Introduction: LGBTQ+ visibilities in the Caucasus and Central Asia

ABSTRACT

The idea for this collection of papers emerged from a desire to showcase queer scholarship in and on the region, following a panel discussion about the visibility of queer communities in the post-Soviet space at the ASEEES virtual convention in December 2021. The panellists’ discussions highlighted the ongoing challenges of queer knowledge production and the tendency for scholarship produced by and on queer people in the region to be regarded as either ‘anomalous’ and/or ‘exotic’ and therefore treated as marginal. The contributions here challenge the latter argument by demonstrating that there are lessons to be learned from the experiences of queer people in the Caucasus and Central Asia. In this introduction, the guest editors explore the dominant themes that emerged from the articles in this issue. They also reflect on the politics of representation, reflexivity and research, and how they have sought to engage with them in editing this issue.

KEYWORDS:

• LGBTQ+ visibility
• LGBTQ+ activism; knowledge production; reflexivity; positionality; research methods
• Central Asia
• Caucasus

Introduction

The beginnings of this collection of papers was a panel at the 2021 ASEES virtual convention entitled ‘Identity and Visibility of LGBTQ+ people in the Post-Soviet (e-)World’, which sought to explore the evolving dynamics of LGBTQ+ visibilities in Central Asia, Lithuania and Russia. Beyond the analyses and insights of the individual papers, the panellists’ discussions highlighted the ongoing challenges of queer knowledge production,¹ including the inequalities and inequities of academic knowledge economies (Kudaibergenova 2019), the tendency for scholarship produced by and on queer people in the region to be regarded as either ‘anomalous’ and/or ‘exotic’ and therefore treated as marginal—a problem noted both in relation to area studies and queer studies—and the complexities for queer scholars and activists of navigating between the lasting effects of Russian/Soviet colonialism, including political homophobia, and new epistemic and colonial dependencies on the West including homonationalism and homonormativity (Levitanus 2023; Luciani 2023; Suyarkulova 2023).

Significantly, the role of the Internet and how digital spaces have and have not created new possibilities for LGBTQ+ activism and research was a recurrent theme in a discussion of these challenges. As a result, the subsequent proposal for the issue and call for abstracts centred on how expanding access to the Internet has shaped the identity and visibility of LGBTQ+ communities and activists in Central Asia and the Caucasus. As a starting point, this question connected with several separate but not unconnected debates about LGBTQ+ issues that we outline below.

First, under what circumstances and conditions does the Internet play a polarizing or liberalizing role in relation to sexual and gender diversities? On the one hand, Internet advocates have argued that the Internet and social media platforms enable the discussion of more diverse issues, including many that are often deemed inappropriate by mainstream print media (Manduley et al. 2018). Accordingly, the Internet is seen as an equalizing and even democratizing force that helps LGBTQ+ subjects to speak up and demand change in the face of institutional failure (Vivienne 2016), and which provides new virtual public spaces where queer people can express themselves and build virtual communities without breaching cultural or religious behaviour codes (Ayoub and Garretson 2017; Robards, Byron, and D’Souza 2021). On the other hand, Internet sceptics caution that the increased visibility of LGBTQ+ people and queer culture online can also lead to backlash, especially in societies that have previously had little exposure to gay people (Ayoub 2016; Costache, Baigazieva, and Gejadze 2018). In particular, attention has been drawn to how far-right and religious conservative groups are using the Internet to target LGBTQ+ people online and advance anti-LGBTQ+ activism (Avdeeff 2021; Shirinian 2019; 2021), as well as the heteronormative policies and algorithms of social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook continue to censor queer bodies, nudity and sexuality, ironically limiting queer visibilities at the same time as support for LGBTQ+ inclusion is claimed (Ellis 2023).

Second, what accounts for the divergent trajectories of LGBTQ+ rights recognition in different states and regions of the world? In particular, after initial signs that more tolerant attitudes towards homosexuality might develop following the collapse of the USSR, why do queer communities in Central Asia and the Caucasus continue to face fierce opposition from local authorities and right-wing religious groups including efforts to roll back even fundamental rights (Wilkinson 2020)? Undoubtedly, the legal status of and social attitudes toward non-heterosexuals in contemporary Central Asia and the Caucasus remain heavily influenced by the Soviet era, with male homosexuality criminalized for most of the USSR’s existence (Kon 1995), and pathologization further stigmatizing non-heterosexuality in both men and women. Yet this influence and contemporary similarities such as the spread of legislative initiatives against ‘non-traditional sexual relations’ from Russia provides only an unsatisfyingly partial understanding for Central Asian governments’ deployment of political homophobia.

