBT activism?”

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To answer the question, I explore how the interviewees have been able to construct socially acceptable homosexual identities for themselves which draw upon the dominant societal discourses of heterosexual masculinity, and reject discourses about “feminine” and “deviant” homosexuality and gender. It is through this prism that the urban homosexual men who are the focus of this study reject the premise of utilising sexual orientation as a basis for organisation (such as the LGBT community) or societal change (LGBT activism). Finally, I argue that one of the results of their distancing themselves from their homosexuality is their alignment with the heterosexual majority, rather than with LGBT activists.

Masculinities The theory underpinning this chapter is informed by previous work on Men and Masculinities (in particular Connell 2005; Bridges 2014; Bridges and Pascoe 2014). The framework of masculinities can help us understand the multiplicity of ways that men draw upon the dominant discourses of society in their everyday lives. In any given society or culture, there are multiple forms of masculinity that place men in a hierarchy and shape their power relations. For example, it is possible to identify, among others, hegemonic, subordinate, complicit, marginalised, and hybrid forms of masculinity. Hegemonic masculinity is the dominant form of masculinity that operates as an idealized and privileged masculinity that supports the hierarchical dominance of certain men over women and over other men (Connell 2005). In other words, hegemonic masculinity is normative, but not normal in the statistical sense as only a few men might actually enact it (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005, p. 832). As Slootmaeckers (2019) clarifies, hegemonic masculinity is a “prescriptive notion that occupies a structural position of power and embodies the currently most respected/ honoured way of what it means to be a man”. Heterosexuality forms the cornerstone of hegemonic masculinity, which places femininity or effeminate behaviour in a subordinate and deviant position. Therefore, homosexuality, which is often easily assimilated with femininity, can

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be classified as subordinate and serves as a useful inferior “other” to the dominant forms of masculinity. This subordination consists of an array of practical measures, ranging from political and cultural exclusion to violence and discrimination (Connell 2005, p. 78). Masculinities are not often as simplistic as the dominant and subordinate labels suggest. For example, complicit masculinities are those who gain from the hegemony of men, but may not embody all the elements of hegemonic masculinity. The term “hybrid masculinities” refers to the selective incorporation of qualities associated with subordinate or marginalized masculinities and sometimes femininities into men’s gender performance (Bridges and Pascoe 2014). Masculinities are insecure and are in constant need of (re)negotiation and affirmation. Using this framework, it is possible to examine how these arrangements play out when normative gender scripts and expectations come into conflict with gender norms. This conflict poses a particular dilemma for homosexual men, as they navigate how to assert the ideals of hegemonic masculinity when their sexuality is associated with subordinate and feminine forms of masculinity. Connell (2005) illustrates how homosexual men can co-opt and borrow elements from hegemonic masculinity to gain the societal dividend of heterosexuality, whilst still framing themselves as gay. In this way, they assert their masculinity and downplay their associations with stigmatizing stereotypes of homosexuality; in essence by becoming a “very straight gay” (Connell 2005, pp. 143–163). This framework provides a fruitful tool with which to analyse the way in which the men interviewed for this chapter conceptualise their own sexual orientation and that of other LGBT people, which in turn shapes their opinion about LGBT activism.

Interviews This study is based on 25 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with men who self-identify as either gay or bisexual and were not engaged in any form of LGBT activism. The interviews were conducted in 2016 and 2017. The initial respondents on gay and homosexual interest groups were found from the vKontakte social media site, and using the

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snowball method their networks yielded still more interviewees. By utilising social media platforms, it was possible to conduct the interviews safely online with secure video software. The interviewees were living in the major metropolitan areas of Moscow and Saint Petersburg. They varied from 20 to 35 years of age and as such became sexually aware and active during the Putin years. The majority of the interview respondents had received or were receiving higher education or were in employment. Nineteen of the interviewees considered themselves financially secure. The interviews were conducted under conditions of anonymity, so the names used in this chapter are pseudonyms. The semi-structured interview format had two main stages. During the first stage, the questions focused on the interviewees’ life stories, including understanding how they perceived their own sexual identity, the attitudes, and experiences they encountered when “coming out” and discussing their orientation with others, and their perception(s) of the societal stereotypes about LGBT people. During the second stage, the interviews focused on attitudes towards the LGBT community, gay pride parades, LGBT activism, and government and politics. It is freely acknowledged that the stories presented here are only representative of a small sample of men from the larger metropolitan areas of Saint Petersburg and Moscow and cannot be generalised to all other LGBT communities in the rest of the Russian Federation. The situation in other areas of Russia, particularly in rural locations, could be quite different. For example, there have been numerous reports of homosexual men being abducted, beaten, and killed in Chechnya (Mapp and Gabel 2017). Nevertheless, despite their variety of backgrounds and personal circumstances, the respondents revealed strikingly similar viewpoints. The interviews thus provide an interesting entry point to explore the way in which these men think of LGBT activism.

Sexual Orientation The findings of this research differ from earlier research on LGBT people (Essig 1999; Kon 2009; Soboleva and Bakhmetjev 2015; Tuller 1997) in two important respects. Firstly, the respondents identified their sexual

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orientation with a clear label; they were either gay or bisexual. Secondly, they did not report experiencing shame or internalised homophobia. Other researchers, such as Kon (2009), have stated that LGBT people in Russia experience a form of internalised homophobia regarding their homosexuality. Similarly, Soboleva and Bakhmetjev found that their interviewees considered their sexual orientation to be “a deviation from the norm of heterosexuality and [an engagement with] narratives of selfblame and self-shaming” (2015, p. 286). However, there is little evidence of such attitudes were in the data revealed by this study. No interviewee expressed any desire to be heterosexual. Instead of self-blame, they diverted the homophobia of society away from themselves and projected it on to an imagined “deviant homosexual” in Russian society. All of the men interviewed believed that their sexual orientation was a fixed part of who they are, that they were “born that way”, and it was “normal” or “natural”. This contradicts the dominant viewpoint in Russia, which is that homosexuality is a lifestyle choice, as evidenced by the propaganda ban which aims to prevent minors from choosing a “western, non-traditional sexual orientation” (Weaver 2016). The “born this way” argument, however, is not without its flaws. It de facto plays into transphobic narratives about those who were not “born that way”. Framed in this way, any “choice to transition” would be understood as perverse, (the transphobia of the respondents is explored further in the sections on the LGBT community and activism). What immediately became clear was the linguistic struggle that the interviewees experienced when discussing their sexuality and identity. They attempted to decouple their sexual orientation from their identity, whilst at the same time (re)affirming that their sexual orientation was an important (and unchanging) part of their own identity. This is unsurprising, given the fact that identities are not monolithic entities, but rather messy and sometimes contradictory constructions (Wood 1999, p. 48). In light of this, what becomes important are the ways in which we try to present ourselves as acceptable. Focusing first on the homosexual respondents, they accepted their sexuality as a core tenet of who they were. However, they had difficulty in assigning any meaning to their orientation. For example, as Yuri (23 years old) explained:

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I am a man who is attracted to other men. That is all […] There is nothing wrong or shameful about this. It shouldn’t mean anything. […] My orientation is not listed on my passport nor on my medical records.

Some of the interviewees expressed frustration with the labels used to explain their sexual orientation: “gei, lesbiianka, these words sound foreign […] however, gei is the only normal word to describe my orientation” (Isaak, 20). Despite some “messiness” around the meaning assigned to their orientation, it became apparent that all the respondents had a fixed labelled sexual orientation. In contrast to previous research (Essig 1999; Tuller 1997), they were not “free-floating subjectivities” demanding to be “free of any determination by others”. Nor did they want to be loosely categorised as v tema “in the theme”, which they viewed as “antiquated” and “funny sounding”. However, it does seem that there was a slight unwillingness, or rather uncertainty of what it means to “be” a particular sexuality. This is further evidenced by Artem’s (20) response: I have sex with both men and women, so I suppose that you can call me a biseksual […] what does it mean? Am I meant to behave in a certain way? I don’t like this word, it doesn’t fit me […] but in a way, I guess, it matters.

There is a disjunction here between the label(s) of identity and personal experience. However, as Healey (2018) has argued, all too often we seek to label our subjects as “gay”, “lesbian” or “bisexual”, when our frames of reference might require greater sophistication. Relating to this, one common undertone in the interviews was a rejection of identity politics and groupings. The interviewees thought that sexuality should not form the basis for “political” or “societal organisation” (this will be discussed further in the section on the LGBT community): I do not feel that my orientation is an identity […] I am not in a subculture. But I am gay. It is who I am. (Luka, 34)

Reading between the lines of these respondents’ answers, there seems to be a rejection of the reification of the social identity of being gay.

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As Connell (1992, pp. 743–744 cited in Bridges 2014, p. 68) argued, the social identity of gay is now so established that it can be imposed on people; it is apparently just as easy for men to adopt this social definition as it is to discover a truth about themselves. This rejection of a sexual identity in-common, and the consequent lack of a point of comparison within their own cultural framework, are perhaps the reasons that the homosexual and bisexual respondents struggled with assigning meaning to their orientation.

Real gei Men All of the men interviewed constructed their masculinity in relation to what they perceived as the hegemonic idea of masculinity, while at the same time constructing their own masculinity in opposition to an imagined “deviant homosexual”. As the excerpts below illustrate, these are men who behave as they believe “proper men” should, irrespective of their homo- or bi- sexuality: Every man must be a man regardless of his orientation […] I do not behave in a feminine way nor talk in a feminine way. I am a man. If we started to act like women, or women like men, it would be bad for us [homosexuals]. […] Those people who behave like gays on American TV shows are sick. It is entertainment and a performance. No one is really like that. (Pasha, 26) I’m gay, but all this gay culture is just western rubbish. Here in Russia, the men are men, even those that sleep with other men! […] we don’t wear pink clothes or wave the rainbow flag […] we live our lives like any other Russian man. (Aleksei, 35)

From these responses, it becomes clear that the interviewees had a rather essentialist view of gender and masculinity. They were “masculine” and “Russian men” as opposed to “western homosexuals”. This duality is present in societal thinking as well. They experience no shame in identifying themselves as homosexual. They accept that their sexual orientation forms an important part of their identity, but their declarations

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of masculinity “I am a man” seek to reassure others, and perhaps themselves, that they are “still men”. This behaviour allows them to be indistinguishable from the male heterosexual majority, and as such they are able to draw upon the patriarchal dividends of hegemonic masculinity. It is perhaps a strategy to cope with their homophobic environment, as they contend and negotiate their own positionality with hegemonic notions of gender and sexuality. If they are able to conform and not be visibly gay, in essence behave as “Russian men do”, then they are safe and “unthreatening” to the societal order. I had to explain to my friends what it means to be gay. That I am a normal person and I am just like everyone else […] I am nothing like those faggots that hold gay parades and walk around naked. (Vova, 25)

Alexander Kondakov (2011, p. 15) explained that there is a pervasive idea of a “good gay” and a “bad gay” in Russia. The “good gay” is one that is tolerated by the heterosexual majority because, in public at least, he is indistinguishable from them. The “bad gay” is the gay man who is noticeably different from the heterosexual majority, and therefore he is not to be tolerated, precisely because of his difference. This intolerance also extends to some of the interviewees, as they frequently juxtaposed their own normality against an imagined “deviant homosexual”. For example: Friends didn’t believe me […] they thought that if you don’t wear feathers and a pink jacket you can’t be gay. Of course, there are those gays, but they only do it for the attention. (Pasha, 26)

In an attempt to explain their own sexuality, most of the interviewees reproduced governmental and societal discourses about “other homosexuals”. When they reassure their own friends and family that they are “just like them”, they also explain that there are “perverted deviants” in Russia that do all the things the government states, and that society should be protected from them. Narrating a homo- or bi-sexual life can be a painful, unpleasant task of reconciling oneself with what one

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“should” be (Wood 1999, p. 49). That process is even more difficult in a society which would prefer that all “non-normative sexualities” be silenced or deported (Kiryukhina 2017). From this perspective, ideologies of gender can be seen as constraints that force LGBT people to either resist or conform to hegemonic values. My interviewees participated in an essentialist discourse that (re)established boundaries between homosexual and heterosexual individuals. They rejected certain social markers of homosexuality and instead sought to incorporate more values from the dominant forms of masculinity in Russian society. This tactic of creating narrative distance becomes more apparent with the interviewees’ stories of coming out and revealing their sexuality to their friends and family.

Coming Out of the Closet All of the interviewees had very different experiences when “coming out”. It is important to discuss the reactions they experienced when coming out, as this may have influenced their decision not to engage in activism. Most of the interviewees came out to their friends and family because they admitted they felt ashamed that they were hiding part of who they were. There was more shame in staying closeted than over “being gay”. Although they felt the need to come out to their friends and loved ones, they stressed the need to hide their sexuality in public, with the justification of “it is no-one’s business other than my own” (Vova, 25). They spoke of coming out as a very masculine and bold act which also necessitated the education of their loved ones, who often did not understand what it meant to be a homosexual. However, over half the respondents experienced some form of verbal abuse when coming out: When I came out, it was painful. My sister reacted horribly, and my parents called me a liar and a paedophile. (Yaroslav, 31)

The parents’ response reveals one of the main societal narratives relating to “homosexuality”, i.e. that if you are a homosexual, then you are also

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a paedophile. The two have become so conflated in public discussions in Russia that it is difficult to tell them apart (Weaver 2016). Yaroslav’s heterosexual friends struggled to accept his homosexuality as well, and he did not have a larger support network around him. His coming out story was similar to those of many other respondents, and would seem to be an inevitable consequence of the climate of political homophobia which currently exists in Russia, and the lack of positive cultural references relating to homosexuality. Coming out in this atmosphere demands great moral strength and self-confidence. This was recognised by one respondent, who said that some of his friends “were thankful for the trust that was placed in them by [my] coming out” (Vladimir, 18). Not all of the interviewees came out by choice, however: My co-workers accidentally found out about my orientation. I met a guy at work and we started seeing each other sexually […] my friends accused me of lying to them and disowned me […] I thought if this was the reaction I would get from people […] I couldn’t live like this anymore […] I tried to commit suicide. (Luka, 34)

At that time, Luka was deeply unhappy. However, he maintains that his depression was due to the fact that he was outed at work, which could endanger his professional career, and the goodwill and friendship of his colleagues. His experience may appear to be at odds with the statement that the interviewees do not feel shame or internalised homophobia. What Luka’s story reveals, however, is that our feelings change over time and coming out is often the first step on the journey to selfacceptance. Like the other interviewees, Luka is in a comfortable position at present. He is financially secure, enjoys his work, and has a supportive group of friends who accept him. While the interviewees may not experience shame or internalised homophobia now, they may have in the past struggled with coming to terms and accepting their sexuality. In that vein, three of the interviewees stated that they consulted psychological services after coming out (either of their own volition or at their families’ request). In all three cases, the psychologists presented their sexuality as a “deviation from a normal healthy sexuality”, but said there was nothing to be done:

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I came out to my mother, and she was so shocked. She thought there was something wrong with me and took me to a psychologist to consult. […] The psychologist explained it was a “sexual deviation” and there wasn’t anything to be done […] now she [my mother] is trying to forget I ever said anything. […] some of my friends don’t accept my homosexuality either, they think I have gone mad and don’t discuss it. But it’s who I am, what’s to accept? (Pasha, 26)

Despite the negative reactions of some of their friends and family, all the interviewees felt that coming out was the right thing to do. Most of the respondents emphasized the value of taking time to let their families and friends adjust to the news, and then they were able to explain what it means to be a homo- or bi-sexual man: “People have a lot of ridiculous stereotypes in their heads which must be explained” (Isaak, 20). It should be noted however, that when the respondents debunked myths and societal stereotypes relating to homosexuality, for example, that “gays are paedophiles”, they often reinforced the myths and projected them onto “other gays”. The construction of their identity and the narrative of their coming out stories relied upon them upholding the homophobic value system of Russian society. Their self-identification with hegemonic values of (heterosexual) masculinity formed a narrative along the lines of, “I’m gay, but I am not like those perverts”. From this perspective, it is necessary to examine how these men form relationships and partnerships with others whom they have judged so harshly.

Forming Relationships This was a difficult subject to broach with the interviewees. Some of them wanted to avoid talking about sexual encounters and relationships altogether, because “we aren’t all sex crazed animals” (Yuri, 23). The ones who discussed their sex lives expressed some disdain in talking about it; they felt it was not a proper topic for conversation. This may have been an attempt to distance themselves from the assumption that homosexuals are promiscuous, but it could simply be that the topic

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itself that made them uncomfortable, as it is for many people, regardless of their sexual orientation. It is interesting that none of the interviewees were in serious relationships. Some of them (4) voiced a desire to “settle down” into a relationship and find a long-term, stable partner. However, they did not know how to go about doing so, in so far as “finding men for sex is easy, finding men for relationships is hard” (Boris, 28). Boris said that he found sexual partners either in theme nights at local bars, gay clubs, or on Hornet (a gay dating/hook-up app) but lamented that most of them were “only interested in the one night”. He had had boyfriends in the past, but nothing “serious”, he continued “I can’t even imagine how to go about getting an apartment or living a ‘normal life’ with another man in these conditions”. There was no anger in his voice when he discussed this. Instead, he seemed nonchalant. These opinions might change as the men age. The biggest obstacle for finding a stable partner was thought to be the lack of legal rights and protection, as well as the general level of homophobia in Russia. Vitaly (35) explained that without legal protections, living together as a couple would be risky. He felt that couples would find themselves at the mercy of homophobic residents, who might try to “drive them out” or at the very least, be the recipients of unwanted attention. He also voiced the concern of “feeling powerless” and “helpless” if he were in a relationship and a situation would arise where one of them might fall ill. Dealing with the legal issues would be emotionally difficult, but even more so when faced with an uncooperative and potentially hostile officialdom. What is noteworthy from their responses is that the interviewees feel that the lack of legal rights and protection are not the fault of the federal government, but rather due to the level of homophobia in society in general. The perception is that rather than capitalising on the latent homophobia in society for political gain (Kon 2009) the government is only doing “what the people want”. Thus, issues such as stable partnerships, property rights, inheritance laws or changes to the education system, which in many western countries are a rallying cry of something concrete for LGBT people to fight for, are in Russia met with an apathetic shrug of the shoulders and accepted as an “undesirable” situation that cannot be changed.

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The LGBT Community The existence of an LGBT community in Russia is somewhat contentious, with some researchers stating that it is almost non-existent (Marchenkov 2009). Others speak of a small but growing community that holds regular events in clubs, bars, and other venues, facilitated by the Internet and social media (Buyantueva 2018, p. 462). The vast majority of the men interviewed here completely rejected the notion of an LGBT community existing in Russia: “What LGBT community is there in Russia? I don’t know of any. I don’t feel any belonging to something” (Oleg, 22). As previously mentioned, they also rejected the legitimacy for forming bonds based upon sexual orientation and sought to distance themselves from other LGBT people: I do not consider myself part of the LGBT community, I don’t understand what it is in reality. (Yuri, 23)

This attitude could in part be due to the pervasive belief that the LGBT community is seen as a subculture in Russian society. Gavrilyuk et al. (2016) explain that there is a “demonization” and a lack of “tolerance” towards those who exist outside of the cultural mainstream in Russia, which is blamed on the conservative views of the majority of Russians who were educated in the traditions of the Soviet epoch. Most of the men interviewed were intolerant and hostile towards other members of the imagined LGBT community. It was not their sexuality per se that was the issue, but rather the “narcissistic need” of the “vocal minority” to “draw attention to themselves” (Vova, 25). This could be read as an expression of their fear of being publicly exposed as gay. This view is also popular amongst the media, who portray LGBT people as an “aggressive minority” or “queer fascists” that force their “views and lifestyles” onto to the majority of the population who do not want nor need them (Sheddon 2013). In other words, the men interviewed here see other LGBT people through the same ideological lens as homophobes. These pervasive abstract beliefs about what is right and legitimate pervade the discourses

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of both mainstream and marginalised members of a society (Wood 1999, p. 52). It would be difficult to distinguish some of their responses from those of heterosexual homophobes. For example: I have nothing in common with lesbians; they make things worse for us. They [lesbians] want to have children and live as heterosexuals do. What normal life can a child raised by two women have in this country? It is bad for the children […] It is good that the state removes the children […] if they want to be mothers, they should stay with their husbands. (Pasha, 26)

One can detect the influence of mainstream societal discourses relating to homosexuality in Pasha’s response. First, despite the fact that Pasha had previously stated that he was “born this way” and it was not a choice, his attitude towards other types of homosexuality seems to be that it is a conscious lifestyle choice. Women, in his view, are naturally predisposed to be attracted to men only. Second, he believes that children raised by same-sex couples are in some way “under threat” or “harmed” by the experience, which is the justification for the prohibition on distributing “propaganda” on non-traditional sexual relationships to minors. He also expresses some sympathy for the government’s position on same-sex parenting. Whilst it is not illegal for two women or two men to raise children, they can find themselves accused of “promoting homosexual propaganda”, simply through the fact that they are parenting together. Unfortunately, Pasha’s anti-LGBT views were by no means an isolated viewpoint among the interviewees: Transsexuals should be sent for psychiatric treatment. It is one thing to have a fetish for dressing up […] it is entirely another thing altogether to take it outside into public. Those transsexuals make me sick. (Artem, 20)

Artem repeats another commonly held viewpoint that transgender individuals are “mentally ill”. In Russia, “transsexuality” was classified as a “gender identity disorder” which also overlaps with “disorders of sexual preference” and includes “sadomasochism”, “paedophilia”, and “exhibitionism”. In being categorised in this way, transexuals have

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been prohibited from driving road vehicles since December 2014 (Amendment 1604 to the Federal Law on Road Safety, 29/12/2014). Considering the homophobic propaganda campaign and attitudes prevalent in Russian society as a whole, these opinions are unsurprising. Instead of finding solidarity with other marginalised individuals, the interviewees repeat and project the viewpoints of society onto other LGBT people and away from themselves. Instead of an LGBT community, there is mutual fear, disgust, and homo- and trans- phobic attitudes among LGBT people in Russia. This could be a way of resisting the idea that they themselves are the target of the homophobic legislation and are somehow “deviant”. Instead, the interviewees reason that they are not the kind of “perverted homosexuals” which the government condemns, i.e. they are the “good gays”. One interviewee (Vladimir, 18) expressed a positive attitude towards the online LGBT community. Nevertheless, he emphasised that before he came out he had felt hostile towards the LGBT community. He was, in fact, the only respondent to express support or a desire for friendship ties based on sexuality. The prospect of LGBT people uniting and fighting for their rights or other forms of LGBT activism looks rather bleak indeed.

Rejecting LGBT Activism The views held by the interviewees regarding LGBT activism were remarkably similar to the propaganda that the government espouses. All of the respondents thought that engaging in LGBT activism would have negative personal consequences for them. Furthermore, they thought that LGBT activism in its current form in Russia is both harmful for LGBT people and unnecessary, in that it creates further hostility towards them. They also thought that “gay parades” serve the needs of “the foreign elites” and that those Russians that organise them are “in the pocket of Western governments or interest groups” (Boris, 28). The majority of the interviewees (20) conflated “gay parades” and “LGBT activism” in much the same way the media does and were at a loss to explain the point of LGBT activism:

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Who are they fighting for? And for what? It isn’t clear. They just go out and shout about their sex lives. No wonder we have these laws. (Pasha, 26)

There was the view that “gay parades are a demonstration of sin and lust” (Yaroslav, 31) and that “activists engage in actions which can only confirm the correctness of homophobic policy” (Artem, 20). Teasing out the responses further, it became apparent that they were not against LGBT activism as such. Instead, their grievances were focused on the “confrontational nature” of “gay parades” which were perceived to be at odds with Russian society and culture. All the respondents wanted the organisers to stop trying to hold gay parades. Nearly all the respondents struggled to understand or explain what the “actual goals” of LGBT activism in Russia are. A handful of the interviewees argued for a more uniform and coherent form of activism, in which all LGBT people should be working towards achieving a more positive view of LGBT people in the media and society. However, these forms of LGBT advocacy already exist. Russian LGBT activism is heterogeneous and diverse, including various different forms of legal action, media interventions, underground activism, public protest and direct action, and online communities and blogging (Rivkin-Fish and Hartblay 2014, pp. 103–104). However, the interviewees seemed unaware of these actions and instead equated Russian LGBT activism with gay parades. They expressed a desire that LGBT activism should “look normal” and “have plain banners calling for specific policy actions or protesting specific issues”. Unfortunately, in their calls for “normal looking” activism they excluded gender transgressive forms of sexuality and identity, as in their opinion “rainbow flags and transexuals make us look like perverts” (Alexsei, 35). Unpacking their responses further, it appears that they did not support LGBT activism, but were rather in favour of activism in more general terms: “Change can only come from the government, and LGBT activism is pointless […] We should protest real issues, like corruption, before addressing the issues of the minority” (Oleg, 22). He was not the only one to express solidarity with issues facing the (heterosexual) majority:

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I do not need any special treatment or special law to protect me […] we have issues with basic human rights and democracy. This is where our attention should be focused. Everything else is just bullshit. (Boris, 28)

The lack of rights for LGBT people was not a priority for these respondents. Instead, they identified “bigger issues” facing Russian society which must be solved first. This was also the case in research conducted by Soboleva and Bakhmetjev (2015, p. 287). In fact, even in interviews carried out in the 1990s, Tuller (1997) reported that one of his respondents thought that they should not fight for the rights of other lesbians because repression only starts when the government knows they exist. This idea of invisibility as a shield or as resistance is also supported by work carried out by Stella (2015, p. 129), although the conclusion that she draws is that in invisibility marginalised queer forms of life can find solidarity in the shadows. Yet this explanation seems problematic in the context of my interviewees’ responses. Their calls for invisibility and the cessation of all LGBT activism could be read as an attempt to downplay the potential associations with subordinated masculinities, and/or as an expression of fear. Indeed, some of the interviewees rejected the need for activism completely, which could be explained by exploring their political viewpoints in more detail.

Thinking About the Government The views of the respondents regarding the government were complex and diverse. Only three men said they were interested in politics, with the remaining 22 expressing apathy and disinterest in Russian politics. However, that did not stop them from voicing their opinions regarding the current political climate. Most of the men (19) had a favourable view of President Putin, who “is doing a great job under incredibly difficult circumstances” (Vitaly, 35). Yet, the attitudes towards the State Duma and regional authorities were mostly negative. They took the blame for being “corrupt, opportunists who are only interested in furthering their own careers” (Pasha, 26). The charges of breaching human rights and “weakening democracy” were laid at the feet of the political parties.

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Nine of the interviewees expressed concern over the shrinking public space available for free speech and criticism of the government. However, they did not believe that anything would change, even if the opposition came to power: The politicians try and stop people like Navalny from running for president, but he is just as bad as they are […] he doesn’t like gays either […] I don’t know why they are so scared of him, nothing would change if he was elected. (Vladimir, 18)

A similar view was expressed regarding the smaller more liberal political parties, such as Yabloko, which might have some pro-equality and democratic aims. However, there was an impression that they would not be able to push for the advancement of LGBT issues should they become more popular because it would be “political suicide to do so” as the “majority of Russians are homophobic”. There was some sympathy shown towards the government over the “harsh and unfair” sanctions applied against Russia because of “Crimea returning home” (Artem, 20). Underlying all of this was the feeling that the different value systems of “the west” and Russia are not properly understood, there is “simply a difference between us” (Boris, 28). A third of the interviewees (8) supported the legislation prohibiting the propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations to minors. Their argumentation follows the logic that if the vocal “deviant minority” is silenced, society will see that there are “normal” homosexual people who live the same sort of lives that they do, and attitudes will change in their favour over time. However, three of these eight found the level of homophobic comments prevalent in the media “distasteful” and “over-the-top”. Oleg (22) said that, All of this stuff about gays is just provocation and people keep reacting to it like fools […] LGBTs are paedophiles! Protect the children! […] it just makes things worse […] If we stop talking about it—if America stops promoting it [gay rights]—then these idiots like Milonov will find another crusade […] we will be okay.

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This view was not uncommon amongst the respondents. The general understanding was that, given the political and societal situation in Russia, issues relating to LGBT people should not be discussed. It only prolongs the “witch hunt”. With these views, it becomes clearer as to why they have chosen not to engage in LGBT activism or protest the restrictions against LGBT people. There was an expressed hope that the situation would change in the future, but for now, all that was required was to stop “being confrontational”. Otherwise, they really would be the “aggressive minority” that “no one really wants”. While their attitudes may seem controversial, they are not confined to modern Russia. For example, in the 1950s in the United States, the Mattachine Society (a homosexual rights group) placed pressure on some of its members to abandon their radical class politics, while simultaneously rejecting “overtness”, “flamboyance”, and gender-transgressive models of homosexuality (D’Emilio 1983, p. 79). This theme has continued to the modern-day, where many promote the idea that gay and lesbian people should aspire to standards of homonormativity. This involves rejecting gender transgressive forms of expression as deviant, and embracing a lifestyle that is normative and non-confrontational (Duggan 2003, p. 50). It would not be surprising to find echoes of these sentiments elsewhere.

Conclusion The aim of this chapter was to investigate how Russian homo- and bi-sexual men view themselves and others, and to understand their (un)willingness to engage in activism. Given that the interviews could only be conducted with a relatively small sample of men, one should be cautious about overgeneralising the results. However, these interviews do provide a glimpse into an under-examined segment of homosexual and bisexual Russian men, i.e. those who are not engaged in the activism which claims to act on their behalf. What these interviews reveal is the need for additional dialogue and education, not only between LGBT activists and the general population, but also within the wider LGBT population. While the men

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interviewed here may be outliers, they consistently reveal a particular problem in mobilising LGBT advocacy and activism in homophobic and illiberal conditions. This is that rather than aligning themselves with the wider LGBT population, these male homosexuals often identify with the heterosexual majority. In constructing their identities, these men drew upon the dominant discourses of hegemonic masculinity in Russia and rejected the subordinate markers of homosexual identities. Their resistance to what they perceived as “foreign homosexual influence” enabled them to project any homophobia they might have experienced in daily life away from themselves onto the “perverted gays out there”. It was through this process that they were able to draw upon the patriarchal dividend of society and live more secure and perhaps safer lives as gay men. In this framework, they reinforce the dominant narratives related to LGBT people in Russia, i.e. that those men and women who engage in LGBT activism, specifically gay parades, are somehow themselves responsible for their own situation. They rationalise that the legislation resisting the propaganda of non-traditional relationships to minors did not apply to them, because they were not “aggressive” and “confrontational gays”. It is not surprising then, that the way in which they have constructed their masculinity leads to their negative views of LGBT activism. Should they come out in favour of advocacy based upon sexual orientation, they would in essence have to renegotiate their own masculinity and in doing so, become associated with subordinated forms of masculinity in Russian society. However, the situation may not all be doom and gloom. In narrating their sexual orientation and coming out stories, the interviewees explained the ways in which they educated their friends and families about their own homo- or bi-sexuality. Although in doing so they reproduced the “normal” and “abnormal” binaries, they may also have broken down some preconceived notions that their friends and families might have held about homosexuals. It is perhaps through these person-to-person contacts, and with more homosexual people coming out and educating their friends and loved ones, that further change might occur.

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References Amendment 1604 to the Federal Law on Road Safety, On Lists of Medical Contraindications, Medical Indications, and Medical Restrictions to Driving a Vehicle., Pub. L. No. 231. (29/12/2014). http://static.government.ru/media/files/A5X9GSAYrpA.pdf. Accessed 23 Jan 2018. Bridges, T. (2014). A Very, “Gay” Straight? Hybrid Masculinities, Sexual Aesthetics, and the Changing Relationship Between Masculinity and Homophobia. Gender & Society, 28(1), 58–82. Bridges, T., & Pascoe, C. J. (2014). Hybrid Masculinities: New Directions in the Sociology of Men and Masculinities: Hybrid Masculinities. Sociology Compass, 8(3), 246–258. Buyantueva, R. (2018). LGBT Rights Activism and Homophobia in Russia. Journal of Homosexuality, 65(4), 456–483. Connell, R. (2005). Masculinities (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Polity Press. Connell, R. W., & Messerschmidt, J. W. (2005). Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept. Gender & Society, 19(6), 829–859. https://doi. org/10.1177/0891243205278639. D’Emilio, J. (1983). Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940–1970 (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Duggan, L. (2003). The Twilight of Equality? Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy. Boston: Beacon Press. Essig, L. (1999). Queer in Russia: A Story of Sex, Self, and the Other. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Gavrilyuk, T., Garabazhii, V., Gaisina, L., Gabdrakhmanova, L., & Burenina, I. (2016). The Dynamics of the Global Youth Subcultures and Movements: The Russian Context. Global Media Journal, 2(10), 9 p. http://www. globalmediajournal.com/open-access/the-dynamics-of-the-global-youthsubcultures-and-movements-therussian-context.pdf. Healey, D. (2018). Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Kiryukhina, Y. (2017, June 30). Russian TV Offers Gay People One-Way Tickets to Leave. BBC. http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-40456443. Accessed 22 Jan 2018. Kon, I. (2009). Homophobia as a Litmus Test of Russian Democracy. Sociological Research, 48, 43–61. Kondakov, A. (2011). Same-Sex Marriages Inside the Closet: Deconstruction of Subjects of Gay and Lesbian Discourses in Russia. Socio-Legal Series, 1(1), 37.

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Makarychev, A., & Medvedev, S. (2015). Biopolitics and Power in Putin’s Russia. Problems of Post-Communism, 62(1), 45–54. Mapp, S., & Gabel, S. G. (2017). Government Abuses of Human Rights. Journal of Human Rights and Social Work, 2(1), 1–2. Marchenkov, A. (2009). LGBT-Community Does Not Exist in Russia: Almost. Russian LGBT Network. http://piter.lgbtnet.ru/2009/03/09/pochti. Accessed 6 Oct 2018. Persson, E. (2015). Banning ‘Homosexual Propaganda’: Belonging and Visibility in Contemporary Russian Media. Sexuality and Culture, 19, 256–274. Riabov, O., & Riabova, T. (2014) The Decline of Gayropa? How Russia Intends to Save the World. Eurozine. https://www.eurozine.com/the-decline-of-gayropa/. Accessed 15 July 2018. Rivkin-Fish, M., & Hartblay, C. (2014). When Global LGBTQ Advocacy Became Entangled with New Cold War Sentiment: A Call for Examining Russian Queen Experience. Brown Journal of World Affairs, 21, 95–112. Sheddon, M. (2013). Burn Gay People Alive in Ovens. Buzzfeed. https://www. buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/burn-gay-people-alive-in-ovens-russian-scrubsstar-says?utm_term=.js3orvJL3#.ga6yV6bn1. Accessed 9 June 2018. Sleptcov, N. (2018). Political Homophobia as a State Strategy in Russia. Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective, 12(1), 140–161. Slootmaeckers, K. (2019). Nationalism as Competing Masculinities: Homophobia as a Technology of Othering for Hetero- and Homonationalism. Theory and Society, 48(2), 239–265. https://doi. org/10.1007/s11186-019-09346-4. Soboleva, I., & Bakhmetjev, Y. (2015). Political Awareness and Self-Blame in the Explanatory Narratives of LGBT People Amid the Anti-LGBT Campaign in Russia. Sexuality and Culture, 19(2), 275–296. Sperling, V. (2015). Sex, Politics, and Putin: Political Legitimacy in Russia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stella, F. (2015). Lesbian Lives in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia: Post/Socialism and Gendered Sexualities. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Stella, F., & Nartova, N. (2015). Sexual Citizenship, Nationalism, and Biopolitics in Putin’s Russia. In Sexuality, Citizenship and Belonging: TransNational and Intersectional Perspectives (pp. 24–42). London: Routledge. Tuller, D. (1997). Cracks in the Iron Closet: Travels in Gay & Lesbian Russia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Weaver, C. (2016). Biopoliittinen hallinta ja homoseksuaalisuus Pietarissa [Biopolitical Governance and Homosexuality in St. Petersburg]. Idäntutkimus [East Studies], 23(1), 16–31.

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Wiedlack, M. K. (2017). Gays vs. Russia: Media Representations, Vulnerable Bodies and the Construction of a (Post)Modern West. European Journal of English Studies, 21(3), 241–257. https://doi.org/10.1080/13825577.2017.1 369271. Wilkinson, C. (2014). “Traditional Values” into Practice: The Rise and Contestation of Anti-Homopropaganda Laws in Russia. Journal of Human Rights, 13, 363–379. Wood, K. M. (1999). Coherent Identities Amid Heterosexist Ideologies: Deaf and Hearing Lesbian Coming-Out Stories. In M. Bucholtz, A. C. Liang, & L. A. Sutton (Eds.), Reinventing Identities: The Gendered Self in Discourse (pp. 46–63). New York: Oxford University Press.

Part II Outlawing Rainbows: LGBTQ+ Rights, Activism and the Role of State in Central and Eastern Europe

Introduction Radzhana Buyantueva Maryna Shevtsova This part of the volume presents insightful case studies analyzing the impact of state policies on the development of LGBTQ+ activism in the CEE region. The authors focus on the analysis of legislative changes and narratives of political elite’s and the media to get a better understanding of the impact on and implications for LGBT+ activism in Central and Eastern Europe. The chapters below discuss domestic political and public responses to international (Western) influence and their effect on LGBTQ+ communities and movements. As the case of Estonia will show, international influence might bring positive policy changes (i.e., legal recognition of same-sex partnerships). Such positive changes, as Kadri Aavik claims, might provide with a great opportunity to claim further LGBTQ+ rights. At the same time, the influence of Western actors might not be as advantageous in other countries. As the cases of Romania and Ukraine

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will reveal here, it might lead to political and public backlash and homophobia and hinder the development of LGBTQ+ movements. These cases serve as a good illustration of the processes taking place across the region. For example, in Hungary, gender studies have been recently banned as a discipline (Kent and Tapfumaneyi 2018). In turn, in Poland, anti-gender movement is widely supported by nationalist right-wing groups. In all these cases, the political narrative presents LGBT rights as a foreign, immoral, and dangerous interference of external actors aimed at destroying local culture and traditions, or even the nation. The 2018 referendum in Romania when citizens voted on constitutional changes that would make marriage to be defined as only between a man and a woman serves as another example of political attempts to institutionalize homophobia. While the turnout was barely higher than 20% for the referendum to be valid (Buyantueva 2018), the potential of counter-movements and the risks they present for only recently emerged LGBTQ+ movements in the region cannot be underestimated. At the same time, as the case of Russia suggests, certain narratives and symbols (i.e., the image of Putin as a gay clown) might be appropriated by both LGBTQ+ activists and homophobic actors. It presents a curious development for political elites, opposition, and the media as well as for the dynamics of LGBTQ+ activists.

References Buyantueva, R. (2018). Romania’s referendum proves LGBT rights are far from protected, The Globe Post, October 14. Available at: https://theglobepost. com/2018/10/14/romania-referendum-lgbt/. Kent, L. & Tapfumaneyi, S. (2018). Hungary’s PM bans gender study at colleges saying ‘people are born either male or female’, CNN, October 19. Available at: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/19/europe/hungary-bans-gender-studyat-colleges-trnd/index.html.

6 Negotiating Uncertainty: Sexual Citizenship and State Recognition of Same-Sex Partnerships in Estonia Kadri Aavik

Introduction Legal recognition of same-sex partnerships constitutes an important signifier of LGBTQ+ rights and the status of LGBTQ+ people in the society. Pursuing this right has been a key issue for the LGBTQ+ community in many countries. Marriage equality is closely linked to the notion as well as practices of citizenship. In this chapter, I explore meanings that LGBTQ+ people attribute to state recognition of same-sex partnerships in Estonia, where this acknowledgement remains ambiguous legally and symbolically. While same-sex couples do not have the right to marry, same-sex partnerships can be legally recognized under the Registered Partnership Act (RPA) since January 2016. Yet, this does not function in practice due to the lack of implementation acts, as ruling political parties disagree ideologically on the

K. Aavik (*)  Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 R. Buyantueva and M. Shevtsova (eds.), LGBTQ+ Activism in Central and Eastern Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20401-3_6

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question of marriage and partnership equality. The ramifications of this on LGBTQ+ lives, in both practical and symbolic terms, are profound. Uncertainty around the RPA as well as about LGBTQ+ rights more broadly has intensified at the time of revising this chapter (May 2019), as Estonia’s newly elected government includes a far-right party for the first time in the country’s history. Prominent in the political rhetoric of the Conservative People’s Party of Estonia are heteronormative definitions of families and intimate relationships as well as an openly anti-LGBTQ+ agenda. The presence of far-right political forces in the government poses a real threat to the already precarious legal status of same-sex partnerships in Estonia and is bound to make Estonia’s LGBTQ+ population even more vulnerable. In this chapter, I focus on the following questions: What meanings do LGBTQ+ people in Estonia, as members of a group whose ‘status as citizens is […] precarious’ (Kabeer 2005, p. 1), attribute to the legal recognition of same-sex partnerships? How do they negotiate the ambiguity regarding partnership equality? How do they construct their relationship to the state through this issue? This analysis makes use of the concept of sexual citizenship (Evans 1993; Weeks 1998; Richardson 2000a, b, 2015; Lambevski 2009; Lister 2002; Bell and Binnie 2000). The right to get married has been identified as one of the ‘key articulations of sexual citizenship rights’ (Bell and Binnie 2000, p. 3), as it ‘represents a public and state-sanctioned avowal of the couple’s relationship and commitment’ (ibid., p. 54). Estonia constitutes an interesting case to study state recognition of same-sex relationships and LGBTQ+ rights more broadly. Since gaining re-independence in 1991, the country has made considerable progress in social and economic development. Estonia is a member of the EU since 2004 and of the OECD since 2010. It holds 22nd place in the OECD Better Life Index 2017. Today, the country takes pride in and presents itself on the international arena as a leader in digital innovation, branding itself as a digital society: e-Estonia.1 It has implemented some of the most comprehensive and sophisticated digital public 1See

e-estonia.com.

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services in the world, which enable citizens to conduct the vast majority of transactions with the state digitally, including voting. Further, Estonia has introduced and is implementing the idea of digital citizenship or e-Residency. Branded as ‘a new digital nation for global citizens’, this notion of citizenship reaches beyond the country’s physical borders (https://e-resident.gov.ee). This is presented as an innovative and inclusive form of citizenship. Estonia is keen to portray itself as a pioneer in advancing economic and personal freedoms. What it means to be a citizen in this country is thus being transformed and re-imagined through these novel ideas and practices that promise to transcend borders between the public and private spheres. In this context, a new ‘ideal citizen’ emerges—a presumably universal figure, who at a closer look, however, remains very particular and thereby exclusive. It aligns best with the identities, values and practices of intersectionally privileged groups (Aavik 2015), such as tech-savvy CISgendered heterosexual native Estonian men, who embrace neoliberal values and private entrepreneurship, while communicating effortlessly and efficiently with the E-State, which serves their interests and needs. Yet, as a notable contrast to these innovations, in some other areas of life, particularly in enhancing gender, ethnic and other forms of equality, as well as LGBTQ+ rights, progress has been much slower, with predominant lack of political will to deal with these issues. Estonia is among the EU Member States with high (and increasing) income inequalities, holding 7th place (Eurostat 2015). The country is ranked below EU average in the EU Gender Equality Index (European Institute for Gender Equality 2015), with the largest gender pay gap in the EU (25.3%) (Eurostat 2016). Nearly 6% of Estonia’s population— Russian-speaking migrants from the Soviet era and their descendants— remain stateless.2 In terms of LGBTQ+ rights, Estonia occupies the 19th place among 27 EU countries (ILGA-Europe 2017) and holds the third-last place among OECD countries in the OECD’s homophobia index (Valfort 2017). In the context of the country’s rapid technological and economic progress in the last decades and the emergence of what 2For

further information on this, see Vetik (2011).

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are presented as new inclusive and progressive forms of citizenship, it is useful to explore, based on the narratives of LGBTQ+ people, ways in which marginalized groups experience and articulate citizenship. Understanding the experiences of those whose identities and practices challenge traditional notions of citizenship helps to identify ways in which citizenship has remained exclusive. This knowledge can be a basis for envisioning more inclusive forms of citizenship. This chapter begins with a brief overview of the status of LGBTQ+ people in Estonia, their legal situation and the rise of LGBTQ+ activism. I then introduce the research design. This is followed by the presentation of main findings: the meanings that LGBTQ+ people in Estonia attribute to marriage equality and the RPA, exemplified by narratives of three research participants. I end with conclusions that illuminate how LGBTQ+ people’s articulations of current and desired citizenship challenge Estonia’s image of itself as a progressive state.

LGBTQ+ Rights and Legal Recognition of Same-Sex Partnerships in Estonia At first glance, Estonia stands out among all the post-socialist Central Eastern European and ex-Soviet countries, as one of the most progressive in terms of LGBTQ+ rights and well-being in the society. Compared to most Western countries and ‘old’ EU Member States, however, LGBTQ+ rights are much less advanced. Gender and sexuality are policed in various explicit and implicit ways that continue to marginalize LGBTQ+ people on a daily basis. This will be explored in this chapter in relation to the RPA. In the Soviet period, homosexual relations (between men) were illegal in Estonia. Homosexuality was only decriminalized in 1992. The Equal Treatment Act, passed in 2008, protects people against discrimination on various grounds, including sexual orientation. Despite these legal and institutional reforms, the adoption of more egalitarian attitudes in individual practices regarding gender

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(Pajumets 2012), as well as LGBTQ+ issues, has been slow in Estonia. Today, large segments of the population still hold prejudices against LGBTQ+ people; however, there are gradual shifts toward greater acceptance. In 2017, 52% of the Estonian population regarded homosexuality unacceptable (compared to 59% in 2014) (Inimõiguste Keskus 2017). The LGBT movement in Estonia began to emerge in the early 1990s, first with informal gatherings, followed by the founding of LGBT organizations. LGBT issues gained broader visibility in the society in the 2000s when political claims around legal rights, such as the recognition of same-sex partnerships began to be made. In 2004, Estonia’s capital Tallinn hosted its first pride parade. The largest and thus far most active and visible LGBT organization in Estonia—the Estonian LGBT Association—was founded in 2008. It continues to lobby for legal rights, raise awareness and provide support for members of the LGBTQ+ community. In recent years, one of the key struggles for Estonia’s LGBTQ+ community has been legal recognition of same-sex partnerships. After years of lobbying, in 2014, the Estonian parliament (narrowly) passed the RPA, which entered into force in 2016. The RPA is gender-neutral, enabling two adults to officially register their partnership. This constitutes the only opportunity for same-sex couples to legalize their partnership, as marriage continues to be defined as a union between a man and a woman in Estonian legislation.3 However, for the RPA to function in practice, a series of implementation acts are required. By January 2019, these still have not been passed, due to lack of political will by the government. This inaction has left same-sex couples in a state of limbo, facing uncertainty regarding state recognition of their relationships. For example, it remains legally unspecified how same-sex partnerships are added to the population

3Following

a court ruling from December 2016, the Estonian state now recognizes same-sex marriages performed abroad. At the time of writing, in at least one case, a living permit has been issued to a male foreign spouse of a male Estonian citizen.

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registry or whether one partner has parental rights over the other’s children.4 This ambiguity has implications for how LGBTQ+ people experience and practice citizenship.

LGBTQ+ Citizenship: The Concept of Sexual Citizenship Citizenship, as an idea and lived experience, concerns multiple domains: the ‘citizen’ is a legal, political as well as a sociological category (Bell and Binnie 2000, p. 11). Contemporary theories of citizenship typically build on the work of T. H. Marshall (1950), who outlined three key dimensions of citizenship: civil (civil rights such as free speech), political (right to participate in politics) and social (social benefits and income security). Since then, the concept has been significantly advanced, with these existing domains of citizenship broadened and additional ones added. Traditionally, citizenship has been tied to membership of and belonging to nation states; however, processes of globalization and transnationalization are challenging these boundaries. Particularly relevant to the discussion here are contemporary f­eminist and poststructuralist perspectives to citizenship, highlighting ‘the terms and conditions of being a citizen, which place stress on questions of difference’ (Bell and Binnie 2000, p. 7). In this work, citizenship ­figures as a broader notion, encompassing ‘cultural, ethnic, gendered, and s­exual facets’ (Hekma 2004, p. 1). Feminist perspectives on citizenship have explored how ‘citizens have been defined in classical liberal theory as adult males operating in a free market’, as abstract entities, ‘without ­sexuality or body’ (Hekma 2004, p. 1). Just as the concept of citizenship has historically been based on implicit understandings of gender, race and class, it also includes

4With no political action from the parliament to progress with passing the implementation acts of the RPA, several same-sex couples have turned to courts to have their rights as legal partners recognized. There have been some favourable decisions made by courts toward same-sex couples in practical matters such as recognizing both partners as legal parents of their children.

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normative assumptions on sexuality (Richardson 2015). Claims to citizenship in the West are based on heterosexual privilege (Richardson 1998, p. 88). The notion of sexual citizenship explicitly links conceptualizations of sexuality with citizenship (Evans 1993; Weeks 1998; Richardson 2000a, b, 2015; Lambevski 2009; Lister 2002; Bell and Binnie 2000). The concept has been approached in somewhat different ways, but overall, the aim is to understand how the idea of citizenship relates to sexuality and how rights are given to or withdrawn from certain social groups stemming from their sexual identities (Richardson 2015). The idea of sexual citizenship draws on the concept of intimate citizenship (Plummer 2003; Oleksy 2009) that points to ways in which people’s everyday practices and decisions in the private sphere are intertwined with public institutions and state policies (Oleksy 2009, p. 4). Traditional notions of citizenship that draw a rigid line between the private and public spheres fail to adequately address LGBTQ+ lives and experiences. This is because this idea of citizenship focuses on people’s rights and belonging in the latter realm, yet containing implicit ­heteronormative assumptions about the former. The concept of intimate citizenship redefines traditional understandings of citizenship, as it introduces experiences from the ‘private’ sphere (Oleksy 2009, p. 5) and thereby ‘defies and disrupts the public-private divide, which has traditionally underpinned citizenship’ (Lister 2002, p. 191). Sexual citizenship addresses contemporary debates around people’s rights to decide on their lives, bodies, identities and emotions— dimensions of our lives, which have traditionally been divorced from the idea of citizenship. It ‘brings in erotic and embodied dimensions excluded in many discussions of citizenship’ (Bell and Binnie 2000, p. 20). Sexual rights are a set of rights which contains claims related to behavior, identity and relationships (Richardson 2000a, p. 128). Central to sexual citizenship are the ‘rights of free expression, bodily autonomy [and] institutional inclusion’ (Hekma 2004, p. 1). For example, sexual rights can include the right to form non-heteronormative (sexual) relationships (including the right to marry someone of the same sex) and the right to have the state and state institutions recognize these relationships; women’s sexual autonomy and reproductive rights; the right for

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self-representation and identity in the public sphere, based on sexual orientation (Richardson 2000a, p. 128). Institutional inclusion is a key element of sexual citizenship. Institutional inequality prevents LGBTQ+ people from receiving full recognition as citizens (Hekma 2004, p. 3). In understanding sexual citizenship, we need to recognize both how LGBTQ+ people stand out as non-normative citizens but also consider who and how are constructed as ‘ideal citizens’. Thus far, the public sphere—including institutions and politics—have remained ‘the privileged domain of male heterosexuality’ (Hekma 2004, p. 1). Gender is an integral element of sexual citizenship. In the context of LGBTQ+ lives, matters such as sex reassignment surgery and the right or possibility to reject the existing gender/sex binary are relevant. Those who in their gender and/or sexual identities and practices deviate from the heteronormative framework are often faced with ‘various kinds of violence and lead to the denial of basic rights’ (Hekma 2004, p. 2). Understanding sexual rights as an important component of civil rights serves the aim of achieving state recognition of non-heteronormative identities and practices, which could also be termed as the democratization of relationships (Lambevski 2009, p. 2). The idea of citizenship based on the category of sexuality blurs the public and private binary, demonstrating how sexuality and sexual relationships never only belong to the private sphere. However, rights are still claimed in the public sphere and through public space. This means that those whose access to public space is ­limited are at a distinct disadvantage. The sanctions can be either formal (i.e. criminalization of homosexual relationships) or informal (i.e. stigmatization) when identifying oneself as gay or lesbian in public. Hence, being out of the closet and visible in the public space is a crucial prerequisite for claiming and negotiating rights (Richardson 2000a, p. 120). Yet, not all social contexts are conducive to coming out as the prerequisite of claiming rights. Given the high rates of homophobia in Estonia, it is challenging for LGBTQ+ people to claim legal rights in the public arena. In determining the inclusivity of citizenship, it is useful to consider what citizenship looks like from the perspective of those whose lives and

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practices do not correspond to the implicit and/or explicit requirements for full citizenship. The Estonian case is interesting; it illuminates how LGBTQ+ rights are negotiated in a highly secular country that sees itself as progressive and innovative, having embraced some novel forms of citizenship.

Research Design This chapter is based on empirical material collected for the study ‘The daily wellbeing and coping strategies of LGBTQ people in the Estonian society’ (Aavik et al. 2016), commissioned by the Gender Equality and Equal Treatment Commissioner of the Republic of Estonia. While the study covered the experiences of LGBTQ+ people in various spheres of life, this chapter focuses on state recognition of same-sex partnerships. The analysis draws on 28 in-depth semi-structured interviews with LGBTQ+ individuals, conducted by the research team of the aforementioned study. The sample reflects diversity within the LGBTQ+ community in terms of ethnicity, gender, age, educational background and geographical location. The sample included four people who are activists on LGBTQ+ issues (in the areas of legal rights and psychological support services). Most interviewees lived in Tallinn or other larger cities of Estonia, were predominantly in their 30s and 40s and had obtained higher education. All had disclosed their sexual orientation or transgender identity to at least some family members or to (close) friends and had support networks. Several were in some way or another linked to LGBTQ+ activism. This particular positioning suggests that they might be coping better than those who have remained in the closet. Perhaps indicative of this relative privilege of the research participants is the fact that they highlighted the lack of legal recognition of same-sex partnerships as one of the most important problems that LGBTQ+ people in Estonia face. A narrative approach was used in data collection and analysis (Lawler 2002). In this analysis, I also include accounts that do not necessarily follow a classical narrative format. These narratives— sometimes known as ‘small stories’ (Georgakopoulou 2006) are ‘a gamut

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of under-represented and ‘a-typical’ narrative activities, such as tellings of ongoing events, future or hypothetical events, shared (known) events, but also allusions to tellings, deferrals of tellings, and refusals to tell’ (Georgakopoulou 2006, p. 130).

Findings The meanings that research participants attributed to marriage equality and the RPA more specifically will be exemplified by the experiences of three interviewees. These three narratives illustrate predominant meanings given to these issues by the LGBTQ+ people in this study. Each story highlights specific aspects and challenges related to legal regulation of same-sex relationships and its broader implications. Pseudonyms are used to refer to the research participants.

Marika: Symbolic Meanings of Partnership Equality, Belonging and Politics of Visibility Marika identifies as a lesbian woman between 35 and 40 years of age and resides in Tallinn. She lives with her partner who also identifies as a woman. They have no children. Marika describes her own experience of gradually discovering her lesbian identity and coming out to family and friends as relatively easy. She deems her personal well-being as a lesbian in Estonia as fairly good, attributing this partly to her appearance, which she describes as not corresponding to stereotypes that people attribute to lesbians. This signifies her relatively privileged social position, making it easier for her to claim rights based on the category of sexuality/sexual orientation in the public sphere. Like a few other research participants, Marika is active in the Estonian LGBTQ + movement. Partly stemming from this role, when speaking of marriage equality and RPA, Marika frames her narrative not only through her own experience, but also based on her broader understanding, acquired through her activist work, of what this issue

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means for Estonia’s LGBTQ+ community. Her strong sense of the community is also reflected in her frequent use of the pronouns ‘we’ and ‘us’ when referring to LGBTQ+ people in Estonia. In explaining why she deems registered partnerships currently the most important issue for Estonia’s LGBTQ+ community, Marika links the personal to the political: The RPA is the most important [issue for Estonia’s LGBTQ+ people] right now […]. The RPA allows me to visit my partner in hospital and other such things. Even if we do not register our partnership, the Act still gives a signal that I potentially could go to the hospital to visit my same-sex partner, that I have the same rights as other people. Currently, it depends on the doctor whether they permit that or not, as some doctors I’ve met have said. Most doctors are sympathetic and will allow it, but if the family is against it, then doctors can do nothing. And that’s it. You are no one. So, if something happens, that means that I cannot decide or think or do anything.

The described (hypothetical) situation, blurring the boundaries of the public and private realms, is a practical example of how heteronormative notions of citizenship fail to relate to the realities of LGBTQ+ lives. Here, Marika challenges the heteronormative idea of the family that ‘draws on sexualized constructions of appropriate (and inappropriate) modes of living together and caring for one another’ (Bell and Binnie 2000, p. 10). With this example, she highlights how, due to lack of marriage equality, LGBTQ+ citizens are prevented from sustaining acts and relationships of care with their intimate partners—an aspect of citizenship that heterosexual people take for granted. Beyond these very real, practical implications that Marika describes, she stresses the symbolic meanings as well as the broader significance of the RPA that were deemed by research participants just as important as the direct function of the Act. With the RPA, the state is seen as sending a broader message to the LGBTQ+ community regarding their status and significance as citizens:

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The state has a lot of power. They should express much more strongly that we are important and that this topic matters. I feel that the state should provide more such support. It’s great that our president5 signed the RPA so quickly, but he should engage with the issue more explicitly. In his annual speech [at Estonia’s Independence Day] there was only one sentence where I thought that maybe this applies to me. I always listen to those speeches, trying to see if there is something there. But it all sounds so general, like “we should have more diversity”. Just say out loud what kind of diversity you mean – ethnic, religious and then add LGBT people there too. I want to hear that word, not all this general talk where I can only guess if it applies to me. I don’t care about that talk any more, I want something more.

The state is seen to play a key role in helping to normalize social attitudes around LGBTQ+ lives as well as foster feelings of belonging and a sense of security in the community. More explicit and forceful statements by political leaders were deemed an important part of this process of normalization. By allowing or disallowing certain practices and social relations, an important function of the state in this context is to promote social change: It might be that it is more difficult to foster change from above and there must also be change from below, but I can currently see a lot being done on the grassroots level. But from above, we get the message that it’s great you are doing things but we don’t really want to take a stand. At some point, they must take a position on this. So just do it. In that sense, I am proud of the Social Democrats as they have supported us as well and there are supportive people in the Reform Party. It’s great to see politicians who are willing to fight for such topics and to tell us that we matter.

In this excerpt, Marika condemns the current legal ambiguity related to the RPA, particularly stemming from some political parties. The image of Estonia as a ‘slow state’ projected here regarding legally recognizing same-sex partnerships contradicts its self-image and its 5The interviews were conducted during the presidency of Toomas-Hendrik Ilves, in office until 2016.

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activities in many other spheres of life, where the state is active and quick to foster change—for example with its advances in digital literacy and digital citizenship as well as presenting itself as a state with minimal bureaucracy. Despite the problems related to the current status of the RPA that she highlights, Marika appreciates the public discussion that the RPA has generated in the society, having put LGBTQ+ issues on the national agenda and increased the visibility of LGBTQ+ citizens: People have become more aware of us. Thanks to the RPA, we have become more visible. Earlier people just thought that LGBTQ+ people exist somewhere and let them just be, but now they know that we are everywhere.

Marika believes that it is this increased visibility that has made it possible for the community to claim social acceptance and legal rights, a view that likely stems from her position as an activist. While several other research participants also highlighted the importance of being present in the public sphere, they did not explicitly associate this visibility as stemming from the discussions around RPA. The next section takes us from symbolic rights, belonging and the politics of visibility to more embodied dimensions of sexual citizenship.

Justice: Transgender Identities and Bodies Justice is a transgender woman between 50 and 55 years of age. While raised as a boy in Soviet Estonia, she recognized her ‘difference’ at an early age, without knowing to associate her experience with a transgender identity. She started identifying as a woman around the age of 40. At the time of the interview, Justice was about to start hormone replacement therapy for gender reassignment. She has been married for nearly 30 years to a partner identifying as a woman. The couple has an adult child. When asked, at the beginning of the interview, to evaluate her personal situation as a transgender person in Estonia as well as the general well-being of the LGBTQ+ community, Justice states:

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Perhaps my experience is not very typical, but I have not had negative experiences. Many have had, as I have heard talking to other people. Attitudes here are less negative than in America, although there, LGBT people have more protection from the state […]. When I go shopping, or to my workplace, where they know who I am, I have not had problems anywhere, I mean in the attitudes towards me […]. Well, when I go shopping then maybe sometimes people look at me somewhat quizzically or something like that…I think this has been when I’ve applied too much make-up. But lately I really haven’t noticed anyone staring at me in the shops. So, I don’t actually have any negative experiences. Nobody has said anything negative to me, despite the looks that I sometimes get […] and when I talk to someone in a shopping mall, nobody appears to perceive that I am a woman who is a little different. So, everything is very positive for me.

Claiming to do well personally, but citing experiences of acquaintances or referring to stories they have heard of others who have problems as LGBTQ+ people represents a typical reply to the question. Yet, as Justice’s narrative exemplifies, even those who initially evaluated their overall well-being as generally good as LGBTQ+ people, later on highlighted some difficulties when speaking of particular experiences and spheres of life. As Justice describes these micro-interactions, she largely contains her story to the personal realm, downplaying their political dimensions. In identifying her choice of make-up, Justice assumed personal responsibility for how she is seen and treated. This aligns with the prevalent neoliberal discourse of valorizing personal responsibility and individuallevel solutions in contemporary Estonia. Indeed, it is only in passing that she acknowledged the lack of legal protection for LGBTQ+ people in Estonia. This individualistic understanding of discrimination limits as to what can and should be expected from the state. It can also shape people’s perception of what precisely constitutes discrimination. In the excerpt above, Justice suggests that negative experiences for her as a transgender person are primarily those occurring in face-to-face interactions in the public sphere—such as very concrete verbal or physical personal confrontations. Admittedly, these are more easily recognizable than the

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subtler structural inequalities or institutional discrimination that she overtly dismisses here. However, they do figure more implicitly as well as explicitly throughout other parts of her narrative. Passing as the ‘correct’ representative of her desired gender is important for Justice and is for her one of the reasons why she is about to undergo hormonal treatment: I decided that I will first do these things [laser depilation], so that now when I go out, I look much more normal in the eyes of the society. I have thought about why I do this, I think it’s because I don’t want to shame the male sex and the female sex. I don’t want to be somewhere in between.

Her wish to remain unambiguous in terms of her gender in the eyes of others reflects societal assumptions about the binary categories of sex and gender, reflected in bodies. Engaging in technologies of the self (Foucault 1988), including body work,6 is a common strategy used by sexual and gender minorities to pass and to cope in societies that recognize gender as a binary. Justice’s rather rigid understanding of gender and sex here is also likely to be at least in part characteristic of her generation. Yet, throughout her narrative, Justice seems to adopt somewhat different positions regarding the fluidity of the categories of gender and sex—in other contexts being more open to understanding these categories as more fluid. As Justice is about to undergo gender reassignment, this ‘personal matter’ becomes a more political issue, as the gender boundary is intensely policed by the state: This autumn I will go to the transgender committee. I already went last year, and after a year, I will have the right to change my name and my sex. Well, I am technically allowed to change my name earlier, but if I am not able to change my sex marker by that time, then the name registry won’t allow me to choose any name. I mean, if I want to be named Sandra, then they won’t allow that because officially my sex is still “male”. Our legislation won’t allow a man to be called Sandra. 6see

Gimlin (2007) for a discussion of the concept of ‘body work’.

