The Ukrainian government is refusing to allow transgender women to leave the country along with the millions of women and children refugees who have been streaming into Poland and other European nations. Instead, Ukrainian border guards are turning them back and forcing them to return home to join the fight.
Their reasoning might sour some tranz activists in the West: Ukraine’s martial law requires all biological males between the ages of 18 and 60 to remain in the country and fight. And it makes no exceptions for tranz women.
Even tranz women who have been widely accepted by their communities as woman still carry passports identifying them as males, which is what border guards see when they try to cross the border. In most cases, trans women who have tried to flee have been turned back, according to the Italian newspaper La Corriere della Sera, Italy’s largest-circulation newspaper.
The paper quoted a tranz woman who shared her experience at the hands of the guards: “They are men…they must turn back and fight.”