Hundreds of transgender citizens are trying to find refuge outside Ukraine but have been stopped at the border and forced to return to fight
They feel like women, they have a very feminine aspect and their community recognizes them as such, but not their passport, where the male name is still bold and the “M” is engraved next to the gender entry.
Two words that have struck hundreds of transgender women fleeing the war in Ukraine in recent weeks.
Under current martial law, male citizens between the ages of 18 and 60 are forced to stay to serve in the military and defend Ukraine. This also includes certified trans men or trans women without any certificate confirming the change.
Judis, a transgender woman, said in an interview with the Guardian that she felt scared when she arrived at the Ukrainian border: “The guards strip you and touch you everywhere. You can see their faces wondering, “What are you?” Like I’m some kind of animal or something. ‘ Some pulled their hair back to make sure it wasn’t a wig.
According to one of the country’s transgender human rights organizations, about 90% of trans women who arrived at the border with only a passport that did not represent them were forced to go back and take up arms.
Olena Shevchenko, human rights defender and President of Insight, one of Ukraine’s few public LGBTQ+ associations, denounces border discrimination against transgender people in general: “It seems that Ukrainian border guards also prevent trans people with a valid certificate reflecting their new way of to leave the country and no one knows why”. This is the case of Judis, a trans woman who, after a long check at the border offices, was prevented from entering Poland, despite the F next to the word gender.
Many of them left their documents at home in their rush to have their homes and cities attacked, while many others never chose to continue the long practice that would allow transgender people in Ukraine to express their new gender to legalize. .
Under Ukrainian law, changing gender and name is just the final step in a process of psychiatric evaluations, hospitalizations and a lot of bureaucracy. Although trans people have been legally recognized since 2017, all of this pushes many citizens not to get to the bottom of the practice and stick to the original documents, which is not right.
According to the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association, Ukraine ranks 39th out of 49 European countries for overall treatment reserved for LGBTQ+ people. Furthermore, the Christian Orthodox Church does not allow samesex marriages as they are not legal for the state and indeed considers homosexuality a sin.
In recent days, the organization Hplgbt has also denounced the difficulties faced by many transgender citizens in finding medicines such as hormone treatments, the interruption of which is extremely harmful to health, and which are supplied by the same NGOs to the people who remain in the country. In the early days of the conflict, someone managed to flee even without ID, but now controls have tightened, and with them extreme attempts to cross the border, such as corruption that could land them in jail. Not too scary compared to being under Russia’s homophobic regime.
March 23, 2022 (change March 23, 2022 | 10:42)
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