Gay pride parades began after the Stonewall Riots, as a means to remember the event that perpetrated the fight for gay liberation. The gay rights movement began when police raided the New York City Stonewall Inn in 1969, a place that was often frequented by the queer community. Five days of riots ensued. Before this event, people were much less open about being queer. Sexuality wasn’t broadcasted, and neither was gender identity. However, while the Stonewall Riots greatly aided Western countries, places like Russia were not faring as well.
Alexander Barseloff (name changed), a thirty-six-year-old man from a small town in Russia, explains his experience growing up as gay. Alexander explains,
“I realized that [I was gay] when I was very young, but I didn’t agree with that and tried to meet with girls.”
This is an incredibly common phase that gay-identifying people go through, especially when in an intolerant environment. Fitting in can become more important to the person than their own happiness, and in severe cases, a closeted person may even marry someone of the opposite gender due to their own or their communities’ rejection of homosexuality.
Alexander explained that he did not know about the LGBTQ+ community until he was twenty-two, which he felt was partially due to growing up in a very small village in Russia. “All families keep traditional families. If you are gay you can’t show [it], because it is shame for you [and] for your family.”
He went on to explain how this kind of thinking plagued him for a while, describing, “[This] fear lived in my brain all the time, and I have this fear now too. But now, it’s better.” This demonstrates that homophobic thinking in communities nurtures the same thinking in children, who could grow up to engage in internalized homophobia. This form of homophobia is described as refusing to accept one’s own queer identity, or acknowledging it while being shameful.
In the early 2000s the website Mamba became a popular online dating site, which was utilized by the queer community. Alexander begins, “All members on this website had fake pictures [and] personal information because it was not safe for these people.” Because Russia was not very tolerant of homosexuality, people felt they had to hide behind fake pictures and identity on dating sites.
Alexander went on to explain that over time, as he found a small community of fellow gay peers, his worries troubled him less. He began to understand that gay people were no different to straight people, a realization that greatly aided his self-acceptance journey. This realization grew even more after he moved to Moscow after graduating from university, a city with substantially more diversity than he was used to in his hometown. In Moscow Alexander explored queer nightlife and entertainment, meeting gay friends and first lovers, and recollects on this period of his life fondly. However, he understood that while in Russia, his rights as a gay man were not equal to his heterosexual counterparts, especially when it comes to starting a family as a gay person.
“I moved to Toronto, and here I recognized that I can’t be happy there. Here [there is] a very strong, very good gay community—and you can be free. You can feel safe as gay. I have the same rights.”
Alexander stresses the importance of community in his journey to self-acceptance, and explained that he is sad that he can’t tell his family about his queer identity, fearing a nervous reaction from them. “I think they know about me, but they hope it is not true.” He continues, explaining, “It is a main problem in my brain, because I can’t be myself.”
He is grateful his friends are supportive of him, indicating that he can be his true self around them because of this.