Alexandra left Russia four years ago, fleeing oppression, propaganda, and ever harsher anti-LGBT laws. She applied for political asylum in the U.S., made a home in New York, and felt safe for the first time. But with Donald Trump’s return to power, her fears have returned. The new rules and laws, the rhetoric, and the swaying of public sentiment against trans people have been much too reminiscent of what she had escaped. Alexandra spoke to Republic about how America has been changing and what now lies in store for thousands of people like her.

I arrived in the U.S. exactly four years ago yesterday. A lot has changed in that time. I arrived right when the covid restrictions were still in force. Just a couple of days before I arrived in New York, an order to wear two masks each had been issued. The city was completely empty. I went straight to Times Square, and there were maybe one or two people walking down the street. Gradually, the restrictions were lifted, and more and more people were out in public. And then the border with Mexico was opened, and everything changed dramatically in terms of jobs, the economy, and real estate — rent went up about forty percent. Now there are new problems: Trump and Musk. But first things first.

“I always had a hard time in Russia”

I am thirty-four years old. I lived in Perm until I was twenty-five, then I moved to St. Petersburg and lived there until I moved to the U.S. I did a lot of jobs in Russia, mainly sales. In my final years in Perm, I worked at a real estate agency.

I had traveled a lot and at first I decided to just move to a big city in Russia, which didn’t make me safe in the end. I decided to leave Russia after the lockdown started. My ex-husband had gone to the U.S. in 2011 on the Work and Travel Program and he had really liked the country. Besides, when it was possible to fly anywhere again, the only valid visas we had were for the U.S.

When I was twenty-five years old, I officially changed my gender and got a woman’s passport. This was in 2016, back in Perm. It was quite difficult to do this. The problem was that at the real estate agency where I worked, no one knew about me, but I had to sign legal documents there. So I had to change my surname, first name, and patronymic to something feminine, but without specifying my gender. The civil registry office did not immediately know how to do this legally: they discussed it among themselves for several months. In the end, they changed my name and surname to the feminine versions of the original ones. I had been Alexander, and so I became Alexandra. They got rid of my patronymic because they didn’t know how to come up with a feminitive for it.

Later, after the updated information had been entered into my birth certificate, I went to the passport office. They remembered me there because a couple of years earlier they had refuse to issue me a passport on the grounds that the photo I had given them was of a young woman, but my papers indicated my gender as “M.” I had filed a complaint with the prosecutor’s office, but it hadn’t led to anything at the time. Ultimately, though, the [passport office] staff decided to meet my needs and help me. I was issued a passport with an “F” in it. I have had several cosmetic surgeries, but have not had intimate plastic surgery, meaning I haven’t undergone a complete transition, but a social one. I don’t want to have surgery yet.

It was always hard for me in Russia. If you are lesbian or gay, you can hide it from society somehow. This is impossible for us transgender people.

You go to apply for a job and you are simply rejected, at best. At worst, you are threatened and humiliated.

I was also harassed at school. For example, I was subjected to a full body search with no clothes on at the checkpoint when I took my Unified State Exam. When it comes to medical institutions, even if you go to a private clinic for a paid operation, you still face discrimination. When I tried to get permission for a sex change, they suggested I go to the male ward because in the female ward they thought I would “rape all the female patients.”

I was an activist in Rainbow World, the Perm branch of the Russian LGBT Network: I constantly attended events and was actively involved in organizing them. When I needed supporting evidence [for my asylum claim] from the head of Rainbow World, she was afraid to communicate with my lawyers, since she seriously feared reprisals from the authorities. Now she doesn’t contact me at all.

We once took part in the May Day rally. We had got all the permissions beforehand, but the placards had not been discussed, and so we ended up having our own mini-gay pride parade. Things were still relatively calm at the time: we marched down the street and people heard us; we were written about and discussed. But then the pressure started. Public opinion shifted dramatically in the direction of aggression towards LGBT people. A few months later, the police came to the offices of our organization and searched them. They confiscated our laptops, and there, of course, they found all our info — addresses, contacts, and passwords. No one thought at the time that things would take such a turn for the worse.

