Ukraine's trans refugees face unique obstacles

A train with refugees fleeing Ukraine crosses the border in Medyka, Poland on Monday, March 7, 2022. [Visar Kryeziu/AP photo]

By Kevin St. John

Many trans people living in Ukraine lead guarded lives, always mindful of the threat of violence or humiliation in a country that grants them few rights.

The process of transitioning and receiving legal gender recognition in Ukraine requires medical intervention, surgery, and a minimum 2-year psychiatric assessment. Because of these requirements, many trans people in Ukraine who wish to receive gender affirming care are reluctant to do so.

Some self-administer hormone treatment therapy with what they can buy at the pharmacy. By going through unofficial channels, they avoid doctors’ pathologizing diagnoses, but lose any hope of legally changing their gender.

Now that martial law requires all Ukrainian men and boys between the ages 18 and 60 to stay and join the war effort, the legal gender designation in your passport—not your gender identity—has become the deciding factor in who is allowed to flee. This has opened up treacherous and completely uncharted territory for trans people trying to leave the country.

There are multiple accounts of trans women being turned away at the border because their passport reads “Male.” In contrast, trans men who still have passports marked female are allowed (at least officially) to flee, but are often subject to taunting and humiliation, either at Ukrainian checkpoints or at the border control of the countries they are entering.

I spoke with Robert, a 31-year-old trans man, and xenia, a 21-year-old trans woman, about their experience fleeing the violence in Ukraine and what their plans are for the coming weeks and months.

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Robert has left war-torn regions three times in his life—first Iraq, where he was born, then the disputed Donbass region after fighting broke out, and now eastern Ukraine. After arriving in Kharkiv in 2016, Robert was granted legal status in Ukraine, but was never approved for asylum. He says that the immigration office kept his passport and refused to issue him an ID with a new photo that reflects the changes in Robert’s appearance after hormone replacement therapy, which he self-administered during his studies at med school.

Without an ID, he could not work legally, travel outside of Ukraine, or even make major purchases in his name. This legal limbo lasted for years, until Robert decided to flee the violence in Kharkiv last week and go to Prague with the help of queer activists, who are now helping him navigate the process of applying for asylum in Czech Republic.

What has this past week been like for you?

Oh, my god. It's very confusing and complicated. I wasn't even planning on leaving because I have no passport, but when the lights went out in my home, I didn't even grab anything, I just headed to the train station. At the train station I got a call saying that my house was bombed 30 minutes after I left.

I managed to get a train to Lviv – the circumstances were very bad; there was nowhere to sit so we stood the whole 21 hours, and there was no access to toilets. In Lviv, I met some German guys that a queer network had connected me with, and we drove to Slovakia. The whole way there, I couldn’t sleep because I was thinking, “How am I going to cross the border without a passport?”

When we got to the border I stood at the Ukrainian checkpoint for five hours. When I got through the Ukrainian side ok, I thought that was it. But then we had to cross the Slovakian border, too. The first two [Slovakian] officers, they took my fingerprints and everything, no problem. The third one, he took my documents and said, “Okay, wait here.” So I waited about an hour. Then another officer came and gestured for me to give him my documents. He looked at me and then threw my documents in the trash and started shouting.

Because the gender signifier in your papers said female?

Yes. And then he went and got two more officers. Everybody was laughing and someone pushed me into a sort of prison cell and closed it. Thank god I managed to call Terry [one of the activists] and put her on the phone because I didn't know what was going to happen. These officers started calling people to come and laugh at me. They made me stand there for an hour, then they called me to the room again.

The border guard took the paper out of the trash and shouted, “Okay, give me your finger.” He took my fingerprint. He started laughing again, and then he threw my documents on the floor. He said, “Just take it, and go away from here.” And so I left and crossed into Slovakia.

Sounds like this has been a traumatic week for you. How are you doing mentally and physically?

I feel like I'm flying or dreaming. My brain can't process it. I saw war in Iraq, I saw war in Donbass, but I have never seen anything like what happened in Kharkiv. It's so horrible.

What are your next steps in the coming weeks and months?

My dream is to get an ID with an updated photo, and just to live a basic life, you know? Job, home, family. And to know I’m safe. To leave home and know I can come back. This is all I want.

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When I spoke to xenia, she and her mother were still in transit after fleeing the fighting in Kharkiv, where they had spent five days straight in a metro station-turned-bomb shelter. They managed to take a train from Kharkiv to the Ukrainian city of Khmelnytskyi and were planning to move on to Yaremche the next day, where they’d been offered a place to stay.

Will you and your mom try to leave the country, or is the plan to stay in Ukraine?

xenia: I just don't think I'll be able to leave because I've got a male signifier in my documents, and they're not letting anyone out of the country with that right now.

It feels pointless. If I could stay and help with something, then I would. But for someone to say: “You have to stay here because somebody decided that you're actually male,” it just feels absurd.

I recently spoke to a trans man who said that he lived a very private life, partly because it was dangerous to be trans in Ukraine. Is that something you can relate to?

I would say more yes than no. For example, even though we fled the fighting and the bombings in Kharkiv, I can't truly relax, because I don't know how people will react to my gender identity. I have to be very careful about who I talk to and what kind of words I use. I haven't had any incidents, like direct attacks or anything, but I don't feel safe.

You mentioned earlier that you took the train. What was that like?

The train was very confusing and scary. We managed to get onto the platform, and the first train we saw was from Kharkiv to Lviv. There were a lot of people trying to get on it, and members of the Territorial Defense and the police force were very strictly monitoring who could: they were only allowing women, children, and maybe some elderly folks to get on. All of the people they assumed to be men were told to get out of the way, and were not allowed through.

While we were watching and thinking, “What are we going to do?” another train pulled up on the same platform, but from a different side. It was going from Kharkiv to Khmelnytskyi and nobody was monitoring who was getting on, so we got lucky and managed to board. On the train itself, we were with 11 other people in a compartment that is usually for four people. There was even a cat. It was very uncomfortable, and we couldn't sleep the whole night. It was hard, but we managed to get through.

Emotionally, how are you doing right now?

That's a good question. I'm not sure I have the answer. After the immediate Russian invasion, I was doing pretty badly. There's a feature in Telegram that lets you schedule messages so that they arrive at a certain time and date, and I scheduled some messages for people close to me, which were essentially my last words if anything happened.

But I’ve realized that if I keep thinking about how many things I haven't done yet, or things that I regret, or my plans for the future, I'm just, like, crying all the time. So I’ve had to essentially bury myself until I'm safe—if I reach safety. Since then, it's been okay, although a couple of days ago, I looked around and didn’t feel much at all, which kind of scared me. Obviously, I’m having some sort of response to what’s happening, but I'm also pushing it down far inside of me. It's going to have to come out sometime. Things feel fine, but they’re not.