From Kitchen Talks to Advocacy
Today’s WPATH symposium wrapped up with a plenary session on human rights. My role was to talk about the legal, medical, and ethical responsibility that all health care providers have to provide appropriate and adequate documentation to ensure that their transgender patients can secure proper identity documents. The WPATH Standards of Care and public policy statements make crystal clear that there is no one specific surgery that constitutes sex reassignment surgery so that any surgeon who performs any of the multitude of procedures that constitute sex-reassignment must provide a properly worded letter to that patient documenting the experience.
But the most moving talk of the plenary was by an activist from Kyrgyzstan who talked about an organization called Labrys’ successful efforts to secure medical care and legal respect for trans people in that country. Anna Kirey explained how her group began its advocacy and organizing in the kitchens of members’ homes. Over dinner preparations, they talked about issues that come up in the everyday lives of trans people. They started in kitchens because, as she explained, there is a belief in Kyrgyzstan that you can agitate for important political, social, and cultural change in your kitchen but you can’t bring those concerns to the government. Her group was committed to changing that and they did.
In fewer than 4 years, they created a loosely affiliated organization that has provided social support through the course of the medical transition of a number of its members, got the local medical center to provide therapeutic and hormonal treatment to members, and caused the government to issue a form that allows for Kyrgyyzstani citizens to change their legal gender markers without a surgical requirement.
As far as I could tell, they advocated for and secured rights that trans people throughout this country have not been able to fully access in nearly 50 years of work. And it all started by cooking together.