Abstract: This paper examines the strategies which Bulgarian local and national authorities use to navigate between their desire for access to European initiatives and their attempts not to upset the local, perceived as traditional-minded, electorate. It analyses three case studies: (1) Plovdiv – European Capital of Culture 2019 and the #Balkan Pride project; (2) Varna – European Youth Capital 2017 and the events targeting LGBTI youth; (3) Sofia’s bid to host the European Medicines Agency and the discussions around the rights of its current LGBTI employees and their families. Taken together, these case studies undoubtedly show that the authorities are torn between the “local” and the “European”, constantly attempting to manage the visibility of the LGBTI community in Bulgaria.
Keywords: visibility, invisibility, LGBTI, queer, Europe
Sofia, Friday, 13 December 2019, shortly after 7:30 pm. Some two hundred of us have gathered in the western part of Narodno Sabranie (National Assembly) Square to protest for the rights of same-sex families in Bulgaria. The protest was organized in a day after the previous afternoon it became clear that the Supreme Administrative Court had refused to recognize the marriage of two Bulgarian women contracted in the UK. Brief speeches from the makeshift stage have ended a short while ago, with one activist saying that the Supreme Administrative Court has failed “to see us”. After this “official” part, some of us are dancing to George Michael’s “Freedom”, while others are continuing to hold placards towards the National Assembly building. Some eight or nine of us are wearing reflective vests identifying ourselves to the police as the people responsible for order and safety during the protest. We know the procedure – just a few of the people in the square are attending a protest for the first time. A bTV crew shows up late: the cameraman turns on the camera, the journalist takes out a microphone for an interview. Someone shouts at us to gather in the frame, and in less than ten seconds the scattered crowd congregates behind the journalist and in front of the camera – with placards and rainbow flags. I’m thinking how the speed and lack of any hesitation among the protesters is a clear sign that these are people who are not only not afraid of being seen – they want to be seen. Despite the footage shot, bTV did not air a report about our protest.
I begin this paper with this brief autoethnography both as an introduction to the topic of the visibility of the LGBTI community (i.e., lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and intersex people)[1] in Bulgaria and to discuss my position on that topic. For professional, political, and personal reasons, I am closely involved with the LGBTI rights movement in Bulgaria. Exploring the movement from the position of a queer man and activist is no exception in queer anthropology, which is explicitly committed to an anti-homophobic approach (Wilson, 2019) and which welcomes voices of insider informants, ethnographers and researchers (Weston, 1993; Walks, 2014). Even outside of queer anthropology, cultural anthropology generally accepts the combination of activism and research within so-called engaged anthropology, and even questions the ethics of anthropologists who take a non-interventionist stance when it comes to defending human rights (Low and Merry, 2010). Anthropologists, at least since the 1970s, have therefore been expected to be more self-reflexive and to discuss how their own identity shapes the way they produce ethnography, rather than claiming to reveal some existing objective reality. This process is known as the “reflexive turn” and it was triggered, inter alia, by the entry of feminists and members of ethnic and sexual minorities into anthropology, who found it to be rife with biases pretending to be “objective” (Lewin and Leap, 1996). The question, then, is not whether insiders have the right to research the LGBTI community, but how to take a critical distance from the subject of their research; to distinguish “self” from “others” so that their work can ultimately have scientific value (Roscoe, 1996: 202–203). Because of all this, I will make some methodological clarifications.
In this paper I explore three different case studies that illustrate the complexities of the visibility of LGBTI people in Bulgaria, especially in relation to the attempts of the authorities to regulate this visibility with regard to different audiences. The three case studies are: (1) the #Balkan Pride exhibition as part of the Plovdiv – European Capital of Culture 2019 programme; (2) LGBTI+ days in Varna in connection with the Varna – European Youth Capital 2017 initiative; and (3) Sofia’s bid to host the European Medicines Agency (EMA). These case studies have been selected both because of the inherent tension between “local” and “European” regarding the visibility of LGBTI people, and because of my limited role as an activist in their development. I have not been directly involved in decision-making processes on the part of the LGBTI movement in any of these case studies, which allows me take a critical distance as a researcher from the research question.