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This description of her ‘official’ transition illustrates how citizenship is clearly gendered and sexed (‘male’ and ‘female’ names). Indeed, Justice highlights just how the body is tacitly assumed in one’s citizenship. Her narrative demonstrates the efforts that transgender people have to go through in this context. The ‘transgender committee’ that Justice refers to, is the Estonian medical committee that decides who can and who cannot change their sex gender through hormone therapy or undergo surgical treatment in this country. Transgender interviewees deemed the dealings with this committee to be an extremely lengthy and bureaucratic process as there is only one such committee for the whole country. They lamented how there seemed to be a lack of sensitivity from the medical professionals as well as other cis-gender people more generally when it came to understanding the impact these hearings and delays had on their mental health and physical well-being. This is an apt illustration of how hegemonic institutional discourses on gender, sex and sexuality, here employed by the state, attempt to regulate certain identities and bodies and prescribe ‘proper’ modes of being a citizen. It is in the process of her transition where a problem arises for Justice and this links to marriage equality, or rather, the lack of it in Estonia: As I am about to change my name and my sex marker, I don’t know what is going to happen legally. We have been married for 30 years and then we won’t any more be married in the eyes of the law […]. We will be in some legal trap […]. Even if the RPA is passed, then it is unacceptable that I have to terminate my marriage and enter into this gender-­ neutral cohabitation, to make some kind of contract or whatever. This is absurd. This is a totally hopeless situation here in Estonia now. Even this ­gender-neutral cohabitation law is wrong for me, from the beginning, just because how it has been conceptualized […]. Now they have to start passing all kinds of acts to link it to all other laws, all laws in this country. Instead of just allowing marriage equality, just to say that everyone can marry, instead of what is said there now that only a man and a woman may marry […]. It would be extremely easy to just rewrite this law in a few sentences. And nothing will change. Everyone will be equal […].

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In the excerpt above, Justice reveals the convolutions and absurdities inherent in her legal entrapment. She demands recognition by the state to her gender identity and her relationship—which has not changed in her own eyes, but in the state’s. When she is legally recognized as a woman, her marriage is rendered invalid. In her case, the RPA has no impact on her particular situation. Justice provides an account of her marriage and gender identity that do not match with the state’s definition of these: Justice: [It] has not been a traditional marriage from the beginning, because clearly, I have always been a woman, from birth, so that means that factually, I have had a lesbian marriage all along. Despite how others have seen it. So anyway, it has been wrong in the eyes of the state all the time. And it could be fixed by just changing one sentence […]. Interviewer: So, does this mean that your wife will become someone who is in a lesbian relationship? Justice: Yes, but she is not lesbian […]. This is not our problem, it’s the state’s problem […]. For us, our relationship has always been OUR relationship, despite what bodies are involved here or what we do in bed. So yes, she will become a lesbian spouse, but what can we do.

Justice’s narrative demonstrates how despite more fluid ideas around gender and sexuality expressed and practised in the private sphere, the state is enforcing its own rigid heteronormative ideas and definitions about gender and sexuality which forcefully shape people’s private lives. Justice’s gender reassignment politicizes her relationship. It no longer fits with traditional heteronormative notions of citizenship. The bodily transformation that she is undergoing renders her longtime partnership inappropriate and illegitimate (Bell and Binnie 2000, p. 10). Justice disagrees with this (re)definition of her relationship by the state. The third narrative addresses same-sex parenting, migration and puts forward visions of future regarding LGBTQ+ citizenship.

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Martin: Parenting, Ageing, Migrating and Visions of Future Martin identifies as a gay man and is between the ages of 20 and 25. He is a student who works full time. Beyond this, he also does volunteer work for different NGOs, including in LGBTQ+ advocacy. He grew up in a small Estonian town, but lives in the capital, Tallinn. Martin is among those research participants who entertained the idea of potentially becoming a parent in the future. He told stories related to planning, having and raising children. Like a number of other research participants who wished to become parents, Martin linked parenting to state recognition of same-sex partnerships. Like them, Martin found this to be too complicated given current circumstances where same-sex couples do not enjoy the same parental rights as heterosexual couples. He referred to creative solutions sought by gay men in the realm of parenting, such as having children and co-parenting with a lesbian couple: I know many gay couples who have had a child or children with a lesbian couple […]. This is becoming more and more common. So, sorry dear lawmakers, but the law is anyway outdated. We have already moved on from the law with our real lives […]. I also know of cases where two couples share a house and raise their child. I also know couples who take turns to be with their child. I myself am a step-dad to one child [laughs]. Well, I think that the best option is to have a house where everyone lives together. Of course, I mean a separate living arrangement, in a way that one couple has one floor and the other has the other, or two detached houses, or whatever solution.

The excerpt above illustrates how legal circumstances based on heteronormative ideas about who should be parents shape parenting practices of same-sex couples. Unconventional forms of families are formed partly as a way to manage the legal situation where the state does not recognize both parties of a same-sex couple as parents, and this places their children in a vulnerable position. In the case of this parenting arrangement, everything is ‘correct’ in the eyes of the law: the child has one mother and one father. Yet, the

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involvement of the partners of both parents makes the situation much more complicated in practice. Martin distinguishes between LGBTQ+ people’s ‘real lives’ and what the state thinks their lives are like or should be. He saw the latter as outdated and out of touch with lived experience. This excerpt also suggests the great lengths that same-sex couples are going to. As such, this was aptly named ‘the baby project’ by another research participant. The state’s refusal to move on with implementing the RPA, based on implicit assumptions about appropriate families and partnerships, inadvertently encourages these kinds of unconventional family models. Interviewees agreed that the current situation considerably decreases the sense of security of people who would like to raise children in samesex partnerships. As a consequence of the Estonian state not recognizing same-sex partnerships and family planning efforts of LGBTQ+ people, several research participants considered leaving Estonia, as expressed here by Martin: If the legislation is not passed, then I will be one of those people who will be leaving Estonia because of the legal situation […]. I too have the right to a fulfilling life. So, there you go. Make those laws or don’t. Surely there will be others who will go. And they have already gone. It’s unfortunate that there are those who would like to come here, but cannot, because of the law.

Leaving—or deciding not to return—reflects the general feeling of insecurity felt by many in the LGBTQ+ community due to the uncertainty surrounding the RPA. These frustrations with the state are particularly common for young, educated and capable people (‘talents’) who speak of leaving Estonia in search of better working and living conditions in Western countries. This nationalist ‘exodus’ narrative in the media can reach hysterical proportions; there is a moral panic that this is an existential threat to the country.7 However, in such public 7Since

re-independence in 1991, emigration rates have exceeded immigration rates, with 2015 and 2016 being the first years with overall positive net migration (Statistics Estonia 2017). This has contributed to a slight overall population growth, which has been steadily declining due to low birth rates (Statistics Estonia 2017, https://www.stat.ee/pressiteade-2017-008).

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narratives, LGBTQ+ people are almost never considered. Martin suggests that these discourses should include LGBTQ+ people as valuable citizens whose potential emigration we should worry about. It is the state’s unfair treatment of LGBTQ+ citizens that excludes valuable citizens and their children from the national community, as exemplified by Martin here: I have a relative in France. He has been living there for twenty years, he is over forty. He has not been residing in Estonia for twenty years and lives in France with his husband and their children. But they cannot come to Estonia, because of their children […]. Because according to current Estonian laws their children would not be legally recognized. They could more or less take their children away. So, they happily live their lives abroad. He has got property in Estonia, he visits Estonia but never with his children. When we get together, he tells me that he would someday like to return to Estonia but does not know if the law enables him to do so.8

These excerpts addressing migration speak of new dimensions of sexual citizenship in the global context, extending beyond the nation state. Practising ‘transnational global citizenship’ (Bell and Binnie 2000, p. 108) involves accessing and inhabiting transnational spaces and communities, a privilege available to some segments of Estonia’s LGBTQ+ community who are able to choose a place of residence. Martin’s stories on children, parenting and ageing in the LGBTQ+ context have a strong future orientation: The RPA is the most important issue currently. The 1990s were passed partying, everyone was like “it’s great to party with you” [the LGBTQ+ people], from one disco to another. And then when people got a bit older, then they discovered “wait a minute, you have families too? Like really? You have children? Like you want to have children? And you want to register your partnership?” Well, we are already thinking of establishing

8At the time of interviewing, Estonia did not legally recognize same-sex marriages and partnerships registered abroad.

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our own retirement home. Some have already thought about this, those that are in their fifties and sixties. They are thinking of having their own old people’s home, because it’s really brutal when you have to go back in the closet in the retirement home. So, it would be like buying a big house or something and this would be the LGBT retirement home. You can live there if you don’t need 24/7 medical care. So yes, we are already talking about having a retirement home, we are much further with this.

As Martin points out here, despite the legislative stagnation, LGBTQ+ people are getting on with their lives: finding love, having babies, forging a career, building communities and planning their retirement. Even further, Martin suggests that in their personal practices and visions, LGBTQ+ people are building and implementing progressive visions of future citizenship. Here, sexual citizenship entails the right to a dignified retirement that includes having one’s sexual identity recognized, that is, accepted by public institutions, as well as more broadly. Besides his critique of the state’s practices regarding current regulation of the same-sex partnership, he sees the state as lacking understanding, as well as a basic imagination about the lives of those in the LGBTQ+ community.

Conclusions This chapter has focused on the meanings that members of the LGBTQ+ community in Estonia attribute to state recognition of samesex partnerships, in a context where marriages between same-sex couples are not allowed and the status of registered partnerships remains legally and practically unclear. Understanding how the ambiguity around legal regulation of same-sex partnerships affects LGBTQ+ lives and excludes them from full citizenship helps to imagine more inclusive forms of citizenship. Drawing on the notion of sexual citizenship, my starting point was the suggestion that citizenship has traditionally been an exclusive concept, which does not always accommodate LGBTQ+ lives and experiences. While traditional ways of being a citizen are re-imagined in

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Estonia, for example, through the emergence of novel practices, such as digital citizenship, this has not transformed citizenship in Estonia into a more inclusive category, at least not for all. The notion of the ‘ideal citizen’ has remained largely within the domain of the intersectionally privileged (Aavik 2015). On the backdrop of this, it is useful to study ways in which non-normative gender and sexual identities operate as a basis of exclusion from full citizenship. I examined how LGBTQ+ people perceive the uncertainty around legal recognition of same-sex partnerships in Estonia, through three narratives of members of Estonia’s LGBTQ+ community. The experiences of Marika, Justice and Martin each highlight a particular aspect around this issue and speak of LGBTQ+ citizenship more broadly. Beyond the direct legal regulation of same-sex unions, Marika’s narrative emphasized the importance of the symbolic meanings that the RPA carries. She stresses the emergence of a public debate around the RPA in the Estonian society which has helped to raise the visibility of the LGBTQ+ community. This has functioned as basis for claiming greater legitimacy—socially, politically and legally. Justice’s narrative speaks of gendered and sexed bodies, and identities in the context of heteronormative understandings of citizenship. Her upcoming sex reassignment is making her relationship to the woman she loves an explicitly political matter. Her experience illustrates how heteronormative state policy can have a profound impact on transgender people’s well-being, sense of self and relationships. Here, the notion of sexual citizenship helps to highlight how inherently intertwined the public and private spheres can be. This is a space where discourses, institutional power, embodiment and identities meet. Martin’s narrative shows how the legal situation has cast a cloud over parenting for many in the LGBTQ+ community. Without protections for relationships and parental rights for same-sex couples, some are considering moving abroad and thereby becoming remote citizens of the state, embracing transnational forms of sexual citizenship. Martin crafts a vision for future citizenship, regarding LGBTQ+ families and ageing. Altogether, these narratives envision ways of belonging and a desired citizenship that have yet to materialize, that is, the kind of belonging

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and citizenship that most of us take for granted. Here, the lived experiences of gender and sexuality blur the boundaries of the public and private spheres and, in turn, highlight the implicit heteronormativity of Estonian citizenship. All narratives illuminate the research participants’ existing and desired relationships to the Estonian state. Viewed from the eyes of the LGBTQ+ community, the state is seen as slow, ineffective, as well as lacking both vision and imagination—indeed a hindrance on LGBTQ+ people’s lives. These articulations of Estonia are at striking odds with how many like to see it or indeed how the country wants to portray itself to the world. Through the idea of e-residency, Estonia invites people from all over the world to join ‘a borderless digital society for global citizens’ (https://e-estonia.com/solutions/e-identity/e-residency/). Personal freedoms are said to be all but infinite; in this advanced digital economy you can do almost anything you want with a click of a button. However, some citizens still do not have the same basic rights and protections others enjoy. Given Estonia’s desire to be seen as a dynamic and progressive forward-thinking small state introducing innovative forms of citizenship, its exclusion of certain groups from full citizenship is most incongruent. This chapter has highlighted how LGBTQ+ lives and experiences do not necessarily correspond to the hegemonic notion of the ‘ideal citizen’ embraced by the Estonian state. While some in Estonia’s Russianspeaking community are denied full citizenship, so too are many in the LGBTQ+ community. This must be remedied if Estonia is to make its citizenship truly inclusive. In this light, ‘digital citizenship’ has little value. Acknowledgements   I am grateful to the research team of the study ‘The daily wellbeing and coping strategies of LGBTQ people in the Estonian society’ (Aavik et al. 2016), specifically to Triin Roosalu, Margarita Kazjulja, Maaris Raudsepp, Laura Mere and Kerli Kaal. I would like to thank the Estonian LGBT Association for their help in finding research participants whom I am most indebted to for sharing their experiences. Also, my thanks go to Luke Stange for his valuable feedback and language editing.

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7 The Localization of Sexual Rights in Ukraine Thorsten Bonacker and Kerstin Zimmer

Introduction The period since the end of the Second World War has been marked by various global trends toward cultural liberalization. Such trends in global culture, norms, principles, and scripts have placed enormous pressure on institutions and policies across the world. As a result, policy changes in almost all political and social fields have been initiated; however, their outcomes have varied significantly. Researchers have subjected these externally driven policy shifts to extensive study, especially in the areas of education, environmental policy, human and particularly The article is based on a research project on the localization of reproductive and sexual rights, which was funded by the Fritz-Thyssen-Foundation.

T. Bonacker (*) · K. Zimmer  University of Marburg, Marburg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] K. Zimmer e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 R. Buyantueva and M. Shevtsova (eds.), LGBTQ+ Activism in Central and Eastern Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20401-3_7

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women’s rights (e.g., Schofer and Meyer 2005; Berkovitch and Bradley 1999; Boyle 2002). This chapter explores a case, in which a global liberal norm has been subjected to significant contestation, both internationally and in a particular domestic context. It takes the localization of sexual rights in Ukraine as an example, in which both national and international norm entrepreneurs advocate for sexual liberalization, in this case for the sexual rights of LGBTI people. The Ukrainian case is especially interesting. As a relatively ‘new’ nation state, it was not part of the initial Western liberalization process, and it remains home to various illiberal post-Soviet attitudes toward LGBTI issues. Today, Ukraine continues to oscillate between conservative and liberal trends. Moreover, both domestic and international conflicts about sexual rights reflect broader identity discourses and trajectories. Sexual rights of LGBTI people are, even today, the subject of worldwide dispute. Nonetheless, one outcome of the gay rights movement, which gathered pace in Western Europe and North America from the 1970s, was the establishment of a global norm on LGBTI acceptance and non-discrimination (Altman 2002). This successfully increased global awareness of discrimination and challenged domestic policies toward, for example, same-sex-relationships. However, authoritative norm-challenging voices remain powerful, not only in domestic contexts, but also in international forums. In this article, we argue that the high degree of contestation of LGBTI rights at the international level is of critical importance for the attempt to localize sexual rights in two key respects. First, it offers so-called norm antipreneurs (Bloomfield and Scott 2017)1 the opportunity to refer to alternative, non-liberal conceptions of sexual citizenship. Second, international dispute and domestic contention both affect the repertoire and strategies of norm entrepreneurs. As we argue here, it makes a key difference whether localization occurs in a favorable or at least non-politicized environment, or if it occurs in a situation where sexual rights are regarded as part of a wider struggle over the very notion 1Norm antipreneurs can be understood as actors who oppose normative change and, therefore, as Bloomfield and Scott (2017) suggest, use different ways of normative resistance towards liberalization.

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of citizenship and national identity. With this premise in mind, we explore the techniques that norm entrepreneurs in Ukraine use to advocate for sexual rights. We conceptualize these norm entrepreneurs as norm localizers who face resistance from domestic norm antipreneurs. The article proceeds with an outline of our conceptual framework. This draws on recent research on localization and vernacularization which shows how global norms are translated and embedded into local socio-cultural contexts (Zimmermann 2010). We refer to scholarly contributions, which emphasize contestation as a key variable for our understanding of localization dynamics. We then summarize the global institutionalization of LGBTI rights, as well as the main controversies attached to this development on the international level. This is followed by the case study of Ukraine. The focus here, is first, on the gathering struggle between LGBTI advocacy groups and their (mostly foreign) supporters on the one hand, and nationalist, religious, and conservative norm antipreneurs on the other. Second, we explore how this contentious context impacts the norm entrepreneurs’ strategical and tactical repertoire. Against this background, we aim to shed more light on the localization dynamics of internationally disputed and thus not fully institutionalized global norms in contentious domestic contexts. Our contribution is based on reports, statements, and several interviews conducted in Ukraine in 2014 and 2015, in both English and Russian.2

Diffusion, Contestation, and the Localization of Global Norms Key scholarly voices in sociological neoinstitutionalism have argued that the international environment can apply enormous pressure onto domestic decision makers and bureaucracies, because these are anticipated to meet external normative expectations (Meyer 2000; Meyer et al. 1997). These expectations are often created and spread by international governmental and non-governmental organizations which serve 2Translations

from Russian by Kerstin Zimmer.

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as norm creators and norm entrepreneurs. This article draws on three key ideas from sociological institutionalism. First, as norms derive their validity from the shared acceptance of their obligatory claims, norms associated with global culture enjoy a high degree of legitimacy. Second, this renders more likely their global diffusion (as conducted by norm entrepreneurs) and their impact on individual states, especially when a consensus about the content and the validity claim is established on the international level. Finally, and in consequence of this, we can observe processes of liberalization in different policy fields across individual states. What this actually means is that social actions are essentially perceived and treated as the choices of individual actors, rather than being embedded in social traditions or caused by external conditions. Prominent examples are liberal reforms in schooling (Anderson-Levitt 2003) and the health sector (Inoue and Drori 2006; Chabbott 2014). Global culture emerged from Western traditions, but its elements have since become central to norms and standards that are accepted worldwide (Meyer 2000; Meyer et al. 1997). This does not make them immune to criticism, but it does mean that challenges to global institutions are unlikely to succeed. Indeed, global culture today penetrates every society and often challenges domestic and local institutions. It does so, by being spread mainly by international and non-governmental organizations serving as norm entrepreneurs, e.g., in development assistance programs, in national and international campaigning and advocacy, or in policy advising functions. Liberalization could be regarded as a desired outcome of this diffusion of global norms and principles. It is associated with the downsizing of state authority over what is considered as private affair, the sanctioning and decriminalization of certain behaviors, and it has affected the very idea and practices of citizenship around the globe. This also holds for the regulation of sexual relationships in general as well as reproductive and sexual rights in particular. The rise of the LGBTI movement, the diffusion of women’s rights, and a more permissive media culture have given rise to a more pleasure-centered understanding of sexuality and one, that considers sexual activities and sexual identities as individual choices. Consequently, sexuality has largely been decoupled from traditional social values and corporative concerns such as family planning

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and population policy (Bonacker et al. 2014). Various scholars have explored this development in, for example, a global trend toward reform of laws on sodomy (Cobb 2014), the liberalization of state policies on same-sex sexual relations (Frank and McEneaney 1999), homosexuality acceptance (Roberts 2017), and abortion law (Boyle et al. 2015). At the same time, however, this global liberalization of ‘sexual citizenship’ (Wilson 2009) has its limits. Especially when compared to other aspects of citizenship, liberal approaches to sexuality have been and continue to be seriously challenged by what, on the international level, can be considered an ‘unholy alliance’ of the Holy See and conservative Muslim governments (Hulme 2009). On the domestic level, sexual liberalization is restricted by the influence of religious authorities and hardline religious campaigners on public policy, as well as by the prevalence of traditional social norms. For example, Boyle (2002) has shown that religion is a decisive factor in explaining variances in national laws on female circumcision. These limits on liberalization show that the degree of norm contestation on the international level plays a crucial role. We can assume that the more a norm is challenged by authoritative actors, such as states and INGOs in international communication (e.g., at international conferences or within international organizations), the more likely norm entrepreneurs will be to encounter resistance in unfavorable domestic contexts. Sexual citizenship seems to be a rather obvious case that highlights the need for a better understanding of how global norms, and in particular contested norms, are translated into domestic and local contexts. Research on norms in International Relations (IR) has focused on two further aspects of global norm diffusion, namely (a) the very process of how global norms are embedded into various national and local contexts, and (b) the different forms of contestation emerging in these localization processes. The following paragraphs will explore these areas in greater detail. a. To be sure, research on norm diffusion has taken into account the fact that global norms must “‘resonate’ with pre-existing and embedded norms as well as collective understandings” (Risse 2002, p. 267). Nonetheless, empirical processes of how and whether global norms are

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translated into local contexts, have only recently become a central focus of norm research (Deitelhoff and Zimmermann 2013). Most prominently, Acharya (2004) has argued that localization is not exclusively conducted by IGOs and INGOs, but also—and perhaps even most pointedly—by domestic and local actors. This occurs through ‘active construction (through discourse, framing, grafting and cultural selection) of foreign ideas by local actors, which results in the former developing significant congruence with local beliefs and practices’ (Acharya 2004). In a similar vein, scholars in anthropology have pointed to the fact that global norms and models can change their meaning when translated into local contexts. According to Behrends et al. (2014), the traveling of global models can have unintended and sometimes even unwelcome side effects. Furthermore, Merry has introduced the concept of vernacularization in order to show how ordinary women and local organizations make sense of global norms and how the global is transformed in response (Levitt and Merry 2009; Merry 2006). Essentially, vernacularization means that ideas are transported from one context to another, while continuously being adapted and reframed to resonate with the new location (Levitt and Merry 2009). Zimmermann (2016) distinguishes two subtypes of localization: embedding and reshaping. Embedding describes a localization type, whereby dominant frames and practices in a given national context differ from an interpretation that is preeminent among norm entrepreneurs in the transnational community. Conversely, reshaping means that norms are not only reinterpreted, but also actively modified during their translation into law. b. This shift in the study of norm diffusion toward processes of embedding and reshaping has increased the awareness of latent and manifest conflicts between global and local normative orders (Bonacker et al. 2017). This has given rise to a growing debate about different forms of contestation, whereby the assumption that international norms diffuse globally and meet little resistance along the way has been subjected to substantial scrutiny. Sociological neoinstitutionalism and norm research have explored processes of decoupling—that is, the idea that international norms are confirmed and adopted on a symbolic level without becoming influential on the level of activity. However, research

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on contestation has gone a step further. Several scholars now argue that, in some cases, even highly consensual international norms are challenged by domestic or local actors, both politically and in everyday life (e.g., Wiener 2008). As Levitt and Merry (2009) have shown, this to a certain extent also holds for activists who refer to international norms, e.g., human and women’s rights, while at the same time rejecting a particular liberal interpretation. This example reveals that contestation concerns not only the validity and the scope of norms, but also their meaning. Wiener argues that it ‘is through [the] transfer between contexts that the meaning of norms becomes contested, as differently socialized actors such as politicians, civil servants, parliamentarians or lawyers trained in different legal traditions seek to interpret them’ (Wiener 2008, p. 33). However, what seems less clear are the particular dynamics in those cases in which norms are contested, both internationally and domestically. In the following section, we will explore the case of Ukraine and inquire into how such a double contestation impacts the strategies of both norm entrepreneurs and antipreneurs. In our case, norm antipreneurs openly reject attempts to liberalize sexual citizenship by localizing LGBTI rights into a non-favorable domestic context. Of course, one might assume that domestic norm antipreneurs are more likely to be successful if they can link their position to the fact that a particular norm is also disputed on the international level, thereby weakening its validity. With this in mind, the empirical question is how antipreneurs create legitimacy for their position, how they challenge liberalization, but also how domestic norm entrepreneurs respond to them.

The Global Emergence and Contestation of LGBTI Rights Even though rights for sexual minorities have been institutionalized globally to some extent, they remain strongly contested. In effect, institutionalization mainly denotes the advancement of soft law, whereas explicit rights for sexual minorities are slow to manifest. Disunity

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among states and organizations demonstrates itself by uneven and contradictory domestic measures and legislation. Whereas some states implement ‘progressive’ laws such as same-sex marriage, others refuse to abolish criminal liability for homosexual relationships and even (re-) introduce homophobic legislation. In what follows, we trace the way LGBTI and to some extent LGBTI rights3 have become institutionalized at the global and supranational level, and how they have been specifically understood and framed as human rights. We consider legal as well as discursive changes and look at the principal norm entrepreneurs and antipreneurs. During the 1960s and 1970s, LGBTI activists in Western countries did not frame LGBTI rights as human, but rather as civil rights. Above all, they aimed to bring about domestic social and political change. They formed domestically organized social liberation movements, which fought for civil rights and social acceptance, mainly via direct action and street protests organized by volunteers. Internationally, the different national strands of the LGBTI movement were only loosely linked. However, the rapprochement of gay and lesbian groups in the wake of the 1980s AIDS epidemic, as well as contestations with Amnesty International (AI), served to intensify the internationalization, coordination, and professionalization of the emergent global LGBTI network. This consolidation was further facilitated by meetings at international women’s conferences (e.g., Beijing 1995) as well as by funding for AIDS and HIV prevention. During the last two decades of the twentieth century, LGBTI activists increasingly shifted to a human rights frame. This developed during a period when a broader international human rights discourse gathered pace and ultimately prevailed. Initially, global human rights organizations such as AI or Human Rights Watch (HRW) did not 3We use both the terms ‘LGBT’ and ‘LGBTI’, depending on context. While the ‘I’, denoting ‘intersex’, did not play a role during the initial liberalization process and early effort at international institutionalization, it has recently entered various documents. For the Ukrainian case, we use ‘LGBT’ because this is the way activists frame their concerns. The few small organisations for intersex people oppose its instrumentalization by larger gay and lesbian groups. Even the ‘B’ and ‘T’ groups hardly influence the domestic discourse, which continues to be dominated by gays and lesbians.

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include LGBTI rights in their campaigns. AI only began to do so in 1991 after intensive internal discussions and external lobbying, and, until 1999, they were not included as a protected category in the official mandate. Moreover, while most LGBTI lobby organizations shifted toward a human rights frame, the International Lesbian and Gay Association ILGA (today: International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association) embraced the human rights frame only in 1995. HRW adopted LGBTI rights around the turn of the millennium (Linde 2017). Over time, the LGBTI movement developed into a well-endowed, highly professional, and elaborately bureaucratic global network which intensively lobbied international organizations and national governments. Several large international LGBTI organizations have received consultative status at the United Nation’s Economic and Social Council since.4 Such organizations often view Western states as natural allies in lobbying for the institutionalization of sexual rights (Linde 2017). That said, the institutionalization of sexual minority rights has not been an unmitigated success, and it has proceeded rather slowly. At the UN, references to sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) have become more prominent over time (McGoldrick 2016). And yet resolutions or statements related to LGBTI rights have not been unanimously endorsed in the General Assembly or the Council on Human Rights (UNCHR), while no binding documents have been adopted and various resolutions have failed as well. Given that no international human rights treaty explicitly refers to sexual orientation or gender identity, the interpretation of existing treaties, ratified by most states, is of crucial importance (McGoldrick 2016). A milestone in this area was the Yogyakarta Principles (2006), whereby international experts applied human rights norms to the discrimination of LGBTI people. Instead of creating and implementing new norms, existing treaties such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant of Civil and Political

4For

a complete list of organisations with consultative status, see: http://esango.un.org/civilsociety/getByAllHavingStatus.do?method=getByAllHavingStatus&searchType=csSearch.

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Rights, or the Convention against Torture were declared to be applicable. Significantly, such treaties include the categories ‘sex’, ‘other status’, and other ‘special social group’ as grounds for discrimination. The UNCHR is the main site of conflict regarding sexual rights. Most states in North and South America, Europe, and Australia support the explicit institutionalization of LGBTI rights and sponsor the relevant resolutions. Their opponents comprise the Arab League as well as many African and South East Asian states. The Holy See, which only has observer status, opposes same-sex marriage and adoption rights, but condemns discrimination and especially criminalization of LGBTI persons. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has published several reports on infringements of LGBTI rights (McGoldrick 2016, p. 615). In 2016, the UNCHR commissioned an independent expert to analyze the causes of discrimination and violence. Numerous UN organizations such as UNDP, UNHCR, UNESCO, ILO, and UNAIDS now explicitly address LGBTI  issues. The WHO, which until 1990 had classified homosexuality as a mental disorder, has also changed its approach. Yet these developments do not go unchallenged. Opponents criticize attempts to apply international human rights norms to LGBTI issues and claim the right for cultural self-determination. They portray sexual minority rights as a non-universal, specifically Western idea, one they regularly counteract by invoking ‘traditional values’, religious dogma, and national interests. During the 2012 meeting of the Human Rights Commission (UNCHR 2012), opponents cited the Vienna Declaration and Program of Action (1993) to demonstrate the importance of accounting for national and religious particularities as well as traditions in any discussion of human rights and sexual orientation. They argued that to impose a normative concept of sexual orientation violates the social and cultural rights of those communities concerned. This contestation of a liberal notion of sexual citizenship thus refers to globally established concepts such as cultural identity and family, as well as the norm of self-determination. Consequently, it is also equipped with a certain degree of legitimacy within international organizations. In the Ukrainian case, the positions of both the European Union (EU) and Russia are relevant, as they are reference points for and

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supporters of norm entrepreneurs and antipreneurs. In development cooperation and enlargement processes, the EU increasingly regards the implementation of LGBTI rights as a ‘litmus test for a country’s broader human rights record’ and its endorsement of ‘European norms’ (Slootmaeckers et al. 2016). This indicates that LGBTI rights have acquired a high symbolic value, especially in external relations. Both, advocacy groups and opponents have come to perceive the EU as a ‘haven’ for LGBTI rights. However, though LGBTI issues played a marginal role in the 1990s, they became more important during the EU’s eastward enlargement in 2004 and 2007. Nevertheless, only the second of these expansions (to include Croatia in 2013) saw a fully fledged consideration of the section on fundamental rights. In terms of providing general guidelines for diplomacy and external relations, the EU issued a Toolkit (2010) and Guidelines (2013) to ‘Promote and Protect the Enjoyment of all Human Rights by Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) Persons’. These documents refer to the EU Strategic Framework on Human Rights and Democracy adopted by the European Council in 2012. By contrast, the relevance and monitoring of LGBTI rights within the member states is limited. LGBTI rights only became part of the EU acquis with the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997). This expanded the legislative competences of the EU with regard to fighting discrimination on the labor market, which was later consolidated in the Employment Directive (2000). The Charter of Fundamental Rights (2000) corroborated the idea that LGBTI rights are indeed human rights (Kristoffersson et al. 2016), and this became legally binding with the Lisbon Treaty in 2007. Currently, these regulations must be adopted by candidate countries if they wish to join the EU. Monitoring of their implementation after accession, however, is far from rigorous. Russia, vice versa, enacted a federal law in 2013 on ‘homosexual propaganda’ which prohibited positive reporting on homosexuality, ostensibly in order to protect minors. This came as part of a broader nationalizing discourse which draws a strict demarcation between the ‘traditional East’ and the ‘decadent West’—a threatening ‘Gayropa’ (Mole 2016; Riabov and Riabova 2014) encroaching on ‘Russian

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civilization’. From 2010 to 2014, Ukraine became the major battlefield for the contest between domestic and foreign proponents and opponents of liberal sexual citizenship, with the issue becoming strongly politicized in the run-up to the conclusion of Ukraine’s association agreement with the EU.

LGBTI Rights in Ukraine In Ukraine, homosexuality was decriminalized in 1991, almost immediately after national independence. Throughout the 1990s, however, SOGI were marginal topics. This changed in the mid-2000s. Ukraine had one of the fastest growing HIV and AIDS epidemics, which induced the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria to engage intensively in the country and to provide funding mainly for gay organizations. Such groups consequently became more active in their advocacy, more engaged in international networking, and more likely to adopt a human rights frame in their lobbying. In doing so, they also influenced other emerging LGBTI organizations. However, during the 2000s, homophobia in Ukraine became more prevalent, with many Ukrainians coming to regard homosexuality either as freely chosen (as an ideology or fashion),5 or as an illness that could—and should— be cured (Majmulachin and Zintschenko 2013; Martsenyuk 2012). Before long, the EU had become one of the most influential norm entrepreneurs for liberal sexual citizenship in Ukraine. In 2004, Ukraine and the EU concluded an action plan in which the former committed itself to gradually adapting domestic legislation to the EU acquis communautaire. This included broad antidiscrimination legislation. And yet the topic of LGBTI rights remained in the background, reform and its effects proved protracted, and contestation remained strong. For example, in 2007, Vasyl Khara (Party of Regions), chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Labor and Social Policy, made the following statement:

5This is epitomized by the widespread usage of the word ‘homosexualism’—instead of homosexuality. The suffix -ism implies an ideology.

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‘Personally, I think that gays and lesbians violate all norms of morality. It is a physical defect that should be concealed, not flaunted. On the other hand, what they [sexual minorities] are demanding is a European norm that is likely to be included in the draft of the [labor] code. I am against it, though’ (Nash Mir 2008, cited in Martsenyuk 2012). Other politicians from all political parties offered similar opinions. Since 2010, the EU has extensively discussed this issue with Ukrainian representatives and has published a series of progress reports. In 2011, an action plan with the EU on visa liberalization took effect, in which Ukraine explicitly committed itself to comprehensive antidiscrimination legislation in line with the recommendations of various UN bodies, the Council of Europe and the OSCE (Khodakivskyi 2014). However, the government of Mykola Azarov (2010–2014) largely eschewed reforms of antidiscrimination legislation. Various proposed changes to the labor code which referred to SOGI as grounds for discrimination were routinely criticized by the Communists, nationalists, and the Churches,6 and they were often accompanied by public demonstrations (Khodakivskyi 2014). Some critics argued that existing constitutional provisions sufficiently protected against discrimination, while others directly opposed the recognition and ‘preferential treatment’ of what they perceived as ‘perverse’ and harmful deviance. At the same time, international experts consistently criticized proposed changes to the law as too general and without clear criteria for assessment (EU Ukraine Civil Society Platform 2016). In 2012, the government began to emulate Russian policy by othering sexual minorities and depicting them as ‘enemies’ and ‘threats’ to society. All political parties supported a draft law on the prohibition of homosexual propaganda (with criminal liability), which was greeted with outrage by international human rights organizations

6Ukraine

is a multi-religious country, with a dominance of Eastern Orthodox Churches, which are split into three rivalling organisations: the Moscow Patriarchate, the Kyiv Patriarchate, and the Autocephalous Orthodox Church. Moreover, there are the Greek Catholic and the Roman Catholic Churches, as well as various smaller Protestant congregations. Despite the sometimes-fierce competition between them, these Churches are united in their rejection of LGBT rights. The small Jewish and Muslim minorities hardly contribute to the conflict.

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(Khodakivskyi 2014). Although the bills never came into force, they influenced public discourse (Teteriuk 2016a), mainly because they were taken up both by media and by norm antipreneurs. In its 2013 progress report, the EU criticized the lack of comprehensive antidiscrimination policy, while simultaneously adopting the above-mentioned guidelines to promote LGBTI rights in third countries. During Viktor Yanukovych’s presidency (2010–2014), norm antipreneurs pursued differing agendas. The Churches generally supported EU integration, but they continued to be critical of antidiscrimination legislation. Conversely, the Communists and pro-Russian groups used homophobia to undermine EU integration and to further Ukrainian rapprochement with Russia. One of these pro-Russian organizations, ‘Ukrainian Choice’ (Ukrains’kyi Vybir ), headed by Viktor Medvedchuk, warned against ‘homodictatorship’ and publicly declared that the EU wanted Ukraine to legalize same-sex marriages. Conservative civic organizations with strong ties to Russia and Protestant fundamentalism lobbied the government and attempted to influence public opinion. The NGO ‘Love against Homosexualism’ (founded in 2003) became one of the leading pillars of the anti-LGBTI movement, arguing that LGBTI rights destroy the family and morality and lead to the degeneration of the nation (Love against Homosexualism, n.d.). This organization was supported by the ‘Orthodox Parental Committee’ and the ‘Parental Committee of Ukraine’, which in 2013 criticized German foundations for allegedly promoting homosexuality in the country. For the most part, these organizations were externally funded, either from Russia or from American conservatives as well as Protestant fundamentalists, and they became closely connected to the Yanukovich government (Strelnyk 2017). The Ukrainian case thus illustrates that just as norm entrepreneurs often successfully mobilize international support for domestic policy change, domestic norm antipreneurs also have recourse to international coalitions against global liberal norms. The most important norm antipreneurs here are the Christian Churches, which expressed their concern that Ukrainian society was being forced to adopt extremely liberal views of morality and family values (IRS 2010b). In 2006, the

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All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations (AUCCRO)7 issued an open letter to parliament to prevent the legalization of same-sex partnerships, claiming that liberalization would surely bring about the demise of the Ukrainian nation (COWI 2010). In 2007, AUCCRO declared itself hostile toward homosexuality and the attempts to legalize same-sex marriages (IRS 2007). The Orthodox Church also labeled same-sex marriages and partnerships a ‘distortion of public morality and an attempt to legalize sin’ (IRS 2010a). The Church maintained that sexual minorities serve to aggravate the myriad economic and demographic crises afflicting Ukraine and called for the strengthening of traditional values (IRS 2010a). In 2010, AUCCRO warned of dire consequences if same-sex partnerships were to be imposed on Ukraine (UGCC 2010). Two years later, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Roman Catholic Church called for the protection of children from ‘moral corruption’ and cautioned against the expansion of rights for sexual minorities: ‘These disastrous tendencies have no borders and gradually penetrate into our society and country’ (UGCC 2012). Apart than that, a growing number of national norm entrepreneurs advocated for a policy shift with respect to sexual citizenship. They also enjoyed international support. Between 2010 and 2014, the number of officially registered LGBTI organizations in Ukraine doubled (Martsenyuk 2016). They received external funding, partly via HIV and AIDS prevention programs (mainly by the Global Fund, but channeled through domestic NGOs). They also had the support of ILGA and various foreign embassies, as well as development organizations such as the Swedish International Development Agency SIDA. This has helped to bring about a rather well-organized LGBTI community, at least in the big cities, which is formally united under a single umbrella organization. These groups connected well with each other and with other human rights organizations and interest groups, on both, international and domestic levels (Martsenyuk 2016). 7AUCCRO

was established in 1996 and represents all major denominations in Ukraine, in particular the various Orthodox, the Greek and Roman Catholics, various Protestant associations, Jews, and Muslims.

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During this period, activists contributed to incremental legislative change by lobbying parliamentarians and parliamentary committees. They published extensive analyses of the situation and provided data for international reports, but most organizations largely shunned the public and did not engage in public awareness campaigns or street activism. However, a few activists did become more public and outspoken. The most prominent example was a (rare) outing in parliament by Bohdan Globa, the head of the organization FULCRUM, during the 2013 hearing on the antidiscrimination law. Overall, then, this phase was characterized by an interplay of domestic and international factors in the contestation of sexual rights in Ukraine. In furthering their cause, norm antipreneurs could take advantage of the rapprochement between the Ukrainian and Russian governments, whereas LGBTI activists were supported by the demands of the EU—demands which, of course, norm antipreneurs framed as illegitimate and harmful external interference.

The Euromaidan In November 2013, President Yanukovych announced that he had no intention of signing the association agreement with the EU. This gave rise to street protests which became known as the ‘Euromaidan’. Because they had pinned their hopes on closer ties to the EU, many LGBTI activists joined the protesters (Breyer 2013). For the most part, however, they adopted a ‘strategy of invisibility’ (Martsenyuk 2016; Shevtsova 2017) and participated ‘as Ukrainian citizens rather than as members of a sexual minority’ (Martsenyuk 2016). Some activists initially wanted to advocate for minority rights, but they refrained in order ‘to preserve the integrity of the Euromaidan’ (Martsenyuk 2016, p. 62) and to prevent provocations by opponents and the instrumentalization of their participation by Russian propaganda. The more violent and nationalist the protests became, and the more traditional gender roles and the idea of strong traditional families prevailed, the more these activists concealed their identity and sexual orientation (Martsenyuk 2016).

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Post-Euromaidan Ukraine As shown above, the contestation of LGBTI rights at the international level increases the likelihood that norm antipreneurs at the domestic level will be in a position to carry out a strong, and by no means unsuccessful campaign of resistance. In Ukraine, however, the power shift triggered by the Euromaidan induced these norm antipreneurs to change their discursive tactics. The liberalization of sexual citizenship, as well as resistance to it, became core aspects of a burgeoning nationalist discourse. Within this discourse, the Ukrainian nation began to be a more important reference point, and one threatened by a range of enemies. After the governmental changes of 2014, the political treatment of LGBTI groups slowly shifted in the direction of a partial ‘weakening’ of ‘the conservative consensus on LGBTI rights in Ukraine’ (Teteriuk 2016b). The government began to make significant overtures toward the LGBTI community, with President Petro Poroshenko acting as their main advocate. To be sure and partly under public pressure from religious groups and parents’ associations, the government still refused to introduce antidiscrimination legislation, continuing to point to the general legal provision of protection as sufficient for the protection of LGBTI rights. However, in November 2015, the Ukrainian parliament—at the initiative of the ruling coalition and after several failed attempts—changed the labor code and mandated protection against discrimination at the workplace based on SOGI. It further announced the legalization of same-sex partnerships until 2020, within the framework of a national antidiscrimination action plan. These moves, however, were not included in the National Human Rights Strategy (Gay Alliance Ukraine 2016c). Indeed, these were political decisions of a largely pragmatic nature, motivated principally by a determination not to jeopardize the free visa regime with the EU. Parliamentary voting was accompanied by political homophobia, with many politicians openly stating that they did not support the legal changes out of conviction. Some even publicly apologized for their ‘sin’. Then-speaker of parliament Volodymyr Hroysman referred to the need to protect ‘traditional values’, from which he excluded the legalization

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of same-sex marriages. That said, since voting took place in 2015, homophobic statements have become rarer, with some MPs offering public support for the LGBTI movement and even participating in Pride marches. In the current conflict with Russia, the Ukrainian government publicly delineates itself from its ‘evil’ and homophobic antagonist. As Yuri Lutsenko, a member of President Poroshenko’s party, put it in November 2015: ‘It’s better to have a gay parade on Khreshchatyk than Russian tanks in the center of the Ukrainian capital’, he also added: ‘I believe if we go to Europe, we must recognize the rules adopted in the EU’ (EUobserver 2015). In a similar vein, during his speech at the 2016 Munich Security Conference, Poroshenko blamed Putin for imposing an ‘alternative Europe’ with ‘alternative values’, including homophobia. ‘Russia and we’, he contended, ‘live in different worlds’ (Poroshenko 2016). For various norm antipreneurs, their former ‘natural ally’, Russia, can no longer serve as a legitimate partner and reference point, because it militarily attacked the Ukrainian state and nation. Many pro-Russian NGOs, as well as conservative (often evangelical) groups, have disappeared, possibly also due to the cessation of Russian funding. Others such as ‘Love against Homosexualism’ gave up their pro-Russian orientation and embraced Ukrainian nationalism (Gorbach 2015). The void left by the discrediting of Russia has largely been filled by Ukrainian nationalist groups, among them the Radical Party and Samopomich. Beyond parliament, ultra-nationalist groups such as the Right Sector, a right-wing political and paramilitary group that emerged during the Euromaidan, as well as Svoboda’s youth organization C14, engage in homophobe rhetoric and activity. Before Kyiv Pride 2016, for example, representatives of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists expressed their dissatisfaction: Today, we are forced to accept LGBTI marches and festivals and thus join the ranks of sinners and those who cover them. Who is going to be equated on this Sabbath? Immoral freaks, clowns, and degenerates will be equated with those who have honor and dignity, respect and love for their neighbor, soldiers who gave their lives and health protecting peace in the country? (cited in Shevchenko 2016)

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Nationalists often refer to external enemies and invoke conspiracy theories, claiming that the ‘local rainbow-colored liberals’ are funded by ‘foreign cultural-Marxist’ elements (Ukrainian Crusade 2017). In Ukraine, nationalist rhetoric is on the rise, and it is accompanied by traditionalist ideas of family relations. This has been keenly observed and analyzed by some activists: With this situation in the country, this patriotism—it’s sort of rediscovering our national identity, or rather recreating—it brings these traditional concepts of family. And this idea of traditional values is the favorite thing that everybody is using and misusing. So they say that the idea of family is a man and a woman and two kids, a boy and a girl. And of course homosexuality and all kinds of non-normative sexual and gender relations don’t fit into this. And this poses a big threat to the LGBTI community. Some people support the ideas and then there are people who use this discourse of support and use violence. And this violence is not condemned. (Interview with an LGBTI activist, November 2014)

Our interviewees also commented on the contradictions in the rightwing groups’ perceptions and arguments: One of their ideologists said that people are not equal. By birth. So, they basically believe … that this is the place for Ukrainians, the white race. They even say ‘Sieg Heil’ and so on. And with all that, they promote the traditional attitude to family norms and to sexuality of course. And they are the ones that pose a threat to LGBTI people in the street. And this is the reason why the Pride did not take place this year. The police said: ‘We cannot protect you from these heroes.’ They [the heroes] say: ‘We came back from the East and this is the war and now all this perversion in the country.’ And this is very interesting how they combine it in their head because this is exactly the rhetoric of Russia. And they sort of oppose Russia, but they are the same in this. And when the revolution started last year it was Svoboda Party that was one of the leaders of this Euromaidan protest. Even though Svoboda was very homophobic and still is. And they wanted to join Europe, but at the same time they criticize Europe for being, as they say, gay Europe, ‘Gayrope’. And they never elaborate these contradictions. But the far right is quite a small group. (Interview with an LGBTI activist, November 2014)

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All major Ukrainian Churches continue to oppose sexual minority rights. The Council of Churches asked the President not to sign the 2015 amendments to the labor code. When a rainbow was (partially) painted on the gigantic arch in Kyiv during the Eurovision Song Contest in 2017, a representative of the Orthodox Church expressed concern that such actions could threaten Ukraine’s social value system (Euractiv 2017). In 2016 and 2017, shortly before the Pride parades, AUCCRO organized processions through central Kyiv which claimed to be advocating for the protection of children and families (RISU 2016). A representative of the Greek Catholic Church commented: It is of utmost importance that society recognizes the severity of the threat posed to the institution of the family. Our politicians have established the framework for the legalization of civil partnerships. They have discussed the adoption of a variety of ‘anti-discrimination’ laws that would punish those who have expressed intolerance for sexual minorities. These politicians and same-sex advocates are intolerant of Christian values. Ukraine is approaching a moral abyss. If we are not courageous enough to protect our eternal values we will lose our chance for a dignified life. (Gavriliv 2017)

As we can see, norm antipreneurs, both pro-Russian and Ukrainian nationalist groups, dispute the suitability of liberal norms for Ukraine. In their repudiation, they refer to the necessary protection of national and religious traditions and values. In this way, they also draw on an internationally legitimized norm.

LGBTI Activists: Strategies and Tactics As research on norm socialization and localization has shown, norm entrepreneurs use diverse discursive and political strategies such as campaigning, lobbying, or advertising in order to advocate for policy shifts and to provide global norms with a ‘local face’ (Zimmermann 2017), to ensure that they resonate within a domestic normative context. This also holds for LGBTI activists in Ukraine, who attempt to make

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LGBTI issues more acceptable by pushing for general antidiscrimination policy and by framing themselves as part of the political nation. However, rather strong opposition from norm antipreneurs not only limits the impact of LGBTI activism, it also influences their strategies, because they are largely obliged to avoid publicly displayed ‘deviance’ and the accentuation of ‘otherness’. Due to expected homophobic reactions and disunity within the LGBTI community, street activism remains limited. As one of our interviewees put it: The thing is that the LGBTI community, especially people who live in big cities, can pretty much manage their lives. There are opportunities to find the community, to find partners. And they think, that there is no need for … public activism, because this causes even more homophobia. This is why a lot of people don’t support Pride. Because, like: ‘Why do you go in the streets? That makes people hate us. Just stay quiet.’ And for me this is one of the problems, that the community itself, because the pressure is not so hard like it was thirty or forty years ago in the West. That people had to rise, otherwise they couldn’t survive. The pressure is not so hard. (Interview with an LGBTI activist, November 2014)

Since 2015, however, street activism has become easier to organize, at least in Kyiv. This is largely due to better support by public authorities and the police. Activists use these occasions to frame sexual rights as human rights. Indeed, ‘human rights are my pride’ was the motto of the 2015 Kyiv Pride parade. These public demonstrations are usually supported and attended by foreign activists and sympathizers. However, they are also regularly subjected to counterdemonstrations and violence by militant nationalist groups, while an overall climate of homophobia remains acute (Breyer 2016). Though some activists openly declare their sexual orientation, most prefer to remain invisible (Martsenyuk 2016). In fact, activists are often professionals who live from their advocacy work. And this work usually comprises a fairly conventional approach to domestic political bodies—through sending letters and petitions, for example. Furthermore, LGBTI activists have become members of established

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political bodies, such as the Working Group on Human and Civil Rights and Freedoms of the Constitutional Committee (2014) (Teteriuk 2016a). That said, many activists do not believe that domestic lobbying alone can be very effective—at least not in the Ukrainian sociopolitical environment, in which questions around the rights of sexual minorities are often either ignored or instrumentalized. Consequently, they frequently opt instead for more indirect forms of advocacy which entail less visibility and fewer homophobic reactions. First, they engage in public awareness campaigns, often in cooperation with other marginalized groups such as people with disabilities, Jews, and Roma (Vil”ni bo obiznani 2015). Furthermore, most LGBTI organizations are party to the Coalition for Combating Discrimination (Coalition for Combating Discrimination in Ukraine, n.d.). One gay activist described the rationale as follows: The word LGBTI to our parliament is something terrible. Honestly, I tell you why we have the Coalition of Persons with Disabilities and Women’s Consortium. Because when you offer a package of amendments, that is, once people with disabilities, women, LGBTI people, then it is easier than just LGBTI people, you know. It is a trick of some sort. On the other hand, it is necessary for them, it is necessary for us, that legislation. (November 2014)

However, the main thrust of LGBTI advocacy in Ukraine is directed at external organizations: And this is … how civil society in Ukraine works, that it’s impossible to pressure our government directly. You have to pressure it through international organizations. And through European organizations. Because they listen to us. So … we tell them what we want them to tell our government. And this is how it works. (Interview with an LGBTI activist, November 2014)

Significant here is that two gay activists recently enlisted the Council of Europe, the EU and the United Nations as supporters of their cause.

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In recent years, there has also emerged a new discursive and performative trend (Pagulich 2016) which echoes the pinkwashing of the government. Various activists, mainly gay men, have recently framed themselves ‘as part of a newly-emerged Ukrainian political nation’ (Teteriuk 2016b). In 2015, the famous Kyiv Pinchuk Art Center hosted ‘Patriots. Citizens. Lovers …’, an exhibition about LGBTI persons, which was tainted in blue and yellow, Ukraine’s national colors. In one of the videos, an interviewee declared: ‘Have social attitudes towards them [LGBTI] changed? Yes, because a new enemy has appeared, one that is seen in an even more negative light than LGBTI people. If ordinary people had to choose between a so called “Moskal” and a gay person, the “Moskal” would be considered worse’ (Anonymous 2015). Overall, these discourses perpetuate the ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ divide. ‘We’ are Europeans—that is, we share and adhere to ‘European values’— whereas ‘they’ (Russians) are not. At the same time, however, such discourses aim to create a ‘correct’, acceptable public identity. In Ukraine, LGBTI persons are regularly seen and portrayed as hedonistic, adherents of an irresponsible, unproductive, carnivalesque life-style. Because gays and lesbians (perceivably) do not contribute to the biological reproduction of the nation, they are subject to othering and portrayed as a threat (Mole 2016). The distinction between ‘worthy’ or productive people (who help to overcome the nation’s economic crisis and to meet the threat posed by Russia) on the one hand, and unproductive people on the other, is redrawn. Many, mostly gay activists, point to their contributions to the wellbeing of the nation, either as (honest) workers and taxpayers or as fighters in the armed forces or volunteer battalions. Reports on the website of the Gay Alliance offer detailed information about gay soldiers in the Donbass: ‘LGBTI at the front’ (Gay Alliance Ukraine 2016a) and ‘I’m gay, I was in ATO, I saw death, and I’m a patriot of my country’ (Gay Alliance Ukraine 2016b). These discourses not only contribute to the contradistinction from Russia and the (potential) inclusion of some sexual minorities into the national body; they also exclude other sexual minorities such as transgender people.

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Overall, Ukrainian LGBTI activists use various strategies and tactics to achieve effective antidiscrimination legislation and social acceptance. Blaming and shaming strategies do not take place in the national context, but via external lobbying which might reinforce the perception that rights for sexual minorities are largely imposed from outside. In the domestic context, activists attempt to frame their concerns within a broader human rights framework and coalesce with other marginalized, but possibly more socially accepted groups. In doing so, they do not modify the meaning of international norms, but instead deemphasize their ‘otherness’. Yet, the norms themselves remain largely alien to prevalent local attitudes and beliefs. Recently, a specific form of embedding and reshaping has emerged. Some activists have made use of particular discursive practices in order to highlight the ‘usefulness’ of LGBTI people for the national cause, thereby countering the norm antipreneurs’ claim that LGBTI people are ‘useless’ and potentially harmful to the development of the Ukrainian nation. However, this discursive move does not embed or reshape the norm. Rather, it attempts to embed or reshape the (perception of the) LGBTI community itself.

Conclusions In this contribution, we analyzed how liberal notions of sexual citizenship, which emerged at the global level and were spread by international norm entrepreneurs, have become localized in the highly disputed Ukrainian context. In terms of broader research on the localization of global norms, the Ukrainian case offers us a number of instructive insights. First, international contestation of a liberal sexual citizenship gives norm antipreneurs at the domestic level more space to successfully resist liberalization. Norm antipreneurs such as the Churches and NGOs can rely on both, discursive and material international support. They derive crucial legitimacy from global, mostly religious, authorities and—until the change of government in 2014—from Russia. Second, it seems clear that, in such a contested situation, discursive and material shifts in domestic power strongly impact both, the

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likelihood of norm implementation and the strategies and tactics of norm entrepreneurs. Third, norm antipreneurs do not simply construct their legitimacy in opposition to global norms and concepts; in fact, they also refer to well-established norms, such as national self-determination, patriotism, and the moral welfare of the public. In doing so, they are able to denounce homosexuality as a Western import and frame liberal sexual citizenship as a cultural expression that might work for Western societies, but which alienates Ukrainians from their cultural roots. Consequently, sexual minority rights are perceived as both foreign and—together with the demand for LGBTI rights—as an immoral and dangerous interference on the part of external actors, one aimed at destroying local culture and traditions or even the nation itself. Finally, research on norm diffusion and localization has largely ignored the question of how contestation, both on the international and on the domestic levels, impacts the strategies of norm entrepreneurs. For the Ukrainian case, we can conclude that the strong, and to a certain extent successful, resistance from norm antipreneurs has led to more indirect strategies of campaigning and advocacy, but also to attempts at coalition building. Furthermore, with the change of government and the rise of Ukrainian nationalism, norm entrepreneurs themselves have engaged in a reframing of liberalization as a matter of strengthening the cultural and political links of Ukraine with Europe. Overall, with respect to the role played by contestation in norm localization, we have shown here that the degree and intensity of contestation is crucial for localizing liberal notions of sexual citizenship. Moreover, we have clearly shown how the strategies of both, norm entrepreneurs and antipreneurs, shift when they are considered as part of a wider struggle over national identity. This analysis of contested localization thus underlines the fact that the patterns and dynamics of how global norms are translated into local contexts depend very much on whether norm antipreneurs can successfully resist norm localization and offer legitimate alternatives to liberalism.

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8 Trends of Homophobic Activism in Romania, or ‘How to Turn Religious Convictions into a Referendum and Still Fail’ Ramona Dima

Introduction During the last few years, Romania has witnessed the rise of a great variety of groups, such as—Coaliția pentru Familie (The Coalition for Family), which oppose queer fundamental rights and freedom. The right-wing discourses concerning this topic were also used by some institutions and political parties, especially as a strategy to attract voters; the general opinion over queer issues seemed to be in line with the traits of national homophobia, as the right-wing NGOs kept emphasizing the great numbers of Romanians who, they claimed, supported their views and actions. The discrepancy between the active online and offline campaigns of the Coalition for Family and other religious groups and NGOs and the results of the referendum concerning the interdiction for same-sex couples to marry will be further discussed throughout this paper.

R. Dima (*)  Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden © The Author(s) 2020 R. Buyantueva and M. Shevtsova (eds.), LGBTQ+ Activism in Central and Eastern Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20401-3_8

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The Romanian Civil Code, as it stands today, explicitly states that marriage can only be fulfilled between a man and a woman but Article 48 from the Romanian Constitution refers to the persons entering marriage as ‘spouses’. Following this terminology, various right-wing groups, mostly gathered under the umbrella of the Coalition for Family, have been lobbying for several years, asking for a legal change of the term ‘spouses’ to ‘a man and a woman’, although same-sex marriages were never legal in Romania. After lobbying and a country-wide campaign gathering signatures in 2017 (which, they claimed, resulted in 3,000,000 signatures, of which around 2,600,000 were validated), a referendum for changing Article 48 of the Constitution was organized on October 6–7, 2018, and failed due to the lack of quorum. This chapter aims to present the main strategies of the homophobic groups in influencing public opinion and to analyze the responses from the queer and allied entities (individuals, NGOs, and media). My main research question revolves around how the debates around Article 48 influenced the political and social landscape in Romania. It argues that this homophobic and nationalist campaign aimed at polarizing the society and building the start of a new right-wing political movement that is symptomatic of and in line with the current trends in Europe. I argue that achieving this polarization and strengthening the position of the right-wing groups were among the main goals of their public campaigns, as it is further suggested by their relative lack of reaction following the results of the referendum. As these groups try to push their agenda forward, their discourse also spreads to areas such as restricting safe and free abortion or forbidding sexual education in schools. This chapter compares the case built by these movements and the LGBT+ activists’ responses and places them in the current political system (in which the social democrat party, currently the main ruling force in Romania, continues to fast develop right-wing views and policies). By doing so, I aim to draw a clear and nuanced image of how these discourses overlap and comment on the outcomes of these strategies, by offering and interpreting a collage of reactions, events, and situations taking place during various moments of both the right-wing and LGBT+ groups and supporters’ campaigns.

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The continuous growth of extreme-right movements throughout Europe has its local echoes in Romania. One may observe it in increasingly racist, xenophobic, and homophobic discourses at various levels, from political leaders who ghettoize Roma persons or gain political capital through their anti-migrant speeches to various public persons taking pride in their misinformed attitudes and opinions on same-sex relationships and partnerships. The present chapter analyzes locality of these movements in line with the extensive academic literature concerning post-socialist states arguing that in order to understand the social constructions of queer identities, one should also consider regional and national identity aspects that are in place in each of these cultural spaces (Kulpa and Mizielinska 2011). At the same time, globalization of culture made it possible for queer Western culture to permeate these areas. As Anikó Imre observes, the changes overlap with the consumption and regional localization processes (Imre 2013). On the same note, I would argue that the same logic is also followed when it comes to ‘importing’ anti-LGBT+ discourses and strategies from the Western spaces and introducing them in post-socialist spaces. Throughout the chapter, I emphasize the process and discuss it in connection with the Romanian context. Thus, I propose a case study based on the emergence of the Coalition for Family in Romania. This group of NGOs and individuals employs a diverse set of communication tools and strategies to promote their discriminatory messages, all constructed with the abundant use of expressions such as ‘civil society’, ‘human rights’, and ‘freedom of speech’. On the other side, reactive activism seeks to explore ways of combating the Coalition’s discourses through various means, including art, legal actions, protests, and social media. In this respect, I will analyze the messages, channels, and implications of homophobic propaganda and the reactions to it. I will also analyze how Romanian mass media reflected the efforts of the LGBT+ rights activists or supporters as opposed to the actions of the Coalition. Another aim of the chapter is to offer an account on these movements in Romania that could serve as a basis for a comparative analysis between this country and other post-socialist states. Moreover, I argue that most of the anti-LGBT+ strategies that are or have been

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used widely in Western contexts are at place in this case, but the actual outcomes seem not to match the desired outcomes because of the particularities of the Romanian civil society and political situation. Therefore, I seek to explore the main strategies and recurrent imagery that have been employed in shaping the debate, using online sources for obtaining statistics related to the Coalition’s online presence and the implications this data might have when compared with their PR practices, communication strategies, and organized events. I use discourse analysis as a key method for understanding and comparing the anti-LGBT+ and the LGBT+ discourses and strategies. I will also briefly present quantitative data related to the Coalition for Family’s online reach, which will I will then use to establish a further correlation between online participation and the offline outcome. The chapter consists of four parts. The first regards ‘queerness’ and the way it is perceived in Romania (similar to other post-socialist states) as a ‘Western import’. Next, I will provide a brief account on the shaping of the LGBT+ community and activism in Romania after the fall of the communist regime followed by the depiction of Romanian counter-movement. The third section is dedicated to a detailed analysis of the extreme-right discourse popularized by the Coalition for Family followed by the last section in which the so-called referendum for family is discussed.

