"If you talk to people about the most difficult things, they will understand, and there will be no hatred," transgender woman Maria Ivanova

IzbirKom talked to an Odesa resident who told us about the problems that Ukrainian transgender people most often face and why it is important to talk about it.

In our society, which, on the one hand, generally approves of advertising with erotic elements on billboards and does not see discrimination in various sexually explicit jokes at official business events, on the other hand, it is customary to condemn people whose sexual orientation or gender identity does not match society's expectations. For example, the same person may not see a problem with sexist advertisements for furniture or cars featuring a half-naked female body, but may be sincerely outraged if they suspect that their colleague, for example, is gay. At the same time, people belonging to the LGBTIQ community (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) do not always (and usually quite rarely) demonstrate their sexuality, but rather ask not to focus on it, because it is only one, and not the only, side of a person. However, hate speech is present not only in our everyday life, but also in the media, and even more seriously, in the law enforcement system. Maria Ivanova from Odesa, who is a transsexual (a person who has changed their gender), told IzbirKom about what our citizens like her have to face on a daily basis and why it is important for society to understand how to respond to people like her.

Mariia came to the meeting with our journalist together with her husband Dmytro and lawyer Vitalii Matveiev. It turns out that she needed a lawyer to defend her in a case of allegedly distributing pornographic materials, which the police suspect the interviewee of being involved in.

- "One day, the police broke into my house and said that I was distributing my own pornographic photos on the Internet. They behaved rudely, were openly rude, and in the end, as it turned out, they wanted to set me up. They told me that if I confessed, nothing would happen, I would just have to pay a fine. It was only later, when I found a lawyer, that I found out that I was actually facing a criminal penalty, not an administrative one, as the police had told me. Of course, I didn't distribute any pornographic photos, and I have no doubt that it was just a simple fake with the help of a graphic editor. Believe me, I know my own body, and the pictures in the case are definitely not it. Not to mention the fact that the investigator refused to show me these pictures at all, saying, "Why do you need them? Now I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that this is not an accident, but a planned situation with falsification of evidence in order to extort money in the future. I may not be the first, but I'm definitely the first to speak up and defend my rights," Maria says emotionally.

- "By the way, her lawyer refused to help her. "Which is due by law as free legal aid," adds Dmytro.

- "It turned out that the lawyer who was supposed to defend me refused when he found out that I was a transsexual. The argument was "beautiful": "I still have to defend the authorities from the zone, what will happen if they find out that I defended a transgender person." So much for a rule-of-law democratic state," Maria recalls.

Her life is full of adventures and complicated relationships with the state, colleagues, random passers-by, and family, but also pleasant meetings and true understanding.

- Probably, like everyone else, my self-perception began in childhood, when I gradually began to grow up. I realized that I was not quite like the others, was afraid of it, and closed myself off from the whole world. I lived like that. It was clear that it couldn't go on forever, and probably, like many of my peers, I learned about what was happening to me from teenagers like me. After receiving such a simple street "education," I went to the pharmacy and bought my first hormonal pills. That's how I started my hormone therapy at the age of 14, without prescriptions or doctors. I continued to take them until I met my husband. When I met him, I started visiting doctors and doing everything to change my gender, including surgeries.

- What is the procedure for gender reassignment in Ukraine?

- Oh, first you have to get a certificate from a psychiatrist, let's say, about your adequacy. It was horrible. At that time, there were students doing their internship, probably 40 of them, sitting behind me. And I was proving to them all that I had the right to change my gender, that I was serious about it, that it was no joke, that I would not change my mind, and so on. If I had been a less courageous person, I probably wouldn't have been able to withstand such pressure. And without this certificate, you can't have surgery, doctors refuse. They say you might change your mind and complain about them. Although it's hard for me to imagine how you can "come up with" such a thing and then "change your mind".

- Imagine the situation in full. First, according to Ukrainian law, you have to undergo sex reassignment surgery, hormone therapy, and only then do you have the right to change your documents. That is, a person has breasts, looks like a woman, feels like a woman, and moreover, has already had an orchiectomy (surgery to remove male genitalia - Ed.), but according to the passport, he is a man. I think you can roughly imagine how a person in such a situation can work, travel around the country, buy and present tickets, and communicate with the police if necessary. And there are hundreds of cases. We don't even think much about how often we have to show our passports: even to pick up a parcel at the post office. For us, it's not a problem at all. But for Masha, it was a problem for many years. You understand: ridicule, rudeness, inappropriate jokes... It's so strange when people who consider themselves guardians of morality suddenly start making dirty jokes without any preconditions. It is not a transsexual who makes jokes about sex, but someone who considers himself the personification of morality and purity... "Okay, Masha has successfully survived this too," says Dmytro.

A transgender person is a person who was born with a certain biological sex but feels like a person of the opposite sex, has the appropriate consciousness and behavior, i.e. has a gender identity inherent in the other sex. Transgenderism is not considered a disease or disorder. Most often, transgenderism has nothing to do with sexual orientation.

