And...nyet

A few minutes ago I was talking to my Russian housemate over tea, and she mentioned a male friend of hers whose wife had just given birth. Apparently it was a difficult delivery. She said it made her feel scared.

I asked her if she wanted children, and she matter-of-factly said "of course," as though it weren't even a question that needed to be asked. Then she suddenly looked at me with an expression of dawning horror and asked me, "don't you?"

When I admitted that no, in fact, I don't want kids she looked completely shocked. "Why not," she asked.
"Because I don't. I never have. It's just not something that I want."
She continued to look shocked, so I told her that I do like kids as long as I can give them back to someone else after an hour or two. That didn't really seem to help.
"You surprise me," she said finally. Then she got up to go do work.

Well then. Nyet.

It's ironic. This woman is probably my best friend in Russia. We get along really well, we go to dance classes together, we share meals, we drink tea. I was actually debating coming out to her, because I thought that she might be open minded, might possibly understand. I'm glad we had this conversation first before I thought about it too much more. The level of shock she showed at my not wanting kids probably indicates that the reaction would be seismic if I revealed that I also don't want a man.

I just don't understand why it's a big deal. I wasn't put on earth to fulfill some biological imperative, or to follow anyone's agenda other than my own. I don't see why it's shocking that a woman wouldn't want a husband or kids. Regardless of whether she's gay or straight.

I'm glad that I'm leaving Russia soon. I love this country in many ways. But I need to be in a place where my way of life is unremarkable. Where no one gives a damn if I date a woman and don't want kids.

Apparently in Moscow I Deserve to Be Killed

At least, this is what Moscow's mayor says. Seventy-two-year-old conservative mayor Yuri Luzhkov made a televised statement just before banning the attempted Moscow Pride Parade that "Our society has healthy morals and rejects all these queers. If you even imagine that they get permission to hold their parade and gather, they will simply be killed."
http://www.gayrussia.ru/en/news/detail.php?ID=13543

Good to know. On the one hand, I find it chilling that a political leader can get away with saying that people from any minority group can and should be killed. World history has shown that bad things usually follow these kinds of statements. On the other hand, I appreciate the honesty. There's something refreshing about knowing exactly where things stand. He thinks we're evil and deserve to die. Clean cut, black and white. None of that "love the sinner, hate the sin" thing that you get from the more tolerant members of the Christian Right back at home, which often comes accompanied by the two-faced, smiling assurance that you're going directly to hell. The overall sentiment in both cases may be similarly hostile, but somehow I have far less fear of being lynched in Moscow than I would in, say, rural Wyoming if I ever went there.

I haven't been in Russia long, but I've noticed a pattern to the way things work here. Rules are both convoluted and rampant. They are also largely ignored. Drinking in public is illegal, but people drink beer on the way to work, and a common evening pastime is to take a bottle of wine to a park with your friends. It's illegal to drink vodka on the trains, but most trains sell vodka in the dining cars. I've yet to be stopped for drinking vodka on trains with any of my groups so far, but I'm told that the appropriate course of action if it happens is to offer the policeman a drink.

Point being, as long as you stay out of general view of the authorities in Russia, you can do pretty much whatever you want. Moscow's mayor thinks gay people should not exist, but the gay scene is alive and well. Lonely Planet lists three or four locations, and there certainly must be more. Traditionally, the gay scene in most places has always been underground, and with good reason, since in almost every society gay and gender-variant people are seen with suspicion at best and outright hatred at worst. So we stick to the shadows, and most mainstream people don't even think about us or know we exist until and unless we try to make ourselves visible. Like with Pride.

I'm thinking about Pride, because my girlfriend reminded me the other night that once again I'm missing DC Pride, which I've heard is a sight to behold. I'm also missing Boston Pride, St. Pete (Florida) Pride, Paris Pride, and pretty much any other Pride you can think of in any of the places I used to live. I wasn't even in Moscow for the abortive attempt at the pride parade that got shut down by the riot police 30 seconds after it began. In general I think that Pride is great, because it's a fun way to get ourselves out of the closet and be completely out in the open, for once in a year. In countries like Russia, though, the idea of Pride itself is controversial. One person interviewed by Time said that he just wants to be treated like everyone else, and running around screaming that he's gay is not going to achieve that.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1899340,00.html

It's a valid point. Everyone might want more acceptance and more rights, but very few people want to be the ones to stick their necks out in the effort to achieve this. I'm no exception; for all that I technically work for a company with an inclusive non-discrimination clause, the fact that I work on the ground in countries like Russia and Morocco effectively means that coming out would be one of the stupidest things I could possibly do. I have no desire to make my life any more complicated than it really needs to be, and I don't want to be the "face of diversity" in my company or anywhere else. I just want to live my life and have that be okay. It's all anyone really wants. It's just difficult to be both visible and acceptable. In general, you have to choose.

The Word of the Day is "Androgyny"

The other day, my Russian housemate showed me a ballet video online.



It's a very interesting piece of modern choreography. I like it from a dance perspective, because they do some unusual things and the fast pointe work is incredible. But it's also interesting from a gender perspective, because it explores relationships. Different people dance together in different ways, and at one point, two female dancers are dressed as men. Before that point, though, during what I thought was a more conventional scene, my housemate asked me a strange question: "Is that dancer a man or a women?"

