Transgendered artist reveals impressively enlightened attitude among Donetsk rebels

Grey Violet, a transgender Russian LGBT activist who went missing on 31 January in rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine with another activist, was released on Valentine’s Day. Born Oleg Vasilyev, Grey Violet, part of the Voina art collective that also gave rise to Pussy Riot, told the Russian opposition news site Meduza that they were planning to film an art performance in an industrial zone in the separatist pro-Russian Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR), which would have involved cutting off the artist’s testicles and feeding them to stray dogs. Grey Violet, who usually uses gender-neutral pronouns in Russian, wanted to draw parallels between people living in war zones and those at war with their own bodies. The artist’s capture and detention—during which rebel forces investigated the pair to make sure they weren’t undercover spies—scuttled the performance, but provided Grey Violet with another revelation. “What’s funny is that the military psychiatrist in the DNR recognised me as a non-binary transgender person; so his position is ten times more liberal than the position of official psychiatry in a European country.” Grey Violet told Meduza that during his arrest he presented as “an openly transgender woman” and did not encounter anything more serious than “delicate irony”.