Do not tell anyone

Last month I was invited to moderate a training seminar on sexual rights and health for a group of lesbian, bisexual and trans women. The training was on a week end in one of the resort cities of Armenia, one hour away from the capital and organized by one of the organizations, which in addition to teaching HIV prevention and promoting safe sex, are also helping out and offering psychological and legal support for the LGBTQ community of Yerevan, but mostly homosexual men. The Armenian society at large is very intolerant towards homosexuals and there is a lot of violence and aggressiveness towards them.

At first the head of the organization came to our centre and wanted to meet with us, he had heard about the Women’s Rights Trainings that we were conducting regularly at the Women’s Resource Center and asked us to help out with the first training week-end for LBT women only.

Anush and I prepared a 2 day seminar on gender and feminism, sexual identity, health and rights, prepared some hand outs specific to health and rights issues related to lesbian women, did lots of translations, since most of the participants knew only Armenian and little Russian.

We arrived late afternoon at the soviet style cozy little hotel and unpacked. The head of the organization had already started the training and was giving a speech on the different definitions of sexual orientations.

I knew some of the participants and it didn’t take us a long time to get acquainted with the others. It was a very supportive and friendly atmosphere.

Katia didn’t mind talking about her sexual orientation during one of the many discussions we had during the seminar. She was lesbian, was attracted to women all her life but was getting married in a couple of months with a straight man. It was her choice; she told me the last time we strolled down the quite streets of the hotel resort, going from one chalet to the other that “that was the right thing to do anyway here in Armenia”. She was getting married because she wanted to have kids and a family, a one accepted by her relatives, parents and neighbours. Then she said that she could always have a girl friend, a lover, but her surroundings will know her only as her “best friend” and nothing more.
Amalia, another girl and a friend of Katia thinks that she will probably do the same. She loves women and until 17, she thought that her attraction towards women was a “perversion” and a “sin” until she started browsing on the Internet and finding lgbt sites and learning more about her orientation. Even though Amalia was the toughest looking girl among the group and the most self-assertive, she agreed with Katia that it was almost impossible to have a “normal” life in Armenia after coming out as a lesbian.

Sergik had changed her name, she had a girl name and she changed it to a man’s name and introduced herself as that. Since her childhood she always wanted to be a boy. At 13 she started dressing like an Armenian boy, with very short cut hair, a shirt, tie and a suit. When I saw her, I was struck by the elegance and the neatness emanating from her personality. She had a very soft voice. She was a very gentle person with a friendly smile that touched almost everyone. At first she was very shy, not speaking much. Then when I was doing a small exercise “the unfinished sentences on the vagina” where I start a sentence saying “if your vagina wanted to dance, which dance would that be…” and the participants would finish the sentence. It was Sergik’s turn and when I started “if your vagina could talk, it would say…” and she continued by saying with a smile “cut me out and throw me already, and replace me with a penis” everybody started clapping and laughing, it was such an honest reply filled with anger and frustration and lots of humor… and Sergik was feeling so happy and relieved.

After the training, we gathered in one of the rooms for celebration and drinking. Sergik gave interesting and daring performances and monologues about her life as a trans in Armenia; she talked about how they kicked her out of theatre school because of what she represented and making everyone uneasy about her gender. She told sad jokes about the incidents she had at public bathrooms, how many times she had to take down her pants to show her sex and confirm that she was in the right place and not a pervert.

In this small room of a remote soviet style resort, women were feeling free to kiss each other and dance with each other, laugh at Sergik’s stories, help each other, cover up for each other to just get through the day safely, get through life safely.
N.B: the events are real; the names have been changed for protection.