The unspeakable queerness in Romania’s communist period: Lesbian and queer accounts beyond gay men’s experiences

Abstract

Informed by interviews with queer women, nonbinary persons, and a trans man, this article aims to fill a major gap in the Southeastern European sexuality studies. It does that by depicting and analyzing several microhistories from communism (1947–1989) and from the early 1990s Romania. The 1990s were also marked by the communist legacy and same-sex relationships continued to be criminalized until 2001. Since gay men’s accounts are much more represented in the public space and in the incipient literature on queerness in Romania, the article offers an alternative view beyond this tendency, by bringing forth the particularities and experiences of cisgender women and trans persons and their day-to-day lives within the patriarchal and homophobic society. The article argues that during communism matters of queerness were known, although rarely discussed, and that the accounts of queer women and trans persons were not absent but neglected. Another objective is to offer explanations for the lack of these marginal (ized) accounts in the incipient gender and queer studies literature on Romania.