Russia's Anti LGBT+ War

Life for the Queer Community Ten Years Since the Propaganda Law

Ten years ago this summer a packet of amendments “Concerning Propaganda of Non-Traditional Sexual Relations among Minors” was passed, and the rights of queer people have been deteriorating ever since, with state-controlled media harping on the subject of “non-traditional orientations.” This anti-queer campaign was intensified after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, when a new law prohibited all so-called “LGBT propaganda.” In essence, the law proclaims queer people to be personae non gratae, and some members of the community have called it a “total ban.”

According to Dilya Gafurova, head of Sphere, a charitable foundation that supports LGBT+ people, the fomenting of hatred toward the community is designed to “shift attention” away from Russia’s more serious problems. In other words, it is a way of redirecting growing dissatisfaction away from the government and toward a vulnerable social group. “Furthermore, the state is attempting to cast its decisions as part of a confrontation with the West, and anti-LBGT legislation as a way of saying that our values are different, and we are protecting our people from negative Western values. But the problem is that these are not values – this is about an entire social group that has existed, exists, and will exist regardless of whatever regime we have and whatever rhetoric it uses.”

Despite the difficulties they face, organizations supporting LGBT people are still in operation. Sphere, which even before February 2022 had been suffering harassment and inspections, was officially shut down after the invasion. Even though it has lost its legal status, the organization continues to function.

“Since the war began, we no longer expect to be able to influence legislation,” says Dilya Gafurova. “Now, it’s all about supporting LGBT people under existing conditions. And we realize that the mechanisms by which international advocacy might have helped in the past have been substantially diminished: we used to send a lot of cases to the European Court of Human Rights, and now we cannot.^[1] And generally, outside pressure would probably just exacerbate the situation.” The number of appeals for legal help coming to Sphere has increased sixfold since the war began, and clients’ needs have changed. “While earlier the issue was discrimination, now it’s relocation, questions about asylum and migration… Since the new law, we get a lot of questions: ‘I don’t understand what qualifies as propaganda. Explain what’s going on.’ The problem is that we don’t understand either: the laws are very vague, and there’s no legal definition of ‘propaganda.’ We haven’t been given one. Anything and everything could be labeled ‘propaganda.’”

Like other repressive Russian laws, anti-gay-propaganda laws are designed to be used situationally, as needed, to put pressure on a specific troublesome citizen. For example, to intimidate an antiwar activist, if he or she is known to belong to a discriminated group.

Sphere, in collaboration with the Vykhod [Come Out] Foundation, conducted a study^[2] that surveyed 6,000 respondents to determine how LGBT people are feeling in wartime Russia. “We saw that the vast majority has developed intense fear and a sense of being cornered,” Gafurova said. “People are worried about the discriminatory law, and they tend to link it to the war, even if they don’t fully understand the connection.”

While they share a sense of dejection and anxiety, the situations LGBT Russians face can vary widely. For some, not much has changed in their lives, as things were relatively bad even before the war. But others face much greater risks than before. This is true not just of those who are antiwar activists, but also, for example, LGBT people with children, who run the risk of their children accidentally “outing” them.

Trans people face particular risks, however, since legislation passed soon after the interviews below were conducted has made gender transitioning illegal. In introducing the legislation, which also outlaws the changing of gender markers and medical interventions associated with gender transitioning, the deputy chair of the State Duma cast the bill as “a step toward defending national interests.” Also during the legislative session, Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said the president had instructed him to set up a special institute within the public health system to investigate conversion therapy.

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Russian Life spoke with several individuals who are personally threatened
by current laws and norms. Their names have been changed to protect their identities.

Marina and Matt

Marina: We met in 1996, and at the time we were living in Rostov-on-Don. We were both listed as women in our passports, but our self-identification was following a circuitous path, and we spent a long time trying to figure out who we were. We don’t have a distinct attitude either about orientation or gender. My identity is fluid. Today I feel like a woman and tomorrow it might be different.

Matt: Since I was three years old, I’ve felt myself to be something other than the sex indicated on my passport, but for a long time I didn’t even consider transitioning. As a child in the late seventies, I was sent before a commission because I tried to urinate standing up and refused to wear a dress. I went through puberty in the Soviet school system, and then came the 1990s, when there was nothing to live on. Later, Marina and I decided to move to Moscow.

