About the circumstancies of life for transidentified people in Austria - written by Karin Fickert

Transidentity is well known, back to the very beyond past. In greek history, Herodot (490BC - 425BC) wrote already about the campaign of the Skyths to Asia and Egypt. On theire way back, some soldiers roped the temple of Aphrodith. The goodness Aphrodite punishd this criminal in her own very special way. All following generations of male as well as the criminal themselfs where changed to highly femal touched males. Transidentity, which is a new and better word for transsexuallity means, that this person has the secure feeling to live in the wrong body This phänomen is more or less present in every kulture and societe on earth. The different is, how cultures and societies handle the living together durig the centuries in past till now. There is quite a full range from very negative to highly positiv. The positivly end means full integration and equality - a very rare incident, even in west european countries . The other end is marked by the not very far behind nazi-regime of Hitler. In this time, a lot of transidentified people were killed in special camps. Before there execution, they had unimagible suffer, because this poor souls where usual raped by the german camp authorities as well as somtimes from other prisoners. The horrible manner was, that man to femal transidents where prisoned in only men´s camps.

Now take a look on the today´s situation of transidentified people in Austria. Here is a little liberal access in legislative, but many things are still unsolved. The circumstancies of this people are different and always connected with private social situation and the attitude of society in toleranz equality- and human rights. Transidentified people are very often discriminated in different - sometimes unbelievel - way´s. There are - of course -some notes in social acts, concerning the change of gender, like the act of psychotheraphie, and the right to change the first name in a proper official way. It is also fixed up, how to change the unliked gender by physical operation into the right position.

There is very often no official help in case of job-hire or unemployment. This people are sometimes named as "unsuitable???" for a job in public. Transidentity have not to be seen in a connex with education, professional experience and qualification. A lot of transidentified people are having a high leveled intelligenc (IQ over 130) Here exists real discrimination. In an unlucky case - under negative circumstances - this going on can destroy the complete social and financal background of this people, sometimes resulting in a final suicid.

One of the most sensitiv period is the "real life test", which is one of the main condition getting a legal change of gender. You have to live alredy before operation in the opposit (right) gender with all correspondent effects in clothing, styling and lifestyle. The difficulties are personal controls by police or for instance getting a official letter (court) at postoffice, where you have to present a identification by photo. It is always a unlikly outing under pressure. With a right act-solution, this would be not neccesary in future.

Many transidentified people live in a very shy way, but there are also some, who starts there "new life" in an open and offensiv way, getting a new carreer in business or politic.

To resume the situation of transidentified people in Austria.

First, there is still a partly discrimination in society as well as in legal affairs. It is the situation in general, how Austrians handle there living together with minorities and how to accept other - sometimes for the majority may be "exotic" - lifestyles. At least it have to be always the decission to respekt each other in a proper and human way.