Russian parliament bans gender reassignment surgery for trans people

minimar@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 561 points –
Russian parliament bans gender reassignment surgery for trans people
bbc.com
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I legitimately can’t imagine how awful it must be to be trans in Russia. Well, pretty much anywhere really, now that I think of it. Trans people just can’t catch a break. I feel so bad for them.

I imagine this is why many people that might consider it just dont. It's easier sometimes to just do the expected things at the expense of one's self.

True, but there are definitely places where it's much better to be trans than others, and Russia's near the bottom of the pack.

Russia is a tough place to be human

Unless you are a white straight russian man

And even then, if you don't support Putin you'll probably be accidently falling out a window.

It’s also tough being a Slavic Russian, but still worse to be of any other ethnic group in Russia I think.

Not really, there are no laws prohibiting any ethnicity to work in the government. Ethnic language and culture is allowed and supported in these ethnic regions.

You and me both, fam. I can't even imagine how it must be for a trans person to live in the US south - it is just mind-baffling to think of what it must be in other countries that barely even recognize any of those rights or are even outright hostile to the identity.

I can't speak for every trans person in the South, but for me, it's pretty fucking awful.

Part of it is my area(lot of old white conservatives). They really don't give a fuck. I have had to listen to 10 minute rants about gender politics because they want a pink gender reveal cake.

We did multiple cake variations for Valentine's. All stick figures. We "dared" to put rainbows on a couple of them. We had to get rid of them because people complained about STICK FIGURES under rainbows.

I have to make sure I'm in a safe place to even begin feeling like myself.

Like you said, I think it's pretty awful in the majority of countries with few exceptions

Here in Ontario is pretty good for me as a trans person, well at least in terms of my being trans. I feel fortunate.

I'm glad you feel comfortable in Ontario. I hope we can keep it that way here.

I have no idea what it's like to have gender dysphoria, but I'd imagine they'd just not come out. But idk how that works, or if they're willing to get bullied by like every Russian ever.

For the record, I tried not coming out for about 25 years and it wrecked my mental health and increased my depression. :(

It can affect everyone differently but not coming out and getting things done can lead to terrible mental health and depression, leading to suicide. Transitionning is the only way we know to supress those symptoms.

That isn't entirely true. Transitioning is very recent idea. Being trans and transitioning is also intimately tied to pharma capital complex.

There were many ways of being queer and trans which have been erased over time. Simply consider the native American stuff and also Indian motions of hijra.

Though not this precise point a good text to read : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testo_Junkie

Probably because those people didn't have a choice due to the limitations of medicine.

Same as how treatment for depression was "suck it up or abuse drugs/alcohol" and the treatment for serious trauma was "die".

Again depression is a modern conception which is a symptom of a society that has erased notions such as melancholia and mourning.

Reference: https://books.google.co.in/books/about/The_New_Black.html?id=8nL823M9X64C&redir_esc=y

The point is that these new ideas pretend that they are all neutral and they have arrived at the truth. In the process the constitue their own subjects who are interpellated in these frames. The people who believe and fall for this new discourses are produced by these new technological and scientific advances. It isn't a truth waiting to be grasped out there.

The point is that alternative routes of making meaning of these phenonemon have been erased and other alternative pathways are blocked by suggesting that this is it.

Hey, germs are a modern conception, too, so I guess it would be fine with you if surgeons stopped washing their hands.

There is no analogical reasoning between germ theory and psychiatry. Psychiatry chooses to individualize a problem in however coded manners at the expense of the social. I am honestly quite astounded by the response that transitioning is the only way to be trans nowadays. This echoes the overall codification of queer behaviour the world over where the normative western queer body language now dominated. If you don't behave or are like them you are not queer.

Alienated not only from the products of our labour, but increasingly the original tool of our labour; that is, our bodies. That's the likely cause of the ideological cart overtaking the materialist horse when it comes to gender. At least, in my opinion.

How about we decide to do the sensible thing and take advantage of modern medicine??

Yes. Not against modern medicine. While you are at it please also look into the pharma complex which oversells modern medicine.