At one point, when I was working at the real state agency in Perm, a local activist came into my life. I don’t know who he was, but he had sent me clip from an episode of the Malakhov show in which he had taken part. He was always stalking me outside the real estate office where I worked. When I would walk past him with my colleagues, right in front of them he would say, “You have to give me an interview.” I would say, “I don’t know you. What’s this about anyway?’ And he would say, “If you don’t, I’ll tell everyone who you are.” This would happen in public, right on the street.

After the first law banning so-called LGBT propaganda for minors was adopted in 2013, police officers started showing up at my house because I right then I was helping out transgender teenagers. The police would knock on our door and ring the doorbell. They would try to get into my flat under various pretexts. One time they stood outside the door for three hours. We just pretended nobody was home. Then, when it got quiet, we looked out the window. The police officers looked up too, realized we were looking at them, and came upstairs again. They stood outside our door again for a while.

Then some people assaulted me and my ex-husband. It turned into a brawl, and a police patrol turned up “by chance.” We were all taken to the police station and advised to “keep quiet and stay inconspicuous.” After that, in 2019, we decided to move to Peter. Everything was relatively calm in Petersburg. But then they found us there too. I do not know what kind of databases they have, but they found us, although I didn’t show my face anywhere at all in Petersburg, and I wasn’t involved in any organizations. The only thing I did was go to the Side by Side LGBT film festival.

I was in no hurry to leave Russia because I have an elderly father, who is seventy-one. I didn’t want to leave him. And I never thought that I should leave the country where I was born, grew up, worked, and paid taxes. Plus, I had a flat and a car in Russia. I didn’t want to start all over again in another place. When covid started, my husband’s and my Schengen visas had expired. We only had our U.S. visas left, and they were still valid for about six months. We decided to give it a try, because we were afraid that, later, the authorities wouldn’t let us go anywhere at all, that the country was heading towards the Iron Curtain.

“Since Moving to the U.S., I Haven’t Been Hiding Anything from Anyone at All”

We arrived in New York on a visa, on a direct flight from Moscow. We started looking for human rights organizations who could provide free lawyers. We called various places: our English was nonexistent, so we used online translators and sometime just read the text into an answering machine. Several organizations reached out to us. Eventually, an organization which deals with domestic violence helped us out. We lived in a hotel at first. We were quarantined there for a fortnight, then we rented a place through Airbnb and looked for a permanent place. I started working three weeks later.

I am currently working as a cleaner and as a webcam model. Webcam modeling is not an easy gig. I started doing it back in Petersburg, because I was afraid of getting a on-the-books job. Initially, you think that it’s easy money and that it won’t affect you in any way, but then you realize you’re just a piece of meat. It’s quite tough psychologically. All this overlapped with my old traumas, and eventually led to big psychological problems. Before the New Year, I stopped taking the antidepressants I’d been taking since 2018.

You can make $100, $300, and $500 a day in the webcam industry. Here in the U.S., it’s a legitimate job, you pay taxes, it’s all above board. Since moving to the U.S., I haven’t been hiding anything from anyone at all. It’s my new principle in life.

I am horrified to read the news from Russia about LGBT people being labeled “extremists” and being murdered in prisons, about gay bars and clubs being raided. It’s wacky, it’s incomprehensible. After moving to the U.S., especially after Russia’s war with Ukraine began, I realized how effective propaganda was in Russia. All my friends and acquaintances in Russia suddenly changed their opinions about politics dramatically, even about LGBT people. Even my friends who are LGBT people themselves either try to avoid the topic or say, “Well, that’s right, but what can we do? It’s the way it has to be.” Some of them I’ve stopped talking to, some I haven’t. Maybe they are simply afraid to say too much.

The authorities inserted pedophilia into the law on “LGBT propaganda” and thus made a strong link in people’s heads between LGBT people and pedophiles. This propaganda has been effective even in my own family.

