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PALGRAVE MACMILLAN STUDIES IN
FAMILY AND INTIMATE LIFE

Queer Families
in Hungary
Same-Sex Couples,
Families of Origin,
and Kinship
Rita Béres-Deák
Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family
and Intimate Life

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Keele University
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University of Edinburgh
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 Rita Béres-Deák

Queer Families
in Hungary
Same-Sex Couples, Families of Origin,
and Kinship
Rita Béres-Deák
Budapest, Hungary

Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life

ISBN 978-3-030-16318-1 ISBN 978-3-030-16319-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16319-8

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 Acknowledgements

I am greatly indebted to all the people from the Hungarian LGBTQ

community and their families who have shared with me stories and in
some cases events from their lives. This book would not have come to
life without you, and I am trying to do my best to give you voice and
provide increased visibility for stories like yours.
This book is based on my Ph.D. research at the Gender Studies
Department of the Central European University, Budapest. I am grate-
ful to CEU for making it possible and also for being a beacon of hope
for researchers and academic freedom in my country.
It would take too long to list here all the scholars who have influ-
enced me; their names will appear on the following pages often enough.
I must, however, mention some who have given me important feed-
back on my work, including (but not limited to) Hadley Z. Renkin,
Ellen Lewin, Éva Fodor, Dóri Rédai, Ráhel Kati Turai, Roman Kuhar,
and Judit Takács. I am indebted to Amelia Derkatsch from Palgrave
Macmillan for considering this book worth publishing and for helping
me along with this process.
For information on the legal background, I am indebted to Tamás
Dombos, one of the few legal experts I know who can actually speak

v
vi      Acknowledgements

in a way intelligible to ordinary humans. Csilla Faix-Prukner and

Krisztián Rózsa, family therapists and leaders of the Rainbow Families
Foundation, have provided me with valuable sites for fieldwork, as well
as psychological literature and friendship.
From the beginning of research to writing this book has been more
than a decade. Over this time, what sustained me was partly my friends
at Háttér, in sz<3ft, at VándorMások, and our very secret Facebook
group of cat-loving feminists. You guys deserve all the virtual hugs and
cats in the world! I am grateful to my parents for being much nicer and
more flexible than many described on the following pages. Last but not
least, I want to thank my own queer family: a human and a cat, András
and Kristóf. Without their unrelenting love, you would not be reading
these words now—and yet words do not suffice to express what I feel
for them.
 Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 The Family in (Post)Socialist Hungary 55

3 Approaches to Kinship in the Hungarian LGBTQ

Community 93

4 Visibility 139

5 Queer Families Performing Kinship 185

6 Family Members Becoming Allies 227

7 Beyond the Heterosexual Family Myth, or How

to Queer the Family 263

Index 287

vii
 1
Introduction

A: Recently they [my gay cousin and his boyfriend] had a kind of
­wedding. Where they strengthened their commitment. We were out on
Margaret Island,1 there were some hundred of us. […] They asked a
friend to give a speech, kinda substitute the priest, to speak about them
and their relationship as he knows them. And then I don’t know, we let
up these lighted balloons into the sky, we almost set fire on some trees.
BDR: Oh, so you mean there were candles lit inside these balloons?
A: Yes, kinda like that. It has some name too, but they’re no longer
[used], now they’re banned. Besides [laughs], it was so soon after the
wedding that they got banned that…
BDR: You mean perhaps this was the reason?
A: Maybe, yes, because really we sent up I don’t know how many into the
sky. […] And it was really scary to see how this thing was nearing the
leaves of the trees. So it was really scary. But we didn’t set fire on any-
thing. (Anikó, interview)

This short account of a gay commitment ceremony in many

ways symbolizes for me several themes that I encountered during

1An island on the river Danube in the center of Budapest, a popular public park.

© The Author(s) 2020 1

R. Béres-Deák, Queer Families in Hungary, Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family
and Intimate Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16319-8_1
2    
R. Béres-Deák

my research. Though same-sex couples are not allowed to marry in

Hungary, Anikó calls the ceremony a wedding, a foundational ritual of
kinship, which is also ‘a major site for the installation and maintenance
of the institution of heterosexuality’ (Ingraham 2006: 197); by celebrat-
ing the commitment of a same-sex couple as a wedding, participants
subverted dominant understandings of the ritual and carved out a space
for the same-sex couple in a country which constitutionally limits the
scope of marriage to heterosexual couples. While celebrating a private
commitment, the ritual took place in a public space literally in the heart
of the capital, an illustration of how same-sex commitment ceremonies
bridge the gap between public and private (Lewin 1998). Another con-
nection to the public sphere is the fact that the balloons were banned
soon afterward (whether or not as a result of this ceremony), which is
another way the law restricts practices related to kinship. The presence
of Anikó and other heterosexuals at the ceremony connects the LGBTQ
community with the family of origin and shows that heterosexual kin
actively participate in extending (as well as limiting) the possibilities of
same-sex couples.
Same-sex commitment ceremonies are seen as the classic exam-
ple where the family of origin is often (though sometimes reluctantly)
involved in claiming equality for LGBTQ people (Glass 2014; Lewin
1998). Most of the stories discussed in this book, however, describe
much more ordinary events: visiting relatives, catsitting, or helping
with the dishes after a family dinner. If we regard kinship as perform-
ative (Butler 2000; Sahlins 2013), the practices of families of origin
with regard to same-sex couples tell us more about their attitudes than
focus group research exploring their opinions (like Cappellato and
Manganella 2014). As we will see, non-heterosexuals2 themselves
deduce their family’s attitude toward their sexual orientation more
from what they do than from what they say (if indeed they say any-
thing at all). At the same time, I also acknowledge discourses as an
important site of performing and claiming inclusion and exclusion.

2See more on the choice of terminology at the end of this chapter.

 1 Introduction    
3

Therefore, throughout this book we will see a dynamic interplay of dis-

courses and practices in families and beyond.
The focus of this book is the relationship between same-sex couples
and their families of origin. Based on ethnographic research (semi-struc-
tured interviews, participant observation, and analysis of written, espe-
cially online sources), I will argue that the nature of this relationship
is strongly connected to the way the participants (heterosexual and
non-heterosexual alike) interpret and enact the notion of kinship.
Weston (1991) suggests that coming out to the family of origin is a test
of kinship ties on both parts. I would add that beyond coming out, the
way the same-sex couple and the family of origin continue to interact
and perceive each other also reveals what they think about kinship. The
notions of family transmitted through mainstream discourses, which
in Hungary are strongly heteronormative, need to be reinterpreted if
one is to accept the possibility of same-sex couples within the kinship
network. Through this process, families get first-hand experience of
­intimate citizenship and the agency to claim it.
This book is the result of over 10 years of fieldwork and, overlapping
with it, six years of doctoral study. During this time, the socio-polit-
ical context changed enormously. My first interviews were made in
the mid-2000s, before the world economic crisis, when Hungary had
a Socialist government and the LGBTQ community was looking for-
ward to the introduction of registered partnership law, which they
hoped would provide their relationships equal recognition with those
of heterosexuals. The law did come into force but, as I will explain in
Chapter 3, with serious limitations on parenting rights. When I started
my Ph.D. at the Central European University, Viktor Orbán’s right-
wing nationalist FIDESZ3 party had just come into power. Their now
over 8-year rule has brought important changes into Hungarian soci-
ety, including the strengthening of neoliberalist policies and economy
(Gregor and Kováts 2018), the propagation of traditional gender roles

3Originally,
the name of FIDESZ was short for Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége, the Association of
Young Democrats, and it was the most liberal party around the fall of the iron curtain. Being no
longer young or democrats, they now refuse this title and choose not to explain the acronym.
4    
R. Béres-Deák

(Kováts and Pető 2017), attacks against civil society and foreign insti-
tutions (including my alma mater), and the aggressive scapegoating of
immigrants (Lehotai 2017) as well as internal minorities like the home-
less (Ámon 2019) and the LGBTQ community. Orbán has become
infamous in the EU for his anti-democratic policies, many of which he
has copied from other right-wing leaders in the post-Soviet region: the
extension of state control over virtually all media from Russian presi-
dent Vladimir Putin (Edenborg 2017) and the framing of our coun-
try as the defender of true Christian values against the immorality of
the EU from Polish nationalists (Graff 2006).4 While his ambivalent
attitudes to the EU and the sometimes extreme measures he takes to
consolidate his power make him figure strongly in the news and on
community websites worldwide, anthropological research can also reveal
how his regime affects those who live under it, especially the ones whose
sexual orientation and family forms are seen as incompatible with
FIDESZ’s definition of family. It is increasingly difficult to make such
voices heard in Hungary; I hope that by writing this book, I can con-
tribute to their visibility.

