ALYONA
I woke up a few hours later. At first, I didn’t understand what was going on, but then the doctors told me that the baby was fine and gave me my phone. I watched the video like five hundred times. We named our son Georgy. Gosha, for short.
OLGA
Alyona and Gosha were transferred to a different unit on the first floor. For the next several days, I would go up to the window and Alyona would show him to me through the glass. On the sixth day, they were finally discharged. I came to pick them up with presents and cakes for all the doctors. The nurse came out, looked around, and realized that I was the father and gave me the baby. We got in the car and went home.
ALYONA
We’ve never encountered any homophobia. We run our business out of our home. A lot of people come over and they see that we share a bed. Everyone knows everything. At preschool, the teachers get it, too.
OLGA
Everyone at my work knows about my life. It’s harder with my parents. They’re divorced. I don’t talk to my mother very often. Gosha was two years old before she ever saw him. I didn’t talk to my father for almost ten years until he found out that I was living with a woman and that we have a son. For him, this came as a major shock because he is very conservative. But he was eager to be part of our lives and support us. Since then, we’ve been seeing each other.
ALYONA
We’re thinking about having a second child. This time, Olga will be the one who gets pregnant. But I’m very worried again. Our apartment is too small for four people. We’ll have to figure something out before we have the baby. Take out a mortgage.
OLGA
We’ve already had two insemination attempts. So far it’s been unsuccessful. But I decided ahead of time that we’re not going to take any breaks. We’re determined to move forward and have three kids. We are optimistic and believe that everything will turn out OK.
OLGA KURACHYOVA
“After we broke up, I felt the fear dissipate.”
Galiya and I met in May 2010. In July, we moved in together. In August, we had a wedding in Kazantyp.
People get married at the Kazantyp festival, which happens every year in the Crimea. There are posters all over the festival grounds that say that on this day there will be this kind of wedding. You have to show up early and sign up for it. There are no restrictions; you don’t need to show them any documents, you just need to give them your real or fake names. Then you’re pronounced spouses, asked to kiss, and issued a Kazantyp wedding certificate.
In some ways this was, of course, a joke wedding. But since we wouldn’t be able to get legally married anyway, it was a real enough occasion for us.
Before we got married and even before we moved in together, one day, while I was lovingly looking at Galiya, I suddenly realized that I wanted to have her children. I didn’t say anything and was startled by the thought, which seemed completely out of place at that time. No matter how hard they try, two women can’t conceive a child without outside help. Sperm banks, donors, and adoption weren’t yet on my mind. This was the second same-sex relationship I had ever been in. My first experience was a deep, dark secret that only my very closest friends knew about. With Galiya, it was immediately clear that this time it was serious.
Incidentally, I am genuinely glad that we met when we were 23 and not, say, 13. I had several phases of overcoming internalized homophobia that went on for months at a time. At first, I would only tell close friends about my new relationship, then various random acquaintances, and then I finally told my parents. Eventually, I began writing about it on social networking sites and became an LGBT activist. Galiya started dating girls when she was a teenager, but it wasn’t until she met me that she came out to her mother, telling her about me and about what her earlier girlfriends had really been.
At a certain point, we started talking about having children together. We wanted at least three: two that we would give birth to, and one adopted from an orphanage. At first, we couldn’t imagine how we would raise our children in a homophobic state, and from time to time we would talk about moving to some cozy civilized country. But these thoughts were hard to swallow. I would always ask myself, “Why should we have to move just because our government is stupid?”
The mass demonstrations after the 2011 Duma elections gave us hope. After coming out publicly, we felt safe. In the summer of 2012, I said I wouldn’t be afraid to give birth even in this fascist country. We existed in a big, beautiful gay-friendly bubble; it would protect us.
By the end of 2012 and beginning of 2013, all of that fearlessness was gone. The law banning “the propaganda of homosexuality” had already led to some terrible consequences: in various Russian cities, under various circumstances, there have been attacks on bisexuals, lesbians, gays, the transgendered and gender queer-everyone whose sexual orientation or gender identity is not the status quo. The initiative to introduce a law that would take away the parental rights of all individuals who “practice an untraditional sexual orientation,” in the words of the Duma deputies, is so monstrous that it’s frightening to think about its potential consequences.
In the summer of 2013, I found myself in the grips of terror. I was overcome with pervasive, all-consuming panic. I didn’t know what to do. Should I pack my suitcases and apply for visas? Stay in Russia and fight? And what about children—when and where would I be able to have them?
We had already told one of our friends that we wanted to have a child by him. He even agreed. It wasn’t a done deal, but we’d been discussing how the three of us would raise a child together. However, a year after we began talking about it, I realized I was completely unprepared to even think about having a child in today’s Russia.
I talked about this to my friends, and they all asked, “Olga, do you really think that they’re going to come after two women that aren’t even registered as a family, who are just living together, and seize their children?” I told them, “Could we have imagined a year ago that people would spend a year in pre-trial detention just for showing up to Bolotnaya Square to protest like we had?”
In July 2013, Galiya and I suddenly broke up. At first, I couldn’t get used to it. I was completely disoriented. At the same time, I felt the fear beginning to dissipate, which came as a complete surprise. I no longer had to think about the issue of having children as a single-sex family in this fascist situation at this point in my life. It’s painful to write about this, to talk about it and even think about it, but at that time, I was genuinely relieved.
I’m still upset about the plight of single-sex families with children in Russia. I’m very afraid for LGBT teens. But worrying about others and trembling with fear for your own family are very different things.
Galiya and I are on excellent terms right now and, as it turns out, great friends. We support each other and advise each other on all sorts of things. We don’t regret anything and know that everything between us was for the best.
I am queer. I fall in love with a person’s soul, and am completely indifferent to their gender identity. Neither the fascist laws, nor what my mother would have wanted, nor anything else can hold any sway over my heart.
I still want three children. I don’t know what kind of family I will have them in—a homosexual one, or a heterosexual one, or perhaps I will have them on my own. I understand full well that if I end up having a husband, there will be nothing threatening our family. If I do it alone, it might be difficult, but at least it won’t be frightening. But if I have a wife, I will once again find myself in a horrifying, vulnerable position. And then, it will have to be suitcases, the station, and emigration for us.