They used to be more ignored than persecuted by the authorities, but now Belarusian trans people are living in fear or seeking sanctuary abroad. From Euroradio.fm.

Call me Christina. I am 23 years old. I am a transgender woman. I don’t want to give my real name and show my face. In today’s Belarus, I don’t want to do this.

The increasing repression of LGBT+ people in Belarus over the past few years is particularly dangerous for transgender people. Their lives are fraught with additional stresses: changing documents, surgeries, issues around work and socialization.

‘A Symbiosis of Fascism and LGBT’

The LGBT+ community has generally been ignored rather than suppressed by the Belarusian authorities. But as the crackdown on all forms of dissent continues – more than three years after mass unrest that followed the disputed reelection of the country’s longtime leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka – transphobic and homophobic discourses have intensified.

The major state-owned media lead the way in stigmatizing LGBT+ people for their individuality, portraying them as representing an alternative order based on change and movement rather than rigidity and anachronisms.

The leader in spreading transphobia and homophobia has always been the newspaper SB/Belarus Today, although Minskaya Pravda has recently started competing with it. In 2022, its website mlyn.by published 14 articles with a strongly negative view of LGBT+ people. Just four such pieces appeared the previous year.

“Stoned transgenders,” “Crested LGBT trolls,” “Criminals, migrants, and the LGBT community,” “The West is a symbiosis of fascism and LGBT” – the tone of these articles is striking in its aggressiveness. Minskaya Pravda’s journalists consistently choose stigmatizing and discriminating statements without citing their sources.

“Last year every second publication on LGBT+ in the Belarusian media contained hate speech,” says Oleg Rozhkov, a media expert and co-founder of Journalists for Tolerance, a group of media workers who monitor hate speech in the media and promote the ideals of equality and non-discrimination.

The group’s 2022 media survey found that just one article or report in five referenced LGBT+ people in Belarus. This means that the topic of LGBT+ in the Belarusian media appears more often in a non-Belarusian context. “How Germans feel about LGBT propaganda” and “Poor transgender people in San Francisco will receive benefits” are just two examples from Minskaya Pravda.

Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, according to the group, just one report in 25 supported discriminatory attitudes toward LGBT+ people. Negative reporting jumped to one report in seven after the first wave of the pandemic, then to one in five after the disputed presidential election in August 2020, and kept rising until, by 2022, almost every second article contained expressions of hate speech.

“There is purposeful incitement of xenophobia towards the ‘collective West’ and the liberal-minded population inside Belarus,” Rozhkov says.

I was already sure I was a girl at the age of six, but I was afraid to tell adults. Because even at that age I felt that it was something different, something wrong, it shouldn’t be like that.

So I lived with my depressive thoughts alone, and only in my imagination could I be who I wanted to be.

This year, the Belarusian state media, in print, online, and on TV, continued actively stigmatizing vulnerable groups. “LGBT as the tip of the iceberg” ran the headline on a mlyn.by article that deliberately lumps LGBT+ people in with those who are likely to commit child abuse or become drug addicts.

Belarus is not alone in official persecution of sexual “others.” Hungary passed a law banning LGBT propaganda among minors in 2021. Nevertheless, when that same year the Hungarian TV channel PestiTV broadcast a show in which the host humiliated transgender people, it ended up in court and a fine for the channel.

In Belarus, such a situation is impossible in today’s reality. Even so, Rozhkov stresses the need to look ahead and record all violations of human rights by the authorities.

At the age of 17, I gradually began to socialize into the gender in which I was comfortable. I bought a wig and women’s clothes and started to leave the house looking like that, at first only in the evenings when it was dark. I became even more convinced that I needed it. At the age of 21, I started the process of transgender transition according to the Ministry of Health-approved procedure.

Help Me Get Out of Belarus!

“Our organization has had to ‘go underground’ because of the repression and growing transphobia. I am now in Poland, but some activists have stayed in Belarus and continue to work,” says Alisa Sarmant, coordinator of TG House, formed in 2019 to help Belarusian transgender people resist discrimination and pressure from the authorities and society.

“Even two or three years ago we were hoping for changes, for an update of the system, for new, more civilized legal norms regarding transgender people. But the political crisis froze everything. Many activists have suffered from repression. Lately the most frequent request from Belarus is for help to leave the country,” Sarmant says.

“It used to be impossible to officially register an LGBT organization in Belarus,” says Yuri Yorsky, human rights coordinator at the Tallinn-based Eurasian Coalition for Health, Rights, Gender, and Sexual Diversity (ECOM), speaking of the time before the crackdown on dissent began in 2020.

