‘So, you're a lesbian or human?’ What the Russian Internet has to say to LGBT teen rights advocate Lena Klimova
Lena Klimova is the founder of Children-404, an online support network for LGBT teens in Russia, similar to the It Gets Better campaign in the US.
On April 20, Klimova created a photo album on her page on VKontakte, Russia's largest social network. The album, titled “Beautiful People and What They Say to Me,” includes publicly available pictures of individuals in their everyday lives, overlaid with the threatening messages they’ve sent her through VKontakte.
The people who wrote the hateful messages are shown in casual and intimate situations, with children, loved ones, and so on. Their messages stand out in contrast to the pictures and are vicious and obscene. RuNet Echo has republished the images and translated some of the messages into English.
PS The album has been online for less than a day, and some of Klimova's commentators have been demanding it be taken down, or else.