Compass Gender: Transgender People Face Losing Legal Recognition in Hungary

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s right-wing government is poised to ban legal recognition of transgender individuals’ gender identity. (European People’s Party)

A new bill places transgender people in Hungary at risk of losing legal recognition of their gender identities. If passed, the bill would define gender in terms of biological sex, denying trans individuals the ability to legally reassign their gender and cementing long-standing legal difficulties in making such requests. Introduced on March 31—which happens to be the International Trans Day of Visibility—the bill is poised to pass through Parliament without much issue since Orbán’s right-wing Fidesz party controls an overwhelming majority of parliamentary seats. 

The bill comes in the wake of Orbán’s controversial new rule-by-decree powers amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The step seemed to confirm human rights activists’ fears that the emergency powers will be directed toward accomplishing Orbán’s conservative agenda rather than coronavirus precautions.

Orbán’s deputy prime minister, Zsolt Semjén, a member of the ultraconservative Christian Democratic People’s Party, introduced the legislation as part of a pack of 57 largely-unrelated legislative changes, known as a “salad bill.” Semjén’s bill also contains infrastructure spending, museum facilities construction, and significant curbs on artistic liberty in Hungary. Orbán’s right-wing government has passed other trans-exclusionary legislation in recent years, most notably a 2018 order to ban gender studies courses in Hungarian universities. 

Transgender rights activists foresee far-reaching negative effects as a result of the legislation, namely increasing the risk of discrimination and violence against trans and intersex people in cases where documentation does not match gender presentation. When IDs are a necessary element of conducting basic life responsibilities, like fetching mail or renting a bike, an inability to change gender identity on legal documentation forces transgender and intersex people to “[come] out as trans to complete strangers, all the time,” a Budapest-based trans woman told the Guardian. Such exposure increases the likelihood of harassment and discrimination, especially given Hungary’s widespread hostile attitudes towards transgender people as a group. A global Ipsos survey found that 43 percent of Hungarians believe transgender people have a form of mental illness. 

Backlash to the proposed legislation has spread throughout Europe as well as through global activist channels. Council of Europe Commissioner of Human Rights Dunja Mijatovic called legal gender recognition a “matter of human dignity” and said Hungary’s proposed law was “in contravention with human rights standards.” Over 60 European lawmakers penned a letter to senior Hungarian ministers to urge rejection of the legislation. Advocacy groups such as Human Rights Watch have also vehemently condemned the legislation.