She puts on a long wig, high heels and bright clothes. All dressed up, she hits the bars with her friends, who are all dressed exactly like her.

They call her Anastasia-Eva Kristel Domani. However, for many people this transgender woman is still Oleksandr, a male-born 38-year-old, who didn’t want to reveal his full name as he was not ready to come out publically as transgender.

“In my teenage years I was so scared of this craving to wear women’s clothes, I thought of it as a mental illness,” Domani says. “I once threw all my female clothes away, but soon understood that doing that wouldn’t change who I was.”

To teach transgender women to accept who they are and not to be afraid of their needs, Domani founded the non-governmental organization T-Women in 2012. Currently, there are about 200 transgender women throughout Ukraine involved in the organization. There are no statistics on how many transgender people live in Ukraine in total.

“I simply wanted people with the same needs to get together, not to feel alone,” Domani says. “I would rent a photo studio, invite a make-up artist, order some food, and we would get together, dress ourselves up, take photos and simply have fun.”

Domani says being a transgender is harder than, for example, being gay: Gay people do not have to deal with plastic surgery or dangerous hormones, and it is easier to conceal one’s sexual orientation at work. In contrast, everyone would instantly notice a man transforming into a woman, or vice versa.

According to Oksana Didenko, a psychiatrist at the non-governmental LGBTQ organization Insight, “transitioning into a different gender, these people often lose their jobs, families.”

Didenko works with about 10 transgender people a year, who come to her with depression. She works only with adults, but notes that gender identification issues can start at a young age.

“Some people realize they are different when they are 10 or 11,” says Didenko. “They may not understand it, they won’t state ‘I’m transgender.” They’d rather say ‘I don’t like my clothes,’ or ‘I don’t like my breasts.’”

Since November, Domani has also been working at Insight, where she helps LGBTQ people find accommodation, go through medical procedures, and arranges lectures on what it’s like to be a transgender person in Ukraine.

For almost a year she has been going through a hormone replacement therapy (HRT) – a therapy that introduces hormones associated with the gender a person identifies themselves with: testosterone for trans men, and estrogen for trans women.

“Of course I was scared of HRT, it’s dangerous and it increases the risk of breast cancer,” says Domani. “But I’m 38 now, I’ve wanted this for so long, and if I don’t go for it now, I’d probably not have enough courage to do it later.”

If everything is done properly, the transition will last at least a couple of years, but it will be as safe as possible.

“My intent is to live long,” smiles Domani. “I have a daughter, and I want to see her when she grows up.”

Family ties

Domani married a woman in 2006 and has a seven-year-old daughter. She got married as a man, and back then her wife had no idea her husband was a transgender person.

“When we started going out, I put my desire to be a woman on the back burner,” says Domani. “A couple of years later my wife gave birth to a daughter we both wanted very much.”

Yet Domani could not pretend to be a man all the time. She used to buy women’s clothes and hide it in the apartment she lives in together with her spouse and child. A couple of years ago, while cleaning, her wife found the clothes and confronted Domani.

“She thought I was having an affair,” Domani says. “That time we made peace, but she started being very suspicious.”

After that incident, Domani’s wife slowly started to discover the truth and even asked for a divorce, but Domani said she doesn’t want to divorce her: “I love my wife and my child.”

They are still together. At home, Domani wears gender-neutral clothes and does not bring up the topic of her work. Her wife does not bring up the subject of Domani’s body changes. Some of Domani’s relatives still do not know she is a transgender person.

Growing numbers

There are no official statistics on how many transgender people live in Ukraine. Russian psychologist, psychotherapist and sexologist Dmitry Isaev, who often gives lectures in Ukraine, says that statistically, there is one transgender person per 50,000-60,000 people. However, the actual number is much higher and estimates are continuing to grow.

According to Domani, in the more religious, western parts of Ukraine the situation is much more difficult for transgender people, as they hide their identity for fear of disapproval.

“It’s the same situation in small villages, where everybody knows everything,” Domani says.

“You can’t even go to the doctor for some advice, because the doctor will be the one who spreads rumors.”

But even in big cities, such as Kyiv or Kharkiv, disapproval from society is high and transgender people are afraid to express themselves. That was the reason why Domani founded T-Women.

“We got together from all over Ukraine and wore provocative clothes, high heels, and wigs,” Domani says. “Friends would tell us: This is too much, women do not dress like that. We understood their words made sense, yet we still wore such clothes and were so delighted doing so.”

Since she has started working at Insight, Domani has less time for T-Women, but she stays in touch with the people she met there and supports them.

Legal regulations

Until 2016 it was almost impossible to legally change one’s gender because of decree No. 60, issued by the Health Ministry in February 2011. It was a key document that regulated sex reassignment and the legal gender recognition procedure in Ukraine. It established the sex reassignment commission and determined how the procedure should be carried out.

To get a document aligned with their gender identity, previous rules required transgender people to undergo extensive psychiatric examinations and irreversible sterilization, to submit to gender reassignment surgery and to obtain a divorce. The decree was canceled in 2016.

The new decree, No. 1041, does not require a sterilization, an inpatient psychiatric evaluation or an appearance before the State Evaluation Commission to confirm the diagnosis. However, patients still have to undergo a psychiatric examination.

Domani intends to undergo the procedure and hopes to become a woman both on paper and in life.

Editor’s Note: This article is a part of the “Journalism of Tolerance” project by the Kyiv Post and its affiliated non-profit organization, the Media Development Foundation. The project covers challenges faced by sexual, ethnic and other minorities in Ukraine, as well as people with physical disabilities and those living in poverty. This project is made possible by the support of the American people through the U. S. Agency for International Development and Internews. Content is independent of the donors.