Abstract
This chapter addresses the struggles of Russian activists for LGBT recognition and rights against the backdrop of national, transnational, as well as global contentions around sexual citizenship. It discusses how Russian LGBT actors can negotiate their positions and ideas about sexual citizenship at national and transnational levels and to consider how the results can add to thinking about conceptualizations of sexual citizenship. Theoretically, sexual citizenship can be understood as a Western term. This leads to problems in investigations of Russia, where the relations between the state, law, and society differ from Western liberal democracies. The chapter emphasizes the importance of situating sexual citizenship. An important constraint to LGBT activism is the so-called Foreign Agent Law from 2012, which labels non-governmental organizations which receive funds from abroad as foreign agents. Based on interviews from 2021 with Russian LGBT activists, it discusses how they perceive processes of citizenship inclusion and exclusion. The focus is on how they make spaces for themselves as citizens, to call attention to as well as despite anti-LGBT political developments and structural inequalities. Theoretically, the chapter uses research on sexual citizenship with a focus on Russia, nationalisms, and bordering practices and theorizations of ‘acts of citizenship’ and ‘activist citizen’.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | The Palgrave Handbook of Gender and Citizenship |
| Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan |
| Pages | 425-447 |
| Number of pages | 23 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 978-3-031-57144-2 |
| ISBN (Print) | 978-3-031-57143-5 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2024 |
