Paper long abstract:

Being a transgender in Soviet Kazakhstan and in present independent Kazakhstan seem equal in the level of pathologization of the condition, requiring to undergo humiliating medical and legal procedures for official recognition (Feminita, 2016; Alma-TQ, 2016). According to activists, for transgender people in Kazakhstan the legal gender recognition procedure requires humiliating, invasive, and abusive procedures in order to change gender on official documents, which includes extensive physical and psychiatric medical examinations, hormone therapy, sterilization, and gender reassignment genital surgery (Alma-TQ 2016). However, this was not always the case, and the attitude to gender 'deviance' in Kazakhstan has changed over time.

This is an overview article about transsexuality in Kazakhstan considered nowadays as gender 'deviance', the history of which may be traced back from shamanistic tradition through Tsarist Russia to Soviet Union - resulting in the current situation. Kazakhstan had transgender practices long before the globalised spread of knowledge or influence of feminism, as crossdressing and transgender motives are fixed in Kazakh folklore such as "Dudar Kyz", "Ezhigeldy" (Radlov, 1870), although they are never publicly discussed. At the same time the religious authorities in Central Asia seem to have had a more relaxed attitude to transgressive practices, maintaining a delicate position regarding the tradition of bachi - beautiful dancing boys. This compares negatively with contemporary attitude of Muslim authorities to gender 'deviance' (homosexuality, bisexuality, transsexualism), who proclaim homosexuality as the sin of the people of Lot (referring to Sodom and Gomorrah) and as such consider it one of the gravest sins.

Why have Muslim authorities in Kazakhstan expressed so different attitude to transgender issues and homosexuality in the past and in the present? It is possible to assume that it is because transgender and homosexuality are seen by them as only Western values and identities, called by researchers, specifically by Roscoe, as 'homosexualization' (1997) - framework about sexual orientation and gender identity described through medicalized and legal empirical nexus. Murray and Roscoe (1997b: 5) made a critical review of Western model of homosexual identity that was disseminated for decades as unique and having no references to the history of ancient, medieval Muslim societies where gender variance and homosexual conduct existed in different places from Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, Arab medieval Spain, Balkans in 13th till 19th centuries. In essence the negativity seen today towards homosexuality and transsexuality are an aspect of opposition to Western imperialist domination of values and knowledge production.