LONDON — A Russian poetry competition has banned transgender people from submitting entries this year, in what it says is an effort to protect traditional values.
The Andrei Dementyev All-Russian Poetry Prize, organized by the government of western Russia’s Tver region, accepts applications until late April from poets “regardless of citizenship, nationality, profession and place of residence.”
But the competition explicitly bars “citizens who have changed their gender,” according to rules posted on the website of a local poetry organization.
The competition organizers said the move was an effort to “preserve the ideas of marriage, family, motherhood, fatherhood and childhood that are traditional for Russian society”.
Under President Vladimir Putin, Russia has engaged in a widespread crackdown on LGBTQ rights, portraying them as a Western invention that threatens traditional Russian values.
Russia has designated what it calls “the international LGBT social movement” as extremist and those supporting it as terrorists, opening up avenues to pursue serious criminal cases against LGBTQ people and their advocates.
Transgender people in particular have seen their rights stripped away. Russia last year banned gender change surgery and hormone therapy and barred trans people from adopting or fostering children.
Nef Cellarius, program coordinator for Russian LGBTQ rights group Vykhod (“Coming Out”), told Reuters the poetry prize ban is an example of a growing trend among local officials to showcase their loyalty to the Kremlin on a variety of social issues.
“As soon as it becomes known that the ‘Tsar’ doesn’t like something, the entire state apparatus begins to publicly condemn this ‘something,’” said Cellarius, who is based in Germany.
The Tver organizers provided no explanation for why it was excluding transgender people. Named for a local Soviet-Russian poet, the competition gives out two main awards a year for works of “undeniable artistic merit” and “universal moral values.”
Previous competitions did not stipulate a ban on trans participants, Russian independent news outlet Mediazona said.
The prize organizers did not reply to a Reuters request for comment.
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