Queerness as an ‘Import’ and Other Tropes As the topic of LGBT+ identities is strictly connected to the idea of nationalism, especially in post-socialist states, this section critically deals with some relevant scholarly works concerning this topic. As there are only a few academic sources concerning LGBT+ issues in Romania, I will mainly refer to scholars who conducted their research on similar contexts. In ‘Nationality and sexuality: homophobic discourse and the “national threat” in contemporary Latvia’, Richard Mole (2011) argues that religion and the common background of former communist countries, such as Latvia and other CEE states, are not the sole factors that

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influence the Latvian extreme attitudes against homosexuality. Other factors Mole analyzes are the tropes (found in the media and political discourses) according to which queerness is seen as a threat to national identity and values. As we will see later, these arguments are also employed in Romania. Mole highlights one of the popular strategies of right-wing groups: the appeal to the decrease in birthrate that opens the way for populist measures, anti-abortion legislation, and the demonization of ‘sexual practices that failed to produce children’ (p. 546). Gender roles are reinforced in these discourses, and anything seen as ‘non-traditional’ (e.g., homosexuality) is deemed as an import and a threat to the ‘traditional ethos’. Mole reflects on the internal/external ‘threat’ of non-normative sexualities arguing that the tendency of constructing and redefining a national identity in the post-socialist states represents a way of countering the EU and other organizations’ legislation and proposals with regard to the rights of sexual minorities. Therefore, bringing up the case of Latvian nationalism, the researcher argues that this liberal tendency is regarded as a national threat to ‘the Latvian nation in its desired ethnic form’ (p. 554). The anti-EU rhetoric is also used in Romania when it comes to issues such as LGBT+ person’s lives and rights. Alongside it, the discourses based on religion or foreign studies that claim to prove the negative impacts of same-sex relationships are often brought into public’s attention. Authors such as Stephen Hicks (2003) have demonstrated the biases and misinterpretations of the persons who use these studies, following some examples of ‘Christian homophobic discourse’ (p. 4). One example would be the one alleging that children of queer parents are more likely to face sexual abuse and stigma which, as Hicks argues, uses Patterson’s work in an untruthful and biased way, as he clearly states the opposite (i.e., that heterosexual men are the ones committing most child abuses) (Patterson 1992, p. 1034). There are some other strategies related to the means of communication chosen by the opponents of LGBT+ rights. One linguistic strategy that can be usually observed at a transnational level is avoiding naming lesbian, gay, transgender, etc. persons as such but to use syntagms such as ‘proper families’ that implicitly exclude lesbian and gay kinship

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formations (Peterson 2011, p. 1). By deliberately avoiding terms such as ‘queer family’ or ‘lesbian parenting’, the idea of a single type of family (i.e., ‘heterosexual’, ‘traditional’ one) is reiterated and articulated in the public’s social expectations and opinions. These examples were chosen because they also function in the antiLGBT+ logic currently present in Romania. The development of such discourses strengthened the idea of LGBT+ issues being more of a ‘Western’ concept and opened the way for homophobic and traditionalistic groups to model and re-model the ‘traditional Romanian identity’ that nowadays is constructed as being religion-based, heterosexual, and pro-natalist. But in order to understand how these discourses evolved over time, I will now comment on the main (historical) stages concerning the issue of LGBT+ rights in Romania.

A History of LGBT+ Activism in Romania After the fall of the communist regime in 1989, the first LGBT+ association, ACCEPT, was founded in 1996. The same year, the parliament introduced amendments to Article 200 of the Criminal Code. This article, effective since 1968, criminalized the private sexual acts between two consenting adults of the same sex and presented the legal grounds on which LGBT+ persons were prosecuted. Partial decriminalization became possible as a result of intense lobbying from domestic organizations (such as APADOR-CH, ACCEPT) and international human rights organizations along with the Council of Europe that explicitly criticized the article. Public manifestations of sexuality remained prohibited, along with the entire activity of LGBT+ associations seen as ‘promoting homosexuality’. Gay persons could still face imprisonment under those circumstances. Article 200 was completely repealed in 2001, once Romania approached the end of EU negotiations for becoming an EU member (Andreescu 2011). Since then, ACCEPT has offered legal support to LGBT+ persons, alongside trying to insert issues regarding human rights (decriminalization of LGBT+ relationships, anti-discrimination policies and later civil partnership policies) into the public and political discourses.

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Over time, the emergence of different informal groups that helped shape the LGBT+ activism in Romania could be mentioned along with other NGOs that started to publicly state their support for these issues. Other associations were founded in time: Be An Angel Romania, in the early 2000s in Cluj-Napoca and in Bucharest, MozaiQ in 2015, TRANSform in 2014—the first association dedicated to transgender persons in Romania. TRANSform is inactive at the time this chapter is written, though its members remain extremely active as activists in various other formal and informal structures. Speaking of the post-2000 years and grassroots activism, it is important to mention the emergence of support groups in major cities. In contrast to the above-mentioned groups (except for Be An Angel Romania), support groups were formed outside the Capital city (which, for many years, has been the most important and at some point the only city in which LGBT+ formal groups existed). Some examples are Les Sisterhood (recently re-named Queer Sisterhood) in Cluj-Napoca,1 LGBT+eam (founded in 2006 in Timișoara), Rise OUT (an LBGT+ association in Iași). Another notable group is Campus Pride Bucharest (founded in 2015, focused on LGBT+ students). There is, of course, still much work to do in less rich cities and in rural areas, where there are no LGBT+ communities or programs. Bucharest Pride Week and its associated march was, until 2017, the only LGBT+Q+ public event in Romania. In 2017, an informal group of LGBT+ activists (under the stewardship of Be an Angel Romania) and Go Free NGO in Cluj organized another march, which was the first for the city. It showed that, although Romania has proper anti-discrimination legislation, these principles do not apply in practice when it comes to queer events or issues. After several (to be specific, 22) attempts to register the march to the city hall, the event was finally and at the last minute approved by the Cluj municipality to take place on a route that was isolated and not central, as per the initial requests. Meanwhile, the United Romania Party (Partidul România Unită)—a 1On

Les Sisterhood Cluj website (now Queer Sisterhood Cluj): ‘Les Sisterhood Cluj is a group of female persons who identify as lesbians, bi, trans, queer. The aim of the group is connecting and consolidating a united community which can offer support’.

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far-right organization—applied four days later to organize a countermarch, which would take place in the same day as the queer march, on the same initial central route initially proposed by the queer activists. Their request was granted after their first application. The Cluj Pride March gathered several hundred persons in relative peace, with just a few homophobic slurs shouted from the margins. As this part of the chapter is dedicated to the legislative initiatives related to same-sex partnership, it is also important to mention that the most recent struggle of ACCEPT Association and other NGOs is to convince the Romanian authorities to recognize the marriage between Adrian Coman (a Romanian citizen) and Clai Hamilton (a US citizen). The couple had a hearing at the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), and the decision issued in November 2017 was that the Romanian state should recognize their marriage. The Romanian Constitutional Court was waiting for a decision from CJEU, but this favorable decision was met with complete silence from the Romanian authorities. The issue of LGBT+ rights started to gain public attention, especially with the repeated attempts (first in 2013, then in 2016) of a Romanian politician (Remus Cernea) to propose a law concerning civil partnership that would allow civil unions for sex couples. The third similar proposal, formulated by CNCD (The National Council for Combating Discrimination), was issued in October 2018 by several deputies (both independent ones and representatives of political parties). Each time, the projects were rejected by the Legal Commission in the Senate. Meanwhile, in the heated debates surrounding legal partnership proposals, some associations (of a religious and right-wing nature) formed, in 2015, the Coalition for Family. The next section is dedicated to discussing the formation of anti-LGBT+ activism in Romania.

Anti-LGBT+ Activism in Romania The negative reaction to the legislative attempts and public discourses in which the voices of LGBT+ persons and organizations started to be heard has a long history in the context of post-communist Romania. As homophobic groups began to form and to borrow Western (mainly American) anti-LGBT+ rhetoric, another process started to take shape

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in the Romanian context: the ‘import’ of anti-LGBT+ organizations and strategies to the Eastern European states. I will continue by presenting the main traits of these movements, giving a brief account of their first years in the Romanian public sphere, as I aim to discuss further the importance of this history in contemporary debates. In the early 2000s, anti-choice (‘pro-life’) movements such as Pro-Vita appeared on the Romanian scene. Alongside them, several neo-protestant organizations (initially criticized by the Romanian Orthodox Church but later assimilated in their legal efforts) started to lobby against free and legal abortion, euthanasia and other such issues. Their first attempt to change the Romanian Constitution took place between 2006 and 2007. The article (Art. 48), which defines the family as based on the marriage of two spouses, was brought into the discussion. The groups managed to raise 650,000 signatures2 in favor of a referendum, and only 400,000 of these were validated; therefore, the legal minimum in order to initiate the process (500,000 signatures) was not fulfilled. In June 2013, the Commission for the Review of the Constitution adopted the form stating ‘the family is founded on the freely consented marriage between a man and a woman’. The initiators at that time were a group of 73 NGOs and religious groups that had come together under the name of ‘Coalition for Family’. The head of government at that time, Victor Ponta, considered that the amendment was unnecessary, copied from the Hungarian Constitution, and would transmit a conservative message (Mediafax 2013). The amendment was eventually rejected, and the form ‘spouses’ remained in place (Council of Europe 2014). In 2015, the Coalition restarted the process of collecting signatures for replacing the term ‘spouses’ with the expression ‘the union between a man and a woman’ regarding the right to marry as stated in the Romanian Constitution. After almost a year, they claimed to have raised 3 million signatures (not verified by any authority; some cases were reported in which representatives of the Coalition went to schools to obtain signatures even from minors) in support of a referendum on 2The

page that offers a brief account on the initiative, hosted by The Alliance for Families website, was removed; however the article can still be accessed via Internet Archive—Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20140804102931/www.alianta-familiilor.ro/proiectulcivic.html.

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this issue. This potential referendum became a central theme of discussion, both among politicians and in the civil society. Public declarations were issued, one of the most remarkable coming from Klaus Iohannis, Romania’s President, who stated that society must be tolerant and accept the others; moreover he stated that he did not endorse ‘the religious fanaticism’ and the idea of a referendum on this topic. Shortly after, he reverted his decision and, as some of the parties (including the social democrat party and a liberal party ALDE) had already signed a collaboration protocol with the Coalition for Family, he stated that a referendum would be a ‘wise idea’. He would continue to go back and forth with contradictory declarations until the moment of the referendum, in conjunction with the fact that his political public stances are in opposition with those of the leaders of the social democrat party, now in government. Adriana Săftoiu, the vice president of the National Liberal Party (PNL) refused to endorse the initiative arguing that the liberals should think more of the principle of protecting individual rights and freedoms. On the same note, Raluca Prună, head of the Ministry of Justice, at that time stated that having such a restrictive definition for a family would be an evidence of intolerance and that the aim of the law is to protect all citizens. There were other reactions in the media and in the public space. Those included arguments regarding single-parent families, persons living in consensual partnership (not recognized by law), families where children were raised by their relatives, etc. Those cases would not be seen as ‘families’ according to the Coalition for Family‘s proposal. There were also small-scale protests organized by LGBT+ individuals, NGOs, and allies against this initiative. The referendum was only one of the Coalition’s aims and, at this moment, the most notorious one. Applying the method of taking things one step at a time, they issued 50 measures with regard to policies around family issues. These include, but are not limited to eliminating the state subventions for abortion and contraceptives, forbidding minors to access abortion and family planning services without the consent of their parents and introducing a mediation process to discourage divorces. Conservative groups in Croatia, Slovenia, and Slovakia also proposed similar initiatives. Adam Bodnar and Anna Sledzinska-Simon offer a

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short review of these initiatives across Eastern Europe in the chapter ‘Between Recognition and Homophobia: Same-Sex Couples in Eastern Europe’ (Bodnar and Sledzinska-Simon 2014). In Croatia, the conservative group U ime obitelji (‘In the Name of the Family’), backed by the Catholic Church, raised over 700,000 signatures in favor of the referendum that had the same purpose as the Romanian one. Approximately 65% of the votes were in favor of the amendment of the Constitution in December 2013 (Roudik 2014). As in the case of Romania, the Prime Minister Zoran Milanović stated that there was no need for a change in the Constitution and that the referendum would be a waste of resources. In 2014, the Croatian Parliament passed the Law on Life Partnership, granting same-sex couples the right to enter civil partnerships (ILGA-Europe 2014). In the case of Slovenia, after failed attempts of LGBT+ groups to contest the legality of a referendum, the Civil Initiative for the Family and the Rights of Children managed to organize it in 2012. The turnout did not meet the minimum requirements. In Slovakia, the conservative group Alliance for Family supported by the Roman Catholic Church raised 400,000 signatures in order to hold a referendum ‘on protecting the family’. Marriage in Slovakia was already defined as a ‘unique bond between a man and a woman’ since June 4, 2014. The referendum took place in 2015 and only 21.4% of the voters were present. Therefore, it was not effective despite the media campaign that included audio-visual messages and billboards (Krošlák 2015). As the Constitution was already placing same-sex marriage outside the law, the referendum had all the premises of a mechanism of further discriminating the queer communities.

Coalition for Family (CfF) as an Institution of Homophobia The recent study of GLOBSEC Policy Institute (2017) on the impact of fake news, misinformative sources, and their credibility in seven CEE countries shows that ‘Almost 10% of people in the CEE trust online disinformation outlets as relevant sources of information on world affairs. In Romania, 30% of respondents considered disinformation

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websites to [original emphasis] be a relevant source of information’ (p. 24). The same study reveals that 51% of people in Romania use the Internet to actively search for information on political events and 57% do not believe in information provided by the media (p. 27). These numbers should be regarded with caution, because of the absence of a detailed methodology (which would include the number of persons that took the survey, the questions asked). I will now briefly note some comments on the sources used by CfF’s website and Facebook page. In my analysis, I have found that the majority of articles shared on the CfF Facebook page are from right and extreme-right sources (both foreign and Romanian). According to Media Bias/Fact Check,3 websites such as Breitbart, Life Site News, American Thinker, Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children, Heat Street, Red Flag News, and The Daily Signal that are very often quoted by the Coalition are right-biased, often fail the fact checks, and some of their news are misleading and often appeal to emotions and stereotypes. The only exception in terms of foreign sources was Talking Points Memo, which, according to MBFC News ‘has liberal bias in story selection and produces some very credible journalism. They almost always source to credible information’. The article cited by the Coalition was entitled ‘Ohio Judge Refuses to Marry Same-Sex Couple’ (published on July 8, 2015). The Romanian websites from which the Coalition communicators most often choose to share the news are also of rightwing and extreme-right orientation and some of them are religiously affiliated (Cuvântul Ortodox, Cultura vieții, Librăria Sophia, Lumea Credinței, Presa liberă, ActiveNews, Știri pe surse). These websites, along with others cited by the CfF, appear on a list of unreliable sources launched in 2017.4 These articles often link homosexuality and queer rights to the practice of zoophilia (e.g., article on Uwe Mitzscherlich and his fake 3Media Bias/Fact Check (MBFC News) is an independent online media outlet dedicated to educating the public on media bias and deceptive news practices. 4By the date of the final review of this present article, the website https://denecrezut.faction.ro/ was removed but it can still be consulted here: https://web.archive.org/web/20170324084822/, https://denecrezut.faction.ro/.

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marriage ceremony with his cat), pedophilia (Australia denying convicted pedophiles their passports), or statistics on suicides in LGBT+ community, which are linked not to the homophobic pressure some individuals are subjected to by initiatives and organizations such as CfF and the Church, but to their ‘mental disorders’. Although the Coalition denies that they consider LGBT+ people sick, comments from their followers suggest otherwise. Moreover, the Coalition hosts another website, parteneriat-civil.ro5 (civil-partnership. ro), which is presented as ‘an informative website for civic engagement, initiated by the Coalition for Family’ (2016). The information I found on the website is self-explanatory: from a biased documentary full of false ‘facts’ (according to which, among many other things, diseases related and specific to homosexuals include ‘Kaposi’s sarcoma, HIV, Hepatitis A, B, and C, neurosyphilis, diarrhea’ (Coalition for Family 2018a), to articles such as ‘10 reasons why homosexual “marriage” is harmful’ (Coalition for Family 2018b), which begins with the words ‘this kind of marriage is not marriage’. It continues with the negation of the fact that non-heterosexual sexualities are natural (and omits the overwhelming evidence found in several species), adds on the false premise that same-sex couples are sterile or slippery slope fallacies such as ‘legalizing homosexual marriages would be a door opener for other aberrant behaviors’. To all of these examples, the comments of the CfF might be added, as further proofs of disinformation; one such case is a response from CfF administrators in which they state that ‘In Switzerland, same-sex [sic.] is not legal’, when, in fact, it has been legal since 2007 (EQUALDEX 2018). The website resource page is linked to the anti-choice website of ProVita. According to Backlink checker, the backlinks are from rightwing sites and initiatives such as buciumul.ro, curentul.net, and oradereligie.ro (the initiatives of persons and NGOs, mainly the ones that back the Coalition’s messages that promote the religious education 5After

the referendum was invalidated, the majority of the resources hosted on the website were deleted. These can still be accessed thanks to archiving internet engines such as Wayback Machine. The older version of the parteneriat-civil.ro website can be found here: https://web. archive.org/web/*/, http://parteneriat-civil.ro/.

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subject as opposed to the history of religions in the school curriculum). Although both websites state that the initiators are not affiliated to any religious groups, a brief look at the NGOs and cults that are in favor of these entities indicates otherwise. As many as 17 NGOs from the 46 members of the Coalition have religious affiliations stated in their name itself and the others have as core values faith and family. Many of these arguments were used and reused in different periods of time and different socio-geographical contexts and were dismissed as logical fallacies or proven to be based on biased and false assumptions. The fact that these arguments are still debated is strictly connected to mass media and other mass communication mediums, because initiatives of this kind are widely shared each time they appear. When arguing in favor of the amendment of Article 48, the Coalition uses misleading translations, such as that of the first line of Article 16 from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. ‘Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family’. Although the terms in English are clearly general and have a plural form, the Coalition always translates them in the singular (i.e., ‘a man and a woman’) and uses this as an argument in favor of the ‘traditional family’ which is, in their opinion, heterosexual only. The Coalition states that they base their translation on the French version of Article 16, from 1948. The syntagm appears there in singular form, ‘l’homme et la femme’, and is regarded in its specific meaning, not in a general manner, also omitting the fact that same-sex marriage is legal in France since 2013, alongside civil partnership and joint adoption (ILGA-Europe 2017). This, of course, represents only one detail of this particular strategy of communication. Other statements of the Coalition include the deliberate confusion between religious marriage and civil partnership, the construction of antagonisms between heterosexual Romanian citizens and their non-heterosexual counterparts (the latter being presented as agents who discriminate against the ‘majority’), and the translation of misleading international news with regards to LGBT+ persons or communities. I examined whether the Coalition for Family‘s website was changed over time and if so, what the changes were and what they could reveal

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about the Coalition’s communication strategies. Using the Wayback Machine (website that captures previous versions of pages on websites across the Internet) in order to access the initial variant of the website, I have found some interesting modifications. In 2015, when it was launched, the mission of the CfF was to show the ‘superiority of the family based on marriage as a social institution’, as opposed to the more refined mission of the updated website: family based on ‘the freely consented marriage between a man and a woman as social institution’. In the initial form, the implied fact was that the people who could form a family (or, at least, a ‘superior’ one) would have to be married, thus denying the reality of existing Romanian families that are not based on marriage. The paragraph in which the CfF proposes the denial of alternative forms of cohabitation (such as the civil unions) in order to reinforce the status of marriage is today enriched by a note in which they state that ‘[civil unions] demotivate couples from getting married and reduce the importance and uniqueness of marriage’. As single-parent families are brought into attention whenever the initiative is discussed, the CfF’s position underwent a slight change that is also reflected in the website variants: 2015—‘Raising and educating the child in a complete and stable family environment with a mother and father is always the priority of public policies and legislation’. 2016—The following phrase was added ‘With all the respect for the efforts and sacrifices made by single parents, we recall that the child’s interest is best served while in a complete family’. Moreover, in another paragraph of their manifesto, the CfF previously stated that ‘Other forms of social cohabitation, family alternatives, are aggressively promoted: consensual couple, single-parent households, and homosexuality’. In the current version, the last two categories have disappeared. This suggests that CfF changed its discourse when they realized that single-parent families are a reality that has not been neglected in the arguments proposed by the groups that oppose their initiative and actions. Concerning ‘homosexuality’ and family, as we

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will see in the next section, there are some voices in the CfF that do not deny that there are queer Romanian families that can be called such. Those voices insist that the referendum is to set the limits of what is to be called ‘marriage’, not ‘family’ (although the proposed definition is clearly linked to the definition of ‘family’). Other objectives remained untouched when making the changes on their website. For instance, ‘Our goal is to have as many families in Romania as possible, marked by longevity, as numerous as possible, providing their members with a favorable economic, social, protective and psychosocial environment, and for the Romanian nation, providing continuity, demographic, economic, social and cultural development’. This paragraph can be regarded as populist, with no relation to factual measures that can be proposed and with a strong call on demographic growth (thrice in four lines). Right-wing entities usually use the decline in demographics to create concern and fear. To reinforce their views on reproductive rights and other topics such as divorce, the Coalition proposes additional steps to this process, including mediation and counseling, that might postpone the procedure and in some cases—if one of the spouses induces physical and psychological violence to their partner—severely affect the persons under these circumstances. When comparing the content and the manner in which the messages on the CfF’s page were written, one could find an important difference and change of style. During the last two years, the Coalition replaced aggressive language with subtler nuances. An example of a post from 2015 is emblematic: ‘This is why we have to oppose the homosexual propaganda by any means: In the US, Christian patrons are fined with enormous amounts of money if they refuse to satisfy homosexuals’ caprices!!!’ Another interesting change happened with CfF’s list of supporters. The initial list consisted of 16 persons, of which only 6 have remained on the current list. One of the persons that were omitted is priest Constantin Necula, who appeared in several televised debates and conferences on behalf of the Coalition. During the June 3rd edition of ‘Appeal to morality’, an 80-minute long program on the National Romanian Television, priest Visarion Alexa and law professor Gheorghe Iancu appeared on a debate about the referendum, but were not

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mentioned by the CfF as their invited guests. Moreover, the CfF dismissed the claims according to which they had indeed invited professor Iancu to speak on their behalf and stated that the National Television had selected him. These claims were later attacked, as one of the producers issued the following statement on her Facebook page: The initiative belonged to the Coalition for Family, which had the freedom to nominate those whom they considered to be the most appropriate to support their views. I assure you that we have evidence to support the above. (Iordănescu 2017)

This omission is in line with the efforts of the CfF to appear as having no relation to extreme-right views. Recently, Rost Association, one of the supporters of the CfF, a group that shows, in their articles, a cult for Corneliu Zelea Codreanu and his fascist movement, left the supporters’ list but not the initiative that they still favor. The online sphere was not the only channel used by these right-wing organizations. Their discourses were also heavily echoed by traditional mass media. For example, on June 3, 2017, the National Television hosted an edition of the TV show ‘Appeal to morality’ (Youtube 2017) in which the supporters and the opponents of CfF’s initiative brought under debate their ‘for’ and ‘against’ arguments. By analyzing this debate, I could observe the fact that the CfF supporters dominated the discussion (both in terms of allocated time and number of interruptions) and proposed a mixture of logical fallacies as arguments (most used were the appeal to popularity, traditions, authority, red herring fallacies, slippery slope, and circular arguments). A short example that encapsulates the whole spirit of the argumentation is a quote from the law professor Gheorghe Iancu (who, a few months after this statement, was voted as the president for Committee of Ethics and University Management). While arguing that everyone has the right to hold opinions, Iancu stated: ‘Do not avoid history, madame. It was not in ’39 that Hitler decided to do this [i.e. the Holocaust], it was only in ’42, when he started to go mad’ (min.57:14–57:24). As the CfF became more present in the virtual scene, the number of opposing reactions started to increase. They took the form of comments

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on the Coalition’s Facebook page, articles in electronic newspapers, and personal pages. While some of these reactions try to dismantle the CfF’s arguments in a serious manner or on an angry note, there are other ways to challenge them on a humorous note. One example is the Coalition for Vanilla that appeared in May 2017. It is a mock page (Coaliția pentru Vanilie 2017) that borrows the visual elements and discourse of CfF’s Facebook page and states that it fights for ‘the protection and support of vanilla-based ice cream’ in its traditional form. Several types of posts encountered on CfF’s page are reinterpreted and reposted in concordance to CfF’s aims. There are pictures of the CfF’s supporters (public figures such as Dan Puric, Dragonu AK47, Cedri2k, clerics, and politicians) eating vanilla ice cream (with messages such as ‘I support the traditional vanilla’), mock interviews with the initiators of the page, parodies on the Coalition’s campaign video clips (‘3,000,000 voices’ transformed into ‘3,000,000 seals’), pictures with people that ‘support the traditional vanilla flavor’, and the right to reply. In less than a month, the Coalition for Vanilla had gained over 12,900 appreciations in comparison with the 51,570 (at that time) gained by CfF in more than two years. Moreover, as Facebook introduced a new feature (Pride reacts, a pictogram of a rainbow flag, in order to celebrate the season of Pride Marches all over the world), the LGBT+ supporters started to use the pictogram as a reaction to the Coalition for Family’s posts. The numbers are interesting: Many of the previous posts were marked by individuals with the LGBT+ symbol, and in some cases, the ‘pride’ reactions outnumbered the usual ones (‘likes’, for example). Another initiative was the platform Respect, which was formed by over 100 NGOs and individuals to oppose the referendum of the Coalition and which promotes the statement that fundamental human rights are not subject to a vote. What do all these numbers, actions, and reactions in the online environment with ramifications in offline territories tell? Do we witness a shift in opinions toward same-sex relationships and LGBT+ people’s rights in contemporary Romania? Can this debate be seen a symptom of a larger strategy aimed at polarizing the society and facilitating the introduction of right-wing discourses? This chapter aims to put together the different dimensions of right-wing movements in Romania that are

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strictly connected to LGBT+ rights and offer some insight and background for further assessments that can only be made if the situation continues to develop.

The Outcome: A Failed Referendum The Romanian Government announced that the referendum for changing the Constitution would be held over two days (October 6 and 7), in order to maximize the chances for fulfilling the quorum of 30% out of all the persons eligible to vote. For the quorum (5,675,249 persons) to be achieved, the CfF and their supporters started an intensive campaign which had, as one of its core messages, the idea that voting ‘yes’ would mean that the future of the Romanian children would be saved. The way in which the referendum question was formulated may also have played an important role in the outcome. As the referendum law was very specific in terms of how the question should be formulated, the result was a very vague question: ‘Do you agree with the law revising the Romanian Constitution in the form adopted by the Parliament?’ This phrase had no reference to sexuality or minority rights, and in the context of political instability and the continuing decrease of trust in politicians (mainly due to widely discussed legislative measures6 that triggered strong reactions from the public opinion) may also have affected the turnout for referendum. After this long and invested campaign to convince Romanians that same-sex couples could not form a family, the most obvious result was the final number of people who came to vote 20.41% (3,731,704 people). Thus, the referendum was invalidated. There was also a strong (mainly online) campaign (#boicot—in English: #boycott) that called for a general boycotting of the referendum. The main media messages were transmitted with the help of endorsers such as public figures (mirroring the strategy of CfF), 6Media

often referred to them as the ‘laws of justice’. One of the most discussed aspects was the change of the conditions for magistrates, and in consequence, the number of eligible prosecutors and magistrates was drastically decreased. This also affected some well-known cases involving several politicians (including the Romanian Prime Minister).

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and there were also a few offline actions organized to raise awareness on the fact that human rights should not be subjected to voting. One can point out that the relatively small online reach of this movement might not be linked to the actual number of people who would vote for changing the Constitution. While this claim remains valid, the low turnout is also signaling the fact that the extensive online campaign of CfF did not have the desired results. What does this mean for the anti-LGBT+ movement and for the Romanian society? Is this a signal that Romanians’ attitudes concerning sexual minorities’ rights are improving? Could this result finally lead to acknowledging some basic rights, such as legal partnership and adoption for LGBT+ persons in Romania? These questions are still to be addressed while there is yet no outcome in terms of a more inclusive legislation, although different political parties proposed different bills for extending civil partnership rights to same-sex couples. I consider this case study to be important in the history of LGBT+ movement in Romania, as it is both symptomatic for the current rise of far-right discourses in Europe and a perfect example of how public relations and civic initiatives condoned by the church, private funding, and political actors can raise questions about the fragility of the democratic process, especially when it comes to civil liberties and human rights that should not be subjected to a vote.

Conclusion Although this chapter focused on the online dimension of the proLGBT+ rights and anti-LGBT+ rights movements, these movements also impact offline environments. CfF organized conferences, seminars, talks, and tents for rising signatures; its representatives have been in churches and schools in order to promote their initiative and to gather signatures, and there have been marches and other public events in support of this initiative. However, in order to offer in-depth analysis, it was necessary to focus on a single dimension of this pluri-mediatic campaign.

8  Trends of Homophobic Activism in Romania …     205

Throughout the chapter, I presented a brief timeline, also highlighting some of the more visible moments and nuances of this ‘civic initiative’ with regards to changing the definition of family as ‘marriage between a man and a woman’. By analyzing both the online impact and the content of the messages, we can obtain a more accurate image, apart from misinformation and biases, of this organization’s means and tactics. The ‘myth’ of power in numbers might have been eroded and the patterns of argumentation (along with their fallacies, in most cases) have been presented. Therefore, although one of the CfF’s main arguments is that they have important support, this is not sustained in their number of appreciations and shares on their Facebook and web page. Furthermore, the elements of LGBT+ identities as reflected in the Romanian media, along with the struggles of queer activists throughout the relatively short history of the LGBT+ movement in Romania were linked to the resources the homophobic entities use and misuse in their discourses. This strategy of mixing true facts (usually news from Romania) and unreliable is not new. The Coalition for Family, for example, often uses biased news—most of them translated from foreign sources—related to homosexuality in order to receive reactions and increase their reach on social networks. This strategy can in some cases be efficient, as the reactions on social media rose, especially when it comes to issues such as legal partnership or other rights that queer Romanians still have to obtain. In this chapter, I have also analyzed the sources most often used by the Coalition in their communication. Another important aspect is that one of CfF’s strategies was to present Romanians as a religiously homogenous group (and, by extension, heterosexual) while at the same time framing LGBT+ persons as outsiders to Christianity, in opposition to the ‘true’ Romanians. These efforts to polarize society were most visible in the examples concerning queer relationships, gender ‘ideology’, and sexual education which were often used in an ‘us/they’ frame, where the ‘us’, i.e., the ‘majority’, is heterosexual and fond of traditional values, nationalistic, and opposes Western principles. By presenting biased (from right and extreme-right-wing sources) news and opinions, the CfF’s credibility decreases and raises problems of ethics at the level of communication. During their most recent

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campaign, the Coalition for Family funded its entire discourse on the repetition of the trope of the ‘Three million voices’ backing them, using it as a metaphor to refer to the fact that they do represent the thoughts and intentions of the majority of Romanians. In a sense, their main slogan was continuously aiming at being interpreted as: we have three million voices which stand for even more millions ready to act on our command. By a combination of shaming tactics, traditionalists messages, classic trolling strategies, and simple visuals hinting at the fact that they indeed possess the power of the nation, CfF did manage to construct a bubble in which new far-right, nationalist, and traditionalist initiatives will continue to be fostered. In that sense, their referendum campaign was successful, giving far-right oriented individuals and organizations more visibility and a platform to coalesce on. Yet, it also gave human rights organizations the same impulse. Acknowledgements   I would like to thank Maria Cohut, Simona Dumitriu, and the editors and reviewers of this volume for their patience, insights, and suggestions that played an important part in the process of developing this chapter.

References Andreescu, V. (2011). From Legal Tolerance to Social Acceptance: Predictors of Heterosexism in Romania. Revista Română de Sociologie, XXII(3–4), 209–231. Bodnar, A., & Sledzinska-Simon, A. (2014). Between Recognition and Homophobia: Same-Sex Couples in Eastern Europe. In Same-Sex Couples Before National, Supranational and International Jurisdictions (pp. 211–247). Berlin: Springer. Coaliția pentru Vanilie. (2017, May). Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/ coalitiaaiablanao/. Accessed 19 Feb 2019. Coalition for Family. (2016, November 5). About Us/Contact. http://parteneriat-civil.ro/contacteaza-ne/. Accessed 13 Sept 2018. Coalition for Family. (2018a, August 31). Bolile homosexualilor – un documentar medical la zi [Homosexuals’ Diseases: An Up-to-Date Documentary]. http:// parteneriat-civil.ro/argumente-contra/bolile-homosexualilor-un-documentar-medical-la-zi/. Accessed 13 Sept 2018.

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Coalition for Family. (2018b, February 5). 10 Motive: De ce „căsătoria” homosexuală este dăunatoare [10 Reasons Why Homosexual “Marriage” Is Harmful]. http://parteneriat-civil.ro/argumente-contra/10-motive-de-ce-casatoria-homosexuala-este-daunatoare/. Accessed 13 Sept 2018. Council of Europe. (2014, March 24). Opinion on the Draft Law on the Review of the Constitution of Romania. http://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/default.aspx?pdffile=CDL-AD(2014)010-e. Accessed 31 Jan 2019. EQUALDEX. (2018). LGBT+ Rights in Switzerland. http://www.equaldex. com/region/switzerland. Accessed 19 Feb 2019. GLOBSEC. (2017, September). GLOBSEC Trends 2017: Mixed Messages and Signs of Hope from Central & Eastern Europe. https://www.globsec.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/globsec_trends_2017.pdf. Accessed 19 Feb 2019. Hicks, S. (2003). The Christian Right and Homophobic Discourse: A Response to ‘Evidence’ That Lesbian and Gay Parenting Damages Children. Sociological Research Online, 8(4), 1–7. ILGA-Europe. (2014, July 15). Registered Partnership Law Adopted in Croatia. http://www.ilga-europe.org/resources/news/latest-news/registered-partnership-law-adopted-croatia. Accessed 31 Jan 2019. ILGA-Europe. (2017). Charts. http://ilga.org/downloads/2017/Charts_ILGA_ English_Europe_2017.pdf. Accessed 19 Feb 2019. Imre, A. (2013). Global Popular Media and the Local Limits of Queering. In N. Fejes & A. P. Balogh (Eds.), Queer Visibility in Post-Socialist Cultures. Bristol: Intellect Ltd. Iordănescu, Luminița. (2017, June 8). Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/ luminita.iordanescu.5/posts/10211756042369482?pnref=story. Accessed 19 Feb 2019. Krošlák, D. (2015). The Referendum on the So-Called Traditional Family in the Slovak Republic. Central and Eastern European Legal Studies, 1, 149–167. Kulpa, R., & Mizielinska, J. (Eds.). (2011). De-centring Western Sexualities Central and Eastern European Perspectives. Farnham: Ashgate. Mediafax. (2013). “Noua constituţie - Ponta îşi menţine poziţia privind familia: O modificare ar fi inutilă şi conservatoare.” 7 Iun. https://www. mediafax.ro/politic/noua-constitutie-ponta-isi-mentine-pozitia-privind-familia-o-modificare-ar-fi-inutila-si-conservatoare-10941247. Mole, R. (2011). Nationality and Sexuality: Homophobic Discourse and the ‘National Threat’ in Contemporary Latvia. Nations and Nationalism, 17(3), 540–560.

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Patterson, C. J. (1992). Children of Lesbian and Gay Parents. Child Development, 63(5), 1025–1042. Peterson, D. (2011). Neoliberal Homophobic Discourse: Heteronormative Human Capital and the Exclusion of Queer Citizens. Journal of Homosexuality, 58(6–7), 742–757. Roudik, P. (2014, January 13). Croatia: Constitutional Amendment Banning Gay Marriage Passed by Referendum. Global Legal Monitor. http://www. loc.gov/law/foreign-news/article/croatia-constitutional-amendment-banning-gay-marriage-passed-by-referendum/. Accessed 31 Jan 2019. Smallseotools.com. (n.y.). Blacklist Checker. smallseotools.com/backlink-checker. Accessed 19 Feb 2019. Youtube. (2017, June 4). Recurs la morală [Appeal to Morality]. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=l8lQpmrtGu0. Accessed 19 Feb 2019.

9 Putin as Gay Icon? Memes as a Tactic in Russian LGBT+ Activism James E. Baker, Kelly A. Clancy and Benjamin Clancy

Introduction In 2016, an image of President Vladimir Putin wearing make-up and superimposed on a gay pride flag was banned in Russia.1 According to the

1Although

the authors regret we could not secure permission to publish this photograph, we encourage readers to conduct a google image search for “Drag Putin a la Warhol” or “Putin as a gay clown” to view the image referenced throughout the paper.

J. E. Baker (*)  Department of Geography, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA K. A. Clancy  Department of Political Science, Nebraska Wesleyan University, Lincoln, NE, USA e-mail: [email protected] B. Clancy  Department of Communication, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA © The Author(s) 2020 R. Buyantueva and M. Shevtsova (eds.), LGBTQ+ Activism in Central and Eastern Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20401-3_9

209

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Russian Federation’s (RF) Ministry of Justice, which maintains an online database of extremist materials, the image is “meant to give the impression of a non-standard sexual orientation of the RF president,” centering the altered image of Putin in a fraught debate over LGBT+ rights in Russia.2 Yet the image has appeared on Russian social media in an apparent critique of both gay rights and Putin. How could the same image shift its meaning in this way? In this paper, we argue that the queered image of Putin, currently enjoying wide circulation as a global Internet meme, presents a shift in the representational and sexual politics of Putin’s Russia. The RF’s response to the meme signals a new effort by Putin to legally regulate the sexual status of his globally recognizable media celebrity. This chapter examines the way in which discourses of sexuality interface with the Russian state on material and symbolic levels. The material level includes public space and legal discourse, while the symbolic level includes the visual narratives and “riffs” deployed by political actors to operationalize sexuality in order to impugn or affirm Putin’s masculinity and legitimacy. The Russian state and its leaders are frequently put into conversation with homosexuality, but the valence of the discourse shifts by context. The first section of this chapter examines the image in closer detail, conducting a semiotic analysis of how a picture becomes memetic, able to travel across space and time. We consider the subject of the gay clown image itself,3 Russian President Vladimir Putin, as a critical space within the interpretive polysemy of protest. The second section uses this meme to present and explore four realms of discourse, explicating the fluid and contentious discourse about sexuality, Putin, and the Russian state. We examine how the realms reflect the contestation over homosexuality in Russia. We conclude with an assessment of the spatial-political implications of the meme’s visuality. We emphasize that the explicit shift from behavior (defining sexual acts between subjects) to performance and images (especially those suggestive of Putin’s “non-standard sexual 2должно

служить намеком на якобы нестандартную сексуальную ориентацию президента РФ; Retrieved from the Federal List of Extremist Materials [ФЕДЕРАЛЬНЫЙ СПИСОК ЭКСТРЕМИСТСКИХ МАТЕРИАЛОВ] Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation (2019). 3We use the term “gay clown” to refer to the image of Putin discussed throughout the paper. We trace the term in Western media discourse to Selk and Filipov (2017).

9  Putin as Gay Icon? Memes as a Tactic in Russian LGBT+ Activism     211

orientation”) recenters the gender debate within an authoritarian range, reifying homophobic propaganda and justifying anti-gay state policy.

Pouting Putin, Pop Art, and Political Portraits: Symbols and Syntax of a Meme In this section, we explore the emergence of the Putin as gay clown meme. The image debuted on social media outside of Russia in the context of foreign reactions to the 2013 Russian anti-“gay propaganda” law No. 135-FZ.4,5 On August 23, 2013, a Getty photographer at a protest outside the Russian embassy in Madrid photographed a protester with a sign depicting Putin’s face in bold make-up superimposed over a rainbow flag with the words “STOP HOMOFOBIA” [sic] inscribed on his forehead. The image appeared later that day on Slate, the progressive American news site, in an article criticizing the law’s impact on the 2014 Sochi Olympics (Keating 2013). According to the Russian Ministry of Justice, the meme’s debut in Russia can be traced to a May 7, 2014 post by user “Alexander Tsvetkov” on the Russian social network vKontakte.6 Here, the image appears (sans the inscription “STOP HOMOFOBIA”) on a poster, above a caption reading (in Russian): “Electors of Putin are like homosexuals; there are many, but among my friends there are none.” In response to the circulation of the meme across Russian social media, in 2016 the Central District Court of Tver issued a verdict banning the image in the RF. In March 2017, the Ministry of Justice added the image to its federal list

4The

bill passed the Russian Duma on June 11, 2013. It amends the 2010 law, “On Protecting Children from Information Harmful to Their Health and Development” by defining “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships” as a class of harmful content and expanding administrative penalties against offenders. 5Know Your Meme. (2017, August 27). Retrieved from: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/gayclown-putin. Knowyourmeme.com’s entry on the meme suggests that the image first appeared in 2013 on Tumblr, the social media and microblogging Web site; the image was called “Drag Putin a la Warhol.” 6Government of Russian Federation. Ministry of Justice. (2017, March 30). Federal list of extremist material (Item no. 4071). Moscow: Government of Russian Federation.

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of extremist materials: the heavily photoshopped depiction of Vladimir Putin against a rainbow backdrop, sporting vivid eye make-up, enhanced eyelashes, and a colorful pout was “envisioned” by the author(s) “to give the impression of a non-standard sexual orientation of the RF president.”7 While the Ministry of Justice listing omits “obscene vocabulary” from the original quote, the implications of the message’s political calculus are clear: Putin voters are homosexual and Putin’s their man. Homophobia imbues the anti-Putin message with the partisan political language of us and them. The following section unpacks how the meme functions as a contentious site of meaning-making, bridging aesthetics, discourses of sexuality, and the purported power of political iconography. A meme is highly unstable as a symbolic object for two reasons: It is essentially intertextual, and it depends on syntactic play by modifying or “riffing on” a central image. The Putin as gay clown meme is an iteration of a dynamic series of similar memes conveying political meaning by appropriating material from other social discourses. The meme’s power as an object of discourse is largely syntactic, combining processual elements and compositional surfaces (Gemünden 1995). One element of this syntax is Putin’s superimposed purple pout. In the Whittaker (2000) article “Face to efface with the pout,” he quips: “it can’t be long before the ‘smiling heads of state’ photo op… becomes the pouting heads of state. It works for Putin” (n/p). The addition of a thick overlay of photoshopped color to Putin’s pout appears to mock the inward-looking, self-refuting qualities of the leader’s public visage. Putin’s garishly colored lips and eyelashes center the viewer’s gaze on the disembodied gravitas which gives the face a “privileged form within the transformations of modernity” (Werth 2006) and, subsequently, the discursive mobility of political portraiture from Soviet to post-Soviet visual culture. By rerouting this mobility from official fields of circulation, the portrait of the leader addresses a revised contract between sexualized spheres of public and private life. Here, the “knowledge and experience of individuality,” coded in the face, queers the sociopolitical calculus of 7Ibid.

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Putin’s iconic masculine, heterosexual “Everyman” persona (Simmel 1997).8 Putin’s “Regular Joe” scenario is recoded as “gay,” “drag,” or otherwise in flux (Wood 2016, p. 331). These syntactic modifications also demonstrate an affiliation with Western artistic traditions which co-opt iconic portraiture as means of political critique: The composition of the Putin meme strongly echoes Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych.9 Iterations of the Putin meme which incorporate text, such as those with “STOP HOMOFOBIA” stenciled across Putin’s forehead, also deploy a strategy of estrangement. This estrangement is seen in Warhol’s portrait of President Richard Nixon, which boasts the scrawled phrase “Vote McGovern” and so makes explicit its political stance to the figure pictured. More recently, the image resonates with strategies such as “queering the Queen” that have been documented at LGBT+ pride parades in the UK; both function as an example of the contradictory existence of “shared” and “modifying” gay identities within the space of public activism (Ammaturo 2016; Armstrong 2002). As such, invocation of the pop art aesthetic contributes to the subversive quality of the meme in two ways. First, it speaks to the geographic scope of the meme’s legibility by evoking Western political art tropes. Second, the trope offers (syn )tactical resources for resisting or reifying Putin’s heteronationalist discourses by centering the image of the leader as site for political critique. In this manner, the meme “spectacularizes” any “official” intervention in the textual economy that constructs Putin’s image (Goscilo 2013a), undercutting the conditions of monologic socialist iconographies (Bonnell 1999; Turner 1990). The “success” of the Putin meme demands that the leader portrait is viewed as a contested political technology, making a farce of a language that is predominately an agency of state power. These fluid discourses on sexuality promote contentious politics by imbricating Russian politics, LGBT+ activism in post-Soviet space, and Western pro-LGBT+ rights language in the disruptive “politics of the meme.”

8See

Werth’s (2006) discussion of Simmel and the centrality of the face. the Tate Modern’s description of the Marilyn Diptych here: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/ artworks/warhol-marilyn-diptych-t03093.

9See

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Discourses of Sexuality and Russian Politics This section situates the Putin as gay clown meme within a material and symbolic context, exploring the way in which the meme shifts across the four realms identified in Table 9.1. The political consequences of the meme can only be understood through a close semiological reading of the tension between material and symbolic worlds (Bennett and Segerberg 2012; Clancy and Clancy 2016; Gray 2001; Jarvis 2014). By focusing on the operation of an individual meme as a site of political conflict, one can examine (a) the material aspects of the memes circulation, and (b) the content of the meme, at the level of political symbol or trope. This creates four potential realms of discourse (Table 9.1). In Realm I, “The Heteronormative State,” we see the manifestation of “hegemonic heteronormativity” (Ludwig 2011), as the state flexes its muscles to promote an image of hypermasculinity which impugns opponents by attacking their heterosexuality. In Realm II, “Patriotic Homosexuality,” we explore the possibilities of a discourse of patriotic homosexuality bridging the state and civil society. Realm III, “Queering the Resistance,” manifests itself through a shared meaning-making of queer globalization and localized opposition to Putin’s regime, toward the assertion of LGBT+ rights in real and virtual space. Finally, we define Realm IV as “Heteronormative-homophobic Opposition Politics,” where we explore how opposition to Putin enjoins the condemnation of homosexuality in public discourse. We see the meme of Putin as a gay clown shift between these last two realms—“Queering Table 9.1  Realms of discourse Depiction of homosexuality Depiction of Russia/Putin

Positive

Negative

Positive Realm II “Patriotic Homosexuality” Realm III “Queering the Resistance”

Negative Realm I “The Heteronormative State” Realm IV “Heteronormativehomophobic Opposition Politics”

9  Putin as Gay Icon? Memes as a Tactic in Russian LGBT+ Activism     215

the Resistance” and “Heteronormative-homophobic Opposition Politics”—moving from the material level in Western protests in 2013 to the symbolic level of the viral image, and back to the material/legal level where it is banned in Russia in 2016.

Realm I: Homophobia in Russian Politics and the Heteronormative State In this section, we trace the way in which issues of queer identity are present on material and symbolic levels in Russian politics. The status quo of both Soviet era and Russian era homosexual politics exist in Realm I: “the Heteronormative State.” This discursive regime is antihomosexuality and pro-Russia/pro-Putin, as evidenced by the 2010 and 2013 “anti-homosexual propaganda” laws and the media discourse surrounding the sexuality of Putin and his political opponents. Here, we find the strong ideological dictate that homosexuality is damaging to a strong Russian state, and so should be controlled, limited, or eliminated. First, we focus on the material levels: the way in which the government attempts to erase the phenomenon of gayness from public space and the public sphere. This marks a shift from regulating the act of (male) gay sex to decriminalizing the act and instead regulating the imagery in the public sphere. We then turn our attention to the symbolic use of queer imagery by both Putin friends and foes to emasculate political opposition. This battle for control over the material and symbolic production of gayness in public and political space then replicates itself in the Putin meme.

“The Man:” Putin’s Hypermasculine, Symbolic Body Much has been made of Putin’s hypermasculinity; these images of Putin are part of a debate over the nature of his regime; the focus on hyper, hegemonic masculinity is part of a personalistic appeal to power (see Wood’s 2016 discussion of how Putin’s hypermasculinity is a “scenario of power” itself ). The degree to which dominance and

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subordination are performed is relative to the implied sexuality of the political actors. Performative sexuality has already entered the realm of spectacle in Russian politics (Sperling 2015). Putin’s hypermasculinity is frequently weaponized against his political opponents. This is a second manifestation of the relationships in Realm I, the heteronormative state: using an attack on homosexuality by proxy in order to disparage political opponents. Putin’s hypermasculinity creates conditions under which the political opponents are delegitimized or defeated through emasculinization (Sperling 2015). At a state-sponsored camp organized for pro-Kremlin youth in 2007, a poster exhibit of liberal opposition leaders Mikhail Kasyanov, Garry Kasparov, and Eduard Limonov photoshopped their faces onto female bodies clad in bustiers and thighhigh stockings. Labeled the “Red Light District,” portrayal of these politicians as transvestite prostitutes was meant to imply that they had sold Russia to the West (Sperling 2015). This depiction feminized the opposition, attacking their masculinity while implicitly accentuating Putin’s masculinity. Another example occurred in 2011, when photos of Communist Party deputy Artem Samsonov appeared on the Web, showing him wearing a dress, kissing a man, with his underwear pulled down. He sued for 5.5 million rubles and argued that regime supporters were behind these materials. Samsonov wrote on his Twitter feed: “I share the opinion that ‘United Russia’ is the party of crooks and thieves, and that Putin is leading the country toward collapse and civil war, but I have a normal sexual orientation, I’m not an exhibitionist, not a transvestite, I’ve never taken off my clothes for the public, and never put photos of myself naked or in women’s dresses on the Internet” (Sperling 2015). Both images depict political opposition in women’s clothes, conflating cross-dressing and being gay with emasculinization and sexual deviance. Samsonov’s response is telling—asserting that his sexuality is “normal,” equating homosexuality with deviance. Thus, he rejects the characterization of himself, not the characterization of gayness as wrong. These scenarios underscore the instability of the discursive regime of sexual citizenship operating in Putin’s Russia. Romanets (2017) analyzes a Russian web library that hosts thousands of images that represent Putin as an alpha male, while sexually debasing Western and Ukrainian

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officials. Romanets (2017) notes that there are recurrent homosexual and transvestite scenarios, which “bluntly manipulate the concepts of masculinity and sexual deviancy as part of their anti-adversarial rhetoric because domination for a patriarchal culture can only be experienced as a form of emasculation” (p. 161). Further, the “sexually charged construct” of “Putin the Emasculator” haunts the Russian oppositional consciousness as the figure responsible for “weakening … and emasculating institutions that underlined … the division of power,” as well as “emasculating federalism” (Allawala 2016, cited in Romanets 2017, p. 161). In this formulation, Putin even demands dominance and submission from his own state, while insinuating a transition to outright homophobia, even within opposition politics, as defined by Realm IV.

Realm II: The (Mostly Foreclosed?) Possibility of Patriotic Homosexuality Realm II, patriotic homosexuality, exists in a liminal space. On the one hand, an uneasy relationship with pro-LGBT+ activism in light of changing public perceptions and the passing of the propaganda law in 2013 has fractured the LGBT+ community in Russia (Ebel 2016); some members of the LGBT+ community in Russia continue to support Putin’s presidency, while others file for asylum abroad (Buyantueva 2018). As homophobia intensifies, the possibility of organizing a movement which espouses patriotic homosexuality in the context of supporting democratic reform, civil rights, or a transition away from Putin’s becomes foreclosed. Moreover, while strategies of “passive political behavior” and “nonaction” (Buyantueva 2018; Soboleva and Bakhmetjev 2015) may mitigate risk of entanglement with authorities and subsequent exposure to families and colleagues, this kind of political noninvolvement recalls late socialist “parallel cultures,” espousing a kind of patriotism which disorders any neat relationship between power and resistance (Yurchak 1997). However, the unstable nature of homosexuality in Russian discourse complicates the interpretation of the state’s response to the Putin as gay clown imagery. It is worth noting how other voices contribute to

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the construction of privileged subjectivities within Putin’s regime of sexual citizenship. For example, Alexandr Dugin, a proponent of NeoEurasianism and fascist thought, is controversially credited with stating that Russia has made a mistake by refusing to “accept, incorporate, and develop a homosexual discourse of patriotic homosexuality by juxtaposing it to European ‘sodomy’” (Romanets 2017).10 While far from the Russian leadership’s stance, it is also an inversion of Gorky’s maxim: “eliminate homosexuality and you will make fascism disappear” (Essig 1999). We need only to accept a contortion of the present regime of sexual citizenship by embracing Dugin’s “patriotic homosexuality” to inoculate Russia against the existential threat of “European sodomy” and its attendant human rights-based discourse. The political alignment between LGBT+ rights and ideology remains unclear and is constantly open to reinterpretation and imaginations as political opponents are emasculated in Russian political discourse.

Realm III: Queering the Resistance? Given the fuzzy alignment between LGBT+ rights, ideology, power, and resistance in Putin’s Russia, possibilities for anti-Putin, pro-LGBT+ social movements should be grounded in Realm III. Despite contention within the Russian LGBT+ community over the politics of pride parades, the centrality of space to the survival and, ultimately, the success of LGBT+ activist communities remain largely focused on real public spaces as opposed to the virtual public spaces of the Internet. As Stella (2013) notes, there are both everyday, largely private uses of space (what she calls in Moscow “the Scene”), and Pride events, which she defines as “a temporary but also highly visible and politicized

10Dugin’s Neo-Eurasianism, elaborated in 1997s The Foundations of Geopolitics, seeks to restore Russia’s geopolitical position through the defeat of the United States and “Atlanticist” powers via a coordinated campaign of subversion and disinformation. Romanets (2017, p. 165) comments on the authenticity of the Dugin quote which appears in the foreword of his book, Homosexuality in the Service of the National Liberation Movement: “[n]o matter whether this foreword is a mystification posted on the Internet or an authentic text, it factors smoothly into the ideological substantiation of his imagined rivalry between Atlanticism and Eurasianism [sic].”

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appropriation of [public] space by the LGBT community” (p. 17). Pride parades are perhaps the most forward of ways to render the invisible visible, allowing for a “collective coming out” (Valentine 2003), presenting “a spatial and social articulation of political and human rights claims” (Ammaturo 2016). Yet how this strategy promotes a unified front in the face of discrimination and physical violence against LGBT+ persons in Russia remains unsettled. The growth of online spaces and social media networks has fostered the expansion of LGBT+ rights activism, although as Buyantueva (2018) notes, it does not “secure activists from verbal or emotional abuse” or protect a user’s identity against extortion or blackmail (Buyantueva 2018, pp. 8, 20). Importantly, the Internet is the realm of queer globalization as well. Insofar as Russian law prohibits “effacing” Putin’s likeness, the turn to authoritarianism in Putin’s Russia is far from complete. The Internet remains a space where new ideas and shared meaning-making take place, both within Russian LGBT+ activist communities and across territorial borders. The possibility of a new “Scene” (in the sense espoused by Stella 2013) bridging real and virtual space can be evidenced in recent flash mobs in St. Petersburg, which simultaneously celebrated the International Day Against Homophobia while calling national and global attention to claims of LGBT+ persecution and torture in Chechnya (“Gay rights activists hold flash-mob protest in St. Petersburg,” 2017). Such resistance strategies also call into question the construction of time and individual agency within the ideological practices of social groups.

Realm IV: Heteronormative-Homophobic Opposition Politics Amid the Russian media’s buildup to the 2012 presidential elections, opposition candidates began exploiting media focus on sexuality by directly attacking Putin’s masculinity and virility. These attacks exist within Realm IV, frequently adopting the same rhetorical strategies used by Putin in Realm I to “emasculate” his opponents. In the attacks, opposition candidates called Putin #botox on social media, thus implying that he had lost his status as a strong Russian man by

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receiving “Hollywoodesque” Botox treatment (Goscilo 2013b). Putin’s calculated performance of masculine vigor subsequently became the subject of a 2011 political cartoon in which he is portrayed as a drunk patron slumped over a bar and is “cut off” from ordering another Botox (Goscilo 2013b, p. 189). Through the depiction of his body and the implied threat to his masculinity from receiving Botox, Putin was delegitimatized by his opponents through the strategic exploitation of a perceived “hole” in Putin’s hegemonic masculine legitimacy. The promise of “real” political change in Russia, by this logic, has its origin in the discursive play of sexuality and sexual citizenship. Sperling (2015) argues the Botox episode “created an opening for the belief that political change was possible” (pp. 117–118). Moreover, these tactical gambits with the celebrity of Putin’s sexuality frequently alloy his masculinity with the Other.11 As Novitskaya (2017) notes, Putin has “thin skin,” an inability to withstand any challenge to his fragile masculinity. The ease at which Putin is offended, and the centrality of hyper-heteronormativity, makes it easy to mock him. Sperling (2015) contends that allegations that Putin is a pedophile may have contributed to the demise of Alexander Litvinenko in a London hospital in 2006 (p. 112). This section illustrates that the imagery of homosexuality as a means of disparaging Putin did not come out of nowhere. It reflects a political and discursive climate where political actors on both the left and the right of Putin mobilize homophobic discourses as a tool to delegitimatize opponents. This also underscores the fact that, unlike in the West, the “Overton’s window” for change is relatively small. Whereas leftwing parties in most Western countries have embraced a pro-LGBT+ agenda, which would effectively expand Realm II, or provide a bridge between Realms II and IV, that association is not linear in Russia. Both the possibility of a viable opposition party, and thus of a vibrant state that embraces LGBT+ rights, is muted by homophobia discourses and attendant friction within the liberal, anti-Putin opposition. The discourse of imagery and the parameters of its power are by and large factors of

11Like Gorky, Dugin does not specify a subject in his logic of patriotic homosexuality—who will fight Dugin’s Great Patriotic War against European Sodomy?

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an authoritarian state enlisting hegemonic masculinity and homophobia to perform discursive and, in some cases, physical violence against opponents.

Pride Before a Fall: Material Contestations of LGBT+ Activism in Public Space In this section, we adopt a contentious politics perspective, analyzing the interplay between the various realms sketched above. We recognize that not all actors and discourses overlay “perfectly”; for instance, while a “party line” within the discursive regime of the heteronormative state may exist, from the examples analyzed in this paper, a contentious politics perspective allows us to explore the messy boundaries of activist and establishment discourses. We first look at the macrolevel conflict between Realms I and III, in which the hegemony of the Russian heteronormative state uses its power to undermine LGBT+ rights and activism, thereby diffusing the possibility of a pro-LGBT+ activist nationalism (Realm II). Then, we turn to the way in which opposition to the Russian state plays on sexual politics, particularly in terms of how the Putin meme manifests contentious politics as a form of heteronormative-homophobic opposition politics (Realm IV). The Russian government’s backlash against the Putin meme and the concomitant re-entrenchment of heteronormative regimes of sexual citizenship share a common thread. The current crisis has its roots in continued contestations between LGBT+ movements in Russia and the Russian state. The most recent manifestation of this contestation was the institution of a 100-year ban on Pride events in Moscow in 2012 (“Gay parades banned in Moscow for 100 years,” 2012). The ban effectively aims to control the material circulation of counter-hegemonic discourses and to disempower LGBT+ activist citizens from publicly campaigning for cultural visibility and civic inclusion (Kondakov 2013; Turner 1990). Thus, the political contestation over events like pride parades becomes a means of vying for control over that which is both public and visual at the material and symbolic levels—a clash between

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the heteronormative Russian state of Realm I and tactics of queering the resistance which categorize Realm III. Religious actors also play a linking role in the backlash against Pride events manifested in the interplay between Realms I and III. Persson (2015) argues that the chaotic nature of Pride events—their visibility, organization, and action in public space—were frequently met with hostility and violence from private and public actors alike. This reaction “has put homosexuality and LGBT rights—or rather how to ensure the absence of such rights—on the mainstream agenda” (Persson 2015). An unholy alliance between nationalists, communists, United Russia (the Putinist party), parental organizations, and the Orthodox Church has subsequently established anti-gay rhetoric as the norm in the public sphere. Stella (2013) points to the failure of “queer visibility” to assuage public anxieties “intertwined with the crisis and renegotiation of national identity in post-Soviet Russia” (p. 462), a crisis also steeped in broader demographic concerns over reproductive issues and evocations of collective memory of patriarchy, frequently emphasizing “shared blood line[s]” (Mole 2011). The role of religion, in particular, upholds state legitimacy by sanctioning “only those identity performances that correspond to the reproductive and disciplinary needs of the state” (Rourke and Wiget 2016). The second stage of the backlash against LGBT+ activism is marked by the Russian Duma’s “rubber stamping” of Federal Law No. 135FZ, criminalizing the “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations” (our italics) among minors; the Duma approved the law unanimously (Kondakov 2013; Feyh and Iasine 2015).12 Homosexuality was explicitly presented as a matter of protecting Russia’s children from a contagious psychological illness that could only be combated by “restricting propaganda of homosexuality in the form of parades, pedagogy, and parenting” (Moss, quoted in Romanets 2017). This presentation further chills public discourse, as criticizing the law or advocating for LGBT rights is made to carry a higher degree of risk in public spaces, “as one might be perceived as justifying child abuse” (Persson 2015). 12See

also Russian Federal Law: N 135-FZ, 2013.

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Although the 2013 law does not reverse the precedent of decriminalization of homosexuality started in the 1990s, echoes of the “treasonous gay” reverberate through the language, in that it “clearly targets non-heterosexual relations: in the original draft the term was ‘propaganda for homosexuality’ (propaganda gomoseksualizma  ), and the popular word in the press was gay propaganda (gei-propaganda )” (Persson 2015). Loosely crafted to blur public perceptions of homosexuality, child abuse, and treason, this rhetoric reifies the interplay between the heteronormative state (Realm I) and the possibility of a patriotic homosexuality (Realm II) within public spheres delimited by Russian law. Both the banning of Pride events and the anti-“gay propaganda” legislation aim to assert a new regime within this public sphere of citizenship. They represent a break from Czarist and Soviet laws outlawing behavior or action at the scale of the body to laws which outlaw the “public visibility of homosexuality in Russian society” (Stella 2013), including distribution of literature about homosexuality. Indeed, Persson (2015) argues that banning homosexual propaganda in 2013 is a media spectacle insofar as it attempts to curb portrayals of queer visibility. However, this media “spectacle,” centered as it may be on the symbolic level of discourse, has real consequences beyond depriving activists of strategies with which to “queer” their resistance to Putin’s personalistic brand of authoritarianism. Significant physical and discursive violence against the visibility of non-heterosexual bodies has risen as a result (Novitskaya 2017). Essig (2014) points to a particularly violent example of discourse related to the propaganda law. During a debate aired by state-run television network Poccия-1 on April 4, 2012, Dmitry Kiselyov, the controversial host of that network’s weekly “News of the Week” program, explained his stance on the issue: “I think that just imposing fines on gays for homosexual propaganda among teenagers is not enough. They should be banned from donating blood, sperm. And their hearts, in case of the automobile accident, should be buried in the ground or burned

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as unsuitable for the continuation of life” (in Essig 2014, p. 40).13 Kiselyov’s remarks, met with polite applause from the live studio audience, were widely circulated online and in international news media following the passage of the 2013 legislation. The process of othering deployed in the language of the 2013 anti“gay propaganda” law construes the gay body as anathema, literally “foreign,” and “unsuitable for the continuation of life,” and discursively constructs it as a vector of Western emasculation of Russian values. This discourse constructs the gay body as an Other positioned outside of the RF’s heteronationalist value structure, enabling the critiques of Putin to circulate from the hypermasculinist status quo of Realm I to Realm IV, whereby opponents co-opt LGBT+ protest imagery from Western sources to attack Putin’s masculinity and impugn his political base. Evidenced by Kiselyov’s dehumanizing commentary and the apparent magnetism of Putin’s sexuality to allies and foes alike, the discursive interplay between realms functions politically. It effectively casts suspicion over homosexual behaviors and norms while entertaining the possibility that Putin is a pedophile and that the Russian state has the sole power to destroy or recognize the LGBT+ community. Moreover, in the interplay between the heteronormative state of Realm I and the homophobic opposition politics of Realm IV, we encounter an immutable heterogender binary constructed around Putin’s Everyman image and act, situated on the masculine side of the dyad. Read through Butler’s (1990) construction of gender, even when “instituted” in the memetic space of LGBT+ protests in Russia and abroad (as in Realm III), or insinuated by or against his political opponents, Putin reaffirms control of his gender identity as his to stylize and repeat sui generis.

