Yes, at least you beat on the floor – Kommersant

In Russia, it will be forbidden to change the sex in the passport without a real medical operation. According to Minister of Justice Konstantin Chuichenko, this will be “one of the first steps to consolidate family values ​​in Russian legislation.” Specialists of structures subordinated to the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation supported the initiative. According to them, the relevant proposals will be worked out by the medical community. Lawyers working with trans people point out that this, on the contrary, will complicate the life of an already vulnerable category of citizens.

The Ministry of Justice intends to prohibit changing gender in the passport and other documents, said Minister of Justice Konstantin Chuichenko. To this end, the department will soon begin work on amending the law on acts of civil status. It will also require amendments to the law “On the Basics of Protecting the Health of Citizens in the Russian Federation” and to a number of regulations. Such measures, according to Mr. Chuichenko, may be “one of the first steps to consolidate family values ​​in Russian legislation.”

The minister recalled that the opportunity to change gender legally appeared among the inhabitants of Russia in 1997. At that time, he noted, various international organizations, including the World Health Organization, “set the tone in the formation of certain norms.”

A citizen who decides to change the gender marker must go through a special commission with the participation of a psychiatrist, sexologist, clinical psychologist and the head of a medical organization or his deputy.

The diagnosis of “transsexualism” enables a person to make the transition surgically and change documents. “At the same time, it is not envisaged that surgical interventions are mandatory for a person to obtain a certificate of gender change,” said Konstantin Chuichenko. He referred to the statistics of registry offices, according to which from 2018, when mechanisms began to operate that allowed changing the sex in the passport, to 2022, more than 2.7 thousand cases of gender reassignment (according to documents) were registered, after which about 190 marriages were registered with the participation of these people. According to the minister, questions also arise at what age a person who has changed sex on paper can retire, to which correctional institution to send him if he violates the law: “We have not only legal conflicts related to the issue of gender change, but also first of all, the inconsistency with the current conceptual documents and constitutional priorities.”

Specialists of structures subordinated to the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation supported the initiative of the Ministry of Justice. The rector of the St. Petersburg Pediatric Medical University, Dimitri Ivanov, told Kommersant that medical indications for a sex change are associated with genetic abnormalities – this is less than 0.1% of all people.

“The proposals will be worked out by the medical community,” Mr. Ivanov assured. “The society should support this novel. The value of the traditional family is the moral basis of Russian society, what holds it together. And our country has an obligation to protect itself and its citizens.”

Elena Uvarova, head of the gynecological department of children and adolescents at the Kulakov National Research Center for Obstetrics, Gynecology and Perinatology, said that in the past 10 years there have been three patients in the center who, being genetic boys, received a birth certificate as girls due to the inappropriate structure of the external genital organs. “For such exceptional cases, an appropriate mechanism for documenting can be provided. The issue could be resolved by a council of doctors with a very convincing justification,” Ms. Uvarova is sure.

According to lawyer Tatyana Glushkova, changing the gender marker does not create any legal conflicts: “For example, transgender men are registered in the military. They go to the military registration and enlistment office, where they undergo a medical examination. According to the schedule of diseases used by the military registration and enlistment offices, they have a gender identity disorder. This is the basis for recognizing them as partially fit or unfit for military service. Therefore, the initiative, in her opinion, is due to the desire to bring the legislation in line with the concept of “traditional family values”.

Lawyer Maxim Olenichev (recognized as a foreign agent) recalls that until 2017, trans people had to seek the right to gender transition in court, as registry offices refused to make changes to birth records. In 2017, the Ministry of Health issued a certificate form, which was already provided for by the laws on registry offices of 1997, medical commissions began to form – and the process was somewhat simplified. According to Egor Burtsev, a psychologist and coordinator of the project on accessing transgender people to healthcare services, Russian legislation is now humane towards trans people, despite the fact that such commissions work only in a few regions of the Russian Federation (the service costs about 30,000 rubles). However, the proposed changes “will exclude this category of citizens from everywhere.”

The number of trans people in Russia is unknown. According to world statistics, this is 0.2-0.5% of the population. In Russia, notes Yegor Burtsev, we can talk about hundreds of thousands of people.

They, Mr. Burtsev points out, as a rule, are already “not in a very good psychological state,” and such measures can increase the risk of suicide in this group.

Associate Professor of the Department of Psychiatry at RUDN University Roman Suleymanov says that not everyone who wants to change their sex decides to undergo surgery, both because of the high cost and possible health consequences. Some patients stop at hormonal therapy and facial correction, or are satisfied with partial cosmetic changes, such as a mastectomy. “For this group of patients, the general perception of their subjective gender by society is more important than sexual relations. There is also the concept of “gender rejection,” in which the patient does not identify with any gender, seeking to avoid any sexual interest from both men and women,” says Mr. Suleymanov. The abolition of the possibility of changing the sex in the passport, the psychiatrist believes, will not solve the problem, but will create additional ones, infringe on the rights of a certain part of the patients “who are our fellow citizens and, due to biological, and not political circumstances, were born with gender identity disorders.”

Natalya Kostarnova