Second, as empirical material for this study I use interviews with key informants, media publications, and publicly available opinions and positions, and in the case of #Balkan Pride, participant observation of the closing event. Particularly important among this material are the interviews with two LGBTI activists who were directly involved in the cases under study. Although in some cases I received information in real time due to my affiliation with the movement, I have endeavoured here to use the data obtained from my research interviews. The latter are audio-documented and were conducted in strict distinction from other communication between myself and the respondents, with their informed consent and a clearly communicated research role of the interviewer.
Despite the methodological decisions thus made, the researcher’s distinction between the culture they describe and the culture they create (Roscoe, 1996: 207) cannot be entirely precise. Knowledge cannot be strictly divided into that which we have collected as data within research efforts and that which we have perceived as members of a community. This applies to both the collection of empirical material and its interpretation. Moreover, the choice of research field and research question in general is always influenced by the identity of the researcher. The question of LGBTI people’s visibility as part of their (our) struggle for recognition (Taylor et al., 1994) is of interest to me not only as a researcher. Conversely, part of my motivation for this study is to fill existing gaps in research on LGBTI issues in Bulgaria. To put it another way, this study on the visibility of the LGBTI community in Bulgaria is itself a quest for the latter’s greater visibility in an academic context. After all these caveats, the researcher’s self-reflexivity should be transformed into the responsibility of the readers to read this paper – as any other research text – with the necessary dose of critical reflection on the researcher’s position.
(In)visibility
In James Cameron’s sci-fi film Avatar (2009), “I see you” is a typical greeting in Na’vi, the indigenous language spoken on the planet Pandora where the film is set. Through this greeting, the indigenous Na’vi recognize your presence, but it is also part of the planet’s larger life-philosophy based on networking and mutual respect (Avatar Fandom). The importance of seeing is found in different forms and different cultures, and the word very often means more than the physiological act of perceiving forms through our eyes and brains. In the English-speaking world, “seeing someone” means dating them. In the Bulgarian context, however, the etymological relationship between the verbs vizhdam (see) and nenavizhdam (loathe; the prefix ne- means “not”) is striking, as if “not to see you” or “to stop seeing you” (i.e., not to recognize your existence) is among the strongest sanctions we can apply to someone. Conversely, when we arrange to “see” someone (da se vidim), we never mean only being in visual contact, but also communicating, sharing ideas, experiences, which in itself implies high levels of closeness or even intimacy. The antiquated word sgleda, referring to the practice of visiting the home of a prospective bride for the purpose of oglezhdane (“inspecting, taking a look” at her), also means more than visual contact and includes getting to know the young woman, the family, their situation. The verb gledam (first meaning, “look”) in modern times also means to watch and/or experience (a movie, a TV show, the news, a concert) or to care (for a child or a sick person).
It is therefore not surprising that, transposed to the realm of the political, the problem of visibility goes beyond being visually seen in a public environment; it also means winning the right to be in that public environment, to be recognized as a legitimate part of it. “Recognition is a form of social visibility, with crucial consequences on the relation between minority groups and the mainstream. … For racial and sexual minorities, being invisible means being deprived of recognition,” writes Andrea Brighenti (2007: 329). Without entering into a lengthy discussion of the nature of the public sphere, we assume that it is a field in which individuals and communities position themselves to participate in public debate and collective decision-making (Habermas, 1989), and that this positioning implicitly requires that they be visible to the others. However, not all actors placed in this field are equal, insofar as it is constructed and directly entangled in power relations (Arendt, 1958: 199–207). To be seen and recognized as a legitimate participant in public debate is therefore itself a matter of struggle: to be seen but also to have a say on your image (Brighenti, 2007: 333). To this we add Judith Butler’s (2015: 86) position that a body in the political sphere is not devoid of its characteristics such as gender, race or sexuality. This is particularly important for LGBTI people, who often (though not always) have access to publicity insofar as they participate in it without displaying identity markers such as sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression, that is, if they make precisely these markers of their identities invisible. This, however, does not allow them to raise in the public sphere their political demands which are based precisely on these identities.
