I’m Katria, we’re friends. My name is Mariia, Katria and I are friends — I live in Kyiv on and off.

How we met

We met quite a long time ago, when, it seems to me, we were both more or less still kids. But really, I remember you from back when you were still a child and I was already an adult. We were at a summer camp together: Katria was there as a camper, and I was a counselor.

Who I am

I have a hard time with my orientation and my gender identity, because I don’t really understand the concept. I think I’m a pansexual, genderfluid person, but mostly I identify, basically, as a sapphic creature. But here’s the thing: I don’t understand how I’m supposed to love a gender, or why I’m supposed to love a gender rather than a person.

I’m a woman, and I like men. No, that’s not quite right, probably. I’m attracted to men, but I like both men and women. I’m just probably not there yet.

You’re just a little different

I think I heard about your orientation for the very first time just now. I don’t know, it was never something super important to me. To me, Katria is a person who is unlike most people in my circle in that she’s just a little different. The way she behaves, the way she looks, the way she carries and expresses herself is different from what I’m used to seeing most of the time around me. But, I don’t know. Well, everyone lives however they want, basically. And what someone likes is a personal matter.

The most disgusting and awful thing — that’s when people say that part of the LGBTQI+ community is pedophilia. Like, that they’re pedophiles. How people connected those two, I don’t understand.

It matters a lot to me that you accept me exactly as I am. And that you don’t put any… well, like, you do ask questions, but you don’t define me — because it’s hard for me when I get defined, it’s hard for me to define myself. That’s it. And I just love this warmth that exists.

Why it matters to speak

As with any story about rights that don’t exist, it matters to speak. Because for now, the people who understand a person, their nature, their particularities, are not the ones with influence who make the important decisions. And as long as we have people — and they are the majority — who don’t understand this, and when on top of that there is violence, discrimination and everything else, then, well, sometimes you really do want to shout about it and go out to Pride.

Not to Pride, more to the marches. Because Pride is one thing: at Pride we celebrate our sexuality and our uniqueness. A march is more about us showing that we exist, that there are many of us, and that we want to have these rights. Because we are no different from other people when it comes to having these rights.

We are part of society

Sometimes it’s hard for me that there is an LGBTQI+ community — and then there are, like, the other people. Yeah, over there are the different ones, the ones with particularities. What I’m saying is that somehow it doesn’t get woven into society the way it should be. Well, like, I don’t know — if we dig into history, there was never a time when we didn’t have an LGBTQI+ community. And there are no animals that… Why don’t we speak of an LGBTQI+ community among animals, like, if there are expressions of love between them?