Between genders in Prague

PRAGUE — Viktor Heumann lives in limbo: not as a female, the gender that appears on his national ID card, and not as a male, the gender with which he identifies. To bureaucrats and officials, he is gender-neutral “Viki.”

Heumann is one of many transgender Czechs to assume a neutral name while awaiting gender confirmation surgery — the final step in an arduous process he hopes to make easier.

The procedure for legally changing one’s gender in the Czech Republic — consistently ranked one of Europe’s most developed post-communist democracies — is among the most restrictive in the European Union. It hinges on the individual undergoing full gender confirmation surgery.

Trans people are also required to divorce their spouses or same-sex registered partners, live for a year in their preferred gender roles before applying for surgery, and relinquish their ability to have biological children.

Many who conform to traditionally masculine or feminine gender roles have no qualms with the requirements for transition.

According to Petr Weiss, a sexologist at Charles University’s General Hospital, 99 percent of his patients are willing to go through with the surgery.

But for some, compulsory divorce, sterilization and surgery are heavy prices to pay to obtain a driver’s license or an ID with a gender designation that matches one’s identity.

Viktor Heumann lives in limbo — stuck, thanks to Czech bureacracy, between female, which appears on his national ID card; and male, which will become official after surgery | Courtesy of Viktor Heumann

Because names and surnames are gendered in the Czech Republic — female names generally end in “a” or sometimes “e,” and female surnames carry the suffix “ová;” male surnames often, but not always, carry the masculine ending “ý” — surgery becomes the only way to obtain a legal identity that doesn’t automatically “out” an individual at the post office or on a job application.

“It gets old very quickly,” said Julie Koubová, a trans woman living in Prague who successfully petitioned to use her preferred name, Julie — despite the fact it is typically female in Czech — by submitting evidence the name was used by men in the United States and Mexico in the 1940s and is thus gender neutral.

“You don’t want to explain you’re trans all the time,” she added. “And if you don’t want a surgery, then you have this for the rest of your life.”

Dita Jahodová, a former consultant for the gender program of the Prague-based nonprofit Otevřená Společnost (Open Society), argued many transgender Czechs might feel less satisfied with their country’s laws if they believed there was an alternative.

“I think that, yeah, the majority of trans people are satisfied, but also there is a big question: Well, what does [that] mean?” she said. “Sometimes you are satisfied because you can’t imagine it can be different.”

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Twenty-one European countries mandate forced sterilization in order for trans people to receive full recognition of their gender identity, and 22 require they be single or divorced, according to a report released this week by Berlin-based advocacy group Transgender Europe (TGEU). Yet in the past decade, the tide has started to turn for transgender people in Europe, particularly in the West.

In 2008, Germany’s Constitutional Court ruled compulsory divorce was unconstitutional and the country now allows trans people to remain married during their transition. Last year, the Swedish government announced trans people would receive compensation for forced sterilizations that took place prior to 2013, when the practice was abolished.

While trans people in the Czech Republic are afforded many of the same rights and protections under the law as their European and North American counterparts once they have completed their transition, the process itself is unforgiving and sometimes Kafkaesque.

It begins with a formal diagnosis of “transsexualism,” based on the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases, and the green-light of a physician and a sexologist. Reports routinely describe humiliating psychological examinations, in which patients are asked to reveal intimate details about their childhoods and current sex lives.

During a diagnosis performed by Weiss, the sexologist, Viktor Heumann recalled being asked whether he would be interested in having sex with a lesbian, or if he was only interested in heterosexual women. Heumann felt the wrong answer could potentially bar him from being able to start hormone treatment.

Filip, a trans man who asked not to be identified with his full name, wrote about his experiences on his Czech-language blog last December, a day after he received his diagnosis. The doctor asked invasive questions about his sexual practices and made no effort “to draw me out,” he said. “Just yes/no questions. Zero empathy. Zero feeling of a safe space. Zero feeling that I’d like to talk about it with him.”

“You don’t want to explain you’re trans all the time” — Julie Koubová, a trans woman living in Prague

After the diagnosis comes the hormone treatment and a “real life test,” in which trans people carry out their day-to-day lives in their felt gender roles full-time. A controversial practice, it was abandoned by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health in its most recent standards for care guidelines. After a year, they are brought before a panel of doctors, psychologists and lawyers, who conduct an interview to determine if the patient is in good mental health and has met the requirements for surgery laid out by Czech law. Only after gender reassignment surgery can a trans person re-apply for a male or female name and change the gender designation on their legal documentation.

