Transgender. Eastern European Style.
Dear ladies, gentlemen and those who are not pretty sure who they are. You think that our society treats you badly and disrespectful? They probably are, but let’s just imagine for one millisecond that you are the first person in your entire country who openly shared that he/she is planning to change their sex. The first person in your country with over 10 million inhabitants, in puritan Europe and… you were not quite eager to share this story with the whole country, but your colleagues have shared your story on the internet.
Tempting crappy situation, ha?
That’s the letter that a number of office workers in the biggest outsourcing company in Belarus received about a week ago from their colleague. I am not willing to share the name of the person who wrote it, but I will be “honored” to share the name of this company - Epam Systems. Google it, I am sure you outsource your software development to them too.
Let me translate this letter for you as unfortunately (or fortunately?) most of us do not speak Russian:
“Hi everyone,
A couple of changes happened in my life and I feel like you need to know about them.
To cut the long story short, my sex was officially changed to female and my new name is Olga. I need to socialize as a new person now. The process will be started next Monday.
I have no doubts that the majority of you have heard something about changing sex (transsexualism) but it is very likely that some part of it has very little to do with reality (for example, thanks to mass media). Some pretty decent and brief information about this phenomenon and some researches can be found in Wikipedia.
Brief FAQ:
- What’s the sex in my passport? Female.
- What clothes am I going to wear? Women clothes.
- What toilet will I use? Ladies’.
- Should you continue to shake hands with me? No.
- Was there any physical intervention aka operation? It’s a very personal piece of information.
If there are any questions, please ask/write.”
Someone from the email recipients shared this on the internet. The screenshot of the email was deleted a couple of days afterwards, but you know how “undeletable” the information of the web can be.
Olga is still working in the same company, my friend’s classmate works on the same floor with her and shares almost all the details they know. That she truly goes to the ladies’ room, that she wears some kind of a bra and that she probably keeps tomatoes in it to simulate women forms. Some people are asking her to create an instagram account and post her “looks”.
And almost each day on Skype I receive the very same message: “Has he really cut his penis off??”
Firstly, it’s a SHE.
Secondly, it’s not your business.
Thirdly, not everyone’s obsessed about having a penis and making an altar for it.
Fourthly, was sharing the email screenshot not enough for showing how uneducated, stupid, narrow-minded, privacy-disrespectful and jerks-like you really are? Is it necessary to discuss whether she buys new tomatoes every day or once every two days?
I’ve never seen a transgender in my life. I was never up-brought in love for people like that. My parents are anti-semites, racists and yelled at me when a couple of weeks ago I said that France is cool as they allowed gay people to get married and adopt children.
But I have an upbringing of my own and a fucking common sense. And I keep asking myself: why should grown up people behave as if they were scared school boys and school girls?
I feel proud of Olga, she could have lived till the end of her life as a man and could be miserable and unhappy, but she changed it in a society that was probably prepared more for the second Chernobyl explosion, but not for a free choice.
