Dmitry Kuzmin nos ofrece una mirada a la aún poco explorada Rusia homofóbica. Comienza con un ejemplo en el metro:

The problem is that nine out of ten conductors rejoice at the thought that they momentarily hold the fate of a few dozen countrymen in their hands. The best way they know to use their power is to make the lives of others more difficult, even if only a little.

Sigue con una visión general de la tolerancia a la diversidad en Rusia (extrañamente familiar para los que nacimos en Latinoamérica):

It is therefore useless to say here: “I’m gay and I have rights.” What you can say instead is “I’m a well-known writer and, besides, I’m gay and I have rights.” Or “I’m a prominent scientist, and, besides, I’m gay and I have rights.» Or else, “I’m a famous athlete, and, besides, I’m gay and I have rights,” and so on.

Y termina con una aspiración que ojalá se vuelva realidad:

When this happens, I will gladly set aside the classification system which divides people into gay and straight and will fall in love with a beautiful man (or sometimes, for the sake of variety, with a beautiful woman) not because we are gay (i.e., belong to a certain category of people) but because of what brings two (or three, or four) people personally and immediately together. In our attraction for each other gender shouldn’t matter. I once read in an Edmund White interview, that “in the future . . . maybe it would be a mistake to embrace a gay or straight identity. I think it would be more amusing and mysterious and interesting and coquettish and seductive to leave everything kind of vague.” I hope that this future is not very far. It will surely be followed by some other kind of future, when today’s heated arguments about who can and who can’t sleep with whom will come to seem incomprehensible nonsense, the way we now regard Medieval disputes on how many devils can fit on the tip of a needle.

Que es como esta caricatura de The Oatmel, pero en serio.

Sigue leyendo On the Moscow Metro and Being Gay