By Ayman Eckford
When I was born, everyone thought I was a girl. No questions, no doubts. I wonder if my parents ever knew that there could be any doubts. I was born in the industrial Ukrainian city of Donetsk, which is famous for its steel industry and had never been known for being especially progressive. Quite the opposite: it was much more conservative than other parts of Ukraine.
I knew I wasn’t a girl from the age of four, maybe earlier, if only I could remember it. It started almost like play. I asked everyone to call me Mowgli, like the character in my favorite version of The Jungle Book. I preferred the pronoun “he”. I wondered why I couldn’t have a beard when I grew up.
Adults treated it as harmless play, until they didn’t. Until it started to feel like it could be something sinful to them.
And my family were more religious Christians than most of the families I knew. Ukraine in the 1990s was nothing like what some people might imagine from watching TV news today. Today’s Ukraine is much more modern and European, while at the same time being religious. When I was a child, most adults I knew confused the stories of Noah and Moses from the Bible. Meanwhile, my father did not just read the Bible; he studied the Holy Fathers and listened to lectures for future priests. He wasn’t a priest—he was an engineer—but his devotion to religion grew with every year. He preached to my godmother, our neighbors, and our relatives.
Unfortunately, there is no affirmative theology in the Russian Orthodox Church—and my family was from the Russian Orthodox Church, not from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and very pro-Russian in general - which means, once again, more conservative. Transness and queerness were things my family would never mention in front of a child.
But all the same, I knew I wasn’t a girl. Out of simple self-preservation, I refused to be bullied in kindergarten for my non-feminine pronouns, and I tried to be good by calling myself a “girl”. When I think about little me, I feel such a profound desire to protect them that I dream about time travel.
I remember clinging to traditionally feminine interests, like dolls and parenting magazines, at the age of five, rather than the military history my grandpa told me about. At the same time, I struggled to understand why those interests should determine gender. I felt that gender and sex were not the same, but I didn’t have the words to describe it. I knew that I might like dolls or I might like bikes, but that didn’t make me a girl.
I wasn’t “just a tomboy.” I wasn’t even a tomboy. I was me: a little person who didn’t associate themself with girls and felt, physically, that something was wrong without having any explanation for it. A daydreaming geek. Who wasn’t a girl.
In my childhood and teenage years, I never met another trans person. I was restricted from using the internet, so I didn’t see any proper representation. My family wasn’t the kind of family that watched talk shows with trans people or other “dirty”, “anti-intellectual” programs, as they would call them.
I was raised hearing that gay people were going to hell. I learned conspiracy theories about the Global West—the idea that all Western powers, ruled by a secret group of almost-satanic oligarchs who don’t have real democracy or actual cultural differences inside “Western” countries. It’s something like an extremely popular post-Soviet analogy of QAnon theory before QAnons was even a thing. Part of this theory was the idea that this mystical “Global West” spread LGBT propaganda to make Slavic people infertile, or to promote pedophilia in the name of globalism. I know, it’s weird. Luckily, I didn’t believe in this conspiracy, but unfortunately, the “Global West” conspiracy fear stopped adults from letting me learn more about queerness, because my teachers and parents wouldn’t allow me to have queer-friendly books, and my time on the internet was restricted. At eighteen, I still didn’t even know the difference between a drag queen and a trans person. I was scared to learn because of religious trauma and societal pressure.
At my worst moments, I thought my physical discomfort and dysphoria during my teenage years were caused by sin and the fact that I couldn’t pray properly—a sign that I was going to hell. At my best moments, I saw it as internalized misogyny. And I couldn’t have been more wrong in both cases.
But, anyway, there was no way someone could have “promoted” “trans ideology” to me.
Because there is no ideology.
What the modern media calls “trans ideology” and “trans propaganda” is just the acknowledgement of a simple fact: some people are trans. We don’t know why, but we know that trans people have always existed, despite the fact that societies throughout human history have not been very trans-friendly. And we know that there are trans people in cultures and communities that do not support trans rights and do not provide trans representation. I am one of them.
I was lucky and privileged enough to be able to separate myself from my abusive family, to have free access to the internet as an adult, and to meet other trans people, first online. At 23–24, I finally accepted that I’m a transmasculine non-binary person, and it helped me better understand my body and my past. It made me happier. When I speak with conservatives, I just present myself as a male, and it feels much more natural to me than pretending to be a woman.
I had the childhood that far-right activists and trans-exclusionary “feminists” now want all trans children to have before social transition. No information about trans people. No support. As a result, I developed depression, very severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, and what was likely a dissociative condition.
I didn’t have puberty blockers when I was a teenager, just as conservatives and transphobes want, and it left me feeling detached from my body, from my senses, and from my own life, and had suicidal thoughts.
The JAMA Network Open (2022) study showed that appropriate gender-affirming care for young people was associated with 60% lower odds of moderate or severe depression and 73% lower odds of suicidality over a 12-month follow-up—and it was supported by other studies. Meanwhile, the Cass Review is now actively promoted in the UK (the country of my residence) and shapes British policy, despite serious criticism from academics of its methodology and consistency. Moreover, more than 200 Educational Psychologists signed an open letter expressing concerns about the Cass Review.
We also know that there are rare cases of people who regret transitioning, just as people regret many other decisions in their lives. The gender-affirming surgery regret is under 1%. But we don’t talk about prohibiting parenthood because some people regret having children, or prohibiting cosmetic surgery, despite the fact that there are far more regrets associated with cosmetic and other surgery (runs 5 to 33% depending on the procedure) and parenthood regret (5 to 14%). The idea that trans children and teenagers shouldn’t be allowed to be themselves, and that they become trans because of propaganda, has nothing to do with reality. It is a paternalistic, ageist idea based on the belief that until the age of 18, people don’t have the right to their own opinions or bodily autonomy. When I was a teen and spoke about family abuse, I noticed that people laughed at me, but when I repeated the same words as an adult, they took me seriously. Unfortunately, the same happened with any complaints I made, including those regarding my mental health.
People don’t understand that they aren’t just making kids less happy for their own comfort; they are actively causing harm for adults as well. Anti-LGBT laws almost always start with minors. For example, in Russia, a country where I unfortunately lived for four years, the 2013 “propaganda” law was written to protect children, was extended to all ages in 2022, and in 2023, a new law banned transition care for adults. The LGBT movement was then labeled as an “extremist organization,” and in 2024 Russia put it on the same government list of terrorists and extremists as Al-Qaeda. At first, Russian politicians promised that LGBT adults wouldn’t suffer and that children would be protected from the “Global West Conspiracy.” They lied. They were also saying—just like British politicians are saying right now—that trans children just need to be under the “watchful waiting” before making a decision about transitioning.
If the benefits of waiting were true, I would have had a perfect childhood. But I didn’t. My childhood was hell.
I know I’m not alone. As an adult and an LGBT activist, I have met a lot of trans young people. And they all shared the same trait: not a single one of them wanted to wait.
Ayman Eckford is a freelance journalist and a trans-masculine, non-binary person who was born in Donetsk, Ukraine, and now lives in Sheffield, UK. They have been published in the Washington Blade, Tagg, Queer Majority, Bi.org, OC Media, the Moscow Times, Diva, and other outlets, and they began their media career writing in English for the Ukrainian think tank Solid Info, focusing on gender and sexuality.