For LGBTI people, visibility has specific dimensions – on an individual and collective level. For many of us, it is hypothetically possible to navigate our life trajectories without openly identifying as LGBTI: either passively, using the presumption of heteronormativity; or actively, misleading others. In such a hypothesis, part of our subjectivity is visible, while another part remains invisible – it is not seen by the others, who categorize us as part of the majority. In Western societies, from which we mainly import concepts and terms referring to queer life, this condition is called being “in the closet”. This metaphor is directly related to visibility – what remains in the closet is invisible. Conversely, the term for disclosing a non-heterosexual orientation or gender identity other than one’s biological sex describes how what has been hidden becomes visible: “coming out” (of the closet). Coming out (especially to one’s biological family) is thought of as a watershed moment in an LGBTI person’s life, it is often a very emotional experience and, according to some researchers, it is a necessary step in claiming LGBTI identity (Weston, 1997: 41).
The collective visibility of the LGBTI community is directly related to the visibility of LGBTI people on an individual level and practically cannot exist without it. The relationship between the two is brilliantly illustrated by Harvey Milk, the first openly gay politician elected to public office in California. In 1978, three weeks before his assassination, Milk gave a speech in which he said:
Every gay person must come out. As difficult as it is, you must tell your immediate family. You must tell your relatives. You must tell your friends if indeed they are your friends. You must tell the people you work with. You must tell the people in the stores you shop in. Once they realize that we are indeed their children, that we are indeed everywhere, every myth, every lie, every innuendo will be destroyed once and for all. And once you do, you will feel so much better. (Quoted in Garretson, 2018: 84)
In tune with the 1960s feminist message that the personal is political, Milk mapped out a political strategy according to which the more visible LGBTI people are in their personal lives, the more likely social and political change would be. This continues to be the credo of LGBTI movements in countries where the visibility of LGBTI people does not put them in imminent danger of persecution. At the same time, LGBTI people who have come out on an individual level can participate in collective actions and processes through which they can contribute to positioning the community in the public sphere. This most often happens in the street (pride parades, protests) or in the media (interviews, but also representations in popular culture and the arts in general). The entry of these bodies, faces and stories into the public sphere – not devoid of sexuality and gender, but quite the opposite – is a declaration of self-identity to several publics: other participants in the public sphere whose behaviour is relevant to our community; those in power whose decisions determine our lives; other LGBTI people who realize that they are not alone. In other words, through individual and collective visibility, LGBTI people generate a valuable resource through which to demand resolution of pressing needs that are often created precisely by the heteronormative image which the public sphere and its rules are built on.
It is not surprising then that one of the most persistent narratives against the LGBTI community in the Bulgarian public sphere attacks precisely its desire for visibility. Focusing on the issue of “flaunting”, this narrative argues that the existence of LGBTI people may be tolerated as long as they are such in secret: in their bedrooms, but not on public transport, on the street, on television or in parliament. Any act aimed at visibility is perceived as an attack and triggers a reaction: from politicians, media, organizations, and social groups. Sofia Pride continues to be condemned despite its more than ten-year tradition, and in the 2019 local elections three mayoral candidates in Sofia included its ban in their election platforms. Perhaps most telling is the example of the billboard destroyed in Varna (and the subsequent removal of billboards in other cities) in 2018, which depicted two men embracing under the caption “Don’t worry. It’s just love” (BGOnAir). The invisibility of the community is made a condition for its toleration, or in other words: the LGBTI community in Bulgaria is asked to abandon perhaps the only resource that can empower it politically. It, of course, refuses to do so and seeks ways to secure a visible place in the Bulgarian public sphere. By way of the following three case studies, we will examine some of those attempts to gain visibility and the reactions against them.
Fig. 1. A billboard of the campaign “Don’t Worry. It’s Just Love”, which was defaced and/or removed in several cities in Bulgaria in 2018. Source: GLAS Foundation.
