Комсомольская правда, May 27, 1994
Pseudoscientific article on cures or treatments for homosexuality.
1994
This intensely pseudoscientific, pontificating interview with a spurious expert (the interviewer states unequivocally that Holand has “no academic degrees or designations”) is interesting as an article in a mainstream Russian newspaper in the year following the repeal of article 121 of the Russian criminal code (Russia’s law prohibiting “sodomy” or мужеложство). To whatever extent it may or may not be directly derivative of it, the article’s title is reminiscent of a line from the 1970 American film The Boys in the Band, which was something of a psychological exploration of the self-loathing and self-destructive behavior of American gay men in the late 1960s. That line is “show me a happy homosexual, and I’ll show you a gay corpse.” The suggestion that gay men are socially unviable or incapable of leading satisfying, productive lives is a through line of this piece, maintained with an unjustified a priori authority. At no point does the interviewer Nikolai Efimovich question how this uncredentialed man achieved the position of “head of the department of sexual perversions of the Nizhegorodsky clinical psychoneurological hospital” and “pre-eminent psychotherapist of the Nizhny Novogord region.” Efimovich generally does not critically interrogate the sententiously pronounced generalizations about the “tragic nature” of the gay “passion,” the sordid nature of gay courtship (centered around public toilets), and the nature of “real” or “normal” masculinity. In the one moment where Efimovich seems to enter an objection, he himself misrepresents accepted scientific wisdom by suggesting that Freud ultimately concluded that homosexuality was an incurable pathology, when in fact Freud determined that it was not a pathology. In the statement and restatement of the incompatibility of homosexuality with the wider structure of Russian society, where the heterosexual procreative family is the only model of “normal” existence for the Russian citizen, the mores of that wider society, as characterized by the interviewee, seem permanently and peremptorily established and unimpeachable. There is never any question of society being in flux or the possibility of organic social change which might mean that gay men might be more integrated into society, that they would not be forced to seek parters in public toilet stalls, that they might live productive and fulfilling lives openly as gay men. Such scenarios are not mentioned even as hyptheticals.
Homosexuality (https://lccn.loc.gov/sh85061780)--Russia (Federation) (https://lccn.loc.gov/n92056007)
Gay men (https://lccn.loc.gov/sh85061798)--Russia (Federation)
Russia
Komsomolskaya Pravda, May 27 1994