Russia's Queer Science, or How Anti‐LGBT Scholarship is Made

The absence of a politicized gay community and of any real scholarly consensus about sexuality in Russia has made it possible for new “scholars” to advance theories of sexuality that are very much at odds with those that are accepted in Europe and the United States. Much mainstream Russian scholarship on queer topics from the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Sociology Faculty of Moscow State University is highly ideological and based on the universalizing concept that everyone can become lesbian or gay. This paper analyzes several articles written between 2012 and 2014 by prominent Russian sources to show how they confuse concepts basic to queer theory and gender studies (gender/sex/sexual orientation/gender identity), while repeating accounts from right‐wing conservative and anti‐LGBT activists and discredited scholars from the United States. The few Russian scholars who are integrated into international gender studies and queer scholarship tend to be marginalized, while more established senior scholars at important institutions tend to be ideological and anti‐LGBT. This situation has facilitated the adoption of anti‐LGBT laws in Russia, and some of these scholars participate in global right‐wing anti‐gender and anti‐LGBT networks like the World Congress of Families.