Russia’s first openly transgender politician, Yulia Alyoshina, withdrew her candidacy for governor. The woman expressed that the Eastern European country’s most recent bill against LGBTIQ rights negatively affected the support she required to legally register her run in the elections.
Alyoshina was supposed to represent the opposition sector in the Civil Initiative Party in Southern Siberia’s Altai region in September. In addition, she planned to fight for LGBTIQ rights during her political campaign. However, she did not manage to get at least 502 votes for making her run official, so it will not be possible for her to take part in the elections.
About the discouraging results, Alyoshina wrote in a Telegram post on Monday expressing that some council members decided to stop supporting her candidacy. “They were unequivocally ready to put their signatures in support of my nomination..” but later refrained from backing her running the new legislation regarding gender change banning was approved.
“I was told by municipal deputies and village heads that the [gender reassignment ban] bill was being considered and that they couldn’t give me their signatures.”
The bill, which is currently just missing Vladimir’s Putin signature, will prohibit “any medical interventions aimed at changing the sex of a person,” and it will restrict public entities from changing the gender of a person in official documents or certificates. About the new law, Duma spokesperson, Vyacheslav Volodin, stated that gender-change procedures are a “path to the degeneration of the nation” and said the law will protect children.
Russia is also not new to issuing anti-LGBTQI laws that leave the rights of their queer citizens vulnerable. In December last year, Vladimir Putin approved legislation to restrict “LGBT propaganda”, which banned any “non-traditional” or “non-heterosexual” representation.