“It’s just horrible,” a trans woman from Hungary told BuzzFeed News. “I don’t want to lose good people because of this.”
“I’m feeling like I did before I transitioned,” says Adel Onodi. “My mental life is really bad right now.” She sounds flatter and more disconnected with each sentence. “I’m thinking I will kill myself.”
Onodi, a 24-year-old actor, is one of many. As the coronavirus pandemic engulfs Europe, transgender people in Hungary now face an extra threat to their safety: a new law that will end gender recognition.
At the end of March, as other European nations were shutting down, imposing unprecedented restrictions on movement, Viktor Orban, Hungary’s populist prime minister, seized an opportunity. With a two-thirds majority in parliament for his hard right Fidesz party, he was able to introduce an emergency powers law, billed as a response to the COVID-19 crisis, which allows him to rule by decree, indefinitely. Absolute authority, without normal scrutiny, is guaranteed.
The next day, when other world leaders were focusing on the pandemic, Orban’s government proposed a further bill that would see passports and ID cards no longer reflect someone’s acquired gender — even if they have previously obtained legal recognition. Under the new law, such documents would stop using the word “nem”, which means sex or gender, and instead “születési nem”: birth sex. This would be based on “primary sex characteristics and chromosomes”, regardless of the impact on trans or intersex people, and would be immutable. In a further insult, Orban announced all this on the International Transgender Day of Visibility.