Third, how is expanding access to the Internet and persistent government censorship and queerphobia changing LGBTQ+ identities, visibilities and activism in the Caucasus and Central Asia? While there is research on the strategic nature of LGBTQ+ activism in the region (Berianidze 2020; Buelow 2012; Pares Hoare 2021; Sekerbayeva 2017; Suyarkulova 2018; Wilkinson 2014; Wilkinson and Kirey 2010), the phenomenal speed at which telecommunications, Internet penetration and technological infrastructure have expanded in Central Asia and the Caucasus over the last decade means that the Internet has been largely absent from scholarship on LGBTQ+ issues. In this sense, the collection is an opportunity to address this gap, either directly or via exploration of wider questions and issues related to queer activism and research in the ‘digital age’, including how to study and learn about queer lives and experiences in contexts that seek to repress or prohibit homosexuality and gender non-conformity, the complexities of online and offline LGBTQ+ representation, and the potential for less visible forms of activism to effect positive change for LGBTQ+ communities.

In responding to these questions, contributors have utilized a wide range of approaches and methods, including autoethnography, participant observation, discourse analysis, interviews, surveys and statistics, and they draw on a similarly broad array of social science disciplines and fields. In addition, some focus on a single country, whereas others cover several within a comparativist logic. The insights they offer, therefore, are not just about when LGBTQ+ communities and activists are/are not visible and the role of the Internet in this. Rather, taken collectively, the contributions work to extend and complexify the debates outlined above, with critique of visibility and related dichotomies of public/private and being ‘in’ or ‘out’ are a common theme.

Several of the articles trouble the Western binary notion that queer activism must be visible/public to empower and demystify queer people and their concerns (Levitanus and Kislitsyna 2024, in this issue; Kirey-Sitnikova 2024, in this issue; Namazov 2024, in this issue). For many of Levitanus and Kislitsyna’s (2024, in this issue) interviewees, for example, public forms of activism such as making public statements about one’s sexuality or gender identity, or participating in street actions involving being visibly LGBTQ+, was perceived as vulnerable, risky and harmful. Alternative, less immediately visible forms of activism, such as using social media, signing petitions, and taking part in educational initiatives that aim to address and solve real community problems were identified to be more helpful and fruitful. Similarly, public activism was unanimously rejected by the participants in Kondakov’s (2024, in this issue) anonymous online survey of men who have sex with men (MSM) out of fear that public demands could result in greater violence against them in Uzbekistan. Kirey-Sitnikova (2024, in this issue), meanwhile, finds that trans activists in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan approach visibility strategically, tending to operate as a transnational network of pressure groups that raises trans visibility among key players such as professional groups (e.g., doctors, psychologists, lawyers) and political decision-makers, but remaining hidden from the wider public. Their approach enables trans activists to ensure that trans-related issues (e.g., access to healthcare and employment) are visible enough to enhance trans peoples’ lives and needs, but also to minimize the risks of hypervisibility, which may hinder or even harm this progress. The contributions from this volume thus highlight that queer activism does not have to be ‘out and proud’ to empower queer people and address their problems. Rather, it is frequently uneventful activism (Mayerchyk and Plakhotnik 2021) or activism that is ‘low-key, small scale, and initiated by individuals or small, informal groups’ (Jacobsson and Korolczuk 2020, 130) and which occurs in private informal spaces (Gradskova, Kondakov, and Shevtsova 2020) that is often more viable and helpful in contexts where invisibility and silence are important strategies for queer lives to remain liveable.