Intimate Citizenship, Kinship, and Agency

My main lens for exploring family formations that include same-sex
couples is the concept of intimate citizenship. The expression itself was
invented by Plummer, who used it to mean the possibility of decisions,
access, and choices related to the body and intimacy (Plummer 2003).
Thus, individual choices are emphasized rather than the constraints
put on individuals by the various social spaces they inhabit. Some later
scholars, on the other hand, focus on these constraints rather than
individual agency (e.g., Chateauvert 2008). Most authors take a mid-
dle way, using intimate citizenship to describe how intimate decisions

4Though arguably the notion that ‘we’ are the ‘defenders of civilization’ has strong historical roots

in this region and was present in nationalist discourses already during state socialism (Verdery
1991), with reference to the ‘West’ in general rather than the EU.
 1 Introduction    
5

and practices are intertwined with state and public policies (Lind 2010;
Oleksy 2009). For these scholars, the issue is basically the relationship
between the individual and the state. However, if citizenship is about
belonging, the state is not the only community that may become its
site, neither is it the only force that can curtail it. A more encompass-
ing definition of intimate citizenship by Roseneil acknowledges agency
and limitation as well as different sorts of communities that might
be involved. In her view, full intimate citizenship is ‘the freedom and
ability to construct and live selfhood and a wide range of close rela-
tionships – sexual/love relationships, friendships, parental and kin
relations – safely, securely and according to personal choice, in their
dynamic and changing forms, with respect, recognition and support
from state and civil society’ (cited in Roseneil and Stoilova 2011: 168).
Roseneil’s definition explains why I consider intimate citizenship
a better framework for my study than sexual citizenship, which is also
often used to discuss the exclusion of same-sex oriented people on the
level of the law (Bell and Binnie 2000; Phelan 2001), cultural rep-
resentation (Richardson 2001), or societal attitudes (Kuhar 2011). First,
intimate citizenship may include a wide range of relationships beyond
sexuality—like the recognition of non-traditional kin relations, such
as that between a person and her/his same-sex partner’s family of ori-
gin or offspring. This scope also extends to people who themselves do
not belong to marginal groups but have non-traditional kin ties due to
their relatedness to someone who does, such as ‘social grandparents’5 of
a child raised by a same-sex couple.6 Naturally, heterosexuals might also
have non-traditional kinship forms like families of choice, as I will dis-
cuss in Chapter 6; the recognition of such ties also falls within the scope
of intimate citizenship. Second, Roseneil’s notion of intimate citizenship
emphasizes agency and choice, which are becoming central to discus-
sions on kinship as well (see below). Third, as mentioned above, I find
it important to extend the scope of intimate citizenship from belonging

5The term ‘social parent’ is usually applied to a primary caregiver who is not a biological or legal
parent to the child (more about this in Chapter 3); ‘social grandparents’ are this person’s parents
(Gross 2011).
6I am grateful to Roman Kuhar for this insight.
6    
R. Béres-Deák

within the state to belonging to other—e.g., local or religious—

communities. Finally, the dynamic interaction of the person making
intimate choices and her/his environment is framed as ‘respect, recog-
nition and support,’ which goes beyond the formal recognition of mar-
ginal groups that much academic literature is limited to.
Though it is inevitable to discuss barriers to the intimate citizenship
of same-sex couples, I will lay more emphasis on their agency in cir-
cumventing or challenging these. However, it is important to under-
line that this agency is not unlimited, neither is it necessarily equally
distributed. If we constrain the notion of agency to political participa-
tion (e.g., Marques-Periera and Siim 2002; Rose 1989), it is obvious
that people have little opportunity to get their voices heard if they live
under a dictatorship or in a country where homosexuality is illegal.7
Even in countries like Hungary, where homosexuality was decriminal-
ized in the 1960s and the semblance of democracy is still maintained,
manipulated elections, a backlash against civil society organizations, and
a strongly heteronormative public sphere narrow the opportunities of
the LGBTQ community and its allies to influence politics; geopolitical
factors may enable or complicate the power and strategies of activism
(Szulc 2017). However, if intimate citizenship is not limited to the level
of the state, neither should be agency. Various authors describe private
practices that can be interpreted as assertions of intimate citizenship:
coming out (Tereskinas 2008), expressing family belonging through the
use of vocabulary or practices (Mizielińska et al. 2015; Sullivan 2004),
finding loopholes in the system (Canaday 2009) or even ‘voting with
one’s feet,’ that is, emigrating (Kalb and Tak 2006). Even so, we must
be aware that these are not available for all members of the polity. Mere
awareness of such possibilities requires access to discourses alternative
to those of the state, but dictatorships effectively silence or appropri-
ate these (Edenborg 2017). In Hungary, the right-wing government

7Even if such laws are rarely enacted, the state may rely on them any time it feels itself threat-

ened or needs a scapegoat (Dave 2012); queer activists in such countries who argue that a fight
for decriminalization would be assimilationist (see Dasgupta and DasGupta 2018; Dave 2012)
ignore that the prohibition of homosexuality, if enforced, forecloses not only assimilation and
recognition but any kind of visible queer existence.
 1 Introduction    
7

controls virtually all printed media and the main television channels, so
oppositional discourses are mostly available on the Internet, but those
without Internet access or computer literacy are excluded from this
possibility; thus, class and age determine the amount of agency one
has (Dobó 2006). Access to agency might also be gendered: w ­ omen’s
different socialization and opportunities constrain their ability to act
(Friedman 2000). In a context of strong oppression, members of a
group or even a whole society might not have faith in the possibility of
changing the system, and instead of challenging it as a whole try to find
individual ways to get around its constraints (Kapitány and Kapitány
2007) or rely on escapism to dreams or religion (Skidmore 2008).
We must also be aware of how power works not only through exter-
nal constraints but also through internalized values and self-policing
(Foucault 1978).
Some theories consider the achievement of social change as a litmus
test of agency and/or sexual/intimate citizenship. For instance, Cossman
suggests that ‘[s]ome border speakers move the lines. They become sex-
ual citizens’ (Cossman 2007: 48), whereas those who do not manage
to ‘move the lines’ remain ‘outlaws,’ and she completely ignores those
whose actions reinforce rather than move ‘the lines.’ This distinction
is not only problematic because—as Cossman herself and other theo-
rists (e.g., Bell and Binnie 2000) acknowledge—all citizenship is sex-
ual citizenship, but because it creates a hierarchy between successful and
unsuccessful challengers to the system. However, present actions and
discourses might bring about change only in the far future, like early
coming out stories did in the 1970s, when the discourse about revealing
one’s sexual orientation had changed (Plummer 1997). When people
claim intimate citizenship through everyday practices, its effect is hard
to measure—but individuals often have no other means to challenge
mainstream norms (De Certeau 1988; Kapitány and Kapitány 2007).
Ultimately, even such small actions may transform the system itself on
the long run (Bourdieu 1977; De Certeau 1988; Finch 1989). Also,
seemingly assimilationist practices might have subversive intent behind
them (Dahl 2011), and breaking the rules may sometimes strengthen
the power of the system (Bourdieu 1977). Mahmood (2005) warns
that agency may reside not only in transgressive but also in normative
8    
R. Béres-Deák

behaviors. As Fee (2006) points out in discussing covenant marriage,

the very possibility of choosing ‘traditional’ behavior breaks with the
taken-for-granted, unreflexive following of tradition. In short, intimate
citizenship should not be limited to actions with subversive intent,
however popular these may be in queer accounts. In a heteronormative
society, non-heterosexuals need to make decisions on an everyday basis
concerning their relationship to the system, and even if these are seem-
ingly assimilationist, they carry agency and the potential of broadening
the basis of intimate citizenship.
The notion of intimate citizenship problematizes the private/public
divide because it exposes how ‘private’ spaces are strongly controlled by
the state and the community (Kelly 2003; Plummer 2003); one of these
is the family. Besides explicit definitions of marriage and family laid
down in the law (like in the Hungarian Fundamental Law, to be dis-
cussed in the next chapter), other laws, like those governing inheritance
(Seiser 2000) or the acknowledgment of parenthood (Dolgin 1995; Hill
1991), implicitly circumscribe who counts as family. The same is true for
case law (Hill 1991) and state policies, like when state benefits depend
on racial or class characteristics (Chateauvert 2008; Haney 1999, respec-
tively), or when using the rhetoric of ‘family values,’ the neoliberal state
delegates carework onto (mostly female) family members rather than
maintaining the necessary institutions itself (Finch 1989; Gregor and
Kováts 2018). Communities other than the state also exercise surveil-
lance over families. Kelly (2003) develops a triangular model to explain
how both the state and other communities practice control over the fam-
ily, though in the British-American context this control is balanced by
notions of privacy central to Western culture. In societies where commu-
nity is valued over individuality and privacy, such as rural Central and
Eastern Europe (Fél and Hofer 1969), traditional village communities
enforce their preferred model of kinship by expecting families to exhibit
certain types of behavior (Creed 2001; Fél and Hofer 1969) and mar-
ginalizing people whose actions conflict with community norms (Bakó
2008; Stewart 1997). The behavior of such ‘black sheep’ indeed affects
the reputation of the whole kinship network, so families try to make sure
their members do not step out of line: they tell family stories demon-
strating appropriate and undesirable behavior (Boreczky 2004) or expect
 1 Introduction    
9

members to adapt their intimate choices to the family’s interest (Rofel

1999). As state regulations and discourses, as well as community values,
strongly influence the actual content of these ‘public moralities’ (Finch
1989), the family becomes an instrument of the state in conveying its
ideals of kinship (Borneman 1992).
One of the issues strongly regulated by the state and the larger com-
munity is the heteronormativity of the family. Herdt and Koff (2000)
introduce the concept of the ‘Heterosexual Family Myth,’ the notion
that only heterosexual unions with children count as family; this myth
turns non-heterosexuals into ‘exiles from kinship’ (Weston 1991) but
also leads to the stigmatization of anyone who includes a same-sex rela-
tionship in her/his kinship network. Merely acknowledging that one
has a non-heterosexual child or sibling may attach the ‘sticky’ stigma
of homosexuality onto a person (Goffman 1974), so the coming out
of a non-heterosexual within the family creates dilemmas about visibil-
ity for her/his family members (Kuhar 2007). Therefore, it is not only
non-heterosexuals who are affected by stigma and may become mar-
ginalized in their communities but also their family members by asso-
ciation. While in some countries there are organizations for parents of
LGBTQ that strongly promote their view of the family and create an
accepting community for people bearing this secondary stigma (Bertone
and Franchi 2008; Broad 2011), in Hungary people with non-hetero-
sexual kin must rely on individual actions.
Studies on the assertion of LGBTQ intimate citizenship are often
limited to activism (e.g., Bilić 2016; Dave 2012; Nicolae 2009; Renkin
2015), perhaps because it is easily accessible, with consciously formu-
lated discourses; also, if we restrict intimate citizenship to relations with
the state and agency to the achievement of social change, organized
movements certainly fit these more than individual actions. Elsewhere
(Béres-Deák 2019), I do discuss how Hungarian LGBTQ organiza-
tions try to stand up for the inclusion of rainbow families. In this book,
although I will make references to some organizations, my focus is on
how individuals and families claim belonging in various ‘imagined
communities’ (Anderson 1983). Some kinship studies scholars (e.g.,
Haney 1999; Morgan 1996) indeed have explored how individuals
adapt their practices to profit the most from the system or to escape
10    
R. Béres-Deák

