Last week, the deputies of the Duma adopted a new retrograde law which takes away all their rights from transgender and transsexual people… Populations already, in fact, widely discriminated against in this conservative country where the constitution guarantees the preservation of “traditional family values”. According to this text, which should be ratified shortly by Vladimir Putin, trans people will no longer have the right to access medical procedures for gender reassignment, nor to adopt a child. Marriages involving at least one trans person will be annulled, and all Russians will be required to have their gender assigned at birth listed on their identity documents, unless there is a genetic condition that warrants gender re-determination. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, people wishing to change the physical expressions of their gender could resort to surgeries and hormone treatments.
The day before, the security services had just arrested a transgender activist for “high treason”, accusing him of providing financial assistance to the Ukrainian armed forces. The young man faces life imprisonment. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine launched in February 2022, Moscow has increased repressive measures against its own people, and in particular against sexual minorities, accused of “perversion” and of being influenced by the West.
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“Gender dysphoria (distress related to the mismatch between a person’s gender identity and the sex they were assigned at birth, Ed.) is a recognized mental condition. Even in the USSR in the 80s, there were treatments to relieve, thanks to gender change, people who suffered from it, ”says Eva-Lilith Tsvetkova, an endocrinologist who takes care of transgender people. “While the text has not even been signed by the president yet, we are already seeing an increase in depressive anxiety among our patients, and suicidal behavior,” she is alarmed, claiming to have been aware of several cases of suicides for a week.
“Since this new law was passed by the Duma, we have been receiving a wave of suicidal messages from transgender people. Our pace of work is that of an emergency situation,” says Ian Dvorkin, psychologist and director of Center T, one of the largest Russian organizations that help transgender people. Despite the efforts of Center T members, at least two transgender people have committed suicide recently. “They had personal problems and were in a serious psychological state. The law made it worse,” he said.
According to the T Centre, the only solution for transgender people wishing to change sex will be to resort to health professionals abroad. Over the past 20 days, the NGO has received more than 160 messages from people seeking information about moving to a country in the region with practitioners willing to help them. “We don’t have the budget to financially help these people to travel abroad, but we cooperate with foreign organizations and try to connect them with trans people looking for a surgeon or psychologist. Usually these foreign organizations focus on helping activists, but now the situation in Russia is such that it will be necessary to help even ordinary people, who are not activists,” says Ian Dvorkin.
For Russian MPs, gender dysmorphism is just an ideological excuse. “Western transgender industry is trying to infiltrate our country, set up their multi-billion dollar business here,” said Piotr Tolstoy, deputy speaker of the lower house of the Federal Assembly. “The war is not only on the (Ukrainian, Ndr) front, the war is taking place in the heads and souls, and we want to protect our country so that it is not destroyed from within,” he added.
Six months after Moscow banned all “non-negative” information about LGBT, lawmakers also banned the dissemination of information on transidentity in the winter of 2022, in the face of “the growing popularity” according to them of transidentities, especially among young people. According to the Ministry of the Interior, only 2,407 individuals have changed their gender in civil status registers since 2019, and only a thousand in 2022.
The struggle of the preservers of “traditional family values” is not only fought in the Duma. In recent days, Russian courts have repeatedly penalized TV channels, online film platforms and bookstores accused of broadcasting “LGBT propaganda”. Individuals and organizations displaying support for non-heteronormative people are often accused of being “foreign agents.”
According to Russian political scientist Dmitry Tolkatchev, the government has been particularly targeting minorities in the context of the war in Ukraine, since February 2022. “In Ukraine, for example, the government is discussing the legalization of civil partnership in Ukraine. However, Moscow seizes on this type of subject so that they are synonymous with Western and Ukrainian ideas, opposed to the Russian world, ”he explains. “This new text, adopted by the Duma, is a gesture towards Putin’s conservative allies; And, in addition, it gives the opportunity to blame the Ukrainian enemy for what conservative Russians perceive as misfortunes, bad developments in their country,” adds the expert.
“The authorities do not have a specific plan regarding the LGBT community. It is not its existence in itself that is problematic, but the government is seizing the subject to justify its war against the West,” explains Igor Kotchetkov, one of the founders of the LGBT Network, a Russian NGO. Other controversial topics could also serve as a basis for accusing European and North American countries of perverting the Russian people. Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko has just announced the tightening of the conditions for the sale of pills for performing an abortion, which will be treated like drugs containing narcotic substances.