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THE WEIGHT OF IDENTITY - Transgender girls stranded at Ukrainian borders

Moldova/Ukraine, March 2022

Everyone wants to be happy. Living in acceptance with your choices and your body, being able to look in the mirror and recognize in that reflection the fruit of your efforts and hard work, not the dull gaze of a stranger shaped by external events. Undergoing a process of gender transition, understanding and accepting one's identity and sexual orientation should be a very important moment, a turning point in one's life to be celebrated and faced with the utmost serenity. Unfortunately, this does not happen with due frequency, and especially for the protagonists of this story, serenity is something absolutely unknown.

Following the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine on February 24 and the terrible bombings that ruined the lives and psyche of the population, an enormous migratory flow flocked into the neighboUring countries in search of shelter and help. In search of humanity.

Millions have been welcomed, but there are those who have been denied this hope for security: hundreds of Ukrainian members of the LGBTQ+ community, who underwent or are undergoing a transition process from man to woman, often already victims of family discrimination or lack of the right support. Due to martial law promptly introduced by President Volodymyr Zelensky, which denies male citizens permission to leave the country, these transgender girls find themselves carrying a painful weight: their documents, on which the damned M appears. Men in the eyes of the law, betrayed once again by a gender identity in which they do not recognize themselves, forced to stay and perhaps fight in a country that does not have the time or the strength to listen to their stories and their prayers. And so many of them decide to try their luck by illegally crossing these borders, freeing themselves once again from a weight that

oppresses them from birth, facing the cold and unknown dangers with the strength of those who know what it means to take their own life in hand and don't stop in front of any obstacle. Being it a letter on a document or a border line.