13In December 2013, Putin tapped Kiselyov to run Russia Today, Russia’s state-run international news agency. However, in July 2015, Kiselyov came out in support of civil unions in Russia, stating “the existence of the LGBT community is a fact … You could figure out how to make life easier for adults if they want to take on, and on paper, the obligation to take care of each other. Love works wonders. Who’s against that?” (Oliphant 2015). Given Kiselyov’s favor with Putin, his statements suggest the possibility of interplay between the heteronormative state of Realm III and an expansion of patriotic homosexuality a la Realm II. This serves to illustrate two points: that the interplay between realms is necessarily “messy” and that the “looseness” of the 2010 and 2013 laws is a “feature,” not a “bug,” within the state’s discursive regime.

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Here, we see an unprecedented development in Putin’s hypermasculine “scenario of power” (Wood 2016): a feint toward delimiting a copyright to sexual citizenship for the Russian president. Such a strategy emerges from a polylogue of linguistic, visual, and discursive shifts since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991: Some perpetuate Soviet epistemologies within public and private spaces which retain an imprint of Soviet norms.

Implications and Conclusions In a 2017 episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the American talk show host delivered a monologue about a headline from an article published by The Washington Post earlier that week: “It’s now illegal in Russia to share an image of Putin as a gay clown.” Barely containing his amusement, Colbert deadpans to his viewers: “Straight clown? Totally okay. Bisexual lion tamer? Again, totally fine. But gay and clown? Nyet, comrade!”14 Colbert’s humorous commentary reached millions of viewers in the United States, exposing a predominantly progressive American viewing audience with the latest turn in the development of Putin’s calculated politics of sexuality. Colbert then satirized the iconic photograph of Vladimir Putin bare chested on horseback: “I could see that guy leading a pride parade easily.” Insofar as the meme co-opts public images of Putin, it then uses a syntax of queering to undercut the symbolic economy that articulates Putin’s public (often hypermasculinized) body. While to Western audiences the Putin memes may suggest relatively innocuous satire, reading them in the context of post-Soviet constructions of LGBT+ activist identity reveals the contentious politics that underpin its rhetoric. Colbert’s routine, linking Putin’s personas to a stock of queer stereotypes, shows at once the homophobic and paranoid reaction of Putin’s government to the rhetorical claims of LGBT+ activists worldwide. Yet, the visual rhetoric of the Drag Putin a la

14Colbert,

S. (2017, April 8). The Late Show with Stephen Colbert [Television Broadcast]. New York, NY: CBS.

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Warhol-turned-gay clown meme appears to reproduce a homonormative, homonationalist discourse minimizing space for competing understandings of queerness and the rights of queer citizens (Puar 2007). It also affirms the notion that a public culture which supports LGBT+ rights activism remains a necessary condition for LGBT+ communities to develop beyond “survival” mode (Buyantueva 2018; Offord 2011). Why has the meme engendered such polarizing reactions from Russian authorities and Western media? Moreover, can the image—or memes in general—be successfully (re)appropriated within the LGBT+ activist repertoire in Russia? At the material level, memes operate as “objectifications” of political sentiment, transmitting certain social knowledges and practices across space and time (Berger and Luckmann 1991). The circulation of memes depends on variation: These shifts can reveal or obscure the semantic legibility of its content. Counterhegemonic discourses, such as images circulated leading up to the 2012 Russian presidential elections showing Putin and Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev as blushing paramours, can engender multiple readings. Memes depicting Putin as a gay clown may be in fact minted within the bounds of dominant (heteronormative, hegemonic masculine) narratives (Bhaba 1990). Furthermore, when memes shift, two important transformations occur. First, the shifting decentralizes the field of meaning by erasing the “author” in the meme’s transmission. This can make legal blame and geographical origin difficult to assign (crimes have authors, even if texts do not), potentially explaining the Ministry of Justice’s decision to implement a ban on the clown image. Because the author cannot be traced, the image itself must be held responsible. Concurrently, it may make it more difficult for activists to stabilize a meaning for their texts or dispute contradicting interpretations. Such interpretations are not unique to the meme’s transmission from the West to Russia. Within American media discourse, discourse shifted from the time the 2016 Tver decision was reported by The Washington Post (Selk and Filipov 2017), and Stephen Colbert’s subsequent comments that the image looked more like “Joel Grey from (the 1972 musical drama) Cabaret meets a sad dog.” Second, as the meme circulates, it becomes changed by its movement across time and space. This takes on a tactical valence

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by allowing the Putin memes to “tease” Russian authorities in virtual spaces. However, such transmissions may preclude the formation of stable conditions for the meme’s production and reception, as the image resists attribution and incorporation into common political knowledge. Given its global implications, it may appear safe to assume that the Putin meme persists an artifact of “queer globalization” at the center of the LGBT+ struggle to reimagine sexual citizenship in the RF. The presence of the image at protests within and beyond Russia recalls the centrality of public space to the proliferation of the meme. As Stella (2013) notes, both the Scene and Pride events “can be read as instances of the transnational proliferation of a recognizable repertoire of queer consumption and politics” (p. 19) reproducing a space of cultural globalization in which “global queering” can be performed (Altman 1996). The memetic nature of images is part of the process through which global queering is possible. While to Western observers the prohibition on Pride marches in Moscow’s public spaces and the addition of the gay clown image to the Ministry of Justice’s list of “extremist materials” may smack of a Stalinesque “cult of personality,” the polysemic performance of the meme, enabled by consumerist cultural patterns and technologies, constitutes secondary production (De Certeau 1984; Gray 2001). These practices occur largely in a social order subjacent to Russian authorities (Cassiday and Johnson 2013; Yurchak 2006). However, the deployment of the Putin meme challenges many assumptions about the political valence of that globalization. The symbolism of the meme implicitly serves as a regressive, non-state “intervention” in the construction of public and private spaces for LGBT+ activism and identity in Russia and abroad. While initially a protest drawing attention to state-sanctioned homophobia in Russia and its police tactics against queer bodies and representations, the spatial dimensions of the circulation of the Putin meme, as well as its origin and near-ubiquity at anti-homophobia protests outside of Russia attests to what Essig (2014) calls a “clash of fundamentalisms” (p. 50). This clash occurs primarily between what Essig terms a rights-centered gay international activism “which was always a Western one” and “indigenous Russian values” and discourse (Essig 2014). This analysis also underscores the window of change available to LGBT+ activists. Without an

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expansion of Realm II, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, for LGBT activists to rely on the state. Paradoxically, such an expansion of “patriotic homosexuality” into mainstream political and media discourse could be regarded as suspect by members of the LGBT+ community in Russia and the Russian public alike, given the positionality of statements made by political insiders like Dmitri Kiselyov. Just as the decriminalization of homosexuality in Russia came amid international pressure on the state to accede to the Council of Europe (Kon 1997), the circulation and subsequent criminalization of the Putin meme speaks as much to endogenous developments in Russian public culture as it does exogenous forces. Given Putin’s seemingly inexorable drive to shift Russia away from the West and toward a uniquely Russian cultural and geopolitical identity, the possibilities of shared meaning-making diminish. We recognize that the identity-constructing practices of “Western” LGBT+ communities may not hold sway with Russian LGBT+ peoples’ willingness to engage in activism. The meme operates within an increasingly poisoned public discourse on LGBT+ rights, one which challenges the centrality of the Internet as a subcultural space for “coming out” and community organizing. As an LGBT+ activist from Russia’s Far East noted, on the Internet, “you can say what you want, nobody is going to misquote or distort … every event should be organized on the Internet. It is not effective and dangerous to do something in real life” (Buyantueva 2018, p. 8). The criminalization of the gay clown meme and its attendant discursive shifts pose a serious danger to LGBT+ activists to develop and mobilize online in two ways. First, by entering Russian media discourse, the Putin meme is “relocalized” from “Eurocentric” discourse Realm III to Realm IV. This has the capacity to strip the image of its meaning-making capacity for LGBT+ communities within Russian media discourse (and subsequently public perception) by fusing anti-Putin sentiment with pro-LGBT+ rights advocacy. Common markers of community identity—from the rainbow flag to visual constructions of “queerness”—are co-opted by countermovements, potentially foreclosing the possibility of meaning-making and LGBT+ community activism online. The stiff legal penalties and social consequences of engaging in LGBT+ protest not only increase risk to the individual, but also cast suspicion on

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linkages between LGBT+ rights-centered protest and pro-democracy social movements. Second, the Russian state’s efforts to disrupt Internet communication and stifle online dissent is nothing new. The politicization and criminalization of this meme initiate a new set of norms, rules, and patterns of how social movements may opt to mobilize under pressure from both repressive political actors and their manipulation of digital information ecologies. While we do not attribute the popularity or controversy of the “gay clown” meme to the ideological projects of “bots” or “trolls,” the Internet’s potential as a democratic space for the mobilization of pro-LGBT+ public perception—or moreover, as Buyantueva (2018) notes, as a space for the “survival” of the community—appears threatened by the Russian state’s response. Likewise, in the ongoing (and surreal) aftermath of recriminations between the US intelligence community, the White House, and the Putin regime over Russian government interference in the 2016 US presidential election, Western media frequently feature high profile stories implicating pro-Putin “computational propaganda” (Woolley and Howard 2016) in attacks on politicians, gay celebrities, and pro-LGBT+ social media accounts in Europe and the United States. Further research could shed light on the information ecologies in which Russian LGBT+ communities and pro-Putin autonomous agents may unwittingly assemble, and the implications of such contested virtual spaces and discourses on the success of LGBT+ social movements. The gay clown meme demonstrates tactical politics by (a) subverting the syntactic excesses of Russian nationalist discourses that marry heterosexual masculinity to governmental authority, and (b) decentralizing the spatiotemporal locus of activist rhetoric. However, it is the mobilization of queer iconographies to undercut Putin’s power which reifies the very trope of queerness-as-weakness (and its mirror in masculinity as strength) that animates heteronationalist hegemonic discourses. The Western protest strategy of “queering the Queen” ends up meaning something totally different in the Russian context when “STOP HOMOFOBIA” is removed from the mix and substituted with a homophobic, anti-Putin caption. Readings of the meme in the United States, for example, perpetuate “gay villain” stereotypes, often among

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self-professed anti-Putin progressives. This reading speaks to a kind of homonationalism which destabilizes the construction of a sustainable and just regime of sexual citizenship in Putin’s Russia (Kahn 2017). These implications are made more profound by the homophobic discourses harnessed by Putin’s regime and the attendant climate of violence affecting LGBT+ communities and individuals throughout the RF, including shocking reports of “gay genocide” in Chechnya (Walker 2017). What is certainly not to be done, to paraphrase Essig’s (2014) purposeful rephrasing of Lenin’s question, is to more rigidly define a politically correct queerness while lowering the political costs of reinstituting stereotypes of “treasonous homosexuals” in the post-Soviet context or “gay villains” in the West.

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Cassiday, J. A., & Johnson, E. D. (2013). A Personality Cult for the Postmodern Age. In Putin as Celebrity and Cultural Icon (pp. 37–64). New York: Routledge. CBS. (2017, April 7). The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. https://www.cbs.com/ shows/the-late-show-with-stephen-colbert/video/qTtNAITMggXiIuUa9 nbnU8UPDAnL0yC8/putin-hates-being-depicted-as-a-gay-clown-so-this-/. CBS News. (2017, May 17). Gay Rights Activists Hold Flash-Mob Protest in St. Petersburg. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gay-rights-activists-hold-flashmob-protest-in-st-petersburg-russia/. Clancy, K., & Clancy, B. (2016). Growing Monstrous Organisms: The Construction of Anti-GMO Visual Rhetoric Through Digital Media. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 33(3), 279–292. De Certeau, M. (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life (S. Rendall, Trans.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Ebel, F. (2016, May 2). Young, Russian, Gay and Pro-Putin. https://worldpolicy. org/2016/05/02/young-russian-gay-and-pro-putin/. Essig, L. (1999). Queer in Russia: A Story of Sex, Self, and the Other. Durham: Duke University Press. Essig, L. (2014). ‘Bury Their Hearts’: Some Thoughts on the Specter of Homosexuality Haunting Russia. QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, 1(3), 39–58. Feyh, K. E., & Iasine, I. (2015). LGBTQ Oppression and Activism in Russia: An Interview with Igor Iasine. QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, 2(1), 100–108. Gemünden, G. (1995). The Depth of the Surface, or, What Rolf Dieter Brinkmann Learned from Andy Warhol. German Quarterly, 68, 235–250. Goscilo, H. (2013a). Putin as Celebrity and Cultural Icon. New York: Routledge. Goscilo, H. (2013b). Putin’s Performance of Masculinity. In H. Goscilo (Ed.), Putin as Celebrity and Cultural Icon (Vol. 80, p. 180). New York: Routledge. Gray, J. (2001). Striking Social Dramas, Image Events, and Meme Warfare: Performance and Social Activism-Past, Present, and Future. Text and Performance Quarterly, 21(1), 64–75. Jarvis, J. L. (2014). Digital Image Politics: The Networked Rhetoric of Anonymous. Global Discourse, 4(2–3), 326–349. Kahn, A. (2017). Liberals Have Turned Trump into a Gay Villain Because Our Worst Villains Must Be Gay. Slate. Keating, J. (2013). Can Putin Crush the World’s Freedom of Speech at the Olympics? https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2013/08/vladimir-putin-bansprotests-in-sochi-during-the-olympics-will-the-games-be-a-pr-disaster-forrussia.html.

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Know Your Meme. (2017, August 27). Gay Clown Putin. http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/gay-clown-putin. Accessed 31 Jan 2019. Kon, I. (1997). Seksual’naia Kul’tura v Rossii. Klubnichka na Berezke. Moscow: Institut Etnologii I Antropologii RAN. Kondakov, A. (2013). The Silenced Citizens of Russia: Exclusion of Nonheterosexual Subjects from Rights-Based Citizenship. Social & Legal Studies, 23(2), 151–174. Ludwig, G. (2011). From the ‘Heterosexual Matrix’ to a ‘Heteronormative Hegemony’: Initiating a Dialogue Between Judith Butler and Antonio Gramsci About Queer Theory and Politics. In N. D. Maria Delmar Castro Valer & A. Engel (Eds.), Hegemony and Heteronormativity: Revisiting ‘The Political’ in Queer Politics (pp. 43–61). Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate. Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation. (2019, January 22). Фeдepaльный Cпиcoк Экcтpeмиcтcкиx Maтepиaлoв [The Federal List of Extremist Materials]. https://minjust.ru/ru/extremist-materials. Mole, R. (2011). Nationality and Sexuality: Homophobic Discourse and the ‘National Threat’ in Contemporary Latvia. Nations and Nationalism, 17(3), 540–560. Novitskaya, A. (2017). Patriotism, Sentiment, and Male Hysteria: Putin’s Masculinity Politics and the Persecution of Non-heterosexual Russians. Norma, 12, 302–318. Offord, B. (2011). Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia: Arrested Development. In D. P. M. Tremblay & C. Johnson (Eds.), The Lesbian and Gay Movement and the State: Comparative Insights into a Transformed Relationship (pp. 135– 151). Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Oliphant, R. (2015, July 1). Pro-Kremlin Television Host Backs Civil Partnerships. The Telegraph. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/11710849/Pro-Kremlin-television-host-backs-civil-partnerships.html. Persson, E. (2015). Banning “Homosexual Propaganda”: Belonging and Visibility in Contemporary Russian Media. Sexuality and Culture, 19(2), 256–274. Puar, J. K. (2007). Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham: Duke University Press. Romanets, M. (2017). Virtual Warfare: Masculinity, Sexuality, and Propaganda in the Russo-Ukrainian War. East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies, 4(1), 159–177. Rourke, B., & Wiget, A. (2016). Pussy Riot, Putin and the Politics of Embodiment. Cultural Studies, 30(2), 234–260.

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Selk, A., & Filipov, D. (2017). It’s Now Illegal in Russia to Share an Image of Putin as a Gay Clown. Washington Post. Simmel, G. (1997). Sociology of the Senses. In D. Frisby & M. Featherstone (Eds.), Theory, Culture & Society (p. 113). London, UK: Sage Publications. Soboleva, I. V., & Bakhmetjev, Y. A. (2015). Political Awareness and SelfBlame in the Explanatory Narratives of LGBT People Amid the Anti-LGBT Campaign in Russia. Sexuality and Culture, 19, 275–296. Sperling, V. (2015). Sex, Politics, and Putin: Political Legitimacy in Russia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stella, F. (2013). Queer Space, Pride, and Shame in Moscow. Slavic Review, 72(3), 458–480. Tate Modern. (2016, February). ‘Marylin Dytrich’, Andy Warhol. http://www. tate.org.uk/art/artworks/warhol-marilyn-diptych-t03093. Turner, B. S. (1990). Outline of a Theory of Citizenship. Sociology, 24(2), 189–217. Valentine, G. (2003). Sexual Politics. In A Companion to Political Geography (pp. 408–420). Malden: Blackwell. Walker, S. (2017, April 13). Chechens Tell of Prison Beatings and Electric Shocks in Anti-gay Purge: ‘They Called Us Animals’. The Guardian. https:// www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/13/they-called-us-animals-chechens-prison-beatings-electric-shocks-anti-gay-purge. Werth, M. (2006). Modernity and the Face. Intermédialités: Histoire et théorie des arts, des lettres et des techniques. Intermediality: History and Theory of the Arts, Literature and Technologies, 8, 83–102. Whittaker, S. (2000). Face to Efface with the Pout. CTheory, 6–28. Wood, E. (2016). Hypermasculinity as a Scenario of Power: Vladimir Putin’s Iconic Rule, 1999–2008. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 18(3), 329–350. Woolley, S., & Howard, P. (2016). Automation, Algorithms, and Politics | Political Communication, Computational Propaganda, and Autonomous Agents—Introduction. International Journal of Communication, 10, 9. Yurchak, A. (1997). The Cynical Reason of Late Socialism: Power, Pretense, and the Anekdot. Public Culture, 9(2), 161–188. Yurchak, A. (2006). Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Part III Giving Voice to Locals: LGBTQ+ Movement and Queer Politics in Central and Eastern Europe

Introduction Radzhana Buyantueva Maryna Shevtsova Five chapters below examine the emergence and development of LGBTQ+ activism in the CEE region. The authors examine tactics, strategies, and issues of LGBTQ+ activism and communities. There are following common themes underlying these chapters: Tactics and strategies employed by LGBGQ+ activists, the question of solidarity, and marginalized voices within LGBTQ+ movements and communities. First, the authors examine various tactics and strategies employed by local activists to achieve their goals. As, for example, Karlis Verdins and Janis Ozolins illustrate in their chapter on the Latvian LGBT movement, LGBTQ+ activists often employ tactics and ideas developed in the West. They argue, however, that the key for the state and public accepting non-heteronormative sexualities is also in the international (Western) influence and education of younger generation. Second, the authors discuss the issue of solidarity in regard to the development of LGBTQ+ movements in the CEE region. Local

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LGBTQ+ activists become increasingly more aware of inequalities underlying activism such as class, ethnic, social, and economic inequalities. The chapters in this part of the book suggest that gaining better awareness of these issues might have a stronger impact on activists’ claims and goals as compared to political goals framed by the Western neoliberal discourse. Finally, the authors draw attention to the marginalized groups (i.e., asexuals, bisexuals, and rainbow families) within LGBTQ+ communities and activism in the CEE region. It is necessary to clarify what is meant by the terms ‘asexual,’ ‘bisexual,’ and ‘rainbow family’ here. The Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN 2019) defines an asexual as a ‘person who does not experience sexual attraction.’ Bisexuality is defined as ‘the potential to be attracted… to people of more than one sex and/or gender, not necessarily at the same time, not necessarily in the same way, and not necessarily to the same degree’ (Ochs 2005, p. 8). ‘Rainbow families’ are understood as families with children where parents are same-sex couples or non-heterosexual people (Faletti 2014; Puszyk 2016). These are the basic understandings of these identities. As the chapters in this volume will demonstrate, these identities take more complex forms. The authors discuss asexuals, bisexuals, and rainbow families, their identities, their level of involvement in activism, and their interaction with LGBTQ+ groups and organizations. While LGBTQ+ movements develop and become more diverse, not all interests and issues are considered and voiced by activists. As the chapters below will demonstrate, some groups (i.e., asexuals, bisexuals) perceive themselves alienated from the larger LGBTQ+ movements. They feel the need for better inclusion and representation in LGBTQ+ communities and activism.

References AVEN. (2019). Overview. Available at: https://www.asexuality.org/?q=overview.html. Faletti, E. (2014). LGBTI Discrimination and parent-child relationships: Cross-border mobility of rainbow families in the European union. Family Court Review, 52(1), 28–45.

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Ochs, R. (2005). What is bisexuality? In R. Ochs & S. E. Rowley (Eds.), Getting Bi: Voices of bisexuals around the world (pp. 7–15). Boston, MA: Bisexual Resource Center. Puszyk, M. (2016). Families of non-heterosexual people with children: Among old answers and new questions. Studia Humanistyczne AGH, 15(4), 7–19.

10 The Latvian LGBT Movement and Narratives of Normalization Kārlis Vērdiņš and Jānis Ozoliņš

Introduction The 1980s in the USSR ended with perestroika, propagated by Mikhail Gorbachev, and its policy of glasnost. Changes in politics were followed by changes in Soviet public discourse, in which new themes were introduced—the crimes of former USSR leaders, censorship, less ideologically manipulated information on foreign countries, as well as sexuality and erotica. Male homosexual relationships were criminalized in the Soviet era (according to Paragraph 124 of the Criminal Code of Soviet Latvia, consensual pederasty among adults could lead up to five years in prison, under aggravating circumstances the sentence could rise up to eight years), whereas female homosexuality was treated as a mental illness that K. Vērdiņš (*)  Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA e-mail: [email protected] J. Ozoliņš  University of Latvia, Riga, Latvia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 R. Buyantueva and M. Shevtsova (eds.), LGBTQ+ Activism in Central and Eastern Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20401-3_10

239

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fell into the field of psychiatry and had to be cured in mental hospitals (Ruduša 2014). Latvia, one of the fifteen Soviet republics, together with the other two Baltic republics, Estonia and Lithuania, was regarded by the Soviet public as a comparatively “European” part of the USSR. However, the laws affecting the LGBT community differed even between the Baltic republics. Criminal punishment for male pederasty in Latvia was up to five years imprisonment, in Lithuania, it was up to three years, and in Estonia, up to two years (Lipša 2016). When the USSR collapsed in 1991 and Latvia became an independent country, people had to adjust to a capitalist mindset in which sexuality and pleasure became subjects of public interest and mass culture, and commodities. Visibility of non-normative sexuality also became an issue during these years. In our article, we examine the circumstances of the visibility of the LGBT community in Latvian public discourse over the last thirty years, as well as the history of LGBT activism during the period of independence. We pay special attention to the problem of the normalization of same-sex relationships. By “normalization,” we understand social processes through which ideas and actions of a certain group of society begin crossing the threshold of deviance or pathology and start to pass as “normal” and acceptable to the majority.1 The history of Latvian LGBT activism can be seen as a struggle to achieve the normalization of the LGBT community and to overcome the effects of its pathologization and criminalization. More than a quarter of a century after the collapse of the USSR and following decriminalization of male same-sex relationships (1992), we should ask why the level of homophobia is still high and how the work of LGBT activists correlates with the conservative and populist politics of Latvia. In the beginning of the 2000s, the discourse of “traditional family” and “traditional values” arose in the public space as the antipode of the liberal values associated with the West, especially the growing visibility of the LGBT community after 2005 when the tradition of Riga Pride events began.

1This concept was invented by Michel Foucault in his Discipline and Punish. On the creation of the heterosexual norm in post-war Western countries, see Adams (1997).

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We analyze the clashes of these two viewpoints using newspaper and magazine articles, sociological poll reports and government documents, in addition to other relevant printed materials and online posts. Research work on Latvian LGBT-related history has begun only recently. This history of the transition years was touched upon by Lapsa et al. (2008–2009); issues of homophobia and the closet have been studied by Waitt (2005) and Mole (2011), while the first study on LGBT activism was carried out by Vērdiņš and Ozoliņš (2013); life stories of Latvian Soviet and post-Soviet queer people have been collected by Ruduša (2014) while Lipša gives valuable insight into legislation during the USSR time (2016). We use the abbreviation “LGBT” (instead of the popular ­contemporary designation “queer”), speaking about LGBT activism, for several reasons: First, it is the common self-identification of the LGBT activists of the period; second, there is no movement in Latvia whose activists would identify as queer. Understanding gender as a non-binary phenomenon is an idea that is just beginning to attract the younger generation of Latvian LGBT activists. We address the main questions in roughly chronological order to ground them in the recent history of Latvia and the development of its social and political life. First, we discuss the period of transition from Soviet to capitalistic Republic of Latvia, then focus on the 1990s when the possibility to carry out “homophile” (or pre-Stonewall) style activism was tested. After that, we turn to contemporary issues regarding the legal status of same-sex couples and legislative initiatives. We conclude with an analysis of the arguments of “traditionalists” against the legislative changes and the turn against so-called Western values that have recently made it impossible for Latvia to sign the so-called Istanbul Convention2 and led to the vote against the Cohabitation Law bill by a parliament committee.

2“The

Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence” has been discussed at parliaments of several post-socialist countries. Latvia is one of the countries where the signing of this convention was instrumentalized by the populist and right-wing politics as a part of their fight against “genderism” and LGBT rights.

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Years of Change: 1987–1992 Before the changes started in the mid-1980s, sexuality was a minor subject in Soviet public discourse. As a result, when perestroika came, it was met by people who were both unaware of and prejudicial toward non-normative sexuality and unaware of Western discourse on the politics of sexual identity or the principles of civil society. However, the foundations of civil society were about to be laid. Initially, the mid-1980s came with the loosening of the Soviet system of censorship. As Russian sexologist Igor Kon stated, the year 1987 was the breaking point when the topic of sexuality entered public discourse through the mass media of the USSR, becoming a specific phenomenon to discuss and explore openly (Kon 2005, p. 111). During the years that followed, written and visual information on sexuality entered the public space: Illustrated magazines published art photographs of female nudes, journals and newspapers educated their readers about various sex-related subjects (e.g., Q&A sections in the Latvian youth magazine Liesma where Dr. Zālītis addressed problems of a sexual nature put forward by the readers). In the beginning of the 1990s, tabloid press joined this discussion. In 1989, Latvian-American journalist Kārlis Streips moved to Latvia, the country his parents had left after the Second World War. Being openly gay, he was involved in gay organizations and wrote for gay publications in the States. He was open about his sexuality in Soviet Latvia, where he taught journalism at the University of Latvia and got involved in the National Front of Latvia, the main organization of the national “awakening.”3 As he recalled, people in Latvia usually reacted to his openness with surprise and confusion: “In Latvia, nobody… had ever met anybody openly gay, therefore people just did not have any terminology to apply for discussing alternative sexual identities” (Ruduša 2014, p. 131).

3“Awakening” (Atmoda) is a commonly used term for the national activism in the period from 1987 to 1991 when non-violent protests were carried out and nationalist organizations were established to secure Latvia’s secession from the Soviet Union.

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At the same time, Streips’ colleagues started to publish the first articles on gay issues. These first articles appearing in magazines operated with the limited information their journalists managed to acquire and interpret. The publications spoke of gays and lesbians as people abstract and unfamiliar; the writers’ aim was rather to shock their supposedly puritanical reader than to actually immerse them in the issue. One of the first texts of this kind is an article simply titled “Lesbians.” It was printed in the first issue of a short-lived magazine “Edgars,” established to promote temperance. Author Aivars Kaktiņš, using “materials from foreign periodicals,” informed readers on the phenomenon of lesbianism as such. He used information from American media sources which stated that “it is supposed that lesbians are mostly occupied as saleswomen, athletes, union leaders and politicians” (Kaktiņš 1989, p. 57). Lesbians were presented as lonely persons who experience enormous difficulties finding “soulmates and partners.” Such “information” seems to combine the spirit of the time of Radclyffe Hall and “The Well of Loneliness”, published in 1928, with some Soviet press clichés of the capitalist world. Lesbianism as a sexually arousing “perversion” for Soviet Latvian male readers and a dangerous choice for women was discussed in another article in 1989. An interview with Soviet Latvian sexologist Mirdza Liepiņa, published in Liesma blends curiosity and embarrassment. From the very first question asked by the embarrassed journalist, it introduces the crucial category of “normality”: “Doctor, is it normal that we, two women, are talking about this problem?” I asked the sexologist Mirdza Liepiņa. “Of course it is. This is a female pathology, and who else will talk about it, if not we?” (Zvīdre 1989, p. 12)

The doctor’s attitude toward homosexuality is very negative. She holds the view that a woman, raised up in a proper way, will stick to a “normal ethical attitude towards her sexual life” and never yield to a same-sex relationship. Asked if lesbianism might not be a result of an unhappy life, she states, “In the very worst case, a woman could come to masturbation but never to homosexualism” (Zvīdre 1989, p. 12).

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However, she refers to statistical data (without revealing its source) and announces that 25% of lesbians have tried to commit suicide, and 3% of them have succeeded; nevertheless, the majority of lesbians does not want to be medically treated because their sexual orientation “does not disturb their life.” Liesma magazine published other sex-related materials in that period of time. It is for this magazine that the aforementioned Dr. Zālītis wrote his sex column, aimed at educating readers by answering their letters— including those written by young men who expressed anxiety over their supposed homosexual inclinations.4 For the authorities of the USSR, there was another reason to educate the readers of periodicals about same-sex relationships. The end of the 1980s is the period when the AIDS epidemic reached the USSR. Officials reacted to it with an information campaign, positioning male homosexuals as active agents who contracted the deadly disease during their visits to the morally degraded West and carried it to sexually innocent Soviet males. A brochure on AIDS by two Russian doctors, Valentin Pokrovsky and his son Vadim Pokrovsky, was published in Russian in 1988 and soon thereafter translated into Latvian. They construct an identity of the first Soviet AIDS patient as a deluded pervert who yields too easily to Western sexual mores: He happened to obtain an American magazine, and after reading it he came to the conclusion he was homosexual. It happened while he was staying in a foreign country, and it was easy for him to find a male sexual partner there. Not knowing he contracted AIDS, he returned to his motherland and skillfully “applied” his knowledge here. He made acquaintances of male youths 18–20 years old and managed to talk them into having sex with the help of little presents, foreign pornographic publications, and alcohol. In the next three years, he succeeded in finding more than 20 partners; five of them contracted AIDS. (Pokrovsky and Pokrovsky 1990, p. 17)

4See,

for example, Liesma 1990, No. 5, 21 and No. 9/10, 13.

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Despite their contemptuous remarks regarding “the degrading influence of the West,” father and son Pokrovsky are aware that cultivating state-supported homophobia is not always a solution. In the same brochure, they place emphasis on the necessity for a minimal level of tolerance toward gay people for the sake of putting them under medical observation to enable the fight against the further spread of the AIDS virus. Understanding AIDS as a potentially serious social problem in Latvia is one of the main arguments for decriminalizing male homosexuality (Part 1 of Paragraph 124 of the Criminal Code of Soviet Latvia). This argument, however, was used by very few opinion leaders. For example, Leonīds Buhrots, vice-president of the contemporaneous national association “Life without AIDS,” states in his 1991 article that homosexual contacts are “expanding throughout the republic” committed by “the groups of homosexuals up to 200 persons who have contacts with partners in other USSR republics and foreign countries” (Buhrots 1991). The “notorious” paragraph of the Criminal Code is one of the reasons why “these contacts are not regulated in any way and contribute to the spreading of AIDS and leucosis” (ibid.). Latvia, like other countries in the region, had to decriminalize male homosexuality to become a member of the Council of Europe. The event passed with little publicity or information about the processes behind it. Amendments to the Criminal Code, which repealed the punishment for pederasty, were adopted by the Supreme Council of the Republic of Latvia on February 5, 1992 and came into force on March 1 of the same year (see Lavrikovs 1999). According to verbatim reports of the Supreme Council, there is no discussion of Paragraph 124.5 Journalist Kārlis Streips later interpreted the adoption of these amendments, not as a will to improve the situation for Latvia’s homosexual population, but rather as a coincidence: “I have never been sure that the Supreme Council was actually aware of what they were doing”

5See

verbatim reports of the Supreme Council. (1992, February 5). [Latvijas Republikas Augstākās Padomes sēžu stenogrammas]. http://helios-web.saeima.lv/Likumdosana/likumdosana_ steno_ap_lat.html. Accessed 22 June 2012.

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(Ruduša 2014, p. 134). At that time, there were no discussions, neither in the Latvian parliament nor in mass media, based on the contemporary problems of the Latvian LGBT community. Publications in the transition years show several problems confronting those who wanted to organize an LGBT movement in Latvia. Prior to these years, the society was mostly ignorant of the existence of gays and lesbians and the problems they encounter. During these years, the voice of “sexual minorities,” as gays and lesbians were frequently called in the press, were not heard publicly, so public opinion was formed by journalists who were looking for sensational stories and provided stereotypes for their readers. In these years, social activism was understood almost exclusively as participation in the nationalist organizations (and many LGBT people were part of these organizations). It took more than a decade to redefine social activism as the fight for the rights of particular groups in society. As the next section will show, during the next years a nascent Latvian LGBT movement was looking for ways to overcome these problems.

LGBT Activism in the Republic of Latvia In the beginning of the 1990s, the Latvian LGBT movement had to be made from scratch: There was not a single organized gay or lesbian organization, neither in the interwar Republic of Latvia nor in Latvian exile communities after the Second World War. The only way to create such a movement was to use the experience of Western countries and adapt it to the local situation.6 As Annamarie Jagose has pointed out, during the second half of the twentieth century, activists in many countries of the world adopted the principles of the American gay rights movement, thus establishing the phenomenon of the “Americanization” of LGBT identity (Jagose 1996, pp. 34–35). LGBT identity itself in the modern sense of the term also crystalized in the United States with the

6The concepts of democracy and civil society as such were new to the ex-Soviet citizens, so they had to be learned through practice.

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rise of identity politics in the 1960s and proved to be an effective way to mobilize the gay community and to enable its visibility. In the first half of the 1990s, a small group of gay and lesbian Latvians looked forward to establishing the local activist movement based on the same principles as those adopted in Western Europe and Northern America in the 1970s and 1980s. As the occasional gay and lesbian periodicals of the 1990s show, the movement’s aims were (1) to form a homogeneous gay and lesbian community whose members identify as such and are capable of fighting for their interests, influencing both public discourse and legislation; and (2) to establish organizations and support groups, events, helplines, and periodicals, as well as other forms of communication that could aid the movement’s efforts. In the beginning of the 1990s, several activist organizations were established. The Latvian Association of Sexual Equality (LASE; Latvijas Asociācija seksuālai vienlīdzībai), the most influential organization of the 1990s, was registered at the Ministry of Justice on February 12, 1993, though its formation had already begun at the end of 1990. This organization stated its goals as the advocacy of human rights, the fight against the juridical, social, and political discrimination and intolerance against gays and lesbians. In November of 1991, just months after the Republic of Latvia had become an independent state, its representatives organized several meetings with the Committee of Human Rights and National Questions of the Supreme Council of Republic of Latvia and asked them to present a proposal to parliament to repeal Paragraph 124 of the Criminal Code (Lavrikovs, op. cit.). Two leaders of LASE, Ainārs Ločmelis and Juris Lavrikovs, became its public spokespersons and were interviewed in periodicals and on TV programs. In 1993, the first official issue of the LGBT newspaper Loks appeared, supported by the Danish national organization of gays and lesbians; however, it stopped after several more issues. It was relaunched in 1995 as a magazine with the same name, but it did not survive long. In the 1990s, the first gay and lesbian clubs and bars were opened in Riga. Created by the enthusiasts of the gay community, they were placed in whatever places could be used for such purposes and did not always provide their clients with the discreetness they desired. At the end of the 1990s, these adapted venues, operating mostly on weekends,

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gave way to clubs in more proper, permanent spaces that were open on a daily basis. As Gordon Waitt emphasizes in his research on the geographies of the Latvian closet, all of these places were designed to blend into the cityscape without giving away their queer nature to a passerby. The necessity of such precaution was confirmed in 1998 when a bomb was detonated in front of “Purvs” bar, destroying the front wall and windows of surrounding properties (Waitt 2005, p. 176). Even several years after 2005 Riga Pride7 was established as a tradition, the visual presence of the LGBT community in Riga city is still largely hidden. A primary agenda of the LASE was the legal recognition of samesex relationships. During the first years of Latvian LGBT activism, LASE spoke of a necessity for same-sex marriage. Their initial goal was the extension of marriage to same-sex persons with the same procedures and legal consequences. In 1995, to promote this request, LASE organized a public action, which attracted public attention and raised the profile of the LGBT movement in the Latvian public sphere: a lesbian wedding ceremony. In August, Latvian Astra Indričāne and her German girlfriend Birgit Buvinger entered into the first same-sex “marriage” in Latvia. Their ceremony took place in the art-house cinema “Kinogalerija” in Old Riga and was performed by LASE board member Ločmelis who issued them a symbolic certificate of partnership. After the ceremony, the newlywed couple and their supporters paid tribute to the Freedom Monument in the center of Riga City, attracting the attention of journalists and passersby. The revived Loks in its first issue of 1995 celebrated the action as a significant achievement of LASE to make the LGBT community more visible and sparked discussions both in the mass media and on the streets: The significance of this event can be measured in the enormous amount of press publications as well as TV and radio programs dedicated to it. This event was discussed on very different levels from government 7Since 2009, Riga Pride is a part of the Baltic Pride which takes place in Riga once in three years: 2009, 2012, 2015 [as a part of Euro Pride] and 2018. According to the police reports, there were 8000 participants at the Pride march in 2018.

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circles to the passersby on the street. It seems to us that the main goal of this action has been achieved. It made everybody discuss homosexuality including members of the parliament, church leaders, scholars, and ordinary citizens as well. It was a kind of shock therapy for the society of Latvia. (Loks 1995, 1, pp. 4–6)

Tabloid newspapers saw the action as one of the most “shocking” events of the year (see Eglīts 1996). Whether this shock therapy brought positive results for the Latvian LGBT community—other than visibility—is another question, for the reaction from the community and opinion leaders was mostly negative. The tabloid newspaper “Vakara Ziņas” invited two “experts” to comment on the event. One of them was Jānis Pujats, archbishop of the Latvian Roman Catholic church who condemned the action using religious arguments; the other was Ārija Iklāva, the head of the National Civil Registry Office who said: “The most tragic thing about this was that adolescents with immature psyches saw this and read about this. Homosexuality is not characteristic of Latvian mentality” (ibid.).8 After such a reaction, LASE seemed to be confused about whether such actions should be repeated. On October 16 of the same year, one more lesbian couple entered the same kind of unofficial partnership. However, it was celebrated only in a small circle of their friends and supporters; the mass media were not involved this time. It took several years to organize the next publicized same-sex “wedding.” In the years that followed, LGBT activists shifted their attention from the concept of same-sex marriage to the institution of civil partnership. The likely reason for this was their widening knowledge about strategies used by Western LGBT activists who employed the establishing of the institution of civil partnership as a precondition for fighting

8Religious

and “protection of minors” arguments against homosexuality have re-emerged in recent public discourse. On June 18, 2015, the Latvian parliament gave final approval to amendments to the education law that mean schools will henceforth be obliged to give children “moral education” in line with the values of the Constitution, most notably with regard to the primacy of conventional ideas of what constitutes marriage and family life (LSM.lv 2015). The amendments do not mention homosexuality explicitly; however, they can be used to punish teachers for discussing any gay-related subject in their classes.

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for same-sex marriage. The advocacy for same-sex union legislation was taken up by an organization established in 1997, Information Center of Homosexuality (Homoseksualitātes informācijas centrs), which started another short-lived newspaper “10%” in 1998. One year later it supported passage in the parliament of a bill on same-sex civil partnership. The bill, drafted by lawyer Juris Lavrikovs, offered a same-sex partnership institution that would more or less imitate marriage: The registration and divorce of the partnership (with a few exceptions relating to the registration of a marriage in a religious institution) would be governed by the Civil Law, and other laws and regulations concerning the conclusion and dissolution of marriage. The law on cohabitation, adopted in Denmark in 1989, as well as similar laws in other European countries, was used as a model and basis for this bill. Lavrikovs also made a modest gesture to acknowledge that his partnership law did not challenge the institution of marriage: “The introduction of a same-sex partnership registration institution is by no means literally comparable to a marriage between a male and female institution. The draft law does not provide for the repeal of the Civil Law which prohibits marriage between persons of the same sex” (Lavrikovs, op. cit.). On November 30, 1999, the Parliament Committee of Human Rights and Public Affairs rejected the bill with eight members voting against it and two members supporting it (Rendija 2010). On April 11, 2003, some former activists of an LGBT youth group founded the Latvian National LGBT Organization “ILGA Latvia,” which was officially registered in August 2004 and aimed at a more effective fight for LGBT rights, including the organization of the first Riga Pride. However, in 2005, another organization “Mozaīka,” an association of LGBT people and their friends, was established. It quickly became an influential organization and took over the organization of Riga Pride 2005 as well as other events that followed. As a result, “ILGA” Latvia ceased to exist.9 9The contradictions of both organizations are traced in the documentary by Kaspars Goba, “Homo.lv”, in 2010, which pictured both LGBT organizations and their conservative opponents. The film won the national cinema prize “Lielais Kristaps” as the best full-length documentary of the year.

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Around the year 2005, it became clear that a more successful tactic was needed to give voice to the Latvian LGBT community, recognizing that social attitudes could not be changed without public events and discussions, including changes in legislation on the legal status of samesex couples. The previous model employed by LASE (a small organization of just a few activists, dependent on the financial support of foreign donors, lacking any significant body of supporters) proved ineffective. “Mozaīka” was established as a bigger organization with more connections and more possibilities to influence public opinion. Visibility became one of the main principles of the next phase of its activities.

Twenty-First Century: Changing Tactics The idea of same-sex partnership proved to be totally unacceptable to most politicians as well as their electorate and was thus extremely hard to defend. In the early 2000s, the leading Latvian political parties were dominated by politicians who grew up and were educated in Soviet times. They still interpreted same-sex desire as something deviant and unsuitable for public exposure. The association “Mozaīka” undertook a study of the aggressive homophobic rhetoric of many members of parliament (MPs). The survey summarizes Latvian political discourse on homosexuality in the years (2005 and 2006) when the first two Riga Pride events took place. The examples of homophobic speech used usually fall under one of these thematic categories: nationalism (the nation and the state should preserve its homogeneity and integrity by exclusion or subordination of gays and lesbians); Christianity (the nation is defined as not only exclusively Latvian, but also Christian); morality (arguments invoking family values and unspecified principles of morality); illness (gays and lesbians as sick and deviant); conspiracy (homosexuality as an ideology; LGBT intends to “homosexualise” society); or demographic crisis (homosexuality purportedly contributes to the demographic crisis in Latvia). Among the most common attitudes toward the LGBT community was their exclusion from the public space; marginalization; incitement to violence; invitation to discriminate; misunderstanding or misuse of

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terms; manipulation with untrue, untested, disputable facts, outright lies; denial of discrimination (Mozaīka 2007, pp. 8–10). Some months after the first Riga Pride had taken place in 2005, the Latvian parliament answered with an amendment to the Constitution which defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman (LETA 2005). This step was explained as strengthening the “traditional” family and providing the parliament with a legal argument to complicate any further attempts to legalize same-sex marriage. During the second decade of the twenty-first century, support for the idea of same-sex partnership rose among politicians. A part of the younger generation of politicians, educated in Latvian or Western universities and holding more liberal views on issues of family and sexuality, started to speak in favor of the legislation of same-sex unions. Nevertheless, it remained an initiative of some individual liberal pro-European ministers or MPs. Every year when gay pride was organized in Riga, discussions of the legal status of same-sex couples were renewed and were picked up by some politicians, especially some members of the liberal-conservative unity (Vienotība) party. After Baltic Pride 2012, Defense Minister Artis Pabriks announced his support of gender-neutral registered partnership. In early 2015, when the upcoming Europride events raised the visibility of the LGBT movement again, MP Veiko Spolītis submitted to the Legal Affairs Committee a bill to change the Civil Code to provide for partnerships (Diena 2015). His proposal was rejected. A couple of months later, Juris Pūce, a politician of the younger generation and chairperson of the party “For Latvia‘s Development” (currently “Attīstībai/Par”), launched a public signature collection for the adoption of the Cohabitation Law which would provide equal rights to couples regardless of their gender. It took approximately two years, until the end of 2017, for the necessary 10,000 signatures to be collected, to enable this initiative to be passed over to parliament. On March 7, 2018, the Latvian parliament committee dismissed the proposal to pass a cohabitation law by five votes to two, and two abstentions (Xinhua 2018). On March 15, the parliament turned down the initiative. A total of 48 MPs voted to reject it, with only 18 supporting it, while four deputies abstained from the vote and 12 did not take part in it (Mana Balss

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2018). The initiative was consequently turned down without any significant debates in the parliament. Since 2012, Latvian public discourse on sexuality, gender, and family has become a battleground of ideologies which could be characterized as a clash between liberal ideas associated with Europe and “traditional values“ as interpreted by the Russian political elite and church authorities. In these years, both the refugee crisis in Europe and the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by Russia and the war in East Ukraine that followed have created fear about the possibility of similar events in the territory of Latvia. That sense of threat has given way to nationalistic sentiments. Moreover, the rhetoric of Latvian nationalistic politicians and other self-proclaimed patriots more often resembles the views popularized by Russian propaganda: Condemnation of the supposed degeneration and emasculation of Europeans goes hand in hand with the marginalization of the local feminist movement and LGBT community, as well as the reluctance of the Latvian government to give shelter to war refugees from Syria and other immigrants.10 In these circumstances, the Latvian parliament has for the last several years refused to sign “The Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence,” more commonly referred to as the Istanbul Convention. The debates over the Convention were one of the most widely discussed themes in 2017–2018. Particularly problematic for the politicians and religious leaders who actively speak against the ratification of the Convention is Article 12, which obliges states to “promote changes in the social and cultural patterns of behavior of women and men with a view to eradicating prejudices, customs, traditions and all other practices which are based on the idea of the inferiority of women or on stereotyped roles for women and men” (Mustillo 2018). Latvian church leaders see the Article as “gender ideology” propaganda that will lead to acceptance of

10According

to EU data, on June 29, 2017, Latvia had accepted 317 refugees (Latvia’s total commitment according to the EU quota scheme is 481 refugees). However, almost all of these refugees have left the country because of the lack of support and impossibility of finding a job (Antonenko 2017).

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social gender as a matter of individual choice in addition to the acceptance of same-sex marriage. This position is part of an international “anti-gender” campaign which seeks to marginalize contemporary activism and legislation on issues of gender and sexuality taking place across Europe over the last few years (Böll Foundation 2015). In this campaign, the LGBT movement is just one “scapegoat” aligned with feminism and gender studies in academia, social work against gender violence, and sexual education. Paradoxically, Latvian nationalists have in recent years echoed Kremlin propaganda to a certain extent—”traditional values” and an idealized past form a framework that suits them as well. As Dan Healey has observed, “EU membership is no inoculation against the Kremlin’s political homophobia and […] its ‘soft power’ projects are not confined, necessarily, to the countries of the former Soviet Union that remain unaffiliated with the EU or EEU” (Healey 2018, p. 201). Unlike in the 1990s, Latvian LGBT activists now have allies. However, these activists are framed as part of a much wider “genderist” spectrum ready to destroy Latvian “traditional” families and eventually the entire Latvian nation. This whole alliance of liberals tends to be marginalized as “sorosites,” too radical and “out of place” in contemporary Latvia. Paradoxically, the pejorative term “sorosīts” (‘sorosite’),11 popularized by the “traditionalists” and populists, has become a kind of a self-identification that signifies both a certain system of values and participation in EU-funded projects. The replacement of “sodomite” by “sorosite” is the trajectory on which Latvian public discourse on homosexuality is now moving: Sorosite as a dangerous cosmopolite who accepts money from strangers and whose evil deeds will destroy the Latvian nation. Questions of normality and normalization should thus be readdressed according to the rapidly changing current situation.

11Associated

with George Soros, a Hungarian-American business magnate and political activist.

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Discourses of “Normalization” In contemporary Latvia, “normalization” has been part of at least three different discourses relevant to LGBT activism: (1) the “normalization” of Latvian society as a whole, transitioning from a socialist republic of the USSR to a capitalist country of the EU; (2) LGBT activism and how it addresses the rest of the community in its struggle for recognition and equality; and (3) the process of normalization inside the LGBT community to survive in a homophobic society. These processes need to be understood as simultaneous and intertwining movements which speak of the peculiar situation in which the LGBT community finds itself in Latvia. (1) “normalization” as a project of the whole society. Latvian activists have had to operate under the conditions of a society struggling to free itself from traces of totalitarian thinking, a society experiencing with the transition to capitalism the dramatic rise of nationalism. In such conditions, the process of “normalization“ taking place in the country included gender roles, in a way similar to the post-Second World War period when nations recovering from the terrors of war and occupation craved the return to “normality” (Herzog 2011, pp. 96–106). Sociologist Daina Stukuls Eglitis interprets the entire process of rebuilding the independent country as returning to “normality” in contrast to existence under the laws of the USSR which were perceived as “alien and unnatural” (Eglitis 2002, p. 12). As Eglitis shows, all undesirable things associated with the USSR were constructed as “abnormal” by the nationalistic opinion leaders of the perestroika period and the early 1990s—from the living conditions of Latvian families in Soviet Latvia to the growing presence of the immigrants from other republics of the Soviet Union. When the Republic of Latvia regained its independence again in 1991, the decades spent under the Soviets were construed as wasted time when the nation was suppressed and “frozen,” waiting for change. Hence, after 1991 interwar Latvia was seen as the ideal for a developed country. The idealization of the past collided with the idealization of traditional gender roles, with man as breadwinner and woman as wife

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and mother. Gay and lesbian identity seems to speak against such an ideal, giving the stereotype of LGBT people as supposedly childless. In this way, the “normalization” project of Latvian society as a whole is seen at odds with the Latvian LGBT community’s claims for equality. (2) communicating the “normalized” LGBT community to a mainstream audience. Three phases of Latvian LGBT activism can be distinguished. In the period from 1992 to 2005, LASE and other organizations’ tactics can be compared in a way to the practices of the Western homophile organizations of the 1940s to 1960s when their target audience was mostly the LGBT community, and their occasional public actions could not significantly change the opinion of the majority. In 2005, another phase began with the first Riga Pride march. Because of “Mozaīka” and their supporters’ activities, opinions concerning gay and lesbian rights were polarized, and people had to make up their mind on the subject for the first time, especially witnessing the emotional and physical violence during the Pride events in 2006 when protesters threw human excrement at participants in the events and the Pride march was not permitted by the Riga City Council. Over the next decade, the LGBT movement won many supporters among Latvian intellectuals and artists. In 2015, a group of straight allies joined Euro Pride march, organized by the online journal “Satori.” This march marked the beginning of a new phase, with LGBT rights seen as a part of other sex- and gender-related rights (equal wages for women, protection against gender violence, laws concerning egg donation, advocacy for civil partnership law, etc.). The same group of socially active individuals would raise its voice every time nationalistic and conservative forces threaten any of these rights. Under these conditions, radical or challenging tactics are not employed. The Riga Pride march is usually a peaceful and relatively calm action that does not emphasize the aesthetics of camp or nakedness. The Latvian LGBT community and its supporters still need to prove that same-sex relationships need not be decadent and lascivious. (3) “normalization” inside the LGBT community. The third discourse of “normalization” is the need to “self-normalize” felt by gays and lesbians themselves, which serves as a survival tactic in a homophobic society. As various interviews show (Waitt 2005; Ruduša 2014), politics of invisibility, avoidance of participation in gay pride and other forms of

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activism, as well as straight-acting behavior and secrecy, still seem to the majority of the Latvian LGBT community to be the best tactics. Except for very few local “celebrities,” people would not identify with their non-normative sexuality in public. The work of normalization is already done before any representation actually takes place, so compulsory heteronormativity is not challenged, and a prudent status quo is maintained at the LGBT community’s expense.

Normality and Procreation In discussing contemporary Latvian LGBT activism, the question of acceptance of any kind of identity politics in Latvian society also needs to be addressed. The reluctance to accept LGBT people should be viewed together with the society’s denial of problems brought forth by feminists, disabled persons, immigrants, national and cultural minorities, and any other marginalized groups and minorities which are perceived as a threat to the survival of the Latvian nation. In the second decade of the twenty-first century, several issues still loom over the society of Latvia: the steady decrease of population in Latvia (“dying out”); low salaries and insufficient social support which causes economic emigration to better-paid work in Western Europe; ideological controversies that intensified after Russia’s occupation of Crimea in 2014; and the overall reluctance to give shelter to war refugees from the Middle East and other countries. The data of the Central Statistical Bureau (CSB 2017a) show that, since the beginning of 2010, Latvia’s population has dropped by 170,000, or 8%. Migration has resulted in a decrease of 113,000, and negative natural increase in a drop of 57,000 people. At the beginning of 2017, Latvia’s population accounted for 1.95 million, which is 18,800 people less than in 2016. Every year, the population declines by approximately 1% (Worldometers 2018). In such circumstances, the Latvian nation is seen by several nationalist opinion leaders and politicians as a dying organism with no future, and everybody who raises his or her voice for ideas outside the realm of “traditional values,” “traditional family,” and heterosexuality is treated as a national traitor.

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In May 2014, an opinion poll on the integration of society was carried out in Riga City. Respondents were asked about their acceptable forms of contact (i.e., acceptable as a family member, a neighbor, a colleague, a citizen of the same state, a tourist, etc.) with different kinds of people including “homosexually oriented persons.” For this category, 38.5% of respondents chose the answer “Should not be let into the country.” The attitude toward homosexuals proved to be less friendly than toward AIDS patients, alcoholics, ex-prisoners, and representatives of different religions (SKDS 2014). As a comparison to the previous poll shows, the attitude is getting more negative (33% held the same opinion in 2010). As a consequence of homophobic panic spread by the Euro Pride 2015 events in Riga, the Latvian parliament has introduced a “morality clause” to the school curriculum under the Education Law, ensuring children are educated in line with the constitutional definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman (Dittrich 2015). This amendment is one of the reasons Latvia has been ranked the worst place in the EU to be an LGBT citizen according to the Rainbow Europe 2016 index by the gay rights organization ILGA—an index showing the situation of LGBT people based on how laws and policies affect these citizens (Jacobsen 2016). Richard Mole analyzes the high level of homophobia in Latvia as a phenomenon influenced by multiple factors: “the discursive practice of othering homosexuality to counter the perceived ‘national threat’—in tandem with the influence of religion, the communist legacy, the impact of the political transition, and the peculiar nature of its party politics—helps us gain a more nuanced understanding of the problem of homophobia in Latvia” (Mole 2011, p. 557). In addition to the othering of the homosexual, it is worth thinking about the self-identifications of the majority of Latvian society. Such terms as “traditional family” and “traditional values,” so often used in the rhetoric of conservative politicians and church leaders, turn out to be just projected ideals instead of signifying actual values and practices of the majority. In 2016, 13,002 couples were united in marriage while 6061 couples were divorced (CSB 2017b). The number of unmarried heterosexual couples has increased, as has the number of newborns born out of wedlock. The “traditionalists” see this situation as a threat to the

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Latvian nation. They reject the civil partnership law as an option as it is seen as yet another blow to the “traditional family” which will, moreover, open the gates for same-sex unions (Mustillo 2018). This paradoxical logic blames the homosexual minority for the perceived “crisis” of the “traditional” family; it shows the populist politicians and other opinion leaders instrumentalizing the narrative of “dying” and “crisis” for mobilizing homophobic sentiments in society. LGBT persons in Latvia are very rarely represented in public discourse as capable of forming a long-term relationship. There are very few public images of same-sex couples who could help Latvians see the necessity for an inclusive partnership law; the phantom of the depraved homosexual is perceived as a warrior for singles’ promiscuity. During the second decade of the twenty-first century, same-sex parenthood remains a new concept in Latvia. In 2012, LGBT rights activist E. and her partner athlete L. publicized the birth of their son, born through artificial insemination, thus introducing the notion of procreation-friendly lesbian couples (Alberte 2012). Some years later, the narrative of their family complicated as the father of their child was sued for suspending maintenance payments. In that way, this same-sex family was put in a similar position as many divorced heterosexual couples who encounter similar problems (NRA 2017). In 2017, quite the opposite situation arose when the well-known producer J. became the father of a child raised by a same-sex female couple. Some months later he publicly announced the mother’s refusal to acknowledge his paternity and to allow him to meet the child (LA.lv 2017). The anonymous comments on the Web site of the conservative newspaper “Latvijas Avīze” tended to support J.’s position; he was quoted saying that the child needs “a father and a mother instead of two mothers.” Such statements had made him more “heterosexual” in opposition to the two mothers who were reprimanded for their wish to raise the child by themselves. Such statements follow a slippery slope of falling into the mindset of the “traditional” family and demonizing samesex couples who raise children without the presence of their biological fathers or sperm donors. The drive to normalize LGBT lifestyles and relationships is a tactic by which non-normative individuals try to survive in homophobic society.

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Adaptation to minimize the presence of visual signs of the LGBT community is still a crucial tactic. Even the logo of Euro Pride, instead of openly using the rainbow flag, used a concentric spectrum of the rainbow colors blurring one into another in a way that makes it easier for the local community to use this logo publicly. However, the tactic of normalization is altogether a slippery slope as there is no possible way to “self-normalize” the LGBT community for good; this would in effect make the community invisible and politically ineffective. It would also exclude many people who are not willing or capable of such normalization. It would also make it difficult for them to embrace queer identity as a more nuanced understanding of sexuality and gender.

Conclusion The Latvian LGBT movement can now look back at its history, a quarter of a century long. During these years, it has proved that the process of liberalization and integration is neither straightforward, nor equal to concepts like “progress.” In the current era of populist politics and conservative sentiments, LGBT activism seems to amalgamate with other liberal groups and movements, thus attracting far more supporters than in the 1990s. As has been demonstrated, the tactics of Western LGBT movements can be employed in the Baltic region as well. However, they do not guarantee quick results given the resistance to accept non-normative sexuality. This resistance is influenced by different factors mentioned above—including moral, demographic, and nationalistic ones. Latvian society in general cannot be classified as aggressive and radical. The dominant attitude toward the LGBT community is the principle “We don’t care what you do in your bedroom as long as you don’t make it public.” The wish to stand for one’s rights, as soon as it exceeds the imagined homogenous Latvian ethnic group, is seen as a departure from “traditional” values and classified as “radical.” Not only for the Latvian LGBT activists but also for all kinds of sexual policy makers the climate has changed from ignorance and confusion to mute denial. As of 2018, the majority of the Latvian parliament

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silently supports what they see as “traditional” and conservative views on sexuality and gender, and currently there are no substantial discussions about passing or rejecting certain bills; the decisions have already been made by their opinion leaders, and LGBT rights always falls out of the framework of normality. In such a situation, the European Union and its institutions can serve as an important power to influence local politicians. It is possible that more and more citizens of Latvia will obtain a same-sex marriage contract in some other European country. The refusal of Latvian officials to recognize these marriages and their judicial implications including rights concerning childcare, property, inheritance, and health care will sooner or later lead to court proceedings that will go to the European Court of Human Rights. After reaching a certain “critical mass,” these lawsuits might serve as a reason to finally make changes in Latvian laws. Another task would be to educate new generations of Latvian citizens, raising their understanding of civil society, human rights, and sexuality and gender issues. During the next five years, Latvian secondary schools and high schools are undergoing a reform to switch to “competence-based education,” and the new concept promises to have the “social and civic domain” as one of its main fields, as well as to stimulate student’s “cooperation abilities, self-knowledge, critical thinking and creativity” (Catlaks 2015). If such reform proves successful, it must contribute to raising the youth’s tolerance and understanding of the LGBT community. As this quarter of a century has shown, changes in society can be achieved only by fighting for them. The conditions of that fight for Latvian LGBT activists seem to get more and more complicated: The LGBT community is still mostly invisible, and there are very few people who would stand for it publicly given the homophobic reaction that followed “Mozaīka’s” activities and similar projects. Latvian LGBT supporters are left to look across the northern border to Estonia where the Registered Partnership Law, which had been passed by the Estonian parliament in 2014, entered into force on January 1, 2016. The cultural and historical differences between the two “brother” nations have always been considered to be insignificant. However, the recent development shows that every ex-Soviet country has to meet contemporary challenges in its own particular way.

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Acknowledgements   A part of an early version of this article was published in Latvian in Dzimtes konstruēšana (Vērdiņš and Ozoliņš 2013). The work on the final version was supported by the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art, University of Latvia (project LFMI-BF-2019/1). We are thankful to our friends S. A. Sukop and Ena Selimović for their help with language editing.

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Mozaīka. (2007). Homophobic Speech in Latvia: Monitoring the Politicians. Riga: Mozaīka. Mustillo, M. (2018, February 28). Latvia Bristles Against the Istanbul Convention Combating Violence Against Women. The Baltic Times. https://www.baltictimes.com/latvia_bristles_against_the_istanbul_convention_combating_violence_against_women/. Accessed 15 Mar 2018. NRA. (2017, October 24). Latvijas netradicionālākajā ģimenē nedienas – frizieris Pērs nemaksājot alimentus. http://tautaruna.nra.lv/slavenibas/226440latvijas-netradicionalakaja-gimene-nedienas-frizieris-pers-nemaksajot-alimentus/. Accessed 10 Oct 2017. Pokrovsky, V., & Pokrovsky, V. (1990). AIDS: iegūtā imūndeficīta sindroms. Riga: Zinātne. Rendija. (2010). Atmodas efekts. http://homosexuality.wordpress.com/2010/ 09/21/atmodas-efekts/. Accessed 10 Oct 2017. Ruduša, R. (2014). Forced Underground: Homosexuals in Soviet Latvia. Riga: Mansards. SKDS. (2014). Sabiedrības integrācija Rīgā. http://www.nvo.lv/site/attachments/02/10/2014/Sabiedribas_integracija_Riga.pdf. Accessed 10 Oct 2017. Vērdiņš, K., & Ozoliņš, J. (2013). Zilās identitātes naratīvs postpadomju Latvijā: sociālie aspekti. In D. Hanovs, I. Jansone, & K. Vērdiņš (Eds.), Dzimtes konstruēšana (pp. 111–128). Riga: Avens un partneri. Waitt, G. (2005). Sexual Citizenship in Latvia: Geographies of the Latvian Closet. Social and Cultural Geography, 6(2), 161–181. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/14649360500074618. Worldometers. (2018). Latvia Population. http://www.worldometers.info/ world-population/latvia-population/. Accessed 15 Mar 2018. Xinhua. (2018). Latvian MPs Turn Down Cohabitation Law Initiative. http:// www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-03/08/c_137022886.htm. Accessed 15 Mar 2018. Zvīdre, I. (1989). Amor Lesbicus. Liesma, 4, 12.