Marina: Here, as well, we had to struggle for several years to survive, and then we took out a mortgage on an apartment and again money became the main problem. Worrying about our self-identification had to take a back seat. I think we only really started to think seriously about transitioning once we’d gotten on our feet, and that was after 2013.

Matt: In 2006, after we moved, the thought of opening up to some unfamiliar psychiatrist guy was terrifying – the memory of punitive psychiatry was still fresh. Then my mother became sick and died, which gave us other things to deal with. In short, there was always something getting in the way, and a few months ago I realized, it was now or never. Now I’m trying to jump onto a train that’s pulling out of the station: I managed to get through the commission on changing my gender marker, and I’ve got all the paperwork.

With the commission’s findings in hand, I can go to specialists to get prescriptions for hormones and to the necessary government offices to change my passport and all my other certificates. But it might be too late. I don’t know, maybe they will put up roadblocks, draw things out – the situation’s very uncertain. Now neither endocrinologists nor anyone else knows how all this will work, whether they’ll ban prescriptions, what the law will regulate and how it will be enforced. But it’s important to start somewhere, to make a plan, and then, if things get really bad, to somehow get drugs. At that point, there at least won’t be health risks of continuing, even if I have to do it illegally.

We’re currently volunteering at Center T [an organization helping transgender people], to which people from all over the country turn, and we can see that nothing has really changed. These people are poverty-stricken. Since rumors about the law started spreading, they have been trying to get to Moscow on what little money they have so they can get through the medical commission. We offer financial and emotional support, and some people volunteer to put people up. So people are living several to a room just so that they can urgently get through the commission on which their lives essentially depend.

Marina: Of course, we do think about emigrating, but there’s always something in the way. The most we were able to do was move to Moscow, but it was hard to leave my relatives. If life becomes completely unbearable, if we were forced to, we’d have to look for a safe place. For now, we feel as if we can be here, but every day something new happens – for instance now I can’t even go see my relatives in Rostov, even though I’m in Russia [the interview was conducted during Prigozhin’s short-lived rebellion and occupation of Rostov-on-Don].

Matt: Quite a bit has changed for me over the past months. I was working in finance, in an office. And 2022 was simply horrible: you’d go to work and sit in the same office with people who talk about how awful the khokhly [derogatory term for Ukrainians] are and about those pindos [derogatory term for Americans] from those Gayropes [a term built out of gay+Europe and used as a slur against Western acceptance of LGBT people]. Hearing that every day was unbearable. Somehow I couldn’t resist arguing. As a result, it was easier to leave than stay. That conflict wasn’t directly tied to orientation, but the fact that I’m not like everyone else is plain to see, and that also, naturally, had an effect, together with my antiwar views. Now I work partially remotely. That company was in Moscow Oblast, where we now live, and this one is in Moscow and, truly, the people are very different.

Marina: I can clearly remember how attitudes changed. There was a time when we’d listen to some Russian radio station at work and there would be serious discussions about same-sex marriage. My colleagues had comments like “let people do whatever they want in their own homes, but to be public about it, or even to have marriages, we don’t need that.” In other words, the discussions were unpleasant, but there was a general sense that you could work with these people and talk about things. But as soon as the law was adopted, in 2013, the situation completely changed. There were constant jokes and all sorts of insulting comments towards gays and lesbians. Every time, I would just step out to get some air. Right before I quit, the jokes were coming daily, and I actually had to step outside three times a day. I really wanted to say something in response, but I couldn’t. But I only decided to quit shortly before the war. From sales, I switched to IT, and in IT people are less old-fashioned and it’s freer.

I can clearly remember February 21, 2022. We were going to Teatr.doc to see The Man from Podolsk. This play for some reason gave us hope. We returned home at night through Moscow – we really love Moscow – and looked at each other and thought, maybe our plans will work out here after all; maybe we’ll even have a child? So, we were walking along feeling great, and there were the city lights, and then the next day we found out that the decree had been signed to annex the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. I said to Matt: “You know, there’ll be a war and troops will go in.” I clearly remember how that newfound hope crumbled inside me, and then came February 24.