My dad’s new wife has a niece. The niece’s son was three years old at the time. Kids are drawn to me and I always play with them. But at one point I saw how afraid she was to leave her child alone with me. The propaganda has affected even those closest to me.

In the U.S., I saw a completely different world and attitude towards people like me. When I told someone at work for the first time that I was a transgender woman, I got a neutral reaction, as if I was talking about something quite ordinary. The first time I went to the New York Pride March, it was more like a carnival: it was beautiful, friendly, and flamboyant. There were a lot of children there, and there were separate events for them. For the first time in my life I felt I was no different from anyone else, that I had rights, that I could speak openly, that I could receive proper medical care. When I lived in Perm, I was even unable to find an endocrinologist who did hormone replacement therapy. [Living in New York] has changed my sensibility a lot.

Donald Trump’s policies have not affected me specifically yet. But knowing how it all kicked off in Russia, I am scared. In 2013, there was the ban on “gay propaganda,” and consequently, teenagers were left without the support that, for example, they had received from Lena Klimova and her project Children 404. I also helped kids out then, shared my know-how with them, and tried to support them. All transgender people have been dismissed from the [U.S.] army. It’s a nightmare. When the state starts cracking down on a single albeit tiny segment of the populace, and it succeeds, it keeps on going.

“Judging by the First Month of Trump’s Presidency, We Are in for Tough Times”

I believe that common sense should prevail in all things. Previously, the bias had gone in the other direction in the U.S.: people used to be afraid to say something against LGBT, and this was also wrong. Everyone should have freedom of speech. For example, my acquaintances from [the country of] Georgia had this thing happen to them. They were working on a commission for a moving company: a gay couple was moving. One of the workers looked askance, or they said something among themselves. They then got a call from the front office and a dressing-down. They were warned that they would be fired if it happened again. Or there was the case of the flower shop: the owners refused to sell flowers for a same-sex wedding, and the shop had to close because of the scandal that erupted. That’s over the top. I think that if you’re refused service somewhere, you can go to some other place. Let them lose their profits. It’s the same with clubs: if the bouncers don’t let you in, well, those are their views. Everybody has different views. But now it’s going too far in the other direction and it’s scary. I hope that one day we will reach a sensible balance.

Now I live with my fiancé, who is from Ukraine. We discuss politics, and we both want the war to end soon, for people to stop dying. I would like to make a trip to Russia.

I don’t think Russia belongs to Putin and his lackeys. It’s my country, just like it is yours, just like it is everyone else’s. I would like to believe that things will change and we can go back someday.

I am in the U.S. legally, but I am waiting for political asylum. There are numerous such cases, and they take a very long time to process. The approximate wait time for a green card in the past was ten years . I was involved in a class action lawsuit against the U.S. Immigration Service, and I was told that as long as I had a short wait time, the case would not be considered. I appealed that decision and have been scheduled for an interview for late 2026. I would like to go to Turkey, for example, to meet my relatives. I would really like to see my dad. But even if everything goes well at the interview, I will probably not get a green card until 2028.

My father loves me, but over the last three years, since the war started, we have come to disagree about Russian politics, and over time we stopped discussing it. He watches [Russian] television and relays to me what is said there. He constantly accuses me of being under the influence of “American propaganda” and “brainwashed.” But I just reply, “Fine.”

They usually say that the first one hundred days of a presidency set the course for the next four years. Judging by the first month of Trump’s presidency, we are in for tough times, although maybe these measures are like Margaret Thatcher’s — first shock therapy, then stabilization. I hope to get citizenship in the future. I would finally feel safe: there is still a risk of deportation for now. I try not to give up, to hope for the best. Let’s see if positive thinking does the trick.

Source: Maria Litvinova, “‘Trump’s rhetoric has become similar to Putin’s, and it’s scary’: How does a Russian trans woman who emigrated to America under the Democrats feel?” Republic, 27 February 2025. Translated by the Russian Reader