I told her it was a woman, because the likelihood of a man doing such intricate pointe work is almost nil. (I have seen men on pointe, in the "ballet trocadero," but I have to say that the pointe work was pretty blunt. In my experience, most male dancers don't pursue pointe training at all, so would not be able to perform it with such a high degree of skill). So I told her that the dancer was a woman, but the woman was androgynous.

"How you call this? An-dro-gyn-ous?"

"Yes. Androgynous."

It led me to think about dance in general, how girls from an early age are taught to move in an exceedingly light and delicate mannner, feminine to the extreme. They are also taught to starve their bodies, so that they don't develop a shape with many feminine attributes. Therefore...when a female dancer ceases to move in the typically stylized "feminine" manner traditional to ballet, if she begins to move with force and strength, she automatically becomes androgynous, because neither her movements nor her shape indicate "female." This phenomenon is completely unrelated to her own gender identity. It's simply a matter of gender presentation, which normally goes one way and confuses people when it goes another.

I also find it interesting that of all words I should be teaching people in Russia, "androgynous" is one of the first. I'm not out here and I'm not planning on coming out, but gender is something that seems to follow me. I'm one of the people who notices gender ambiguity in the world, and this means that I end up talking about it to unexpected people, even if I don't talk about its relevance to my personal life.

We didn't talk any more about androgyny, my housemate and I, we just watched the ballet. But I'm happy that one person in Russia now knows the English word for ambiguity in gender.

Same Same but Different

St. Petersburg and Moscow both have extensive metro systems, and one of the most common sights you'll see on the uberlong escalators is of young couples cuddling, kissing, or otherwise engaging in rather sickening public displays of affection. I generally ignore these couples, think sour thoughts at them and look away, because in general I a) think these activities are better done in private and b) would rather not be reminded that I'm several thousand miles away from the only person with whom I could engage in such activities. Last night on the metro I saw another one of these couples, and as they were right below me I found them hard to ignore. When they came up for air, though, my opinion of them changed drastically.

They were both female.

Living for a year in a country in which homosexuality is illegal, I developed a keen sense of Things You Do Not Do Or Say In Public. Clearly, these girls had no such sense. They were totally absorbed in each other, and they didn't care who saw it. Because whoever saw it didn't matter. No one paid them any attention at all. It's amazing to think that homosexuality could be such a nonissue. It's so politicized in the States, often needlessly so, and while there are places where it's a nonissue, there are more places where it's a Very Big Deal. I'm not so naive as to think that all of Russia will be like this, as it's even larger than the US and has far more rural areas. And I'm certainly not taking it as a sign that I should come out to my coworkers, because I like to keep my personal life private and separate from my public self. But still. It's nice to know that there are mainstream places where young queer couples don't have to worry overmuch about expressing who they are. It gladddens my queer-happy heart.

Banyas and body image

Last week, I went to a banya with my group. A Banya is a public bathhouse/sauna, in which you sit in an exceedingly hot steam room for a while, exit and dump a bucket of cold water on your head, sit for a few minutes, and repeat. During further repetitions you get to use birch twigs to whip yourself and your friends--it's supposed to be good for circulation and muscle soreness. It's fabulous, and I freely admit that there's a certain masochistic flavor to it that I thoroughly enjoy.

Inside the banya, large groups of naked women sit talking, drinking water (or beer or kvass) between sauna sessions, sometimes eating snacks. It can be an all day event for some people, and given how cold it's been outside I don't blame them for hanging out in the only truly warm place in town. The interesting thing is that no one seems to notice or care about what anyone else looks like. It's possible that because the average age was fortysomething and they'd clearly all had multiple children they were beyond caring about such things. But it was nice to be in an environment where what people look like doesn't make a difference. It's at odds with what I've observed on the street, the high level of fashion and makeup that scream "look at me!" to everyone who passes by. Perhaps it's a generational difference, or perhaps it's because the banya was in a smaller city (not Moscow or St. Petersburg). For whatever reason, the banya seemed to be the one place so far where people are free to let it all hang out. Which is not a bad thing at all.

New Country, New Norms

I arrived in Russia a few days ago, and already I'm beginning to notice the gender norms of the place. Women walk around tottering on high heels as they walk over cobblestones. Their outfits hover between understated fashion and over-the-top uberclothing (think hot pink tights and black miniskirts--I only saw one outfit like this, but it was memorable). In general, there's an emphasis on looking good. Men don't seem to pay as much attention to their own appearance. They generally look dressed down, with the occasional suit and tie amongst the older generation.

More than fashion, I'm noticing that people here have less in the way of personal space issues than we do over in the US. I've seen lots of girls holding hands or walking arm in arm, and while they're obviously just friends and nothing more it still makes me happy. The phobia of touch is something that I don't entirely uderstand about my own culture, even though it's something in which I tend to participate. I like my personal space, but I also enjoy being affectionate with close friends. In the US, it seems as though most physical contact is construed as being in some way sexual, so no touch is permitted unless it's with someone you actually want to have sex with. I've found in most of Europe that this social taboo is much less prevalent, and consequently friends don't need the twelve-inch personal space bubble that we require in the US.