“Those initiatives that found a way to work and support the community did so either covertly or looked for ways not to identify LGBT people as a target group in their statutes,” he says.

Despite the official obstacles, during the 2010s Belarusian activists managed to significantly increase the visibility of the LGBT community. The Community Center for LGBTQ+ launched an initiative called Identity and Law to provide psychological and legal support, as well as documenting cases of discrimination against vulnerable groups. Until the authorities terminated its activities, Makeout magazine shared stories of people who came out and reported on the life of the Belarusian LGBT+ community. The Adaptation Association ran training sessions on hormone therapy and provided up-to-date information on health care for transgender people. And there were more.

Victoria M., a trans activist now living in Poland, says the various projects and groups that supported transgender people “gave us an opportunity to

communicate and share our experiences and helped us to advocate for our interests.”

She helped run the Identity and Law initiative. Although it was not officially registered, “we provided real help,” she says. “We had a female lawyer who was not afraid to defend the rights of transgender people in court and won several cases.”

The project also connected new people to a closed forum gathering transgender people from Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Europe, and America, she says.

Underground Activists

Most of these projects have either stopped their activities in Belarus completely or gone into the shadows due to repression. They prefer not to disseminate information about their work and refuse to give interviews even to independent media. Many activists have been subjected to pressure from law enforcement agencies, including attempts to accuse them of propagandizing LGBT among minors.

“Given the Belarusian reality, we at TG House have focused on providing targeted assistance. We provide food kits and reimburse the cost of hormonal medication to all transgender people in Belarus who need it. TG House was able to do this thanks to the support of international trans organizations,” Sarmant says.

Since it began in 2019, TG House has paid for hormonal treatment for 22 people, she added, and has sent 85 food packages to 50 recipients.

The group used to provide free psychological assistance and hopes it can soon start doing so again.

The lack of information about the Belarusian LGBT+ community is a growing problem.

“We can count on the help of international organizations only if they are aware of the problems faced by the Belarusian LGBT+ community and transgender people in particular. And getting information from Belarus is becoming increasingly difficult,” Sarmant says.

“The process of monitoring and documenting violations of the rights of LGBT people in Belarus has always been difficult. In the last two or three years, we have had almost no access to information inside Belarus, as it is impossible to reach the community,” Yorsky reports.

“The activists we were in touch with left the country after the mass repressions in 2020-2021.”

The hardest thing for me was to come out to my relatives and parents. My father was very strict, conservative in his views, Catholic. He died early of cancer, and then confessing to my mother alone made it easier for me. My mother understood and supported me; she still does. And my father – he never found out, but I think Dad guessed …

Not a Disease

Transsexuality is no longer considered a mental pathology in a widely used diagnostic manual produced by the World Health Organization. In the latest edition of the manual, known as ICD-11, the term “transsexualism” has been replaced by “gender nonconformity” and is now classified under “conditions related to sexual health,” rather than “mental and behavioral disorders.”

In Belarus, transgender transition is regulated by a Health Ministry regulation approved in 2010. On average, the transition procedure takes two to two and a half years.

The process begins with a consultation at the Republican Scientific and Practical Center for Mental Health in Minsk with the country’s only sexologist authorized to work with transgender people. The person seeking gender reassignment treatment then must see a sexologist and other doctors for at least a year and spend about two weeks in the Minsk clinic.

If the authorized sexologist diagnoses a person as transsexual, their request is sent to a special interdepartmental commission for the “medical, psychological, and social rehabilitation of persons with sex denial syndrome.”

According to M.N., a human rights activist, after complaints by transgender people that members of the commission with no medical training often behaved in an intolerant manner and asked inappropriate questions, activists persuaded the commission to restrict membership to people with medical expertise, with one exception.

The commission’s work then became more professional, the activist says. For example, transgender people were no longer required to provide details of their sex lives.

“I made the transition in 2012-2013. At that time, the commission included people from the police and the military recruitment office. They would ask me:

‘How did you have sex?’, ‘How did you satisfy your wife – you were married, weren’t you?” Victoria M. says.

But that is just the first commission transgender people must convince. If their request is approved, they can then receive a new birth certificate and passport indicating the change of gender.

The person must then undergo medical observation for another year before a second commission can give the go-ahead for hormone therapy and surgery. Many transgender people start taking hormonal medication after the first commission, often without consultation and without the permission of an endocrinologist.

