LGBTQ+ activists share their stories with DW to warn against the potential consequences should nationalist and far-right parties make their expected gains in the European elections.
Monika Magashazi is a fighter. The 52-year old trans woman lives in Hungary — a country that has been ruled by Viktor Orban’s nationalist Fidesz party since 2010.
For transgender communities, the situation “has been becoming worse and worse and, unfortunately, we are desperate today in Hungary,” she told DW. She said the government was trying to portray trans people as pedophiles and criminals, using seemingly every opportunity to discriminate against them.
Struggling with her own coming out, Magashazi even attempted to take her own life. “I reached a point when I had to decide on how to live on,” she said. Thinking about her children saved her life.
“I said I will keep myself alive and try to live as a transgender woman and the father of my children — or the second attempt will be successful, and I’m going to be dead. And in that case, my children would miss their father,” she said.
“Transgender people are individuals that you can just talk to if you aren’t sure how they prefer to be referred to” shouldn’t be a scarier way to live than memorizing a rule book of The Correct Way to be transgender and interact with transgender people, as though we are a monolith.
Not all trans people prescribe to a binary view of gender in general or their own gender. Some people are women who are fathers or men who are mothers. They don’t have to justify themselves or the nuances of their identity to be accepted, because understanding isn’t necessary for acceptance. I accept shit I don’t understand all the time, like sportsball fans or Funko Pop collecting.
Acceptance isn’t “I am always interacted with in The Correct Way”, it’s “I am given a basic level of respect and listened to”.