Epress.am News from Armenia
Transsexual (TS) men and women have no constitutional rights or options for seeking healthcare services, said Lusine Vayachyan, a journalist and LGBT community representative at a roundtable on LGBT issues held today and organized by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR).
According to her, TS men and women have to go abroad; secure funds for travel, accomodation, visas and surgery; and then see a psychiatrist before they can be eligible for sex reassignment surgery (SRS). And then they have to forget about returning to Armenia because “here they are no one, neither their former sex nor their current sex,” she said.
She further added that doctors in Armenia either don’t know or don’t want to know the difference between transsexuals and “hermaphrodites” (intersex people).
Vayachyan recalled a friend of hers, Norayr, a citizen of Armenia who wants to change his sex from female to male, who went to see an endocrinologist who, after running chromosomal tests determind Norayr as having female chromosomes, advised him to go see a psychiatrist for “treatment.”
When Norayr mentioned that being transsexual is no longer considered a mental disorder and he does not need to be “treated,” the endocrinologist advised him to go to Russia.
Vayachyan mentioned that Norayr has “never met a doctor in Armenia who knows what it is to be transsexual.”