Queer As Art issue 2 April-May-June 2017 | Page 33

Western activists. They had access to
Western gay media and films, and met
Western activists who travelled to the
German Democratic Republic such as
Peter Tatchell. But despite benefiting from
this support, the dawning LGBT
community still faced state intransigeance
and surveillance. In spite of this, the
activists persisted with some success, and
i n 1 9 7 7 , t h e H I B ' s w o m e n g ro u p
attempted to organize a nation-wide
lesbian meeting.
But this emergence of an actual
LGBT community in East Berlin, due to ties
with the West, remained an exception in
the East. In most other socialist countries,
gay scenes developed later, with the
emergence of underground movements
such as the punk scene, and on a smaller
scale. Homosexuality continued to be met
with pity at best, and disgust at worst, as it
was still associated with the West. The
consequences of the taboo and
repression that marked this era are still felt
today. Having missed on these defining
years, LGBT people in post-socialist
countries tend to have a lesser sense of
community, of togetherness, of a shared
fight throughout the whole community.
They also suffer from a feeling of having
no history on which to base their
experiences, no “elders” to listen to and
take advice from.
This time, in between wars and
massive political awakening from all
occidental countries, appears as a
nourishing field for the growth of radical
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political movements. The opposition
between capitalist and communist parties,
the losing of trust in the institutions after
the second world war, the discovery of the
horrors of fascists regimes created a
propice environment for the development
of new ideas. While the sixties were still
shy in terms of social changes, the
seventies call for more radical actions and
a desire to include more people.
LGBT rights get a place more and
more important in public debates. As
LGBT groups appear and gain influence,
they create their own history. Being LGBT
and being out becomes a political act, as
countries try to enforce, with more or less
zeal, the ideal of the nuclear family. But it
still stays a sort of side-effect of other
movements, and people keep facing
important backlash, being denied jobs,
housing or proper healthcare.
Furthermore, politics tend to
instrumentalize the issue on both sides of
the political spectrum, conservatives
raising it as a proof that socialism brings
decadence while in Eastern Europe,
communists present it as the ultimate
perversion of a liberal lifestyle.