(In)visible Queerness: LGBTQ Politics and Media in Russia

The LGBTQ community in Russia is long used to being slowly erased from the country’ public sphere. The state-sponsored efforts to limit queer visibility are perhaps most vividly evident in the adoption of so-called 'anti-gay propaganda' laws in 2013, which effectively banned queer culture and knowledge from both the mainstream media and public spaces under the auspices of "protecting” children against the promotion of “non-traditional” sexual relations.

Against this backdrop of politicised homophobia, Russian feminist and gay rights activists have begun to appropriate new media and information technologies to gain visibility and voice, present marginal views, share their own information systems and content, and otherwise challenge, subvert, or confront the dominant media culture.

Indeed, the regulated visibility of Russian-state aligned representations of sexual identities appear to exist in conflict with the multiplicity of other images and narratives, other subjectivities and possible lives offered by the wider media environment. Focusing on the intersection of media and LGBTQ human rights in Russia, this lecture will address these two opposing tendencies and discuss how queer (in)visibility is created, regulated and contested in contemporary Russian media environment.