As well as challenging the assumed logics of visibility and invisibility, contributions also complexify understandings of digital spaces and technologies in relation to LGBTQ+ activism in different ways. To some extent, there is support for earlier arguments that digital communication technologies can be used by non-heterosexual and gender-diverse people to create virtual safe spaces for community and connection and facilitate access to information and services (Vivienne 2016). In particular, online activism is identified as a safer and more fruitful option than offline activism (Levitanus and Kislitsyna 2024, in this issue; Kurmanov and Kurmanov 2024, in this issue). Yet other contributors argue that the visibility of queer culture online promotes transphobia and homophobia rather than fuelling public sympathy. For instance, Namazov’s (2024, in this issue) Foucauldian discourse analysis shows how queer Azerbaijani activists and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) employed Western queer normalization practices in their social media campaigns to combat negative stereotypes and hostility towards queer people. However, the hypervisibility of queer activists online, rather than encouraging progress, contributed to portraying non-heterosexuality as a (geo)political and security concern for the Azerbaijani authorities, which ultimately led to a widespread anti-queer crackdown in the late 2010s. Similar observations are reported by Dall’Agnola (2024, in this volume) in a comparative longitudinal study of Central Asian public opinion of queer people in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Namazov and Dall'Agnola find that frequent exposure to information on mobile phones does not necessarily increase Central Asians’ tolerance toward non-heterosexual people. Rather, there is an interplay of information consumption with societal factors such as religiosity, location and age. In some instances, this may lead to a positive correlation between social media use the development of more favourable attitudes towards non-heterosexual people—a dynamic found among urban Kazakhstani youth by Olijar and Li (2024, in this volume), for example. Overall, however, the discussions presented by the contributors emphasize the need to conceptualize the Internet not as a single location, structure or tool, but rather as a complex and dynamic space that is located, accessed, inhabited, used and traversed in multiple ways and for multiple purposes. As they demonstrate repeatedly, understanding the connections between Internet use and LGBTQ+ activism requires close attention to questions of context at multiple levels, since what is helpful in one case can be deeply harmful in another.

Via their engagements with the themes and discussions outlined above, the contributions in this issue have amply demonstrated not just the relevance of scholarship about LGBTQ+ communities and activism for both area studies and queer studies, but the ongoing need to interrogate existing political economies of knowledge production—including the ways in which this issue is situated within them. This is certainly not a new discussion, either within Central Asian Studies (Marat 2021) or the academy more widely. Yet especially in the wake of Russia’s intensification of its imperialist war against Ukraine in February 2022, as well as the scapegoating of LGBTQ+ people having become a well-established strategy for political and religious actors looking to promote nationalist agendas, the unavoidability of power relations is more evident than ever. In the remainder of this introduction, therefore, we reflect on the politics of representation, reflexivity and research and how we have sought to engage with them in editing this issue.

Representation

We were unsurprised to receive feedback on our initial proposal from Central Asian Survey that there was a perceived danger that the collection on LGBTQ+ issues could end up perpetuating knowledge extraction and the objectification of LGBTQ+ people in Central Asia. How many local authors would there be? From which countries? How many contributions would be from LGBTQ+ identifying authors? Given the topic, our identities and Central Asian Survey’s recognition of how submission patterns reflect structural inequalities and desire to address them (Isaacs and Dall’Agnola 2023), these questions made sense. Moreover, we were confident that we could answer these questions in ways that would reassure the journal’s board: the majority of contributions would be local; we would actively encourage and solicit submissions from local and/or queer-identifying authors, including activists; we would ensure coverage of as wide a range of countries as possible.

Yet we were also aware that answering the questions in this way risked being a ‘tick-box’ approach to representation. How to define local, for example? Was nationality enough, or did one have to be located in the region? Many potential contributors met the first criterion, but not the second, often for professional reasons but also for personal ones, including being in more queer-friendly environments. Similarly, could a preponderance of queer-identifying authors be guaranteed? Granted, many potential contributors would be explicit about their identity, but at the same time, to require disclosure (or even to ask the question) would be deeply problematic epistemologically and ethically. In addition, how to balance this representational aspect with others, as well as the need for a sufficient diversity of topics and perspectives in the issue?

This is not to suggest that the questions put to us should simply be dismissed. Far from it. They served to surface some of the complexities and contradictions of representation and asked how we intended to manage them within the process of editing this issue in ways that were cognisant of political economies of knowledge. Is it possible to provide some ‘representation metrics’ for the contributors? Yes. More than half of the authors were born and raised in countries problematically described as ‘post-Soviet’ and the remaining have spent significant amounts of time living and conducting research in a Caucasian or Central Asian location. All but two of the contributors identify themselves as queer/non-heterosexual with most either directly or indirectly involved in feminist or queer activism. But these quantifications tell us little about how they are local or their experiences of being queer, or their understandings of activism. Rather, they risk entrenching locals and/or queers as ‘native informants’, simultaneously valuing their accounts for their ‘insiderness’ while also devaluing them for their ‘bias’ or specificity—a distinctly ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ logic that points to the geographical, epistemic and methodological hierarchies of knowledge production in which we are all inevitably, but differently, entangled.

