Discussion100 Russians asked how they feel about gay people

submitted by julesburm1891 from youtu.be

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[–]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.