Practices vary widely across Europe, but many countries have done away with surgical and hormonal prerequisites to name change, including all Scandinavian countries, Germany, Austria, Bulgaria and Romania.

Once they start the transition process, trans Czechs can select from several dozen registered gender-neutral names and affix a neutral suffix to their surnames. Common choices include René or Michele, as well as diminutives for masculine and feminine names like Míša — short for both Michal and Michala — and Péťa — for Petr and Petra.

They can then choose to keep their neutral name after surgery, or switch to a more traditionally gendered name. Their surnames generally receive a neutral suffix, such as “ů” or “ých.” Foreign surnames, such as Heumann’s, can stand alone.

In his office at the university hospital’s Institute of Sexology, Weiss called the possibility of changing one’s legal gender without undergoing surgery a “political decision,” not a medical one. “I think most of our patients wouldn’t like to use this possibility,” he said. “Because they … if they feel [themselves] to be women, why have a penis, why have testicles? It’s nonsense.”

One of the best-known sexologists working with trans people in the Czech Republic, Weiss provides many people with formal diagnoses and sits on the pre-op panel. He described the diagnostic procedure as a “normal, complex examination,” not the invasive psychological questionnaire some patients recounted.

People hold up a large rainbow flag as they march across the Old Town Square in Prague | Michal Cizek/AFP via Getty Images

Weiss’ brisk demeanor is in keeping with the rest of the institute, which is spartan and white-walled save for a series of black-and-white photographs of sleek, eroticized bodies. He emphatically opposed the notion that a transgender identity might be declassified as a disorder. (In English and Czech, Weiss uses the term “transsexualism,” which appears in the WHO’s International Classification of Diseases.)

“It’s a disturbance, it’s gender identity disturbance,” he said. “Transsexuality is a total gender identity disorder. It’s not without disorder; it’s disordered,” Weiss said.

“If it wasn’t a disorder or disease, if it didn’t have official diagnosis — the health insurance company wouldn’t pay [for] all the treatment,” he added.

To Weiss, successful surgeries speak for themselves. “We have more than 1,000 patients after sex reassignment, and we had three of them who came that they are not satisfied, that they should want to [change their gender] back,” he said.

“Show me the medical specialization where the success is … 99.7 percent,” he added. “Show me.”

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Trans*parent, the trans rights advocacy group Heumann co-founded in 2015, wants to change the discourse around transgender rights in the Czech Republic. Its first line of attack is to remove terms like “diagnosis” and “disordered” that, Heumann argues, divert attention from more important matters. Calling a trans man a “transsexuál” or trans woman “transsexuálka” mistakenly suggests that trans identity is related to sexuality rather than gender, the group argues.

“I think we are very binary. If you go to Germany or if you go to any other Western country, it’s not like that” — Viktor Heumann

With Trans*parent, Heumann wants to create a “safe space for people who identify themselves as non-cis [transgender]” and expand the options available to those who choose not to carry out gender confirmation surgery. Czech sexologists working with trans people need to be “more open” to people with non-binary gender identities, Heumann said.

Heumann — who speaks nearly perfect English after living two years in Dublin — works as a freelance translator and recently spent several months living in a queer housing co-op in Berlin’s Neukölln district. His time abroad gave him a taste for life in a country with more progressive views toward trans rights, he said, but Prague is his home, and the place where he can be most effective as an activist.

He is mid-way through the gender change process himself and is awaiting surgery, after making his final appearance before the commission late last year. He was quick to note people have been “great” about his transition and he hasn’t experienced any social animosity. His gender-neutral name and female gender designation on his ID have not been an issue with bureaucratic authorities. If he felt any trepidation, he didn’t show it. He spoke confidently, had a ready laugh, and declined to portray the situation for trans Czechs as tragic.

What does give him pause is the damage done by four decades of communism, which he said “deprived us of the core values, the spiritual values.” The country doesn’t struggle with religious opposition to trans people or homophobia from the Church, but Czech society clings to identity markers such as gender and race.

“I think we are very binary,” Heumann said of Czech people. “If you go to Germany or if you go to any other Western country, it’s not like that.”

Morgan Childs is a freelance journalist based in Prague.