Activists have already raised this issue, but so far they have not been able to change the situation. Last year, at a training session organized by the Adaptation Association, a doctor said two-thirds of trans women and a third of trans men start taking hormonal medication without consulting a doctor. And this is an alarming fact, because the consequences of such a step can be severe and irreversible.

“Waiting a year for a second commission to [authorize you to] start taking hormonal medication is difficult,” says V.I., who like others interviewed for this article did not wish their real name to be used. “The sexologist expects you to socialize into a new gender, and how can you socialize if it’s very problematic to change your appearance without hormones?”

Just as transgender people must travel to Minsk to begin the long road of gender reassignment, they must also visit the capital to be prescribed hormonal mediation at the only medical facility authorized to do so. This means at least two monthly visits, an inconvenience that can be quite costly for people from outlying regions. And there are occasional disruptions in the supply of hormones.

“Last year the supply of estradiol gels was stopped because of the war. This is a serious problem as the pills cannot give the same effect,” says A., another transgender person. “While the supply of drugs to Russia was maintained, one could order deliveries from there, but then the gels disappeared in Russia, too. Some people use injections, which can be ordered from Japan, although they can take up to six months to be delivered.”

During the transitional period, I changed jobs twice. I had to cheat: only after making sure that the employer was interested in me as a professional did I admit that my documents were in a man’s name. I think if I had told them straight away that I was transgender, they would not even have talked to me.

Everyone to the Reeducation Camps

Not only was there no sex in the Soviet Union but also no LGBT+ people. In modern Belarus, politicians are trying to return to the past: representatives of the Communist Party have demanded the closure of gay nightclubs whose “values” are “not compatible with the traditional values of the Belarusian people.”

The Minskaya Pravda article titled “LGBT propaganda is also genocide” quotes member of parliament Valiantsina Kursevich saying that she, as a doctor, is unequivocally against sex reassignment, as it leads to serious psychological problems. She suggested setting up an association with educators, health care experts, representatives of religious denominations, and other public associations to oppose LGBT propaganda.

Minskaya Pravda’s recipe for an alternative to the “Western destructiveness” that promotes alternative lifestyles looks to the past and to the policies of its eastern neighbor.

“Soviet and modern Russian experience shows that the best option for 90% of troubled teenagers is a good coach, a reputable teacher, and paramilitary camps, with all that marching and life in the woods. For ordinary teenagers it’s hiking … ” the publication states in the article “LGBT as the tip of the iceberg.”

Official statistics on transgender people in Belarus are scarce, and difficult to find in open sources. In 2018, for the first time in 20 years, Belarus submitted a report to the UN Human Rights Committee. The report indicated that there were about 250 transgender people in total in the country.

Very little, if any official information related to transgender people appears in the Belarusian media. Occasionally the topic is broached in professional
journals. On its site, the Belarusian Society of Endocrinology and Metabolism outlined a Belarusian specialists’ report delivered at a 2019 meeting on pediatric endocrinology in Minsk with Russian and Ukrainian peers.

The Belarusian experts said that almost 70% of transgender people lived in Minsk and the Minsk region. Sixty percent of trans women and 82% of trans men were officially employed. More than two-thirds were raised in two-parent families. About one in three trans men had a child before gender reassignment, compared to just 6% of trans women.

A small minority of both trans men (12%) and trans women (6%) married someone of the opposite gender after gender reassignment.

Psychologist and sexologist E.S. believes that attitudes toward transgender people will only change if our society as a whole changes for the better.

“I can’t say that Belarus’ transition to ICD-11 will change anything,” she says, referring to the WHO manual.

“Doctors will write a new code and that’s it. They won’t rewire their psyches; they won’t rewire their attitudes toward transgender people. Until our society changes, until the health care system and the culture of medical care change, the number in the ICD won’t change anything.”

This is my life. I have made the transition and for over two years now I have been living in line with who I feel and have been since I was a child. I am living a much fuller life than I ever did before. Gender reassignment has helped me a lot, and it has helped most of the transgender people I have come into contact with, and these people are quite useful and capable members of Belarusian society.

…

Nadzeya Litvina (text and photos) is the pseudonym of a Belarusian freelance journalist and photographer. From her home in Belarus, she contributes to independent Belarusian media that have relocated abroad.

This article is adapted with permission from the original publication on Euroradio.fm, a nonprofit broadcast and online outlet reporting on Belarus from Warsaw.

This article was produced with the support of the International Visegrad Fund.