By: Aikanysh Jeenbaeva, in collaboration with others from the BFCSQ, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, SSH Correspondents
Transgender people remain one of the most vulnerable groups of the population in Bishkek. Up to 90% of all transgender people experience constant pressure, violence and discrimination at the hands of relatives, acquaintances, law enforcement officials, medical professionals, complete strangers on the streets, etc.
The story below is told from the perspective of my fellow trans*activist, for whom harassment in public places is just one of the many facets of violence in his everyday reality.
“We get harassed by the police most often”, he says. “They come up to me or to my friends and start demanding to show identification. After seeing what they consider a discrepancy in the documents between indicated and real gender identity, they take us to the police station, where we are subject to more severe harassment in the form of humiliating interrogations and threats. One of the officers once said that people like me “are perverts and should be killed”.
This kind of attitude by the police officers is not only seen as normal, but also encouraged. Even if you call the MIA (the Ministry of Internal Affairs) hotline to report police misconduct and brutality, they hang up on you upon hearing that this was done on the basis of gender identity.
You never feel safe and you are never protected. Home is not a place where you feel loved and secure for a large part of my friends and myself and the streets are like a battlefield, where you never know when and who will accost you.
When I or my friends walk down the street, people usually stare at us trying to guess gender identity. Women (mainly) stare at the genital area trying to make out whether the transgender person has male or female genitals. People loudly comment my appearance, stop and start giggling or discussing between themselves whether I am a boy or a girl. And this is even worse for people who do not look masculine/feminine enough and thus do not fit into the cis-normative patriarchal gender binary.
Harassment is so normalized that people simply do not consider it as such. It is normal for them to come up to an unknown person and laughing, start asking whether you are a man or a woman, a boy or a girl. It is also normal for them to start contradicting you, if you choose to reveal your gender identity. They ask incredulously: “Do you really consider yourself a man?! But… just look at yourself!” I get called a hermaphrodite, a faggot, an “it”… there are so many insulting names that it won’t be possible to list them all here.
However, street harassment is not limited to staring or verbal abuse. Many of my friends have been harassed physically by strangers on the streets who have grabbed their chest to “check whether it is real or not”, have hit and beaten them.
Part of the harassment comes when people confuse transgender people with lesbians and gays, and in such a highly homophobic society as the Kyrgyzstani one is, you have to expect threats, loud insults, hateful and disgusted looks. And just imagine what happens to those who are non-heterosexual or queer transgender people…
When we gather as a group to go somewhere to eat or just hang out, we almost always get harassed. When it happens, some of the guys try to start a fight or curse back. Strange thing, if we react in an aggressive manner and yell or shout back at the people, that shuts most of the harassers up. This has led us to believe that the only language people understand is the language of violence and that it is the only efficient way to react. However, acting violently and aggressively in response to harassment makes you feel disgusted and angry that you have allowed yourself to get provoked once again.
Of course, not everyone can or wants to use the tactic. Some of my friends just gave up and stopped leaving home without any urgent need. The streets are a too scary and hostile place for them.
In the past, I used to react in a very angry manner. I was very upset after every such encounter and brooded over it for a long time. But after a while, I just stopped reacting to it. Now when someone makes a comment on the street, I simply pretend not to hear it. Still every time I experience it, it completely kills my mood and leaves me empty on the inside.
This is the society we live in — a discriminatory transphobic, homophobic, biphobic (add your description here) society. I know that tremendous efforts and time are needed to change it. But one thing that any person can do next time he/she has an urge to harass others on the street, is to think how it would feel, if you were in the place of that person.”
Aikanysh graduated from the University of Freiburg with a degree in European Literatures and Cultures and recently from the Diplomatic Academy of the KR with a degree in International Relations. Aikanysh is a co-founding member and coordinator of the Bishkek Feminist Collective SQ. Salidat is an undergraduate student at Kyrgyz National University and a dedicated volunteer at the Bishkek Feminist Collective SQ.
Bishkek Feminist Collective SQ was founded in 2012 by activists from various communities of Bishkek city. Follow BFC SQ on Twitter, @bish_feminists and on Facebook.
