Homosexual community still waiting for acceptance
tand dilapidated barracks. Inside, six men sit and watch other men intertwine in sex acts on a flickering TV screen. The Illuzion video club caters to members of Kyiv's homosexual and transvestite communities. Its name might as well refer to members' hopes for acceptance by a society that until recently branded them as criminals. So wary are organizers within Kyiv's gay and lesbian movement that they will speak only on the condition that the resulting story withhold location of offices where they work, the discos where they dance and the viewing rooms where they get turned on.
One of the men enjoying the nightly blue movie at Illuzion on this particular Sunday is Timur, a 23-year-old student at Kyiv's Railroad Technical School. Timur, who would not give his last name, fears leaving the closet and openly declaring his sexual orientation. Before attending class, he removes the earring he wears in his right ear and the chain he worries might give away his idenity. “A lot of people are prejudiced against us,” said Timur, adding that if someone found out he was gay, he would be expelled from school or harassed until he withdrew. “Those people who work there are old communists,” he said. “And you know that for communists sex, and particularly this kind of sex, did not exist.”
If it did, it was only as a crime requiring punishment. The Soviet criminal GAYS,
code prescribed up to a year in prison, or three years of exile for homosexuality. Ukraine ditched those provisions in 1992, a year after it gained independence. For one of Lilia Taranenko's male friends, that victory came too late. In 1969, he died of injuries inflicted by police who beat him because he was gay. Taranenko, who is heterosexual, has been an advocate for gay rights ever since.
“I turned all my love to these people, and … decided to start an organization to help them protect themselves,” she said.
In 1993, Taranenko founded Ganymede, a gay rights group named after the male lover of the Greek god Zeus. But neither Ganymede's registration documents nor its statute openly describe it as a vehicle for sexual minorities. “Society was not ready to accept such an organization just a year and a half after an article of the criminal code punishing homosexual relations was canceled,” said Taranenko.
Ganymede runs the Illuzion video club as well as an all-night gay bar in the center of the city. Ganymede's 47 members in the Kyiv Region get in free.
“These people need their own places for recreation, places where there are people like themselves, and where they can feel at ease,” said Taranenko.
Ganymede also operates a hotline for gays, lesbians and transvestites who want to discuss their problems. Crank calls are frequent. “Sometimes people call and ask whether we can help them find two lesbian women for satisfy their sexual appetite,” said Taranenko.
Prejudice is not confined to strangers. Timur said even his mother, who is a doctor, had a hard time accepting the fact that her son is gay. “There were a lot of scandals, chairs were flying around the house, but she had to accept it,” he said.
His stepfather was also furious at first, Timur recalled. “It's better now, he does not reproach me, maybe just behind my back.”
Timur would love to be more open about his homosexuality. “I wouldn't hide it if people treated me normally and it didn't affect my career,” he said.
A friend of Timur who came with him to watch the Sunday night movie at Illuzion and also asked that his name be withheld said he has had to grow thick skin to shrug off the slights that are the lot of gays. “I don't hide my homosexuality because I am completely independent and I do not care what people think,” he said.
He said that he became fully convinced that he was gay after the army. “People in the army noticed I was gay, and I got a lot of offers,” he said. He always refused, though for fear that his comrades would start treating him “like a dog.”
Ganymede does not just help homosexuals. Taranenko's work with sexual minorities has convinced her that transvestites face even more problems and prejudice in this society. “Lesbians do not have it written on their foreheads that they are lesbians, and the society primarily see them as women. But transvestites feel like they belong to the other sex, even though their exterior contradicts their feelings,” she said.
Sergei, who would not give his last name, came to Ganymede's offices in men's clothing, then switched into a skirt, black tights and comfortable slippers before an intrerview with a reporter.
It is one of the few places outside his home where he feels free from convention and reproach. “We have our own world here, where everybody understands each other, and nobody hurts anyone else,” he said.
Outside, he leads a double life because “any attempt to express yourself causes ridicule and depression,” Sergei said.
“If a woman puts on trousers, and takes a machine gun in her hands, people admire her. But if a man puts on a skirt, he is haunted and despised,” added Taranenko.
