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In this article, written 2 1/2 years before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, I consider how lesbians and other queer women created lives in what was an increasingly totalitarian regime. Borrowing from Black queer feminist Afro- futurism, I try to open up space for survival in un- survivable conditions without in anyway suggesting that anti- Blackness and the anti- queer regime of Vladimir Putin are the same. In order to figure out how the tools of Afro- futurism can be applied to the homopessimism of Russia, I begin with the death of the lesbian as a utopian figure in the US and trace her rebirth in Putin's Russia. Then I turn to an LGBTQ magazine as well as five interviews with lesbian and queer women in Russia. By insisting on the utopian possibility of creating lesbian existence when such existence is denied, both the journal and the women managed to create some breathing room in a very anti- queer, anti- feminist and patriarchal state and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While much has been said about the diversity industry and about transexclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), little has examined their relationship to one another or to academic feminist, queer, and trans studies. This article considers a "queer attack on feminist studies" at our small liberal arts college as a case study for thinking through these relations. A handful of students and diversity staff termed feminist studies faculty TERFs not because of any actual transphobic behavior, but because of our work to question gender systems and ideologies. By examining how some students and diversity office staff alike mobilized the TERF, as well as the ideologies that allow for slippages among the terms "lesbian," "feminist," and "TERF," we outline how the lesbian and the feminist are in danger of becoming permanently reactionary figures. In so doing, we reflect on the relationship between performing diversity work and policing academic studies of gender and sexuality, ultimately arguing that the mobilization of the TERF can function both to further extend the work of the diversity industry and also to call into question academic feminist, queer, and trans studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]