Coming Out

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On Summer 2008 while being in the USA, I decided to set up contacts with American LGBT-organizations on behalf of newly formed Saint-Petersburg LGBT-organization “Coming Out”. Being aware of American mentality and community, I had a dim suspicion that they could be rather interested in Russia.

I sent 20 letters which included brief description of “Coming Out” and hope for collaboration to different organizations.

On April 25th the “Silent Flashmob” took place in St. Petersburg. More than 70 representatives of LGBT-community and friendly heterosexuals went into the Nevsky prospect to attract general population’s attention to the problem of silencing the cases of discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity and hate (homophobia) crimes.

On the 22-28 of February, 2008 a study session “Intercultural and Ethnic Diversity within Youth LGBT Communities” took place in Strasbourg. It has been organized by Council of Europe and IGLYO (International Gay Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Youth and Student Organization)

This article contains reflections of one activist on such topics as “Propaganda of Homosexuality”, “Why Show Off vs. Why Hide”, “Demographic Situation,” and, last but not least, “Inner Homophobia.” These are the questions of the day that exist in the minds of the Russian society and the LGBT community. The author of the article writes to encourage the LGBT community to ponder over these questions and apply critical thinking. In the end of the article, the author urges her readers to seek information, for many fears and problems stem from ignorance.

Russian mass media rarely features publications focusing not on social problems per se, but on those who are actually trying to do something about them. As a consequence, the society is not adequately informed about grass root and activism movements: what discussions they engage in, what kind of people they are, what motivates them and with what concepts of life and social reality do they participate in the work of civil associations, social movements, grass roots groups. The public attention is usually focused on ‘theater-carnival’ scandalous sort of events or conflicts, whereas internal activity, everyday life, the essence of talks and doubts are pretty much left behind the scenes. As a result, it is rather difficult to form any sort of general view of goings-on, catch the tendencies behind variety of newslines. The LGBT movement (movement for the rights of gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender people) in this sense, is no different, it is actually one of the media, which remains a black box for many, despite informational openness and the Internet activity.

Monitoring of discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in Saint-Petersburg, which was hold in a year 2008, is a part of all-Russian monitoring, organized by the Russian LGBT Network and the Moscow Helsinki Group.

Eight volunteers who are the participants of public organization “Coming Out” were involved in research in Saint-Petersburg. The main functions of volunteers were the following: spreading of information concerning monitoring, carrying out the surveys and questionnaires’ collection, interviewing, looking for participants of research, mass-media monitoring.

Sorry, but this post is not available in English

Sorry, but this post is not available in English

It is scary to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender in our country. Of course it’s not so terrifying as in Iran. Fear is a natural human reaction to any threat to his existence as biological or social being. There is an easy mechanism of survival instinct and it works in both cases.

Fear drives a person into a corner or some sort of ghetto, fear takes away any power to struggle, fear has it’s own perverted logic alien to any courage.