Russian translations – healthy relationships resources

Russian translations – healthy relationships resources

This year we worked together with T-Action, a transgender organisation in Russia, to bring you Russian translations of some important resources.

The resources are about healthy relationships with yourself and others. We are releasing these for Trans Day of Visibility, 31 March 2023 #TDoV.

Trans people in Russia are currently illegalised, and it is illegal to “promote” being transgender in Russia. This means that being visible poses very real danger to a trans person, and makes it incredibly hard for organisations like T-Action, which do similar advocacy to us at Gender Minorities Aotearoa.

Trans people cannot be visible without freedom from laws that criminalise us.

We stand together with trans people in every country where laws are hostile to trans existence. We are very grateful to T-Action for their continued work to support trans people, for reaching out to us, and for translating our resources.

We hope that these translations will benefit trans people in Russia, as well as Russian-speaking trans people in Aotearoa, and across the world.

Message from T-Action

Visibility is a form of empowerment.

We become stronger not only when we become visible to the cisworld, but also when some trans communities become visible to other trans communities. 

On Transgender Day of Visibility, trans initiative group T-Action announce a precious collaboration with Gender Minorities Aotearoa. We proudly present you a Russian translation of resources from “The Transgender Guide to Sex and Relationships” – as translators Aleksandr Grin, Inga Grin and Anna Polyakova believe, one of the best materials on the web, created by trans people for trans people. 

In a situation where any talk about transgender and sexuality is prohibited by outrageously unfair laws, an ability to access such materials is a necessity for Russian-speaking trans people. We are grateful for the opportunity to publish the translation on Gender Minorities Aotearoa website.

As we all continue to face challenges and discrimination, it is important to remember that we are not alone, the community is looking after us and ready to give us a place to belong, listen and help.

Despite the geographical distance and cultural differences, we can find common ground and work together toward a world where trans people are free to live, love, and thrive without fear of discrimination, rejection, or violence.

About T-Action

T-Action is the major trans organisation in Russia operating since 2014. Our mission is to empower transgender people, strengthen the trans community, and raise trans awareness and trans sensitivity in society.

In 9 years of its work, T-Action has made a “trans revolution” in health care services in Russia:

– Educated hundreds of medical doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, and other professionals about transgender physical and mental health.

– Conducted research projects about the life of trans people in Russia with medical institutions – that had never been done before.

– Changed perceptions and beliefs about transgender people in the Russian medical, media, and social field. Organized programs, research, and activities with professionals from different areas.

– Organized a Trans*Fest – a unique annual festival with educational events made by the community for the community (not for the people outside, as many trans-related events have to be). Each Trans*Fest is visited by hundreds of trans people throughout the country, both online and offline.

– Empowered many transgender people themselves to be proactive, to know, and to protect their rights.

In current times T-Action was declared a foreign agent and as a result, announced its liquidation. Instantly, a new group was founded with exactly the same goals and activities which works with and for so-called ‘kilkots’.

Within the trans community, Kilkot is a well-known mascot of our group – half-cat, half-fish, a kind of cat-mermaid – and our audience is well aware of it and associates it with us. This way, our audience easily understands the context, and, in the end, it’s just fun if we are accused of “propagating kilkotism”.

instagram.com/kilkota
t.me/kilkota
vk.com/kilkota
https://www.patreon.com/kilkota

See the translations

#TDoV TDoV2023 #TransDayOfVisibility #TransDayOfVisibility2023 #TransgenderDayOfVisibility #TransgenderDayOfVisibility2023

Website Accessibility

Website Accessibility

We believe in equal access for all transgender people, and work hard to make everything we do as accessible as we can with the resources we have.

We’ve redesigned our website to improve accessibility

  • We did a lot of testing.
  • We carried out a complete website redesign.
  • We’ve updated header structures on our 48 pages and 220 posts, so that accessibility devices can tell what’s important on a page and what order to read things in.
  • We installed and adjusted a super accessibility-friendly main menu.
  • We’ve done heaps of titles and alt-text tagging on images, so a screen reader can tell a website user what the picture is for or what’s happening in the picture.
  • We’ve gone through and adjusted the contrast in areas where things were harder to see for people with low sight.
  • We’ve made many different elements work well for keyboard-only navigation.
  • We’ve changed the layout of most pages, so they won’t get messed up if the text size is increased by 200%.
  • We’ve removed our language translation widget and replaced it with a function which automatically detects the language your browser is using.
  • We’ve added a new accessibility menu.

What the accessibility menu allows website users to do

  • Easily switch to keyboard navigation rather than using a mouse.
  • Resize text.
  • Change to a dyslexia-friendly font.
  • Change the colour of the background and text.
  • Highlight all links on a page.
  • Invert the colours on a page.
  • Save the chosen settings for our website.
  • Clear those settings.

Further accessibility

Our website does still need some work – it’s quite complex as far as rainbow organisation websites go. It contains a lot of information and different data structures, over 200 documents, and over 2,000 images. We also built it ourselves, and do all our own maintenance, so it does take time to learn how to fix something before fixing it. However, we’ll keep chipping away at it, and we won’t make the same accessibility mistakes in the future!

Our website landing page.
Accessibility menu open.
Our website landing page.
Accessibility menu open, links highlighted, font changed, font size increased, and colour adjusted to black.
Our website landing page.
Accessibility menu open, links highlighted, font changed, font size further increased, and colours adjusted to high contrast green.
Cool New Merch

Cool New Merch

Clocks, t-shirts, cushions, socks, badges, stickers, and more!

GMA has some great new trans-positive merch available from our online store.

A round clock with the trans flag colours printed on it, and "trans rights are human rights".
A person wearing a blue t-shirt with the pink and white trans flag stripes, which says "trans women are women".
A yellow tote bag with the trans flag colours printed on it, and "Indigenous genders are real".
A person wearing a blue t-shirt which says "transgender, don't just dream it".
A cushion with the trans flag colours printed on it, and :all communities are beautiful".
A person wearing a black t-shirt which says "don't hate me because I'm transgender, hate me because I stole your boyfriend".

See more designs and products

Check out our online store by clicking the button below to see more.

GMA Wins Health and Wellbeing Award

GMA Wins Health and Wellbeing Award

Gender Minorities Aotearoa received the award for Health and Wellbeing – Wellington City, at the Wellington Airport Regional Community Awards 2021.

Image: Wellington Airport Regional Community Awards

We would like to say a big thankyou to Sophie for nominating us, to the amazing communities of Wellington who support us, to our 2021 sponsors Wellington City Council, Tindall Foundation, and the A. W. Newton Bequest, to Wellington Airport and Wellington Community Trust, and most of all to trans folks; who inspire and motivate us to do what we do. Special thanks to the older generations who paved the way, and to the youth who push for change.

You can read more about the awards here.