its total control; Finch (1989) calls these ‘avoidance strategies.’ People
may also have their own interpretations of family, which may include
constellations that are excluded from its official definition (Powell
et al. 2010). Standing up for intimate citizenship may thus happen on
the level of discourses as well as practices, and may come from those
directly affected or supportive outsiders. Some studies categorize par-
ents and other family members of LGBTQ people into the latter group
(e.g., Bruce 2016; Cappellato and Manganella 2014), but as I have
mentioned above, they are also immediately affected by the silencing
of same-sex sexuality in the public sphere. Nevertheless, at the time of
my fieldwork in Hungary there was no organization for family mem-
bers of LGBTQ.8 In contrast, LGBTQ people in Hungary do have their
own institutions, spaces, and values; I refer to this as the ‘Hungarian
LGBTQ community.’9 In the next section, I will outline some charac-
teristics of this community.

The Hungarian LGBTQ Community

There is a variety of approaches as to how researchers define the term
‘community’ with reference to same-sex oriented or gender-variant peo-
ple and their subcultures. Some authors (e.g., Weston 1991) include in

8Natália Szenteh, who also compiled an interview volume with parents of gays and lesbians
(Szenteh 2005), operated a telephone helpline for parents and had personal meetings with them,
but her efforts to organize regular group meetings failed. After my actual fieldwork was com-
pleted, a Facebook group for family members of LGBTQ people started, but I did not include
them in my study.
9The acronym LGBTQ means ‘lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer.’ Though recently

many activist organizations add the letters A (asexual) and I (intersex), this is often more
an empty gesture than the incorporation of the specific needs and experiences of these groups
(Butterfield 2013). During my fieldwork, asexual and intersex people were practically invisible
in Hungary, including in the LGBTQ scene; therefore, I decided against adding their letters to
the acronym I use. (The situation is still not much better with regard to intersex; the Hungarian
Asexual Association was founded in 2019.) Though (for reasons discussed below) I did not inter-
view trans* people, they did contribute to the production of community discourses at workshops
and in online spaces, so I felt the use of the acronym ‘LGBTQ’ appropriate when referring to the
community as a whole.
 1 Introduction    
11

it all gay and lesbian10 people within a given geographical area; o­ thers
(e.g., Krieger 1983) limit it to a group of people who know each other
personally. However, subcultures transmit values through other means
than personal contact, in the twenty-first century more than ever
before: word of mouth, mainstream media, community publications,
and especially the Internet create links between people who have never
met but can still engage in one-way or two-way communication with
each other. Some of my sources—books published by LGBTQ organ-
izations, Internet forums of community websites or the coming out
stories on melegvagyok.hu—were indeed created with such purposes.
In this sense, the LGBTQ community is a kind of ‘imagined commu-
nity’ (Anderson 1983), enabled by modern communicative technol-
ogies that reflect as well as create a sense of belonging. However, we
should not think of it as encompassing all same-sex oriented and gen-
der-variant people in Hungary. As Edwards and Strathern (2000) warn,
taking it for granted that people ‘naturally’ want to belong is an eth-
nocentric notion based on Western discourses idealizing community.
Some non-heterosexual people may not feel the need to have contact
with others who have the same sexual orientation. Others might not
associate with the LGBTQ community for fear of getting stigmatized,
not an unfounded worry in a society with widespread homophobic dis-
courses like Hungary; in some cases, not belonging can be seen as a vir-
tue (Edwards and Strathern 2000). Some might not even be aware of
the existence of this community, or keep a distance from it because they
disagree with its values (Renkin 2007b).
We should also be aware of the multiplicity of smaller communities
within the LGBTQ community. Some are organized on the basis of a
narrower concept of identity11 (such as the trans* community); others

10Weston’s work is limited to these two groups.

11In queer theory, ‘identity’ has been criticized as too monolithic and essentialist (e.g., Jagose
1996) and ‘subjectivity’ is often used instead. While this is justified when writing about cultures
or ages with no communities based on sexual object choice (e.g., Blackwood 2011; Halperin
2002), I believe ‘subjectivity’ is too individualistic a term, focusing more on the individual’s
self-perception or taste (Halperin 2012) than on belonging to and/or identification with a specific
community, which is my research area. It is important to note, however, that I use the term ‘iden-
tity’ in a soft, more fluid sense (Brubaker and Cooper 2000) and do not wish to suggest that it is
in any way inborn or immutable.
12    
R. Béres-Deák

may be informal networks of friends and acquaintances. What I call

‘Hungarian LGBTQ community’ in this book is the one with the high-
est visibility, with spaces and events advertised on the Internet, as well
as in some written media; other groups of LGBTQ people are organized
more in private and one needs personal contacts to get in touch with
them. Choosing the most ‘public’ LGBTQ community in Hungary was
partly a question of accessibility for the researcher as well, but partly
a conscious choice: I wanted to explore how different discourses and
practices are discussed and adopted by people of diverse backgrounds,
in dialogue with mainstream discourses, and I assumed that a publicly
visible subculture is more heterogeneous than those created by groups
of friends in private spaces. I also assumed that many people connect
to publicly visible LGBTQ communities because they feel an affinity
to the values those represent, and/or feel the need to participate in dis-
courses that challenge heteronormative mainstream ones. At the same
time, I am aware that some people, whether they wish or not, cannot
connect to this community.
Some literature on LGBTQ communities tries to idealize them as
coherent wholes where—in contrast to the people’s heterosexual envi-
ronment, including their families—members can express their ‘true
selves’ without repercussions or restraint (e.g., Johnson 2004). This
description is similar to the ideal of the bourgeois family (see Chapter 2)
and evokes Turner’s (1991 [1969]) notion of communitas, a liminal
space where people are accepted unconditionally.12 Real communities,
however, are power-laden, their meanings, structures and frontiers con-
tinually produced, reworked, and contested in relation to socio-­political
attachments and antagonisms (Gregory cited in Valentine 2007). The
LGBTQ community is no exception: gay and lesbian communities have
often been criticized for excluding people on the basis of race or age
(Casey 2007; Weston 1998), and the queer subculture produces similar

12Communitas, as Turner describes it, is not a permanent phenomenon but is connected to tem-

porary situations like initiation rites, while the rest of the time people are expected to act out
given societal roles. Narratives of LGBTQ people, however, often describe the LGBTQ commu-
nity as a place where they can ‘be themselves’ all the time, as opposed to the hostile heterosexual
world (e.g., Bailey 2013; Weston 1991).
 1 Introduction    
13

exclusions as well (Brown 2007). Sometimes such exclusions appear in

the form of explicit discrimination or prejudice (e.g., Esterberg 1997;
Kennedy and Davis 1993; Valentine 2007; Weston 1996), but more
often subcultural structures—which may be the result of phenomena in
wider society—enable access for some more than others. Below I will list
the exclusions most often mentioned in literature and reflect upon how
these are reproduced (or not) in the community I researched.
Recently, there has been an unprecedented growth of research on
queer aging (possibly because some researchers are affected by it them-
selves) and on the lower visibility of elderly LGBTQ people. Herdt and
Beeler (1998) claim that for the older generation, loss of status due to
being associated with the LGBTQ subculture is more a threat than for
young people, which may keep them away from subcultural spaces.
Besides overt ageism in some LGBTQ venues (Casey 2007), some
authors cite generational differences in terms of values and activities
that might exclude the elderly from subcultural spaces (e.g., Kennedy
and Davis 1993; Renkin 2007b). They often have difficulties adapting
to changes in LGBTQ lifestyles, in context-dependent ways: for exam-
ple, in Sweden with its long history of lesbian feminism, elderly lesbians
lament that the younger generation is not political enough (Bromseth
2015), while in Hungary, where activism was all but impossible dur-
ing state socialism, older gays and lesbians may feel uncomfortable with
what they perceive as too much politics (Renkin 2007b). Also, elderly
people are less likely to be able to use the Internet and visit places (such
as night clubs) where LGBTQ program magazines are available, so they
often lack information about the possibilities.
At the other end of the age spectrum, teenagers are also underrep-
resented at LGBTQ events in Hungary, though they participate some-
what more actively in online spaces. They are usually dependent on
their parents for financial resources and accommodation, and this
makes it difficult for them to access LGBTQ spaces if they are not out
at home (Gray 2009), which is often the case in Hungary (Dombos
et al. 2011). The offline subcultural infrastructure does not favor teen-
agers: not only bars but also some events set an age limit of 18 (though
IDs are rarely checked apart from night clubs) and prohibitive prices
might also keep teenagers away. The Internet does offer them a way to
14    
R. Béres-Deák

get in touch with the LGBTQ community, but only if they can access
it safely from the prying eyes of family and peers; as Gray (2009) points
out, parents may exercise control over their child’s Internet access and
thus her/his connection to the LGBTQ community. Consequently, the
majority of people actively participating in the subculture are between
20 and 40; in a 2010 LGBTQ discrimination study, 75% of respond-
ents were of this age span (Dombos et al. 2011).
It is a truism that women are less present in LGBTQ spaces than
men: potential reasons may include fear of violence or cultural codes
that relegate women to the private sphere (Casey 2007). Also, women
have more limited financial resources than men due to the gender gap
in wages (Fodor and Nagy 2014), so they often cannot afford to enter
commercialized LGBTQ venues (Casey 2007). Some of them also feel
uncomfortable with openly sexual self-expression (e.g., cruising) by
MSM.13 In Budapest, every month several parties are organized where
patrons are exclusively or predominantly women, but these do not have
a regular place or time, and there are no women’s cafés either.14 Much
more men than women seem to be comfortable with visiting mixed
spaces in Budapest, while many women prefer the infrequent exclusively
women-only programs. In rural towns, the few partying opportunities
are mixed and the women frequenting them seem comfortable with
this; at the same time, this might mean that women who are disturbed
by the presence of men get excluded from rural LGBTQ communities.
Organizations, too, tend to be male-dominated (with the exception
of Labrisz Lesbian Association, of course), but to a lesser extent than
events, with several women in leadership positions in some of them.