Reflexivity

If greater attention to representation is in itself insufficient for navigating the politics of knowledge production, what are the alternatives? Although certainly not a solution, we see the practice of reflexivity as crucial for finding ways to surface and navigate the tensions inherent in working across multiple knowledge hierarchies and power dynamics. Reflexivity demands ongoing and critical consideration of positionality and attentiveness to the politics and power relationships of the research field (Bissenova 2023; Sultanalieva 2019; Suyarkulova 2018). It requires the researcher to interrogate their relationship to the research, and to be clear about how they have shaped the final form that their accounts take in terms of their political and methodological commitments, how they have engaged with ethical and political issues such as the potential to cause harm (Blair 2016), the potential for objectification, exoticization, exploitation or queerbaiting (Woods and Hardmann 2022), and dealing with location-specific challenges and opportunities (Dall’Agnola and Sharshenova 2024).

In our instructions to contributors, therefore, we requested that they include explicit critical reflection on the politics and ethics of their research project. To assist with this undertaking, we provided a short list of guide questions:

• Why have you undertaken this research? What are the origins of your interest in studying LGBTQ+ people/communities/issues?

• How does your positionality (i.e., your personal characteristics and context; cf. Berger 2015) affect your research on LGBTQ+ people/communities/issues?

• What ethical challenges have you encountered in researching LGBTQ+ people/communities/issues and how have you sought to manage them?

• What steps have you taken to ensure that your research reflects the complexities and diversity of LGBTQ+ lived experiences?

• What are the implications of your research for LGBTQ+ people and their lived experience in Central Asia and the Caucasus? How are you ensuring that your research does not cause harm?

Importantly, the aim was not to elicit disclosures of personal identity and experience, or ‘confessions’ about one’s relative privileges and/or marginalizations, despite positionality often being understood in this way (Folkes 2023). Instead, we hoped to encourage authors to adopt what Soedirgo and Glas (2020, 527) describe as a ‘posture of “active reflexivity”’ throughout the research process, via ‘ongoing interrogation’ of their own positionality; how others read their positionality in light of their own social locations and the context of interactions; and the assumptions made in both of these cases. In doing so, it becomes possible to begin thinking in more complex ways about representation and power: rather than asking whether one is an insider or an outsider, the question becomes in what ways and contexts is one an insider and an outsider, and, no less importantly, how is this salient for the research?

Beyond the initial instructions and guide questions, contributors could respond as they saw fit. In several cases, authors reflected on their engagements with activism and how it informs their research. Namazov, for example, critically reflects on their activist past in Baku and how their maarifchi position continues to influence their research and knowledge production in and on queer activists and NGOs in their home country Azerbaijan. Likewise, in reflecting about their experiences of navigating their insider–outsider status while researching intimate partner violence in same-sex couples in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, Aitbayeva (2024, in this issue) complicates the assumed commonality of a ‘local’ researcher’s positionality and that of their research participants, explaining how their social class and educational background made them look like a ‘privileged’ outsider, despite other shared identities.

Others’ reflections spoke to the ways in which positionality matters for personal safety. In addition to Aitbayeva’s (2024, in this issue) reflection on the positionings that enable her to engage in feminist activism in Central Asia without fear of state repression, Kurmanov and Kurmanov (2024, in this issue) discuss how their positionality as an interracial, queer and transnational couple has shaped their methodological enquiry into trans visibility in Kyrgyzstan. In particular, they highlight how their own everyday experiences have informed their understanding of the challenges and difficulties faced by trans people on public transportation, at home and on the street in Bishkek. Coming from a different perspective, meanwhile, Cheburashka’s (2024, in this issue) research note points to other strategies for protecting respondents from harm, via strategies such as self-censorship and publishing under a pen name (Honig 2024; Sou 2021), as well as raising questions about how such practices affect readers’ evaluation of the account presented.

