I was 12-13 years old when I read Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis — a story about Gregor Samsa, who wakes up from a disturbing dream and discovers that he has been turned into a beetle and is persecuted by his family for it. I don’t think I’ve ever felt such empathy for the character since. I was raised heterosexual, in a heterosexual environment from which queerness was completely banished, and the first questions I was asked about my identity were painful, especially because I knew that if anyone found out, they would ask me to answer for a “crime” I didn’t commit. But Gregor Samsa’s story wasn’t disturbing; on the contrary, it showed me that if I’m right in my own feelings, the apples thrown by other people aren’t so bitter anymore.

I’m sure that the Georgian Dream, which adopted a fascist law before the elections and turned the lives of queers into a commodity for votes, hasn’t thought about what they’re banning, what they’re putting on the shelf.

For example, I, a queer reader, read a text according to my own feelings, which a hetero person would read from a completely different perspective. Yes, but what or who should be banned — the text or me, a queer reader, who ties emotional threads corresponding to personal experience to a universal text?!

Let me give you another example: you would probably all agree that Romeo and Juliet is such a superficially hetero text. A girl and a boy fall in love and, despite the opposition of their families, sacrifice themselves for this love. What is important in this play, is it about a girl and a boy or is it that it shows an immortal example of taking control of one’s own life and sacrificing oneself? If we draw a connection with reality, let’s imagine a young boy who is in love with another boy, but his family sees this as a tragedy and struggles with this feeling. Do you think that if this hypothetical boy were to read Romeo and Juliet, he would find a connection with the text? I think he would find it — the sharing of personal experience and the text will be manifested precisely in courage, self-sacrifice, and the primacy of his own desires.

And in this case, who or what can be banned, the text or, again, the reader?

It is probably futile to look for logic in the methods of control of an authoritarian government, but in this article, let’s at least talk about a few classic works that can be read from many perspectives and try, perhaps, to see a far-reaching evil intention in the seemingly absurd nature of the imposed censorship.

Moby Dick

Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, this whale of American writing that has had a great influence on literature, was first published in the 19th century and has been translated into Georgian a number of times — from the Soviet period to the present day. The symbols and content in the book have been the subject of research by many critics, including many who have tried to understand Moby Dick from a queer perspective. The reason is simple — the book provides this opportunity. How can you imagine reading the story of dozens of men locked on a ship during a long sea voyage, who sleep naked with each other, develop a close relationship with each other, and not be able to detect a homoerotic subtext in this context?!

I will tell you more, the relationship and friendship between Queequeg and Ishmael are described in such a way that it is open to interpretation, perhaps some readers will freely consider it a romantic attraction. Ishmael describes the “wild” Queequeg in such a way, speaks in such a way that he is attracted to him like an andamatic, how he sees something more behind his appearance distorted by swings, that explaining these feelings in a simply friendly manner would be lame. Moreover, especially when we are talking about a 19th century text, about a restrained, measured description in the literature of that time, when it comes to relationships, especially between men.

“Considering the affectionate arm I had found thrown over me upon waking in the morning, I thought this indifference of his very strange,” Ishmael writes of Queequeg, and later, as they sat alone in the room, he describes the effect it had on him—“ I began to be sensible of strange feelings. I felt a melting in me. No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world. This soothing savage had redeemed it.”

In another passage, Queequeg places his forehead against Ishmael’s, puts his arm around his waist, and announces that they are henceforth married. It is also explained that this is a confirmation of close friendship, although such emotional closeness can also be read with a queer eye. At the end of the same chapter, Ishmael describes how they lie down together, even using the analogy of a wife and husband for comparison.

We undressed and went to bed, but peace with our own consciences and all the world. But we did not go to sleep without some little chat. How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts’ honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg — a cosy, loving pair.

Return to Brideshead

Illustration by Harry Brockway

“Why did you marry her?”
“Physical attraction. Ambition. Everyone agrees she’s the ideal wife for a painter. Loneliness, missing Sebastian.”
“You loved him, didn’t you?”
“Oh yes. He was the forerunner.”

These are the words of Charles Ryder from the book Brideshead Revisited by a British writer Evelyn Waugh. The journey of the characters in the work echoes the author’s biography and is a commentary on early 20th-century Britain, where romantic attraction and experimentation between boys were considered a normal part of youth. Years later, Evelyn Waugh wrote in his personal letters that he considered homosexuality to be a part of youth that fades with time.

The plot of Brideshead Revisited is as follows — Sebastian and Charles, two Oxford students, meet and quickly become attached, spending time in seclusion and being suspicious of anyone who intrudes on their relationship. The relationship lasts for a short time, and then the two “friends” become estranged from each other. Evelyn Waugh is also known for this — he had relationships with boys in his youth, and in the second half of his life he married women twice, because this was the fate of gay boys in Britain at that time.

Returning to today’s Georgian context, we might think that this text should not be on the list of banned books in of the “Dream,” since the characters return to the heterosexual bed and abandon the “reckless passions” of youth. However, this is not entirely the case; the many-year path traveled by the characters and their emotional transformation indicate only one thing – neither desire disappears anywhere, nor does queerness fade with age. The lives of Sebastian and Charles are also defined by the first love or its loss that they experienced in their youth.

There was a change in both of us. We had lost the sense of discovery which had infused the anarchy of our first year. I began to settle down,” Charles says of himself. However, Sebastian is unable to do the same — “he had closed himself off in his own head and now felt like a prisoner even where he had previously enjoyed freedom. He was indifferent to everything; he had become closed off, even with me.