13MSM (men who have sex with men) is a term originating from HIV/AIDS activism to refer to

men who engage in same-sex activities but do not necessarily adopt a sexual identity reflecting
this practice. Here I denote with this term all men who are completely or partly same-sex ori-
ented, in order to avoid assigning to them identities they may not claim.
14There was a short-lived attempt to create a women-only bar in the mid-2000s, but it closed

down soon; one reason was financial difficulties, the other harrassment by heterosexual men, who
repeatedly tried to get in and conflicts with them drove away many of the patrons. This example
shows that in Hungarian society, permeated with sexism and the advocation of traditional gender
roles (including by nationalist politics, see Chapter 2), allegedly ‘safe spaces’ for women may not
be safe at all.
 1 Introduction    
15

There is an abundance of Western literature on the commercializa-

tion of the LGBTQ scene (e.g., Casey 2007; Clark 1993; Skeggs 2004),
some even claiming that consumption has become central to gay/lesbian
identity and citizenship (Clark 1993; Evans 1993). While commer-
cial LGBTQ venues do exist in Hungary, their role in the formation of
sexual orientation identities is less pronounced. To start with, only a thin
layer of the population can afford them: though there have been several
attempts to launch glossy gay or lesbian magazines, they inevitably went
bankrupt within a year,15 and much of the clientele in Budapest gay
bars are foreigners16 or curious wealthy heterosexuals wishing to explore
this ‘exotic’ world.17 While it has been claimed that in some Western
countries commodity capitalism accommodates queer practices as life-
style choices (Jackson 2005), we must take into account the power of
homophobic, nationalistic discourses in limiting this possibility: far
from hoping to expand their clientele by appealing to LGBTQ people,
non-subcultural businesses fear the loss of heterosexual customers18 in
case they advertised their services and products in the LGBTQ com-
munity.19 The founders and members of LGBTQ organizations (more
about these later) are mostly intellectuals; they are the ones who have
the cultural capital (e.g., language skills, foreign contacts) and the free
time (all organizations are based on volunteer work) to do activism and
become visible within the subculture and in mainstream society, but due

15Mások, the longest-lived gay and lesbian magazine, was much cheaper in quality and focused
on providing information; this and its cheap production costs (the editors and the contributors
all worked for free) enabled it to exist from 1990 to 2008, when the internet became the primary
source of information for younger LGBTQ. (This resulted in the further exclusion of the elderly
non-computer-literate, who still lament the lack of a printed gay magazine.)
16This, incidentally, is true for most catering venues in the center of Budapest.

17This will be discussed in Chapter 6.

18And sometimes even subcultural ones: in several instances, same-sex couples have been asked in

gay bars not to show too much affection, as it might drive away heterosexual patrons.
19Recently, an initiative ‘We Are Open’ was launched by some (usually multinational or gay-

owned) companies, but this is mostly limited to their presence at pride marches and does not
involve openly targeting LGBTQ people in their general advertising. In a context of state hom-
ophobia this is hardly surprising: as this book is being prepared for publication, outrage was
created among conservative politicians and Christian denominations by a poster campaign of
Coca-Cola featuring same-sex couples, with right-wing public figures calling for a boycott on
Coca-Cola products and the mayor of Budapest planning to ban the poster campaign.
16    
R. Béres-Deák

to the uncoupling of cultural and economic capital in the state socialist

and postsocialist context (Stout 2014), they cannot afford participation
in the commercialized LGBTQ scene. Therefore, the most visible model
of LGBTQ identity is highly cosmopolitan with respect to discourses
(e.g., regarding coming out—see Chapter 4), but less attached to con-
sumption than in the gay villages of some Western cities (Evans 1993;
Halperin 2012). This raises and also complicates the issue of class.
Class is difficult to theorize in Euro-American cultures in general, as
class discourses are often merged into discourses of ethnicity and cultural
diversity, which then overshadow differences based on socio-economic
status (Kalb 2011). The vague nature of class is even more pronounced
in Central and Eastern Europe, where state socialism supposedly cre-
ated a classless society. The state socialist identification of social class and
Communist consciousness has led to a discrediting of the class discourse
after 1989 (Bartha 2011), so class language is even more delegitimized than
in the West (Kalb 2011). The reluctance to use class as a category is perva-
sive both in academic literature (Bartha 2011) and in political and public
discourses. State socialism enabled class mobility by demoting former aris-
tocrats and intellectuals to physical work and attempting to create a new
intelligentsia loyal to the system from working-class youth (Verdery 1991).
This makes it difficult for a researcher to use reliable markers of class.
Class, race, and geographical location strongly intersect in Hungary.
The Western parts of the country and the capital are considerably
wealthier and have much more employment opportunities than the
East and the North. Poverty is also strongly racialized, with Roma peo-
ple suffering from it more than the white population. The origins of
Roma economic deprivation can be traced back to the disappearance of
many of their traditional trades, but also to overt racism among poten-
tial employers and in state policies (Stewart 1997), as well as, in recent
decades, educational segregation, which makes it almost impossible for
Roma children to get postsecondary education (Havas and Liskó 2005).
These general tendencies have consequences for the structure of the
LGBTQ community as well. At the time of my fieldwork, only one of
the 13 registered LGBTQ organizations was based outside Budapest,20
20A community-building project (headed by a Budapest-based organization), which resulted in

the formation of some rural LGBTQ organizations, started toward the end of my fieldwork.
 1 Introduction    
17

and the capital offered a far wider range of facilities and programs for
LGBTQ people. This naturally means that people living in and near
Budapest have more access to the community. As the countryside is per-
ceived as more homophobic than the city (Weston 1998), most rural
LGBTQ people either seek to move to Budapest21 or stay closeted in
their home environment, which also means not frequenting LGBTQ
events or even not checking LGBTQ websites from netcafés or libraries,
which are often their only access to the Internet. This way, they might
get cut away even from those subcultural sites which would otherwise
be available to them. Visiting LGBTQ events is too expensive for many
working-class people, especially if it also involves travel; the owner of
a gay bar in a poverty-stricken region complained to Budapest activists
that, though entry is free, few people visit his club because they can-
not afford to pay 100 HUF22 for a soft drink (László Mocsonaki, per-
sonal communication), though gay bars in Budapest are much more
expensive.
Events organized by LGBTQ organizations also tend to be domi-
nated by white middle-class people (Renkin 2007b), due to reasons
discussed above. It is also possible that in poor working-class environ-
ments, social and financial pressures to get heterosexually married are
stronger; according to a fellow researcher, the low number of visible
working-class lesbians might be due to the fact that in their economic
position a woman or female couple cannot make a living on women’s
wages only (Dorottya Rédai, personal communication). Even when
there are working-class people in a group, class privilege often results in
middle-class activists setting the agenda.23 This is well reflected in the
nature of the activities organized by activist groups, which often appeal

21We must be aware, however, that rural to urban migration is also fueled by the lack of work
opportunities in the countryside and is characteristic of younger generations of any sexual orien-
tation or gender identity.
221 Euro = about 300 HUF (210 USD). This price is less than 1/3 of what a soft drink would

cost in an average bar in Budapest.

23A poignant example for this took place in a reading group, where some university educated

queer-identified women persisted in using expert language and eventually drove most work-
ing-class participants away—ironically after they (the women) had declared that women can
never be oppressors due to the prevailing gender order.
18    
R. Béres-Deák

to educated audiences, such as lesbian pilgrimages (Renkin 2007a) to

sites associated with early twentieth-century female literary figures an
average high-school educated person has never heard of. I have seen
several cases when working-class participants, elated at having found
the only publicly advertised LGBTQ events, turned away disappointed
when the discussion focused on history and literature rather than the
everyday difficulties of LGBTQ people.24 Internet forums are more
inclusive in this respect, though—as mentioned above—looking at
LGBTQ websites safe from curious glances is not available for everyone.
While Boellstorff warns that, in spite of stereotypes, working-class users
are by no means absent from the virtual sphere (Boellstorff 2008), they
have less opportunity to contribute to forum discussions during work,
like some middle-class posters do. Also, in online discussion forums
highly educated people often support their position with reference to
expert discourses, which means they end up in a dominant position.
This power dynamics can often be observed offline as well; less educated
people are indeed present in LGBTQ spaces, but they often appropriate
the values and rhetoric of the middle-class majority, including in terms
of work and study aspirations (see an example in the next section).
While this adoption of middle-class values is not necessarily uncritical
(e.g., some of my interviewees with a rural working-class background
criticize stereotypes of rural homophobia) and some organizations
have been trying to attract a wider range of audience, there is no visi-
ble counterdiscourse to this predominantly middle-class position within
the subculture.25 Rather than claiming that the most publicly visible
LGBTQ community is a middle-class one, I would rather say it is an
urban, male-dominated community with explicitly middle-class and
cosmopolitan values.