11 Framing Queer Activism in Poland: From Liberal Values to Solidarity Justyna Struzik

Introduction While conducting fieldwork in 2015, in one of the biggest Polish cities, I met with a queer activist to discuss her involvement in the LGBTQ movement,1 her vision regarding possible political and social change, and the challenges faced by queer groups and organisations in contemporary Poland. Talking about a plethora of actions, campaigns, workshops, and protests and mapping crucial events and milestones of the movement, she noted that from her perspective over years, the symbolic dimension of exclusion dominated queer collective actions. The economic, material, and systemic character of discrimination experienced by LGBTQ people and demands for changes in this matter were much less visible in the movement. 1In

the following paper, I use the terms “LGBTQ” and “queer movement” interchangeably.

J. Struzik (*)  Institute of Sociology at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Kraków, Poland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 R. Buyantueva and M. Shevtsova (eds.), LGBTQ+ Activism in Central and Eastern Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20401-3_11

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[We often say] that marriage equality shouldn’t be our primary goal, that tackling youth homelessness should be [taken care of ] in the first place, you know, all these demands more economic, more social than symbolic. For me it’s a big problem that we forget about that material, economic dimension [of exclusion], and such a critique speaks to me [R28NB242]. In her narrative, the symbolic was embedded in the idea of equal marriage/civil partnership for same-sex couples that have become a leading demand for some LGBTQ organisations in recent years. She stated that “a lot of energy within the LGBTQ movement is devoted to marriage equality” whereas, for example, trans rights (including access to refundable hormone therapy) are neglected. It can be claimed that the invisibility of structural facets of social exclusion has been partially caused by a post-transformation need to build an adequate representation of LGBTQ rights in public discourses, after the period of their denial by previous socialist regime authorities. In this context, other interviewees pointed out that the direction of the movement in Poland depends on its emergence in the post-transformation reality, when liberal democracy and capitalistic values were perceived within a framework where “there is no alternative” way. In the initial shaping of LGBTQ communities, democratic and pro-capitalistic values were thus also uncritically welcomed by civil society organisations to a certain extent (cf. Binnie 2013). The specific political and economic transformation in which the LGBTQ movement emerged in Poland, as well as the critical reflections of the interviewees concerning the symbolic/economic dimensions of the activism, led me to address the following research questions in this chapter. To what extent and how is the problem of economic inequalities or structural dimensions of discrimination presented by the movement? Are neoliberal values and ideologies somehow reflected in queer actions or does the movement negotiate and deconstruct these ideas

2For each respondent, I have assigned a number for the interview (R1, R2, R3…) and provided gender identity (M—male, F—female, NB—non-binary, Q—queer) and age at the time of the interview.

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by mobilising around alternative visions? In the context of the public criticism of the social costs of the 1989 transformation in Poland, this chapter explores how these issues have been perceived by queer activists. In other words, it examines the activists’ narratives through the prism of intersectionality, searching for definitions and understanding LGBTQ rights that would include a broader interpretation of injustice, for example by taking into account class or economic disadvantages. In order to shed light on existence of the intersectional approach in queer activism, I applied frame analysis which gives centre stage to the ideas, values, and visions of social change emerging from the actions undertaken by the activists. Frame analysis also pertains to the discussions and negotiations of the meanings of these frameworks among LGBTQ activists. The chapter thus scrutinises various frames produced by Polish queer activism, as developed since the end of the 1990s in a new democratic and capitalist reality. I argue that within the frames, there is a visible shift towards more solidarity and social justice-oriented values. The shift could be provoked on the one hand by public debates about the negative or ambiguous results of the economic transition, as already mentioned, the changeable political climate, and the weakness of the Polish left-wing, or, on the other hand, by the internal differentiation and development of the movement. The goal of this chapter is thus twofold. It presents and discusses the main frameworks of LGBTQ activism in Poland, stemming from a study conducted between 2012 and 2015 in several LGBTQ communities, groups, and organisations. Discussing the frames allowed me to address recent noticeable transformations of these frames that emphasise the importance of solidarity and queer kinship for defining the goals for queer movements. At the beginning of the movement, collective actions were focused primarily on building a symbolic visibility of LGBTQ identities in a public discourse and promoting the idea of equality and diversity in the society, often rooted in an individualistic understanding of LGBTQ rights. Recent years have brought a slightly different vision for social change by demonstrating the importance of solidarity with other minority groups and among LGBTQ people. This chapter is divided into several parts. It starts with a description of the methodological approach to the study by focusing on

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the meanings of frames and framing processes as well as on the main assumptions of public queer sociology applied in the research. I then describe the emergence of the LGBTQ movement in Poland and their main characteristics. The crucial part of this chapter is devoted to the presentation of empirical results from research where I discuss how LGBTQ activists, groups, and organisations frame collective actions by formulating the following frameworks: a visibility frame “Come and see us”,3 an equality frame “Simply equality”, a diversity frame “Every person has their own gender”, and a frame of personal development “We are all homo ”. Recently emerging frames, specifically a family frame “We are a family” and a solidarity frame “Solidarity is our weapon”, which are still in the making, will be presented in the final part of chapter and discussed through the lens of a shift from interpretative schemes based on liberal values, focusing on an individual, to the frames built upon an importance of solidarity, queer kinship, and social relations.

Methods of the Study When I started my research into the queer movement in Poland, I was initially convinced that the “products of the movement”, such as documents, manifestos, graphic material, and social campaigns, would be the most important sources of knowledge in the project. In time, however, I noticed that it was necessary to reach the voices of those who actually work on the discourse and its products, those who negotiate it and argue about their content. This was why I decided to re-design the methodological approach and focus more on the actual experiences of activists than on analysing the discourse. The methodological perspective guiding this study relies on “movement-relevant-theory”, referencing the assumption that the social theory of a movement needs to be constructed as significant for the movement itself (Bevington and Dixon 2005; Cox 2014; Cox and Flesher Fominaya 2009). The rules

3The

slogans of each frame refer to mottos and phrases used by the activists during demonstrations.

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behind public queer sociology were equally considered and adopted (Santos 2012). I decided to set up several rules with which to put the ideas upon which public queer sociology could be built into action. Firstly, I tried to conduct a study which could be somehow useful to the movements, and therefore, during the interviews or other meetings with the activists, I discussed my goals, methodological approach, and methods with them. Secondly, I was involved for years in several queer groups and organisations in Cracow, and thus, I often positioned myself both as an activist and as a social researcher (cf. Croteau 2005). Such a position, although involving various challenges, provided me with a unique perspective on the LGBTQ movement, especially when it came to processes of negotiating different meanings of strategies and tactics, tools and representation by the activists. Being part of the movement allowed me to experience and thus understand the internal “social worlds” of the activists. Thirdly, following the approaches of other researchers (Milan 2014; Santos 2012), the main role of sociology in this inquiry involved describing and revealing social inequalities and promoting social change in this regard. Such a vision of sociology was accompanied by a certain reflexivity, understood as “[…] an iterative and permanent process, and a dialogical one, transforming the researcher into the object of his own scrutiny, and potentially able to situate the researcher in a horizontal relationship with the research object” (Milan 2014, p. 448). In-depth interviewing and participant observation were used as research methods and techniques. Between 2012 and 2015, I conducted interviews with 30 activists in different Polish cities. The activists identified themselves as lesbian, gay, queer, non-binary, or heterosexual. The interview participants were between 21 and 43 years of age, educated to degree level, and engaged in diverse types of social activism, usually in more than one initiative. They predominantly represented the middle class, with relatively large cultural capital reserves; they worked in higher education institutions, NGOs, or had their own businesses. Being part of social movement events that were actually happening fostered my understanding of the inner-structure of the implemented tasks (their dynamics and temporality), as well as the complex relationships “on the inside”. Frame analysis was applied to the collected materials.

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Frames in social movement studies are interpretative schemes4 produced and shaped by the movements in order to mobilise participants, by-standers, and communities to engage in collective actions (Johnston and Noakes 2005; Snow and Benford 1988). They are certain performative “calls for arms” as they aim to convince potential attendees that the goals of the movements are in fact their own issues. Framing processes consist of a diagnostic element which defines causes of injustice and inequalities, a prognosis component demonstrating a vision for social change and a motivational factor showing the importance of taking actions and self-organising. By reconstructing the main frames of queer activism, I focused primarily on the processes of negotiating their meanings and symbolic boundaries, transformations, and shifts in their definitions and inner hierarchies. Such an approach to framing allowed me to foreground the changeable character of the frames, noticeable in internal transformations of the movement.

LGBTQ Activism in Post-socialist Poland The first documented attempts of self-organising by gay men took place in the 1980s in Warsaw (e.g. the Warsaw Homosexual Movement or FILO—a gay magazine); however, they did not receive any legal or social recognition from the state at that time. It was only in the 1990s that the social changes linked to the transformation from socialism to capitalism and democracy allowed not only for organised activism, but also initiated the subjects of non-heteronormative sexuality, women’s rights, and gender equality as pertinent issues in the public debate. Nongovernmental organisations, informal groups, and queer collectives have been set up in the large Polish cities over the last twenty-five years. The initial period of queer activism is sometimes described as “institutionalization without mobilization” (Gruszczyńska 2009), since a multitude of groups and organisations were focused on community development and self-help actions through setting up non-governmental organisations 4In

this chapter, I use the terms “frames” and “schemes” interchangeably.

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and lacked interest in direct, mass, and militant actions (Kochanowski 2013). The above processes were surrounded by the socially important processes of political and economic changes: a broadly understood democratisation and capitalist regime were introduced, and the pivotal moment of Poland’s accession to the European Union took place in 2004 (Binnie and Klesse 2012; O’Dwyer 2012). The EU institutions not only fostered material emanations of the equality ideal in the selected (though sparse) areas of social life, but also began to constitute a significant reference point for local human right debates, inclusive of LGBTQ issues. Nevertheless, in recent years more sceptical attitudes towards the ability of the EU to introduce or support national anti-discriminatory regulations can be seen among LGBTQ activists. Over the course of recent decades, the actions taken by queer activists have become fragmented and professionalised as specific organisations and networks focused on civil partnership for same-sex couples, while others tackled transgender rights or/and diversity education. The recent right-wing political shift5 in Poland significantly hampers LGBTQ collective actions by undermining their position within civil society by the state authorities. Poland still lacks comprehensive anti-discriminatory and pro-equality regulations when it comes to sexual orientation and gender identity. The current social situation of LGBTQ people is also still defined through their experiences of discrimination, exclusion, and injustice (Świder and Winiewski 2017). This is why the movement is often perceived in terms of collective actions without unequivocal success (Kochanowski 2013). In the chapter, however, I would like to go beyond a certain narrative of the unsuccessful movement and look at LGBTQ actions through the prism of the movement’s internal diversity and the multiplicity of diverse collective activities undertaken over the last three decades. By demonstrating how the frames consolidating activism have changed and diversified internally, I investigate frames as a continuous process of negotiation, transformation, and reshaping the boundaries between them. 5Many

progressive NGOs have been under attack (experiencing smear campaigns and violations of principles of financing civil activities) since 2015 when the Law and Justice conservative political party took power in Poland and formed a government.

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Framing Queer Activism Over the last three decades, the Polish queer movement became one of the most evident manifestations of civil society actions after 1989 by using different strategies for self-organising. The frames discussed below demonstrate a variety of the strategies and tools and the internal diversity of the movement, but they also show the dynamics of the collective actions. It is also worth noting that all these frameworks are intertwined with each other. The picture of the main ideas unifying current queer activism consists of actions promoting the visibility of LGBTQ rights, equal treatment and equal access to citizenship, diversity among LGBTQ people and within society, and the self-development of queer activists. Newly emerging frames, as this paper argues, demonstrate the need to build a broader movement by focusing on queer kinship and solidarity, which could include various social and economic postulates. They also show a new way of defining queer struggles by incorporating a wider definition of sexuality and sexual/intimate practices into their agenda, in which the roles of class, family status, disability, ethnicity, and other characteristics may be as important as sexual orientation or gender identity. The emerging schemes thus pertain to a notion of intersectionality, by demonstrating the complexity of LGBTQ experiences, practices, and identities. Applying the frame analysis reveals how the frames borders are constructed and reconstructed, and how they change through time. Historically, the visibility frame emerged first, followed by the equality and diversity schemes. The latter initiated the personal development frame by expressing the value of an internal heterogeneity within the movement. The emerging family and solidarity frames spring from the equality and self-development frames, respectively. I present each frame in a separate subsection in chronological order.

Visibility “Come and See Us” Political, social, and economic transformation in Poland brought about new public discussions on sexuality, gender and minority rights, invisible in previous regimes. One of the goals for the LGBTQ movement

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from the beginning of its existence was to demonstrate why LGBTQ rights and inclusive policies matter. This aim also embraced strategies of building representations of LGBTQ community in public discourses by showing different dimensions of discrimination and demanding changes and protection, creating visible identities of gay and lesbian people (later also other identities, e.g. transgender persons) and disseminating information about collective actions. Visibility therefore became the first crucial framework of activism and was noticeable in several protest slogans: “Living in hiding is good for rats”, “Gays and lesbians, wherever you are, come out!”, “Closets are good for clothes”, and “I am a proud mother of a gay”. The initial frame resembles one of the interpretative schemes—“Gay is good”—distinguished by Stephen Valocchi (2005) with respect to the American LGBT movement. According to Valocchi, the frame “was rooted in the notion of self-image” (2005, p. 58) and concentrated on creating a positive and self-affirming message about non-heteronormative sexuality. In the Polish context, a fundamental objective of the visibility frame, stemming from the collected narratives, was to break the taboo of not talking about LGBTQ issues, entrenched in society, and to propose a positive image of the community. This was gained through the use of different tools and tactics, such as city space reclaiming actions, presence in mainstream media, creating own media. It also aimed to tackle a pathologising, harmful, and negative media portrait of “homosexuals” from the 1990s, equating homosexuality with sin, sickness, perversion, or “unnatural behaviours”. It thus meant a certain normalisation of the LGBTQ community (Szcześniak 2016). One of the interviewees describing a successful aspect of the scheme, named the strategy of visibility as a process of “imposing” a certain language and vision of sexuality on society. The beginning of this movement was probably just about accustoming people to us. Make them see us campaign, right? The symbolic name of this action. […] Well, these activities towards changes in mentality, social perception, and social functioning of LGBT people worked to a certain extent. Of course, there is always a contentious issue, what could have happened, how far we could have gone, right? And our society doesn’t fully support equal rights yet, and it’s even not yet fully tolerant, but we can talk about successes in big cities, in some social circles,

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maybe we can even use the word “imposing” such an official political language on the public sphere [R14M38]. But the visibility frame reveals a permanent process of negotiating the borders of sexual normativity as well. Tensions regarding gender identities and roles became particularly evident to me while talking with the activists. Some of the lesbian and transgender activists pointed out that visibility, despite the idea of inclusiveness and internal diversity often noted in official statements or documents, was in practice still somehow limited to cis-gender gay identities. On the other hand, it was noted that even if some identities are less visible, transphobic and sexist behaviours among the activists are relatively rare. Even if I can see that the numbers of men and women involved in the movement are not equal, and that there are a few trans people, but there is no transphobia, maybe we don’t have enough trans people, but there is no discussion about that, no discussion in our organisations [R12M29]. These critical reflections on the visibility of various identities and practices did not, however, cause any significant or durable split in the movement. Aside from the gender and sexual identity dimensions of visibility, the very negotiations related to this frame also show tensions regarding the content of the frame. While some of the activists pointed out that Come and see us scheme was too “polite” and not radical or confrontational enough, the others demonstrated their general distant attitude towards some of the visibility strategies, such as those related to discussing non-heteronormative sexual practices in public. One of the interviewees mentioned his negative evaluation of the Warsaw parade, which, in his opinion, could influence the social perception of a gay identity as equated with sexual practices. […] from what I noticed, the LGBT people, particularly gays, I would say, like lesbians or bisexual people, maybe because they are invisible, but… usually the gays are being talked about… and are equated with sex, and why would you deal with sex? Why? I mean there are other, clearly more important issues or people… [R9M27]. In spite of the constant negotiations and contestations over the content and boundaries of the visibility frame, however, it was the only frame perceived by the activists in terms of gaining success, especially

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in the context of introducing issues related to LGBTQ rights to public debates, and experiencing homophobia. Although there are some visible tensions related to this frame, the majority of the interviewees agreed that in terms of building the perception of LGBTQ identities, this scheme proposed a profound change in thinking about minority rights and presenting their arguments. This alteration not only meant a new language for describing and discussing LGBTQ rights, but also brought about fresh interrelations with progressive ideas and ideologies. The intense processes of negotiating the limitations of the visibility frame led to the emergence of new interpretative schemes which focused on the ideas of diversity and equality.

Diversity Frame “Every Person Has Their Own Gender” Diversity and equality were central concepts for two separate frames developing simultaneously. The accession of Poland to the European Union in 2004 facilitated civil society actions promoting equality, human rights, democratic values, and social diversity. Against this background, a narrative about equal rights and social diversity as important values for a democratic society fulfilled a liberal discourse on citizenship. LGBTQ marches were banned in Warsaw and Poznań in 2004 and 2005 by local authorities and provoked a public debate on the meanings of social protests, public gatherings, and minority rights. The banned events sparked solidarity demonstrations demanding the right to protest for the LGBTQ community (Gruszczyńska 2009). They helped to clarify the boundaries and meanings of the new frames. The diversity frame stressed the need to promote individuality, various identities, and practices and to build inclusive spaces for self-expression. The frame was in many ways an outcome of the diversifying processes of the movement itself. Over the years different groups, organisations, and communities were built in multiple localities, often proposing own specificity in terms of tools, strategies, topics, and social actors and speaking for diversity as a value for the movement itself. The diversity frame met critical responses on the activist side; however, they were not about contestation of the very idea of diversity in

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this context, but revealed the limitations of the scheme, especially with respect to the practical aspects of implementing such a concept. This means that the activists critically reviewed and evaluated their own actions in terms of their actual heterogeneity. They claimed that although diversity is crucial for society, their actions, groups, and organisations marginalised some identities and practices and failed to adequately address diversity in the movement. [Because diversity is still absent] in Poland, I have this impression that we do not give ourselves the right to be different. Just as there are different women. There are also Catholics, anarchists, and feminists among them. Likewise, the LGBTQ movement is diverse and I have the impression that organisations often forget about it [R21F3]. Another research participant, noting the need for inclusive practices in the movement, pointed out the negative consequences of the “mainstream approach” in collective actions for reaching potential audiences. In her opinion, the mainstream strategies and tactics present a limited vision of the LGBTQ community and do not include diverse identities in their practices. I would like very much that this gay perspective—of course it does not bother me, it is also important—I would just like it not to obscure the view of the whole [community]. And this whole community is very colourful and diverse. I also think that the approach of many people who are in the movement [I mean] the mainstream approach, is so much nonsense because it also narrows down the circle of our recipients, I think [R17F32]. While the equality frame, described in detail below, was present most often in the actions undertaken by formal organisations, diversity was particularly important for informal groups. Interestingly, some actions and statements produced by the movement provided an understanding of diversity close to the definition of intersectionality and opposed to the neoliberal concept of heterogeneity determined by consumption practices (Chasin 2000). The diversity foreshadowed the emerging frame of solidarity by referring to intersectionality. As I will demonstrate with respect to other frames, intersectionality appears at the margins of each frame, including the next one—equality. This clearly shows the processual and changeable character of framing and reveals complex interrelations between the schemes.

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Equality Frame “Simply Equality” The equality frame proposed to organise collective actions around the idea of rights, with special attention to civil partnership or, recently, marriage equality for same-sex couples. It was developed simultaneously with the diversity scheme. Equality seems to be the result of a broad way of thinking about rights in terms of their political dimensions. Connor O’Dwyer (cf. 2010, 2012) demonstrated that alongside the processes of Europeanisation of the Polish public discourse and local preparations for accession to the EU, LGBTQ organisations began to operate more and more often under political rights frames, invisible earlier in the 1990s. Such framing could be found, for example, in the slogans chanted during many demonstrations: “Everyone different, all equal”, “Equal rights are the foundation”, “Tolerance is not enough - we want equality”, “Equality for all”, “We want entire life – marriage equality”, “We have the same obligations - we demand equal rights”, and “Equal rights are not privileges” or in the names of festivals or regular events: Equality and Tolerance Days in Poznan, Equality Marathon in Łódź, Equality Festival in Warsaw, and Equality Rights to Love Festival in Warsaw. The need for equal rights was clearly expressed by the activists when during interviews, they compared the situation of LGBTQ people in Poland with that in other (Western) European countries. Western Europe has been often identified with progressive policies, successful social movements, gender, and LGBTQ equality and rights, and these comparisons became a crucial point of reference for local activists. I know that in one year the slogan [of the local festival] was “Equality in Poland, Equality in Europe”. We wanted to point out that first of all Poland is still such a black spot, there are no partnerships, and four years ago it was even worse in terms of social tolerance and here it was just such a warning that we are in Poland without any regulations, without any rules and actually already in the European Union since 2004, we could already push things forward as a country […] and all the Days [of Equality and Tolerance] festivals, every slogan and everything we did was related to this equality, broadly understood [R27F26]. The equality frame brought about at least two explicit discussions in the movement. The first concerned the definition of equality.

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The majority of the research participants delineated this idea through the prism of legal regulations and legal guarantees of the rights, but for some, such a legal understanding of equality was too narrow and limited. According to such narratives, the frame should be built on a more radical vision, in which equality would be put into effect through everyday practices. But it is a bigger question whether the queer movement is a mobilisation for equal rights, for example family rights or marriage equality. Or maybe not, because in fact it is a movement which contests every institution and demands absolute or complete equality [R2F36]. Another issue provoking discussion around the equality frame involved the contestation of existing social, economic, and cultural regimes as systems built on inequalities and power relations. Equality in this context could be achieved only by creating a new gender and sexual order. Although such critical stands were rather rare, they contributed to promoting an intersectional vision of the mobilisation and included other dimensions of social injustice in the agenda of the queer actions. In such narratives, equality is understood to be beyond the rights guaranteed by law and thus requires more profound changes not only in social structure, but also in thinking about sexuality and gender. I will quote for you a sentence I wrote for a queer magazine: “We are not going to reform the existing system. We are a rebellion against it”. So, in here we see this thought that the system doesn’t work, that it’s impossible to repair this system, it’s impossible to re-start it, and every form of reparation, reform [it’s senseless]. This belief that if we introduce gay marriage, the world will be repaired somehow, I cannot agree with this [R26Q46]. Both equality and diversity, as mentioned above, were developed coincidently. A good illustration of tensions related to the emergence of these two frames at the same time could be the change in the name of the march in Cracow in 2010, from the “March of Tolerance” to the “March of Equality”. The word “tolerance” in the name of the march could be equated with the visibility frame, preceding the emergence of the new interpretative schemes. The shift was accompanied by an internal discussion about other names for the demonstration, among the organisers of the march. One exhaustively explained me why, although ultimately

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“equality” was chosen, the idea of diversity was also taken into account. He was one of the diversity supporters. The activist argued that there was an evident need in the community for a departure from “defensive tolerance” and stressed that equality as an idea of collective actions was for him “too bland”, “too neutral”. He explained that diversity would guarantee a positive value—something that could enrich society. For me it was, you know—this rainbow, this diversity, it was something we could propose as a positive value, something extra that we could contribute with, we could add [to this reality]. Well, I insisted on diversity [R14M38]. Finally, equality seems to be the most productive frame in terms of actions and projects guided by this idea. It could be claimed that the struggle for equal rights dominated the queer movement in Poland both discursively and practically. The key postulate from this scheme, and centred around legal recognition for same-sex couples, sparked many actions and campaigns promoting civil partnership and marriage equality. More and more often a wider equality concept is included in this frame, however, indicating a simultaneous need for equal rights for different groups and minorities. For example, in 2016 and 2017, many LGBTQ organisations actively supported mass demonstrations against a total abortion ban and other anti-democratic regulations. As I will show in the next sections, the equal marriage postulate has been recently transformed into actions promoting queer kinship and expressing values of intimate relations built by LGBTQ community.

Self-Development “We Are All Homo” During the meetings, interviews, and queer events, I noticed that many of the research participants underlined the importance of self-development in terms of individual identities, attitudes, behaviours, knowledge, and skills. I think that activism is related to overcoming one’s barriers, or the fact we simply learn a lot. I’ve learnt a lot, especially in terms of anti-discriminatory issues. I’ve overcome a lot of my own barriers, phobias, prejudices [R29NB29].

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The activists—participants of the study—underlined how important it was to learn how not to discriminate or exclude within the movement itself. Responsibility for such an attitude was, however, assigned to individual activists, who became more and more engaged in their own self-development. Some claimed that discrimination or marginalisation is in fact the opposite of the very essence of the movement. [Discrimination inside of the movement] is the opposite of the movement for me. We just fight for our sexual expression and expression of our identities. [We want them] to be understood [by others], we don’t to be discriminated against, and if we discriminate internally [within the movement], then there is a scandal. It applies both to activists and non-activists [R5M23]. These permanent processes of self-improvement and searching for new tools to build more inclusive, non-hierarchical, and equal communities, described in the activists’ stories, led me analyse some of the activities through the lens of the separate frame. The personal development scheme was built upon an idea of a permanent change within the movement, consisting in efforts to make the community more sensitive, open, and equal. It is interesting here that during the fieldwork, I realised that many activists blamed themselves for the movement’s “failures” and lack of evident success. They were very often critical when it came to their own actions and capacity, and this sometimes became somehow paralysing for the activism itself, for example when some activists decided not to participate in events due to their fears about the inclusiveness of the action. One of the activists pointed out that when once she realised that sexist statements and behaviours took place in her organisation, she started to tackle them in everyday activities. But also it is about the movement, as I realised at some point, how much people within this organisation [I work with] discriminate against each other, in different ways, on different levels, and the fact that there is a relationship between persons of the same sex, it does not mean that there is no sexism. I have seen such behaviours, and at some point I started to name them, say to people that “hey, this is a sexist joke” [R10F30]. In practice, on the one hand, the self-development scheme appeared at an organisational level of a group or community by expanding new instruments shaping inclusiveness and equality (e.g. choosing

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a collective group instead of an NGO, consensual making decision processes, resigning from leadership, etc.). On the other hand, it was often defined through the prism of individual progress, constant selfimprovement, and self-care. In fact, this frame also had certain limitations. Research revealed that self-development was usually restricted to symbolic or language-related instruments, and the goals were rarely achieved in the everyday practices of the NGOs or informal groups.

New Emerging Frames In the previous part of the chapter, I elaborated on the main frames of queer activism, showing well-established and well-rooted schemes of visibility, diversity, equality, and self-development. It has also been shown that borders between frames are often flexible and blurred, which translates into the processual and changeable character of framing. There are also newly emerging frameworks concerning queer kinship and solidarity among LGBT people and with other marginalised and vulnerable groups—namely a solidarity frame and a family frame. The newer frames became very noticeable only recently in the collective actions, although as has been shown in the previous sections, some elements of these new schemes were signalled by past actions. As mentioned in the introduction, as well as the question about the main ideas unifying the movement, this chapter queries whether the economic dimensions of discrimination and exclusion were somehow visible in the collective actions. In analysing the four main frames, I have pointed out that they were sometimes interpreted by the activists through an intersectional prism. For example, equality was from time to time defined as a very broad idea that should include not only gender and sexuality, but also other aspects of life. Similarly, meanings assigned to diversity were not limited to an individualistic heterogeneity of sexual and gender identities. These intersectional claims become even more visible in the new interpretative schemes. While the family frame underlines the importance of queer kinship and only talks about economic inequalities indirectly, the ideas about solidarity discuss this issue explicitly. The shift in the frames, showing the emergence of new ideas,

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has been in compliance with a more general public debate about economic inequalities in post-transformation Poland. Only the last decade brought about a critical public discussion on the transition from the centrally planned and governed communist society into a democratic and capitalist social order, started in 1989 (for reflection with respect to LGBTQ see Binnie 2013). The broad reflection mapped the emergence of new vulnerable groups and new minorities, a multitude of social problems such as high rates of unemployment at the beginning of the transformation period, changes in the labour market, poverty, and social inequalities (related to the privatisation of state farms and heavy industry, among other things). It also discussed new ideologies based on the assumption that every man and woman is the architect of their own fortune, reinforcing individualism and self-responsibility. It is interesting here that the discussion somehow affected social movements as well. I suggest that while the four main frames have to some extent mirrored neoliberal ideologies by promoting self-development, individualism, and liberal values, the new schemes demonstrate the necessity of social inclusion, building strong communities, and tackling inequalities in different areas of social life. The changes between the “old” schemes and the newer ones are not, however, radical—these new values and visions of social change were also present in the past, but now they are expressed more precisely. This argument has been inspired by theoretical discussions within social movement studies. The transition towards social justice, seen as a fundamental value for social movements, has been noted by some researchers working on mobilisation (cf. Feixa et al. 2009; Hetland and Goodwin 2013). According to them, new social movements focused on liberation, individualism, diversity, and identity, but global movements advocate for social and economic justice. Certain movements, such as the Occupy mobilisation, global justice, or anti-capitalism movements, include elements of identity politics in their agenda, but focus primarily on global socio-economic disparities. “Intersectional activism” becomes more and more often an important point of reference for activists (Chun et al. 2013). These discussions and observations sparked my study, in which I decided to analyse the visibility of economic injustice in the LGBTQ collective actions.

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The solidarity frame refers to the Workers Solidarity Movement from the 1980s, not only in terms of its style but also with respect to discussing LGBTQ rights in the realm of broader social injustice, including the economic and material dimensions of discrimination. The actions, events, and marches organised under the solidarity frame often apply an intersectional definition of exclusion, thus taking into consideration the social situations of other minorities and vulnerable groups, such as people with disabilities, migrants and ethnic minorities, the poor, and homeless persons. Solidarity was expressed in the following slogans: “Solidarity is our weapon”, “Diversity, solidarity, equality”, “Together against discrimination”, “There is no equality without solidarity”, and “Solidarity of the 21st century – support same-sex partnerships”. Actions showing solidarity with people in disadvantageous positions include, for example, organising a shelter for LGBTQ homeless people or LCBTQ people at risk of homelessness or violence in Warsaw or arranging other forms of social support for this group. Queer groups in different cities also organise textbooks and workbooks for children living in poverty. One of the activists described his engagement in arranging a clothes exchange for trans people. We also started doing an exchange of clothes once a year. We started it last year and I hope it will become our tradition, I mean creating a space where people can come and find something, because we also have contact with people who, for example, have no clothes or have no sources to buy them, because they are poor, so we try to provide them with this kind of help, so that it would not be just such psychological support, that they could really get something physical. But we also perform individual interventions or at the level of social work, social assistance. And this is the support activity, this activity is growing rapidly, because there are more and more topics that need to be undertaken [R29NB29]. It is interesting that the visible call for solidarity appears in the context of the growing professionalisation of the movement, on the one hand, and in the circumstances of the current right-wing radicalisation in Poland (e.g. awakening of far-right groups, anti-refugee sentiments) on the other. According to the interviewees, the precarious positions of the activists, not only in terms of their rights but also in the economic

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realm, force them to re-think and re-evaluate the movement’s goals and values that were previously taken for granted. I believe that we return again to a question about the professionalization of [NGOs], but in fact we return to social and economic conditions, because in Poland you cannot have a part-time job and then devote the rest of your time to an organisation. Because in Poland you barely make ends meet with a full-time contract [R30M26]. The solidarity frame emerging in this context seems to be a solution for overcoming neoliberal discourses which put individualisation, self-development, and competition at the centre of social relations. Standing with “people who have no influence or power”, as expressed within the scheme, could be interpreted as a gesture reclaiming social spaces for those who are often excluded or marginalised in society. Solidarity is our strength, which flows from overcoming of our prejudices. It comes from a belief that in Poland and around the world there is a social outcry for politics, which ignores the problems of people who have no influence or power, is our common experience [A manifesto of Equality March, Cracow 2013]. The family frame provides a more personal or intimate perspective on social relations. By demonstrating the significance of queer kinship, the scheme reclaims the notion of a family, often defined only through its heteronormative (and in Polish context also Catholic) characteristics. Interestingly, the idea of family is often also used by counter-movements, but in that context their strategy is built upon a need for the defence of (traditional) family values. During the last few years, slogans visible during demonstrations and protests, promoting queer kinship and the importance of family value included: “I am a mother, a Pole, a lesbian”, “A normal family loves and doesn’t exclude”, “We are a family”, and “A girl and a girl – A normal family”. Although sometimes the frame is limited to defining queer kinship as a nuclear, non-heterosexual family, often it goes beyond such a narrow description and promotes the idea of community as such. The new frames are bringing about a certain shift in the activism. By situating queer kinship, the importance of social relations, and solidarity with those within and outside of LGBT community in the centre of the mobilisation, the schemes promote a certain social turn in queer

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self-organising. The four main frames often concentrated on the rights of an individual to become visible, but expressing one’s identity, gaining equality in terms of rights, solidarity, and queer kinship present LGBT issues through the lens of common interests, shared experiences, and the value of communities. By applying a wider definition of the queer struggle, the movement also shifts attention towards the precarious positions of the LGBTQ community in Polish society, not only due to sexual orientation and/or gender identity, but also because of the unstable economic situation, and unequal relations between families, and so on.

Conclusions This chapter explored the presence of economic inequalities alongside actions and projects, and thus it scrutinised the intersectionality of mobilisation. The chapter also presented crucial ideas about integrating the queer movement in Poland. I applied frame analysis in order to discuss these ideas. It enabled me to distinguish four “old” frames that were well-developed and deeply rooted in the movement and two new, emerging and in-the-making ones. Past frames focused on visibility, diversity, equality, and self-development. The emerging frames were built upon the ideas of queer kinship and solidarity. It is worth noting that all these frames and the actions related to them are strongly intertwined and entangled with each other. The emergence of the new frames shows, I suggest, a noticeable shift in defining the goals of the queer struggle—it demonstrates the importance of including social and economic inequalities in a diagnosis of injustice and proposing new solutions for the activists’ agenda. At the beginning of the paper, I noted the reflections expressed by one of the interviewees, who said that in her opinion the symbolic dimension of the queer struggle dominated the economic and material aspects of injustice. The activist emphasised that this domination has been clearly visible in the discussion about equal marriage and civil partnership, in which the symbolic importance of social recognition overshadowed socio-economic dimension of legal solutions for same-sex couples. As I argued, the LGBTQ movement in Poland has recently started to

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include the intersectional perspective more and more often in collective actions. The change could be seen, for example, in the way the equality framing is transforming into the family scheme. The first scheme provided the movement with a strong and visible argument for civil partnership, based on the need for equal rights for everybody. The family frame shifts attention to the need for the protection of the fragile and fundamental intimate relations of LGBTQ people. The shift is not radical, on the contrary—it reveals the processual character of frames and collective negotiations over values and ideas. As shown, each frame was accompanied by internal discussions about its limitations, definitions, and practical uses and applications of the ideas. I demonstrated, for example, that intersectionality, which has recently become noticeable, was also present on the margins of the “old” frames. The concepts of visibility, diversity, equality, or self-development brought about various debates and disputes among the activists, which caused the emergence and clarification of the new frames. Such a perspective on the mobilisation lets us see frames not as something static and fixed, but rather through the lens of their changeability, fluidity, and flexibility. It also demonstrates the significance of activists’ agency in creating their own meanings and transforming ideas important for them.

References Bevington, D., & Dixon, C. (2005). Movement-Relevant Theory: Rethinking Social Movement Scholarship and Activism. Social Movement Studies, 4(3), 185–208. Binnie, J. (2013). Neoliberalism, Class, Gender and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Politics in Poland. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 27(2), 241–257. Binnie, J., & Klesse, C. (2012). Solidarities and Tensions: Feminism and Transnational LGBTQ Politics in Poland. European Journal of Women’s Studies, 19(4), 444–459. Chasin, A. (2000). Selling Out: The Gay and Lesbian Movement Goes to Market. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

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Chun J. J., Lipsitz G., & Shin Y. (2013). Intersectionality as a Social Movement Strategy: Asian Immigrant Women Advocates. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 38(4), 917–940. Cox, L. (2014). Movements Making Knowledge: A New Wave of Inspiration for Sociology? Sociology, 48(5), 954–971. Cox, L., & Flesher Fominaya, C. (2009). Movement Knowledge: What Do We Know, How Do We Create Knowledge and What Do We Do With It? Interface: A Journal for and About Social Movements, 1(1), 1–20. Croteau, D. (2005). Which Side Are You On? The Tension Between Movement Scholarship and Activism? In D. Croteau, W. Hoynes, & C. Ryan (Eds.), Rhyming Hope and History: Activists, Academics, and Social Movement Scholarship (pp. 20–40). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Feixa, C., Pereira, I., & Juris, J. S. (2009). Global Citizenship and the ‘New, New’ Social Movements Iberian Connections. Young, 17(4), 421–442. Gruszczyńska, A. (2009). Sowing the Seeds of Solidarity in Public Space: Case Study of the Poznan March of Equality. Sexualities, 12(3), 312–333. Hetland G., & Goodwin J. (2013). The Strange Disappearance of Capitalism from Social Movement Studies. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.602.6970&rep=rep1&type=pdf. Accessed 31 Jan 2019. Johnston, H., & Noakes, J. A. (2005). Frames of Protest: Social Movements and the Framing Perspective. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Kochanowski, J. (2013). Socjologia seksualności: marginesy. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN. Milan, S. (2014). The Ethics of Social Movement Research. In D. Della Porta (Ed.), Methodological Practices in Social Movement Research (pp. 446–464). Oxford: Oxford University Press. O’Dwyer, C. (2010). From Conditionality to Persuasion? Europeanization and the Rights of Sexual Minorities in Post-accession Poland. Journal of European Integration, 32(3), 229–247. O’Dwyer, C. (2012). Does the EU Help or Hinder Gay-Rights Movements in Post-communist Europe? The Case of Poland. East European Politics, 28(4), 332–352. Santos, A. C. (2012). Disclosed and Willing: Towards a Queer Public Sociology. Social Movement Studies, 11(2), 241–254. Snow, D., & Benford, R. (1988). Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant Mobilization. In B. Klandermans, H. Kriesi, & S. G. Tarrow (Eds.), From Structure to Action: Comparing Social Movement Research Across Cultures (pp. 197–217). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

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Szcześniak, M. (2016). Normy widzialności. Tożsamość w czasach transformacji. Warszawa: Fundacja Nowej Kultury - Bęc Zmiana. Świder, M., & Winiewski, M. (2017). Sytuacja społeczna osób LGBTA w Polsce. Raport za lata 2015–2016. Warszawa: Kampania Przeciw Homofobii. Valocchi, S. (2005). Collective Action Frames in the Gay Liberation Movement, 1969–1973. In H. Johnston & J. A. Noakes (Eds.), Frames of Protest: Social Movements and the Framing Perspective (pp. 53–67). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

12 Polish Asexualities: Catholic Religiosity and Asexual Online Activisms in Poland Anna Kurowicka and Ela Przybylo

Introduction In Poland, LGBTI+ people are granted few affordances and rights compared to their heterosexual counterparts. While Poland was notably one of the first modern nation-states to decriminalize homosexuality in 1932, Polish society is replete with homophobia and transphobia, with a civil partnership act voted down in 2013 by the Sejm (the Polish parliament) and limited access to medical services available for transgender and nonbinary persons (Nabrdalik 2018; ILGA Europe 2017). At the same time, Poland resounds with LGBTI+ activisms, as a recent report that was drawn up in collaboration between three Polish organizations—Kampania Przeciw Homofobii (Campaign Against Homophobia), Stowarzyszenie Lambda Warszawa (Lambda Warsaw), and Fundacja Trans-Fuzja (Trans-Fusion Foundation)—makes clear. A. Kurowicka (*)  Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin, Poland E. Przybylo  Illinois State University, Normal, IL, USA © The Author(s) 2020 R. Buyantueva and M. Shevtsova (eds.), LGBTQ+ Activism in Central and Eastern Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20401-3_12

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The report suggests that, much like other sexual minorities, asexuals are at a serious disadvantage in terms of mental health, social isolation, and social acceptance in Polish society (Świder and Winiewski 2017). For example, 22.9% of asexual people in the study indicated unfair treatment by the medical establishment, 21.9% mistreatment in their workplace, and 54.8% in their religious communities (Świder and Winiewski 2017, p. 48). Further, less than half of the asexual people in the study suggested that they would evaluate their life on positive terms, 68.2% have experienced social isolation, and 20.5% have frequent or very frequent suicidal thoughts (Świder and Winiewski 2017, pp. 54, 55, 57). The Social Situation of LGBTA People in Poland report (2017) provides a remarkable document that traces the presence of asexuality in the Polish context and asserts the importance of looking at asexuality in relation to LGBTI+ identities, communities, and activisms. Asexuality is a burgeoning sexual identity, widely understood as a low to absent level of sexual attraction to other people. The Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), an online community launched by David Jay in 2001, provides the following landmark definition: ‘an asexual person is a person who does not experience sexual attraction’. Significantly, asexuality does not exclude lesbian, gay, or bisexual identification, as a person can be both asexual and lesbian, gay, or bi. For example, one can consider themselves to be homo-, pan-, or biromantic because they experience romantic or aromantic, rather than sexual, attraction to people of the same gender, all genders, or both genders, respectively. Further, many asexual people (also known as ‘aces’) are transgender, genderqueer, agender, and nonbinary (Ginoza et al. 2014; Przybylo 2016). Despite the huge overlap between asexuality and other sexual and gender minorities, as well as arguments that asexuality is in itself a sexual minority that belongs under the LGBTI+ umbrella, little scholarly attention has been paid to asexual activisms. In this chapter, we examine asexual activisms in the context of post state-socialist Poland, looking especially at online forms of asexual articulation and activism.1 1‘Post state-socialist’ is our term of choice because it indexes the ways in which Poland, under occupation, never achieved socialism but rather was state-socialist, built on inequality and dictatorship (Grabowska 2012).

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The Social Situation of LGBTA People in Poland report’s (2017) commitment to including asexuality in its findings is notable on a global scale and can in many ways function as a template for LGBTI+ inclusion of asexuality in and outside of post state-socialist contexts. The report precipitates the importance of including asexuality in discussions of LGBTI+ activism and in challenges to homophobia and transphobia in post state-socialist contexts. This chapter draws on the growing literature in asexuality studies as well as research on Central and Eastern European (CEE) sexualities, to explore what asexual activisms might mean in the context of Poland, a post state-socialist, neoliberal, and prevalently Catholic nation-state. Throughout we develop the argument that asexuals and Polish asexuals in particular are a diverse group that has uneven commitments to LGBTI+ allyship and to the systems that uphold nationalism, racism, sexism, and transphobia. We examine asexual articulations in the Polish context with an interest in how they function in conversation with Polish attachments to whiteness, religious subjecthood, and the heteronormative reproduction of the values of state-formation. Despite some conservative streams of asexuality, we hold that asexual activism in Poland is a diverse site of engagement that questions the status of sex and sexuality as compulsory and integral to both straight and LGBTI+ identities. In this vein, our first section, ‘Beyond a White and Western Asexuality Studies’, provides an overview of the theoretical context, exploring the concept of compulsory sexuality against the backdrop of queer of color approaches, and specifically those of Cathy Cohen (1997) and Jasbir Puar (2007). Next, in ‘Asexuality in Poland, Online and Offline’, we offer a review of our methods for data gathering, explaining how we undertook the work of exploring online asexual activisms in Poland. Following this, in ‘Online Formations’, we examine asexual organizing and activism, arguing for the importance of online tools in thinking about asexual activisms today. We explain that asexual online engagement is activist in four specific ways: It hones asexual self-articulation, increases visibility, builds community, and challenges social commitments to compulsory sexuality. Our next two sections, drawing on CEE and Polish reflections on sexuality, move into a

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discussion of our findings. We focus here on two themes: Polish asexuals’ allyship and antagonism to LGBTI+ identities and Polish asexuals’ articulation of religiosity. We end the chapter by considering the meanings that Polish asexuals attach to their identities and to online activism.

Beyond a White and Western Asexuality Studies: Theoretical Context Local and international activism around asexuality has sprung up in the twenty-first century as a way to end the invisibility and silence around asexuality and to bring into focus the ways an absence or infrequency of sexual attraction has been stigmatized in contexts that adhere to compulsory sexuality. Compulsory sexuality is a term deriving directly from thinking on asexuality (Gupta 2015; Emens 2014; Przybylo 2011). It aims to describe ‘the assumption that all people are sexual and to describe the social norms and practices that both marginalize various forms of nonsexuality, such as a lack of sexual desire or behavior, and compel people to experience themselves as desiring subjects, take up sexual identities, and engage in sexual activity’ (Gupta 2015, p. 132). Significantly, compulsory sexuality is also too frequently present in queer and LGBTI+ spaces, and as Ela Przybylo and Danielle Cooper write, ‘[a]sexuality is almost entirely absent in queer, feminist, and critical sexuality studies’ (2014, p. 298). For example, sexual orientations such as lesbian, gay, and bisexual have been defined on the basis of sexual attraction and sexual relating, leaving asexual lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and queers on the fringes of those communities. At the same time, LGBTI+ identification, community, research, and even most pronouncedly activism, has often been about more than sexual attraction, waging responses to the oppression of multiply marginalized individuals and communities along lines of class, racialization, gender, and ability, while building alternative kinship formations to sustain life and love in its many forms. For example, Cathy Cohen’s (1997) seminal work on queerness argued against a model of elevating the gender of sexual object choice as the main qualifier of ‘queerness’,

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suggesting that this hard and fast binary between gay and straight identification fails to account for how whiteness and heteronormativity often go hand in hand to reinforce a racist nation-state. Many people who might not be legible as ‘queer’ to mainstream LGBTI+ movements, such as racialized poor single mothers, Cohen argues, nonetheless become produced as ‘queer’ in terms of their positionality to the state. Along similar lines, Jasbir Puar’s (2007) work has explicated how gay identity can itself be mobilized by the state in the production of homonationalism across various national contexts, again complicating the idea that the gender of the person we desire can be an effective determinant of some sort of blanket ‘queer’ community. What asexuality studies can contribute to and gather from these texts, is that sexual attraction fails as a determinant of formulating what constitutes ‘queer’ community, activism, and identity. In the words of Yasmin Nair (2015), ‘Your sex is not radical. Your politics can and should be. Consider the difference, and act upon it’ (n.p.). Since queerness and LGBTI+ identification are never solely about sex per se, disavowals of asexuality might lie in deepseated anxieties around the social roles and meanings of sex. As Przybylo and Cooper frame it, the invisibility around asexuality in queer spaces ‘raises a political question: why the disinterest, the overlooking, the neglect? What is the fear that deters queer and feminist engagements and explorations of asexuality?’ (2014, p. 298). One possible answer is the implicit and unfortunate association of asexuality with sex-negativity and thus with political goals antithetical to feminist and queer politics. We are not suggesting that asexuality is an experience similar to racialization (though these identities can and do intersect) but that asexuality studies can inform an understanding of how compulsory sexuality plays a function in the maintenance of nation-states. For example, by encouraging sex among ‘healthy’ and able-bodied white citizens for purposes of reproduction or pleasure, compulsory sexuality is a system that upholds racist and ableist notions of worth. Compulsory sexuality is also invoked in homonationalist projects such as ‘love is love’ politics, which erase the ways in which even while sex between lesbian and gay couples has in many ways been sanctioned by Western nation-states, racialized, poor, and disabled people continue to be denied the same celebration of sexual subjectivity, often being hypersexualized or desexualized (Kim 2010).

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Drawing on the insights of queer theorists such as Cohen, Puar, and Nair, it is vital to think about if, how, and when asexuality upholds white nation-building and also how an exclusion and rejection of asexuality is rooted in particular forms of community-making that are attached to homonationalist futures. The remainder of this chapter explores these concerns by focusing on online asexual activisms in relation to LGBTI+ movements and in relation to Catholicism in the Polish context.

Asexuality in Poland, Online and Offline: Notes on Methods In the fall of 2017, we undertook data gathering and analysis of Polish language forums on the online site AVEN. AVEN presents researchers with an overwhelming archive of content for analysis, which includes 15 years of archived discussions made by 250,000 plus members, 160,000 plus of whom are on non-English forums (as of January 1, 2017) (Brown 2017). The Polish language forum, Sieć Edukacji Aseksualnej or SEA (translated as the Asexual Education Network), is a thriving online community, with 132,220 posts, 4981 threads, and 4559 members as of November 2017 (Sieć Edukacji Aseksualnej/SEA 2017). SEA is one of the 18 sub-forums of AVEN written in languages other than English. Many posts on SEA indicate that Polish asexuals are aware of and draw directly on AVEN for their definition and understanding of asexual orientation and for their approach to increasing the visibility and awareness around asexuality. Yet, while the forums on SEA offer a fascinating living document of Polish asexual discussions around identity, religion, and queer politics, they do not constitute the only form of discussion on and by asexuals in the Polish context. For example, asexual and aromantic people are beginning to organize offline in Poland through groups such as Grupa Stonewall (Stonewall Group), an LGBTI+ organization active in Poland since 2015, which strives for gaining equality and human rights for sexual and gender minorities. As part of the Poznań Pride Week in 2017, a panel was put together through Stonewall to facilitate discussions

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around asexuality and aromanticism. In addition to this, an LGBT film festival that took place in April 2018 in Warsaw included the screening of a short documentary, Asexual (2017), along with a panel discussion on the topic. This rising awareness around asexuality in Poland is also reflected in popular and news media articles published in print magazines and online, which aim to introduce the topic to Polish readers. Following on a number of researchers who draw on online asexual communities as a source of their data (Carrigan 2011; Scherrer 2008; Renninger 2015), we focus on the discussions taking place on SEA, exploring the online dimensions of asexual activisms in Poland. We searched the SEA forums for posts related to defining asexuality, the religious dimensions of asexuality, the connections between asexuality and LGBTI+ movements, and discussions of asexuality as a social movement. The posts we used were published on an open forum and we will quote from them without user attribution, indicating only the subject thread the data is from. We analyzed Polish-language data by coding for the following themes: religiosity, queer and LGBTI+ identification and activism, Polish identity, and Polish vocabulary generation around asexuality. Reviewing the forums on SEA, we were interested in the following two questions: How do Polish asexuals take up or fail to take up activism in the Polish context? How do Polish asexuals define, explore, expand, trouble, and invent understandings of asexuality in conversation with Western definitions of asexuality? As mentioned, we organize our findings into two themes, the first being asexual allyship and antagonism with LGBTI+ identities and the second being Polish asexuals’ navigation of religiosity.

Online Formations: The Importance of Online Activism for Asexuality As a relatively newly enunciated sexual identity that has in large part been invisible throughout sexual minority organizing, asexuality has utilized online means of activist organizing and expression. In this section, we argue that online forms of organizing undertaken by aces constitute

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forms of LGBTI+ activism. We do so by drawing on LGBTI+ and queer models of activist involvement as well as asexuality studies research. Bryce Renninger discusses Social Networking Sites such as Reddit and Tumblr as especially instrumental in the shaping of ‘asexual counterpublics’ and as serving two main purposes: ‘a chance to work out ideas related to identity, community, and relationships, and an opportunity to develop tactics to assert or adapt identities to configure oneself and asexuals in general within relationships, families, communities, and sexusociety’ (2015, p. 4). According to Renninger, online asexual organizing speaks back to dominant discourses around sexuality as compulsory, which tend to invalidate asexual existence. Queer theorist Michael Warner has written that counterpublics ‘are constituted through a conflictual relation to the dominant public’ (2002, p. 423), necessitating the creation of separate spaces and narratives, in this case asexual ones. Along similar lines, writing on queer activism in India, Naisargi Dave theorizes activism as ‘critique, invention, and creative practice’–emphasizing both the critical and world-making energies of activism (2012, p. 3). Drawing on Renninger, Warner, and Dave, online asexual organizing, we suggest, is a form of activism because it functions to build identity, visibility, community, and resistance in contexts of compulsory sexuality. A similarly complex vision of sexual minority organizing is offered by Mary Bernstein (2003) in her analysis of the modes of activism used by lesbian and gay movements in the 1960s–1970s and 1980s. She reveals the interplay between various types of goals prioritized by a social movement, which include political but also cultural change, mobilization, and discursive impact on the public opinion (p. 357). A movement may be unsuccessful in directly changing a political or legal situation, but at the same time may manage to shift the public understanding of the minority in question and thus introduce significant cultural change. This approach is useful for our thinking about asexuality because the ‘soft’ goals of the movement, that is the ones centered around undermining ace-phobic assumptions and discourses and challenging compulsory sexuality, may be best achieved through promoting visibility and education (as the name of the Asexual Visibility and Education Network suggests), without necessarily fighting for legal changes. At the same time, asexuality

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does have the potential for inspiring specific modifications in legal and medical practice that affect not only asexuals, but everyone. For example, the asexual movement played a crucial role in modifying the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual’s (DSM-5 ) definition of low sexual desire disorders so that asexuality as a sexual orientation is taken into consideration as an alternative to the medical diagnosis (De Lappe 2016, p. 2). The importance of online spaces such as AVEN for asexual activism cannot be overstated. While asexual or ace activisms include both online and offline organizing, online organizing has been especially pivotal to identity and community. In fact, AVEN fulfills all the reasons for organizing we discuss above: naming asexuality and mobilizing its definition, increasing visibility around asexuality, providing forums through which aces can connect with one another, and talking back against the compulsiveness of sex and sexuality. While asexual activism is not limited to the virtual movement (aces organize meet-ups, conferences, zine publications, partake in pride parades, and take part in an annual Asexual Awareness Week, which is held in the last week of October), online spaces have been a primary and key site of asexual activism. Joseph De Lappe refers to asexual activism as a social movement facilitated by the Internet and calls it ‘a digital social movement in its character and concerns’ (2016, p. 1). Because asexuality was until recently an unmarked sexual orientation, the Internet has provided a way for asexual people to find each other and to share their experiences toward organizing for asexual inclusion, recognition, and in response to compulsory sexuality. It is likewise worth pointing out that asexual organizing online is not monolithic. Feminist research and activism argues for the plurality of asexual identities and against a standardized one definition fits all model. As K.J. Cerankowski and M. Milks (2010) comment, asexual experiences, identities, and expressions are best understood in the plural as ‘asexualities’. For example, the asexuality umbrella can encompass romantic and aromantic individuals (or ‘aros’), gray-asexuals (or those who fall on the lower end of the sexual attraction spectrum), and demi-sexuals (or individuals who only develop feelings of sexual attraction if they are emotionally close to someone) (‘Lexicon’ 2017; Decker 2016). In the online ace discourse in Poland, we have seen discussions of gray-asexuals as ‘szarzy’, ‘szaraki’ (both meaning literally ‘grays’),

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and ‘szarasy’ (‘gray-aces’) (SEA 2017, ‘As, Gray-A, Demi-, Semi- Kim Jestem?’ [‘Ace, Gray-A, Demi-, Semi-, Who Am I?’]). These vocabularies point to the insufficiency of sex-based relationship formations and language for holding and describing the experiences of ace people. A plural understanding of asexuality also directs our attention to the intersecting identities that asexual people have in relation to gender (women, men, nonbinary, genderqueer, trans), sexuality (LGBTI+, queer, straight, polyamorous, monogamous, romantic, aromantic), racialization, ability, language, geographical location, political orientation, religious affiliations, and education. In other words, aces can be anywhere and can be anyone. Keeping this in mind can help us understand how asexuals, like any sexual minority, while radically nonconforming in one aspect of their lives (in the case of asexuality, sexually), are still harnessable as subjects of a nation-state and its racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic goals.

Allyship and Antagonism: Polish Asexual Formulations of LGBTI+ Activism The first theme we explored on the Sieć Edukacji Aseksualnej forums (SEA) is how users imagine asexuality in relation to LGBTI+ struggles, communities, and identities. We found that there is disagreement among Polish asexuals regarding whether asexuality belongs within queer and LGBTI+ movements and spaces. While some see asexuality as politically linked to the struggles of other sexual and gender minorities, we also found evidence of other ace people having strong homophobic and transphobic sentiments and disassociating asexuality from LGBTI+ identities and movements. We make sense of this by seeing Polish asexuals as a diverse group not characterized by one political stance, ranging from conservative to left-leaning, from anti-feminist to feminist. On the SEA forums, references are consistently made between asexual people and gay people as two distinct groups with little explicit overlap. The thread ‘Different Sexual Orientations’, for instance, opens with the question: ‘how do you [aces on SEA] approach other sexual orientations?’ (SEA 2017). Discussion of this question between

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the dates 2007–2013 ranges from users who are ‘tolerant’ of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and those who are not. While answers vary, what is interesting to note is that asexuality is framed as an identity and orientation separate from all others even while it rests on a heterosexual presumption or the neutrality and primacy of heterosexuality. Users on the thread ‘Asexuality as a Social Movement’, for example, discuss asexuals as receiving less discrimination than ‘homosexuals’ because, among other things, the Catholic Bible does not decry asexuality as sinful (SEA 2017). Some of the discussants in the forum take a skeptical approach to pride parades and pride movements arguing that asexuality should develop, in their words, ‘without parades and identity flaunting’ (SEA 2017). Western countries are framed here as places where such ‘shams’ as pride parades are celebrated and popularized. One user in particular takes offense at pride parades on transphobic, sexist, ageist, lesbian-phobic, and ableist terms, arguing that parades are times when, in their words, ‘crippled aunts in tight latex vests or pink t-shirts take to the streets, making out with each other and making a scene’ (SEA 2017). These remarks reflect a critique of compulsory sexual expression and a positionality of sex repulsion by the user even while they affix these sentiments to ungenerous and bigoted readings of LGBTI+ struggles. The association of LGBTI+ politics with ‘flaunting’ sexuality and ‘making scenes’ is a key element of homophobic discourse wherein having a non-normative sexuality makes one’s very existence political, while heterosexuality remains neutral and depoliticized, even when it involves public displays of affection. The online rant ends with a declaration that asexuals do not need to parade in order to be ‘one big family’. This phrasing suggests a rejection of possible allyship and alliance, as the user in question sees no common cause between asexuals and other LGBTI+ people. Another user takes a less homophobic approach but argues that pride parades, by focusing on sexual culture, tend to marginalize asexuals. The user writes, ‘It might be better to show that homosexuality is also about love and not just exhibitionism?’ (SEA 2017). The tension suggested here between ‘love’ and ‘just exhibitionism’ indicates a conflation of homosexuality with perversity as opposed to ‘love’, which is construed as something more pure. It reveals a feeling of alienation experienced by

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some asexuals in LGBTI+ spaces, while also perpetuating the distinction between sexuality as more basic than the more elevated and pure emotion of love, a stance rooted in the Christian dualism of body and mind. Other SEA threads, such as ‘Ace, Gray-A, Demi-, Semi-, Who am I?’ which has posts from 2010–2017, explore the intricacies of asexuality, sometimes arguing for it as separate from other sexual identities and sometimes as overlapping with them. For example, as one user writes ‘There are ‘asexual lesbians’. The only problem is that they are very difficult to find’, demonstrating that some users see overlap between asexuality and other sexual identities (SEA 2017). This runs parallel to asexual identification in Western contexts which tends to see asexuality as a sexual orientation that can coincide with lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, heterosexual, and queer identification as well as polyamory and monogamy (Scherrer 2008; Przybylo 2016). At the same time, users across SEA forums comment that they often do not feel comfortable in LGBTI+ spaces, even if they identify as LGBTI+ in addition to being asexual. Parallel to this, we noted that aces on SEA are divided between seeing asexuality as a personal matter and seeing it as a ground for political organizing. The first attitude is noticeable in a post in the ‘Asexuality as a Social Movement’ thread, from a user who claims: ‘Asexuality is my own personal matter and I feel no need to manifest it to the world’ (SEA 2017). This person, and others who express their support for this sentiment, construct their asexuality as a private matter, in direct opposition to the public world. The belief that political activism is unnecessary in the Polish context is reflected in another quote: ‘I am a Polish ace and I don’t want to do the same things [i.e., fight for the right to be asexual]. They have a different culture and upbringing there [in the West]. I accept myself and I don’t need to fight for it’ (SEA 2017). A line is clearly drawn here between the overtly political Western approach to being asexual and cultivating a more private and depoliticized approach in the context of Poland. Part of the message is an individualized approach to identity where self-acceptance of oneself and one’s asexuality suffices and need not lead to recognition in the public sphere. Many SEA forum users seem reluctant to engage in the type of activism they associate with Western politics, which for them would involve

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manifesting their identity in the streets. Other Polish aces take on a different approach more in line with the visibility politics espoused by AVEN. For example, one user writes: ‘I have mixed feelings, on the one hand it’s my own business, I don’t feel like manifesting it to the whole world, but on the other hand education would be useful’ (SEA 2017). Here, in distinction to some of the other comments, education is seen as a valuable goal, challenging the conviction of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ as a suitable solution for gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual, and asexual people in Poland. This foregrounding of education as an important activist goal mirrors debates in the broader LGBTI+ movement and echoes the political goals explicitly stated on AVEN, as we discussed in the section on online activism. Overall, our findings on discussions of LGBTI+ identities on SEA echo Milica Batričević and Andrej Cvetić’s (2016) research on Serbia and Croatia, which suggests that asexually identified people express ambivalence with the broader LGBTI+ movement (2016, p. 93). More than half of Batričević and Cvetić’s respondents claim they are not members of the LGBT minority because they consider asexuality to be a lack of sexual orientation (2016, p. 94). At the same time, some asexuals in their study volunteer their time and energy to participate in LGBT organizations, despite the fact that these groups did not include asexuality in their priorities (2016, p. 98). Likewise, our findings suggest that Polish aces have ambivalent views on allyship to queer communities. On the one hand, certain users exhibit strong homophobic and transphobic sentiment and do not see asexuality and LGBTI+ identities as movements or identities that should be thought in relationship to each other. On the other hand, other users see asexuality and LGBTI+ struggles and identities as linked and overlapping. This suggests to us that both allyship and antagonism are evident in online asexual discussions in Poland. It is also likely that antagonistic approaches to LGBTI+ communities are informed by the often uncertain status of asexuality within the LGBTI+ community and within society at large—that is by whether asexuals are understood as belonging to sexual minority communities and whether they are seen as a sexual minority in the first place.

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Asexuality and Religion: Polish Asexual Secular and Catholic Voices In our research on online asexual activisms in Poland, we found Catholicism to be a significant point of reference. Most users of SEA distinguish between religiously-motivated celibacy, which is associated with the Catholic Church and asexuality, which is understood as a sexual orientation. At the same time, some users draw on Catholic discourse to explain their asexuality. In this section, we will discuss online debates around asexuality and Catholicism by looking at the tensions between asexuality, celibacy, and Catholic teachings and examining asexual voices that define asexuality on secular terms and those who draw on Catholicism. Catholicism has been a predominant religion of Poland for hundreds of years and has been entangled with Polish identities, Polish struggles for independence and sovereignty, and a Polish sense of community. According to a national census conducted in 2014, over 85% of Poles identify as Catholic or secular Catholic.2 While Catholicism has been a source of cultural strength and identity in Poland historically, it has also been entwined with sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, and transphobic discourses. Catholicism thus looms large in the consciousness of people in Poland, including those involved in asexual activism. Most children go through Catholic religion classes at school and Church representatives routinely comment on and attempt to influence the most significant social and political events in the country, especially in terms of curbing sexual and reproductive freedom and stoking public opinion against so-called ‘gender ideology’ (Graff 2009; Grabowska 2013, 2014; Gdula 2016; Graff and Korolczuk 2017). The Catholic Church supports certain non-sexual ways of life such as lifelong celibacy practiced by priests, nuns, and consecrated virgins, and

2Many of these are secular Catholics: Only 39% of Poles declare that they follow Catholic directives, while 52% refer to themselves as ‘religious in their own way’ (Public Opinion Research Center 2015, p. 2).

