Ada Blakewell News Today

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In the vast expanse of Russia, a country where the rigid chill of societal norms and legal strictures often bites more painful than the harshest winter frost, unfolds the poignant story of Ada Blakewell, a 23-year-old trans woman. The act of revealing her gender identity to her family, which should have been a moment of liberation and acceptance, morphed into the onset of a nightmarish chapter of her life.

“They forced me to castrate a pig because I wanted gender-affirming surgery.” Ada Blakewell, 23, a non-binary transgender woman, was undergoing hormone therapy when in August 2022 her parents took her to a private center in the Altai region to undergo “masculinization” — an attempt to change her to her birth sex.  “My parents, with the help of third parties, sent me to an official center where they tried to take me through what they would call ‘conversion therapy’,” Blakewell ...

Hearing takes place behind closed doors, without any defence present; people identifying as such and living in Russia could face years in jail.

Russia on Thursday banned the "international LGBT movement," claiming it was an extremist group in a move that cements a long crackdown on the community as the Kremlin pushes ultra-conservative social values.

Russia's LGBTIQ+ community fears arrests and prosecutions will come from the Supreme Court's decision to designate them as extremists.

The move is part of a pattern of increasing restrictions in Russia on expressions of sexual orientation and gender identity, including laws outlawing the promotion of "non-traditional" sexual relations and banning legal or medical changes of gender.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia's Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that LGBT activists should be designated as "extremists", in a move that representatives of gay and transgender people fear will lead to arrests and prosecutions.

President Vladimir Putin has long sought to promote an image of Russia as a guardian of traditional moral values in contrast with a decadent West