Problematizing the Transgender Phenomenon: Sexual Geopolitics and Europeanization in Contemporary Ukraine
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Problematizing the transgender phenomenon: sexual geopolitics and Europeanization in contemporary Ukraine Nadzeya Husakouskaya Thesis for the Degree of Philosophiae Doctor (PhD) University of Bergen, Norway 2019 Problematizing the transgender phenomenon: sexual geopolitics and Europeanization in contemporary Ukraine Nadzeya Husakouskaya ThesisAvhandling for the for Degree graden of philosophiaePhilosophiae doctorDoctor (ph.d (PhD). ) atved the Universitetet University of i BergenBergen Date of defence:2017 22.02.2019 Dato for disputas: 1111 © Copyright Nadzeya Husakouskaya The material in this publication is covered by the provisions of the Copyright Act. Year: 2019 Title: Problematizing the transgender phenomenon: sexual geopolitics and Europeanization in contemporary Ukraine Name: Nadzeya Husakouskaya Print: Skipnes Kommunikasjon / University of Bergen Contents Acknowledgements 3 Introduction 5 Shaping PhD research 5 Research aims and objectives 8 Key analytical concepts 9 Methodology and data 12 Positioning the research: novelty and contribution 14 Structure of the thesis 21 Chapter 1. Contextualizing “transgender issues” in contemporary Ukraine 23 Transgender issues in Ukrainian professionalized LGBT activism 23 The Procedure 1996–2018: (per)forming a recognizable transgender subject 27 Chapter 2. Problematization. Theoretical and methodological framework 37 Problematization as method of analysis 37 Problematization as production of problems and objects for thought 39 Problematization and production of truth 43 Problematization, governmentality, and biopolitics 45 Chapter 3. Problematizing contemporary Ukraine: geo-political logics and post- colonial considerations 50 “Post” and “Soviet” in post-Soviet 51 “Post” in post-Socialist and post-colonial: bridging the gap 55 “East” and “Europe” in “Central and Eastern Europe” 63 Europeanization and contemporary Ukraine 68 Chapter 4. Defining Ukraine through LGBT rights: instrumentalization of sexual diversity 73 Europeanization and instrumentalization of sexual diversity in Ukraine 75 The geo-political dimension of “being in transition”: the transgender phenomenon and the reproduction of Ukraine as not-European-enough 84 Geo-temporal effects of the instrumentalization of sexual diversity in Ukraine 91 Chapter 5. Defining “transgender”: problematization of the transgender phenomenon in practical texts of LGBT NGOs in Ukraine 102 Prior to the first transgender research in Ukraine: “transsexuals” and “transgender” 103 The transgender phenomenon in Insight’s practical texts: main shifts in practice 108 Chapter 6. Translating transgender: donor aid and the transfer of ideas 130 The emergence of international donors and their vocabulary in post-Soviet academia and activism 132 New language and professionalized LGBT activism 139 Transgender activism: donor aid and the transfer of ideas 146 Transgender advocacy and its discontent 158 Conclusion 171 APPENDIX 1. Map of Ukraine. 176 APPENDIX 2. Research documentation. 177 APPENDIX 3. Insight’s practical texts (2010-2017) 184 BIBLIOGRAPHY 186 2 Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor Prof. Randi Gressgård for unwavering support, patience and academic guidance. Without her encouragement and constant feedback this thesis would not have been written. I am also grateful to my co- supervisor Prof. Jack Halberstam for his thoughtful comments on the final draft of the thesis. I greatly appreciate institutional support of the Centre for Women’s and Gender Research (SKOK) and financial support of University of Bergen and Meltzer Research Fund. I am grateful to Insight and its director Olena Shevchenko for collaboration and for granting access to Transgender Archive. I thank Insight staff members for their assistance during my fieldwork. I am indebted to all respondents who participated in Insight transgender research projects over the last ten years and to those participants of my research who agreed to be interviewed during my fieldwork. This PhD research would not have been possible without all of you. My sincere thanks go to Oksana Guz and Timur Lysenko: our trip to Odesa was life saving and your being by my side during the fieldwork was priceless. I am deeply grateful to friends who kept me going these five years: Natasha Golova, Lena Minchenia, Elena Kovsh, Sara Crawley. Thank you for staying in touch. I thank those friends who offered their homes in different countries under different circumstances – Tamara Zlobina, Olga Plakhotnik, Maria Mayerchyk, Oksana Pokalchuk, Oksana Guz, Timur Lysenko, Nasta Mantsevich, Elena Kovsh, Donna McCormack, Ingrid Young. Thomas, Katrin and Donna brightened dark Bergen evenings, and my therapist Svetlana helped me to get through the toughest moments of this journey. I want to mention places that welcomed me and inspired to write – Vilnius, Minsk, Kyiv, and London, and books that provided peaceful time when it was needed and changed the way I think about writing – The Gilda Stories by Jewelle L. Gómez, Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and All That Remains by Sue Black. 