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it also promotes chastity and sexual purity as a Catholic duty.3 Despite this possible common thread, many asexuals reject any affiliation with this Catholic stance on sexuality for two major reasons. First, some asexuals claim that the Catholic understanding of celibacy as a religiouslymotivated sacrifice is incongruous with the concept of asexuality, which is an innate sexual orientation. Second, though asexuality’s relationship with other sexual minorities can be contentious (as discussed above), many people who identify as asexual reject associations with the conservative end of the political spectrum. Polish asexual activism draws, much like Western articulations, on an understanding of asexuality as a sexual orientation on par with other non-normative sexual minorities (AVEN; Scherrer 2008, p. 630). In this context, religiously-motivated celibacy is not seen as a phenomenon related to asexuality, but as one directly opposed to it: Celibacy is a choice, while asexuality is not (AVEN ‘Overview’). This is expressed by a Polish user on the ‘Asexuality—Faith’ thread, who points out that ‘there is a difference between an asexual and a celibate. An asexual person looks inside themselves, while celibacy is a kind of imposed social prohibition, in opposition to what a person feels and wants’ (SEA 2017). This dichotomy between an innate and thus more liberated asexual identity and an externally imposed celibacy, has been a focal point of defining asexuality within the framework of sexual orientations. Asexuals on Polish forums debate the intricacies of Catholic celibacy and its relationship to asexuality, noting that the former is predicated upon a sacrifice made for God, which is only possible for a person who naturally possesses a sexual drive. Users question the Church’s attitudes to asexuality in relation to Catholic teachings on chastity and the place of sex in marriage. This uncertain status of asexuality in official Catholic dogma is made more complicated by changes in the Church’s approach to sexuality: Sex itself is not directly associated with sin anymore, at least as far as official dogma is concerned, and sex is encouraged in a married

3Chastity

is not synonymous with refraining from sex; in marriage, chastity can be practiced as sexual faithfulness to the spouse and as the proper conduct of one’s sex life, following Catholic dogma on the place and practice of sex (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1993, p. 2349).

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heterosexual context.4 Even so, sex is hardly framed by Catholicism as a realm of freedom and joyful exploration; rather, it is understood as something to be controlled (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1993, p. 2339). The image of sex relayed to people in religion classes and in sermons in the Polish context tends to be laden with suspicion and skepticism. One forum user remembers that the priests who taught him religion made sex sound worse than murder, and then wonders whether this message influenced his asexuality: ‘maybe it did, maybe it didn’t’, he writes (SEA 2017). While this user and others on the forum reject any direct causation between religion and their asexuality, in many recollections the Church is present as a crucial point of reference. It is no wonder that most asexuals do not want to have their identity associated with religion, as an important part of the effort to legitimize asexuality has been fighting with perceptions that it is a result of external causes including trauma, illness, or religious and social influences (AVEN). Celibacy is thus perceived as a false ally to asexuality, being grounded in choice, restriction, and religious dogma as opposed to sexual diversity and liberation. The Evangelical purity movement in the U.S. offers an interesting parallel here: it is also a social movement that advocates abstaining from sex as a positive choice, yet it remains distinct from U.S.-based articulations of asexual identity and orientation. Most Polish asexuals see their asexuality on secular terms and as a naturally-occurring sexual orientation, thus describing asexuality as morally neutral. As one user writes: ‘For me asexuality is a regular orientation, no better or worse than any other. In my opinion it’s not a gift, or a blessing, or a distinction’ (SEA ‘Asexuality—Faith’). Others, however, employ the concepts of purity and moral superiority to bolster asexuality. One user writes that, ‘I will admit […] that I consider asexuals to be purer and maybe in some stupid way better (I don’t want to offend anyone) from sexual people, and especially from those who are too sexual—I hope you know what I mean’. A similar perspective can

4In

a foundational Catholic text on love and religion, Miłość i Odpowiedzialność [Love and Responsibility ] (1982), Karol Wojtyła (Pope John Paul II) discusses the uses of sex within marriage as including not only reproduction but also functioning to strengthen the bond between spouses.

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be found on a forum entitled ‘Aces as Better Homo Sapiens?’ where this very question is considered in reference to the place of sex in people’s lives. Here one user argues that freedom from sexual drives is a quality typical of great thinkers, including of Jesus (SEA 2017). While these discourses are marginal in online asexual discussions and users often correct individuals who express such views, their presence provides a fascinating navigation of Catholicism in relation to asexuality. Ideas of asexuality as a superior state draw fully on Catholic notions of sexual purity and ideals of sexual chasteness as outlined by the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1993, p. 2339). These discourses are also underwritten by what Ianna Hawkins Owen (2014) has identified as ‘asexuality-as-ideal’, or the notion that sexual restraint is a moral achievement and one attached to white supremacy. Owen examines the historical and present-day racialization of sexuality in the USA, including the construction of black women as either hypersexual ‘jezebels’ or asexual ‘mammies’ to consolidate white sexual exploitation and domestic exploitation, respectively. While racialized people are desexualized or hypersexualized, whiteness is often framed as a neutral, innocent, and pure position, and white people are envisioned as being capable of controlling their sexual urges through restraint towards achieving a higher moral status. This notion of self-mastery, of ultimate bodily and sexual self-control, is a constitutive element of the construction of whiteness and it is informed directly by Catholicism (Dyer 1997, pp. 23–24). Race is an analytical category that is often markedly absent from discussions of gender and sexuality in Poland, due to the uncontested assumption that Polish society is racially and ethnically homogenous and white, even while racialized categories of Roma people, Jewish people, and Muslim people have played a central role in the Polish imaginary both historically and in the present. One post from the ‘How Did You Actually Find Out About Your Asexuality?’ SEA thread draws most explicitly on the conflation of moral restraint with asexuality, or on ‘asexuality-as-ideal’ in relation to whiteness. The user writes: ‘In some sense I feel I am better than sexuals, above them in some way. (Master race? )’ (SEA 2017). While the smiley emoticon is supposed to suggest some ironic distance, the expression ‘master race’ (or ‘rasa panów’, literally meaning ‘elite race’ or ‘race of the lords’), provides a provocative

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example of Owen’s thesis of asexuality being discursively available not only as a sexual orientation but also as a pronouncement of white mastery entangled with religion. The user draws on this discourse of asexuality as morally superior to directly link asexuality with ideas of white supremacy, understanding whiteness itself as morally superior, fit for rule, and evolutionarily more evolved. We can think of such instances of asexuality as emulating ‘asex-nationalisms’ drawing on Puar’s framing of homonationalism as ‘the dual movement in which certain homosexual constituencies have embraced US nationalist agendas and have also been embraced by nationalist agendas’ (2007, p. xxiv). Asexnationalisms could be understood as instances in which asexuality can serve the goals of a white religious nation-state through a misreading of asexuality as moral restraint. While the Church or nation-state do not deploy asexuality toward justifying imperialist expansion, as with the case of homonationalism, asexuality-as-ideal, that is as a form of moral restraint attached to whiteness, is routinely invoked in Catholicism and as part of the ‘family values’ advocated by the religious right in Poland. Ideas around the purity of asexuality as a form of moral restraint are at the heart of Catholicism and its function in Poland, underwritten by the simultaneity of compulsory sexuality (in heterosexual contexts) and sex-negativity. It is also through ideas of moral restraint as a white, Catholic, and Polish value, that asexuals can, however infrequently, evoke their superiority to others. Interestingly, however, asexuality is also on occasion seen as antithetical to the goals of a Catholic nation-state, especially when exhibited in women. One user, for instance, writes of having her experience of asexuality corrected by her priest: ‘I went to the priest again, […] hoping he’d advise me on what to do in the name of God. He said, perhaps unaware of how much it meant to me: You need to be a wife and a mother… I broke down, but I was also happy. I finally had my answer’ (SEA 2017). In this case, asexuality is seen as a threat or impediment to heteronormative nation building and as in need of aggressive correction. This aligns with Breanne Fahs’ (2010) arguments that some forms of asexuality, such as political asexuality, can be framed as radical, anarchist, and feminist acts of civil disobedience against expectations that women should reproduce and be sexually available for men. While the

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asexuality the user speaks of is not a radical feminist asexuality, its correction by the priest suggests that there is something threatening—from a Catholic standpoint—in women who are asexual. Compulsory sexuality is harnessed by the state and by religion, encouraging the reproduction of patriarchal norms as well as providing a context in which asexuality can be seen as an exceptional form of moral restraint, a moral accomplishment. Again, even while these voices are marginal in the ace discourse online, their presence reveals something about the availability of discourses that either take up asexuality on religious terms or see asexuality itself as a threat to religious heteronormative subjecthood. Toward this end, we find it important to disarticulate asexuality from ‘asex-nationalisms’—understanding the former as a sexual identity and orientation that can be politicized and anti-oppressive and the latter as a deployment of asexuality toward religiouslyinfused and potentially conservative ends.

Conclusion: Polish Asexualities with and Against LGBTI+ Activisms In this chapter, we have argued for a broad and plural understanding of asexual activisms grounded in online forms of community-making which focus on visibility and challenging compulsory sexuality. Our choice of online forums as a source of material for analysis was motivated by the fact that asexual community has to a large extent been formed and maintained on the Internet. The Polish asexual community has functioned mostly in online spaces, though asexuality also appears offline at Polish LGBTI+ events and in organizations from time to time. In defining asexual activisms broadly, we were able to look into a variety of discourses produced by people who identify as asexual and who might engage with this topic without always necessarily considering themselves activists. In so far as their discussions contributed to asexual visibility, self-articulation, community creation, and challenging ideas around compulsory sexuality, we considered them instances of asexual activism.

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Notably, we found a variety of political affiliations on the part of asexuals, with some expressing solidarity with other sexual and gender minorities, and others conceptualizing their asexuality in close relation to conservative ideals of sexual purity. Our research points to a deep ambivalence, from the perspectives of ace people, around whether asexuality should be included in LGBTI+ spaces, communities, and activism. While we were aware prior to our research of ace experiences of exclusion and marginalization within LGBTI+ frameworks and spaces, we found it surprising to learn that some ace people do have homophobic and transphobic sentiments and that they do not always desire to seek inclusion in LGBTI+ communities. Further, some ace people also frame their asexuality as morally superior to other sexualities on terms that we find resonant with what Owen (2014) has discussed as ‘asexuality-as-ideal’—an asexuality that draws on ideas of sexual restraint in the name of whiteness and proper religious conduct. In this regard we put forward the term ‘asex-nationalisms’ to account for the sometimes surprising ways in which asexuality, as a marginalized sexual orientation and identity, can be taken up on terms that advance the interests of a religious nation-state. At the same time, we want to make clear that just as homonationalisms need not be exhibited and supported by all gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, so not all asexual people can be said to support ‘asex-nationalisms’ (Puar 2007). This is important to keep in mind with research on asexuality in particular because too often asexuality is misread as right wing chastity or abstinence and invalidated as a legitimate sexual orientation. As with any other sexual orientation, asexuals are a complex group of diverse people with variegated political commitments and approaches to identity. And while being asexual, as our research suggests, does not directly mean that one will become politically active, asexual positionalities are uniquely situated to critique compulsory sexuality and the nation-state’s investment in encouraging reproductive futures on hetero and homonormative terms. The variety of political investments and preferences expressed by Polish asexuals confirm queer claims that no sexual practice or identity is inherently politically progressive (Jagose 2012; Nair 2015); rather, depending on how it is conceptualized and practiced, asexuality can serve either conservative or progressive goals.

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References AVEN: The Asexual Visibility and Education Network. (2001–2012). http:// www.asexuality.org/home/general.html. Accessed 19 Sept 2018. Batričević, M., & Cvetić, A. (2016). Uncovering an A: Asexuality and Asexual Activism in Croatia and Serbia. In B. Bilić & S. Kajinić (Eds.), Intersectionality and LGBT Activist Politics: Multiple Others in Croatia and Serbia (pp. 77–103). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Bernstein, M. (2003). Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained? Conceptualizing Social Movement “Success” in the Lesbian and Gay Movement. Sociological Perspectives, 46(3), 353–379. Brown, C. (2017). The History of the Asexual Community. Asexual Countercultures: Exploring Ace Communities and Intimacies, organized by Ela Przybylo and Justine Munich. Vancouver, BC: Simon Fraser University. Carrigan, M. (2011). There’s More to Life Than Sex? Difference and Commonality Within the Asexual Community. Sexualities, 14(4), 462–478. Catechism of the Catholic Church. (1993). Libreria Editrice Vaticana. vatican.va/ archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM. Accessed 5 June 2017. Cerankowski, K. J., & Milks, M. (2010). New Orientations: Asexuality and Its Implications for Theory and Practice. Feminist Studies, 36(3), 650–664. Cohen, C. (1997). Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics? GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 3(4), 437–465. Dave, N. (2012). Queer Activism in India: A Story in the Anthropology of Ethics. Durham: Duke University Press. De Lappe, J. (2016). Asexual Activism. In N. A. Naples (Ed.), The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies (pp. 1–2). Wiley-Blackwell. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781118663219. Accessed 3 June 2018. Decker, J. S. (2016). The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality. New York City: Skyhorse Publishing. Dyer, R. (1997). White: Essays on Race and Culture. New York: Routledge. Emens, E. F. (2014). Compulsory Sexuality. Stanford Law Review, 66, 303–386. Fahs, B. (2010). Radical Refusals: On the Anarchist Politics of Women Choosing Asexuality. Sexualities, 13(4), 445–461. Gdula, M. (2016). Dogmat Płci: Polska Wojna z Genderem [Sex Dogma: The Polish War with Gender]. Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Katedra.

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Ginoza, M. K., Miller, T., & the AVEN Survey Team. (2014). The 2014 AVEN Community Census: Preliminary Findings. https://asexualcensus.files.wordpress. com/2014/11/2014censuspreliminaryreport.pdf. Accessed 19 Sept 2018. Grabowska, M. (2012). Bringing the Second World In: Conservative Revolution(s), Socialist Legacies, and Transnational Silences in the Trajectories of Polish Feminism. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 37(2), 385–411. Grabowska, M. (2013). Between Gender Studies and ‘Gender Ideology’: Gender Education in Poland. Warsaw: Heinrich Boll Stiftung. pl.boell.org/sites/ default/files/downloads/Magda_Grabowska_gender_education.pdf. Accessed 23 Aug 2017. Grabowska, M. (2014). Cultural War or “Business as Usual”? Recent Instances, and the Historical Origins, of a “Backlash” Against Women’s and Sexual Rights in Poland. Warsaw: Heinrich Boll Stiftung. pl.boell.org/sites/default/files/ uploads/2014/10/cultural_war_or_grabowska.pdf. Accessed 23 Aug 2017. Graff, A. (2009). Gender and Nation, Here and Now: Reflections on the Gendered and Sexualized Aspects of Contemporary Polish Nationalism. In E. H. Oleksy (Ed.), Intimate Citizenships: Gender, Sexualities, Politics (pp. 133–146). New York: Routledge. Graff, A., & Korolczuk, E. (2017). ‘Worse Than Communism and Nazism Put Together’: War on Gender in Poland. In R. Kuhar & D. Paternotte (Eds.), Anti-Gender Campaigns in Europe: Mobilizing Against Equality (pp. 175–194). London: Rowman and Littlefield International. Grupa Stonewall [Stonewall Group]. http://grupa-stonewall.pl/kim-jestesmy/. Accessed 29 Nov 2017. Gupta, K. (2015). Compulsory Sexuality: Evaluating an Emerging Concept. Signs, 41(1), 131–154. ILGA Europe. (2017). Annual Review of the Human Rights Situation of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex People in Europe. https:// www.ilga-europe.org/sites/default/files/Attachments/annual_review_2017_ online.pdf. Accessed 19 Sept 2018. Jagose, A. (2012). Orgasmology. Durham: Duke University Press. Kim, E. (2010). How Much Sex is Healthy? The Pleasures of Asexuality. In J. M. Metzl & A. Kirkland (Eds.), Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality (pp. 157–169). New York: New York University Press. Lexicon. (2017). AVENwiki. http://wiki.asexuality.org/Lexicon. Accessed 19 Sept 2018. Nabrdalik, M. (2018). Out: LGBTQ Poland. New York: The New Press.

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Nair, Y. (2015). Your Sex Is Not Radical. Yasmin Nair’s Blog. http://yasminnair. net/content/your-sex-not-radical. Accessed 19 Sept 2018. Owen, I. H. (2014). On the Racialization of Asexuality. In K. J. Cerankowski & M. Milks (Eds.), Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives (pp. 119–135). New York: Routledge. Przybylo, E. (2011). Crisis and Safety: The Asexual in Sexusociety. Sexualities, 14(4), 444–461. Przybylo, E. (2016). Introducing Asexuality and Asexuality Studies. In S. Seidman & N. Fischer (Eds.), Introducing the New Sexuality Studies (3rd ed., pp. 181–191). New York: Routledge. Przybylo, E., & Cooper, D. (2014). Asexual Resonances: Tracing a Queerly Asexual Archive. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 20(3), 297–318. Puar, J. (2007). Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham: Duke University Press. Public Opinion Research Center. (2015). cbos.pl/PL/publikacje/public_opinion/2015/02_2015.pdf. Accessed 23 Aug 2017. Renninger, B. J. (2015). ‘Where I Can Be Myself… Where I Can Speak My Mind’: Networked Counterpublics in a Polymedia Environment. New Media and Society, 17(9), 1513–1529. Scherrer, K. (2008). Coming to an Asexual Identity: Negotiating Identity, Negotiating Desire. Sexualities, 11(5), 621–641. Sieć Edukacji Aseksualnej / SEA [Asexual Education Network]. (2017). http:// pl.asexuality.org. Accessed 19 Sept 2018. Smith, O. (2017). Asexual. UK. Świder, M., & Winiewski, M. (Eds.). (2017). Sytuacja Społeczna Osób LGBTA w Polsce. Raport za lata 2015–2016 [The Social Situation of LGBTA People in Poland: Report for 2015–2016 ]. Warsaw: Kampania Przeciw Homofobii. https://kph.org.pl/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Sytuacja-spoleczna-osobLGBTA-w-Polsce.pdf. Accessed 1 Dec 2017. Warner, M. (2002). Publics and Counterpublics (abbreviated version). Quarterly Journal of Speech, 88(4), 413–425. Wojtyła, K. (1982). Miłość i Odpowiedzialność [Love and Responsibility  ]. Lublin: Wydawnictwo Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego.

13 Activism for Rainbow Families in Hungary: Discourses and Omissions Rita Béres-Deák

Introduction The Hungarian (also called the Fundamental Law) that entered into force in 2011 defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman, and family as based on marriage or descent. In this legal context—in addition to public policies and discourses—the exclusion of same-sex couples from the definition of “family” is occurring, while the heterosexual family is “protected as the foundation of the nation” (Fundamental Law of Hungary).1 Although the institution of registered partnership for 1The

Fundamental Law of Hungary. Magyar Közlöny 2011/43, p. 10658.

Rainbow families are defined as “families with children where parents are lesbian, gay, non-heterosexual or transgender” (Kuosmanen and Jämsä 2007, p. 13, my translation). It is worth noting that in Hungary the strongest focus of activism is on same-sex parenting. The first publications on transgender parenting appeared in 2017 (see below).

R. Béres-Deák (*)  Independent Researcher, Budapest, Hungary e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 R. Buyantueva and M. Shevtsova (eds.), LGBTQ+ Activism in Central and Eastern Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20401-3_13

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same-sex couples entered into force in 2009 and it provides almost all the benefits of marriage, there are two notable exceptions: partners cannot take on each other’s names and they are banned from all means of becoming joint parents of the same child. It is this latter issue that has sparked a wealth of human rights activism within the country. Háttér Legal Aid, an already existing legal aid service on LGBTQ matters, began active lobbying work with political parties and in the parliament during the debates of the registered partnership bill. After the registered partnership law had been passed, new organizations came into being to support same-sex parenting. Inter Alia Foundation focused2 on lobbying and advocacy work and published documents on the situation of existing rainbow families in Hungary. The Foundation for Rainbow Families, on the other hand, has mainly provided support for same-sex couples who are raising or wish to raise children. Some other LGBTQ organizations also conducted discussions and workshops, mostly with the aim of raising consciousness within the LGBTQ community3 of the legal barriers to same-sex parenting, and possible (though not always entirely legal) ways to overcome these. While marriage equality has been one of the foci of international LGBT activism and theory4 (Rimmerman 2008), much fewer authors take up parenting rights as central to the full equality of LGBTQ people (some exceptions are Gross 2011; Mizielińska et al. 2015; Ryan-Flood 2009), although restrictions on the acknowledgment of or access to parenthood have very practical consequences for many rainbow families. In this paper, I use the concept of intimate citizenship (Plummer 2003) to refer to the symbolic, legal, and practical exclusions that these nonnormative families experience. I will explore how LGBTQ rights 2This

organization no longer exists. acronym LGBTQ stands for “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer.” It is common to also add the letters I (for intersex) and A (for asexual), but during my fieldwork these two groups were barely visible in Hungary. In terms of parenting activism, intersex people do appear among the respondents of the Transvanilla survey (Grőber and Hidasi 2017, see below), but are grouped together with transgender respondents without any mention of their possibly different needs. 4I do not use the acronym “LGBTQ” here, as queer activists and scholars are strongly critical of this priority (e.g., Bell and Binnie 2000; Warner 1999), as I will mention below. 3The

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activism in Hungary (here including the queer perspective) stands up for the intimate citizenship of rainbow families, and whether it produces any exclusions itself with regard to the various forms same-sex parenting can take. I will also examine the strategies organizations use in trying to lobby for same-sex parents’ rights. I conducted anthropological research in the Hungarian LGBTQ community from 2007 to 2013 on notions of family and kinship using participant observation, ethnographic interviews, and an analysis of online sources, such as blogs and forum threads. Though most of my interlocutors were non-activist members of the community, I also looked at activist discourses coming from various NGOs and informal groups. My main sources for these were the websites and publications of these organizations, as well as workshops, presentations, and discussions organized by them for members of the community. Comparing these with the views and lived experiences of my interlocutors, I found that activist discourses have a strong impact on people’s personal attitudes. At the same time, there is often a discrepancy between the problems, values, and family forms of everyday LGBTQ people and those represented by the organizations. It is some of these discrepancies I explore in this paper. First, I will discuss how the concept of intimate citizenship may be applied to rainbow families. This is followed by a mapping of the Hungarian legal framework concerning same-sex parenthood, and the results of some surveys and my own fieldwork that show what types of rainbow families come into being in this restrictive legal environment. Next, I give a brief description of the organizations that performed some kind of activism related to rainbow families during my fieldwork. In presenting the results of my fieldwork, I will focus on two characteristics of this activism: the strategies used and the kinds of rainbow families promoted or omitted. My aim is to demonstrate how LGBTQ activism, while performing important work in making decision-makers and the general public aware of the existence and the legal plight of rainbow families, sometimes gets detached from the everyday experiences of their constituency, and—due to strategic reasons or unawareness—accords a lower priority to issues that may actually be pressing for a number of LGBTQ people.

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Intimate Citizenship in LGBTQ Activism The struggles of LGBTQ persons to gain rights equal to heterosexuals are often framed in scholarship as assertions of sexual or (less frequently) intimate citizenship. The term “sexual citizenship” has two main uses: it either refers to sexual rights granted or denied to various groups, or it explores how forms of citizenship are dependent upon one’s sexuality (Richardson 2001). Most authors discussing sexual citizenship focus on legal provisions that disadvantage non-heterosexual people. This includes examining the lack of access to marriage or (formerly in the USA) exclusion from the military (e.g., Bell and Binnie 2000; Cossman 2007); non-institutional practices of exclusion and everyday strategies for countering these occur more frequently in the literature about intimate citizenship (e.g., Kuhar 2011). This latter concept is also broader, encompassing the possibility of any decisions, access, and choices related to the body and intimacy (Plummer 2003). Thus, intimate citizenship includes intimate relationships not limited to sexual ones, like those between non-biological parents and their offspring; therefore, I will use the term “intimate citizenship” when I discuss activism for same-sex parenting rights. The language of sexual/intimate citizenship in the West has been widely used by LGBTQ activists in claiming equal rights in various campaigns (Nicolae 2009).5 The argument is that due to not holding equal rights, LGBTQ people are “second-class citizens” (Nicolae 2009; Weeks 1999) or even “non-citizens” (Phelan 2001) in their own country. Activism from this perspective is a way of asserting one’s intimate/ sexual citizenship. At the same time, some theorists are highly critical of these strategies. They accuse rights-based activism with assimilationist and homonormative6 tendencies (Rimmerman 2008) and claim that the achievement of some of its goals would, in turn, create inequalities 5In Hungary, however, the concept is completely unknown, and the term “citizenship” is mostly used in the meaning of formal belonging to a country, though the term “second-class citizenship” has recently been taken up by some minority groups, including the LGBTQ. 6Homonormativity is the approach whereby only non-threatening, commercialized, and assimilated non-heterosexuals can make citizenship claims (Bell and Binnie 2000).

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between members of the LGBTQ community (Bell and Binnie 2000), partly because access to legal rights often depends on financial means and consumption (Evans 1993). It is most commonly same-sex marriage that is claimed to benefit only middle-class gays and lesbians, though in reality, people with a lower income are more dependent on the benefits brought by marriage, which middle-class people can secure by other means (Hunter 2006). The queer critique of marriage equality campaigns thus does not take into account the everyday reality of working-class LGBTQ people and neither does it reflect their needs. In a survey conducted by Budapest Pride in the Hungarian LGBTQ community,7 working-class and rural respondents put more emphasis on marriage equality than urban middle-class ones (and somewhat surprisingly, self-identified queers supported it to a higher extent than self-identified bisexuals). Mainstream activism (including queer) thus ignores the needs of certain groups of the LGBTQ population, most typically of those who are already marginalized due to their class position, geographical location, racial/ethnic background, and/or gender/ sexual practices (such as polyamorous or non-binary people). In contrast to the wide range of studies on marriage equality principles and activism from an intimate/sexual citizenship perspective, there is comparatively little similar analysis of same-sex parenting. One possible reason could be that in the UK and North America, where most scholarship in this field comes from, access to same-sex parenthood was made possible earlier than in continental Europe, where same-sex partnerships tend to be legally recognized earlier than same-sex parenting (Takács and Szalma 2013). Struggles for parenting rights for gays and lesbians in the USA started already in the 1970s–1980s, when the disadvantages faced by LGBTQ people were not yet discussed in the framework of citizenship. This early activism and the supporting scholarship focused on the effects of same-sex parenting on the child, aiming to prove that it has no detrimental effect on her/his development 7The

survey was conducted in 2016 in the Hungarian LGBTQ community; its results presented at the Budapest Pride Open University on October 21, 2016. A written summary (much less detailed than the presentation): Budapest Pride. (2017). Felmérés az LMBTQ emberek magyarországi társadalmi és jogi-politikai helyzetéről 2016-ban. Available at http://budapestpride.hu/sites/ default/files/field/file/budapest_pride_felmeres_2016.pdf. Accessed 12 Feb 2018.

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(for a summary of such studies, see Biblarz and Stacey 2010). The argument of the child’s psychological well-being also surfaces in contemporary activism for access to parenthood (e.g., Grőber and Hidasi 2017). However, in some (especially Nordic) countries, the rights perspective also enters the debate, which combines the rights of the child and those of the parent (Carbin et al. 2011). In Hungary, while individual members of the community and some organizations do assert the right to parenthood, it is the best interest of the child that is emphasized, either for strategical reasons or because the Western human rights discourse has relatively little credit in Central and Eastern Europe (Böröcz 2006). This is only one of the moves through which LGBTQ activists and community members try to make their cause palatable for the majority. Based on sociological surveys, Hungary is one of the European countries where people place the highest emphasis on family (Tóth and Somlai 2005), and also holds the strongest adherence to patriarchy and traditional gender roles within the EU.8 Such attitudes are further strengthened by the rhetoric and policies of the nationalist right-wing government that has been in power since 2011, and the more recent “moral panics” (Herdt 2009) around “gender ideology,” which is feared to threaten the very texture of society (Félix 2015). In this context, the cis-heterosexual family has become a prerequisite of intimate citizenship. In the following section, I will examine how this conservative approach to gender and family works to exclude rainbow families on the legal level, and what forms of rainbow families still come into being in spite of severe legal constraints.

8See, e.g., European Commission Gender Equality Survey. http://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/ publicopinionmobile/index.cfm/Survey/getSurveyDetail/instruments/SPECIAL/surveyKy/2154;jsessionid=4DF19E46B4DF6E0390462C04669CBB21.cfusion07001?CFID=37739&CFTOKEN=dd640c73cd213aba-B73FC928-E281-DF76-30EBFDB60A37DF3A. Accessed 2 Nov 2017.

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Laws and Reality As mentioned above, in Hungary the main legal disadvantage that same-sex couples face in comparison with heterosexuals is access to parenthood. Individual gays and lesbians can adopt, but not as a same-sex couple.9 Similarly, single women (regardless of sexual orientation) have access to anonymous donor insemination, but they have to sign a paper declaring they are single.10 Because cohabitation (whether registered or not) is a different family status, a lesbian living with her partner would commit forgery by signing this document. Hiring a surrogate is punishable by imprisonment, and so is the practice—popular among lesbians in some countries (Ryan-Flood 2009)—of conducting home insemination with a known donor’s sperm (the Hungarian law classifies this as “forbidden use of the human body”). As second-parent adoption is also denied to same-sex couples, the biological or adoptive parent’s partner cannot gain formal parental status; at best he/she qualifies as a stepparent, which grants certain rights but not equal parenthood. The law explicitly bans same-sex couples from becoming foster parents. In spite of such difficulties, there are a considerable number of rainbow families in Hungary: in a survey conducted by Háttér Society (Dombos et al. 2011), 10% of 2119 LGBTQ respondents reported having their own child, and another 5% participated in raising their partner’s child or children.11 In 82% of the cases, the children came from a previous heterosexual relationship; two respondents had conducted artificial insemination in a healthcare institution, four had conducted home insemination, and one had adopted a child. In an online LGBTQ survey conducted in 2016–2017 (n = 1249), 13% of the respondents were parents, and while the majority of children still came from a heterosexual relationship, 36% of these families were planned rainbow families 9In

the summer of 2019, the head of the governing party did express a plan to ban gays and lesbians from adopting, but due to summer break, the bill has not yet been proposed to Parliament. 10Apparently, this rule is not always taken seriously, as some lesbian mothers and mothers-to-be I spoke to do not recall ever signing such a document. 11It is important to note that not all these families were rainbow families in the strict sense of the word, as in many cases the heterosexual ex-partner had full or partial custody of the children.

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(Háttér Társaság 2017).12 A trans* community survey conducted at the same time (Grőber and Hidasi 2017) found that 48 out of its 243 respondents had children. The people I spoke to reflect a similar pattern. Twelve couples I interviewed had children from a previous heterosexual relationship and five were planned rainbow families: one created through anonymous donor insemination, one through known donor insemination,13 one through surrogacy, one through adoption, and in the last case a gay and a lesbian couple used artificial insemination and were co-parenting the children. Based on informal conversations, artificial insemination with an anonymous or known but not-too-involved donor seemed to be the most popular method among lesbians. Gay men were more divided. Those whose priority was biogenetic connection to the child preferred co-parenting with a lesbian couple, while those prioritizing full-time parenthood propagated adoption. Surrogacy was minimally spoken about, possibly due to its being illegal14 and hazardous in Hungary. The one couple I managed to speak to who conceived children with this method emphasized the risks involved (which for many forum posters too was a stronger disincentive than the actual illegality of the practice), and only agreed to be interviewed because they were about to leave the country. These examples show that despite legal constraints on same-sex parenthood, members of the LGBTQ community find means to have children. They often received assistance with this from LGBTQ organizations, which offer legal and often also practical advice for those wishing to become parents. At the same time, these organizations also stand up for the rights of rainbow families in mainstream society.

12A

planned rainbow family is where the children are born to or adopted by the same-sex couple or a self-identified LGBTQ single person, as opposed to reconstructed rainbow families, where they were originally born to or adopted by a different-sex couple. 13In these cases, the mother-to-be and the donor have to pretend to be a couple in order for the healthcare institution to conduct the insemination. 14In fact, the law gives the same punishment for incitement to surrogacy and for home insemination (up to 3 years’ imprisonment), but people probably think it is difficult to get caught with the latter.

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The Organizations While Hungary does not abound in LGBTQ organizations, many of the existing ones have experience with some work on same-sex parenting. Their role is important in spreading information in the LGBTQ community and also in speaking up in public in the name of rainbow families. Hungarian same-sex parents are usually strongly closeted because they fear repercussions for their children in case that the nature of their family form comes to light (Béres-Deák 2012),15 so the lobbying efforts of organizations are almost the only way the general public is informed about the existence of rainbow families.16 The oldest existing LGBTQ organization in Hungary is Háttér Society founded in 1995 to provide mental health services for LGBT people. In 2000, the organization began a legal aid service, partly in order to fund its other activities (rights activism more easily attracts foreign funds17 than mental health services) (author’s fieldnotes). Initially performing various legal services related to LGBTQ issues, including drafting partnership contracts, Háttér has increasingly focused on discrimination cases and lobbying, including consultations with politicians. The organization has also conducted research formally focusing on discrimination but giving a broad overview of the situation of LGBTQ people in Hungary (Takács et al. 2008; Dombos et al. 2011; Háttér Társaság 2017) and has issued other publications on LGBTQ rights, such as the Hungarian translation of the Yogyakarta Principles (2010). Another important field of activities is consciousness-raising within the LGBTQ community. Háttér’s Facebook page regularly shows 15Some

same-sex parents have given anonymous interviews in magazines, and in the summer of 2016 during a demonstration, three lesbian mothers spoke in public (though not all of them giving their real names). 16A study of Hungarian school course books revealed that only one of them mentioned same-sex parenting and only as a hypothetical possibility (“If gay people raised children…”) (Takács, I. K. 2011). 17In Hungary, LGBTQ organizations receive no financial support from the state, and Hungarian donors—whether companies or private persons—are scarce, so any organization that requires funding for its activities—e.g., to maintain an office—needs to apply to foreign donors; the funding priorities of these, however, are often out of sync with the needs of LGBTQ populations in Central and Eastern Europe (Bilić 2016).

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short video posts informing LGBTQ people about their rights, and the organization has held several workshops at LGBTQ festivals. During my fieldwork, I attended one such workshop; the other information I use here I gathered from Háttér’s publications and two expert interviews with Tamás Dombos, head of Háttér Legal Aid. The Inter Alia Foundation was founded in 2010 with the purpose of fighting against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, especially focusing on the equality of gay and lesbian parents and their children (Sándor 2010a). It published a White Book on the legal situation of same-sex parents and their children (Sándor 2010a) as well as a collection of interviews with same-sex (mostly female) couples who were raising or expecting children (Sándor 2010b). This latter publication was the first to make rainbow families visible in Hungary, as at the time they remained in the closet for fear of repercussions for their children. Inter Alia also operated a website and a blog, on which activists of the organization commented various events and discourses concerning same-sex parenting. The Foundation ceased to function in 2012, though the website was available for some more years. The founder of the organization, Bea Sándor, later transferred to Háttér Legal Aid, and this has influenced the latter’s recent activities (including a stronger focus on rainbow families). In this paper, I use Inter Alia’s publications and blog as primary sources. The Foundation for Rainbow Families was founded in 2010 by two family therapists, Krisztián Rózsa and Csilla Faix-Prukner, as well as gay activist Milán Banach Nagy. This organization’s activities are mostly directed toward the LGBTQ community; they have organized various roundtable discussions and a series of LGBT Parenting Workshops in 2011–2012. This workshop series was meant to help couples who wished to start a planned rainbow family. The events usually consisted of small-group discussions and activities as well as the story of a guest who has her/himself had a child through the method the occasion was focused on. After two of the original three founders moved abroad, the official activities of the foundation have mostly become limited to cyberspace, though families associated with it regularly get together informally (Csilla Faix-Prukner, personal communication). I conducted

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participant observation at seven of the foundation’s workshops, as well as three roundtable discussions the foundation had organized. Other organizations have also occasionally dealt with the issue of same-sex parenting. Labrisz Lesbian Association hosts a monthly film club, where lesbian-themed films are followed by a discussion. During my fieldwork in 2012, the film Elena Undone was shown and triggered a discussion on lesbian parenthood. Some forums on Labrisz’s website also tackle the issue, with activists from the organization occasionally offering their own opinions. I analyzed four such forum threads for my work. I also conducted participant observation at two other discussions on this topic, one by a short-lived organization called Vállald Magad Egyesület (Come Out Organization) in 2012 and the other by a theater group and NGO called Krétakör during the Pride Festival of 2013 called “Body and state.” The topic of transgender parenting has recently been taken up by Transvanilla transgender organization, who (within the framework of the same research project as Háttér) have published a research report on transgender parent families (Grőber and Hidasi 2017) as well as a Trans Family Rights Q&A (Transvanilla 2017). As we have seen, the profiles and approach of these organizations vary greatly within the field of same-sex parenting. In the following section, I will discuss the strategies they use for helping the cause of rainbow families.

Strategies of Activism There is a variety of ways to stand up for the intimate citizenship of rainbow families. Hungarian LGBTQ organizations choose from these based on their preferences, expertise, and opportunities. Háttér and Inter Alia are/were focused on legislative change, and this influences their strategies and arguments. Such organizations need to be in constant dialogue with legislators, speaking their language and raising arguments that would resonate with them. One such argument is the best interest of the child, the classic trump card of our time (Lawler 2000), when the rights of the next generation are often placed above

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those of their parents (Berlant 1997). Inter Alia, for instance, gives the following justification for second-parent adoption: the guarantee for her/his[the child’s] security would be the legal acknowledgement of her/his family as a family – s/he has the right to two parents as well, with the security guaranteed by them. […] The solution for this would be if all those who want to found a family could do it – with all the rights AND duties attached. (Floya,18 Inter Alia blog)

The factors emphasized in this quote—legal acknowledgment, security, duties as well as rights—resonate with mainstream Hungarian politics, where in contrast to the liberal approach to citizenship as based on individual rights, many endorse a more communitarian view, which puts obligations above rights (Janoski and Gran 2002). The quote—and the two organizations in general—also emphasizes that these are already existing families where children suffer from a lack of legal acknowledgment. According to Tamás Dombos, it was partly a strategic decision to lobby more strongly for second-parent than stranger adoption: It is much easier to first pass the hurdle of second-parent adoption, because there they can’t raise the arguments that ‘poor hets [heterosexuals] don’t get kids either’ or ‘that child would be better off with a straight couple.’ (Tamás Dombos, interview)

As we see, Háttér Legal Aid anticipates possible counterarguments and chooses to take a path where these cannot be raised. This is in marked contrast with the Krétakör and Vállald Magad workshops, where presenters also collected common discourses against same-sex

18I refer to blog posters and workshop participants (but not representatives of the organizations) by pseudonyms. The Inter Alia blog is a border case: The posters are activists from the organization, but only some of them use their real names. For those who do not, I invented pseudo-nicks; this is standard practice in online ethnography, as the real nicknames—though often different from the person’s offline name—may make the person’s online or offline persona identifiable for members of the community (Garcia et al. 2009). Also in order to protect the anonymity of my online interlocutors I do not give links to the actual websites (many of which have ceased to function anyway) and do not list them among my sources.

13  Activism for Rainbow Families in Hungary: Discourses …     325

parenting but came up with possible ways to refute them. This second strategy is more inclusive and potentially targets a wider audience, while the focus on second-parent adoption only addresses the needs of already existing, two-parent rainbow families (indeed, no Inter Alia publication mentions any single-parent rainbow families). While Inter Alia devised its recommendations on the basis of interviews with a narrow circle of rainbow families mostly created through artificial insemination, Háttér has conducted several internet-based surveys, which also asked respondents what legal changes they would like to see. These recommendations, however, cover a much wider range of issues than what is represented in Háttér’s actual strategies. For instance, in their 2016–2017 research, 94% of respondents supported the legalization of surrogacy, but it is not mentioned in the recommendations of the research report (Háttér Társaság 2017). Tamás Dombos claims that lobbying for surrogacy would be a problem issue as “traditionally there is a big debate over it between feminist-oriented lesbian organizations and general LGBT organizations” (Tamás Dombos, interview). This statement refers to often-voiced feminist claims that surrogacy entails the exploitation of (working-class and/or third world) women (e.g., Katz Rothman 2004)—even though the only Hungarian lesbian organization has never expressed any opposition, and in a 2010 LGBTQ community study, more female (91%) than male (82%) respondents were in favor of surrogacy (Dombos et al. 2011).19 Besides lobbying for legal change, the other common form of activism in the field of same-sex parenting is awareness-raising in the community, including regarding the possible ways of achieving parenthood. Indeed, both Háttér and Inter Alia use this strategy as well as the lobbying one. The Inter Alia volume Mi vagyunk a család, a biztonság, az otthona. Leszbikus anyák, meleg apák és “pótapák” [We are the 19This

could be explained by the low level of feminist consciousness in Hungary in general (Gregor 2014), whereby the majority are not even aware of the goals and discourses of feminist activism, and also the absence of public debate on the ethical issues around surrogacy. It must also be stated that lesbians are by no means neutral outsiders in this issue. One of my lesbian respondents was actually planning a surrogacy arrangement with her sister, who wanted to conceive through heterosexual intercourse and then give the child to the lesbian couple to raise (to my knowledge, the plan never got realized).

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family, the safety, the home. Lesbian mothers, gay fathers and “substitute fathers” ] (Sándor 2010b) illustrates through the stories of gay and lesbian interviewees the most common problems faced by same-sex parents and potential ways to overcome these. At the Háttér workshop that I attended at the 2016 Lesbian Identities Festival (LIFT), the two representatives of the organization, Bea Sándor and Tamás Dombos, provided information on the legal consequences of each method of obtaining children in a same-sex relationship. The events organized by the Foundation for Rainbow Families, as well as the Vállald Magad workshop, also belong to this category. A marked difference from the previous strategy is emphasizing the rights of parents rather than children. At the LGBT Parenting Workshop focusing on surrogacy, the facilitator actually raised the rhetorical question “whether we can regard parenthood as a human right that everyone should be entitled to, regardless of sexual orientation” (author’s fieldnotes). At these workshops, the issue of second-parent adoption is also looked at more from the social parent’s20 than the child’s perspective. For instance, Jocó said that he had not felt a part of his partner’s adoption process because he knew he would not be able to forge a legal relationship to the child (author’s fieldnotes), resonating with theories that a lack of legal recognition may hinder emotional attachment (Gross 2011). The approach emphasizing the right to parenthood and family strongly resonates with community discourses. This is illustrated by this forum post: “Dear Mr. Semjén,21 in 5 years’ time, as an intellectual with a degree in a hopefully long-lasting relationship have I no right for a child?” (Mary Jo, pride.hu forum). Consciousness-raising activism often entails a certain disregard for legal regulations. Much of the advice within such activism, implicitly or explicitly, is connected to how to overcome legal obstacles. For instance, the LGBT Parenting Workshop on surrogacy made only one reference to the illegality of surrogacy, explaining that a potential surrogate

20For simplicity’s sake, I use the term “social parent” to the biological or adoptive parent’s partner, even though not all people in this category identified themselves as parents. 21Zsolt Semjén, head of the Christian Democratic Party.

13  Activism for Rainbow Families in Hungary: Discourses …     327

contacted by the couple was afraid they might be undercover cops. Also not mentioned was the fact that a gay couple hiring a surrogate actually breaks the law and may be prosecuted. This was possibly not mentioned in order not to deter participants from this strategy. Similarly, the Inter Alia interviewers and interlocutors never point out that some practices described in the volume (such as lying about the identity of the genitor in order not to give him paternal rights) are actually illegal. At the Vállald Magad discussion, participants brought up examples of people they knew who had managed to become parents by circumventing the law. One of the participants, Szöszi, voiced the rationale for such strategies: “if we can’t do it officially, we must resort to such solutions” (author’s fieldnotes). At first sight, the two activist approaches described above may seem to correspond to the two main historical threads of Euro-American LGBTQ activism, assimilationism and liberationism (Rimmerman 2008). But while the lobbying performed by Inter Alia and Háttér can easily fit the assimilationist model of identity politics, the encouragement of illegal practices is not coupled with the aim for broader social transformation as in gay liberationist activism (Rimmerman 2008), but is more reminiscent of what De Certeau (1988) calls “tactics,” isolated actions constrained by the dominant culture. Kapitány and Kapitány (2007) suggest that in a case of strong oppression, members of a group or even a whole society might not have faith in the possibility of changing the system, and instead of challenging it as a whole try to find individual ways to get around its constraints. In the views of many LGBTQ people, it is unlikely that the Hungarian right-wing government advocating a strongly heteronormative image of family would, in the near future, pass laws that enable same-sex parenting. As Szöszi’s comment above demonstrates, illegal practices are dictated by necessity rather than political consciousness. At the same time, such activities may have the power to subvert dominant meanings (De Certeau 1988). On the other hand, legal activism may indeed have long-term social transformation as one of its goals. Háttér is very aware of problematic elements in the system that disadvantage other groups as well as LGBTQ people, such as the policy that married couples should enjoy preference as adopters, and tries to argue against them (Tamás Dombos,

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interview); in this particular case, they challenge the mainstream ideal of the two-parent family. Bea Sándor, on the Inter Alia blog, tells about an online interview where she was challenged on the lack of male role models in a lesbian-parent family, to which she makes a comment: I didn’t ask, though I could have: what do you mean by ‘male role model’? […] Surely not paid work or appearing in public space? Because these are things women can now do too. (Bea Sándor, Inter Alia blog)

This feminist reasoning, which subverts the patriarchal approach to family, is arguably more radical than the approach of those LGBTQ who would gladly go by the rules if those offered them any possibility of becoming parents. The mixed strategies of these two organizations illustrate that accommodation and subversion are not mutually exclusive, and indeed, LGBTQ family practices necessarily demonstrate elements of both (Lewin 1998). Legal activism, consciousness-raising, and practical advice are all influenced by how organizations and members of the community envisage rainbow families. We have already seen examples where some types of rainbow families are more in the focus of activism than others (e.g., the “best interest of the child” argument bringing second-parent rather than stranger adoption in focus). In the next section, I examine what types of rainbow families enjoy (some) visibility within the LGBTQ community and in the discourses of organizations, and which discourses are all but ignored.

The “Ideal” Rainbow Family Háttér’s 2017 survey asked its participants what recommendations they would have for legislators. 99% supported second-parent adoption and joint adoption, 97% suggested access to artificial insemination, 94% supported the legalization of surrogacy, and 82% were interested in the recognition of more than two parents (Háttér Társaság 2017). Joint stranger adoption enjoys the same level of support among the LGBTQ

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community22 as second-parent adoption, possibly due to Western examples but also due to discourses that frame adopting parentless children as a “good deed” to society (Neményi and Takács 2015). Also, as mentioned above, most people seem to have no ethical doubts about surrogacy and co-parenting arrangements are recognized within the LGBTQ community too. The Hungarian LGBTQ community thus appears to support a variety of rainbow family forms, but—as we have seen with the case of second-parent adoption—lobbying organizations are selective in the issues they take up and their choices are often related to what line of reasoning they assume could have more success with legislators. While the community events they organize are more inclusive in this respect, they also give unequal space to particular family forms; this is partly related to community discourses as a whole and partly (but connected to this) due to perceptions of non-heterosexual orientation within the community, as well as practical issues. The near invisibility of families with children from a previous heterosexual relationship in some cases results from such a practical consideration: that the LGBT Parenting Workshops were meant to help people who wished to become parents, not those who already were.23 Nevertheless, people already raising children turned up there from time to time as participants, maybe because they wanted more children, maybe because of a motivation to help others or to attend a participatory community event.24 There was much community discussion on reconstructed rainbow families in this period, on online forums and in private conversations, concerning issues like coming out to children, the potential harm to children caused by their mother’s lesbian relationship, or what role the divorced heterosexual parent should play in the family’s life. Nevertheless, during the time of my fieldwork I know of no publicly

22Assuming,

of course, that Háttér’s research is representative of the community values. must be mentioned, though, that during the discussions people often asked questions about parenting practices in same-sex relationships, which could be equally relevant in reconstructed rainbow families. 24At the time of my fieldwork, these workshops were the most participatory events in the Budapest LGBTQ scene, with much pairwork and small-group discussion; some attendants confessed to me that it was this that drove them to the workshops, not a desire to have a child. 23It

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advertised event that would have focused specifically on the problems of reconstructed rainbow families. While second-parent adoption is an issue with these families as well, Inter Alia’s White Book (Sándor 2010a) only makes a passing reference to the possibility of non-heterosexuals with children from a heterosexual marriage, and all the couples in the interview volume (2010b) used artificial insemination to obtain children (with the exception of the “substitute fathers,” see below). This reluctance to tackle reconstructed rainbow families, in my view, comes from an essentialist understanding of sexual orientation. Reconstructed rainbow families, though in Hungary more numerous than planned ones (Dombos et al. 2011), call into question the ethnic model of homosexuality as inborn and immutable. The ethnic model is dominant in the Hungarian LGBTQ community (Renkin 2007), both in community discourses (e.g., on a forum thread, participants discussed whether one can still identify as gay or lesbian if one has had heterosexual sex and concluded that only if one tried it no more than once and did not enjoy it) and in activist ones. Inter Alia’s White Book, for instance, claims that the restricted access of single women to artificial insemination is “discriminative against lesbians, who cannot get pregnant in any other way” (Sándor 2010a, p. 16), although some pages earlier it mentioned that some lesbians conceive through heterosexual intercourse. The unwillingness to admit the fluidity of sexual orientation may come from a fear that doing so would delegitimize LGBTQ rights and acceptance (Whisman 1996), as people are less likely to raise moral objections against a trait considered inborn (Powell et al. 2010), and also from low awareness of queer perspectives within the community (Renkin 2007). At the same time, it renders reconstructed same-sex parent families invisible, both in and outside the community. As an interesting contrast, the Transvanilla research report (Grőber and Hidasi 2017) barely mentions the possibility of planned transgender families and focuses instead on issues connected to reconstructed ones (e.g., the terms children use for their parent before and after the transition). Whereas lesbians and gays are only included in the realm of parenthood if they do not overstep the boundaries of rigid identity categories, for trans* people parenthood is only imaginable before their

13  Activism for Rainbow Families in Hungary: Discourses …     331

transition, in a cis-heteronormative framework, and later only as a remnant of their pre-transition selves.25 Even planned rainbow families are not equally represented in activism. Inter Alia, while ostensibly lobbying for rainbow families in general, in practice focused almost entirely on lesbians. In the White Book (Sándor 2010a), all the quotes are from women and surrogacy is not even mentioned (possibly for strategic reasons, see above). The report on Háttér’s research on rainbow families (Háttér Társaság 2017—the research itself was led by Bea Sándor, former founder of Inter Alia) only cites one man (as opposed to 15 women), and the quote suggests he is only considering fatherhood. The Inter Alia interview volume (Sándor 2010b) contains two interviews with men (as opposed to 9 with women): one with a single gay man who co-parents a child with two lesbians and the other with a gay couple who act as “substitute fathers” to a widowed friend’s son, looking after him from time to time to help his mother. No printed material from these organizations depicts gay men who are full-time parents to a child.26 Gay fathers at parenting workshops and in my ethnographic interviews have often complained that in patriarchal Hungarian culture men are not considered suitable parents. For example, as one research participant explained, “you virtually have to deny that there is no mother around” (Benjámin, interview). Also, gay men wishing to co-parent with lesbians are often disappointed to hear that the women would like them to be “Sunday daddies,” with minimal involvement in childcare (LGBT Parenting Workshop, author’s fieldnotes). The Transvanilla research report (Grőber and Hidasi 2017) only cites trans men (i.e., biological “mothers”), though based on the information at least 20 respondents (almost 10%

25This

reflects the mainstream view of trans* people as sterile: in a study describing the experiences of trans* people in health care (Takács 2006), one of the psychologists interviewed explicitly called transsexuals after gender reassignment “second-class” men or women because they are unable to bear or beget children. 26The White Book makes a brief mention of a widowed gay man who raises his children with a same-sex partner, emphasizing in the same sentence that most reconstructed rainbow families involve female parents.

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of the sample) were trans women.27 While the Foundation for Rainbow Families is careful to create a gender balance in representations of parenthood, Háttér and especially Transvanilla and Inter Alia reinforce the mainstream patriarchal discourse that denies the ability of people born in a male body to look after children. The invisibility of fatherhood is further enhanced in the Inter Alia interview volume by the fact that it makes a strong case for using anonymous or uninvolved donors for artificial insemination. While one of the stories does present a case of donor involvement, this is included rather as a warning, with the interviewer also expressing a strong opinion that the sperm donor should not be included in the family: Anna: We saw him [the donor] show pictures to Samu [our son] of his [the donor’s] mother and tell him this was his [Samu’s] grandma. IA28: So this disturbed your family. After all, Samu has two grandmothers already… A: Yes. And then we told him this was not going to work this way. (Sándor 2010b, p. 51) The man is seen by this couple as an intruder into the family; the story is a cautionary tale to any lesbian who wishes to use a known donor. Inter Alia’s ideal family model is that of two women with their children. While this model challenges the biogenetic basis of kinship (Sullivan 2004), it also follows the hegemonic model of the two-parent family. Single parenting is mentioned, if at all, in a negative light—“a single mother struggles with a child alone,” says Virág (Sándor 2010b, p. 24)—and second-parent adoption is also justified by the child’s right to have two parents. At the same time, a family with more than two parents is unimaginable for them, though at the LGBT Parenting Workshops, as well as on Internet forums, many members 27The data on parenthood are not broken up by gender but can be inferred from the number of responses to the statements “I used to be a father and I still am [after my transition]” and “I used to be a father and now I am a mother.” Of course, the number of biological “fathers” may be higher, as some may identify with the gender-neutral term “parent.” 28There is no indication of the person of the interviewer in the book, though he/she often expresses strong opinions or even tries to convince interviewees of a given position.

13  Activism for Rainbow Families in Hungary: Discourses …     333

of the community—both male and female—were strongly in favor of co-parenting arrangements and the sharing of parental responsibilities between three and four people. 82% of respondents in Háttér’s rainbow family survey recommend the recognition of more than two parents (Háttér Társaság 2017). However, as in the case of surrogacy, this issue is not mentioned among the recommendations the publication makes to legislators. Other omissions include that of class, which possibly derives from the mostly middle-class character of the Hungarian LGBTQ movement.29 As we have seen from Mary Jo’s forum post above, the LGBTQ entitlement to parenthood is sometimes connected to class privilege. Workshops and publications on access to parenthood hardly ever dwell on related costs, though this is a topic widely discussed on online forums. Inter Alia’s interviewees matter-of-factly recommend private schools as possible protection from homophobic bullying targeting their children.30 One couple does mention that this will require financial sacrifice, but no alternative is suggested for those who are absolutely unable to afford such arrangements. At the LGBT Parenting Workshop focusing on surrogacy, the facilitator framed the related ethical dilemma as “whether we consider women adult enough to make decisions over their own bodies” (author’s fieldnotes), thus linking surrogacy to the societal discourse on abortion, but not tackling its possible class aspects. In post-socialist countries, class analysis is associated with Communist 29It

is mostly middle-class members of the community who have encountered Western ideas of LGBTQ subcultures through their travels, internet access, and/or language skills (including on the Internet, where very little relevant material has been translated into Hungarian), and the ones who have enough free time and money to participate in such activities (given that most LGBTQ organizations cannot afford to have their own venue, even some workshops and discussions require participant contribution to rental fees). It is also possible that in poor working-class environments, social and financial pressures to get heterosexually married are stronger; according to a fellow researcher, the low number of visible working-class lesbians might be due to the fact that in their class position it is impossible to make a living on a woman’s or two women’s wages only (Dorottya Rédai, personal communication). 30It seems to be a common belief in the community that private schools regard parents as paying clients and thus dare not offend them, though a recent event—the discriminatory non-admittance of a teenager into a Waldorf secondary school because he was being raised by a lesbian couple (Gábor, M. (2014, September 26). Nem vették fel az iskolába, mert leszbikusok nevelik. https://24.hu/ belfold/2014/09/26/nem-vettek-fel-az-iskolaba-mert-ket-anya-neveli/)—disproves this folk theory.

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ideology and therefore discredited (Kalb 2011), so it is not surprising that in this relatively class-homogeneous environment no mention is made of diverse socioeconomic positions. People with non-binary gender identities are becoming gradually more visible in the Hungarian LGBTQ scene: They represented 4% of the respondents to Háttér’s 2010 discrimination survey (Dombos et al. 2011) and almost 15% of the Transvanilla survey (Grőber and Hidasi 2017).31 In spite of this, the latter makes no mention of their parenting practices and issues and neither does Transvanilla’s Trans Family Rights Q&A (Transvanilla 2017). In summary, the ideal rainbow family as depicted by activist organizations in Hungary includes two (and no more) middle-class parents of binary gender and stable monosexual orientation as well as one or both parents’ biological (not adopted) children. This may include a planned rainbow family of two lesbians and a child conceived through donor insemination as well as a trans man and his partner parenting a child conceived in a previous heterosexual relationship. While this ideal certainly subverts heteronormative gender conceptions and arrangements, in other aspects it stays in line with the mainstream notions of the immutability of sexual orientation and the two-parent nuclear family.

Conclusion While the full intimate citizenship of LGBTQ people is not limited to their legal recognition, it is definitely a prerequisite for their full social inclusion, partly because laws do influence public opinion (Takács, J. 2011) and partly because the law may hinder the realization of non-heterosexual family forms in practice. In Hungary, the legal discrimination LGBTQ people face is related to rainbow families and includes the ban on same-sex marriage, the lack of access to second-parent and

31This

survey also used the categories “mostly man” and “mostly woman,” which they grouped together with “man” and “woman,” respectively, but could also be interpreted as signifying an intermediate gender identity.

13  Activism for Rainbow Families in Hungary: Discourses …     335

joint adoption, fostering, surrogacy, and artificial insemination. It is not surprising, then, that LGBTQ organizations put a priority on rainbow families. Their strategies are twofold: on the one hand, they try to achieve legal change through lobbying, and on the other hand, they help members of the community form their own families within the existing legal and social circumstances; the latter often entails breaking or evading the law. During this work, however, certain types of rainbow families get more attention than other ones. The choice may be strategic: activists expect more opposition from mainstream society about the creation of new rainbow families than about the legalization of existing ones. Therefore, they focus on second-parent rather than stranger adoption, and downplay surrogacy, partly due to its ethically dubious nature. Another possible explanation is that surrogacy creates a situation— similarly to stranger adoption and co-parenting but unlike anonymous donor insemination—when more than two parents may make claims to a child. The strong emphasis on the biogenetic connection in mainstream Hungarian discourses about the family (Neményi and Takács 2015) may also contribute to putting stranger adoption behind artificial insemination on the list of priorities in lobbying. Emphasis on children’s rather than parents’ rights is also in line with mainstream values. In other words, when communicating with mainstream society, LGBTQ organizations play by its rules and adapt their issues and language to their discourses. At the same time, some of them are aware of their constituency’s different priorities and address them in the communication they direct to the LGBTQ community. This results in a slightly contradictory situation where the same organization that demands legal changes from legislators may at the same time teach members of the LGBTQ community how to circumvent the law. We have seen that certain forms of rainbow families are less visible in activist discourses than others. This fact again reproduces some values of mainstream society regarding family (biogenetic connection, two-parent families), but at the same time subverts others, namely ones connected to gender expectations. As Hungary is one of the most conservative countries in Europe regarding gender roles, this is an approach that may induce radical changes in the notion of family. While the LGBTQ

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movement certainly produces its exclusions with regard to family forms, these are not necessarily in line with the values of mainstream society (e.g., reconstructed rainbow families and co-parenting arrangements between gay men and lesbians may be more palatable for heterosexuals in terms of gendered parenting). As for strategies, lobbying follows a rights-based approach, while activities directed toward the community (sometimes by the same organizations) are more focused on finding loopholes in the system. Ironically, the former is much more openly directed toward systemic change than the latter, though avoiding the radical tactics of liberationist or queer activism. However, as Szulc (2011) points out, in a highly homophobic context confrontational queer techniques may be counterproductive, carrying the threat of anti-LGBTQ violence and a level of repression that would make activism virtually impossible. Parents in rainbow families are especially careful about their attitudes and visibility, not wanting to make their children suffer ostracism or discrimination. Fighting for LGBTQ parenthood in nationalist and heteronormative Hungary is hardly the area where queer tactics would yield positive results (though it would benefit from a queer approach to sexual orientation and gender identity, seeing them as more fluid and less monolithic). Still, I disagree with authors who claim that parenting rights for LGBTQ people are an assimilationist goal (e.g., Bell and Binnie 2000). The mere existence of rainbow families disrupts the heteronormative perception of kinship and challenges existing norms of gender and parenting.

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Berlant, L. (1997). The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Biblarz, T. J., & Stacey, J. (2010). How Does the Gender of Parents Matter? Journal of Marriage and Family, 2010(72), 3–22. Bilić, B. (2016). Europeanisation, LGBT Activism, and Non-heteronormativity in the Post-Yugoslav Space: An Introduction. In B. Bilić (Ed.), LGBT Activism and Europeanisation in the Post-Yugoslav Space: On the Rainbow Way to Europe (pp. 1–23). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Böröcz, J. (2006). Goodness Is Elsewhere: The Rule of European Difference. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 2006(48), 111–138. Budapest Pride. (2017). Felmérés az LMBTQ emberek magyarországi társadalmi és jogi-politikai helyzetéről 2016-ban [Survey on the Social, Legal and Political Situation of LGBTQ People in Hungary]. http://budapestpride. hu/sites/default/files/field/file/budapest_pride_felmeres_2016.pdf. Accessed 12 Feb 2018. Carbin, M., Harjunen, H., & Kvist, E. (2011). (In)appropriate Mothers— Policy Discourses on Fertility Treatment for Lesbians in Denmark, Finland and Sweden. In J. Takács & R. Kuhar (Eds.), Doing Families: Gay and Lesbian Family Practices (pp. 59–78). Ljubljana: Mirovni Inštitut. Cossman, B. (2007). Sexual Citizens: The Legal and Cultural Regulation of Sex and Belonging. Stanford: Stanford University Press. De Certeau, M. (1988). The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. Dombos, T., Takács, J., Tóth, T. P., & Mocsonaki, L. (2011). Az LMBT emberek magyarországi helyzetének rövid áttekintése [A Short Overview of the Situation of LGBT People in Hungary]. In J. Takács (Ed.), Homofóbia Magyarországon [Homophobia in Hungary] (pp. 35–54). Budapest: L’Harmattan. Evans, D. T. (1993). Sexual Citizenship: The Material Construction of Sexualities. London and New York: Routledge. Félix, A. (2015). Hungary. In E. Kováts & M. Põim (Eds.), Gender as Symbolic Glue: The Position and Role of Conservative and Far Right Parties in the Anti-Gender Mobilizations in Europe. Brussels: Foundation for European Progressive Studies. Gábor, M. (2014, September 26). Nem vették fel az iskolába, mert leszbikusok nevelik [He Was Not Admitted to the School Because He is Being Brought Up by Lesbians], 24hu. https://24.hu/belfold/2014/09/26/nem-vettek-felaz-iskolaba-mert-ket-anya-neveli/. Accessed 20 Feb 2019. Garcia, A. C., Standlee, A. I., Bechkoff, J., & Cui, Y. (2009). Ethnographic Approaches to the Internet and Computer-Mediated Communication. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 38(1), 52–84.

