For a country that has established itself as a global beacon of conservatism, this is anything but intuitive. In Russia, a transgender person only has to push the door of a public hospital or a private clinic to obtain, a few months later, thanks to a medical document and without any obligation of treatment, the right to change his identity documents.
In practice, things often turn out to be more complicated, but the observation is nonetheless true: “In this area, Russia is one of the most liberal countries in the world,” says Vladimir Komov. This 30-year-old lawyer leads the organization Delo LGBT +. Suffice to say that he rarely has the opportunity to rejoice and hardly used to pay compliments to his government.
“For years, transgender people were simply invisible to the state, which explains why they were not subject to particular pressure”, he explains in the small Moscow office of his association, created only a year ago, full of cameras to avoid attacks.
“Verbal and legislative outbidding”
From the beginning of the 1990s, the powerful Russian school of psychiatry evolved on the subject and broke with the restrictive view that prevailed in the Soviet era, without encountering any particular resistance in society. The first legislation was adopted in 1997. To obtain a modification of their identity documents – and even of the birth certificate – an adult transgender person must obtain the favorable opinion of a medical commission, headed by a psychiatrist, which issues a diagnosis of “transsexualism” (a term that transgender people refute). The whole thing takes a few months, with regular consultations.
Since 2018, the validation of a judge is no longer necessary. On paper, the follow-up of a hormonal treatment acting on the secondary sexual characteristics (like the hairiness or the chest) or the appearance of the person are not supposed to be taken into account.
This exception – this incongruity, almost – is living its last hours. On May 31, a bill prohibiting the “sex change” (a term also rejected by transgender people) was tabled in the Duma, the Russian Assembly, by nearly 400 elected officials and its rapid adoption is beyond doubt.
The text prohibits any modification of identity documents but also any ” medical intervention “, except in cases of“congenital anomalies” in children. “In recent months, the verbal one-upmanship against transgender people has been accompanied by a legislative one-upmanship, recalls Vladimir Komov. Several competing projects were submitted and the most restrictive was chosen. »
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