3 A very special gratitude goes to Donna McCormack for friendship, tea with cakes and imagining the unimaginable. I am grateful to my parents for their love and support at every turn of my life. And last but not least I want to say a heartfelt thank you to my partner Sasha Padziarei – for the path walked together and for making London my home. 4 Introduction Shaping PhD research Around the time of USSR was dissolved, gender studies was institutionalized as a new discipline in post-Soviet1 countries: Center for Gender Studies in Moscow (Russia), founded in 1990, was followed by gender studies centers in Kharkiv2 (Ukraine) in 1994 and Minsk (Belarus) in 1997. The early 1990s were also characterized by the emergence of the so-called third sector (tretii sektor) which represented “the forms and logic of political activism encouraged by international development agencies” with a particular focus “on the project to promote civil society development” (Hemment 2003, 215). In the post-Soviet region, a new gender and human rights vocabulary, informed by Anglo- Saxon intellectual and activist traditions, has emerged alongside socio-economic transformations (after the collapse of the Soviet Union), liberalisation of academia and activism, discrediting of Marxist analysis, and influx of international donors claiming to promote democracy and critical thinking (see Gapova 2007, 2009, 2010, Zhurzhenko 2008). In the mid-1990s, the first gay and lesbian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were officially registered in Ukraine. At the beginning of the 2000s, the LGBT3 (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) acronym gained momentum and obtained a widespread use in old as well as newly registered organizations aimed at delivering services to specific populations. The number of officially registered NGOs that defined their target groups through the LGBT acronym rose drastically, reaching 48 in 2015 (Kasyanchuk 2015, 1 Here I use “post-Soviet” in a narrow sense referring to the territories of the former Soviet republics. For further discussion about the meaning and use of the term see Chapter 3. 2 Throughout my thesis I use Ukrainian spellings while transliterating geographical and topographical names. Therefore, I use “Kharkiv” in place of Russian-speaking “Kharkov”, and the capital of Ukraine states as “Kyiv” instead of Russian-spelled “Kiev”. I see it as a de-colonial gesture to disrupt a taken for granted tradition of using Russian as a universal language for post-Soviet countries and challenge recognizability of words transliterated from Russian equivalents for English-speaking academic audience. In the case of names and surnames of people, I use spelling they indicated as the preferred one (in a consent form, on their social media profiles, in e-mails, or in personal communication). 3 In my research, I use “LGBT” abbreviation critically. I acknowledge epistemological conditions of its emergence in post-Soviet/East European/Central European spaces. As Mizielińska and Kulpa (2011) note, “‘transgender’ was included in lesbian and gay politics in CEE [Central and Eastern European] almost from the very beginning of these movements. Homosexual activism was self-labelled as ‘LGBT’, even if ‘B’ and ‘T’ were purely discursive invocations. This ‘inclusion before coming into being’ occurred because of different temporalities of West and CEE as in many other spheres of life, activists in CEE adopted labels already in use in the West, even if these markers did not denote their new reality” (Mizielińska and Kulpa 2011, 14). I will elaborate on different temporalities of LGBT activism and gender studies development in post-Soviet/CEE spaces in Chapters 4 and 6. 5 126-133, Martsenuyk 2010, 135). From the late 2000s, there has been a growing attention to transgender rights in Ukraine, and a number of NGOs concerned with LGBT rights have taken up their cause. Insight has been one of the major players in the field of LGBT activism in Ukraine since 2007, when it was launched as an informal activist group in Kyiv. At the time of its inception, Insight had one project, Drugoi Vzgliad4, which was a photo exhibition aimed at representing the LGBT community in Ukraine, funded by MamaCash, an international fund that supports women’s, girls and trans people’s movements around the world. In May 2008, Insight was officially registered as a non-governmental organization. The registration of the organization was paramount for the donor’s support to continue.