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Gregor, A. (2014). Nyílt titkok – a nők elleni erőszak észlelése és az ezzel kapcsolatos vélemények a magyarországi lakosság körében [Open Secrets— Awareness of and Opinions About Violence Against Women Among the Inhabitants of Hungary]. Replika, 85–86, 13–34. Grőber, D., & Hidasi, B. (2017). Transparenting: Documentation of the Parenting Situation of Trans Persons in Hungary. Budapest: Transvanilla Transgender Association. Gross, M. (2011). Grandparenting in French Lesbian and Gay Families. In J. Takács & R. Kuhar (Eds.), Doing Families: Gay and Lesbian Family Practices (pp. 117–134). Ljubljana: Mirovni Inštitut. Háttér Társaság. (2017). Azonos nemű szülők és gyermekeik. Kutatási összefoglaló [Same-Sex Parents and Their Children: Research Summary]. http://hatter. hu/sites/default/files/dokumentum/kiadvany/szivarvanycsaladok2017.pdf. Accessed 5 Jan 2018. Herdt, G. (2009). Introduction: Moral Panics, Sexual Rights, and Cultural Anger. In G. Herdt (Ed.), Moral Panics, Sex Panics. Fear and the Fight Over Sexual Rights (pp. 1–46). New York and London: New York University Press. Hunter, N. D. (2006). Marriage, Law and Gender. In L. Duggan & N. D. Hunter (Eds.), Sex Wars: Sexual Dissent and Political Culture (pp. 105–118). New York and London: Routledge. Janoski, T., & Gran, T. (2002). Political Citizenship: Foundations of Rights. In E. F. Isin & B. S. Turner (Eds.), Handbook of Citizenship Studies (pp. 13–52). Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore: Sage. Kalb, D. (2011). Headlines of Nation, Subtexts of Class: Working-Class Populism and the Return of the Repressed in Neoliberal Europe. In D. Kalb & G. Halmai (Eds.), Headlines of Nation, Subtexts of Class: Working-Class Populism and the Return of the Repressed in Neoliberal Europe (pp. 1–37). New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Kapitány, Á., & Kapitány, G. (2007). Túlélési stratégiák. Társadalmi adaptációs módok [Survival Strategies: Social Methods of Adaptation]. Budapest: Kossuth Kiadó. Katz Rothman, B. (2004). Motherhood Under Capitalism. In J. S. Taylor, L. L. Layne, & D. F. Wozniak (Eds.), Consuming Motherhood (pp. 19–30). New Brunswick, NJ and London: Rutgers University Press. Kuhar, R. (2011). The Heteronormative Panopticon and the Transparent Closet of the Public Space in Slovenia. In R. Kulpa & J. Mizielińska (Eds.), De-centring Western Sexualities: Central and Eastern European Perspectives (pp. 149–166). Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate. Kuosmanen, P., & Jämsä, J. (2007). Suomalaiset sateenkaariperheet sosiaali- ja terveyspalveluissa ja koulussa [Finnish Rainbow Families in Social and Health Services and School]. Helsinki: Edita Prima Oy.

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Lawler, S. (2000). Mothering the Self: Mothers, Daughters, Subjects. London and New York: Routledge. Lewin, E. (1998). Recognizing Ourselves: Ceremonies of Lesbian and Gay Commitment. New York: Columbia University Press. Mizielińska, J., Abramovicz, M., & Stasińska, A. (2015). Families of Choice in Poland: Family Life of Non-Heterosexual People. Warsaw: Institut Psychologii Polskiej Akademii Nauk. Neményi, M., & Takács, J. (2015). Örökbefogadás és diszkrimináció Magyarországon [Adoption and Discrimination in Hungary]. Esély, 2015(2), 67–96. Nicolae, L. M. (2009). The Marriage Between Kinship and Sexuality in New Mexico’s Domestic Partnership Debate. In E. Lewin & W. Leap (Eds.), Out in Public: Reinventing Lesbian/Gay Anthropology in a Globalizing World (pp. 338–356). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Phelan, S. (2001). Sexual Strangers: Gays, Lesbians, and Dilemmas of Citizenship. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Plummer, K. (2003). Intimate Citizenship: Private Decisions and Public Dialogues. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press. Powell, B., Bolzendahl, C., Geist, C., & Carr Steelman, L. (2010). Counted Out: Same-Sex Relations and Americans’ Definitions of Family. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Renkin, H. Z. (2007). Ambiguous Identities, Ambiguous Transitions: Lesbians, Gays, and the Sexual Politics of Citizenship in Postsocialist Hungary. Doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan. Richardson, D. (2001). Extending Citizenship: Cultural Citizenship and Sexuality. In N. Stevenson (Ed.), Culture and Citizenship (pp. 153–166). London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi: Sage. Rimmerman, C. A. (2008). The Lesbian and Gay Movements: Assimilation or Liberation? Boulder: Westview Press. Ryan-Flood, R. (2009). Lesbian Motherhood: Gender, Families and Sexual Citizenship. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Sándor, B. (Ed.). (2010a). Fehér füzet azonos nemű szülőkről és gyermekeikről [White Book on Same-Sex Parents and Their Children]. Budapest: Inter Alia Alapítvány. Sándor, B. (Ed.). (2010b). Mi vagyunk a család, a biztonság, az otthona. Leszbikus anyák, meleg apák és ‘pótapák’ [We Are the Family, the Safety, the Home: Lesbian Mothers, Gay Fathers and ‘Substitute Fathers’]. Budapest: Inter Alia Alapítvány.

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Sullivan, M. (2004). The Family of Woman: Lesbian Mothers, Their Children, and the Undoing of Gender. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. Szulc, L. (2011). Queer in Poland: Under Construction. In L. Downing & R. Gillett (Eds.), Queer in Europe: Contemporary Case Studies (pp. 159– 172.). Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate. Takács, I. K. (2011). A homofóbia nyomai a magyar közoktatásban – Egy szegedi vizsgálat tanulságai [Traces of Homophobia in Hungarian Public Education—Results from a Study in the Town of Szeged]. In J. Takács (Ed.), Homofóbia Magyarországon [Homophobia in Hungary] (pp. 152– 164). Budapest: L’Harmattan. Takács, J. (Ed.). (2006). A lélek műtétei [Operations of the Soul]. Budapest: Új Mandátum. Takács, J. (2011). Homofóbia Magyarországon és Európában [Homophobia in Hungary and in Europe]. In J. Takács (Ed.), Homofóbia Magyarországon [Homophobia in Hungary] (pp. 15–34). Budapest: L’Harmattan. Takács, J., Mocsonaki, L., & Tóth, T. P. (2008). A meleg, leszbikus, biszexuális és transznemű (LMBT) emberek társadalmi kirekesztettsége Magyarországon [The Social Exclusion of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) People in Hungary]. Esély, 2008(3), 16–54. Takács, J., & Szalma, I. (2013). Az azonos nemű párok általi örökbefogadással kapcsolatos attitűdök Magyarországon [Attitudes Towards Adoption by Same-Sex Couples in Hungary]. Socio.hu, 2013(7), 1–13. Tóth, O., & Somlai, P. (2005). Families in Hungary: Handbook of World Families. Sage. http://www.sage-ereference.com/hdbk_worldfamilies/Article_ n14.html. Accessed 13 Nov 2014. Transvanilla Transznemű Egyesület. (2017). Transz családjogi kérdezz-felelek [Trans Family Rights Q&A]. Budapest: Transvanilla Transznemű Egyesület. Warner, M. (1999). The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics and the Ethics of Queer Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Weeks, J. (1999). The Sexual Citizen. In M. Featherstone (Ed.), Love and Eroticism (pp. 35–52). London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi: Sage. Whisman, V. (1996). Queer by Choice: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Politics of Identity. New York and London: Routledge. Yogyakarta alapelvek a nemzetközi emberi jogi szabályok alkalmazásáról a szexuális irányultsággal és nemi identitással kapcsolatban. http://hatter.hu/sites/ default/files/dokumentum/kiadvany/yogyakartaalapelvek.pdf. Accessed 12 Nov 2015.

14 Gender and Class Tensions in Hungarian LGBTQ Activism: The Case of Ambiguous Bisexual Representation Ráhel Katalin Turai

Bisexuality, Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Hungary There is much diversity in the meanings of bisexuality in contemporary Hungary. This chapter examines such diversity from the point of view of the local LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) movement. The account below from an interview I made illustrates this diversity of meanings1: The only porn genre my friend watches is bisexual. (…) Also, there is this stupid and primitive fantasy of lesbianism, a man together with two

1In

this paper, I refer to my interviewees with pseudonyms and their approximate age, and I anonymised all their data. In the translated quotes from the life story interviews I made in Hungarian, I try to preserve the original linguistic formulations.

R. K. Turai (*)  Central European University, Budapest, Hungary © The Author(s) 2020 R. Buyantueva and M. Shevtsova (eds.), LGBTQ+ Activism in Central and Eastern Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20401-3_14

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lesbians – which we know is impossible. (…) But for me, a woman and a guy [at the same time]: no. My mom was right; I am bi in the sense that in the first part of my life I had only women. She added that the way others do it is once this, once that, alternating between the two. (Péter, 51, m)

In this quote, several different understandings of “bisexuality” appear which circulate today globally. First, as a porn genre and the fantasy of threesomes (two “lesbians” and a man, or, less often, two men and a woman); second, as alternating relationships with men and women; and finally, as the interviewee characterises his own life (“I am bi in the sense…”): an exclusively heterosexual period followed by an exclusively homosexual one in the present. Even scholarly definitions vary according to foci on self-identification or sexual practice (see Eisner 2013, p. 13). However, this chapter does not aim to set criteria according to which people could be classified as bisexual. Instead, I aim to show the great range of social understandings of bisexuality reflected in its representations in contemporary Hungary, and the implications of such a range of understandings for the local LGBTQ movement specifically. Based on Hungarian LGBTQ public discourses and on interviews with bisexuals, I examine how “bisexuality” or the sexual practices that include both women and men as partners are represented. What do these bisexual representations tell us about understandings of non-heterosexuality in Hungarian activist discourses? How are these representations embedded in post-socialist Hungarian social relations, including class, gender and global hierarchies? To answer these questions, I use a system-critical, leftist feminist approach to sexuality, viewing it as deeply embedded in structural and material conditions of capitalist and patriarchal social relations (see Fraser 1995). This entails a critical examination of celebratory narratives of an accelerating “sexual liberation” (see Fahs et al. 2018), and related “Eastern backwardness”, including homophobia (Böröcz 2006; Ayoub and Paternotte 2014). Specifically from a Central-Eastern European perspective, I am critical of recent trends in global LGBTQ movements which reinforce unequal relations between the privileged and the marginalised, be they regions, classes or the sexes (see Kašić 2005; Bilić 2016; Mészáros 2017). Through the lens of critical

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feminist post-socialist studies, I view similar tensions around bisexuality as the result of the (globally and domestically) limited opportunities of post-socialist sexual activism. I argue that the diversity of Hungarian bisexual representations helps us see the variety of post-socialist sexual meanings of non-heterosexuality in areas ranging from systemic sexism to Hungarian LGBTQ activism. Further, my analysis highlights that there exists a wide range of people with non-heterosexual practices who do not identify at all with any of the labels of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer, and do not see themselves as part of one group. The ambiguous meanings of bisexuality reveal the distance between those worlds that are often subsumed under the unifying term of “LGBTQ community”, and, furthermore, how LGBTQ activism fails to represent the entire group. There are two primary divisions which show the narrow understanding of the acronym: one is between women and men, as bisexuality illuminates their power hierarchy; and the other is a class division manifesting around questions of coming out and activism. Therefore, I argue that bisexual representations in LGBTQ activism do not only show exclusions inside a minority, but, more importantly, they reveal the inadequacy of the umbrella term “LGBTQ”, as it fails to respond to the needs of many. Following my understanding of bisexuality as reaching beyond “LGBTQ” discourses, I rely on an intersectional analysis of my data which expands into homosexual and heterosexual discourses to locate bisexual representations (see Hemmings 2002). My analysis aims at discourses which allegedly give voice to bisexuals so that I show what hierarchies they reproduce. To this end, I primarily use the interviews I made with Hungarians attracted to both men and women. As the opening quote illustrates, these interviews tell us a lot about the kinds of representations of bisexuality that exist in contemporary Hungary.2 My research on Hungarian bisexuality entailed ethnographic 2Between

2010 and 2013, I made 26 life story interviews with Hungarian women and men (aged between 18 and 64, belonging to lower to upper middle class) who reported sexual attractions to both men and women over their life course. The narrative, unstructured interviews took place in Hungarian in Budapest, ranging between 60 and 130 minutes (for details see Turai 2018).

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observations in the LGBTQ community, including activism, where I also acquired first-hand experiences as a volunteer for years. Furthermore, I include data from textual and visual representations of bisexuality in both Hungarian mainstream heterosexual magazines and LGBTQ dating and cruising sites, as well as some public speeches in Hungarian LGBTQ events. The chapter will, first, provide a brief outline of how men’s and women’s non-heterosexual sexual lives have been represented, enabled and controlled in Hungary in the past three decades in the context of wider frameworks of gender. In the following sections, it addresses the main spheres where dominant meanings of bisexuality get re-/produced in contemporary Hungary. First, it compares female bisexuality objectified by mainstream media culture and the spheres of secret bisexuality (of men). Then, it discusses the ambiguous presence of bisexuality in Hungarian LGBTQ activism, which cannot reach out to a range of these non-heterosexual practices. Finally, the chapter concludes that the case of bisexuality illustrates the processes by which certain forms of sexual non-normativity, depending on gendered and class positions, are granted more opportunities whereas others are silenced, resulting in a widening gap between various non-heterosexual lifestyles. In Central-Eastern Europe, the social-political-economic “transition” entailed a strengthening of both homosexual rights and visibility, as well as patriarchal heteronormativity (Kašić 2005; Imre 2009, p. 130)—according to the logic of global neoliberalism, which can capitalise on and reinforce both (Fraser 1995). Debates about sexuality in Central-Eastern Europe are framed in reference to the position of countries like Hungary as economically weaker than and dependent on core Western countries. This framing results in the competing domestic discourses of “voluntary self-colonisation” (in this case, including the uncritical celebration of transnational neoliberal LGBTQ identity politics) and nationalist “colonial self-love” which rejects respect for non-normative sexualities as Western imperialism (Gagyi 2012). In the Western-oriented post-socialist discourses, sexual liberation of any sort is interpreted as emancipation, and as the same dynamics gave space to LGBTQ movements, challenging contemporary global capitalist sexual

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discourses as misogynist or classist sounds backward for many who oppose socialist or traditional conservative ideas, including those on femininity and sexuality. Nevertheless, homosexual relations, networks and subcultures existed in Hungarian socialist times. Men would meet in cruising areas (parks, public toilets and baths), while women had to rely on personal networks, until the 1980s when social organising took off (Borgos 2014; Takács 2015). Furthermore, in contrast to ideas of complete socialist silence or invisibility (Stella 2015), public discourse on both men’s and women’s homosexuality was present. References to male homosexuality in criminal news and gossip about celebrities’ private lives always included condemnation, but cultural products as well as social scientific research often displayed sympathy (Borgos 2014; Takács 2015). Terms like gay (“meleg ” in Hungarian, literally “warm”), bisexual (“biszexuális ”) and lesbian (“leszbikus ”) were all circulating already before 1989. Alongside the development of Hungarian LGBTQ NGOs from 1988 on, such non-activist narratives provided more widely accessible sources for understanding bisexuality, often for the very people concerned. Processes of democratisation, commercialisation and support from Western institutions, together with the opening up of legal opportunities for civic movements since the late 1980s, have brought a lively LGBTQ life and activism in Budapest. In terms of Hungarian legal recognition of homosexuality, anti-discrimination policies and registered partnership for same-sex couples exist since 2009, albeit alongside the Basic Law of 2011 which defines marriage and family in heteronormative terms. At the same time, homophobic attitudes permeate public and personal discourses. LGBTQ activism increasingly focuses on the widening of legislative rights and on the annual Budapest Pride Marches. The contestation of LGBTQ rights and visibility is most obvious around the March, frequented by masses, but regularly attacked and policed since 2008. Importantly, the Pride March and associated activism are also objected to by many people with non-normative sexualities, including several in my research sample. Similarly, more and more Hungarian organisations, groups and activities employ the acronym

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“LMBTQ”3; yet most non-activist people, including those personally concerned, are often unaware of what the terms mean. These general developments of sexual representations also offer patterns of non-heterosexuality distinct from those narrated by LGBTQ activism, and known by everyone through mainstream media. Although Hungarian cultural representations of female sexuality have multiplied since the demise of socialism, up to today they move among narrow frameworks from national reproductive heteronormativity to capitalist-consumerist ideas of sexual availability (Borgos 2014; Stella 2015, p. 42). Most importantly, both the broadened opportunities for sexual self-organisation and for (primarily male) sexual experimentation in new patriarchal forms contributed to the increased eroticisation of female same-sex encounters (see Baer 2005; Kašić 2005). This led to a specific representation of female bisexuality which features a normatively feminine women’s “lesbian” erotica aimed at straight men’s pleasure. Most Hungarian LGBTQ activist groups share a feminist stance. However, the critique of sexual objectification often seems to clash with the capitalist emancipatory rhetoric of (same-sex) sexualities, as the latter includes the reliance of gay subcultures on commercialised networks of sex (Kašić 2005; Stella 2015). Therefore, as a result of broadening sexual opportunities as well as increasing sexual objectification, the various representations of bisexuality in Hungary either connect to LGBTQ activism or to women’s increased sexual objectification in popular and mass media.

Bisexuality in Non-activist Discourses: Femininity and Secrecy Both men and women with bisexual practices (even identities) live in straight communities, oftentimes without any connection to LGBTQ groups, as my interviews also show. Foregrounding the differences

3Leszbikus, Meleg (Gay), Biszexuális, Transznemű és Queer. Because of the official use, I use the same term.

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between the images of women’s and men’s bisexuality, I will show how representations of bisexuality outside LGBTQ activism stem from, and contribute to, the processes of neoliberal marketisation, which include LGBTQ services and women’s sexual objectification. From the 2000s, sources like tabloids, online articles, films and series emerged in Hungary which reached a wide range of people and mediated to them a new set of non-hostile meanings of same-sex sexuality from normalisation to sensationalisation and exploitation (see Kis 2012). If women’s sexual encounters could not be imagined by many women during Hungarian socialism, for young women today, they cannot be not imagined. This restrictive scheme of lesbian representations includes images of female bisexuality in the framework of “lesbianism for men” in the sex market (Eisner 2013, p. 159). By the 2000s across the globe, the threesome became visible as a specific form (or, even representative) of female bisexuality, stemming from its increasing public appearance (Fahs 2009, p. 431). An interviewee of mine, Zita (21, f ) referred to threesomes with an obvious easiness and noted the recent visibility of bisexuality: I don’t know how much it concerns the topic [of bisexuality], but you hear a lot about such threesomes. I personally haven’t been to one, but people of my age practically almost, a lot of them. (…) And for instance, in such a situation, the presence of another woman absolutely wouldn’t bother me, indeed. I could even say I would like it. But then if I actually got there, what it would be like, I don’t know, but I can absolutely imagine it. I see nothing repulsive about it, indeed it’s definitely attractive. (…) I think in our generation it is more acceptable. Or our eyes are more used to it.

This specific representation of conspicuous bisexuality is based on widely circulated images of gender normative women’s same-sex erotica, not on Hungarian LGBTQ activist discourses. In Central-Eastern Europe, such visible forms of bisexuality are known from international, mostly US, popular media, and therefore are viewed as experimentations of a “trendy, Western-influenced”, thus foreign, inauthentic, urban subculture (Baer 2005; Kašić 2005; Turai 2018). In the quote, Zita does

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not report serious desires towards women, but she can imagine such a “situation” which she hears about a lot. In this formulation of bisexuality, women are perceived to be just open to sexual experimentation in party situations (see Rust 1993). Precisely due to the semi-public context of many women’s same-sex erotic from the music industry to youth parties, the authenticity of their same-sex desires becomes questionable as well as irrelevant both to their audience and to themselves (Garber 1996, pp. 424–479; Eisner 2013, pp. 144–164). The typical male heterosexual fantasy of the two women-one man set up promises to give women the opportunity to participate without compromising their heterofemininity. Nóra (24, f ), who identified as straight, said that if she really wanted a woman sexually, she would not be scared and it would not be risky for her; indeed, in some situations I could even, between scare quotes, capitalise on it. Because a guy must be into it even more. Definitely. He’ll say for sure, “then what about a threesome” and I guarantee I’ll say “of course”.

When young women like Zita and Nóra casually say “I could imagine” being with another woman, this does not only reflect the popular pornographic imagery (Kašić 2005; Eisner 2013, pp. 159–164). It also signals, I argue, more general, new capitalist-individualist ideas of risk-taking and adjusting to changes through the production of consumerist desires (note Nóra’s expression “capitalise”). In the CentralEastern European context, sexual experimentation including bisexuality becomes the sign of a new post-socialist generation’s freedom and openness. It hence entails identification with Western wealth, modernity and culture which count as “cool” for Hungarian youth (Rotkirch 2004). Addressing a wide social range of audiences, bisexuality is highly visible on Hungarian LGBTQ dating sites since the early 2000s and, most recently, smartphone dating applications. As these sites are very popular and not framed by Hungarian LGBTQ activism (only by the market), I view these sites as a nodal point for the intersection of straight and LGBTQ sexual cultures, private and public visibility, as well as of male and female bisexuality. In the summer of 2014, I registered on three LGBTQ dating sites as a “bisexual woman looking for women”.

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My observations and interactions proved to me the wide extension of men’s bisexual practice, which is hardly visible either in gay activism or in the depiction of female bisexuality in mainstream media. On these sites, “bisexual” most often characterised men in heterosexual relationships who seek out same-sex sexual encounters in secret. Bisexuality connoted closet, secrecy, sexual desire and pleasure, non-monogamy, threesomes and group sex, sexual practice versus (homosexual) identification. Unlike the Budapest- and middle-class centred Hungarian LGBTQ activism, site users come from various social-spatial locations, including rural, poor, uneducated and Roma people. In this sense, bisexuality in dating sites also reveals significant geographical and cultural-classed divisions which characterise the Hungarian LGBTQ “community”. Furthermore, what struck me on LGBTQ dating sites was a surprising degree of women’s sexual objectification visually and in interactions as well. This sexualisation of women certainly stems from the enormous post-socialist public visibility of women’s general sexualisation sketched out above. I frequently received unwanted advances from men, amounting to sexual harassment and cyberbullying. Many women, or straight couples behind women’s profiles, approached me to invite me into threesomes with their male partner. It shows how female sexuality is being absorbed into male-centred sexual culture, be it straight or nonstraight (see Ward 2015). As the story of one of my respondents shows, there are indeed women who are not embedded in lesbian communities and therefore rely on threesomes organised via dating sites to reach other women sexually. Ilona (36, f ) met online with a young woman who also did not have any same-sex sexual experience: She wasn’t sure she could do it, like the two of us, so she insisted this happens in a threesome, that we have a third, a man, who would direct the whole thing. She was 22 years old, and maybe that’s why I said, “all right, okay, if you need direction so much, let’s do it”. And then in a threesome! [laughs ] The point was that I was only dealing with the girl, so luckily, I didn’t have to deal with the guy. Well this was the price, otherwise I couldn’t get the woman.

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For Ilona, even if she laughs, the threesome was a conscious decision, a compromise: the presence of a man was the price for the realisation of her lesbian desires. This does not only reflect a general image of both lesbianism and female bisexuality as centring on men, but also points at the sexual vulnerability of women hidden behind celebratory narratives of “sexual liberation” or the “acceptance” of female bisexuality. This objectifying sexualisation forms the basis upon which bisexual women become the most prone to all sorts of intimate partnership violence (see Kašić 2005; Hura 2016, pp. 55–56; Fahs 2009; Eisner 2013, pp. 80, 137–179; Fahs et al. 2018). Given the representations of bisexuality as a general female trait in favour of men’s desires, in contrast, it is notable that there is only one openly bisexual male public figure in Hungary (while a small but growing number of persons come out publicly as gay and, more rarely, as lesbian). Dissident émigré poet and writer György Faludy (1910–2006) was widely known across all strata of Hungary as well as internationally, due to his appearance in both tabloid newspapers and products of the literary elite. He is the only bisexual figure with which ‘out’, educated middle-class Hungarian men like some of my interviewees can identify with. Following his long-term relationship with the artist Eric Johnson, Faludy married the 27-year-old poet-to-be Fanni Kovács at the age of 92. However, this relationship, questionable itself, has been co-opted by the global heterosexist sex market. After their wedding in 2002, György and Fanni Faludy were photographed naked in the erotic men’s magazine Penthouse. It was mostly the wife’s naked body displayed in the photos, shot in their elegant house full of books. Fanni’s normatively feminine naked body, together with the discourse about the inauthenticity of her desire for the old and renowned György, makes their Penthouse appearance parallel to general media depictions of female sexuality in general. Faludy’s figure, including the wide acceptance of his bisexuality, might unite the class gap, but, apparently, the only way for that remains through women’s objectification. With Faludy being a noteworthy exception, I now turn to the more widespread but much less visible form of male bisexuality in Hungary: a secret practice which belongs to private “double lives” or to anonymous spaces (see Fahs 2009). Interestingly, being less visible than

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mainstream media does not mean that these spaces are less affected by or intact from capitalist markets. On the contrary, men’s same-sex sexual culture (including dating sites, bars, clubs and especially saunas) means a market for commercial capitalism in Hungary as well. Either belonging to gay or heteronormative cultures, men have been able to meet for sex in Budapest gay saunas from the early 2000s on. These places live off the transnational male sexual market, either through cruising or prostitution, also targeting (mostly Western) gay tourists (see Bunzl 2000 on the Czech Republic). They exclude women if the economic interest says so, for example in 2015 when a small group of women wanted to organise an all-women sauna event. However, only a year earlier, they organised a “Bi Party”, also advertised as a Facebook event. The caption on the image said, “A night for men and women”, marking the exceptional presence of women. Despite its gay context, the image followed the visualisation of (non-monogamous) bisexuality in heteronormative contexts from mainstream porn to popular music media outlined above (Eisner 2013, p. 159). It depicted a man in the centre embraced by two conventionally feminine women with long hair and standard, hairless white and skinny bodies. What made the photo possibly non-heterosexual was the man: conventionally masculine, muscular, young, with no body hair, who was objectified by an assumed male sexual desire, owing to the gay market context. Therefore, the event was obviously addressed at bisexual men, rather than women, and precluded any feminist atmosphere. The visual representation of the “Bi Party” event thus illustrates the cultural breach between LGBTQ activism and a market-oriented LGBTQ lifestyle, together with its position on women, as an exploitable economic resource. The difference between men’s and women’s same-sex sexuality also explains why in my own research project, I could not access male respondents who maintained same-sex relations without belonging to LGBTQ communities (Turai 2018). However, my male respondents did talk to me about a great number of such male partners. Through these accounts on closeted bisexual practice, we can indirectly have an image of these secret lives. It also provides us an idea of how they are perceived by other men who maintain more ties with the LGBTQ

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community, and therefore share some of its assumptions about bisexuality. Lázár (34), for example, who maintains a partial gay identity, lives in an open relationship with a woman, and together they engage in threesome sex with men whom they contact through dating sites. The open relationship offers a solution for Lázár, who can realise his homosexual desires and also contain them inside the safe frame of the heterosexual bourgeois, conservative lifestyle they otherwise lead in a family house in the Hungarian countryside (see Garber 1996, p. 419). The gay-identified János (55) acknowledges that he considers many of his male partners who identify as bisexual—whom he hooked up with through dating sites or saunas—“complete fags”. I had many [male] partners, but among these many, I hardly had those who would openly identify as gay, who would like be OK with a single life, or who would even have a boyfriend. Most of my partners came to me from the side of their wife or girlfriend. (…) What I see much more often is that these definitions, when someone describes himself as a “beginner bi”, these are used as escape routes. “Beginner bi” actually refers to someone who is at the beginning of acknowledging his same-sex desires. (János, 55)

Although my out gay interviewees told me about several such men, when asked, these non-gay men were not willing to give an anonymous interview to me. This shows their need for privacy, perhaps even distancing from their same-sex practices. In sum, my data suggest a world with samesex practices embedded in heterosexual lifestyles, without any engagement to Hungarian LGBTQ activism. A lot of these people, as previous literature on Central-Eastern Europe shows, relate with discomfort to LGBTQ identity labels, gay marriage or Pride Marches, in spite of the blossoming of dating sites (Woodcock 2004, pp. 176; 2011, p. 69; Renkin 2015).

LGBTQ Activism and Bisexuality Clare Hemmings writes that in the UK 60% of women’s personal ads marked bisexual desire, whereas less than 10 women made up the core of a local bisexual women’s group. She says that this fact reflects

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“a larger mismatch among bisexual desire, identity, and community” (2002, p. 66). In addition, I see an important gender hierarchy at play. Due to men’s greater economic independence from the household, they have more opportunities both for secret relationships and for an open marriage than women (Hoy 2007). This has a specific significance in post-socialist countries where low wages necessitate women’s unpaid extra work even more (Mészáros 2017). Paraphrasing Hemmings, I would thus say that the tensions between bisexual practice, identity and community belonging in Hungary reflect a mismatch among LGBTQ activism and the non-heterosexual population, based on classed and gendered opportunities. In this section then, I will show the specific appearance of bisexuality in the discourses of the Hungarian LGBTQ movement in activists’ and public figures’ statements. I argue that these representations are partly a consequence of the representations of bisexuality in mainstream heteronormative media, dating sites and personal narratives discussed above—and they partly stem from global LGBTQ discourses. Altogether, activist representations of bisexuality, either hostile and elitist, or benevolent but empty, make clear that the movement is not capable of representing large masses of non-heterosexuals; hence my argument on the “illusion of an LGBTQ community”. Although the Hungarian LGBTQ community shares similar negative ideas about bisexuality as the ones I discussed in the previous section, activists seem to be more understanding on the personal level. However, as I will show, this does not translate into organisational action. Inside the LGBTQ community, bisexuality carries the same meanings of irrelevance, inauthenticity and promiscuity. Anna Borgos’s small-scale discourse analysis in Hungarian LGBTQ online forums revealed that bisexuality was predominantly considered a “transitional stage” without political commitment, in relation to promiscuity and as a “trendy excursion for straights” (Borgos 2007, pp. 170–171). In contrast, when she did a small survey among a few LGBTQ activists, the responses tended to reflect on, and not express, negative stereotypes of bisexuality. Activist respondents acknowledged the complexity of bisexuals’ situation, including the fact that it is rarely talked about in LGBTQ NGOs, despite having bisexual members. This might reflect activists’

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greater reflexivity on bisexuality, but it might be explained as well by the personal survey method, where one responds to assumed expectations much more than in online forums. Anyhow, groups and organisations, especially the activities and publications of Budapest Pride (the organiser of the annual LGBTQ festivals), frequently attempt to be attentive to sexual-gender-class-ethnic diversity inside the community, including giving voice to bisexuality issues as well. The “gay and lesbian” (“meleg és leszbikus ”) Festival and March which has taken place annually since 1997 included bisexuality in its name in 2005 (“LMBT ”), became LGBTQ (“LMBTQ ”) in 2012, and from the following year on remained simply “Budapest Pride Festival”. In the post-socialist region, the inclusion of bisexual and transgender into acronyms and statements had shortly followed the first homosexual associations forming in 1988. This inclusion followed international NGO discourses, and specifically Western donors’ expectations, without offering any substantial content to these groups (Woodcock 2004, 2011; Hura 2016). According to Borgos (2007), a few individuals consider the inclusion of bisexual topics in gay and lesbian activities a political, awareness-raising aim. There are attempts to include bisexuality in Hungarian LGBTQ NGOs’ activities, where the number of bisexual women seems to grow, aiming not primarily at people concerned with bisexuality, but those potentially hostile to it. When I planned to co-organise a couple of discussions on bisexuality, it was always included in the programme by festival organisers. Yet, despite such inclusions, the reference to bisexuality mostly remains an empty phrase without bottom-to-top community self-organising (Borgos 2007, p. 170). Borgos made two life story interviews with a man and a woman, who belong to gay and lesbian communities and who sometimes, or to some extent, identify as bisexual. These identifications, it turned out, are situational and political, which they use when they feel the need to address biphobia inside the community. It also follows that these bi-conscious people, nevertheless, did not find it important to form specifically bisexual communities. While by the 2010s, Hungarian transgender organisations became active, also owing to international transgender politics, and recently, asexual groups are forming, no specific Hungarian bisexual community

14  Gender and Class Tensions in Hungarian LGBTQ Activism …     355

exists. It also stands in contrast to various forms of bisexual organising elsewhere (see Ritter 2014 on Germany; Monro 2015 on USA, UK, India and Colombia; and Hura 2016 on Serbia). Apart from informal initiations for gatherings time to time, and one or two Facebookgroups which quickly became inactive, to this day, Hungary does not have a bisexual organisation of any sorts, or a group meeting regularly, not even in the capital, Budapest, where Hungarian LGBTQ life centres and many aspects (marketed or not) flourish. It seems that, on the one hand, bisexual activists find their place inside the existing LGBTQ infrastructure. On the other hand, those men and women with bisexual desires whom I talked about in the previous section would not attend such groups for community purposes, if that relates to the Hungarian LGBTQ activist sphere. Interestingly, it was in the mid-1990s, when discussions about the political outcomes of sexual identity categories led to the short life of a quasi-bisexual group, “Group for People without Sexual Identity”.4 One of their leaflets parodied the stereotypes of sexual identification through a fictional bisexual character (Borgos 2007, p. 181). In contrast, recent developments in Hungarian LGBTQ activism display a reinforcement of sexual (and gender) identity categories as mostly fixed and essential personal characteristics. As across Central-Eastern Europe, in spite of the bisexual lived experiences of many people outside activism, the feminist or queer critique of identity categories remains limited (Kašić 2005). Shannon Woodcock’s observation on Albania seems to apply to Hungary: “The blunt categorical definition of sexuality destroys difference and a plurality of sexualities even as it claims to recover identities from repression” (2004, p. 185). In the following, I will show a few examples which illustrate the attitude of Hungarian LGBTQ activism towards bisexuality, and I will underline how these cases show the incapacity of the movement to engage with bisexuals’ needs. The inclusionary attempts of Hungarian activism cannot hinder its increasing focus on activities (from same-sex marriage campaigns to organising the Pride March) which favour the most privileged: 4“Nemi

Identitás Nélküliek Csoportja ”; its short, “NINCS ” literally means “there isn’t any”.

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educated, middle-class, out gay men of Budapest. In the CentralEastern European context, in contrast to many Western countries, it is not the nation state which poses as the defender of LGBTQ rights. It is mostly the liberal-leftist middle class, irrespective of their sexual orientation, who in opposition to the homophobic nationalist right-wing governance identifies with the “West”, the global North/core countries. This identification includes the European Union, the European Commission and other international organisations who serve as the main donors for Hungarian LGBTQ projects (Böröcz 2006; Gagyi 2012; Mészáros 2017). Due to the financial system of Central-Eastern European LGBTQ and other NGO project profiles, which are dependent on Western donors in lieu of national state support, local projects have to conform to the donors’ priorities, even if they are detached from local community needs, be it AIDS-activism, same-sex marriage or the promotion of coming out (see Butterfield 2016; Woodcock 2004, 2011; Bilić 2016; Hura 2016). In my own work in the Hungarian LGBTQ scene I also witnessed the difficulties in financing services which are not project-based but long-term; which do not aim at a specific theme but at general personal help or community life; and which cannot be converted onto the market and commodified. In my view, these would serve bisexuals’ needs. If it was not obvious, many who call the anonymous, free helpline with LGBTQ-related issues, are detached from LGBTQ communities, sometimes even just dreaming about a same-sex partner, or pursuing bisexual practices with shame and fear. As it was also discussed in the previous sections, many Hungarian people with non-heterosexual lifestyles hide in secrecy, or are so embedded in heterosexual lives that they do not even consider a partnership with a same-sex person. For them, it is difficult to find a non-heterosexual community (let alone partners), or for the community to reach out to them. Especially since many people with bisexual practice live in the countryside and belong to social strata with lower cultural-political capital, the messages of LGBTQ activism on coming out and same-sex marriage are irrelevant for them. As Woodcock shows in her Albanian and Romanian case studies, a politically more privileged subject position is needed for people to be able to take advantage of LGBTQ identities, together with the “legislative structures enabling same-sex

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relationships to be recognized by the state” (2004, p. 182). This is obviously also a question of class differences: the Budapest middle class with higher education forms the vocal fraction of the illusionary “LGBTQ community”. Although they invest a lot of volunteer work in activist organising which suffers from deficits due to the hostile homophobic national governance, these activists and NGOs, however, must respond to international trends and financial constraints which favour same-sex marriage to community building or psychological support (see Hura 2016). The Hungarian LGBTQ movement is trying to make alliances with the liberal-leftist elite, which has resulted in large numbers of straight people and NGO, even corporate, allies in the Pride Marches in the last couple of years. However, this process happens at the cost of losing touch with many, often poorer, non-heterosexuals across the country. Many of them reject the idea of the March or any other activism, exactly because visibility would be threatening to their safety, due to their lower social status, and they do not profit from the offers of the gay-friendly market niche (see Renkin 2015; Stella 2015). Symptomatic to this process was the widespread colouring of Facebook-profiles during the 2015 US campaign celebrating same-sex marriage, which testified to a growing tendency to approve certain forms of homosexuality in certain spheres of mainstream heterosexual culture in Hungary. The serious class implications of this campaign are known, from IT literacy and access to Internet, to the privilege of marriage. The latter concerns financially and socially independent ‘out’ people with a same-sex partner—while masses cannot even afford to try to realise their desires, short of opportunities (see Warner 1999). This means that a specific, normative form of same-sex sexuality is applauded by specific, privileged social strata, not independently of global international relations. However, such gay-friendly voices of the Hungarian liberal-leftist cultural elite contribute to the exclusion of bisexual lives, which I illustrate with two cases from 2015. These representations of bisexuality by two men above 60, a straight ally and an ‘out’ gay man, popular intellectual figures of the Hungarian liberal-leftist cultural elite, did not necessarily voice official statements of activist NGOs, but nevertheless represented Hungarian LGBTQ activism while reaching a wide audience

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beyond LGBTQ groups. Their statements made me feel ambiguous and frustrated exactly because, as I now see, they were symptomatic of the marginalisation of huge groups of sexual non-normativity, including the reaffirmation of biphobic, classist and sexist stereotypes. During my fieldwork on Hungarian bisexualities, on 11 July 2015, I was listening to the sympathetic and celebratory opening speech for the Budapest Pride March delivered by the renowned heterosexual conductor Iván Fischer. Just before the March started off on the Andrássy út avenue in the heart of downtown Budapest, he spoke from the back of a music truck to an estimated twenty thousand participants, consisting of LGBTQ people and many allies from the liberal-leftist, urban cultural middle class, who were separated from non-participants with police and security bars. Fischer warned “homophobes” that homosexuality is an “inborn trait”, and asked for acceptance for those who “feel attracted to same-sex people from adolescence” and “are just as the members of society as we all are, with the only distinction that they choose someone of the same sex as the partner for their whole life”, advocating for coming out and equal marriage. While standing there and listening to him, I was wondering who could actually feel addressed, and I bitterly thought it was by no means bisexuals, let alone the “homophobes”. Later his speech was published in the online journal szinhaz.hu (2015), a website on theatrical arts, which signals the incorporation of LGBTQ issues into artistic spheres, reaching out to the elite but never accessible to most of the Hungarian population. Fischer’s speech, soon after the news of US marriage equality campaign spread to Hungary through Facebook, expressed the globally shared reduction of LGBTQ agenda to the sellable “gay love” (see Ward 2015). Despite its references to “colourful, not black-and-white world and people”, the speech divided society into clear hetero- and homosexual clusters, obviously from an outsider ally’s assimilationist position. It showed no concern for people with bisexual lives or those who realised their homosexual desires later than “adolescence”. The speech also expressed oblivion about the classed nature of sexual opportunities, including those who cannot afford the risks of coming out, or the “homophobes” overrepresented

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in poor and uneducated social strata (Mészáros 2017). The speech thus reinforced a specific image of gayness with which society’s only task is to “accept”, foreclosing structural reasons and solutions. We could see some examples in the previous section when my openly gay male interviewees spoke about closeted bisexual men with contempt. However, such views voiced by a gay public figure become powerful “LGBTQ” representations of bisexuality, even if not necessarily in accordance with Hungarian LGBTQ activist agenda. Ádám Nádasdy is an openly gay literary scholar, celebrated in both gay and mainstream circles, whom I also respect and admire for a lot of his personal and professional merits. However, I am deeply disturbed by his comments on bisexuality and I view them as symptomatic to the sexist and class-blind elitism of the Hungarian liberal-left in general, and of the Hungarian LGBTQ activism in particular. A few months prior to the 2015 Budapest Pride, a volume of his gay-themed essays was published (Nádasdy 2015a), which addressed a similar audience to the theatre journal: liberal-leftist intellectuals, be they straight or not. It included Nádasdy’s own Pride-opening speech from 2009 (given in a hall in front of a couple of hundred people), which works with the same narrative as Fischer’s, ignoring bisexuality. He passingly mentioned his former heterosexual marriage and his two daughters. Just like Fischer, Nádasdy similarly spoke about LGBT people as “those who are not attracted to the opposite sex”, and welcomed gay-friendly legislation (the Hungarian implementation of registered partnership in that year) as the sign of belonging to the civilised West. In another essay of the book, Nádasdy did touch upon bisexuality in the role of an interviewer asking a gay friend about his women partners, although it was unclear whether this interview had in fact happened. When “Nádasdy” asks his friend, “Is it possible that you are bisexual?”, “the friend” responds, “Please don’t label me, I’m an earnest homo, who made a few mistakes in his youth”. Obviously, “bisexual” here connotes an insult. However, what I discuss next in detail are Nádasdy’s much harsher remarks on bisexuality in one of the most popular Hungarian online newspapers, which reached a much broader audience.

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In the online interview about his book where Nádasdy argued for “bourgeois gayness” (Nádasdy 2015b),5 he was also asked about the text on bisexuality above. Referring to the expectation of an either-or self-identification between Hungarian and Romanian ethnicities in multi-ethnic Transylvania, Romania, Nádasdy stated that in sexuality “there cannot be transition either”. In his view, in contrast to men, alternating homo- and heterosexual relationships do happen in women’s lives, because they “more easily give themselves to someone who doesn’t make them hot-blooded”. He added that he did not have self-identifying bisexual acquaintances; rather, “they coyly disclose it, as if they were not only cheating on their boyfriend or girlfriend, but also on the hetero- and homosexual societies as well”. When the reporter commented that bisexuals thus experienced exclusion also from inside the minority, Nádasdy responded impatiently that bisexuals should be asked about it, not him, who did not care. Finally, he closed off the topic saying, “I’m sorry, but usually those people who identify as bisexual are gays but are ashamed of it. They are the ones unable to let that barrier loose which binds them to the bourgeois world or to stable finances; and this can be understood”. This was thus a gay insider’s public utterance which displayed an attitude to bisexuality different from Fischer’s in not only being oblivious but also overtly hostile, identifying bisexuals as infidels and as traitors of the gay community. We can see here the transfer of stigma from homosexuality to bisexuality: accusing bisexuals of promiscuous sexual practice, cowardice, inauthenticity and fraud, thus of the same charges that homophobic views usually contain (Takács 2004, pp. 209–211; see also Turai 2011). Beyond reinforcing general biphobic stereotypes and excluding bisexual lived experiences from what Nádasdy believes gayness is about, the erasure of bisexuality also discursively accomplishes the shaming of the closeted gay person. Yet, the condemnation of the closet ignores the geographical and classed differences which make coming out unrealistic for many people with same-sex desires. Ironically, he

5“Be akarom lopni a melegeket a polgári társadalomba ” (“I Want to Shuffle Gays into Bourgeois Society”).

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blames bisexuals for not being willing to give up privileges, whereas in reality being ‘out’ is a privilege. This way, such statements reinforce the boundaries between non-heterosexual people, rejecting notions of bisexuality which actually dominate many other bisexual representations as I showed. Further, Nádasdy claimed that women (in contrast to men) engage in sex irrespective of their sexual desires; this perpetuates images of women’s sexual desire as inauthentic, irrelevant and inconsequential, stemming from and in turn reinforcing women’s sexual objectification, discussed in the previous section (see also Ward 2015). Nádasdy’s Transylvanian example indexes the significance of national-ethnic parallels in the conceptualisation of sexuality in Hungary. Both public statements show the operation of sexual identity politics in Central-Eastern Europe which rely on international discourses and are reinforced through the application of a national parallel. LGBTQ discourses are supported by the leftist-liberal strata of educated Budapest middle class, in a politically-socially-culturally divided Hungary ruled by a homophobic right-wing government. The very context of these utterances—an online newspaper and a Budapest Pride March—makes visible the class breach among various representations of non-normative sexualities, as well as among the entire Hungarian society. In contrast to these voices by people who represent LGBTQ issues, as I showed, less visible but much more numerous people maintain same-sex relationships while living in heterosexual ones, across the country, typically with fewer opportunities: from lower classes, from smaller towns in the countryside, or in other, for example religious bounded communities (Woodcock 2004, 2011; Stella 2015). Statements like that of Fischer’s and Nádasdy’s do not only miss addressing these people, but even contribute to the widening gap between people who experience their non-heterosexuality in different ways. It reinforces the marginal position of many people with bisexual lives, who continue to be loyal to heteronormativity that silences and exploits them. Looking back at the figures whom I discussed as presenting influential bisexual images to the public, from the bisexual Faludy to straight Fischer to gay Nádasdy, one cannot ignore that they were all older, respected Hungarian men of Budapest liberal-leftist intelligentsia, in contrast to the mainstream assumption that most women are bisexual.

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The question thus emerges, whose voices get heard? Finally, let me close my analysis with the voice of a woman. Móni (23) is a student who is involved in Budapest liberal-leftist university circles. In these circles, as I discussed before, human rights defence in general and LGBTQ rights in particular are important values, partly as a sign of opposition against the right-wing nationalist government and identifying with a pro-gay EU discourse (Böröcz 2006; Gagyi 2012; Bilić 2016). Still, Móni’s bisexual desires cause her dilemmas in this social context. Although many young women, like Nóra (24) quoted in the previous section, do not think about their bisexual practice as making them part of the Hungarian LGBTQ community, Móni had problems with incorporating her bisexual practice into her understanding of sexual orientation and identity. She had shared the idea of a same-sex encounter as irrelevant to her (heterosexual) orientation earlier, but its repeated occurrence started to cause her concern: After the first [same-sex encounter] my conclusion was that this had been very good, but this had reaffirmed me in my heterosexuality. Only till this happened another few times. And since then, I’m not that certain about myself. Well I really don’t know, because it’s difficult to put it in a box, or force a concept on it, like ‘this is bisexuality because I went to bed with a woman’, but actually I’ve not been in love with a woman yet, I haven’t dated a woman. Or, is it bisexuality exactly because it’s about sex, and not about relationships? But how? There must be adequate research results and terminology out there. For the time being, I’m just trying to put my own little puzzle in order. (Móni, 23)

Her expression “this had reaffirmed me in my heterosexuality” marks the idea of the inconsequentiality of women’s sex. Later however, Móni finds herself lost among the various LGBTQ identities she is knowledgeable about, assuming adequate criteria upon which she could be classified as bisexual or not. I contend that her confusion was exactly the result of her being involved in these circles, which followed an identity politics logic, and which, with Woodcock’s (2004, p. 185) words, instead of recovering the plurality of sexualities, contains them. In sum, neoliberal identity politics and hierarchical West-East relations of

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economic dependence result in a distance between Hungarian LGBTQ activism and bisexual people, even if they have felt affinity with the movement’s discourse.

Conclusion Concluding, I summarise the image of bisexuality which Hungarian mainstream sexist-heteronormative media, dating sites and LGBTQ activism specifically create and reproduce, and what these representations reveal about the sexist and classist elements of identity politics pursued by the Hungarian LGBTQ movement. We could see that in most discourses, bisexuality represents something apolitical, sex-centred, infidel and inauthentic. A similar image dominates mainstream heteronormative media through the depictions of women’s same-sex erotica as something serving men’s pleasures, therefore implying the inauthenticity and inconsequentiality of women’s desires. What dating sites show us is bisexuality as a private, overtly sexual practice of many secret lives, across social strata, and across geographical locations. Bisexuality appears here as distanced from LGBTQ activism, embracing women’s objectification, and as a part of men’s sexual lives reconcilable with heteronormative lifestyles. Without any specifically Hungarian bisexual groups, Hungarian LGBTQ activists personally often express empathy with bisexuals and some of them do identify as bisexual. Official Hungarian umbrella LGBTQ organisations like Budapest Pride refer to the existence of bisexuality, but this most often does not address the specificity of bisexuality and seems to politely avoid its discussion as a topic entailing controversy. For many openly gay men of Budapest’s middle class, insensitive to the classed difficulties of coming out, bisexuality is a phase or a tactic of the coward and the weak. What these representations imply for people with actual bisexual lives, visible or invisible, is that they are not taken seriously. Due to different gender ideas and homophobia, most men with bisexual desires are forced to hide their non-heterosexuality, and they only use the commercialised sexual arenas of LGBTQ infrastructure. In contrast, most women only have access to same-sex encounters inside frameworks which centre heterosexual men’s needs, and women’s sexuality

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continues to be defined by these needs. The era of the capitalist objectification of women’s bodies appears in the post-socialist region as belonging to West-led social-political-economic liberation. Hungarian bisexual representations and their implications on actual lives also suggest the limitations of LGBTQ activism, and eventually the illusion that a “LGBTQ community” would exist. I argued that all these discourses show us the gap between those people whom Hungarian LGBTQ activism can reach and those whom it cannot. Due to its limited opportunities in a neoliberal era, trapped between homophobic nation states and identity politics driven by Western donors, the Hungarian LGBTQ movement lacks both the resources and the necessary critical perspective to address and represent people who do not have the opportunities to leave their heterosexual lifestyle behind, including objectified women in youth cultures as well as middle-aged men in the countryside with secret homosexual relationships. Therefore, many people with bisexual or non-heterosexual lives are not reached by activism nor can reach any spaces of the LGBTQ community. I argued that as the wide range of classed and gendered meanings of Hungarian bisexual representations illustrates, in this era, certain forms of sexual non-normativity are granted more opportunities: for example for those men who can afford to be out or who only look for sex, whereas others are silenced. This results in a widening split between various non-heterosexual lifestyles. Bisexual representations are thus able to show that homo- and heterosexuality are not two strictly sealed worlds but their cultures, lifestyles and ideological systems overlap in many ways. As my analysis revealed, however, there are other, mostly class- and gender-based social divisions in the Hungarian society, which organise certain bisexual practices as belonging to one social sphere and others to another. Bisexual research reveals the existence of the sexual identity-practice tension also in the Hungarian context: social groups are divided along whether “LGBTQ” categories are meaningful for them more as an identity or rather as a sexual practice. Moreover, this paper has filled a gap in previous literature by highlighting the significance of bisexuality in sexual structures in the Central-Eastern European region. The critical leftist lens of feminist and post-socialist studies allows me to conclude that the post-socialist specificity of bisexual representations lies at the intersections of global, classed

14  Gender and Class Tensions in Hungarian LGBTQ Activism …     365

and gendered inequalities. In the end, I argue, the case of Hungarian bisexual representations highlights feminist-gay tensions which appear all over the globe. Using a feminist lens helped me to show that biphobia stems in great part from women’s objectification, and to show that bisexual women, far from being privileged, are prone to various forms of exploitation (Hemmings 2002; Eisner 2013). Consequently, I also take issue with the widespread idea that biphobia mostly targets women in lesbian communities. My interviews showed that straight (and some gay) men are the ones who perpetuate these ideas, and lesbians often react in defence against the permeation of straight men, through the bodies of bisexual women, into lesbian spaces, as dating sites and threesome dynamics show. Moreover, biphobia (especially its elements about inauthenticity and the closet) stems from the classist oblivion to poverty and to the economic constraints of realising non-normative sexual desires. With questioning the idea of an “LGBTQ community” as an illusion, finally, I do not only point at the limits of the inclusivity of Hungarian LGBTQ activism. I also underline bisexuality as a focal point to unfold the shortcomings of global capitalism, with its reproduction of regional and national economical hierarchies, class divide, marketisation of sexuality, commodification of women’s bodies and with its global LGBTQ identity politics. Acknowledgements    I am greatly indebted to the two volume editors Radzhana Buyantueva and Maryna Shevtsova, as well as to Adriana Qubaiova, Amy Soto and Anna Szlávi for helping me edit this chapter. Any mistakes that remain are my own.

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Bilić, B. (2016). Europeanization, LGBT Activism, and Nonheteronormativity in the Post-Yugoslav Space: An Introduction. In B. Bilić (Ed.), LGBT Activism and Europeanisation in the Post-Yugoslav Space (pp. 1–22). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Borgos, A. (2007). The Boundaries of Identity: Bisexuality in Everyday and Theoretical Contexts. In R. Kuhar & J. Takács (Eds.), Beyond the Pink Curtain: Everyday Life of LGBT People in Eastern Europe (pp. 169–183). Ljubljana: Mirovni Institut. Borgos, A. (2014). Eltitkolt évek – mozaikok a magyar leszbikus herstoryból [Secret Years—Mosaics from Hungarian Lesbian Herstory]. Replika, 85–86, 123–146. Böröcz, J. (2006). Goodness Is Elsewhere: The Rule of European Difference. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 48(1), 110–138. Bunzl, M. (2000). The Prague Experience: Gay Male Sex Tourism and the Neo-Colonial Invention of an Embodied Border. In D. Berdahl, M. Bunzl, & M. Lampland (Eds.), Ethnographies of Transition in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union (pp. 70–95). Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Butterfield, N. (2016). Discontents of Professionalisation: Sexual Politics and Activism in Croatia in the Context of EU Accession. In B. Bilić (Ed.), LGBT Activism and Europeanisation in the Post-Yugoslav Space (pp. 23–58). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Eisner, S. (2013). Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution. Berkeley: Seal Press. Fahs, B. (2009). Compulsory Bisexuality? The Challenges of Modern Sexual Fluidity. Journal of Bisexuality, 9(3), 431–449. Fahs, B., Plante, R. F., & McClelland, S. I. (2018). Working at the Crossroads of Pleasure and Danger: Feminist Perspectives on Doing Critical Sexuality Studies. Sexualities, 21(4), 503–519. Fraser, N. (1995). From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a ‘Post-Socialist’ Age. New Left Review, 212, 68–93. Gagyi, Á. (2012). Anti-populism as an Element of Postsocialism. Paper presented at the 44th Annual Convention of the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, New Orleans, LA. Garber, M. (1996). Vice Versa: Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life. London: Penguin Books. Hemmings, C. (2002). Bisexual Spaces. London and New York: Routledge. Hoy, J. L. (2007). Secret Sex and the Down Low Brotherhood. In S. Seidman, N. Fischer, & C. Meeks (Eds.), Introducing the New Sexuality Studies: Original Essays and Interviews (pp. 209–302). London and New York: Routledge.

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Hura, R. (2016). Against Bisexual Erasure: The Beginnings of Bi Activism in Serbia. In B. Bilić & S. Kajinić (Eds.), Intersectionality and LGBT Activist Politics: Multiple Others in Croatia and Serbia (pp. 55–76). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Imre, A. (2009). Identity Games: Globalization and the Transformation of Media Cultures in the New Europe. Cambridge: MIT Press. Kašić, B. (2005). The Spatiality of Identities and Sexualities: Is ‘Transition’ a Challenging Point at All? In A. Štulhofer & T. Sandfort (Eds.), Sexuality and Gender in Postcommunist Eastern Europe and Russia (pp. 95–108). New York: Haworth Press. Kis, K. (2012). Identity Politics, Authenticity and Romantic Love: American Telecinematic Discourses on Homosexuality and the Hungarian ‘Gay Boom’ of the 2000’s [Thematic issue: ‘In Transition?’ Central/Eastern European Sexualities]. lambda nordica, 17(4), 153–185. Mészáros, G. (2017). Reconsidering the Identity Approach of the EU LGBT+ Architecture from a Feminist Perspective. In E. Kováts (Ed.), The Future of the European Union: Feminist Perspectives from East-Central Europe. Budapest: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. Monro, S. (2015). Bisexuality. Identities, Politics, and Theories. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Nádasdy, Á. (2015a). A vastagbőrű mimóza [Thick- and Thin-Skinned]. Budapest: Magvető. Nádasdy, Á. (2015b, June 13). Be akarom lopni a melegeket a polgári társadalomba [I Want to Shuffle Gays into Bourgeois Society]. Interview by M. Pálos. Origo.hu. http://www.origo.hu/kultura/kotve-fuzve/20150611-nadasdy-adam-meleg-konzervativ-irodalom-kozelet-orban.html. Accessed 6 Oct 2017. Renkin, H. Z. (2015). Perverse Frictions: Pride, Dignity, and the Budapest LGBT March. Ethnos—Journal of Anthropology, 80(3), 409–432. Ritter, K. (2014). ‘Dieses Gefühl irgendwie so ‘n Zuhause gefunden zu haben’. Biografische Konstruktionen von Bisexualität im Kontext monosexueller Ordnung [‘This Feeling of Somehow Having Found a Home’. Biographic Constructions of Bisexuality in the Context of the Monosexual Order]. In B. Magnus Hirschfeld (Ed.), Forschung im Queerformat (pp. 199–214). Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag. Rotkirch, A. (2004). ‘What Kind of Sex Can You Talk About?’ Acquiring Sexual Knowledge in Three Soviet generations. In D. Bertaux, A. Rotkirch, & P. Thompson (Eds.), On Living Through Soviet Russia (pp. 93–119). London: Routledge.

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Rust, P. C. (1993). ‘Coming Out’ in the Age of Social Constructionism: Sexual Identity Formation Among Lesbian and Bisexual Women. Gender and Society, 7(1), 50–77. Stella, F. (2015). Lesbian Lives in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia: Post/Socialism and Gendered Sexualities. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. szinhaz.hu. (2015, July 13). ‘A világ nem fekete-fehér, hanem színes’ - Fischer Iván Pride beszéde [‘The World Is Not Black-and-White, But Colourful‘— Iván Fischer’s Pride Speech]. szinhaz.hu [‘theatre’.hu]. http://szinhaz. hu/2015/07/13/_a_vilag_nem_fekete-feher_hanem_szines_fischer_ivan_ pride_beszede. Accessed 12 Oct 2017. Takács, J. (2004). Homoszexualitás és társadalom [Homosexuality and Society]. Budapest: ÚMK. Takács, J. (2015). Disciplining Gender and (Homo)Sexuality in State-Socialist Hungary in the 1970s. European Review of History: Revue Européenne D’histoire, 22(1), 161–175. Turai, K. R. (2011). A biszexualitás, a homofóbia és a bifóbia összefüggései. In J. Takács (Ed.), Homofóbia Magyarországon [Homophobia in Hungary] (pp. 55–68). Budapest: L’Harmattan. Turai, K. R. (2018). Sexual Transitions: Biographical Bisexuality in Post-Socialist Hungary. Ph.D. Dissertation, Central European University, Budapest. Ward, J. (2015). Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men. New York: New York University Press. Warner, M. (1999). Normal and Normaller: Beyond Gay Marriage. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 5(2), 119–171. Woodcock, S. (2004). Globalization of LGBT Identities: Containment Masquerading as Salvation or Why Lesbians Have less Fun. In M. Frunză & T.-E. Văcărescu (Eds.), Gender and the (Post) ‘East’/’West’ Divide (pp. 171–188). Cluj-Napoca: LIMES. Woodcock, S. (2011). A Short History of the Queer Time of ‘Post-Socialist’ Romania, or Are We There Yet? Let’s Ask Madonna! In R. Kulpa & J. Mizielińska (Eds.), De-centring Western Sexualities: Central and Eastern European Perspectives (pp. 63–84). Farnham: Ashgate.

15 Conclusion Radzhana Buyantueva and Maryna Shevtsova

The contributors to this volume have addressed dynamics, patterns, and issues of Central and Eastern European LGBTQ+ activism. In all the countries covered in this volume, LGBTQ+ movements, especially professionalized, have developed in close relationship and often with the major support coming from the Western donors. In addition, the important impact of Western theories and approaches regarding gender and sexualities in the region cannot be denied. This has been strengthened by the fact that the European Union included promotion and protection of rights of LGBTQ+ people in its external action agenda. Moreover, the EU was always outspoken in condemning LGBTQ+ rights abuse and homo- and transphobic violence in CEE countries. Most of this volume’s chapters, however, question the role of Western influence and examine possible political and social backlashes that R. Buyantueva (*)  Newcastle upon Tyne, UK e-mail: [email protected] M. Shevtsova  Gainesville, FL, USA © The Author(s) 2020 R. Buyantueva and M. Shevtsova (eds.), LGBTQ+ Activism in Central and Eastern Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20401-3_15

369

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might be caused by it in the CEE region. Western (European and American) institutions and actors might have a clear vision of what ‘democratic values’ or ‘European values’ are and how LGBTQ+ rights supposed to be implemented in specific regional contexts. However, these notions do not always resonate well with local LGBTQ+ activists. In other words, while for many activists LGBTQ+ rights are closely linked to the idea of democracy and the West, their understanding of how to achieve these rights may differ significantly from those of external observers. The authors of this volume, thus, emphasize the need to examine the local voices and take their perspectives into account when analyzing LGBTQ+ activism in the CEE region. In addition, the authors also question if and how these perspectives are unique or different, in reality, from those in the West. By bringing these chapters together, we pursued several objectives. First, we aimed to discuss the applicability of the key Western concepts such as ‘homonationalism’, ‘visibility’, and ‘queer activism’ to the Central and Eastern European contexts. Second, the purpose of the volume was also to examine tactics and techniques used by local LGBTQ+ activists to achieve their goals. Finally, the authors of this volume attempted to evaluate the role of local LGBTQ+ activists in bringing attention to and addressing issues of the less visible groups (i.e., bisexuals, asexuals) that tend to be often overlooked by organized LGBTQ+ movements.

