Sexual Citizenship, Nationalisms, and Bordering: Russian LGBT activists, and the ‘Foreign Agent Law’

This chapter addresses the struggles of Russian activists for LGBT recognition
and rights against the backdrop of national, transnational, as well as global
contentions around sexual citizenship. It discusses how Russian LGBT actors
can negotiate their positions and ideas about sexual citizenship at national and
transnational levels and to consider how the results can add to thinking about
conceptualizations of sexual citizenship. Theoretically, sexual citizenship can
be understood as a Western term. This leads to problems in investigations of
Russia, where the relations between the state, law, and society differ from
Western liberal democracies. The chapter emphasizes the importance of situating
sexual citizenship. An important constraint to LGBT activism is the so-called
Foreign Agent Law from 2012, which labels non-governmental organizations
which receive funds from abroad as foreign agents. Based on interviews from
2021 with Russian LGBT activists, it discusses how they perceive processes
of citizenship inclusion and exclusion. The focus is on how they make spaces
for themselves as citizens, to call attention to as well as despite anti-LGBT
political developments and structural inequalities. Theoretically, the chapter
uses research on sexual citizenship with a focus on Russia, nationalisms, and
bordering practices and theorizations of ‘acts of citizenship’ and ‘activist citizen'.