Unique Russian Gay Pride topic of Pride Week talk

In his talk Thursday, San Francisco Chronicle reporter David Tuller discussed the unique awareness of Russian gays and lesbians.

"Many gay and lesbian Americans went over expecting to liberate these people and found that we actually had a lot to learn from them," he said, describing the experience that he and other Americans had when they went to Russia as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

Tuller was invited to give his talk by the Russian Department as part of Gay Pride Week. In the speech Tuller emphasized that homosexuality in Russia is an entirely different entity than what we know it to be in the States. He discussed how the strict sexual categories which we take for granted in America hold little water with Russians.

Reading from his new book, Cracks in the Iron Closet : Gay and Lesbian Pride Russian Style , and speaking extemporaneously, he explained that many Russians do not feel they need to define themselves as strictly gay or straight. If they do define themselves as such, he said, they take those definitions to be far less rigid than Americans are commonly accustomed to doing.

Russian ideas about coming out and gay pride are also very different from our own, according to Tuller. It is very difficult for Russians to dissolve the distinct boundaries between their public and private lives that they created in order to manage the repressive Soviet society.

Their history also affects attempts at community organizing. "Many Russians simply don't feel comfortable in groups, because it reminds them too much of the past," Tuller said.

Tuller stressed, however, that Russian gays and lesbians are not more likely than Americans to view their sexualities as shameful. Rather, he observed the exact opposite. Many Russians took the attitude,

"Just because my society says it's bad, why should I think it's bad? My society thinks everything is bad."

Sexuality became, Tuller said, for many Russians just another aspect of life, like ideology or creativity, that they maintained comfortably in private while hiding in public .