Gay Doesn’t Exist, According to Your Phone

If same-sex attraction is your reality in Russia, the odds of living an undisturbed life are bleak by design. The government treats homosexuality as something that functionally doesn’t exist. Mainstream media frames two men kissing as obscene content. Drunk teenagers treat anyone who reads as not straight as a moving target.

Apparently the phone is also in on it. Apple’s Russian-language Siri has been recorded responding to questions about gay topics with lines like I’d blush if I could, I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, and I think this emotion should be classified as negative. Someone made a specific choice to write those responses in. It’s not a glitch or an oversight—it’s a posture, encoded into a consumer product, aimed at people already surrounded by hostility on every other side.

Think about what that means for a young person who’s fallen for someone of the same sex—parents, teachers, strangers, government, media all arrayed against them—and then they pull out their phone, the one private space they thought they had, and even that says: no, this doesn’t exist, I didn’t hear you. Your own fucking iPhone. Thanks for nothing, Siri.