Case Study 1: #Balkan Pride and Plovdiv – European Capital of Culture 2019
European Capitals of Culture (ECOC) is an initiative of the European Union launched in 1985, which strives to put culture at the heart of European cities. Among its objectives are to “highlight the richness and diversity of cultures in Europe”, “celebrate the cultural features European share”, and “increase European citizens’ sense of belonging to a common cultural area” (Europe.eu). After working on its application since 2010, in 2014 Plovdiv was selected as European Capital of Culture 2019 by an international panel of seven European and six Bulgarian experts (Dnevnik). Plovdiv won the ECOC 2019 title with its programme developed around the concept “Together”. Written in English, the slogan of the programme was visualized on the Kamenitza stairs in the city centre, in colourful 3D letters reminiscent of the colours of the rainbow. “Together”, however, did not visibly include the LGBTI community: according to Plovdiv Municipality, the concept “brings together people of different generations, ethnicities, religions, with different professions and a common vision for the cultural development of the city and the entire South Central Region of Bulgaria” (Plovdiv Municipality). LGBTI people were not mentioned in the bid book with which Plovdiv won the title – unlike those of other Bulgarian cities bidding for it. For example, Varna proposed in its bid book the Walk4Pride project, which included a four-month walk for LGBTI tolerance from Varna to Italy (Varna 2019 Bid Book: 36).
In Plovdiv, the ECOC initiative was implemented almost entirely on a project basis, with the municipal Plovdiv 2019 Foundation funding projects selected through open calls within and outside the initiative’s bid book. It was through such an open call on a competitive basis that the #Balkan Pride project, proposed by the Sofia-based GLAS (Gays and Lesbians Accepted in Society) Foundation, was selected for funding. The project “present[ed] photos, artefacts and audiovisual installations from pride parades in big Balkan cities, including Sofia” and sought “to present a contemporary reading of Balkan traditions in the context of global society and our digitalized reality” (Plovdiv 2019). The project was actually part of a long-term effort by the GLAS Foundation to reimagine the Balkans, the LGBTI community and activism through culture and art. In an interview with me, Simeon, of GLAS, said that they had seen in the Plovdiv 2019 competition an opportunity to further develop this idea of theirs, whose partial implementation had begun with a small exhibition within the Sofia Pride Arts programme in the 2018 Sofia Pride season.
The rest of the case study is known to the public. In March 2019, the local chapters of the nationalist VMRO party and the Bulgarian Socialist Party declared they were against the project and demanded its withdrawal from the cultural calendar. They went as far as demanding the resignation of the Plovdiv 2019 Foundation’s artistic director Svetlana Kuyumdzhieva, but this demand did not find support in the City Council. Graffiti reading “No to gay propaganda in Plovdiv”, “Thieves”, and “Pedals” (a slur for gay men), were sprayed overnight on the walls of the Foundation’s headquarters on 19 March 2019. In April, the tension around the project was reported by the The Guardian under the headline “Homophobia scandal hits Plovdiv, Bulgaria’s European capital of culture”, and the story was then picked up by a number of other international media outlets. The exhibition opened as planned at SKLAD on 4 July to intense interest, while VMRO activists organized a peaceful protest against it in front of the venue. A closing discussion and a concert by Mila Robert took place on 16 July – this time, without giving rise to protests.
Fig. 2. Part of the #Balkan Pride exhibition. In the centre: the kuker (mummer) made for the creative campaign of Sofia Pride in 2017. Source: Personal archive.
Simeon said he wasn’t surprised by the reaction. On the contrary, he saw it as part of the trend towards a hardening of opposition to LGBTI initiatives since the debate on the Istanbul Convention in Bulgaria:[2] “We have become permanent sparring partners with nationalists and patriots.” He was happy that the project ultimately went ahead, which at some points had seemed unlikely. There was speculation that Plovdiv mayor Ivan Totev had been ready to withdraw his support for the project until The Guardian article appeared. That is, once the case got on the radar of international media, the local authorities began worrying about what is commonly referred to in Bulgaria as “making a fool of yourself before foreigners”. This was undoubtedly related to the European character of the initiative under which the project was being implemented. Part of the attacks on the project, by the way, were about its being implemented with municipal funding, therefore the GLAS team had discussed declining the funding but implementing the planned activities anyway. It didn’t come to that.