24Of course, middle-class participants who wish to discuss their personal issues may feel the same

disappointment, but at least understand the presentation.

25A short-lived initiative, called Queer New Wave (Buzi Új Hullám), did try to address issues of

class, but from an explicitly middle-class position: all its members were university educated, and
their ideas of addressing class were charity-based, like distributing food for the homeless, which
reinforces rather than dismantles class hierarchies.
 1 Introduction    
19

It is worth saying some words about some LGBTQ organizations,

as they played a crucial role in my fieldwork: I conducted participant
observation at several events organized by them, published my call
for interviewees—among other forums—on their mailing lists and
Facebook profiles, and used their publications and websites as sources.
Also, they play an important part in influencing community discourses
and practices.
Háttér Society, founded in 1995, is the oldest LGBTQI26 organiza-
tion in Hungary. It is also the most professionalized, with its own office
and some (part-time) employees. While to the mainstream public its
most visible features are advocacy and legal aid, its wide-ranging activi-
ties should not be restricted to the promotion of legal equality, as some
more superficial research (e.g., Mészáros 2018) suggests. Besides HIV/
AIDS prevention and psychological counseling via telephone, Internet,
or in person, it has conducted extensive research on the life experiences
of LGBTQ people in Hungary, which I will frequently reference in this
book (Takács et al. 2008; Dombos et al. 2011; Háttér Társaság 2017).
Labrisz Lesbian Association, founded in 1999, focuses on community
building (including workshops and film clubs), operates a story-tell-
ing-based school program together with Szimpozion (see later), and
has published several anthologies on lesbian topics, including Eltitkolt
évek (Secret Years, Borgos 2011), a set of interviews with middle-aged
and elderly lesbians, which I have found an invaluable resource about
lesbians during state socialism. Discussion forums on Labrisz’s web-
sites have also yielded important research data. Szimpozion, originally
a gay youth organization but now inclusive of all ages and LGBTQ+27
identities, hosts biweekly discussions on specific topics and coordi-
nates the school program together with Labrisz; its website hosts a vid-
eoblog, Meleg szemmel (‘through gay eyes’), which offers a broad and
often funny picture of the Hungarian LGBTQ scene, as well as a set of

26Háttér uses this acronym; my reason for not including the letter ‘I’ with reference to my field-
work is mentioned above.
27Indeed, at the time of my writing, of all the Hungarian LGBTQ organizations its events have

the highest diversity in terms of non-binary, trans* and asexual presence and topics, as well as the
highest awareness of intersectional oppression.
20    
R. Béres-Deák

coming out stories sent in by readers (more about these in the next sec-
tion). Budapest Pride, besides organizing pride marches, has recently
started advocating for marriage equality, with research, roundtable
discussions and an open university focusing on this topic. Two short-
lived smaller organizations were especially active in the field of same-
sex parenting: Inter Alia focused on legal advocacy (Sándor 2010a),
but also published a volume of interviews with lesbians and some gay
men who raise children (Sándor 2010b; more about this in the next
section and in Chapter 3), while the Foundation for Rainbow Families
(Szivárványcsaládokért Alapítvány ) organized workshops on the practi-
calities of various methods to form a rainbow family (more about these
in the next section).28 Rural organizations tend to be short-lived (partly
because of the rural-urban migration of their leaders) and tend to focus
on community building; during my fieldwork, I attended events organ-
ized by such groups in two rural towns.

The Fieldwork
Ethnography, with its focus on everyday life, is ideal for mapping out
people’s practices. From the wide range of possible research methods,
ethnographers need to choose the ones most viable and most suited
for their topic and expected results. In this section, I will dwell upon
the methods I used to collect research data, their specific strengths
and weaknesses, and the way they contribute to my account of the
kin relations of non-heterosexuals. I conducted multi-sited ethnog-
raphy (Gatson 2011) in offline and online environments, utilizing
semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and textual analysis.
Though I did some preliminary interviews in 2004 and 2007, most
of my fieldwork was conducted between 2011 and 2013. The bulk of
my research data comes from semi-structured ethnographic interviews

28Inter Alia ceased to function in 2012, though its website was available for some more years (Bea

Sándor, personal communication). The Foundation for Rainbow Families officially still exists, but
as two of its three founders have moved abroad, its activities are mostly constrained to online
help.
 1 Introduction    
21

with 68 people who were living or had lived in a same-sex relation-

ship and 13 people who had a same-sex couple in their family (mostly
mothers and sisters, but also one father, one cousin, and one sister-in-
law). Semi-structured ethnographic interviews are especially suitable for
learning not only about practices but also about people’s interior expe-
riences, their interpretations of events that happened (Weiss 1994), and
cultural meanings they have learnt (Spradley 1980), so they elicit peo-
ple’s everyday awareness of their culture (Boellstorff 2008). Interviews
also give people the opportunity to discuss issues that occupy them
(Boellstorff 2008) and possibly gain new insights into their own cul-
ture (Spradley 1980). Ethnographic interviews provide oppressed
groups with an opportunity for self-expression; sometimes may even
have a therapeutic function, with the ethnographer’s active listening
(Rogers 1951) facilitating self-understanding or self-acceptance in the
interviewee (Heckert 2010), thus they are in line with the principles
of engaged anthropology (Boellstorff 2008). I recruited most of my
non-heterosexual interviewees from within the segment of the LGBTQ
community described above: via Internet community sites (includ-
ing Facebook, where the profiles of LGBTQ groups and community
events—including rural ones—gave me access to people who are less
active within the community), mailing lists of LGBTQ groups, flyers I
distributed during the pride festival, through personal connections, and
via the snowball method. Thus, my non-heterosexual interlocutors are
all connected to the community (physically and/or virtually) and aware
of its discourses, though to various degrees.
Research on the relationship between non-heterosexuals and their
families of origin has mostly concentrated on the point of view of the
non-heterosexual family member (e.g., Kuhar 2007; Sullivan 2004;
Weston 1991), though coming out and subsequent efforts to integrate
or exclude the same-sex couple involve the whole family as a system
(Grafsky 2014). Weston warns that families created by non-heterosexual
people cannot be studied in isolation from the families they grew up in
(Weston 1991). Interviewing several members of the same family also
facilitates the triangulation of data (Jamieson et al. 2011) and avoids the
fallacy of taking the family as a coherent whole. Therefore, I also inter-
viewed people who had a same-sex oriented family member; they were
22    
R. Béres-Deák

partly accessed via the snowball method (through their non-heterosex-

ual family member or, in one case, through a friend) or through their
participation at LGBTQ events. Consequently, my sample is distorted:
the relatives I interviewed were mostly people who accepted their family
member’s same-sex orientation and were often aware of the problems of
LGBTQ people. At the same time, it is extremely difficult to interview
family members totally rejecting same-sex relationships for a project like
this (Bertone and Franchi 2008), especially if conducted by someone
known to be an LGBTQ activist. However, as it will transpire in the fol-
lowing chapters, this does not mean that all the families I encountered
have unconditionally integrated the same-sex couple.
Participant observation is one of the key methods of cultural anthro-
pology, considered one of the discipline’s trademarks since the early
twentieth century. It shows how discourses and practices emerge in
interaction and reveals which cultural domains are connected and how
(Boellstorff 2008). It is especially suitable for research settings which are
relatively obscured from outsiders or where outsiders and insiders might
have different views on the same phenomenon (Jorgensen 1989); both
family events and interactions within LGBTQ communities belong to
this category. Participant observation also helps provide a holistic pic-
ture and facilitate access to the interior, seemingly subjective aspects
of human existence (Jorgensen 1989). My participant observation in
the homes of my interviewees was limited to the time before and after
the interview, except a Christmas visit to the rural family of one of my
informants (this will be described in Chapter 5). However, support-
ive family members do turn up in LGBTQ spaces and events, where I
could observe their interactions with non-heterosexual kin. Workshops
and roundtable discussions, as well as informal conversations provided
access to discourses within the community and also some personal sto-
ries. In the course of my fieldwork, I attended 26 workshops relevant to
identity, kinship or coming out, three of them outside Budapest, as well
as several programs that provided the opportunity for spontaneous dis-
cussions (film showings, pride marches, parties, hiking trips).
Boellstorff (2008) warns that if anthropologists are to keep up with
the realities of technological change, they need to take account of forms
of social interaction and meaning-making in virtual worlds. This is
 1 Introduction    
23

especially relevant to the study of disadvantaged groups, for whom the

Internet may offer empowerment (Wellman and Gulia 1999) as well
as an opportunity to hide their real-life identity and thus avoid possi-
ble negative consequences in offline society (Boellstorff 2008). At the
same time, online communities offer the chance of participation in the
subculture also for those who are otherwise isolated due to their resi-
dence, closetedness, or other factors (Gray 2009). I analyzed forum
threads on three websites: pride.hu (originally an LGBTQ news website,
but mostly visited for its forum and personal ad sections),29 labrisz.hu
(the website of Labrisz Lesbian Association) and melegvagyok.hu (the
website of Szimpozion).30 The topics of the forum threads I analyzed
focused on sexual identity, parenting, coming out, and the situation of
LGBTQ people in the countryside. Though not giving much (or relia-
ble) information about practices, forums are useful for mapping out the
most important discourses and controversial points in the community.
The possibility of citing texts—the comments of other posters or any
material published on the Internet—is a characteristic of online forums
(Gatson 2011) and makes it possible for posters to give more nuanced
reactions to mainstream or community discourses. The anonymity
of the Internet may encourage people to express opinions they would
not in an offline community.31 Of the three websites I analyzed, pride.
hu was the most widely visited and the most democratic, with a broad
range of opinions expressed. The other two websites were operated by
LGBTQ organizations, and this left its mark on the forum threads as
well: they were more strongly moderated against trolling and flaming,32

29Since the end of my fieldwork, the pride.hu website disappeared, then restarted under a differ-
ent name (pridekozosseg.hu), but the old forum threads can no longer be retrieved.
30Unfortunately, shortly after I started my research, the melegvagyok.hu website was hacked; the

organization started a new website, but without the forums. Therefore, I only had access to one
forum thread, focusing on coming out, that I had managed to copy into a file.
31Which is not to say that there are no rules and taboos in online communities (Csáji 2015;

Gatson 2011; Wellman and Gulia 1999).

