Forced to keep a low profile by an increasingly intolerant society, The Moscow Times meets the city’s residents struggling to find acceptance

“Those who see me for the first time at the steering wheel are surprised how a lady can operate such a huge truck,” explains Vika, a 48-year-old driver who works on a construction site in Moscow.

For Vika, there’s no Russian equivalent of Caitlyn Jenner to relate to. Instead, like so many transgender Russians she’s forced to keep a low profile, worried about the discrimination she could suffer at the hands of a society that struggles to understand what being transgender really means.

There are no official statistics on the number of transgender people in Russia, but experts put the number at around 15,000 across the country – about 0.1% of the population.



Vika is one of them. She declined to give her last name, but explained that she came to the capital from Novosibirk in Siberia, where her wife and 10-year-old son still live.

I wanted to fit the public opinion that your genitals define who you are. I married and had kids, but nothing changed Anastasia Gerasimova

She didn’t intend to be a truck driver. Vika worked in a beauty salon for eight years before it closed, and subsequently spent a long time looking for work. In her most desperate days, she even resorted to selling her body, an experience she describes as as shameful and terrifying.

Finally, she found her current job, where she says her boss is very supportive. “Once a couple of colleagues wanted to beat me up for being a transgender person. After my boss found out about it, he fired them immediately.”

Anastasia Gerasimova, 48, tried to take on the most masculine jobs she could think of as a young person, with the hope that it would make her feel more like the gender she was born as.

“I wanted to be a woman since my early childhood, but I thought serving in the army and having a masculine profession would help me to remain a man,” said Gerasimova, who worked on the railways after her military service. “I wanted to fit the public opinion that your genitals define who you are. I got married and had two kids, but nothing changed.”

Eventually, Gerasimova joined a transgender support group and began living as a woman. She now works as a laser epilation specialist.

“My relatives believe all the TV nonsense and try to give me all the hardest, ‘man’s’ work at home. I always have to carry the heaviest items, must earn more, fix the electrical and plumbing problems at home. But I love my family and will never leave them. My son is 21 years old now and my daughter is 12. We live together. I feel I am responsible for bringing them up.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A documentary produced by the Moscow Times on Moscow’s transgender community

Hurdles

To officially change legal identification documents, including the internal passports that are the primary IDs for all Russians over the age of 14, transgender people must go through several steps, including being diagnosed by a state psychiatric commission with “transsexualism”.

Tatyana Glushkova, a lawyer with the Transgender Legal Defence Project, which offers free legal help to transgender people, says that hurdles remain even after those requirements are met.

“According to the law, one must submit a certificate of gender change. However, there is no approved form for such a certificate,” Glushkova said. She explained that state registry offices often use the lack of a proper form as an excuse to refuse to amend birth certificates.

Glushkova also noted that while there is no law stating that gender reassignment surgery is necessary to change a person’s gender on official documents, courts often refuse to do so without the surgery, creating another – expensive – hurdle for transgender Russians.

Gender reassignment surgery runs from 35,000 roubles ($500) for the removal of testicles for male-to-female transition, to up to 1.2m roubles ($20,000) for the construction of a penis for female-to-male transition, a member of the transgender community explained.

Despite the cost, Igor Gulyayev, a plastic surgeon at the K+31 Clinic in Moscow, said that his clinic does more female-to-male transition surgeries. “Most of the operations we do are female-to-male, while in Europe, for example, the majority are from male to female. Probably it’s because psychologically in Russia it’s easier to live as a male,” he said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Vika: ‘Once a couple of colleagues wanted to beat me up for being a transgender person.’ Photograph: Pascal Dumont/The Moscow Times

‘All I can say is wait, be patient’

Russia’s economic downturn has made it harder for transgender people to save the money needed for hormones and reconstructive surgery.



Gulyayev said that his clinic has seen a drop-off in surgery requests. “In 2014, we performed about five operations per month. This year, we are doing about three sex-change surgeries per month. I think the decrease is a consequence of the crisis; people don’t have much money anymore.”

Eva, a transgender pharmacologist who declined to give her last name, offers patients free consultations on hormone therapy, but agrees that money makes everything easier.

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“If you have money, you can solve any problem: have an operation, rent an apartment and change your ID documents,” she said.

But according to transgender people themselves, the biggest problem they face is not a financial one, but rather the lack of understanding about what being transgender means.

“In the opinion of the public, transvestites, transgender people and gays are all the same,” Vika said. “That’s actually what makes me the most sad.”

Gerasimova echoed her complaint. “I feel sorry for Russia when on state TV channels they basically equate transgender people with paeodophiles and call us sodomites. There are transgender people who have never even had sex!” she said.

Russian legislation hasn’t made it any easier to educate the public, according to Demedetsky.

“Russian authorities constantly want to outlaw things instead of dealing with them and bringing them into the legal field,” he said. “Now, under the law that protects children from gay propaganda, we cannot help teenagers who are struggling with gender identification.”

“My heart breaks looking at young people under the legal age of 18 who cannot go to a psychiatrist, psychologist or even call us. … All I can say is wait, be patient. But that makes the suicide risk very high,” he said.

‘Transdostavka’

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Andrei Demedetsky: ‘I wanted to be a boy since I was in school. I was lucky my parents accepted me.’ Photograph: Pascal Dumont/The Moscow Times

Andrei Demedetsky, 32, had gender reconstructive surgery at 19 and has lived as a man for nearly half his life.

“I wanted to be a boy since I was in school. I was lucky my parents accepted me and even sponsored my operation,” Demedetsky said. “I live in the same neighbourhood where I went to school. My former classmates don’t recognise me on the street.”

Demedetsky and his wife founded Transgender.ru in 2004 to provide information about transgender people and offer advice and support to the community. He also works in a shop that sells special supplies.

“You can buy stuff like corsets, Hessian boots, wigs. We also sell special devices to enable women to pee in the men’s room,” he said. “There are women’s shoes in sizes up to 46, push-up pants and bras. We sell special t-shirts to flatten down breasts.”

The shop, called Transdostavka, is very discreet.

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“When we first opened, our customers insisted we shouldn’t have any signs on the door so people around them wouldn’t know where they were going,” Demedetsky said.

“Famous clients are afraid of harm to their careers, and ask us to pack deliveries as tightly as possible so no one sees what’s inside,” Demedetsky said. “We hand the box to a courier somewhere in the city.”

Gerasimova agreed that social stigma makes it more difficult for Russians to come to accept people like her.

“Russia is a great country, there are a lot of kind and intelligent people. But it’s hard for transgender people to be integrated into society fully,” she said.

A version of this article first appeared on the Moscow Times