- The biggest "impression", so to speak, was a visit to the military registration and enlistment office. All the employees took pictures with me as if I were a monkey. But, to the credit of the management, everything was done promptly and without any extortion or bribes. It's good that they did," says Maria.

"In Ukraine, a few years ago, it was impossible to obtain documents without surgical sex reassignment. However, on December 30, 2016, the Ministry of Health abolished the gender reassignment commission, invalidating the order of the Ministry of Health of February 3, 2011, "On Improving the Provision of Medical Care to Persons in Need of Gender Reassignment (Correction)." This was done as part of the implementation of the Action Plan of the National Human Rights Strategy until 2020. The Unified Clinical Protocol for Primary, Secondary (Specialized) and Tertiary (Highly Specialized) Medical Care "Gender Dysphoria" was also approved. It is quite progressive, although human rights activists believe it needs to be improved

- The most difficult thing for people like me is the perception of our parents. After all, these are the closest people, and their approval is important for each of us from the first days of our lives. My dad accepted me, I'm so happy. Sometimes, though, he speaks of me as a man, but then he catches himself and says: "My daughter". But I still can't explain to my mom what this means and why I am not her son, but her daughter. But I'm about to turn forty," she sighs.

A transsexual is a person who has surgically changed or is changing the sex they were born with

- Of course, few people understand. I realize that for people it is both unusual and to some extent scary. After all, something different, not what they are used to, repels and frightens them. And the best defense is offense. Though this is actually good in the animal world, probably, not in the human world. When I was very young, I used to come home, lock myself in and cry. From insults, from dirty jokes, hints, harassment. And then I got used to it, became stronger, more mature, more hardened. I did not go to psychologists. In fact, I can tell you that there are no psychologists for trans people. This is very bad, because not every psychologist is ready to work with us. I think this is a task that should be solved by public organizations," she suggests.

- "And, by the way, lawyers. Indeed, not every lawyer is ready to defend transgender people. This is a problem. I believe that social activists need to work on creating a kind of pool of lawyers and psychologists to provide support to such people," Vitaliy Matveev adds.

Maria and Dmytro have recently officially gotten married. They haven't thought about having a child yet, but they think there will be a lot of problems with that.

- We haven't found out what the procedure is yet. Officially, of course, we are no different from an ordinary married couple, but who knows if there will be a problem, for example, if we want to adopt a child. And if we want a child of our own, I don't know if it's legally possible for people like me. In general, after all these operations, obtaining documents, and even an attempt to accuse me of something I did not do, I am not yet ready to think about it seriously. I feel that this could be a big challenge in legal and psychological terms," Maria believes.

According to her, Ukrainian society has not changed much over the past ten to twenty years.

- "I was misunderstood and rejected just as I am now. Previously, militiamen insulted me, now it's the police. And court employees? Not long ago, I was rudely insulted by employees, and apparently they did not consider it something indecent. To prevent this from happening, or at least to reduce it, we need to talk to people about it. Write in newspapers, on websites, in social networks, do interviews. We need to tell people what it is, why we are no worse than anyone else and certainly not dangerous. I have been detained by the police so much recently that I am now afraid to stand with my back to a closed door in my own apartment. I'm subconsciously afraid of being attacked. You see, it's very difficult to talk about myself in general. Then people write such comments... It's hard to read even now, despite my experience of pressure and hostility. For some reason, people are not interested in what I am as a person, what problems I have because of imperfect legislation, for example, what I do as a public figure - and I help transgender people on a voluntary basis, in a public organization - but in my sexual life," says the Odesa woman.

- "We need to change the work of our law enforcement agencies. Employees must understand that such people exist and that discrimination against them is unacceptable. Sometimes they don't understand how to behave at all, so no one has taught them how to do it. In addition, we should not be afraid to initiate criminal proceedings under so-called discriminatory articles. Nowadays, most proceedings are initiated under "hooliganism". In order to qualify the fact not as hooliganism due to "suddenly flaring up hostility," but as hate crimes. These are actions that are a crime under the Criminal Code, and their motivation is prejudice. This means that the victim of the crime was targeted by the perpetrator solely because of their characteristics (i.e. race, color, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity, language, etc.). This does not necessarily mean that the perpetrator hates the victim specifically, but may indicate stereotypical ideas about the whole group of people to which the person belongs. The police are afraid of such articles, apparently, so as not to "spoil the statistics." But statistics have nothing to do with it, on the contrary, the more such cases occur, the more it shows that people in Ukraine are aware of the problems of discrimination and punish it, rather than try to silence it," says lawyer Vitaliy Matveyev.

According to official data, in 2018, 149 offenses were recorded in Ukraine that were motivated by racial, national, sexual or religious intolerance. In 2017, 85 such cases were registered.

Evgeniya Genova