Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 9 – Vladimir Putin’s
response to Oliver Stone’s inquiry as to what he would do if he found himself
in a shower with a gay man – Putin said he wouldn’t want to tempt him and that
the latter should remember that he is a judo master – has provoked widespread
comment by Russian bloggers (http://www.kasparov.ru/material.php?id=59383BCB8C3C4).
Perhaps
the most thoughtful has been offered by Igor Eidman who notes that “people
(regardless of sexual orientation) typically bathe themselves in showers” and
that Putin’s remark thus points, as Freud would have it, to “a whole set of
serious complexes and deviations” (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=59398434C9302).
Eidman, who lives in Germany and
provides commentary for Deutsche Welle, offered three:
First of all, the comentator says,
Putin displayed “a fear of others, a syndrome of a weak boy lacking confidence
in himself who constantly fears force from those around him and therefore tells
everyone that he is ‘a master of judo.’
They are suddenly frightened and decide not to attack.”
Second, Putin’s words point to “a
fear of his own latent homosexual nature … Most likely, Putin simply is
subconsciously afraid that if he were in a shower, he wouldn’t be able to
withstand temptation. Latent homosexuality, as often happens, is pushed out of
site by demonstrative homophobia.”
And third, Eidman says, Putin’s
words also reflect a fundamental narcissism. The Kremlin leader clearly thinks
that were he to find himself in a shower with a gay man, the latter would be
instantly attracted to him and try to force himself on Putin. It clearly “doesn’t
come into his head that he, an older and battered man, might not be of any
interest to someone else.”
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