As noted above, we do not contend that reflexivity is a magic bullet. Knowledge production is never ‘value-free’ and involves multiple subjectivities (England 1994), and reflexivity is always incomplete and partial. Yet we are also clear that engaging with the challenges and contradictions that arise from our entanglements in hierarchies of power and knowledge is essential in order to change the continuing marginalization of both LGBTQ+ and regional knowledge.

Research

In broader terms, the articles in this issue also contribute to the growing body of literature that discusses the methodological obstacles of researching queer communities and issues in societies and countries where expressions of non-heterosexuality are heavily censored and repressed. This is most directly addressed by Kondakov (2024, in this issue), who asks how researchers can learn about queer experiences in countries such as Uzbekistan, where queer people are hidden from view by repressive legislation? By cataloguing the various methods that have been used by previous academic studies to learn about queer experiences in Arab, African and Asian countries that criminalize non-heterosexuality, Kondakov concludes that issues of non-normative sexualities and genders are most suited to study through qualitative methods (e.g., ethnography, participant observation, interviews and focus groups) that have the potential to be flexible enough to manage the dangers of researching sensitive or taboo topics and responsive to the needs and circumstances of those being researched.

Given this, the predominance of critical approaches and qualitative methods in the contributions to this issue is perhaps unsurprising, speaking to understandings of knowledge as fundamentally situated and political in contrast to positivist approaches that seek to generalize and universalize, often using quantitative data to do so. At the same time, this does not mean that there is no place for quantitative work in understanding research into LGBTQ+ issues and activism in repressive contexts, as Olijar and Li (2024, in this volume) and Dall’Agnola (2024, in this volume) demonstrate. In one respect, they are quite different from other contributions in focusing on public opinion regarding LGBTQ+ people, rather than investigating LGBTQ+ experiences or issues.

In other ways, however, they face similar research challenges. Simply generating or accessing data for analysis is often problematic. Conducting public opinion polls in Central Asia on any kind of topic is heavily monitored and restricted by local regimes (Haerpfer and Kizilova 2020; Ysmanova 2024). Inclusion of questions about LGBTQ+ issues may result in permission to conduct a survey being refused, forcing a choice between having no survey at all or having the survey, but with some questions excluded (Ysmanova 2024). For opinion polling centres, the latter option is likely to be preferred, even though it serves to invisibilize LGBTQ+ people and issues. At the same time, even if questions are included in surveys, the risk of censorship at a later stage remains, as Dall’Agnola (2024, in this volume) discusses.

As with qualitative research methods, safety is also a consideration in deciding whether to include questions on issues of sexuality and gender identity that may provoke strong reactions. The Bishkek-based Central Asian Barometer, for example, which conducts surveys in all countries of Central Asia, including Turkmenistan, does not feature any attitudinal questions about non-heterosexual people in their questionnaires, mainly due to security concerns for their interviewers (Ysmanova 2024). Such concerns are not abstract, as the experience of Olijar and Li (2024, in this volume) shows. Olijar and Li were forced to cease their fieldwork in Shymkent, because when asked about their attitudes towards queer people, some of their interlocutors accused Olijar of spreading LGBTQ+ propaganda and of themselves belonging to the queer community.

Such experiences confirm the inescapably political nature of knowledge production and the impossibility of solving the complex ethical and political challenges and dilemmas involved in research through techniques or technology alone. While imperfect, messy and challenging, we see far greater potential for reflexivity to facilitate scholars in conducting research ethically and critically. Reflecting this, the authors in this issue neither aim to offer definitive accounts of queer lives in Central Asia and the Caucasus, and nor do they claim to be representative. Instead, they offer a small glimpse into the power dynamics and challenges of researching/studying LGBTQ+ communities and issues in societies that offer little space for ‘queer visibility’. And that, perhaps, is all that we as editors can hope for.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the authors who contributed to this issue for their patience and for sharing their experiences, work and knowledge with us. The publication process was a bumpy road, but we made it! Cai would also like to thank Jasmin for her leadership and firm steering throughout the process of developing and finalizing the issue, without which the project would not have made it to its destination.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 In contrast to our use of LGBTQ+ to describe particular identities and communities that relate to specific configurations of sexuality and/or gender, we use ‘queer’ here to denote a wide range of sexualities, gender identities and expressions, all of which do not conform to cisheteropatriarchal norms of gender and/or sexuality. As such, our use of ‘queer’ does not describe a specific identity or experience per se.