How Do You “Change Sex” to Avoid Military Service?
📰 Recently, many news headlines and bloggers began writing about a “man” (spoiler: she is a woman) who supposedly “changed sex”, thereby avoided mobilisation for military service and won a court case against a territorial recruitment centre.
🧬 Do trans people really change sex to avoid serving in the military? What is wrong with the way news involving trans people is covered?
We unpack an old myth and explain the consequences of the prejudice and stigma it creates below 👉
Contents
What happened?
A territorial recruitment centre in Kharkiv refused to remove a local woman from the military register, even though she had already obtained identity documents with an “F” in the sex field.
She eventually managed to have herself removed from the military register after filing an administrative lawsuit. This is a very valuable precedent for the trans community: the court sided with the woman and ruled:
The administrative claim shall be granted.
The decision […] refusing to exclude […] from the register of persons liable for military service, issued in letter No. 10/780 of 4 October 2025, shall be declared unlawful and annulled.
[…] shall be required to exclude […] from the register of persons liable for military service and enter the corresponding information in “Oberih”, the Unified State Register of Conscripts, Persons Liable for Military Service and Reservists.
The court also ordered reimbursement of the court fee of UAH 1,211.20. Anonymised details identifying the parties have been shortened in this excerpt; the judgment is available at the link shown on the slide.
Yet many media outlets and bloggers somehow cover the story differently…
The so-called “draft dodging” myth
The portrayal of trans women — often a caricature — as “men who simply want to avoid conscription” has long existed in post-Soviet public opinion.
Since russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, however, transphobic rhetoric along these lines has gained new momentum.
On the one hand, many men — ordinary cisgender heterosexual men — began trying their luck at border crossings and district recruitment centres, dressing in women’s clothes and presenting themselves as women. This has fuelled state institutions’ distrust of trans people.
On the other hand, gender inequality has become a catalyst for transphobia. Misrepresentation has made transition look like an easy, foolproof way to avoid conscription, either by obtaining an ICD-10 diagnosis or by changing one’s gender marker.
A meme in the post illustrates the contradiction:
“Transgender people are sick.”
“OK. Then we’ll have ourselves removed from the military register on the basis of that diagnosis.”
“No, you can’t! You’re draft dodgers! You can’t change sex!”
So can you just “change sex” and stop worrying about conscription?
Ukraine currently uses ICD-10. Under it, everyone planning to transition, change their sex characteristics and change the letter in the sex field of their documents must receive the psychiatric diagnosis F64.0, “Transsexualism”.
This diagnosis is also among those that provide grounds for being declared unfit for military service. The post links to the relevant regulatory document.
Under the new ICD-11, however, the diagnosis “Transsexualism” will no longer exist. We discussed this in more detail in an earlier post.
Under Ukrainian law, documents can be changed only on the basis of another document: a certificate of change (correction) of sex.
This document can be obtained only if a trans person is already taking hormone therapy and their appearance corresponds to the desired sex. The Kharkiv District Administrative Court reached a similar conclusion:
“…this case involved neither a change of first name, surname or patronymic, nor amendments to a civil status record, but rather a change in the person’s sex in a biological sense, recognised by the competent authorities of the State of Ukraine, on whose behalf a Ukrainian citizen’s passport was issued, attesting that the person is female.”
These are therefore two different questions:
“So I can just pretend to be a woman at a district recruitment centre and have myself removed from the military register?”
And:
“So I can start hormone therapy, fundamentally change my body’s endocrine system for the rest of my life, live socially in another gender, lose my family’s support… and have myself removed from the military register?”
And if the prospect of hormone therapy sounds quite acceptable — or even appealing — to you, perhaps it is worth thinking about your identity?
Selective logic
When the status of trans people in relation to conscription is discussed, it is often trans women changing their documents from male to female who come under attack.
But it is worth remembering that, around the world, the approximate number of people making a transfeminine transition (“from man to woman”) is similar to the number making a transmasculine transition (“from woman to man”). This is supported by the studies linked on the slide.
The ratios presented in the original post are:
Scroll horizontally to view the table.
| Country | Trans men / transmasculine people | Trans women / transfeminine people |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 1.3 | 1 |
| Japan | 1.5 | 1 |
| Germany | 1 | 1.2 |
| Serbia | 1 | 1 |
Harm to society
Prejudice against trans people can affect both public opinion and the future treatment of trans rights in Ukraine. Politicians may wrongly believe that banning transition or “trans propaganda” would reduce the number of people avoiding military service, or at least please voters who would see such decisions as effective and useful.
In reality, this only creates further social stigma and ignores trans service members’ contribution to defending Ukraine.
The narrative of “men avoiding service by changing the sex in their passports” was widespread in another state: russia. Rhetoric about “undermining defence capabilities” accompanied the adoption of a law completely banning transition.
moscow also applies this discriminatory law in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine.
Sources
- Emancipation NGO’s original Instagram carousel.
- Kharkiv District Administrative Court judgment
- Regulatory document on military medical assessment
- Certificate of change (correction) of sex
- U.S. Transgender Survey report — link from the slide
- Study — ScienceDirect, S0165178107002612
- Study — DOI 10.1034/j.1600-0447.2000.102006445.x
- Study — ScienceDirect, S1743609515324759
- Kyiv Post — link from the slide
- BBC — link from the slide