According to Ukrainian legislation, homosexuality or bisexuality does not affect a person's suitability for military service. Gays, lesbians, bisexual people enter or are called up for military service without restrictions. Currently, thousands of representatives of the Ukrainian LGBT community are serving in the ranks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the National Guard — you can find dozens of interviews with them and reports about their service on the Internet and mass media. This is stated in reports Human Rights Defender of the LGBT Center "Our World".
У article. it is also about the diagnoses of "transsexualism" and "gender dysphoria", which can mean unfitness in peacetime and limited fitness in wartime for military service.
This issue caused a heated public debate, so we turned to Andrii Kravchuk, an expert in advocacy of the LGBT Human Rights Center "Our World", who provided EliteExpert comments and clarifications.
What do the diagnoses "transsexualism" and "gender dysphoria" mean?
Transsexualism is the inconsistency of a person's gender (his/her psychological sex, how a person perceives himself/herself) to the biological sex that was indicated in his/her birth documents. Gender dysphoria refers to the stress a person experiences from being transsexual.
What does the law say about mobilization for the diagnoses of "transsexualism" and "gender dysphoria"?
For transgender persons, according to the "Schedule of diseases, conditions and physical disabilities that determine the degree of suitability for military service", the diagnoses "Transsexualism" and "Gender dysphoria" mean a person's complete unsuitability for military service if they are "sharply expressed, with a tendency to repeated prolonged decompensations or pathological reactions" or unfitness in peacetime and limited fitness in wartime if they are "moderately expressed with unstable compensation or compensated". In practice, the "severity of expression" and "compensation" of these conditions is determined by a specialized medical commission - for example, at a regional psychiatric hospital.
In the presence of such diagnoses, the medical commission at the military commissariat will decide whether a transgender person is suitable for military service. People who have officially changed their gender are generally prohibited from serving in the Ukrainian army, but we know of cases when such people enter the service, hiding their transsexuality from doctors, there is even a case of an openly transgender woman, a volunteer from the USA, who was nevertheless taken to serve in the ranks of the Armed Forces, despite the current ban.
How are these diagnoses medically determined? Should women who feel and consider themselves men be drafted into the Armed Forces? And vice versa - do not invite men who consider themselves to be a woman.
The presence of pronounced transsexuality is a barrier to military service, regardless of whether it is transgender men or women. However, two things should be emphasized: first, simply declaring one's transgenderism is not enough. The Medical Commission under the Military Commissariat makes a decision on suitability for military service based on a medical opinion on the presence of a relevant diagnosis and the degree of its severity. You can get such a diagnosis only after a thorough psychiatric examination — as a rule, in an inpatient setting for at least two weeks. The same rules apply here as for starting the official gender change (correction) process.
When it comes to military service or crossing the border, the state doesn't care about your gender - who you feel you are - the gender on your documents is the determining factor. In Ukraine, it can be changed only after going through all the stages of complex and lengthy medical and administrative procedures. I have to disappoint those who think that it is enough to simply submit a statement.
Women are not subject to conscription, so they can enter military service only voluntarily. For transgender women, this is problematic.
Transgender men must come to the medical commission at the military commissariat, just like ordinary biological men, where the issue of their removal from military registration is already decided. This is not done automatically, although they must already have a diagnosis of severe transsexuality - otherwise they would not be allowed to change their documents from female to male. They have to confirm this diagnosis with documents or undergo an appropriate examination again.
It is worth emphasizing that transsexuality is considered in modern medicine not as a disease, but as a special psychological state of a person, which, however, can interfere with his full life.
Why does Ukrainian society react to such news in such a way - "why gays are not accepted into the army"?
Gays are accepted into the army, there are restrictions only for transgender persons. While Western society developed in conditions of free access to information, open discussion of any issues, free competition of ideas and views, in Ukrainian society homophobia and transphobia were initially planted by the Soviet government, and after its collapse, the church took over this function. We will have to go our own way in order to finally escape from the suffocating embrace of the past - Russia and the USSR. We are now at war with him not only physically, but also spiritually.
Unicorns in the Ukrainian army
Just as sex did not exist in Soviet times, gays do not seem to exist in the current Ukrainian army. Representatives of the LGBT community turned it into a joke and chose a unicorn as their symbol, a creature that also doesn't seem to exist.
When the Ukrainian capital Kyiv was bombed early in the morning on February 24, theater directors Oleksandr Zhugan and Antonina Romanova decided to voluntarily go to defend their homeland.
It was a kind of jumping into the water in an unknown place, because the tolerant attitude towards LGBT representatives is not the strongest point of Ukrainian society. On their uniforms, Zhugan and Romanova wear a chevron with the image of a unicorn under the Ukrainian flag. This symbol appeared in the Ukrainian army after Russia's invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014 as a reaction to talk that gays were not serving in the Ukrainian army.
What are the statistics on sex change in Ukraine?
There are very few such people - it is estimated that there are a few hundred for the whole of Ukraine. When the Ministry of Health still had a single commission on sex correction, it considered only a few applications a year. Transgender people do not pose any real problem for society and the state, just because of their extremely small number.
People dare to take such a step only when they are really unable to continue living according to documents that completely contradict their identity. It is very uncomfortable for transgender people to live in our society. Suspecting them of fraud because they don't feel the way their documents describe them is unfair and inhumane.
We recommend that our state lift restrictions on transgender military service — but this must be accompanied by the simultaneous lifting of all other restrictions on LGBTQ people.
Ukrainians should be equal in both duties and rights. All who are fit for military service must defend their Motherland. Likewise, everyone should be guaranteed equal protection against discrimination, particularly on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity, in all spheres of life regulated by law.
Among other things, this means protecting the rights of same-sex family partners. In the USA, Canada and most of the EU countries, there is no ban on the military service of transgender persons and at the same time same-sex marriages or civil partnerships are recognized. Do we want to live by the standards of the modern free world? Let's start right now. Only by all standards, not selectively.
What the Human Rights Defender of the "Our World" Center offers to the authorities:
Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine — eliminate all provisions in Ukrainian legislation that lead to discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
Ministry of Justice of Ukraine it is recommended to develop a draft law on the legalization of registered civil partnerships for same-sex couples in Ukraine.
Ministry of Health — to approve changes to the order of the Ministry of Health No. 479 dated 20.08.2008 "On approval of the List of diseases, in the presence of which a person cannot be an adoptive parent", removing from this list the code F64 (item 9 "Personality and behavior disorders in adulthood").
Ministry of Education and Science recommend including the topics of sexual orientation and gender identity in the school curriculum and programs of pedagogical universities.
Ministry of Defense of Ukraine - if possible, conduct educational activities with the staff on the formation of a tolerant attitude and the inadmissibility of human rights violations in relation to LGBTQ people.
