Transgender Ukrainians struggle to continue treatment
CNN reports that many transgender Ukrainians within the country and abroad find it hard to get access to hormones and other types of treatment.
Eric, a 23-year-old transgender man from Ukraine, explains:
“The clinic had closed because of the danger of airstrikes. I had the testosterone, but no way of getting [it administered]. I didn’t have the needles and there were huge shortages of everything in pharmacies, even the most basic stuff, because obviously, during the war, there’s a big need for things like syringes.”
A lack of hormones
The Ukrainian transgender rights group Cohort says it has helped more than 1,500 people since the start of the war, assisting them to move to safer areas and helping them pay their bills, CNN writes. The NGO also works with shelters to make sure they have the basic supplies they need.
Getting access to hormones has become a major challenge. The war has interrupted supply chains.
Russian transphobic propaganda helps trans people in Ukraine
The Russian government has become increasingly homophobic and transphobic since the beginning of the war, blaming queer folks for waging a gender war against “traditional values”. This has become the normal excuse for fascist terror these days, it seems, on both sided of the Atlantic.
This has, ironically, helped the transgender cause in Ukraine, as support for queer people is now seen as part of an overall effort to protect humanistic and democratic European values in Ukraine. The discriminatory Russian rhetoric has pushed more Ukrainians to speak up.
Transgender Ukrainians abroad
More than 7.8 million Ukrainians have left the country. Some of them are trans.
CNN explains:
The rights of trans people are weaker in some European Union countries than they are in Ukraine. For example, the Czech Republic, Finland, Latvia, Hungary and Romania still require trans people to undergo sterilization if they want to change their gender – despite a 2017 ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, which found such laws violate Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. A bill seeking to overturn the requirement is currently making its way through the parliament in Finland.
Poland and Hungary, two countries that border Ukraine and have seen a large influx of refugees, have both seen a pushback against LGBTQ rights in recent years – so much so that the European Commission launched legal action against them over the issue in July 2021.
In a country like Norway, transgender refugees will find it non-problematic to get their real name and gender respected legally (including getting correct ID-cards), but they face the same problems as everyone else when it comes to getting access to hormones. A gender dysphoria diagnosis from Ukraine is not automatically accepted by all doctors.
According to a report by Transgender Europe, waiting times for an initial appointment with a specialist can stretch to years in several European Union countries, including Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden.
Transgender Ukrainians abroad need to get in touch with the local LGBTQA organizations, which – in many countries – have put in place extra measures aimed at helping queer refugees.
Photo of Anastasiia Yeva Doman, the co-founder of Cohort, a Ukrainian trans rights group by Kateryna Kryuchkova (via CNN)