Ilhom

I was born in Kyrgyzstan, in the city of Osh. I’m Uzbek. I came to Russia in 2010, when we were having ethnic conflict, and I was given a Russian passport and started living here. As an LGBT person, things got easier, freer. Then, in 2013, they became harder, and as time went on, they got worse – just bad, bad, bad.

Earlier, about five years ago, you could still hold hands in the metro, and nobody said anything, and even the police didn’t pay any attention. Now, even that is hard to imagine. Of course, even back then you could get into trouble, but from individuals, not the authorities. Now the state scares me more than people, and a lot of people who were friendly have left. It’s mostly homophobes that remain. You can feel it.

Last year, in June 2022, I lost my job because of my orientation. I was working as a brand chef, a cook who opens restaurants, comes up with dishes. The chain’s operations manager called me in and said, “I’m not going to put up with any [derogatory word for male homosexuals] on my team.” She said I either had to leave on my own or everyone would know. I begged her not to tell anyone, because the other brand chefs are also from my city, and I was afraid they’d find out. Here, all we think about is for people back home not to find out. If they do, they could come here for me, they might want to bring me back and re-educate me. I didn’t want to risk looking for a job in the restaurant business, so now I work for Yandex Taxi.

So I lost the profession I spent 16 years working in, during which I rose from a simple prep cook to brand chef and was in demand and launched some famous restaurants. And [before that] in Kyrgyzstan I had an auto repair shop, but during the ethnic unrest it was burned down, and I lost everything. They burned houses, people, it was very scary, I don’t want to think about it. Earlier, I made a good living here in Moscow, but now I make only a third as much as I did then – the bare minimum for survival, to pay for an apartment. My partner works at a Dixi grocery store. He’s also from Kyrgyzstan. He had a difficult childhood without parents; he’s also had a rough time.

We’ve never been open as a couple, and we behave like brothers. We’re not afraid of our neighbors, because Russians are used to seeing Asians live together in large groups – that doesn’t cause suspicion – but overall, we’re very careful. We’d like to leave, but don’t know where and how. Georgia, the Caucasus, where everyone’s going – no, there it would be worse for us. Definitely not to Kyrgyzstan. There we could just be killed. I don’t know how other queer Russians feel, but I’m glad that here they at least put you in prison rather than killing you if something happens.

It helps keep my spirits up that I volunteer at Resource [an LGBTQIA social, psychological, and cultural project]. I work as a coordinator, helping queer migrants from Central Asia, like I once was. Attitudes toward them, as migrants, are even worse, plus their own mentality gets in the way. They are much more ashamed of themselves, of their orientation, and are very afraid. They don’t seek help, and there are even HIV positive people who were taking drugs back home but stopped when they came here because they don’t know where to go and who to ask. Here, migrants are even afraid to buy condoms. They are very uptight people. When I first came, a lot of people were seeking help and I helped a lot of people. Recently one immigrant was lured into a date under false pretenses.^[3] He had his arm broken and his papers stolen. Then the cast was put on wrong, and sometime later the doctors said they’d have to amputate. And through the Kazakh community we managed to help him get an expensive operation for free and to save his arm.

I would really like to get back to my profession – it’s in my blood. My father worked his entire life as a chef. My taste buds are very highly developed. I can try a dish and know how it was prepared, what they first put in the oil when they were cooking it. Of course, I do cook at Resource, and we recently celebrated the birthday of a law office director, and I made shashlyk and taught everyone how to make it.

Anna

When the war started, they taped a big Z on my daughter’s school building. That was simultaneously crazy, scary, and pathetic, it was just awful. I realized things were really going nuts. I was already quite worried about our family, but when the war started and all this business about “traditional values,” I realized we were in real trouble.

That summer I started to look for a private school, but private education is expensive, and for me the only option was to get a job there as a teacher, so that my child could attend for free. Since I teach English, that was natural, but not easy, because I had never worked with children. For me it was very important to find a school with liberal values, and I did. We got through the academic year, and I was very pleased, because it turned out that I had a lot of LGBT colleagues. There were fabulous adults there interacting with the children as equals. The first month my daughter couldn’t understand what was going on, but then she got in the swing of it and really blossomed.

I don’t think I would have had the courage to talk to my daughter about how we were living if I hadn’t taken her out of the state system. I didn’t want my child to have to keep this secret, to have her carefully choosing her words and forced to hide. If my daughter walked into the room as my partner was embracing me, we would quickly draw apart. We had to use all sorts of circumlocutions and call my partner her aunt.