The #Balkan Pride project met with such fierce opposition precisely because of the visibility-seeking LGBTI community. “Their biggest fear was that we would organize a pride parade in Plovdiv. This is what upset them,” Simeon said. Indeed, this was initially claimed by VMRO (Dnevnik). Even after it had become clear that there were no plans for holding a pride parade in Plovdiv, Borislav Inchev, chairman of VMRO-Plovdiv, said that the exhibition was “the same as holding a gay parade in Plovdiv” (Dnevnik). VMRO MP Alexander Sidi declared that the exhibition would be stopped “by all legal, and if need be, illegal means” (ibid.). The reaction of some Bulgarian media, which also showed concern about the international coverage of the case, was interesting: according to bTV, for example, “British media implicate[d] Plovdiv’s name in homophobia scandal” – as if the scandal were caused by British media, not by Plovdiv municipal councillors.
Fig. 3. Screenshot of bTV’s official Facebook page showing The Guardian article. bTV headline: “Homophobia scandal in Plovdiv over gay-themed photo exhibition”.
During my fieldwork in Plovdiv in May 2019, I met Svetlana Kuyumdzhieva, who said that the city’s residents were not strongly homophobic and that the uproar over the exhibition was just a political game. Shortly thereafter, she said that consideration was being given to a last-minute change of the time or location of the project’s opening event as a safety measure (this ultimately did not happen). Indeed, it is not clear from all the media hype what Plovdiv residents – apart from some small but vociferous politicized groups – thought of the #Balkan Pride project. These groups undoubtedly left a stain on the city and undermined the “Togetherness” of Plovdiv’s European initiative. However, Simeon of GLAS was pleasantly surprised by the high attendance at the actual events:
The controversy over the exhibition started in February, but it was scheduled to open in July anyway. In this period we managed to screen a documentary called OUT, about coming out, at Lucky Cinema in Plovdiv. I was very worried about the result of this screening, because it was attended by no more than ten to fifteen people. Five of them were hecklers who left halfway through the film, standing up, swearing, verbally attacking... And I was wondering that if a film that has a very low level of publicity – a dark room, you sit down, watch, and leave – if that doesn’t get our community to come, could the exhibition be successful at all. However, the result was quite different because at the opening ... despite the silent protest across the street, there were actually an awful lot of people inside. Many times more people: people from the community as well as people who had come to support [the community] and people who were angry about all this aggression ... And we spoke with many people from the community who were happy that this was happening there. … For me, this is the most valuable thing: not the emergence [of an LGBTI community], because there is a community there [in Plovdiv], but its empowerment: not being afraid to go out and support such a project and be there, even though there’s a human chain of protesters. (Simeon)
Case Study 2: LGBTI+ Days in Varna and European Youth Capital 2017
The European Youth Capital (EYC) is an initiative of the European Youth Forum, an international platform representing over 100 youth organizations in Europe. The title is awarded to a European city each year through competitive selection of project proposals. Thus, in 2014 it was officially announced that Varna’s application had been approved and that it would be the European Youth Capital in 2017 under the slogan “InnoWave” because of its focus on social innovation (Varna2017). Prior to the final selection in 2014, Varna Municipality announced that they were working on final improvements to the application, including ones aimed at “involving new, untapped, youth communities in municipal initiatives and events” (Varna24). This, however, is not evident in Varna’s bid book, which made little to no mention of vulnerable youth and youth from minorities; LGBTI were not mentioned at all (Innowave Varna 2017 BidBook).
The subsequent developments in this case are not known to the public and have been reconstructed from an interview with Veneta, of the Sofia-based Youth LGBT Organization Deystvie (Action). She said that in the summer of 2017, the organization was contacted by the European Youth Forum, which told them that there was a need for support for LGBTI-focused youth events in Varna. Deystvie, together with the then active informal collective Queer Squad (Sofia), committed to partner in organizing such events in Varna and established communication with the European Youth Capital team.
We had developed a programme [of events] which they had to approve. We had ultimately agreed on a budget of BGN 1,000, for which we would organize a week of events in Varna. A contract had also been drawn up, but it was never signed because while they were discussing the programme there, their terms became clear: the events we were to organize should not be officially associated with the European Youth Capital initiative in any way. That is to say, the funding was to be given to us under some condition forbidding us from telling where we got it from. Now we would have perhaps reacted differently, but back then we decided that we would go ahead and hold our events without asking them for money. (Veneta)
When the problem arose in communication with the Varna European Youth Capital team, Veneta contacted the European Youth Forum again, seeking support to resolve the issue. They stressed their view that the events should take place under the umbrella of European Youth Capital, but admitted that they had no right to interfere in the implementation, which remained the prerogative of the Bulgarian team. In the course of communication, it became clear that the funding was entirely from the municipal budget of Varna Municipality, which Veneta thinks is the likely reason why the decision was blocked in the Managing Board of the organizers of European Youth Capital 2017.
