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News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyAugust 3rd, 2007
In the face of tremendous anti-gay sentiment in Russia, the Kvir publishing house is releasing a small print run of a new gay anthology, Liberty Life. Unfortunately, for a gay anthology, gayness is barely mentioned:
“I regularly think in my head about what the grandma in the bookstore who opens the book will say. I’m always a little afraid and am reluctant to have problems with the government,” (editor Vladimir) Kirsanov said. “I wanted a collection of authors that wouldn’t arouse such a reaction” as previous gay prose books had, he admitted.
One Russian-studies scholar noticed the role foreign words play in the anthology:
A surprising number of English words appear in the text, often connected with sex or relationships — “brief encounter” and “blind date,” for example. The word “Liberty” in the book’s title is also written in English. And the publisher’s name, Kvir, is a Russianized version of Queer.
This preponderance of foreign terms suggests that “the idea of queerness in itself is still associated with abroad — it couldn’t be something native Russian,” said Kevin Moss, head of the Russian department at Middlebury College in Vermont and editor of a collection of Russian literature on gay themes.
According to this review, it appears that Russian gay-themed literature is in a state similar to American gay-lit in the 1950’s, where gay themes are de-emphasized and the endings are often tragic. Contributing author Konstantin Kropotkin described his work this way: “This text is about a lack of freedom.”
The book will only be sold in two Moscow gay bookstores. I wonder if any of them would be interested in distributing Ruslan Porshnev’s Russian translation of “The Heterosexual Agenda: Exposing the Myths”?
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Ruslan Porshnev
August 4th, 2007
Jim,
“This text is about a lack of freedom.†– it’s a quote not from Kirsanov. It’s from one of the authors, Kropotkin.
While preparing the article in TimeOut about AntiDogma, I was asked why “Heterosexual agenda” is not published yet. My answer was that it’s not for commercial distribution, according to author’s terms of use.
Jim Burroway
August 4th, 2007
I got my Kirsanov and Kropotkin mixed up. Thanks for the note; it’s corrected now.
The “Heterosexual Agenda” mirrors many anti-gay tracts in yet another way — it’s available for free. But if someone wants to make copies of it to give away, that’s perfectly alright.
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