Stand Up And Fight the Gender Wars!

This week, Syinat Sultanalieva looks at LGBT rights - one of the ideological fault lines between Ukraine and Russia+Central Asia. It's complicated - well, not really!

BY SYINAT SULTANALIEVA

First they came for the gays, we all said a few words, but they did not listen. Then they came for pretty much all the others, we said some more words, but that didn’t really change anything. And now there are way fewer joyful parties and a lot more of the stinky incel men walking around still unable to get any, while all the fun has gone into the deep-deep underground, from where no sounds of laughter (that is still there, believe me) are able to escape.

That’s the state of things today in Kyrgyzstan on May 17, 2025, the International Day Against Homophobia (and Transphobia, Biphobia, and all other sexual orientation/gender identity related phobias), as I write this note, sitting in a street café, drinking ice matcha latte in +35 degrees (C) hot Bishkek. (It’s really not supposed to be this hot this early, but that’s a topic for another day).

Although non-heterosexual relations and identities are still legal in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan (in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, homosexuality has never been decriminalized, and the law is actively used in both countries), the three countries are well on their way there.

In Tajikistan, it’s all peachy and legal on paper, but in practice the law enforcement literally hunts after LGBT people, ransacks their phones to get contacts of more LGBT people for blackmail and other nefarious purposes. It’s so pervasive that LGBT people themselves often do not trust each other because anyone can become a police collaborator, unwillingly yes, but a danger nonetheless. There are no organizations working openly on LGBT rights and many LGBT people lead double lives as heterosexually married, but secretly non-heterosexual.

In Kyrgyzstan, in the summer 2023, president Sadyr Japarov signed into law a discriminatory provision that bans the dissemination of information about LGBTI people, rights, and identities among minors — considering it “harmful information”. What else is harmful? Well, anything that “denounces family and traditional societal values, promotes non-traditional sexual relations and initiates disrespect towards parents or other family members”. Rightfully any information that promotes cruelty and violence, suicides, gambling, or pornography. But then also any information that encourages children to drink beer (for some reason specified?).

So, basically, now in Kyrgyzstan, you’ll be fined 50 euros (as an individual, and more if you’re a group/legal entity) for being all emo like: “OMG I HATE THESE STUPID TRADITIONS THAT REDUCE ME TO A MERE BIRTHING AND CLEANING AND COOKING MACHINE AS A WOMAN!”

I joke, of course — or am I? This is all up to law enforcement now to interpret anything that they might see as going against “societal values”. Or whether posting an Instagram photo drinking beer served in a frozen mug on a piping-hot summer day somewhere in Bishkek could be constituted as “encouraging children to drink beer”, because who knows who’s watching your Insta, right?

In Kazakhstan, although no such laws yet exist, an obnoxious group called the Union of Parents has been lobbying the government aggressively to pass such legislation, with several attempts shut down so far - but who is to say how long the authorities will withstand? Beyond this, representatives of that group have attacked private events of LGBT rights groups and initiatives in the cities of Kazakhstan, barging in on closed-door “LGBT only” exhibitions and performances and parties. Like, you wanted them driven underground, but when they do — you go get them even there? Where’s the logic? Ah yes, mea culpa, the fundamentalist conservatives are famously not on friendly terms with logic.

As is often the case, for the people in power in Central Asia, Russia is “an inspiration.” The law in Kyrgyzstan has literally copy/pasted whole sections from the Russian “anti-LGBT propaganda” law, and the Kazakhstani petitions keep referring to it. Similar attempts have been noted all throughout the post-Soviet space in recent years, the only exclusion to this currently being (drum roll) — Ukraine, of course!

Although the situation of LGBT people in Ukraine today is far from all roses and peaches, undoubtedly LGBT rights, gender equality, decolonization were part and parcel of the European choice that Ukraine made during its Revolution of Dignity back in 2014. They constituted part of the ideological fault lines along which Ukraine and Russia parted; Ukraine took their rights seriously - Russia outlawed, ostracised, and sewed mouths shut.

But! It’s very easy to appoint Russia as the original sinner here because Russia is everyone’s favourite monster these days (and rightfully so in many ways) — we all still have long-term memory despite shortened attention span due to TikTok and the meme-ization of the Internet though, right?

So, remember Scott Lively? The crazy evangelist and born-again Christian that’s been behind anti-gay activism in many non-Western countries. His footprints (even if he himself wasn’t there, but via those he inspired) are everywhere in the post-Soviet space too. I myself have heard of “some Americans” setting up meetings with members of the Kyrgyz parliament back in 2012-2013 to strategize on how to oppose the existential threat of gays and lesbians taking over the traditional mountains and steppes of Central Asia. The first attempts to criminalize “LGBT propaganda” sprouted in Kyrgyzstan in 2014 — the timeline works. It’s just funny how right up until then there was no problem with rainbow flashmobs, awareness-raising campaigns, and transgender remembrance days, and then all of a sudden it’s “THE GAYS ARE DESTROYING OUR TRADITIONS AND HISTORY AND OUR ECONOMY TOO!”

I said that was the state of things in Central Asia, but really this is what we’re dealing with all around the world today, isn’t it? And considering where this current obsession with blaming the so-called “gender ideology” really originated from, it’s a bit ironic that it’s come full circle to wreak havoc in the “Anglo-Saxon” world now. It’s a sad state of affairs that DEI programs are being dismantled in the USA and the courts in the UK have established that being a “woman” is defined by biological sex. I wanted to finish with a more uplifting note, something along the lines of “the night is darkest just before dawn”, but I feel like such sentiments lead to complacency in these times and this political climate.

We can no longer hope that this is just the old systems agonizing before being wiped out for good, giving way to a Star Trek-esque future of equality, arts and science, and progress — it might be that the Third World War is already raging and it’s the war between values and ideologies that’s been going on for a while, and is now entering its decisive Final Act.

So gear up, social justice warriors, we cannot afford to lose this one.

Syinat Sultanalieva is a human rights activist and researcher from Kyrgyzstan, who writes science fiction on the side when she’s not busy dissecting power structures and dynamics in the region and the world.

With Syinat, we are adding a voice from the other end of what used to be the Russian and later Soviet empire. A voice less old and less grumpy, we trust that you will enjoy her perspective.