‘Between Post-Soviet Closet and Western Media Spectacle’ The first part of this volume offers the analysis of sexualities in Central and Eastern Europe with the focus on the role of Western discourses, theories, and ideas. As we stated previously, privileging local perspectives should not mean overlooking the impact of Western influence. However, Roman Leksikov and Dafna Rachok (Chapter 2) argue that the CEE countries should not be trapped in the endless race of catching up with the ‘progressive West’. While Western scholars might lack

15 Conclusion     371

sufficient knowledge about the non-Western world, one can observe an imposition of Western-centered theoretical and practical notions and ideas to the local contexts. To illustrate this, the authors examined the employment of the concept ‘homonationalism’ by Ukrainian LGBTQ+ activists. They demonstrate that simply ‘copy-pasting’ and applying Western concepts to the CEE contexts would often result in a certain level of insensitivity toward local complexities and differences such as social inequalities, political subjectivity of LGBTQ+ communities, and political environments shaped by military actions. Masha Neufeld and Katharina Wiedlack (Chapter 3), whose expression ‘between post-Soviet closet and Western media spectacle’ we used to title this section, support this argument by comparing the Western media perspectives on Russian LGBTQ+ activism and Russian lesbians’ self-representation. They argue that Western visibility paradigm is not often applicable to local contexts. For Russian lesbians, for example, it is more important to use their (non-)visibility in a strategic way in order to protect themselves from homophobic abuse and unwanted attention. For them, becoming visible might, in fact, result in losing family ties and/or being cut off from important resources and spaces of socializing and community building. The authors claim that other tactical and strategic choices could be developed in such social and political environments. Russian lesbians rather opt for so-called transparent closet, a different form of self-preservation and self-care. That does not make them, however, simply victims of homophobia deprived of agency. For Western scholars and activists calling for local LGBTQ+ people to become more visible, it is important to understand that it may not be the best strategy in such political and social contexts. Clinton Glenn’s (Chapter 4) findings further confirm these arguments. He examines three Western documentaries, the ways they depict Russian LGBTQ+ activists, and for which audiences. The films that Glenn analyses present the Russian state as extremely homophobic. They picture LGBTQ+ Russians as victims under constant siege from state and public homophobia. The author argues that political and social claims made in the films were aimed at reinforcing the binary ‘progressive Western countries - backward and repressive Russia’.

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True, the Russian government’s actions such as the adoption of the notorious ‘gay propaganda’ law could be viewed as repressive. The filmmakers are justified in presenting them as such. However, the Western media requires to work on developing more nuanced and complex narratives regarding LGBTQ+ Russians lives. In turn, Cai Weaver (Chapter 5) examines the motivation behind the unwillingness of Russian gay men to engage in LGBTQ+ activism. His interviewers see organized activism, especially gay parades, as a ‘foreign homosexual influence’. They choose to construct their identities drawing on the dominant discourse of hegemonic masculinity that presents subordinate homosexual identities as ‘perverted’. Drawing on rich interview data, Weaver interprets his interviewees’ reasoning as their own way to rationalize existing political and social order and project homophobia they encounter in their daily lives on hypothetical others (i.e., ‘perverted gays out there’). As such, they distance themselves from ‘perverted homosexuals’ and their activism. In other words, they reject LGBTQ+ activism in favor of solidarity with the heterosexual majority, even if it happens at the expense of other members of LGBTQ+ community. The analysis offered by the chapters of this part of the volume suggests that scholars examining LGBTQ+ rights and issues in post-socialist space may be able to develop their own fundamental categorical apparatus reflecting specificities and complexities of local social, political, cultural, and historical contexts. At the same time, it also raises the question of the necessity of coming up with new concepts and terminology since a large number of Western concepts was already adopted and integrated into everyday lives of LGBTQ+ people in the CEE countries. Refinement and/or further elaboration of Western theories, terminology, and ideas could be enough when analyzing a specific case in the CEE context. As an increasing number of scholars across the region examine Central and Eastern European LGBTQ+ issues and rights, we believe, this part of the book has foregrounded the directions for further research as well as political and social action.

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Directions and Dynamics of LGBTQ+ Activism in the CEE Region In the CEE countries, specific cultural, social, historical, and political contexts made local LGBTQ+ activists pick and choose from best practices and success stories of Western LGBTQ+ activists and communities. At the same time, these local contexts prompted activists to develop their own strategies and tactics to achieve their goals. The situation with LGBTQ+ rights in the CEE countries varies significantly from the more liberal case of Estonia to the increasingly repressive case of Russia. Therefore, the issues of LGBTQ+ people and activists across the region also vary from the issues of adoption by rainbow families to further increase of discrimination and homo- and transphobia. The states’ responses to international pressure and their reaction to LGBTQ+ activism also vary. Yet, as the second part of the volume demonstrates, the CEE countries still have much in common due to the shared socialist and Soviet past and the continuing dichotomy of East versus West. Estonia, for example, is often presented as a progressive forerunner of digital innovation. For example, the Estonian government introduced e-residency and a state-issued digital identity. However, the country seems to be less progressive when it comes to sexual citizenship of LGBTQ+ people. Kadri Avik in Chapter 6 points out the exclusive nature of Estonian citizenship. She criticizes the absence of comprehensive public discussion of the Estonian registered partnership act. She also examines the issue of heteronormative understanding of citizenship and the lack of protection of parental rights for same-sex couples. In turn, Thorsten Bonacker and Kerstin Zimmer (Chapter 7) approach the notion of sexual citizenship in the context of Ukraine where the situation with LGBTQ+ rights is worse than in Estonia. Despite the Ukrainian state declaring itself inclusive and liberal, adoption of liberal policies is not followed by their implementation. Furthermore, political and public discussions in Ukraine include a clear juxtaposition of West and East. Political elites and the public often struggle over predilections for either traditional Orthodox values shared with Russia or European norms ‘imposed’ on Ukraine by the EU and the USA.

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Despite examining two radically different cases, these two chapters complement each other in exploring how the notion of citizenship can be re-conceptualized, and what kind of resistance may be facilitated by the attempts to do so. Ramona Dima (Chapter 8) reminds the reader that civil society organizations may not be necessarily LGBTQ+ friendly. She analyzes strategies and tactics of anti-LGBTQ+ activism in Romania. The author demonstrates how organizations that allegedly aspire to protect so-called traditional family values might use biased and/or fake news and employ fact manipulations in order to present Romanians as a homogenous Christian religious unity and discredit LGBTQ+ rights and activism. The chapter provides us with better understanding of political and civil society actors and challenges LGBTQ+ activists have to face in their everyday work. James E. Baker, Kelly A. Clancy, and Benjamin Clancy (Chapter 9) analyze the case of the meme presenting Russian President Vladimir Putin as a gay clown. The authors show how the image introduced at first as an international reaction to the 2013 Russian anti-‘gay propaganda’ law entered then the Russian media and political discourse. As a consequence, the meme had both emancipatory and damaging effects on LGBT+ activism in the country. LGBTQ+ symbols (i.e., rainbow flag) were employed by local political elites and the media to link anti-Putin opposition with advocacy for LGBTQ+ rights. The authors discuss what implications such imaginary linkages with LGBTQ+ themes outlined by political actors and the media may have for LGBTQ+ individuals and activists. Finally, Karlis Verdins and Jānis Ozoliņš (Chapter 10) analyze Latvian LGBTQ+ activists’ attempts to normalize public attitudes toward LGBTQ+ people using both Western and their own tactics. They also discuss public and political resistance to LGBTQ+ activism. In comparison to a more progressive Estonia, the Latvian state and public demonstrate less tolerant views toward LGBTQ+ people. The authors suggest that international influence and education might play an important role in societal transformation necessary for LGBTQ+ activism to succeed.

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The four chapters of this part of the volume show the following trends persisting in the CEE region: political and public strengthening of the populist rhetoric of ‘us’ versus ‘them’, LGBTQ+ rights as opposed to national values, Christian beliefs, and family traditions. It is tempting to frame these trends as a struggle between Russia and the West for ideological domination in the region. However, the factors affecting these political directions are much more complicated, multifaceted, and nuanced. This is why we emphasize the importance of analyzing these cases in more detail to get a better understanding of political and social processes in the region as a whole and in each separate case.

Queer Frames and Representations The last part of the volume discusses tactics and frames employed by LGBTQ+ activists in the CEE countries. It also analyzes the transformations of queer kinships, identities, and forms of solidarity taking place in the region. Justyna Struzik (Chapter 11) examines the frames employed by Polish LGBTQ+ activists. By analyzing recent political and social developments in Poland, she shows that these frames have shifted from the ideas of queer kinship and solidarity to the development of new ideas such as overcoming social and economic inequalities and addressing class issues within LGBTQ+ community. Drawing on the interviews with local LGBTQ+ activists, the author demonstrates how the discussion of the concepts of visibility, diversity, equality, and self-development facilitated the formation of new frames for LGBTQ+ activism in Poland. Her findings suggest that ideas and tactics employed by activists are not static and/or fixed and could be examined through the lens of their changeability, fluidity, and flexibility. Furthermore, Justyna Struzik’s work highlights the centrality of activists’ agency in transforming frames and ideas and creating their own meanings that is important to take into account when analyzing local LGBTQ+ movements. Finally, the last three chapters of the volume explore the topic of inclusivity of LGBTQ+ movements in the CEE countries. They question who benefits from existing activism and who remains overlooked.

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Rita Béres-Deák’s (Chapter 13) analyzes same-sex parenthood in Hungary and organizations engaged with rainbow families. She investigates activists’ strategies that became possible in a rather restrictive legal environment. Béres-Deák also identifies implications it might have on same-sex couples in the country. The author argues that, possibly strategically, local LGBTQ+ organizations focus mostly on legalization of already existing rainbow families and second-parent adoption and do not address other issues (i.e., surrogacy, creation of new rainbow families). In other words, due to the need to communicate with the ‘mainstream society’ LGBTQ+ organizations strategically choose to play by its rules and adapt their tactics. It has obvious implications for the LGBTQ+ community and many rainbow families’ real priorities. Even though it is problematic to evaluate the scale of these implications and their long-term effects, they should be taken into consideration and critically addressed. Two other chapters, by Anna Kurowicka and Ela Przybylo on asexual online activisms in Poland (Chapter 12) and by Ráhel Katalin Turai on bisexual representation in Hungary (Chapter 14), investigate such marginalized groups as asexuals and bisexuals. They discuss their inclusion (or rather exclusion) in LGBTQ+ activism and communities. They also examine challenges that asexuals and bisexuals face related to biphobia and discrimination in the post-socialist context. Importantly, these chapters raise the question of homophobic and transphobic attitudes asexual and bisexual persons may have themselves. While emphasizing experiences of exclusion and marginalization within LGBTQ+ frameworks and spaces for asexuals and bisexuals, the authors also argue that these people do not always want to be a part of LGBTQ+ communities or be involved in activism. These findings raise the question of agency and also challenge the perception of bisexuals and asexuals as marginalized groups of LGBTQ+ communities and activism. All chapters of the book bring us to the wider debate on what are the abbreviations such as LGBT, LGBTI, and LGBTQ+ stand for. Are they inclusive and representative of all groups and interests related to sexuality and gender? The authors of this volume demonstrate that these groups do have their own identities, cultures, spaces, and problems.

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Yet, these are not unequivocally separate worlds. Labeling them by umbrella terms such as LGBTQ+ might bring them closer to solidarity. It emphasizes their lifestyles, ideologies, political and social struggles that overlap in multiple ways. That should not prevent scholars and activists from challenging existing power distribution and prioritizing one group’s interests over those of the others within the community, even if that is justified by activists’ goals and strategies.

Where Do We Go from Here? While the findings presented in this volume offered rich data and important insights into the dynamics and issues of LGBTQ+ activism in the CEE region, they also underline directions for further research. Despite increasing academic and public interest toward the topic, there is still little scholarly works on the LGBTQ+ movements of the region due to, as we specified in the introduction, limited access to LGBTQ+ communities, language knowledge, unequal funding and human resources distribution in research and academia, and other factors. Potential directions of further research include more in-depth analysis of different types and forms of LGBTQ+ people organizing across the CEE countries, analysis of LGBTQ+ activism with an emphasis on class, ethnic, and minority groups, interregional and transnational connections between LGBTQ+ groups and activists, and biographical studies of people involved in LGBTQ+ activism. Further scholarly attention to these research directions will undoubtedly contribute to better and deeper understanding on the emergence and development of LGBTQ+ movements in the region, experiences, and struggles of activists. It is also important to note that most research on LGBTQ+ activism in the CEE region, including the chapters of this book, is focused on single-country studies. Further work is needed for systematic comparative analysis of strategies and dynamics of LGBTQ+ movements in Central and Eastern Europe, taking into account local historical, cultural, social, economic, and political contexts.

Index

Symbols

лесбиянка/lesbiyanka 69 Стекло/Steklo 65, 66, 68 тема/tema 54, 68 тусовка/tusovka 54, 57 Это Происходит Рядом с Вами 67, 70 A

Abortion 186, 189, 193, 194 ACCEPT 190, 192 Aces 290, 295, 297, 298, 300, 301 Acquis communautaire 164 ActiveNews 196 Activism v–ix, 79, 94–97, 102, 106, 110, 117, 118, 120, 121, 188, 190–192, 266, 267, 269–271, 273, 279,

280, 282, 284, 290, 291, 293, 295–297, 300, 308, 343–345, 349, 355, 357, 364 Activist(s) v–viii, 52, 53, 59–61, 69 Agency 72, 213, 219, 224 Agender 290 AIDS 244, 245, 258 AIDS-activism 356 Alexa, Visarion 200 Alliance for Family 195 All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations (AUCCRO) 167, 172 Americanization 246 American LGBT movement 273 American media 52 American nationalism 33 American Thinker 196 Amsterdam 163

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2020 R. Buyantueva and M. Shevtsova (eds.), LGBTQ+ Activism in Central and Eastern Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20401-3

379

380     Index

Anonymous donor insemination 319, 320, 335 Anthropological research 25, 315 Antidiscrimination law 168 Antidiscrimination legislation 164–166, 169, 176, 191 Antidiscrimination policy(ies) 166, 173, 345 Anti-discriminatory legal regulations 271 Anti-gay discourses 59 ‘Anti-gay propaganda’ bill 79–82 Anti-“gay propaganda” law 211, 224 Anti-gender campaign 254 Anti-homosexual propaganda law 51, 215 Anti-immigration sentiment 36, 38 Anti-LGBT+ logic 190 Anti-LGBT+ organizations 193 Anti-LGBT+ rhetoric 192 Anti-LGBT+ rights movements 204 Anti-war activism 42 Aromanticism 295 Aromantic people 294 Article 200 190 Article 48 186, 198 Artificial insemination 319, 320, 325, 328, 330, 332, 335 Asex-nationalisms 306 Asexual activism(s) 290, 291, 294, 295, 297, 302, 303, 307 Asexual Awareness Week 297 Asexual Education Network 294 Asexual experiences 297 Asexual groups 354 Asexual identification 300 Asexual(ity) 14, 290–308, 370, 376 Asexuality as a Social Movement 299, 300

Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN) 290, 294, 296, 297, 301, 303, 304 Asylum seekers 53, 58 Asylum seeking 56 Atshan, Sa’ed vi Azarov, Mykola 165 B

Backlash viii Backlash against LGBTIQ+ visibility 52 Backwardness 58, 62 Bad gay 109 Bad nationalism 41 Bakhmetjev, Y. 102, 105, 106, 118 Baltic countries 13 Baltic region vi Baltic republics 240 Banach Nagy, Milán 322 Batričević, Milica 301 Be An Angel Romania 191 Belonging 84 Bill on same-sex civil partnership 250 Binary categories of sex and gender 141 Biological reproduction of the nation 175 Biopolitical control 91 Bi Party 351 Biphobia 354, 365 Bisexual activists 355 Bisexual communities 354 Bisexual(ity) 14, 15, 104, 106–108, 120, 290, 292, 299–301, 308, 341–365, 370, 376

Index     381

Bisexuality connoted closet 349 Bisexual lived experiences 355, 360 Bisexual organising 355 Bisexual porn 341, 342 Bisexual representations 342, 343, 361, 364, 365 Bisexual women 350, 352, 354, 365 Bodily performance 55 Bodnar, Adam 194 Borgos, Anna 345, 346, 353–355 Breitbart 196 Bucharest 191 Bucharest Pride Week 191 Buciumul.ro 197 Budapest Pride 317, 354, 359, 363 Budapest Pride Festival 354 Buhrots, Leonīds 245 Butch 63, 65, 68 Butler, Judith 79, 84, 224 Buvinger, Birgit 248 Buyantueva, Radzhana v, ix, 95, 102, 114, 217, 219, 226, 228, 229 C

Campaign of Hate 10, 89, 90, 94, 96, 97 Canada 78, 84, 90, 91, 96 Capitalism 255 Capitalist-consumerist ideas of sexual availability 346 Capitalistic values 266 Capitalist social order 282 Catholic Bible 299 Catholic celibacy 303 Catholic Church 302–305 Catholic discourse 302 Catholicism 294, 302, 304–306

Catholic nation-state 291, 306 CEE countries 369, 370, 372, 373, 375, 377 Celebration of sexual subjectivity 293 Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) 1–5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8–10, 12, 26–28, 318, 321, 342, 344, 347, 352, 355, 361, 370, 377 Central Statistical Bureau 257 Cerankowski, K.J. 297 Cernea, Remus 192 Charter of Fundamental Rights 163 Chechnya 105, 219, 230 Children 404 10, 78, 83, 84, 88, 90, 93, 95, 96 Christian beliefs 375 Christian dualism 300 Christian homophobic discourse 189 Christianity 205, 251 Church 302, 303 Church leaders 249, 253, 258 Church’s attitude to asexuality 303 Citizenship 129, 130, 132–134, 137, 142, 143, 147–149, 373 Civil Initiative for the Family and the Rights of Children 195 Civil partnership 190, 192, 198, 204, 266, 271, 277, 279, 285, 286 Civil partnership law 256, 259 Civil partnerships act 289 Civil rights 132, 134 Civil society 187, 188, 194, 242, 246, 261, 266, 271, 272, 275 Class 30, 31, 33, 342–344, 349, 350, 354, 356–359, 361, 363–365

382     Index

Cluj-Napoca 191 Coaliţia pentru Familie 185 Coaliţia pentru Vanilie 202 Coalition for Family (CfF) 186–188, 192–206 Cohabitation Law 241, 252 Cohen, Cathy 291, 292, 294 Colbert, Stephen 225, 226 Collective actions 267, 268, 270– 273, 276, 277, 279, 281, 282, 286 Collective activities 271 Colonial self-love 344 Come Out Organization 323 Coming out 53, 56, 95, 105, 110–112, 121, 134, 136, 343, 356, 358, 360, 363 Commercialisation 345 Commercialised networks of sex 346 Commission for the Review of the Constitution 193 Communication tools 187 Communist Party 216 Communist regime 188, 190 Communist society 282 Comparative politics 2 Complexity of identities viii Compulsory sexual expression 299 Compulsory sexuality 14, 291–293, 296, 297, 306–308 Conspiracy theory 251 Consumerist desires 348 Contemporary Poland 265 Contentious politics 213, 221, 225 Contestation of LGBTI rights 154, 169 Contestation(s) 210, 221, 274 Contested political technology 213

Contraceptives 194 Cooper, Daniel 292, 293 Co-parenting arrangements 329, 333, 336 Core-periphery scheme 32 Council of Churches 167, 172 Council of Europe 87, 165, 174, 228, 241, 245 The Council of Europe Convention 253 Cracow 269, 278, 284 Crimea 257 Criminal Code 239, 245, 247 Criminal Code of Soviet Latvia 239 Criminalization 240 Critical feminist post-socialist studies 343 Critical sexuality studies 292 Critique of sexual objectification 346 Croatia 194 Cross-border activism vii Cruising 351 Cruising areas 345 Cultural capital 269 Cultural liberalization 153 Cultural mainstream 114 Cultural self-determination 162 Cultura vieţii 196 Curentul.net 197 Currier, Ashley vii Cuvântul Ortodox 196 Cvetić, Andrej 301 Czechoslovakia 6 D

Daily Signal 196 Dating and cruising sites 344

Index     383

Dating sites 349, 351–353, 363, 365 Dave, Naisargi 296 Decline in demographics 200 Decriminalization 190 Decriminalization of homosexuality 223, 228 Decriminalization of male same-sex relationships 240 Decriminalizing male homosexuality 245 Defensive tolerance 279 De Lappe, Joseph 297 Democratisation 271, 345 Depoliticization 30 Desiring subjects 292 Development assistance programs 156 Deviance 216, 240 Deviant homosexual 106, 108, 109 Digital citizenship 129, 139, 148, 149 Digital social movement 297 Dimensions of citizenship 132 Disciplining power of the state 57 Discourse 267, 268, 275, 277 Discourse analysis 78, 79, 188 Discourses on sexuality 213 Discrimination 56, 57, 71, 130, 140, 154, 161–163, 165, 169, 172, 265, 266, 271, 273, 280, 281, 283, 321, 322, 334, 336 Discursive regime 215, 216, 221, 224 Discursive violence 223 Diversity 13, 267, 268, 271, 272, 274–279, 281–283, 285, 286, 341, 343, 354, 375 Diversity frame 275

Divorce 200 Documentary(ies) 77–80, 82–86, 88, 90, 91, 93, 94, 96, 97, 371 Dombos, Tamás 319, 321, 322, 324–327, 330, 334 Domestic homophobic discourses 92 Domestic policy change 166 Domestic power 176 Dominance 215, 217 Dominant forms of masculinity 104, 110 Dugin, Alexandr 218, 220 Duma 101, 118, 222 E

Eastern Europe 25, 27, 43, 53, 59, 80, 92 Eastern European countries 31, 39 Eastern Europeans 34 Eastern European sexualities 27 Eastern European states 193 Economic inequalities 266, 281, 282, 285 Economic transition 267 Effeminate behaviour 103 Emancipation 9 Emasculate 215, 219 Emasculation 217, 224 Emasculinization 216 Embedding 158, 176 Employment Directive 163 Equal access to citizenship 272 Equality 3, 13, 267, 271, 272, 275–281, 283–286, 375 Equality frame 268, 276–278 Equality Marathon 277 Equality Rights to Love Festival 277

384     Index

Equal marriage 266, 279, 285 Equal parenthood 319 Equal rights 273, 275, 277–279, 286 Equal treatment 272 The Equal Treatment Act 130 Era homosexual politics 215 E-residency 373 Eroticisation of female same-sex encounters 346 Essig, Laurie 26, 218, 223, 224, 227, 230 E-State 129 Estonia 2, 5, 6, 10, 127–131, 134–140, 142, 145–149, 240, 261, 373, 374 Estonian citizenship 149 Estonian LGBT Association 131 Estonian parliament 131 Ethnic minorities 283 Ethnographic interviews 315, 331 EU countries 129 EU Gender Equality Index 129 EU institutions 271 EU integration 166 Eurasianism 39, 218 Euromaidan 11, 168–171 Europe 3–7, 7, 8, 8–10, 10–12, 186, 187, 190, 193, 195, 198, 204, 277 European Commission 36, 356 European Council 163 European Court of Human Rights 261 Europeanisation 277 European norm(s) 165, 373 European Union (EU) 2, 128–130, 162–166, 168–170, 174, 189, 190, 261, 271, 275, 277, 356, 369, 373

Euro Pride 248, 258, 260 Euro Pride march 256 Eurovision Song Contest 172 Exclusion(s) 265, 271, 281, 283, 294, 308, 343, 376 Externally imposed celibacy 303 Extreme right movements 187 F

Facebook 96, 196, 201, 202, 205, 321, 351, 355, 357, 358 Fahs, Breanne 306 Faludy, György 350, 361 Family 313, 315, 318, 319, 321, 322, 324, 326–329, 332, 334–336 Family frame 268, 281, 284, 286 Family planning services 194 Family traditions 375 Family value 284 Far-right political parties 90, 92 Female bisexuality 344, 346–350 Female same-sex attraction 54 Female sexuality 54 Feminine naked body 350 Femininity 103, 345, 346 Feminist 343, 346, 351, 355, 364, 365 Feminist engagements 293 Feminist perspectives on citizenship 132 Feminist research 297 Fieldwork 314, 315, 322, 323, 329 FILO 270 First World 31 Fischer, Iván 358–361 Fluidity of sexual orientation 330 Foreign funds 321

Index     385

Foreign homosexual influence 121 Former Soviet countries 5 Forms of citizenship 130, 135, 147, 149 Forms of misrepresentations 63 Foundation for Rainbow Families 314, 322, 326, 332 Frame analysis 267, 269, 272, 285 Frame of personal development 268 Frames 267, 268, 270–272, 275– 278, 281, 282, 284–286 Frameworks 267, 268, 272, 281 Framing 270, 276, 277, 281, 286 Framing processes 268, 270 Friedman, M. 61, 62 Fundacja Trans-Fuzja 289 G

Gay activists 174, 175 Gay clown image 210, 217, 227 Gay clown meme 211, 212, 214, 226, 228, 229 Gay community 247 Gay couples 144 Gay fathers 331 Gay-friendly legislation 359 Gay identities 213 Gay liberationist activism 327 Gay liberation politics 57, 67 Gay men 52, 57, 60, 144 Gay men wishing to co-parent with lesbians 331 Gayness 215, 216 Gay parades 109, 116, 117, 121, 372 Gay pride 52, 53, 64, 209 Gay propaganda 82, 91, 94, 95, 223 “Gay propaganda” bill 77–79, 84, 85, 87–89, 92–94

Gay propaganda law 57, 58, 61, 372, 374 Gay rights 210 Gay rights movement 154 Gayropa 7, 90, 163 Gay(s) 101, 102, 104–109, 112– 114, 119–121, 160, 165, 175, 242, 243, 245–247, 251, 252, 256, 258, 269, 270, 273, 274, 276, 278, 290, 292, 293, 296, 298, 300, 301, 308, 341, 343, 345, 346, 349–352, 354, 356, 357, 359–361, 363, 365 Gay tourists 351 Gei Men 108 Gender 25, 26, 35, 36, 103, 104, 108–110, 117, 120, 129–132, 134, 135, 141–143, 148, 149, 317, 318, 322, 331, 332, 334–336, 342, 344, 347, 353–355, 363, 364 Gender and sexual order 278 Gendered and sexed bodies 148 Gender equality 270 Gender identity 161, 164, 266, 271, 272, 285 Gender-normative privilege 55 Gender norms 104 Gender reassignment 139, 141, 143 Gender roles 55, 88, 189 General Assembly or the Council on Human Rights 161 Georgia 90 Gessen, Masha 83, 86, 90 Global capitalist sexual discourses 344 Global context 146 Global culture 156 Global demands viii

386     Index

Global diffusion 156 Global heterosexist sex market 350 Global hierarchies 342 Global institutionalization of LGBTI rights 155 Globalization 32, 37, 59, 89, 90 Globalization of culture 187 Global justice or anti-capitalism movements 282 Global LGBTQ discourses 353 Global liberalization 157 Global norm diffusion 157 Global norms 155, 157, 158 Genderqueer 290, 298 Global queer activism vi Global South 53, 57 GLOBSEC Policy Institute 195 Good gay 109, 116 Greek Catholic Church 172 Grupa Stonewall 294 H

Háttér Legal Aid 314, 322, 324 Hawkins Owen, Ianna 305 Healey, Dan 86, 102, 107, 254 Heat Street 196 Hegemonic grammar 79, 84, 85, 88, 89, 92 Hegemonic masculine legitimacy 220 Hegemonic masculinity 103, 104, 109, 121, 372 Hegemonic values 110, 112 Heterofemininity 348 Hetero-nationalist hegemonic discourses 229 Heteronationalist value structure 224

Heteronormative 214, 215, 221– 224, 226 Heteronormative boundaries 102 Heteronormative gender conceptions and arrangements 334 Heteronormative-homophobic opposition politics 214, 219 Heteronormative ideas 143, 144 Heteronormative perception of kinship 336 Heteronormative regimes of sexual citizenship 221 Heteronormative reproduction 291 Heteronormative sexuality 270, 273 Heteronormative state 214–216, 221, 224 Heteronormative state policy 148 Heteronormative understanding of citizenship 373 Heteronormativity 293 Heterosexism 55 Heterosexual couples 258, 259 Heterosexual family 81, 313, 318, 334 Heterosexuality 103, 106, 269, 289, 299, 300, 304, 306 Heterosexual life styles 352 Heterosexual majority 103, 109, 121 Heterosexual masculinity 103 Heterosexual men 15, 55, 189, 363 Heterosexual privilege 133 Heterosexual relationship 319, 320, 329, 334 Hicks, Stephen 189 History of homosexuality 86 Home insemination 319, 320 homelessness 266, 283

Index     387

Homo- and transphobic violence 369 Homonationalism vi, 8, 14, 27–31, 33–36, 38, 39, 41–44, 230, 293, 306, 308, 370, 371 Homonationalist discourse 226 homonationalist subjects 35 Homo-neoliberalism 33 Homonormativity 30, 35 Homophile 241, 256 Homophobia 4, 6, 13, 15, 52, 55, 57, 60–62, 68, 70, 71, 79, 85, 86, 88, 92, 93, 95, 102, 106, 111, 113, 121, 129, 134, 164, 166, 169, 170, 173, 212, 215, 240, 241, 245, 254, 258, 289, 291, 342, 363, 376 Homophobic activism 60 Homophobic attitudes 94, 345 Homophobic discourse(s) 67, 187, 220, 230, 299 Homophobic environment 109 Homophobic groups 186, 192 Homophobic hate crimes 93 Homophobic legislation 160 Homophobic narrative 85 Homophobic nationalist right-wing governance 356 Homophobic policy 117 Homophobic politics 37 Homophobic propaganda 187 Homophobic propaganda campaign 116 Homophobic rhetoric 92 Homophobic society 78 Homophobic speech 251 Homophobic value system 112 Homophobic violence 84, 92, 94

Homosexual behavior 65, 66 Homosexual desires 352, 358 Homosexual identities 121, 372 Homosexuality 77, 82, 87–89, 94, 101–104, 106, 110–112, 115, 120, 130, 131, 157, 162–164, 166, 167, 171, 177, 189, 190, 196, 199, 205, 210, 214–218, 220, 222–224, 239, 243, 245, 249, 251, 254, 258, 289, 299 Homosexuality acceptance 157 Homosexual men 102–105 Homosexual propaganda 101, 102, 115, 200 Homosexual relations 130, 345 Homosexual rights 344 Homosexuals 77, 92, 211, 230 Homotolerant 51 Hormone replacement therapy 139 Hormone therapy 266 Hroysman, Volodymyr 169 Human rights 64, 70, 82, 92, 118, 187, 190, 202, 204, 206 Human rights activism 314 Human Rights Commission 162 Human rights discourses 53 Humboldt University xviii Hungarian bisexuality(ies) 343, 358 Hungarian bisexual representations 343 Hungarian Constitution 193, 313 Hungarian LGBTQ activism 343, 344, 348, 349, 352, 355, 357, 359, 363–365 Hungarian LGBTQ community 315, 317, 329, 330 Hungarian LGBTQ online forums 353

388     Index

Hungarian LGBTQ public discourses 342 Hungarian socialism 347 Hungarian society 361, 364 Hungary 1, 2, 4, 6, 15, 313–316, 318–322, 325, 330, 334–336, 341–344, 346, 347, 350, 353, 355, 357, 358, 361 Hunted: The War Against Gays in Russia 77, 78, 82, 87 Hybrid masculinities 104 Hyper-heteronormativity 220 Hypermasculinity 214–216 I

Iancu, Gheorghe 200, 201 Ideal citizen(s) 129, 134, 148, 149 Identity 26, 28, 34, 36, 37, 39–41, 106–108, 112, 117 Identity discourses 154 Identity politics 107, 282 Iesbophobia 54 Iklāva, Ārija 249 ILGA-Europe 6 ILGA Latvia 250 ILO 162 Imperialism 31, 42 Implementation 373 Imre, Aniko 187 Incitement to violence 251 Inclusive legislation 204 Inclusiveness 274, 280 Inclusive practices 276 Inconsequentiality of women’s desires 363 Independent media 85, 93 In-depth interviewing 269 Individualisation 284

Individualism 282 Indričāne, Astra 248 Inequalities 270, 278, 282 Informal groups 270, 276, 281 Information Center of Homosexuality 250 INGOs 157, 158 Injustice 267, 270, 271, 278, 282, 283, 285 Institutes of monopolized violence 34 Institutional discrimination 141 Institutional inclusion 134 Institutional inequality 134 Institutionalization without mobilization 270 Institutionalized homophobia 89 Inter Alia 322–325, 327, 328, 330–333 Inter Alia Foundation 314, 322 Internal diversity of the movement 271, 272 Internalized homophobia 102, 106, 111 International activism 292 International contestation of a liberal sexual citizenship 176 International Day Against Homophobia 219 International human rights discourse 160 International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) 161, 167 International norms 158 Internet 357 Internet meme 210 Interpretative schemes 268, 270, 273, 275, 278, 281 Intersectional approach 267 Intersectional claims 281

Index     389

Intersectionality 267, 272, 276, 285, 286 Intimate citizenship 133, 314–316, 318, 323, 334 Intimate partnership violence 350 Intimate relationships 316 Invisibility 118, 266, 345 Iohannis, Klaus 194 Iron Curtain 6 Islamophobia 29 Istanbul Convention 241, 253 J

Jagose, Annamarie 246 Jay, David 290 Jews 305 Johnson, Eric 350 K

Kaktiņš, Aivars 243 Kampania Przeciw Homofobii 289 Kazakhstan 3 Kinship 13, 14 Kiselyov, Dmitry 223, 224, 228 Klimova, Elena 78, 84 Kondakov, Alexander 93, 95, 109 Kon, Igor 94, 105, 106, 113, 242 Kovács, Fanni 350 Kremlin 254 Krétakör 323, 324 Kulpa, Robert 92 Kurov, Askold 83 Kyiv Pride 27, 36, 165, 170, 172, 173, 175 Kyrgyzstan 3

L

Labelled sexual orientation 107 Labor code 165, 169, 172 Labrisz Lesbian Association 323 Latent homophobia 113 Latvia 4, 5, 13, 239–242, 245–255, 257–259, 261 Latvian Association of Sexual Equality (LASE) 247–249, 251, 256 Latvian citizens 13 Latvian LGBT activism 13, 240, 248, 254, 256, 257, 260, 261 Latvian LGBT movement 246, 260 Latvian public discourse 240, 253, 254 Latvian Roman Catholic 249 Latvijas Avīze 259 Lavrikovs, Juris 245, 247, 250 Law on Life Partnership 195 Lazarev, Sergey 95 Leftist feminist approach to sexuality 342 Legal Aid service 314, 321 Legal discrimination 15 Legal partnership 192, 204, 205 Legal protection 113 Legal regulation of same-sex relationships 136 Legal regulation of same-sex unions 148 Legal rights 131, 134, 135, 139 Legislative change(s) 15, 168 Legitimacy 156, 159, 162, 176, 177, 210 Lesbian community 54, 57, 66, 68, 70, 71 Lesbian couple 62

390     Index

Lesbian existence 67 Lesbian identity 58, 63 Lesbianism 243 Lesbian lifestyle 57, 66 Lesbian representations 67 Lesbian(s) 14, 95, 115, 118, 134, 136, 143, 144, 160, 165, 175, 243, 244, 246, 247, 251, 256, 269, 273, 274, 284, 290, 292, 293, 296, 299–301, 308, 313, 317, 319–323, 325, 326, 329– 334, 336, 341, 343, 345–347, 349, 350, 354, 365, 371 Lesbian self-representation 65, 67, 71 Lesbian sexuality 67 Lesbian spaces 365 Lesbian subculture 65, 68 Lesbian victimhood 58 Les Sisterhood 191 Leveraged pedagogy 53, 54 LGBT+ 186–192, 195, 197, 202, 204, 205 LGBT activism 77, 86, 102–105, 116–118, 120, 121, 240, 241, 246, 255, 260, 314 LGBT+ activism 213, 217, 222, 227 LGBT+ activist communities 218, 219 LGBT activists 96, 102, 103, 120, 240, 241, 249 LGBT+ activists 225, 227, 228 LGBT advocacy 117, 121 LGBTA People 290 LGBT citizens 91 LGBT+ community 217, 218, 224, 228 LGBT community(ies) 78, 83, 85, 95, 102, 103, 105–107, 114,

116, 240, 246, 248, 249, 251, 253, 255, 256, 260, 261 LGBT+ discourses 187, 188 LGBT+eam 191 LGBT film festival 295 LGBTI+ 289–296, 298–301, 307, 308 LGBTI+ activisms 289 LGBTI activists 33, 36, 40, 42, 160, 168, 172, 173, 176 LGBTI advocacy 155, 174 LGBTI advocacy groups 155 LGBTI+ community 301 LGBTI community(ies) 33–44, 371 LGBTI+ identification 293, 295 LGBT identity 246 LGBTI groups 169 LGBTI initiatives 36 LGBTI issues 154, 163, 173 LGBTI movement 30, 33, 35, 37, 38, 41, 43, 156, 160, 161, 166, 170 Ukrainian LGBTI movement 27, 36, 38 LGBTI organizations 41, 42, 161, 164, 167, 174 LGBTI people 28, 34–38, 42, 154, 161, 171, 174–176 LGBTIQ+ 52, 53, 56, 58, 59, 66, 67 LGBTIQ community 67 LGBTIQ+ harassment 52 LGBTIQ+ identities 53 LGBTIQ+ identity discourses 53 LGBTIQ+ rights activist 60 LGBTIQ+ rights organizations 53 LGBTI rights 28, 36, 159–164, 166, 169, 177 LGBT+ issues 188, 190 LGBT issues 102, 119, 131

Index     391

LGBT movement 246, 248, 252, 254, 256 LGBT+ movements 221 LGBT organizations 95, 131, 325 LGBT Parenting Workshop(s) 322, 326, 329, 331–333 LGBT people 77, 78, 83–86, 88, 91, 95, 273, 274, 281 LGBT+ persecution 219 LGBT+ persons 219 LGBT persons 259 LGBT+ pride parades 213 LGBTQ 314, 316–319, 321, 328, 330, 333–336, 376 LGBTQ activism 315, 327, 343, 345–347, 351–353, 356, 363 LGBTQ+ activism 1–5, 7, 8, 10, 12, 16, 130, 135, 369, 371–377 LGBTQ+ activists 3–7, 15, 370, 371, 373–375 LGBTQ activists 267, 268, 353, 363 LGBTQ+ citizens 137, 139, 146 LGBTQ+ citizenship 143, 148 LGBTQ community(ies) 266, 267, 273, 275, 276, 279, 285, 314, 317, 320–322, 325, 328, 329, 335, 351, 356 LGBTQ+ community(ies) 56, 66, 127, 131, 137, 139, 145–149 LGBTQ discourses 361 LGBTQ equality 277 LGBTQ events 344 LGBTQ experiences 272 LGBTQ family practices 328 LGBTQ festivals 322 LGBTQ groups 346, 358 LGBTQI 10 LGBTQI citizenship 10, 11

LGBTQ identities 267, 275 LGBTQ+ identity v LGBTQ infrastructure 355, 363 LGBTQ issues 271, 273, 321 LGBTQ+ issues 2, 7 LGBTQ+ movement politics viii LGBTQ+ movements 1–5, 8, 12, 13, 369, 370, 375, 377 LGBTQ movement(s) 265, 266, 268, 269, 272, 276, 285, 342, 353, 357, 363, 364 LGBTQ organizations 266, 277, 279, 314, 320, 321, 323, 333, 335, 376 LGBTQ+ organizations 376 LGBTQ people 265, 267, 271, 272, 277, 286, 314–317, 321, 322, 327, 334, 336 LGBTQ+ people vi, 1, 2, 4–6, 8, 9, 15, 127, 128, 130–132, 134–137, 139, 140, 145–149, 369, 371–374, 377 LGBTQ+ politics v, vi, viii, ix LGBTQ rights 266, 267, 272, 273, 275, 283, 345, 356, 362 LGBTQ+ rights 2, 3, 6–8, 10–12, 127–130, 135 LGBTQ+ rights abuse 369 LGBTQ rights activism 314 LGBT rights v, vii, 79, 82, 83, 86, 87, 90, 97, 118 LGBT+ rights 187, 189, 190, 192, 203, 204, 210, 213, 218, 220, 222, 226, 228 LGBT+ rights-centered protest 229 LGBT Russians 78, 83, 93 LGBT teenagers 78, 89 LGBT youth 83

392     Index

Liberal activists 40 Liberal democracy 266 Liberal norm 11 Liberal values 240, 268, 282 Liberation 282 Librăria Sophia 196 Liepiņa, Mirdza 243 Life Site News 196 Lithuania 80, 240 Lobbying 131, 314, 321, 325, 327, 329, 331, 335, 336 Localization dynamics 155 Local perspective 27, 371 Łódź 277 Loks 247–249 Loparev, Pavel 83 Love against Homosexualism 166, 170 Low sexual desire disorders 297 Lucas, Michael 78, 82, 83 Lumea Credinţei 196 M

Mainstream approach 276 Mainstream heterosexual culture 357 Mainstream media 346, 349, 351 Mainstream media culture 344 Male aggression 61 Male homosexuality 345 Male homosexual relationships 239 Male sexual desire 351 March of Equality 278 Marginalization 308, 376 Marginalized communities viii Marginalized masculinities 104 Marginalized sexual orientation and identity 14

Marriage 313, 314, 316, 317, 330, 334 Marriage equality 127, 130, 136, 137, 142, 266, 277–279 Marriage equality campaigns 317 Martsenyuk, Tamara 167, 168, 173 Marxist ideology 37 Masculinity(ies) 103, 104, 210, 215–217, 219–221, 224, 229 Mass culture 240 Mass media 242, 246, 248, 249 Media campaign 195 Media depictions of LGBT individuals 90 Media discourse 88, 210, 215, 226, 228 Media representation of homosexuality 88 Media spectacle 57, 58, 223 Medical diagnosis 297 Medvedchuk, Viktor 166 Men’s bisexual practice 349 Mental health 290 Mental illness 239 Middle-class 269 Migrants 283 Migration 143, 146 Milanović, Zoran 195 Military violence 42 Milks, M. 297 Milonov, Vitaly 69, 70, 83, 86, 95, 97 Ministry of Justice 210, 211, 226, 227 Minority 343, 360 Minority groups 267 Minority rights 272, 275 Minors 106, 115, 119, 121 Misrepresentation 35

Index     393

Mobilization 278, 282, 284–286 Mobilization of queer iconographies 229 Mobilization of state 80 Modernity(ies) 30, 31, 348 dominant form of modernity 30 Mole, Richard 4, 188, 189, 241, 258 Morality 251, 258 Moscow 79, 91, 93, 94, 105, 211, 218, 221, 227 Mozaīka 250–252, 256, 261 Muslim 29, 34 Muslim people 305 N

Nádasdy, Ádám 359–361 Narrative distance 110 National census 302 National Council for Combating Discrimination 192 National Front of Latvia 242 National Human Rights Strategy 169 National identity 155, 171, 177, 187, 189 Nationalism 2, 11, 51, 91, 188, 189, 251, 255 Nationalist discourse 34 Nationalistic groups 34 Nationalist organizations 246 Nationalist sentiment 40, 253 National Liberal Party 194 National reproductive heteronormativity 346 National Romanian Television 200 National self-determination 177 National values 51

Nation-state 132, 146 Negotiation 267, 271, 274, 286 Neo-colonialism 90 Neo-conservative values 64 Neoliberal discourse(s) 140, 284 Neoliberal ideologies 282 Neoliberal marketization 347 Neoliberal values 266 Neo-protestant organizations 193 Netherlands 34 Nochnye Snaipery 63, 65 Nonaction 217 Non-binary 269, 289, 290, 298 Non-discrimination 154 Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) 155, 156, 185–187, 191–194, 197, 202, 269–271, 281, 315, 323, 345, 353, 354, 356, 357 Non-heteronormative identities 134 Non-heteronormative sexualities and identities 7, 11, 13, 14 Non-heterosexual bodies 223 Non-heterosexuality 6, 15, 16, 88, 342, 343, 346, 361, 363 Non-heterosexual life styles 344, 356, 364 Non-heterosexual people 55–57, 316 Non-heterosexual practices 343, 344 Non-heterosexual relations 223 Non-heterosexual sexualities 197 Non-institutional practices of exclusion 316 Non-normative belonging 54 Non-normative bodies 63 Non-normative citizens 134 Non-normative genders 71

394     Index

Non-normative sexuality(ies) 53, 67, 240, 242, 257, 260 Nonsexuality 292 Non-traditional sexualities 82 Non-traditional sexual relations 64 Non-traditional sexual relationships 80, 81 Non-visibility 52, 55, 57, 67, 71, 72 Non-Western academics 44 Normalization 138, 240, 254–257, 260 Normalization of same-sex relationships 240 Norm antipreneurs 11, 154, 155, 159, 166, 168–170, 172, 173, 176, 177 Normative gender scripts 104 Normative sexuality 93 Norm contestation 157 Norm diffusion and localization 177 Norm entrepreneurs 154–160, 163, 164, 166, 167, 172, 176, 177 Norm localizers 155 Norms 153, 155–159, 161–163, 165, 166, 171, 172, 176, 177 Norms of gender and parenting 336 North America 86, 154, 317 Northern American context 29, 30 Nuclear family 88 O

Objectifying sexualisation 350 Occupy Paedophilia 82, 87 O’Dwyer, Conor 3, 4, 6, 271, 277 OECD 128, 129 Online forms of organizing 295 Online organizing 297

Online participation 188 Online spaces 297, 307 Open relationship 352 Opportunities for sexual self-organisation 346 Opposition Politics 214 Oradereligie.ro 197 Orban, Viktor 3 Organized activism 372 Orientalism 29, 59 Orthodox Church 60, 101, 165, 167, 172, 222 Orthodox Parental Committee 166 Other(ing) 25, 28–30, 34, 39, 61, 62, 87, 88, 91 Outing 88 P

Pabriks, Artis 252 Palestine vi Pansexual 300 Parental rights 132, 144, 148 Parenting 144, 146, 148 Parenting practices 144 Parents of Russia 82, 89 Parliament 203 Participant observation 269, 315, 323 Partnership equality 128 Passive political behavior 217 Passive resistance 57 Pathologization 240 Pathology 240, 243 Patriarchal culture 217 Patriarchal social relations 342 Patriotic homosexuality 214, 217, 218, 223, 228

Index     395

Pedophiles 197 Penthouse 350 People with disabilities 283 Perestroika 239, 242, 255 Performance 210, 220, 227 Performative sexuality 216 Peripheral country 33 Persecution 79, 92 Persson, Emil 79, 84, 86, 222, 223 Pinchuk Art Center 175 Pinkwashing 30 Planned rainbow families 319, 320, 322, 331, 334 Pokrovsky, Vadim 244 Pokrovsky, Valentin 244 Poland 2–4, 6, 14, 266–268, 271, 272, 275–277, 279, 282–285, 289–291, 294, 297, 300–302, 305, 306 Polarization 186 Polish context 290, 291, 294, 295, 300, 304 Polish queer movement 272 Political activism 300 Political activists 40 Political and cultural exclusion 104 Political and economic order 32 Political awareness 102 Political critique 213 Political discourses 189, 190 Political elite(s) 2, 4, 6, 85, 88 Political homophobic campaigns 86, 88 Political iconography 212 Political motivations 82 Political noninvolvement 217 Political opposition 89, 215, 216 Political portraiture 212

Political subjectivity 33, 37, 38, 44, 371 Politicizing homophobia viii Politics of sexual identity 242 Ponta, Victor 193 Pop art aesthetic 213 Populist politics 240, 260 Pornographic male gaze 54 Poroshenko, Petro 169 Positionality 109 Positionality of sex repulsion 299 Postcolonial epistemology 44 Postcolonial perspective 31 Post-socialist context 4 Post-socialist countries 333, 353 Post-socialist queer studies 44 Post-socialist sexual activism 343 Post-socialist societies 44 Post-socialist space v–vii, ix, 25–27, 372 Post-socialist states 187–189 Post-Soviet countries 27, 30 Post-Soviet history 101 Post-Soviet Russia 222 Post-Soviet space vii, 213 Post-Soviet visual culture 212 Post state-socialist Poland 290 Poznan 277 Poznań Pride Week 294 Practices of citizenship 127 Presa liberă 196 Presidential elections 219, 226 Pride Festival 323 Pride March(es) 27, 36, 42, 79, 170, 202, 227, 345, 352, 355, 357, 358, 361 Pride parade(s) 60, 72, 105, 131, 218, 219, 221

396     Index

Pride politics 54 Privileged groups 129 Professionalisation of the movement 283 Professionalization 284 Pro-gay EU discourse 362 Prohibition of homosexual propaganda 165 Pro-LGBT+ activist nationalism 221 Pro-LGBT+ social movements 218 Promiscuity 353 Propaganda 115, 116, 119, 121 Propaganda ban 106 Pro-religious consensus 36 Pro-Russian NGOs 170 Pro-Russian orientation 170 Prostitution 351 ProVita 197 Prună, Raluca 194 Psychiatry 240 Psychological violence 200 Puar, Jasbir 28–31, 33, 35, 38, 42, 291, 293, 294, 308 Public awareness campaigns 168, 174 Public campaigns 186 Public debate 267, 270, 275, 282 Public discourse(s) 239, 242, 247, 249, 259, 266, 273 Public homophobia 371 Public moral order 11 Public opinion 186, 203 Public participation 53 Public queer sociology 268, 269 Public space 84, 85 Public sphere 215, 222, 223 Pūce, Juris 252 Pujats, Jānis 249

Putin’s regime 12 Putin, Vladimir 12, 59, 77, 85–87, 90, 91, 105, 118, 209–221, 223–230, 374 Q

Queer 27–30, 33, 35, 42, 44, 341, 343, 355 Queer actions 266, 278 Queer activism 267, 270, 272, 281, 370 Queer activists 267, 271, 272 Queer agenda 34, 37, 40 Queer collective actions 265 Queer community(ies) 66, 195 Queer critique 317 Queer disability 57 Queer groups 265, 269, 283 Queer identity(ies) 187, 215, 300 Queer imagery 215 Queer issues 185 Queer kinship 267, 268, 272, 279, 281, 284, 285, 375 Queer liberation ix Queer models of activist involvement 296 Queer movement(s) 38, 42, 267 Queerness 29, 34, 188, 189, 292 Queer people 241 Queer politics 293, 294 Queer Romanian families 200 Queer Romanian identities 11 Queer space(s) 54, 293 Queer struggle 272, 285 Queer studies 2 Queer visibility 54, 55

Index     397 R

Race 29, 30 Racial conflict 27, 29, 30 Racialization 38–40, 293, 298, 305 Racialized subjects 38, 39 Racializing discourse 39, 40 Racializing distinction 39 Racist nation-state 293 Rainbow Europe 2016 index 258 Rainbow families 14, 15, 313–315, 318–323, 325, 328, 331, 333–336 Rainbow flag 211, 228 Rainbow Russia 94 Reactive activism 187 Recognition of same-sex partnerships 127, 128, 131, 135, 144, 147, 148 Reconstructed rainbow families 320, 329–331, 336 Red Flag News 196 Referendum 185, 186, 188, 193– 195, 197, 200, 202, 203, 206 Reflexivity 269 Registered Partnership Act (RPA) 127, 128, 130, 131, 136–139, 142, 143, 145, 146, 148 Registered partnership for same-sex couples 313–314 Registered partnership(s) 137, 147, 313, 345, 359 Regulation of sexual relationships 156 Regulation of the same-sex partnership 147 Religion 222 Religiosity 292, 295 Religious communities 290

Religious dimensions of asexuality 295 Religious heteronormative subjecthood 307 Religiously-motivated celibacy 302, 303 Religious marriage 198 Religious nation-state 306, 308 Renninger, Bryce 296 Representations of bisexuality 343, 344, 346, 347, 350, 353, 357, 359 Reproductive rights 200 Reproductive violence 55 Reshaping 158, 176 Resistance 56, 57, 70, 72 Rhetorical strategies 219 Rhetoric of conservatism 87 Riga city 248 Riga City Council 256 Riga Pride 240, 248, 250–252, 256 Rights-based approach 336 Right Sector 170 Right-wing discourses 185, 202 Right-wing entities 200 Right-wing groups 37, 186, 189 Right-wing NGOs 185 Right-wing political movement 186 Right-wing radicalisation 283 Rise OUT 191 Risk of exposure 56 Roman Catholic Church 167 Romania 1–4, 6, 11, 12, 185–192, 195, 200, 202, 204, 205, 360 Romanian Civil Code 186 Romanian Constitution 186, 193, 203 Romanian Constitutional Court 192

398     Index

Romanian context 187, 193 The Romanian Government 203 Romanian mass media 187 Romanian media 205 Romanian Orthodox Church 193 Romanian society 204 Roma people 305, 349 Roskomnadzor 96 Russia 2–7, 9, 10, 12, 26, 38–40, 51, 53–55, 57–59, 61–64, 66, 67, 69–71, 78–80, 82–97, 101, 102, 105, 106, 108, 109, 111, 113–117, 119–121, 162, 163, 166, 170, 171, 175, 176, 209–211, 214–222, 224–228, 230, 371, 373, 375 Russian Federation (RF) 77–79, 81, 96, 105, 209–211, 224, 227, 230 Russian foreign and domestic policies 64 Russian government 9, 11 Russian identity 87, 91 Russian lesbian lives 55, 62, 63 Russian lesbians 52, 72 Russian LGBT activism 117 Russian mainstream culture 63 Russian media 84, 85, 88, 90, 93 Russian Ministry of Justice 211 Russian Orthodoxy 58 Russian politics 213, 215, 216 Russian queer experiences 102 Russian queers 26 Russian social media 210, 211 Russian state 54, 210, 215, 221, 224, 229 Russian television 87 Russian traditionalism 91 Russia-oriented nationalists 37

S

Săftoiu, Adriana 194 Saint Petersburg 105, 219 Saint Petersburg Pride 94 Same-sex couple(s) 115, 127, 131, 144, 145, 147, 148, 185, 192, 195, 197, 203, 204, 266, 271, 277, 279, 285, 313, 314, 319, 320, 345 Same-sex desires 348, 352, 360 Same-sex desiring women 54 Same-sex erotica 347, 363 Same-sex marriage(s) 30, 160, 162, 166, 167, 170, 186, 195, 198, 248–250, 252, 254, 261, 355–357 Same-sex parenthood 259, 315, 317, 320 Same-sex parents 143, 313–315, 317, 321–327 Same-sex parents’ rights 315, 316 Same-sex partnership(s) 128, 131, 137, 138, 145, 167, 169, 192, 250–252 Same-sex relationship(s) 154, 187, 189, 202, 243, 244, 248, 256 Samsonov, Artem 216 Sándor, Bea 322, 326, 328, 330–332 Satori 256 Second-parent adoption 319, 324–326, 328–330, 332, 334 Second World 30 Sejm, Polish parliament 289 Self-acceptance 111 Self-expression 275 Self-help actions 270 Self-identification 342, 360 Self-improvement 280 Self-normalization 42, 43

Index     399

Self-preservation 57, 72 Self-representation 371 Self-shaming 102, 106 Semiological reading 214 Semiotic analysis 210 Sex-based relationship formations 298 Sexist statements and behaviours 280 Sex reassignment 134, 148 Sexual attraction 290, 292, 293, 297 Sexual citizenship 10, 11, 64, 128, 133, 134, 139, 146–148, 154, 157, 159, 162, 164, 167, 169, 176, 177, 216, 218, 220, 225, 227, 230, 316, 317 Sexual deviancy 217 Sexual diversity 91 Sexual exceptionalism 29 Sexual experimentation 346, 348 Sexual identity(ies) 26, 105, 108, 133, 134, 148, 156, 274, 290, 295, 307, 355, 361, 364 Sexuality 25, 26, 28, 29, 102, 104, 106, 107, 109–111, 114, 116, 117, 130, 133, 134, 136, 142, 143, 149, 210, 212, 215, 216, 219, 220, 224, 225, 239, 240, 242, 252–254, 260, 261, 272, 273, 278, 281, 344–347, 349–351, 355, 357, 360, 361, 363, 365 Sexualized spheres of public and private life 212 Sexual liberalization 154, 157 Sexual liberation 342, 344, 350 Sexual minorities 14, 159, 165, 167, 172, 174–176, 290, 298, 303, 308 Sexual minorities’ rights 204

Sexual minority populations 14 Sexual nationalism 35 Sexual non-normativity 344, 358, 364 Sexual normativity 274 Sexual objectification 346, 347, 349, 361 Sexual orientation 14, 56, 61, 67, 103–108, 113, 114, 121, 130, 134–136, 161, 162, 164, 168, 173, 210, 212, 216, 244, 271, 272, 285, 297, 300–304, 306, 308, 319, 322, 326, 330, 334, 336 Sexual perversion 90 Sexual politics 12, 54, 210, 221 Sexual practice 342, 349, 360, 363, 364 Sexual representations 346 Sexual rights 133, 134, 154, 156, 161, 162, 168, 173 Sexual stratification 93 Sexual temporalities 26 Sexual vulnerability of women 350 Shevtsova, Maryna v, ix Shtorn, Evgeny 93 Sieć Edukacji Aseksualnej (SEA) 294, 295, 298, 300–302, 305 Single parent families 194, 199 Sledzinska-Simon, Anna 194 Slovakia 194 Soboleva, I. 102, 105, 106, 118 Social acceptance 139, 290 Social activism 246 Social attitudes 138 Social campaigns 268 Social change 265, 267, 269, 270, 282 Social classes 41

400     Index

Social conservatism 40 Social exclusion 266 Social identity 107, 108 Social inclusion 334 Social inclusionism 53 Social inequalities 78, 269, 282 Social isolation 290 Social justice 267, 282 Socially acceptable homosexual identity 103 Social markers 110 Social media 104, 105, 114, 211, 219, 229 Social movement(s) 277, 282, 295–297, 304 Social movement studies 270, 282 Social norms 292 Social order 372 Social perception 273, 274 Social racism 40 Social recognition 270, 285 Social stratification 33 Social theory 268 Social transformation 327 Societal acceptance 54 Societal change 103 Societal discourses 103, 109, 115 Societal dividend of heterosexuality 104 Societal homophobia 79, 80 Societal narratives 110 Societal repression 79 Societal stereotypes 105, 112 Sociological institutionalism 156 Sociological neoinstitutionalism 155, 158 Sociology 269 Sociopolitical calculus 212

Solidarity 9, 13, 14, 116–118, 267, 268, 272, 275, 276, 281, 283–285, 308 Solidarity actions 52 Solidarity frame 268, 272, 281, 283, 284 Soviet era 215 The Soviet Union 5, 25, 39, 40 USSR 39 Sperling, Valerie 216, 220 Spolītis, Veiko 252 State legitimacy 222 State power 213 State recognition of same-sex relationships 128 State-sanctioned homophobia 79 State-sponsored homophobia 52 Stella, Francesca 102, 118, 218, 219, 222, 223, 227 Stereotypes 104, 112 Ştiri pe surse 196 STOP HOMOFOBIA 211, 213, 229 Stowarzyszenie Lambda Warszawa 289 Street activism 168, 173 Streips, Kārlis 242, 243, 245 Structural violence 32, 33 Stukuls Eglitis, Daina 255 Submission 217 Subordinated masculinity(ies) 118, 121 Subordination 216 Suicide 244 Support network 111 Supreme Council 245 Supreme Council of the Republic of Latvia 245, 247

Index     401

Surrogacy 320, 325, 326, 328, 329, 331, 333, 335 Surrogate 319, 326, 327 Surveillance 79 Swedish International Development Agency 167 Symbolic boundaries 270 Symbolic production of gayness 215 Symbolic visibility 267 Szulc, L. 336

Transnational activism vii Transnational community 158 Transparent closet 55, 66, 67, 72, 371 Transphobia 289, 291, 373, 376 Trans rights 266 Transsexual(ity) 115 Transvanilla 314, 323, 330–332, 334 Transylvania 360 Trolling strategies 206 Turkmenistan 5

T

U

t.A.T.u 63 Tabooization 35 Tallinn 131, 135, 136, 144 Terrorist Assemblage 33 Third World 28, 42, 44 Threesome 342, 347–350, 352, 365 Tolerance 54, 59, 62, 64, 114, 277, 278 Traditional family 198, 240, 257–259 Traditional notions of citizenship 130, 133 Traditional Romanian identity 190 Traditional social values 156 Traditional values 85, 90, 92, 102, 162, 167, 169, 171, 240, 253, 254, 257, 258 Transformation 266, 267, 270–272, 282 Transgender 341, 343, 354 Transgender activists 274 Transgender identity 139 Transgender politics 354 Transition 142

Ukraine 2, 5, 6, 8, 11, 26, 27, 31–33, 35–43, 80, 82, 90, 154, 155, 159, 164–169, 171, 172, 174, 175, 177 Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church 167 Ukrainian nationalism 167, 169, 170, 176, 177 Ukrainian parliament 169 UNAIDS 162 UNCHR 161, 162 Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children 196 Unconventional forms of families 144 Underground activism 117 UNDP 162 UNESCO 162 UNHCR 162 UN High Commissioner for Human Rights 162 United Kingdom (UK) 213, 317 United Romania Party 191 United States (US) 29, 120, 229, 304, 373

402     Index

Universal Declaration of Human Rights 161, 198 University of Newcastle xvi Urban subculture 347 USSR 239–242, 244, 245, 255 Uzbekistan 5 V

Vakara Ziņas 249 Vállald Magad Egyesület 323, 324, 326, 327 Valocchi, Stephen 273 Values 34, 36, 39, 40 Vernacularization 155, 158 Victimization 62 Vienotība 252 Vigilante group 87, 89 Violence 52, 53, 55–57, 60, 61, 63, 64, 70, 72, 283 Virtual movement 297 Visa liberalization 165 Visibility 4, 6–10, 13, 14, 52–56, 58, 61–63, 65, 66, 71, 84, 85, 131, 139, 148, 206, 240, 247, 249, 251, 252, 272–274, 281, 282, 285, 286, 344, 345, 347–349, 357, 370, 371, 375 Visibility frame 268, 272–275, 278 Visibility oriented activism 52 Visibility politics 52, 301 Visible forms of bisexuality 347 Visual activism 96 Visuality 210 VKontakte (VK) 89, 96, 104, 211 Voluntary self-colonisation 344

W

Waitt, Gordon 241, 248, 256 Warner, Michael 296 Warsaw 270, 274, 275, 277, 283 Warsaw Homosexual Movement 270 The Washington Post 225, 226 The Well of Loneliness 243 Western academia 2 Western artistic traditions 213 Western capitalism 37 Western countries 38, 43, 94, 95, 130, 145 Western culture 187 Western discourses 370 Western donors 369 Western Europe 86, 154, 277 Western feminism 31 Western forms of representation 52 Western gaze 62 Western hegemony of visibility 62 Western imperialism 344 Western influence 6, 7 Westernization 37 Western liberalization process 154 Western male superiority 61 Western media 102 Western model of tolerance 52 Western models of representation 52 Western modernity 87, 90, 92 Western neoliberal discourse 14 Western politics 300 Western scholars 370, 371 Western sexualities 26, 27 Western values 241 Western visibility paradigm 63, 67, 371

Index     403

White nation-building 294 Whiteness 291, 293, 305, 306, 308 Wiener, A. 159 Women as an exploitable economic resource 351 Women’s homosexuality 345 Women’s objectification 350, 363, 365 Women’s rights 154, 156, 159, 270 Workers Solidarity Movement 283 Working-class LGBTQ people 317 X

Xenophobia 34, 36

Y

Yanukovych, Viktor 166 Yogyakarta Principles 161, 321 YouTube 95, 96 Z

Zemfira 63 Zimmermann, L. 155, 158, 172