all 6 comments

[–]ArthnoldManacatsaman🇬🇧🌳🟦 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

My takeaways:

  • I was surprised at how many people were surprinsingly chill about it. Overall it seemed to be 'I'm fine with it, just don't kinda shove it down my throat' - which, to be honest, is fair enough. Even the ones with a broadly negative view tended to have an 'it's not for me but I'm not lobbying for a holocaust' kind of attitude.

  • Before watching the video I thought it would be mostly negative, which I guess tells us more about my stereotypes about the Russian people than it does anything else. I sort of assumed that Russians swallow state propaganda and state propaganda says gay = bad, but clearly I've swallowed some anti-Russian propaganda of my own at some point.

  • However, I wonder to what extent there was a social desirability bias at play. How many people are going to stand with a camera in their face and say 'Yes, I hate gay people, they should be gassed.'? Very few indeed, I would argue.

  • Finally, how representative is this of the opinions of the Russian people in general? The sample seemed to skew younger and urban which we know tend to lean more liberal. Does the average babushka living in a hut in Siberia share the opinions of hip Muscovites?

Very interesting though, thanks for sharing!

[–]julesburm1891[S] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I too am curious what the responses would be if this was only asked of older people or of people in very rural areas. Because in this urban sampling there seemed to be kind of a generational divide and kind of a gender divide. (Older people and men seemed less on board. Although I absolutely adored the older woman who said she loved everyone.) Maybe those divides get wider the more one moves away from urban areas? Or maybe this really is indicative of how average people feel? I hope he’ll do a video where he goes East and asks the same question.

I speak some Russian and have seen some pretty horrible anti-gay state media. So, it was surprising to see that a lot of regular people don’t share the sentiment. It was a little weird how they only thought of gay men though. It didn’t seem to occur to anyone that women are gay too. (They were definitely using the word for man and masculine pronouns in answers.)

[–]soundsituationI myself was once a gay 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Thanks for sharing this:) 1440 made a similar video a couple years back and I recall there being several responses that acknowledged lesbians and bisexual women.

[–]julesburm1891[S] 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

This is a YouTube channel I watch fairly regularly where a guy just asks random people questions on the streets of different Russian cities. (It’s interesting to hear what regular people really think given the very fractured relationship between Russia and the West.)

Anyways, I found this interesting and was curious what your thoughts were. (My big takeaway is there seems to be no “born this way” view of things.)

[–]MarkJeffersonTight defenses and we draw the line 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I realized that most people don't really understand the concept of sexual orientations, even when they say they do. That's why so many people seem to want to call it sexual preference instead. That's how dominant heterosexuality is. Everything else is simply... extra.

People generally fall into 3 camps. Extra is bad, Extra is good, And Extra is neutral, depending on the sexuality/sex. But extra is almost always considered to be down to lifestyle choice. And frequently, sexualities are lumped in with paraphelias and treated as if they were, for better or worse.

Their attitude towards this perceived choice largely depends on which of 3 groups they fall into. Obviously, the last group is usually the best one, as they're the ones mostly likely to believe in leaving people alone to do their own thing. But there can be many libertarian-minded members of the other two groups who will keep to their own business, too. They are also of least concern.

They ones who obviously cause the most problems are the ones of the first two groups who don't believe in leaving people alone, either because they are morally against or morally in favor of same-sex attraction or exclusive same-sex attraction. The latter attitude is of course, much more common in the Western world.

Clearly the pairing with the T can obfuscate surveys like this quite a fair bit. A good reason for why matters of sexuality should be split off from gender identity to minimize conflating the two. Because sometimes we can't exactly tell who people are referring to since trans topics are getting so much public air time nowadays.

[–]RedEyedWarriorGay | Male | 🇮🇪 Irish 🇮🇪 | Antineoliberal | Cocks are Compulsory 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I anticipated that most Muscovites would be fine with us. The ones who weren’t okay with homosexuality just wanted us to leave them alone, which is fine by me. One fella stood out to me, saying he’d slap his son in the ass if his son was gay, which inclines me to think he’s taking the piss (trolling).

I believe that Saint Petersburg would have similar attitudes, or be more accepting. Same with Yekaterinburg. Some other cities and oblasts too. Certainly not all of it.

I’m not gonna pretend that Russia is some form of paradise for gays. No gay marriage, no civil partnerships, not even a form of limited domestic partnerships. Not even at a local or state level, despite being a federation. And compared to other European countries, yes Russia does poorly. But I’d rather live in Russia than in most countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Middle East. But if I had to live in Russia, I know I’d feel safer in certain areas than in others. Also, I’d rather live here in my country, because we have same sex marriage and full adoption rights.