On February 2, the U. S. State Departmentwarned Americans in Ukraine to “leave now” and also issued a warning against going there, due to the “increased threats of action from the Russian military and COVID-19. “The Russians invaded 3 weeks later and on March 2, journalist Sarah Ashton-Cirillo of Las Vegas headed in that direction.
She is on the ground, covering the war for 119 days, and is believed to be the transgender war correspondent in Ukraine.
“I wasn’t necessarily coming here to cover the war,” Ashton-Cirillo told me by phone from an apartment he rents. “I had never fought before. I had never been exposed to live fire. even my e-book on refugees that I wasn’t satisfied with. That’s what it was all about, to allow me to write the e-book about refugees that wasn’t well written in 2015. »
She wrote this eBook about the Syrian refugee crisis before coming out as transgender and knew that traveling this time, as a trans woman, in a war zone, would be a very different experience.
“At first, I didn’t plan to move to Ukraine,” Ashton-Cirillo said. Idea that I would be in Poland for 10 days to cover the refugee crisis. “
“And when I was given there and I thought, I will move on to Ukraine,” he said. “But I’ve had primary, primary problems. “
These issues were something many other trans American people can relate to, especially those living on the margins: their identity is incompatible with the way they lived and what they looked like now.
“My gender is feminine. My call replacement is legal in Nevada and on my driver’s license. The driver’s license is good. The passport looks different,” he told me. “I never bothered to update my passport. So my passport still has a face that looks nothing like mine.
One of the gender-affirming healthcare functions for transgender women is FFS: Facial Feminization Surgery. The procedure cosmetically provides a more feminine appearance to those whose male puberty has explained their characteristics as male. Ashton-Cirillo had an FFS, but the photo on his passport showed what it was like before this operation.
“I don’t care that other people know I’m trans. My challenge is for the passport to show something different. There is no other way to know. I underwent a large facial feminization surgery. I don’t see myself at all like this person. I had a blue concern. “of what would happen if I tried to pass into the terrifying Ukraine as an original self,” he said.
Once in Poland, Ashton-Cirillo met with other journalists covering the refugee crisis and presented them with an opportunity.
“I’m here with some other news hounds and they say, ‘Come on, if you don’t come now, are you going to pass by alone?’And I just met those people. I was in Poland, maybe 12 hours. “He recalls. ” There was an exercise going out with members of the Ukrainian army, returning supplies, and those other 3 news hounds were leaving.
The moment of the event for Ashton-Cirillo occurred on this train, after crossing the border between Poland and Ukraine. The value of her admission: she in a position to be humiliated.
“Security came on board for border control, and you may see without delay the state of exacerbation, you know, we’re at war. They look at my passport. They look at me and look at some of my writings. And they look at some of my media, because you know, I’ve been in the media a lot for other things. They make me take my postiche off. They are education for all. And then they look at me more. And then they welcome me. to Ukraine, and I said, “Damn shit. ” The humiliation was worth a lot. Because they may just not let me in.
And once inside, Ashton-Cirillo didn’t hesitate to show her fans and readers on social media, both on her and on the news site, LGBTQNation, what she saw firsthand.
“My God, I with strange men, cross a country at war, whose language I do not speak, I do not know anyone except this doctor. And we stopped in the war zone and stopped 20 kilometers from the village of Kharkiv,” Ashton-Cirillo said. “We’re in this white Jeep Cherokee, sleeping in an alley, when there are those rockets, the mortar chimney and the artillery chimney overhead. And I say, “If that’s how I faint, I would have made Hemingway, Gil Horn, and Orwell proud. “The next morning, I woke up and knew I wasn’t dead after sleeping in a car in the alley. front line of the war.
Ashton-Cirillo wrote about it in her first article for the LGBTQ website, on March 17, and included a tweet in which she said, “I’m here for the long haul.
To do this, he needed everything he could get in Ukraine: references in the media.
“I told him that the only way to cover the war is to ask the Ukrainian army for credentials. And I told him it took weeks or months to get them, in the early days of the war. Eight days after the war began. So, I combined a very long history about myself for the Ukrainian army to review, and I added the fact, obviously, of being trans, my old name, as it’s called, my dead name, my current name, my existing legal name. name, all my legal documents,” Ashton-Cirillo said.
To his surprise, he won a phone call two days later.
“Someone from the government sought to meet with me, just to get a sense of what I’m doing. We sit down, a 10-minute verbal exchange in a coffee shop, and it turns into an hour. It’s a Tuesday. On Friday, I had my diploma, they gave them to me in 4 and a half days, in my name, politica. tips, which is my website.
Something else is in his credentials, which for Ashton-Cirillo is a smart thing, but for most trans people, it would be considered an insult: his birth name, or as many call it, his “dead name. “he, why is this a smart thing?
“Very small print,” he explained. So if I get arrested, I can provide my driver’s license or passport. The government did that for me. It’s not to humiliate me, it’s a neat and written track, a wonderful thing. It says “Sarah Ashton Cyril”, with my foto. conseils. politiques. Es one of the most rewarding things. Suddenly, the whole country, adding the war, opens up to me.
As war continues in sight, when will it return?Ashton-Cirillo said she wasn’t sure. But when he does, he knows there are more stories to tell.
“I met with senior officials, I met with high-ranking politicians, I noticed things that I probably couldn’t write about 80% of what I saw, until I left Ukraine. With that said, he also needed to cover this ordinary life, he needed to cover the other people living on the subway. I needed to cover the other people who are queuing, who have lost their homes, who have been victims of war crimes. I spend most of my days photographing evidence of war crimes right now and reviewing Russian disinformation, about the war, trying to figure out what’s really happening and what’s not.
One of Ashton-Cirillo’s tweets this month shows how to fire an M-16 rifle.
This would possibly be a mandatory skill for this journalist, as this morning she tweeted that the war was in full swing.
Follow Sarah Ashton-Cirillo on Twitter by clicking here.