Frames and Counterframes on LGBTIQ+ politics: Movement/Countermovement Interactions in Ukraine

Maryna Shevtsova’s paper centers on LGBTIQ+ politics in Ukraine—a context whose geopolitical location involves a plethora of actors (notably, the European Union and Russia) that blur the boundaries between the national and the transnational scale, left and right, and the different subject-positions at the core of the nation. Through a framing and counter-framing methodology, Shevtsova analyses data collected between 2013 and 2022 and detects three discourses (or, indeed, frames/counter-frames) in relation to the recent trajectory of Ukrainian LGBTIQ+ politics. The first one (2013-2015) reacts to the discourse on the protection of traditional values largely influenced by the Russian law against ‘gay propaganda.’ The second one (2015-2020) unfolds in a different, post-Euromaidan scenario marked by the war in Eastern Ukraine, responding to the trope that LGBTIQ+ people do not defend their country. The third and last one (2020-2022) is built on the alleged threat that ‘gender ideology’ casts on children. How future discursive frames/counter-frames will look like is difficult to predict, because the question remains as to whether, in post-war Ukraine, LGBTIQ+ rights will be expanded or restricted.