Of course, but that's the case for medicine in the US across the board. It's not so much a problem elsewhere.

Hormonal transition for those who want it is scientifically proven to be beneficial in improving in quality of life and decreasing suicidality.

Queer people have always existed in many forms. Estrogen replacement therapy and testosterone replacement therapy have only existed for the last hundred years. But I would make no mistake that trans people are a real thing and for many of us who are binary the desire is not "i want to be perceived as genderqueer" rather it is "i want to be perceived as a man/woman". Youre also definitely wrong that those things have been erased. Two spirit people and hijira still exist. And non-binary people do as well, who live entirely new lives made up of entirely new queer experiences.

Which is great, and I'm happy people are able to live how they want to. I'm just a woman though. I'm just a binary transgender woman. In a perfect world I would never transition at all, I would have just been assigned female at birth. To that end I've been taking estrogen and t blockers for over 8 years. I had surgery so that I now have a vagina. I didn't do those things because of 'pharma capital complex', I did them because this makes me happy. Because I am happy with myself and my body like this. I would not be happy if I did not have typical hormone levels for women, I would not be happy if I still had a penis. No one made my want those things, I have spent my entire life since I was a young child wishing for those things. And now that I have them I have the opportunity for a happy life. I would likely not have lived this long had I been born before the advent of medical transition. Whatever life I would've lived would have been absolutely miserable and likely ended by my own hand once I could no longer numb myself to my own skin.

Couldn't have said it better myself <3

Lots of transphobes and bad actors spamming downvotes too. Yet too cowardly to actually have a response.

most of russian people doesn't support lgbt whatsoever

and it's prohibited by law to promote lgbt

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So this is next step for american republicans?

Technically yes. Previous laws were also drafted with the help of some republican-adjacent organizations, not to mention that CitizenGo, the dhristofascist org that pushed the Ugandan gay genocide law, is being bankrolled by both Russian and US far-right adjacent oligarchs. Any free country that does not consider CitizenGo a threat to safety, liberty, and secularism, are committing suicide.

You mean the previous step? It seems to be what they're working on now

Have they actually got something in the pipeline.

Tough fucking luck. If healthcare is private in the US, it's none of their business, the state doesn't get a say.

Just like they have no say over abortion, right? They won't be held back by principles.

The global RW fascist insurgency are tied at the hip with moscovia

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This reminds me how during the later stages of WW2, while the Nazis were losing the war, they kept spending resources on the Holocaust.

The scary thing is that it actually wasn't a lot of resources. Most genocides in history have happened in places that aren't industrialized. In those cases, yeah it did take a significant amount of resources and involves a lot of people.

For an an industrialized country, genocide on the scale the Nazis did is actually a tiny percentage of the resources available. Think about how many people you can put in just one train. Even if that train runs just a few times a day, well... there's some extremely dark mathematics about it.

The politics of hate is so incredibly dangerous in an industrialized country. Industrialized genocide can kill millions without impacting other priorities.

Scary to think about.

Why are the so many people on this site white washing Nazis? It seems so concetrated here.

I'm very curious about what it is that you think the word "whitewash" means.

I googled it after reading your comment cause I realized I didn't actually know what it meant.

There were a few definitions but I'm guessing this is the one the person you're replying to meant:

"deliberately attempt to conceal unpleasant or incriminating facts about (someone or something)."

Idk why they thought someone calling out Nazis for spending resources on the Holocaust up until the very end meant that people are whitewashing Nazis though.

I think the comparison is, in the eyes of Blamemeta, between a thing that is very severe and a thing that is somewhat less severe. If that's the case, equating the two must either exaggerate the severity of the latter or minimize the severity of the former. So I think Blamemeta is trying to say that it cheapens the severity of the holocaust, not realizing that the word "whitewash" implies that it's deliberate, i.e. that Acharnien also agrees that Russia's law isn't a big deal and want to use it to downplay the holocaust. But I think it's more likely they just meant to say "cheapens" instead of "whitewash" lol

I am not equating though, I just wrote "this reminds me". They're being dramatic.

Making something seem not-as-bad. Nazis literally genocided 11 million people. Russia is being awful about medical care. Theres an ocean of difference.

