Quantum Leap 2.0 or the Western gaze on Russian homophobia

This paper analyzes recent discourses about Russian homophobia within Anglophone media. It argues that western liberal media, supranational institutions such as the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), and gay rights activists create discourses that center gay issues in the midst of an East-West oppositionality. Such a binary construction creates the image of a just, democratic and homophile West in opposition to an undemocratic, unjust, homophobic East, dominated by Russia. It attaches the notions of progress, equality and freedom not only to a homo-tolerant or homo-inclusive legislation and society, but actually binds all these aspects to the global territory of Western nations. Russia, Eastern Europe and Eurasia, on the other hand, become attached to the notion of homophobia, hence backwardness, and anti-modern conservatism. The key figures and visual representations of all these discourses, that simultaneously signify western homo-tolerant progress as well as Russian anti-gay backwardness are white young gay men, who became victims of anti-gay violence. In using images of frightened, beaten or otherwise harmed young white men, liberal media, supranational institutions, and gay rights activists render the gay subject not only as vulnerable, and without agency, but also as globally uniform and carrier of western insignia. In this way, gays are symbolized by western signs, and become symbols themselves, standing in for western progress, modernity and development. Somehow paradoxically, such a focus on gay men allows for ignorance towards lesbians, transgender, intersex and other queers as well as the troubling nationalism, homophobia and racism within Western, Anglophone countries, such as the USA or the UK. Moreover, it allows for what Kulpa calls “leveraged pedagogy,” a condemnation or reprimand of Russian policies, from a point of moral and ethical (western) superiority.