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franfine1917.bsky.social
I'm a recent PhD graduate posting some of my more interesting finds from my dissertation on Russian queer history in the 1990s
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"‘Shadow, know thy place!’ And your place was, and is, by the latrine.” Boris Kamianov wrote these words in response to other recent Russian immigrants to Israel who identified as queer, lesbian, and bisexual and who spoke against homophobia and demanded respect for same-sex relations.

submitted 53 minutes ago • 1 comment

One of the unique features of the Russian queer community is that trans men have seemingly outnumbered trans women for its entire history. There is a narrative in medical historiography of transness that trans women used to predominate and it was only recently that transmasc individuals appeared

submitted 55 minutes ago • 1 comment

When queers appeared in sensational crime journalism, it was always as threats to children. Moskovskii komsomolets , a newspaper that had previously suffered harassment from conservative groups for its positive depictions of gays, reported “Homosexuals Steal Children Straight from the Stroller.”

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

In 1984, Valery Klimov, a schoolteacher in Nizhny Tagil, was sentenced under Article 121 for sexual relations with an underaged boy. Klimov’s partner was seventeen at the time, above the age of consent for heterosexual relations (sixteen) but below the age of consent for homosexual sex (eighteen).

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

I really love this logo from the 1980s "peace movement" in the USSR. I believe it originated with the European ant-nuclear group END (European Nuclear Disarmament)

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

Partner (Sha!) is a completely unremarkable short lived queer paper from the 90s but I've been obsessed with this coverboy ever since I first saw him

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

anyway since im off topic already, heres selfies. i am in fact a real person and not a picture of a ukrainian transexual from 1994

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Sorry to go off topic but my hot take is that the Republicans run high profile anti trans messaging not because it is super persuasive (always ranks as a bottom concern for voters) but because every time we do the entire liberal and left side of this country starts a struggle session with itself

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

MOLLI, the Moscow Society for Lesbian Literature and Art, was one of the less discussed but most valuable queer orgs in 90s Russia. Their correspondence service helped thousands of queer women in provincial Russia know that they were not alone.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Cover for the lesbian-centric sixth issue of the underground Soviet feminist journal Zhenskoe Chtenie (Women's Reading). Translations of Adrienne Rich pieces feature prominently within, along with the first published version of Olga Zhuk's historical project on lesbian culture in Soviet prisons

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

When western observers saw the budding queer rights movement in the collapsing USSR, they categorized its members in the familiar "radicals" vs "assimilationists" dichotomy found in the west. I have always questioned how relevant those categories were for the Russian context

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

"The first pride was a riot" well in Russia the first pride, if you could call it that, was a festival organized by college students on both sides of the iron curtain who were very excited about the possibilities of a new, post-communist world

submitted 7 days ago • 1 comment

Victor Putintsev was not a subtle artist

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

Short answer: no That being said, it is noteworthy that sodomy was decriminalized in the Russian Federation a full ten years before it was in the US

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments