I’m studying at the Benedict school as part of my degree :) How come you’re living in Russia?

About 50% of the girls studying Russian at my college are queer, but every time one of us asks our professor “Как по-русский <> если я девочка,” she says that they d on’t do that in Russia, people aren’t gay in Russia. However, this year our Russian language assistant was not homophobic, or at least in our conversation class she encouraged us to make utopias in which anyone could marry “даже женщина с женщиной и мужчин с мужчином.”

Also:

http://beta.navsi100.com/en/news/621-Natasha-Koroliova-Wants-Lesbian-Sex

for some reason, i also know a lot of queer girls who study russian (including myself, duh). what’s the attraction? i’m teaching ESL at a university here and every single one of my female students has asked me if i have/want a boyfriend. i’m pretty much completely out at home, so it’s been a strange experience to go back “in.” i want to be honest with people here, but i don’t think they’ll understand it. every day i hear people using “gay” as a terrible insult, and then calling someone a “pederast” in the same sentence. on average, i’d say that queerness is about as well received here now as it was in america in the ’50s. people don’t really get it.
i hope you tell your professor that gay people are everywhere (even in russia -gasp). they’re just not out.
to be fair, i’ve only been here a few weeks. i went to an art opening last night and saw a dozen gay looking ladies hanging out with their mullets and huge belt buckles. so i remain hopeful that i will find their secret underground lair.

There are loads of gay guys studying Russian at my university..girls not so much .
I’ve always wondered about the words for getting married in Russian. I mean, obviously gay marriage isn’t legal there, but the way our textbook phrases things is still really weird. ‘To get married (FOR a man/woman)’. Like..for rather than to. It seems odd/implicitly homophobic.

I’ve noticed that Russian is the hipster language at my school? Also the ROTC language, oddly enough. So maybe the confusing overlap between hipsters/the army and lady-lovers is responsible.
My Russian professor is perfectly gay-friendly; she is a supersophisticed, pure intelligentsia lady. She also has lived in the US for 15-20 years. So I think that the liberal, pro-democracy-activist types may be our hope, but you have to search them out.