Thus, in the period 16–21 October 2017 in Varna, Deystvie and Queer Squad held – on a voluntary basis and with their own funding – a number of events for the LGBTI community, including lectures, screenings, a book launch, and a party. A member of the Varna EYC team supported the events in a personal capacity, helping with contacts and organizing locations. The events attracted moderate attendance (some more than others) and did not get any media coverage. They were organized without any connection to the then ongoing European Youth Capital initiative, and were therefore not included in its programme or promoted through its channels. From the perspective of the Varna EYC initiative, these events remained invisible.
Fig. 4. A photo of one of the LGBTI-themed events organized in Varna in October 2017. Source: Queer Squad’s Facebook page.
While we were there, we managed to meet with ... the European Youth Capital chairman and people from the team who were working on the initiative. They tried to explain to us why and how we couldn’t get this funding, while we explained why and how it was unacceptable for this to happen. (Veneta)
Although the events ultimately took place, Veneta admitted that today she would have taken a different approach and would have tried to draw media attention to the situation: “We didn’t do it then because we wanted to maintain a partnership relationship, not to discredit the partners... but at the end of the day, were they really partners?” She said that if the case had received media coverage, especially at the international level, it may have been possible to exert pressure on the EYC team and get them to back the events for LGBTI youth in Varna. She drew a parallel with The Guardian article about the #Balkan Pride exhibition in Plovdiv, which had put the issue in a completely different context. She concluded that “without pressure from outside, it will never happen”.
Case Study 3: Sofia and the European Medicines Agency
After the 2016 UK vote to leave the European Union, one of the many questions that needed to be resolved was where the London-based European Medicines Agency (EMA) would relocate. In July 2017, the Bulgarian Council of Ministers decided that Sofia would bid to host EMA in a competitive procedure at European level, in which eighteen other European cities were taking part. At the end of August 2017, LGBT staff members at EMA sent an open letter to the Agency’s executive director and leaders of European institutions, expressing their concern about how the relocation would affect their rights, especially when it comes to recognition of their families (Politico.eu). The letter did not mention Bulgaria or any other member state by name, but expert and media analyses on the subject put the country on the problematic list (Euobserver.com).
Sofia’s candidacy to host EMA was officially presented at a press conference in Brussels in September 2017 by Deputy Health Minister Miroslav Nenkov. There, he answered a journalist’s question related to the concerns of LGBT staff members at EMA. He said that “every year there is a gay parade in Sofia. These people are not discriminated against in our country, Bulgarians are open-minded, they live at a crossroads and have seen it all” (Dnevnik). This answer was particularly problematic. First of all, the Bulgarian state has never officially supported Sofia Pride. On the contrary, coalition partners in the government at the time had repeatedly demanded its ban, while then prime minister Boyko Borisov had commented on Sofia Pride by saying that “they should not flaunt [their sexual orientation] so much” (Dariknews). It was therefore particularly strange that the Bulgarian state was using the long-running Sofia Pride as an argument to defend its political aspirations. And then, the use of the expression “seen it all” undoubtedly showed the low sensitivity of the Bulgarian authorities.
