From The Advocate: http://www.advocate.com/politics/transgender/2013/09/16/watch-russian-lawyer-comes-out-trans-protest-anti-lgbt-laws
Masha Bast, a human rights lawyer in Russia, revealed that she is transgender and spoke out against her country’s violent crackdown on LGBT people.
BY Sunnivie Brydum
September 16 2013
Masha Bast is the chairwoman for the Association of Russian Lawyers for Human Rights and has worked on some of the nation’s most high-profile human rights cases. She’s defended clients facing down the government for allegedly violently protesting corruption. This weekend she took part in a demonstration on the streets of Moscow to protest Russia’s draconian anti-LGBT laws.
And last week the Moscow-based lawyer’s fight for human rights took a personal tone, as she announced that she is a bisexual transgender woman. Bast, who is married to another Russian woman, said she decided to come out now to protest the nationwide ban on “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations,” passed this summer. Since the law, modeled after similar local legislation, passed the nation’s parliament unanimously, LGBT Russians and visitors have been beaten, kidnapped, arrested, and silenced in what amounts to a ban on LGBT identities in any public or private space that might be accesible to minors.
Speaking with The Moscow Times, Bast said her motivation to come out was threefold.
“First, it would have been very difficult for me personally not to come out,” Bast said. “Second, having represented people in the Manezh Square, Primorsky partisans, and Bolotnaya cases, when those finished up I finally had the opportunity to come out. Third, my coming out was a protest against what is going on in Russia today. I couldn’t just sit there and do nothing.”
The Moscow Times reporter then asked Bast what “made” her transgender. Bast patiently explains what the word transgender means, noting that she thinks of herself as a woman but also a part of the LGBT community.
“It isn’t a matter of upbringing,” Bast said. “It’s nature. That’s why I think the law against ‘homosexual propaganda’ is a law against children and one that targets certain social groups. It is a fascist law and nothing else.”
Bast also spoke about knowing that she was a girl from age 10, and even going to school dances dressed in women’s clothing, though when she was growing up in Soviet Russia, there were no depictions of LGBT people that she could look to for inspiration.
Continue reading at: http://www.advocate.com/politics/transgender/2013/09/16/watch-russian-lawyer-comes-out-trans-protest-anti-lgbt-laws
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy9x6SiGmYY
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