32Trolls are people who attempt to pass as legitimate participants of a forum or other internet

group but cause disruption by disseminating bad advice or attacking other posters (Donath
1999). While Donath suggests that trolls only assume the identity on which the group is based,
on pride.hu I witnessed trolling by self-proclaimed LGBTQ people, especially concerning argu-
ments they strongly disagree with. Flaming is aggressively attacking another user (Donath 1999).
24    
R. Béres-Deák

and sometimes people associated with the organization spoke from an

authority position. They exemplify that forums are not devoid of hierar-
chy either: the word of influential community members or public gay/
lesbian figures carries more weight, especially on websites operated by
an organization with clear political goals. The editors of such sites are
acutely aware of possible outsiders reading the material and thus may
police contents that might shock outsiders or put the community in a
negative light (Csáji 2015).
The same is true for other online material I analyzed: the blog of
Inter Alia Association, written jointly by members of the organization
and taking an explicit stand for same-sex parenting, and coming out
stories on Szimpozion’s website melegvagyok.hu (‘iamgay.hu’). These
stories are written by readers of the website and are classified into two
categories: by ‘those who came out’ and by ‘those who have been come
out to,’ mostly friends and family members. The majority of these sto-
ries deal with coming out to the family of origin, so they provided use-
ful material for my chapter on coming out. At the same time, people
who strongly disagree with activism in general and Szimpozion’s goals in
particular are unlikely to visit the website, as are people deterred by the
explicitly gay domain name; as discussed above, this may include young
people under strict parental control (Gray 2009). Not surprisingly, writ-
ings by ‘those come out to’ are likely to support LGBTQ causes. Many
(though not all!) of their and also the gay and lesbian contributors’ sto-
ries were produced with the educational purpose of encouraging people
to come out. Thus, they might distort reality even more than other sto-
ries, either in order to fit the narrative traditions of coming out (Weston
1991; Plummer 1997) or to make an activist point.
Gatson (2011) argues that in contrast to offline research, where the
ethnographer has to convert sensory experiences into text, no such
work is necessary on online sites, which are already text. Besides ignor-
ing non-textual online sites like virtual worlds (Boellstorff 2008), this
approach does not consider that interpretation is indispensable for eth-
nography (Asad 1986; Geertz 1993 [1973]) whether online or offline,
and also the fact that participant observation also includes verbal inter-
actions. As discussed above, the bulk of my offline research focused on
verbal communication, and in this sense was similar to studying forums
 1 Introduction    
25

or online coming out stories. The main difference lies in the topics
covered: the online and offline communication of small communities
often differ, partly (though not solely) due to the public nature of the
Internet (Csáji 2015).33 We should also be wary of making a rigid sepa-
ration between online and offline worlds: several of my interviewees also
participated in online forums, and in Chapter 4 we will see an example
how online and offline discourses mutually influence each other.
Besides the analysis of virtual texts, I also used three interview vol-
umes that were published during or just before my fieldwork. The
first one was published in 2005 with the title És ha a te gyereked lenne
homoszexuális? (What if your child was homosexual?) (Szenteh 2005)
and focuses on family members of gays and lesbians. A book contain-
ing 11 interviews with lesbian and gay parents, Mi vagyunk a család, a
biztonság, az otthona (We are the family, the safety, her home) (Sándor
2010b) was published by Inter Alia, which through this volume tried
to create visibility for rainbow families. In the case of both interview
volumes, the activist purpose is clearly visible: the interviewer (presum-
ably the editor) also expresses her opinion, at times tries to convince
the interviewees about it and Szenteh consciously chose interview-
ees who accepted their lesbian or gay34 family member in order to set
a positive example (Szenteh 2005). The third volume, Eltitkolt évek
(Secret Years), contains interviews with women who lived as lesbi-
ans during or shortly after state socialism and was one of the outputs
of a lesbian herstory project conducted by Labrisz Lesbian Association
(Borgos 2011).35 Coming out to, and relationship with, families of ori-
gin feature in many of the interviews, as do families of choice. Using
the oral history method, these interviews are much less biased; at the
same time, the choice of interviewees—mostly women the activists
themselves had known before (Borgos 2011)—and the interviewees’

33Naturally, there are less public sites of communication on the internet, like closed Facebook
groups or Skype calls between group members (Csáji 2015), but I did not examine these.
34Bisexual, transgender, and queer people are not even mentioned in either volume.

35The oral history project continued with gay men and yielded the book and film Hot men, cold

dictatorships (Hanzli et al. 2015); however, as it was published years after my fieldwork, I had no
opportunity to analyze it in detail and will only make sporadic references to it.
26    
R. Béres-Deák

awareness that the project was conducted by a feminist lesbian organi-

zation might have influenced the content. Thus, I used these interview
volumes less as primary sources than as ways to get insight into com-
munity discourses, especially those propagated by NGOs (Labrisz, Inter
Alia) and activist-minded individuals (Szenteh); at the same time, I am
aware that alternative discourses within the community or among fam-
ily members are silenced in them.
Duneier (1999) warns anthropologists against the ‘ethnographic
fallacy,’ the trend to see the world only through their interlocutors’
eyes, who may not be aware of broader social processes shaping their
situation. In the following chapters, it will transpire that many of my
interlocutors do see the constraints laws and social discourses put on
their intimate choices and recognition. Nevertheless, some of them
are mistaken about the actual content of the law (e.g., several times
I heard the—false—claim that the law bans gay men and lesbians from
adopting in Hungary)36 and are often unaware of constraining dis-
courses within their own subcultural community or family. I was con-
stantly watching public discourses, including informal conversations
among heterosexuals related to the topic of family, and tried to ques-
tion taken-for-granted assumptions. To have a more accurate view of
legal regulations concerning same-sex relationships and parenting, I also
conducted an expert interview with Tamás Dombos, the head of Háttér
Legal Aid.37
In choosing my interviewees, I tried to reproduce the diversity of
the community as much as possible. With respect to gender, 31 of
my non-heterosexual interviewees were women and 37 men. I did not
include trans* people in my sample because the term ‘same-sex couple’
is more problematic in the case of people with non-binary gender or
in the midst of transition; also, based on informal conversations with
trans* people, I found that gender transition and non-binary gender are
extra complicating factors influencing the family’s reaction and would

36In summer 2019 the government did suggest a modification of the law to ban adoption by gays

and lesbians, but no bill has been presented to the Parliament yet.
37Háttér Legal Aid, besides its advocacy and legal counseling work, also hold trainings and work-

shops to raise the legal awareness of the LGBTQ community; I participated in such workshops
and Tamás Dombos also provided me with training materials.
 1 Introduction    
27

merit a study of their own.38 The family members, with one excep-
tion, were all women; as mentioned above, they were recruited through
LGBTQ discussion groups (where, during the whole of my fieldwork,
I never saw any cisheterosexual men) or through their same-sex ori-
ented child or sibling, who almost invariably suggested female family
members for interviewing. This may be due to the assumed higher level
of homophobia in men than women, which is confirmed by statistics
(Kite and Whitley 1998; Takács 2011) or the assumption that family
affairs are a women’s realm (Di Leonardo 1992). I did meet and talk
to male family members in people’s homes as part of participant obser-
vation. In terms of ethnicity, two of my interviewees were Roma, but
one of them made me promise that I would not mention her ethnic
background, and also due to the small number I could not generalize
about their experiences,39 so my reflections on race will mostly concern
public discourses.40 Seven of my interviewees identify as Jewish and
one as Romanian. However, in each of these cases I found that the fam-
ily had kept silent about their background until the transition, which
saw a revival of ethnic identities, but this usually only characterizes the
younger generation (Neumann and Vajda 2008); though for these inter-
viewees ethnicity may have implicitly influenced discourses and prac-
tices, it was certainly not a family tradition.
The age of my same-sex oriented interviewees ranges from 19 to 60,
that of family members from 17 to 70. The majority of the same-sex
couples is, however, between 20 and 40 years of age, mirroring the char-
acteristics of the community (see above), and also because I needed peo-
ple who had had at least one same-sex relationship; this may not be true
of teenagers but neither of some elderly people, who knew of no oppor-
tunities of meeting people like themselves at a young age and now have