Apart from the ethical issues in this statement, however, the legal ones also need to be addressed. Whether a community is guaranteed equal treatment isn’t a matter of a deputy minister’s subjective feeling, but of a legal analysis of the relevant legislation. This is exactly what leading Bulgarian LGBTI and human rights organizations did in an open letter of 27 September 2017 on Sofia’s bid to host EMA: they highlighted the legal provisions under which the Bulgarian state would not be able to provide the same level of protection to LGBT EMA staff members that they have in the UK or would have in other EU countries (Bulgarian Helsinki Committee). The letter was met with scepticism by Bulgarian media and politicians: several online media outlets ran headlines accusing the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee of “hindering our bid to host” EMA (News.bg), while VMRO (a junior partner in the then coalition government) sent an alert to the prosecutor general, asking him to investigate whether the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee was protecting the interests of foreign countries. According to VMRO, in the letter of the human rights organizations, “strangely and without any logic, the hosting of the Agency is tied to the rights of a group of people with non-traditional sexual orientation, which is contrary to Bulgarian legislation” (Dnes.bg). The coalition partners in the government seemed to have different opinions on whether Bulgarian legislation guarantees the rights of LGBTI people or not. In their alert to the prosecutor general, VMRO also wrote: “We are firmly convinced that the highly educated specialists from the Agency will come to work in Bulgaria and not to demonstrate their sexual orientation” (emphasis added).
Sofia did not win the hosting of EMA, Amsterdam did – in a complex three-round voting system. Sofia dropped out in the first round, receiving only the minimum number of points (three), along with two other applicant cities (Euobserver). Already a month before the announcement of the winner, however, it had become clear that Sofia’s chances were slim. Bulgaria’s application did not include “a plan for relocating the Agency, or a price at which it will use the building promised specifically for it”, among many other structural omissions (Mediapool).
Government Regulation of Visibility
Although they are very different, the three case studies discussed above have many features in common. They illustrate above all the desire of the authorities (be they local or central) in Bulgaria to secure access to European initiatives and the attendant opportunities for gaining funding, tourism, and prestige. In actively seeking such access, however, the authorities are confronted with “European values”, including the rights of LGBTI people, whom they themselves have managed to demonize among what they imagine to be their traditional and conservative electorate. This impossible situation is navigated by those in power by trying to regulate who sees what: thus, we present ourselves to “Europe” as open-minded and tolerant (and as having “seen it all”), but “at home” as supporters of “traditional morality”.
In their attempts to regulate the visibility of the LGBTI community to the local population, the authorities use at least three strategies – of blackout, neutralization, and super-visibility – sometimes simultaneously.
The first strategy, of blackout, directly attempts to reduce the visibility of LGBTI people and/or institutional support for the community. This strategy is particularly evident in the first two case studies – Plovdiv and Varna. The attempts by municipal councillors from different parties to cancel the #Balkan Pride exhibition in Plovdiv were essentially an attempt to restrict the opportunity of the city’s residents and visitors to see fragments of the lives and struggles of LGBTI people. In Varna, on the other hand, the European Youth Capital Association (the organizers of EYC 2017) was willing to tolerate – including to invest in – visibility of the community through thematic events, but made concrete attempts to hide its own support for these events. The motivation, it seems, was to please the European partners (in this case, the European Youth Forum) without incurring potential criticism “at home”. However, in the context of (some) democracy and access to social media, this strategy is less and less viable and is likely to backfire, generating even more visibility. This is particularly true for the Plovdiv case study, where mobilization against the exhibition gave international visibility to the LGBTI community and the institutional homophobia it encounters regularly – although the exhibition was, nevertheless, held. That is also why the authorities often have resort to other strategies.
The second strategy is that of neutralizing visibility (see Panayotov, 2013). Stanimir Panayotov explores persistent constructs, such as that of the political gay mafia, which act as a neutralizer of any higher levels of LGBTI visibility. He argues that these constructs are based on anti-expertism, anti-elitism, and anti-EU sentiments. In the case studies examined in this paper, we can see how this works in practice in the first and third case studies. In the battle against the #Balkan Pride exhibition, the central homophobic trope remained that of “flaunting” (crossing the boundary of “traditional tolerance”), while criticism was levelled at the expertise of Plovdiv 2019’s artistic director, as well as at the use of municipal funding. VMRO, on the other hand, mobilized the mythology of anti-Bulgarian NGOs in an attempt to neutralize the revealed unequal treatment of LGBTI people in Bulgaria compared to other countries bidding to host the European Medicines Agency. In both cases, the LGBTI community’s attempts to make itself and its demands more visible (through an exhibition, Sofia Pride, or an open letter) were counter-attacked not on substance, but through well-established and long-held myths and concepts.
