Homophobia begins at home: lesbian and bisexual women's experiences of the parental household in urban Russia

Abstract

The author conducted interviews with lesbians in Moscow, and Ulianovsk, a city of 700,000 in the Middle Volga Region, in 2004-05. For this article, she has focused on younger women still living with their parents. She examines how the parental home is perceived both as an intimate, comfortable space and as a site where ‘everyday homophobia’ is most commonly experienced, and she looks at how gender expectations are at the root of hostility to the lesbian family member. Research conducted elsewhere in Europe also indicates that the family home is one of the most difficult spaces to negotiate for young LGBT people, not only in Russia