38I do discuss a case where the partner was not cisgender in Béres-Deák (2015).
39This also reproduces community tendencies, as at the time of my fieldwork Roma members
usually did not talk about their background. From 2018, one has been able to observe a higher
visibility of Roma LGBTQ (especially gay men) in Hungary, including some research projects
exploring their experiences.
40Except one person’s experience of adopting a Roma child, see Chapter 3.
28    
R. Béres-Deák

a difficulty establishing lasting partnerships in an ageist subculture.41

Among family members, it was also usually the younger generation the
non-heterosexual person recommended for an interview, potentially
because of the less strained and/or hierarchical relationship between
them.
Twenty-one members of same-sex couples and three relatives inter-
viewed lived outside the borders of Budapest at the time of my field-
work; my participant observation at community events was also mostly
in Budapest, except (as I have mentioned) three rural workshops and
some other rural events (parties, camps, hiking trips). While the propor-
tion of rural interviewees seems rather small, it is worth problematizing
the urban/rural divide. First, during my fieldwork several interlocutors
changed their residence: during our first interview Vándor was living in
Budapest, by the second one she had moved to the countryside. Second,
taking ‘Budapest’ and ‘countryside’ as monolithic categories ignores
local specificities. The experience of Lóránt, who lives in a large rural
town, differs considerably from that of other non-heterosexual men liv-
ing in small towns (Krisz) or villages (Edmund). Some of the Budapest
families—such as those of Zsóka and Kornélia—live in suburban envi-
ronments which resemble villages in their arrangements, lifestyle and
connections to the city center. Studies about the form of settlement
influencing attitudes to same-sex sexuality also suggest such distinc-
tions: Takács found that suburban inhabitants are considerably more
accepting toward homosexuality than either rural people or residents of
inner cities (Takács 2011). Finally, regional and other characteristics of
the settlement might also count; Endre emphasizes that in his modern
industrial hometown, people are more open-minded than in his part-
ner’s smaller, agricultural community.

41A middle-aged gay friend’s email sums up the situation in a funny way: ‘I’d participate in your

study, but by the time I wake up in the morning, my same-sex relationships always disappear! ’
 1 Introduction    
29

Also, a considerable number of my interviewees (about half of those

who currently live in Budapest) were born and raised in the country-
side, and moved to Budapest as adults. In most cases, the main moti-
vation (like with many young heterosexuals) was to study or find work,
but for some a quest for an LGBTQ community or an anonymous
space to lead a non-heterosexual lifestyle (Weston 1998) also played a
part. Nevertheless, the families of these interlocutors remain in the
countryside and specific patterns of interaction emerge between them
and their city-dwelling kin. In some other cases, my interviewee comes
from a Budapest family, but his/her partner has rural origins. Given that
my study focuses on the whole family and not just on the same-sex cou-
ple, such arrangements offer, in more ways than one, a way to study
‘the rural through the urban’ (Weston 1998: 32). At the same time, the
rarely acknowledged suburbanization of LGBTQ subcultures (Holman
and Oswald 2011) is also present, with some originally city-dwelling
couples moving to the countryside, especially those who plan or have
already started to raise children. As these people have families and often
jobs in Budapest, they also problematize the urban/rural divide.
Class is similarly difficult to pinpoint; as discussed in the previ-
ous section, state socialist legacy has made class analysis difficult. My
interlocutors themselves have no clear emic criteria for determining
class (one college-educated man called his father, who has not com-
pleted secondary school, ‘an intellectual’ because he speaks a foreign
language) and rarely exhibit any class consciousness. Also, state social-
ist class mobility (McLennan 2011) created complex constellations in
families: the ‘classic’ class markers—financial background, education,
work or (in the case of women) marriage (Lawler 2000)—often do not
coincide. Havana, a rural lesbian, is a case in point: she is the only one
among my adult interviewees who has not finished secondary school.
Her parents are farmers and also have a low level of education, but her
sister is a doctor. Moreover, Havana’s partner Ribera is a middle-class
woman, and as a result of her influence Havana has changed her life-
style, her appearance and her aspirations: at the time of our interview,
she was studying for her school-leaving exam and considered going to
college. At the same time, she keeps a close contact with her parents and
occasionally helps them on the farm, along with Ribera; she has also
retained her love for rock music (a class marker in her opinion), which
30    
R. Béres-Deák

she tries to instill in Ribera’s daughter. While a form of social mobil-

ity can be observed in this family through education and ‘marriage,’
the working-class roots are still present and result in a mixture of class
markers in Havana’s life and that of her family.
In spite of these difficulties, I tried to recruit interviewees from differ-
ent socio-economic backgrounds, because I believe that kinship practices,
expectations and discourses are shaped by class. Due to the variation in
emic definitions of class described above, I relied on the etic categories of
work and education as primary class markers. Though the majority of my
same-sex oriented interviewees have had some form of higher education,
the fact that many come from working-class families allows a glimpse
into class differences with regard to family practices and ideologies.
Several studies make a rigid contrast between activists and ‘ordinary’
members of the community; some (e.g., Dave 2012) limit their research
to activists, while others (e.g., Boellstorff 2005) try to avoid them. I
find this separation problematic on various levels. On the one hand,
it is a matter of definition: Does participating at the pride parade, vol-
unteering for a telephone hotline, or taking part in a workshop make
one an activist?42 On the other hand, we need not assume that activists
and non-activists are affected differently by community values and dis-
courses; some of my interviewees who have never even been to an event
of an LGBTQ organization, like Ribera, express strong political con-
sciousness, and in Chapter 4 we will see a story where a former member
of an NGO distances himself from the community rhetoric of coming
out. Though involvement in activism sometimes does influence my
respondents’ views and experiences, I did not find this enough reason to
exclude either group from my research.
With online interlocutors, it is even more difficult to determine per-
sonal characteristics. The scarceness of identity clues on the Internet
means that it is easy to put on a fake identity; this might happen with
the purpose of deceiving other users (like when straight men pretend to

42In a journal article, I described the story of a woman who, after participating in a legal awareness

workshop, started legal action against discrimination, as an illustration to how non-activists also
rely on the legal framework. The anonymous reviewer commented that the heroine of my story was
indeed an activist, after all, she had taken part in an event organized by an LGBTQ organization.
 1 Introduction    
31

be lesbians with the hope of attracting lesbian or bisexual women) or for

other reasons (e.g., changing personal data in order not to be identifia-
ble as an LGBTQ person) (Donath 1999). I will refer to forum posters
with the gender they assume (or suggest in the wording of their posts)
and also accept other characteristics they claim about themselves (e.g.,
sexual orientation, type of settlement) in order to respect the personae
they have created for themselves (Boellstorff 2008), while being aware
that this may not coincide with their offline characteristics. This leads us
to questions of ethics and authenticity.

Ethics, Authenticity, and Positionality

Authenticity seems to be one of the few concepts that have not been
deconstructed by poststructuralism. Even though the subject is increas-
ingly seen as fragmented (Butler 1990; Muñoz 1999), queer analysis
only questions the taken-for-granted value of authenticity, if at all, with
regard to cultural production (e.g., Halperin 2012), but not in terms of
what people say about themselves. This has consequences for the dec-
laration of sexual identities (see Chapter 4), but also for ethnographic
fieldwork. Especially in online ethnography, the issue arises whether
respondents tell the truth about their identity and life events (Donath
1999; O’Brien 1999). However, if we take online interlocutors as per-
sonae not fully equivalent with the offline person who created them
(Boellstorff 2008) and their stories as community discourses, it is point-
less to wonder whether these are true (in Chapter 3, I will present a
coming out story which is likely to be at best exaggerated, but nicely
reveals the ruling ideas of the community).
Even if we do not doubt the honesty of respondents, the narratives
heard in interviews, workshops or private conversations or read on
the Internet or in interview volumes cannot be considered objective.
Distortions may result from lapses of memory (Gabb 2010 [2008]),
but also from the interactive nature of the process. In face-to-face inter-
views, people are more concerned about self-presentation and polit-
ical correctness than during informal conversations (Erel et al. 2011).
People’s wish to create a coherent life story often makes them forget
32    
R. Béres-Deák

or consciously omit elements that do not fit into it (Weston 1996).

Indeed, people’s motivation for agreeing to an interview or for writing
on an Internet forum might be to create a certain impression of them-
selves (e.g., how tolerant or how ‘out’ they are) or to give proof to their
opinion on an issue (e.g., to illustrate with their story that Hungarian
families accept/reject LGBTQ members). In this sense, the value of
these life narratives does not lie in their ‘truthfulness’ but in the dis-
courses they reveal. At the same time, I do not question the facts or feel-
ings they share, and when I triangulate data, it is not in order to verify
‘the facts’ but to see different perspectives on the same event (an exam-
ple will be discussed in Chapter 5).
Not questioning people’s words includes their self-definition. Though
in the preliminary phase of my research I used the term ‘gay and les-
bian,’ I then abandoned it because my later respondents showed a much
wider variety of identification. One reason could be that, whereas until
the early 2000s sexual and gender fluidity was barely present in com-
munity discourses and identifications (Renkin 2007b), the notion of
‘queer’ became more known in Hungary in the 2010s. The other possi-
ble reason is the inclusion of rural interviewees, who were more inclined
to identify as bisexual, possibly because they had no experience with the
biphobia prevalent in some Budapest sections of the community (Béres-
Deák 2007). We must bear in mind, though, that terms are subject to
interpretation and may mean something else for each person. Many of
my female respondents shunned the word ‘lesbian,’ which they associ-
ated with feminist activism and Labrisz Lesbian Association, and pre-
ferred to identify as gay; some (especially rural) people say they are
bisexual because they used to have heterosexual relationships, while
others with a similar past identify as gay, lesbian, or queer (Béres-Deák
2016); ‘queer’ may mean an activist position, a sexual orientation or
gender fluidity, depending on the person. Some of my interviewees
reported changes in their self-identification during the course of my
research. Therefore, as generic terms, I will use ‘same-sex oriented’ or
‘non-heterosexual’ for my interviewees, a strategy also applied by Stella
(2015). While the term ‘non-heterosexual’ has been criticized for its
negativity, it nicely emphasizes how this group is distinct from the het-
erosexual mainstream and therefore denied full intimate citizenship.
 1 Introduction    
33