The third strategy is that of super-visibility. According to Brighenti (2007: 329), there are “thresholds of visibility”, and “as you push yourself – or are pushed – over the upper threshold of fair visibility, you enter a zone of supra-visibility, or super-visibility, where everything you do becomes gigantic to the point that it paralyses you” (ibid.: 330). He gives the example of media images of minorities that are so strong and persistent that they become impossible to overcome. In a public environment dominated by media, it becomes vital not just to be visible, but to have control over one’s image, to be able to manage it. The latter is particularly difficult for minority groups, including the LGBTI community which, in the Bulgarian context, suffers from distorted media representations (see Atanasov, 2009; Vasileva and Galev, 2015). It is no coincidence that the first and third case studies discussed in this paper received extensive media coverage. Even without a detailed media analysis, it can be seen that the attacks against the visibility of LGBTI people (the positions of municipal councillors in Plovdiv, the VMRO alert to the prosecutor general) attracted significantly more media coverage than the original occasions: the #Balkan Pride exhibition itself or the open letter of NGOs to European institutions. Mobilizations to neutralize visibility turned out to be significantly more interesting for the Bulgarian media, which maintained the super-visibility of LGBTI people on the plane of conflict and scandal, depriving them of the opportunity to manage the way they are seen in the public sphere. The key issue remains that of access to the places of visibility (for example, to media), yet “it is not simply ‘access’ that matters, but rather the styles and modes of access” (Brighenti, 2007: 333) which determine the extent to which we can be seen in the public sphere in a way chosen by us.
Taken as a whole, these strategies undoubtedly show that achieving visibility for an inherently invisible community is not a unilateral process that depends entirely on the community. On the contrary, the authorities and other social actors actively employ strategies to counter, distort, or blow this visibility out of proportion. This leads us to conclude that the field of visibility is not neutrally open, it is itself a site of struggle and resistance (Edenborg, 2019: 2). The power to make decisions about the way a society functions is transformed into a constant attempt to manage who can be seen, and how, in the public sphere. Those in power use various means in their attempts to appropriate and/or reframe the LGBTI community’s efforts at visibility according to their own interests.
Fig. 5. Sofia Pride 2019 passing by the Council of Ministers building. Source: Emil Metodiev / Photo EMOtions.
Still, LGBTI people cannot and should not give up their efforts to gain visibility as a tool to assert themselves and to communicate their demands. Visibility remains among the most valuable resources we can mobilize in order to try to change the oppressive heteronormative environment that generally excludes us from its field of vision. It is through visibility that progressive successes have been achieved in many places around the world, as well as in Bulgaria. In our individual lives and as a collective body, LGBTI people, like other minority groups, will continue to face counterstrategies that attempt to keep us invisible or to control the way we are seen. Understanding what these strategies are is an important step in figuring out how to overcome them. Moreover, tensions between the “local” and the “European” will continue to emerge and will become increasingly difficult for the authorities to manage: both in terms of LGBTI rights and minority rights, and in relation to a number of other issues such as the natural environment. The visibility of different groups is particularly important for the crystallization of such tensions and may be a key factor in creating an environment in which they will be impossible to contain.
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Translated by Katerina Popova
* This paper was produced under the project “The New Festivity: Communities, Identities, and Policies in Bulgaria in the 21st Century” of Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, financed by the Bulgarian National Science Fund at the Ministry of Science and Education (Contract No. DN 05/7, 14 December 2016).
[1] In this paper, I mainly use the acronym LGBTI – instead of, for example, the term “queer”, for which I have a personal and political preference – in order to adhere to the name that the main organizations of the movement in Bulgaria have been using relatively consistently in their communication over the last few years.
[2] The issue of Bulgaria’s ratification of the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, known as the Istanbul Convention, sparked a heated debate in this country in late 2017 and early 2018. The matter was taken to the Constitutional Court, which ruled in July 2018 that the Convention was inconsistent with the Bulgarian Constitution.
Biographical note
Vladislav Petkov is a PhD student in the PhD Programme in Cultural Anthropology at Sofia University’s Department of History and Theory of Culture. Previously, he graduated in Law in 2012 and in Cultural Anthropology in 2016 from the same university. His research interests include queer and political anthropology, populism, and popular culture.
Email: v.v.petkov[at]gmail.com
