In the vacuum of government support, Bart Nikolo, a trans man in Georgia, has tried to support queer people. (Georg Nebieridze)
Chloe Lula, a Berlin based writer and audio producer, writes for PinkNews and openDemocracy about the unique challenges trans-folk faces ultra-conservative Georgia.
Bart Nikolo, a transgender man who lives in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, spends his winter nights collecting kindling for the sex workers waiting for customers near Heldenplatz.
He’s been doing that for years. After driving around for hours to pick up fallen branches, he piles them up in neat piles, creating small fires that give off a weak heat.
When police officers try to punish him for “littering”, he explains what he says should be clear: He is only trying to help prevent these women, many of whom are also transgender, from dying of the cold.
In the absence of government support for queer people, Nikolo believes that the burden of care rests on the LGBT + community.
During the pandemic in particular, government aid failed to reach the most vulnerable citizens, including those facing socio-economic problems and gender and identity discrimination.
Success, the only openly queer bar in Tbilisi. (Georg Nebieridze)
Many transsexuals who cannot be classified as cis are forced into dangerous, unstable and often illegal work, such as prostitution. This makes it difficult for them to access health care, housing, mental health services and unemployment benefits.
I met Nikolo in October 2020 on the upper floor of Success in downtown Tbilisi, the city’s only queer bar.
“I started fighting for my own rights,” he told me. Horrified by the bigotry he faced when he first appeared as a transsexual in 2006, he founded Equality Movement in 2011, a queer advocacy NGO.
“Word of my wish to help [other LGBT+ people] spread quickly. I discovered that there were hundreds of people who needed it – more than you think, ”he said.
Since then, Nikolo has helped many LGBT + people overcome the challenges of a system that for decades has vehemently suppressed the voices of sexual minorities.
Church and State
Georgia’s hostility towards LGBT + rights, Nikolo told me, stems from the contradictions between the two pillars of Georgia’s national identity, the church and the state.
When the United National Movement (UNM) came to power after the “Rose Revolution” in 2003, it promised to restore the stagnating Soviet political economy and culture by introducing far-reaching neoliberal reforms, government-led modernization projects and closer ties with NATO and the EU.
But the UNM’s desire for a shift towards a western-oriented national identity was at odds with orthodox traditionalism.
An overwhelming 87 percent of the population identify as Georgian Orthodox, and the church, which considers homosexuality immoral, inappropriate, and an affront to God’s plan for humanity, is far more trusted than the government.
The UNM’s rise to power led to a period of polarization – along with an increase in poverty and inequality, which puts the country’s most socio-economically marginalized people, including queer people, at greater risk of exploitation and discrimination .
While homophobic stigma prevented above-ground queer organizing, wider internet access has made it possible to establish inclusive values in underground communities.
The internet is an important meeting point for the queer people in Tbilisi as there are no physical safe spaces
“It was only with the advent of the Internet that new categories of identity became available,” wrote Georgian feminist Anna Rekhviashvili.
This new form of connection helped mobilize clandestine gay networks, she explains, that eventually emerged in a small number of visible havens – like Success – in the 2010s.
The internet continues to be an important meeting place for the queer people in Tbilisi as there are no physical safe spaces and LGBT-affirming resources.
Homophobia vs. solidarity
In May 2013, a small rally in central Tbilisi to mark International Day against Homophobia was attacked by thousands of angry demonstrators. Many of them, including Georgian Orthodox priests, violently attacked the gay rights protesters.
Russian millionaire and ultra-nationalist Levan Vasadze was a prominent participant in the 2013 ambush. Last month, he announced his plans to enter politics with a new movement called Unity, Essence, Hope – ERI, which means nation, in Georgian.
Vasadze recently spoke of destabilization if the Tbilisi Pride takes place in early July. “We are giving the government time,” he said, “to cancel the events, otherwise people will react to the government’s decision” and “will not allow the ‘anti-Christian and anti-Georgian’ activities.”
Vasadze “is doing nothing to discourage extremist and nationalist bigoted views, and that is worrying,” said Ian Kelly, the US ambassador to Georgia in 2015-18.
“His power comes from uniting the opposition and creating a situation that is very much shaped by ‘us-versus-them’.”
Such developments are alarming, but they underscore the importance of solidarity – and improved connections – within the queer community. Giorgi Kikonishvili, a gay rights activist in Tbilisi, was among those attacked in 2013 and recalls a turning point for the Georgian LGBT + movement.
“But,” he said, “we have to start working together very hard.”
Giorgi Kikonishvili, an LGBT + rights activist, has set up social media groups to support Georgians. (Georg Nebieridze)
In 2018, Kikonishvili and Nikolo started a private Facebook group called LGBT News. It now has almost 4,000 members from Georgia, Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia and gives advice on how to safely be “queer” in public.
Social media are becoming more and more important. “I have about 5,000 friends on Facebook,” said Nikolaus.
“This is how I find ways to help people. I can be reached around the clock for anyone who needs me. Social workers are not always there – but I am. “
For example, he remembers a trans sex worker jumping out the window of an apartment building in the middle of the night to escape a threatening customer (she survived).
“I spent the night chatting with her friends and finding out what happened, what was going on. It becomes a kind of therapy, ”he said.
Nikolo and Kikonishvili used their Facebook platform to set up the Transgender Solidarity Group to raise funds for trans sex workers who became unemployed during the pandemic and are excluded from emergency government aid.
Part of this money was spent on food that was delivered to the sex workers by Natia Gvianishvili, a local lesbian feminist, and Nikolo.
“I fought very hard with the state to get a sticker on my car that would allow me to do so during the [pandemic] Curfew, ”he said.
Tbilisi, a city of cobblestone streets, rises from the steep banks of Mtkvari. (Georg Nebieridze)
At one point, Nikolo worked three days without sleep as his initial list of 40 needy people quickly grew to over 100.
The alternative public created around Nikolos online group helps its members through small, human gestures.
But it also works in a broader way – generating ideas for petitions, reaching out to other NGOs, and even generating lawsuits that could have the potential to change the law.
Nikolo is campaigning for laws that would allow trans people in Eurasia to legally change their gender without having to undergo overly expensive sex reassignment surgery. In 2019 he submitted a (still ongoing) case to the European Court of Human Rights.
Nikolo and Kikonishvili describe this struggle for recognition as a legacy of the 2013 attack on the queer rights rally.
In a video from that day they showed openDemocracy, a car carries activists inch by inch through angry crowds under the escort of a lone police officer who pushes the protesters away with his hands. Kikonishvili pointed at himself in the video and crouched in front of the stones, sticks, and metal bars that almost smashed the windows of the car.
But even more than the violence, he remembers the barricades the police erected to hold back the crowd of anti-LGBT protesters.
For Kikonishvili, this dividing line symbolized how a small part of Georgian society, for its part, tacitly demands acceptance. The rest on the other side want to wipe them out.
This article was first published by openDemocracy.