When talking about individual people, I use the identity category they
apply for themselves, and I do the same when referring to other research
in the field.
While it has been standard anthropological practice to assign pseu-
donyms to interlocutors (Spradley 1980) or even whole tribes (e.g.,
Herdt 1994), some ethnographers contest this notion, claiming that
the use of pseudonyms makes people unrecognizable even for them-
selves and thus enhances their invisibility (Myerhoff cited in Newton
1993); however, this can be avoided if respondents choose their pseu-
donyms themselves, a practice I also followed. Others suggest that by
using pseudonyms, ethnographers wish to protect themselves rather
than their interviewees (Duneier 1999). However, in a sensitive area like
non-heterosexual orientation, being identified on the basis of a study
might carry serious risks,43 especially in a country with widespread
homophobia like Hungary. Moreover, using real names in a study about
kinship would out not only one’s interlocutors but also family members
who might not be comfortable with this (Boellstorff et al. 2012; Lewin
1998). Lewin also suggests that using real names gives the impression
that the study is about specific people and not a social phenomenon
(Lewin 1998). Considering all these factors, I decided to use pseudo-
nyms for my interviewees as well as the forum posters. The necessity
of assigning pseudonyms in online research is sometimes debated, given
that in these environments people rarely use their real names; how-
ever, their offline identity can sometimes be deduced from their screen
names or nicks, and/or they might not want to identify with things
they wrote earlier (Garcia et al. 2009). Thus, currently ethical prac-
tice in online research also requires the use of pseudonyms (Boellstorff
et al. 2012). I did not assign pseudonyms to the authors of coming
out stories on melegvagyok.hu, most of which do not have one on the
website either, and I did not change the names of some public figures
and political groups that were mentioned in interviews or on forums.

43Though Newton (1993) used the real names of her gay and lesbian interlocutors, it must be
remembered that these were openly out people in high-class positions, who had less to lose by
being identified.
34    
R. Béres-Deák

For settlements—except for Budapest—I use names invented by myself

or in some cases by my interviewees, and I omitted or changed any
other details or stories that might identify my respondents. However,
given the smallness of the community, its core members reading this
text might be able to identify some people even on the basis of gen-
eral demographic information (this is the reason one Roma respondent
made me promise not to mention her ethnic background); this is proba-
bly impossible to avoid in such contexts.
My fieldwork was entirely conducted in Hungarian, which is my
native language. All excerpts from interviews, blogs, and online or
offline discussions are my translation. On the one hand, translating
online texts also makes them harder to identify and thus further pro-
tects the anonymity of respondents; on the other hand, translation
necessarily requires interpretation, and in case a forum post I could
not go back to the author44 and verify what he/she meant. Where the
original wording is ambiguous or unclear, I have included the original
Hungarian in italics.
Beyond translation, the researcher’s person inevitably influences
the result (Kulick 1995; Pratt 1986) because the ethnographer cannot
remove herself completely from the stories of her interlocutors that she
is telling (Muñoz 2010). This influence of the anthropologist’s subjec-
tivity on both data collection and analysis is not necessarily a drawback
but might also become an asset, as ‘[o]ur subjectivities form the core
of anthropological theory and method’ (Blackwood 1995: 55). My his-
tory as an LGBTQ activist since the 1990s and a relatively well-known
member of the community may have facilitated my access to sites and
interviewees; as opposed to the increasing number of (mostly MA) stu-
dents of sociology and psychology,45 who are eager to write papers on
the ‘exotic’ LGBTQ subculture but in fact know but little about it, my

44I consciously made no attempt to trace forum posters’ offline identity.

45Apparently, these are the disciplines where Hungarian universities allow research in such top-
ics, and also where it is easy to study them without actually having to meet LGBTQ people in
person, e.g., through online questionnaires. Such surveys are often shared on forums and mail-
ing lists, and in most cases harshly criticized for their cisnormativity and lack of background
knowledge.
 1 Introduction    
35

respondents could assume that I was familiar with their life situation.
My previous research on lesbian style (Béres-Deák 2002) may also have
convinced people that I would do no harm to their person or identity
(some of my respondents in that study contacted me again to be inter-
viewed for this one). At the same time, very closeted people may have
been deterred from participation when considering they would have
to meet someone widely identified as a member of the LGBTQ com-
munity.46 Similarly, my self-identification as queer may have induced
some respondents to reflect more on their own identity and acknowl-
edge more fluidity than they would in a community space; for others,
it may have been a deterrent. This does not necessarily mean, however,
that all my interviewees are completely in agreement with me with
regard to activism or sexual identity; I heard harsh criticism about both
during our interviews. We should not overestimate the extent to which
respondents say things to please the researcher. This is also connected to
the question of power hierarchies between researcher and researched.
Feminist and postcolonial research often emphasizes the mutuality
of the research relationship resulting from a shared ‘moral community’
and commitment (Bishop cited in Denzin 2003). Others warn that the
anthropologist is automatically in a superordinate position in relation
to her/his subjects because of her/his control over the research, her/his
possibility to leave the field (Boellstorff et al. 2012) or of her/his expert
position and language (Abu-Lughod 1991). With regard to the latter,
most of my respondents either did not know what anthropology was
(their interpretation was that I was writing a popular book, like several
journalists producing tabloid versions of LGBTQ life stories, e.g., Vas
2011) or treated it with a contempt typical in Hungary toward social
sciences (also detectable in the recent government attacks on these).
Some of my heterosexual interviewees asserted their superior economic
(and in one case, gender) position toward me, which made me feel I
was ‘studying up’ (Boellstorff et al. 2012). With non-heterosexual inter-

46I do not think people outside the community would recognize me, but as we will see below,
the closet is sometimes associated with an irrational amount of fear; there have been people (not
potential interviewees) who were reluctant to appear in my company in public space.
36    
R. Béres-Deák

viewees, I did not feel such differences; our shared stigma and ‘sensitive’
identity (Goffman 1974) arguably overshadowed many other differ-
ences. One difference it did not overshadow was the urban/rural one:
some rural respondents were elated that a city person would travel hours
to hear their story, while others implied that living in the city, I can-
not understand their circumstances. This is also a reflection of how in
the Hungarian LGBTQ community the urban/rural difference is much
more thematized than, e.g., class.
Naturally, my analysis also bears marks of my positionality. Being a
feminist, I was likely to detect gender and other inequalities at work
where my interlocutors did not, and my interpretation in some cases
might differ considerably from theirs. Moreover, some of the terms I am
operating with—discourse, intimate citizenship, subversion—are not
present in Hungarian public speech and most of my interlocutors are
not familiar with them.47 The result is that my analysis may be very dif-
ferent from how the interviewees or forum posters would interpret their
own words and actions. Such differences, however, do not invalidate
either interpretation (Borland 1991).
Anthropologists often assume the position of speaking for groups
that cannot speak for themselves. While in the case of remote cultures
this can be criticized as a colonialist stance ignoring the literacy and
agency of Third-World peoples (Asad 1986), the situation is different if
the researched community keeps silent because of the stigma attached
to them. Elsewhere, I have argued (Béres-Deák 2010) that in the case of
extremely closeted groups (in that instance, parents in rainbow families)
social scientists have a crucial responsibility for making them visible in
public discourses while preserving their anonymity. For similar, though
not exactly the same reasons, heterosexual family members of same-sex
oriented people are in a similar position. Ethnography is an especially
suitable method for mapping out the everyday realities of groups mostly
hidden in contemporary Hungarian society and possibly makes readers
aware of their concerns and perspectives. Thus, the following chapters,

47Indeed, in the interviews I had to paraphrase the question about discourses, because even uni-

versity-educated interlocutors were unfamiliar with the term.

 1 Introduction    
37

besides providing new insights into the connection of family, intimate

citizenship, and agency, also give voice to oppressed groups and thus
comply with the call for engaged anthropology (Sanford 2006).

The Structure of the Book

In Chapter 2, I discuss some common myths about the role of the
family in (post) state socialism, like the notion that ‘traditional’ fam-
ily structures have survived more than in ‘the West’ or that during state
socialism family was the only sphere free of state interference and thus a
site of resistance. Through this, I aim to problematize a simplistic East–
West dichotomy and provide a context for my findings. Then I will
address the way the contemporary right-wing nationalist leadership of
the country frames and influences family structures, and explore con-
nections between nation and kinship/sexuality. I look at this in a com-
parative Central Eastern European and European perspective, through
the lens of intimate citizenship, in order to present the broader social
and legal context of the families I studied, as well as contribute to schol-
arly debates on presumed specificities of Central and Eastern Europe.
Chapter 3 contributes to anthropological debates on the nature
of contemporary kinship and how it is affected by new reproductive
technologies and rainbow families. The empirical material comes from
on- and offline discourses on the meaning and functions of ‘family’
within the Hungarian LGBTQ community. I discuss how ‘traditional’
notions of kinship survive in the LGBTQ community, but given vari-
ous (including legal) barriers, they are also expanded to accommodate
new family forms; LGBTQ kinship cannot help being subversive and
accommodationist at the same time (Lewin 2009). I also address how
geopolitical context, such as the legacy of state socialism, neoliberal
family policies, and nationalism affect notions of kinship in Hungary.
Thus, relying on my field data and relevant scholarly literature, I prob-
lematize the juxtaposition of accommodation and subversion in relation
to LGBTQ kinship forms.
Chapter 4 focuses on, but also problematizes the notion of coming
out. In critically engaging with both academic and activist discourses,
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