The story of people torn between personal desires and societal expectations, who find themselves in the grip of religious teachings or give up everything to free themselves from these shackles, also says a lot about Georgian reality. The story of Charles, a loser who is always searching for himself, and Sebastian, an alcoholic who is always looking for someone to lean on, does not popularize anything, but it clearly shows how we sacrifice dogmas, how destructive the “order” that institutions offer us in the name of protecting our morality is.

Orlando

Helena Perez Garcia

British queer writer Virginia Woolf’s Orlando is a centuries-long odyssey about the relationship between gender and identity, public perception and self-perception. The story of a noble young man, Orlando, is full of surprises, including a particularly noticeable turning point for the censor, when Orlando transforms into a woman. In this part of the story, Woolf neither offers an explanation nor attempts to explain how we can understand the character’s unexpected and supernatural transformation. Critics write that precisely because of this author’s design, it is clear that Woolf is trying to comment on the fluidity of identity, the conditional nature of femininity and masculinity.

Orlando, who has lived for 30 years as a man, painfully accepts the fears, dangers, and dogmas that accompany femininity, which are imposed only on women. At the same time, he sees the inconsistency between the distribution of social goods, how women are perceived as an addition to men. Orlando already perceives women and men from both perspectives, and in this new reality he does not know who he is, as if he is stepping into a new space, on the edge of both sexes:

“She was man. She was woman; she knew the secrets, shared the weaknesses of each. […] Thus it is no great wonder, as she pitted one sex against the other, and found each alternately full of the most deplorable infirmities, and was not sure to which she belonged – it was no great wonder that she was about to cry out.”

Orlando is transformed into a woman, but in this part the longing from his time as a man remains unchanged – he still loves a woman, but this feeling, given that they are of the same sex, is enhanced with more passion and clarity, and the depth of longing between the same sex is explained by a better understanding and sharing of experiences.

And as all Orlando’s loves had been women, now, through the culpable laggardry of the human frame to adapt itself to convention, though she herself was a woman, it was still a woman she loved; and if the consciousness of being of the same sex had any effect at all, it was to quicken and deepen those feelings which she had had as a man. For now a thousand hints and mysteries became plain to her that were then dark. Now, the obscurity, which divides the sexes and lets linger innumerable impurities in its gloom, was removed.

Virginia Woolf writes about how our self-perception is shaped by the expectations of others, how we learn to be a woman and a man, and how we sometimes find ourselves in a privileged position solely because of our gender. Beyond this, Woolf sees finding human fulfillment precisely in the oscillation between genders, in sharing experiences attributed to both sexes, and shows that over time, gender expectations and self-perception change, and the boundaries become increasingly blurred.

Different though the sexes are, they intermix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what it is above. Of the complications and confusions which thus result everyone has had experience.

And still, what is the regime trying to prohibit or control?

As you probably noticed in the discussion of the universal texts listed above, I have only highlighted those passages that allowed me to make the queer elements clear. Left alone with the texts and given the freedom to do so, I have pulled the threads that would lead me to my goal. For the totalitarian regime that Georgian Dream aspires to become, it is precisely this independent interpretation that is the problem.

According to Hannah Arendt, totalitarian regimes not only control actions, but also attempt to control the very essence of thought and public life — “In this context, censorship does not simply concern the restriction of expression, but the complete deprivation of the public sphere from the possibility of independent thought. The aim is to replace freedom of speech and thought with a uniformity that stifles any form of dissent.”

For a ruling power, which has all branches of government under its influence and wields the levers of surveillance and violence for which no one is held accountable, a society that is not homogeneous is especially dangerous.

Therefore, it needs to internalize the meaning of truth and falsehood, to produce an alternative truth in which a homogeneous society can live obediently. A whole range of information media is involved in the production of the “Dream truth” — starting from propaganda television stations, continuing with fake accounts on social networks, or so-called leaders who have a certain influence on the audience. The ultimate goal is to form a society in which there is no space for independent interpretation, individual judgment, and criticism.

“Totalitarian governments are not content with simply restricting the freedom of dissent. They seek to control what individuals think and say, creating a world in which truth is no longer objective and is determined by the state. Totalitarian censorship serves this purpose: not only to suppress dissent, but also to shape a new reality in which citizens must live. It is a form of control that denies even the possibility of independent, authentic thought.”

Georgian Dream offered voters membership in its own “club,” which is quite attractive and has an “answer” to the traumas of Georgian citizens — membership in this club implies “impeccability” (the sanctity of the family), a sense of protection (“we stand as a shield between Georgia and war”), and closeness to the moral axis and morality, which is reinforced by the Georgian Orthodox Church’s declared support for the Dream. Behind this shiny surface, the truth is easily lost – monuments of Georgian culture are being destroyed before our eyes, the church and the criminals behind it are free from legal responsibility, domestic violence and the murder of women are an unsolvable problem, we have thousands of families torn apart by emigration and if this continues, this figure will increase dramatically, Russia has occupied part of Georgia and is currently waging an information war, which rules out peace.

Georgian Dream has been producing false truths for a long time, and we, as a society, have only been able to notice it more clearly in recent years, and when first Russian, then homophobic, and frankly, fascist laws were passed, many more realized that the “Dream” was taking a narrow path to total control, and if it managed to pass it, the way back would be blocked.

So it turned out that in this process, queer people, critical media, and civil society organizations became the alternative voice that had to be suppressed first. If the “Dream” manages to overcome this uphill climb and consolidate the rest of society around the false truth, then management by fear, by the expectation of disaster, will become our reality, in which all the individual’s worries about poverty, increased crime, and freedom of speech are overshadowed by the fear of chimeras — “What, should the gays take over?”, “Well, do you want war?”, “Well, should the National Movement come back?”. We are on the edge, we may one day discover, or we may not, that we can not only be alone with a book, but we are no longer alone with our thoughts before going to bed, because the thoughts we have are the developed by the regime.