I remember one funny moment when I was showing my daughter a cartoon from my own childhood, Sailor Moon. And it had two girls who were obviously a couple. Elya was six and could already distinguish friendship from romantic relations, and she got really excited. She was like, Wow! They really love each other! She giggled, she was happy, and probably had a feeling about us.

My partner Masha and I started dating when my daughter was three. After two years of living together, we decided to move from Novosibirsk to Petersburg – here people are more progressive, and there would be an LGBT community, and some bars and clubs where we could be ourselves. I thought it would be better, but the war changed everything, because you can sense the antagonism everywhere.

The conversation was rather hard – my daughter cried. She loves Masha and our family, but it was still hard for her. There were a whole bunch of reasons, and Ellya was disconcerted by the very fact of our relationship, and she was afraid for us. She felt torn. I explained that in Russia this is considered something bad, but in many countries it’s legal. About four months have passed since then. Nothing has particularly changed in our relationship, but everything is more transparent, and we can be more openly affectionate with one another. We have moved away from using “aunt” for Masha within the family, but I told my daughter that if adults we’re not close to start asking questions, she could still say that Masha’s her aunt. Now she’s ten and she is grown-up enough to filter.

It would be wonderful to leave; I’m always turning those thoughts over in my mind: how and where to go – seriously, not a day passes without those thoughts! But everything depends on money and employability. I teach and my partner is an editor working with the Russian language – it’s not clear how we could find work abroad. I also think that my child is starting to show signs of adolescence, and it might be less traumatic for her to go through that in our bubble, around our friends, our school. I’m not sure. I’m afraid that we wouldn’t be able to provide her with everything she needs. Also, my partner has very strong ties with her family, and leaving would be very hard for her. Masha has thought about having a child of her own, and even last summer, after the war began, we talked about that. But when this new law was passed, she stopped talking about it.

The law has been a huge shock. Hate and intolerance are being legalized. We’re still trying to process what has happened. Yes, in 2013 it was partially the same, but there it was just about “protecting children,” and they were testing the waters. Now it’s a different matter. I’m afraid that they’ve gotten themselves so worked up they might not stop at this law.

Last summer when our tennis star came out,^[4] I suddenly felt something open up inside me – it was a real aaah, heavens, yes moment!  I started walking a little taller, holding my head higher! And at that very moment I felt how tense and shriveled up I was, how afraid I was. But you just get used to it, you adapt and stop noticing it.

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Since LGBT people experience discrimination from the state and often become involved in activism, there is a clear tendency toward oppositionist views within the community. But this doesn’t mean that all LGBT people are automatically antiwar. Dilya Gafurova warns against such simplifications and stereotyping. Those who live outside the big cities aren’t always able to make sense of the political agenda. Such people are afraid to be open about themselves, so we know very little about their lives. “They don’t have the opportunity to sit and read analyses,” Gafurova says. “Some don’t know how VPN works and or even about what is happening with LGBT rights. These are the sorts of people who are often coming to us for help now with questions – can this be used against me or not?”

“Sodomy,” which was illegal in the Soviet Union, was decriminalized in 1993. A return to the criminalization of same-sex relationships – now targeting not just gay men but also lesbians – has the community truly worried. “There are rumors about some sort of government studies of LGBT,” the head of Sphere explains. “This might be the lead-up to new repressive laws. We can’t say that this will definitely happen, but it’s a possibility. We might have criminalization and also a green light for conversion practices. This is happening in Malaysia. They call it “support for the religious rights of the LGBT.” In China there are state clinics that practice totally licensed conversion therapy, and in Russia we see a similar trend.”

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Ten years ago, the anti-gay-propaganda law was a response to emerging LGBT activism. But the number of organizations supporting queer Russians and the people involved in them has only grown – and continues to grow – even in the face of intensifying crackdowns.

Members of these organizations say that, after the war began, there has been increasing support from volunteers from a variety of professions. This has greatly expanded, for example, access to free psychotherapy. As it turns out, recent repression has had the effect of promoting consolidation and intensifying resistance: Russia’s LGBT community is fighting a war of its own and is not giving up.