Russian poetry competition bans transgender applicants

[Jessica_Rose]

Russian poetry competition bans transgender applicants

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russian-poetry-competition-bans-transgender-applicants/ar-AA1nM7it?ocid=windirect&cvid=a9e4dfdb0832403a9238f9fc4551be3b&ei=49

Story by John Russell (26 April 2024)

The organizers of a Russian poetry competition have banned entries from transgender people.

Rules posted online for this year's Andrei Dementyev All-Russian Poetry Prize specify that while the competition will accept entries from poets "regardless of citizenship, nationality, profession, and place of residence," entries from "citizens who have changed their gender" will not be considered, Reuters reported.

Organized by the regional government of Tver, a city northwest of Moscow, the competition is named for the late prize-winning Russian poet Andrey Dementyev, who died in 2018. Previous competitions have not explicitly banned trans people from submitting their work, according to Russian independent news outlet Mediazona.

However, The Advocate reported that the competition's official application currently includes a question asking if the applicant has "changed" their gender.

The competition's official rules state that trans people are banned "in order to preserve traditional Russian society and religious ideas shared by multiple denominations about marriage, family, motherhood, fatherhood, and childhood."

Nef Cellarius, program coordinator for Russian LGBTQ+ rights group Vykhod ("Coming Out"), said that the rule change is likely an effort on the part of local officials to show their loyalty to the anti-LGBTQ+ Russian president.

[Lori Dee]

The reason behind this is because... as everyone knows... transgender Russian poets have an unfair advantage over cis-gender Russian poets.