This article is taken from Stonewall UK’s International Campaigner’s toolkit
Refusing to be defined as ‘other’ and ‘non-traditional’, the Service Project for Transgender People and Their Close Ones T9 NSK’s campaigns subvert the typical ‘tradition’ narrative often used to suppress LGBT people.
A project of both T9 NSK and the Russian LGBT Network, the campaign is titled We Are Traditional. This campaign takes the current Russian understanding for the word ‘queer’ as ‘non-traditional’ and counters it through a series of photographs depicting LGBT people doing ‘traditional’ practices such as shopping together, caring for each other, and having fun together.
Promoting simple images of LGBT people having ‘traditional’ experiences had two goals. The first goal was to amplify the message that LGBT people are just like anybody else. The second was to tackle internalised homophobia, biphobia and transphobia within the LGBT community itself. Organisers explained that discriminatory attitudes towards LGBT people run so deeply throughout Russia that many LGBT people find themselves thinking they are ‘bad’ or ‘other’ – so the campaign was designed to counter these feelings of exclusion, whilst articulating a more inclusive message more broadly.
Predominantly a social media campaign, the response to this new way of framing LGBT people was positive, with more than 300 online publications of the photos and over 2,000 social media ‘likes’. The campaign’s popularity spread to neighbouring countries, including Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine, where campaigners used the hashtag #мытрадиционны to also promote LGBT equality in their own contexts.
Due to capacity issues the campaign hasn’t been continued by T9 NSK. However, their most recent campaign also appeals to ‘traditional values’ through the I’m Here for You campaign.
I’m Here for You is a campaign based on the acceptance of LGBT people by their brothers and sisters. Starting by hosting a focus group for brothers and sisters of LGBT people, T9 NSK collected their stories of love and acceptance to share with the larger LGBT community as well as their allies.
Although the I’m Here for You campaign is still in the beginning stages, it mirrors the sentiment of We Are Traditional by directly engaging with broader ideas about traditional values.