-- Hey those kids are good at playing soccer very defensively. It kind of reminds me of when Greece got the 2004 Euro Cup under the management of Otto Rehhagel.

-- How dare you compare the two things. One was a major international professional soccer competition, that shaped a country's sports for a generation, the other one is just some shitty kids kicking a deflated ball in a school yard.

-- Well, yea, sure but they do both win by playing quite defensively. Noticing that takes nothing away from Greece's epic historic win, what kind of idiot would think that?

Sorry, what? Are you saying that this comment about the holocaust makes the Nazis look... better?

More like equating the holocaust to bad medical care is trying to make the holocaust look better. Im exergeratting of course, but im hate when people call everything nazi.

I didn't "equate" anything. I said that one thing reminds me of another.

You're whitewashing Putin's regime right now.

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Can we add a rule where all articles should be archive articles to avoid incidentally paying a shitty company ad revenue. In this case an organisation that houses and protects child predators.

Sup, you might want to raise that within feedback channels within your instance. Threads like this one are seen by many instances so there's going to be disagreement in the votes. It's a perfectly fair thing to do though, years ago we banned direct links to the BBC in the UK left's largest subreddit /r/greenandpleasant (i mod) for its transphobia.

God I miss greenandpleasant; it's really the only thing I miss from Reddit. :(

Here was being considered as a potential lifeboat although getting people to migrate would be slow and any new community would be small, but the soft on meta position of the instance made a mess of internal thoughts on what to do.

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“Hi! I’m the news! Today, the Russian government did a bad thing!”

—Every day, it seems

This comment isn’t meant to trivialize the action, it’s just becoming almost comical how much the Kremlin is taking a dump on human rights.

The funny thing is, it's the BBC reporting. That institution beholden to a party that is committed to making the issue a volatile political football.

Sad that so many people live under such an oppressive government. Some people have started hating Russians but I feel bad for most of them.

They're a huge country with all kinds of resources. If the government supported the people instead of keeping them under their heel, Russia could be an advanced, wealthy country with a rich culture. Instead we got Mafia in the Kremlin.

don't make the mistake to think this is a government only problem. Sure not all Russians are pro-war or pro-putin but a majority of them supports their leader, his efforts and this mindset, they are basically fine with all that crap.

So again to blame all russians is wrong but this is also not only putins fault, a lot of russian people are also heavy involved in this kind of lifestyle.

Well it’s hard to blame the people when information and propaganda are controlling their lives in such a specific way.

Manufactured consent is a very real thing

I never understood why people can see it locally, but can not understand when applied to Russia and China.

Ok so there you go. If you ever need to help someone understand why their political viewpoints are bad, you can just show them what Russia is doing.

Call it what it actually is: genocide

While I am utterly against laws like this, "genocide" is too much.

What you are doing is just wiping of history of genocide done by different countries (mostly western), by using word for something that is much less than systematically killing millions and even hundreds of millions, just take this as an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_indigenous_peoples and than decide which word you will use.

Pointing out the genocide of trans people doesn't erase the history of other genocides....

That's not what that is.

Well it really depends on what definition of genocide you use. If genocide for you is the systematic killing of a certain group then perhaps not. However I don't find that definition that particularly useful bc it just points to the end result of these discriminatory laws. If you use the border definition "Genocide is an internationally recognized crime where acts are committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group." It better highlights the complexity of genocide and how it comes to be.

I got that definition from here and it even has a list of specific actions that count as genocide.

It’s called mass murder, we don’t need some etymological euphemism.

I certainly agree that genocide doesn't have to be restricted to killing. China is genociding every non Han group by enforcing mandarin and banning local schooling. But LGBT people can be any race, religion, nationality, ethnicity, culture. It is not a genocide. It's horrible and backwards, but not genocide.

I find excluding LGBTQ people from a group of people which can be genocided awfully strange. Like sure unlike those groups LGBTQ people will always pop up so to speak so you can't eradicate us like you could with cluture or ethnicity but does it actually matter when talking about genocide? What matters is the harm and the degree of harm done on to the group not which type of group it is.