Interview with Lenka Králová for the International Trans Day of Visibility

Trans Visibility in Czechia:

Lenka is a trans woman, an activist, a parent, a podcaster with two shows called V Tranzu and TLK–Talkshow with Lenka Králová, a person with an incredible sense of fashion, an artist, former IT developer and a new member of the Czech Pirate Party.

I used a lot of labels trying to introduce you but I wonder what do labels mean to you? 

Lenka: Well, the label I like the most is that I am a human. Labelling me a trans woman is okay because that is what I do [trans rights activism], but, in my opinion, most trans people do not want to be labelled. They want to be treated like everyone else. I think it is important to understand where the labels have their place and where they do not because if you are out in the society and being trans is the first thing people associate with you; that’s not how it should be. It is not being trans that defines me. I am human, I do lots of things other than being trans and it is not the main part of my identity. Even though it is the partI am the most visible and known for [in the Czech Republic]. 

I know that after you transitioned you changed your surname from your father’s surname to your mother’s maiden name. If you don’t mind me asking, was there a reason behind that?

Lenka: Yes, there was. I simply did not like my father’s surname. It wasn’t very nice and I got bullied for it when I was at school. I like my mother’s maiden name way more and it also happens to be the surname of the mom of my child. It is just a coincidence, although we [Lenka and her ex-wife] checked and we don’t have any common relatives in the genealogy. Talking about the personal stuff, I think we should probably mention that I have known your parents very well for years and I remember you as a baby. 

Ema: Yes, that is true [laugh].

This article will be published on March 31 in celebration of the Trans Day of Visibility. Do you plan to celebrate and if yes what are your plans?

Lenka: Well, I have a transgender day of visibility 365 days a year because I am the most visible trans woman in this country [Czech Republic]  right now. So, for me it is not that special because this is what I do [trans visibility and trans rights] and this is what I concentrate on.

Is it hard to always be perceived through your identity?

Lenka: I got used to it. On one hand, it is not ideal because then you are less of a human to people; and transgender is the first word that comes to their mind. On the other hand, it gives you publicity and access to the media for free. Things that politicians would love to have; you simply get for free [laugh].

Continuing on the theme of visibility; what makes you feel seen or understood?

Lenka: In general I feel seen and understood. It’s not a moment. I often get a question “What is it like to be a trans woman in Czechia these days?”I usually say that is very hard to answer because it depends and varies case by case; it depends on what social bubble you live in; what you look like and so on. I am very lucky that I just get hate and bullying on social media but that’s about it. I don’t meet the people in person and I never actually faced any sort of hate face to face, so I know this only from social media.

Ema: I think that is great. I think some LGBTQ+ people struggle to be understood in some of their personal contexts. So being surrounded by people who see you and understand you not necessarily for being a trans activist but for being a human as you said earlier is very important.

Lenka: I think the most important thing people should do is choose the people around them. I know it is sometimes hard; because when you are fifteen you cannot really choose your parents and you cannot really choose your school, but if you can, you should do it because that is basically all that matters. 

Ema: I think that is a very nice message. I am now going to move to politics as you are a new member of a Czech political party called the Pirate Party and you have dedicated a significant portion of your time to activism around trans rights. 

Politics and Activism:

You have largely become known through your activism surrounding the rights of Czech trans people to legally change their gender without having to go through forced sterilization. As of July 2025, Czech trans people are no longer required to go through forced sterilization or undergo hormonal treatment to legally change their gender. Do you feel like you were part of the success? 

Lenka: Well, yes and no. I put a lot of effort into it. I was a board member of an organization called Trans*parent, which  advocates for trans rights, and me and my colleague, Viktor Heumann [founder of Trans*parent], met a lot of Czech politicians to whom we explained the issue. However, in the end it was the constitutional court that decided to change the rules. 

You receive a lot of hate on social media, death threats and other hateful comments are unfortunately part of almost every one of your posts. On top of that, you are very active in your advocacy for trans rights. Is there something you do to take care of your mental health to be able to sustain your activism? 

Lenka: [laugh] Well, the easiest way is to just close your eyes and imagine what the life of the hater looks like and what my life looks like and usually that is enough. 

Ema: Fair enough. [laugh]

Lenka: I know I shouldn’t say that but it helps.

But do you ever struggle with mental health? Or do you feel like because you have been an activist for over 6 years it does not affect you as much?

Lenka: I do struggle with mental health but in totally different areas. This doesn’t affect my mental health even though it is very visible for people. I am kind of disconnected from that and as I said I never face the hate in real life. But yeah, I have trouble with love and with my relationships. [laugh] So, the thing that actually gives me the most trouble is what I hide from the public.

Ema: Well, I think a lot of queer people can relate to having a messy love life.

Do you find it important to keep some things private in general?

Lenka: Of course! Because I am an influencer, actually I think I am more of an influencer than an activist these days. A lot of people think that I just show my entire life to the public on social media but that is far from the truth. For instance, I have a kid, a son who is thirteen years old and I spend a lot of time with him, but since I became publicly known I decided not to show him on social media. A huge portion of time that I spend with him is not shown to the public, so I just show what I want to show. 

In some of your interviews you said that your kid is your biggest cheerleader. Is that still going on?

Lenka: Well, he became a teenager. We still have a great relationship but he’s less of a cheerleader [laugh] but not much changed, except he has more of his own life right now. 

I saw you recently posted that you joined the Czech Pirate Party, which posits itself as “center-left”. It is one of the few parties in the parliament that is outspoken about queer and trans rights. I wonder what prompted that? 

Lenka: When I became a trans woman and I started doing activism and meeting politicians, I realized that you have two options if you are not happy with what is going on in our country. You can either show your unhappiness on social media or you can go and do something about it. So, I decided to join the Pirate Party. I am new and I have no function yet; I am a political baby right now. There is nothing to talk about yet.

I just felt that it was the right thing to do. I was hesitating for a long time because I was afraid it would not be helpful for my activism, since the most important thing that I was fighting for, which was the abolition of the forced sterilization law, had already happened. I figured I will probably be more useful on the other side. I believe that advocating for equality of trans people in Czechia and actually achieving it, will be easier to do through being able to pass laws as well as being part of the drafting process. 

Do you feel like so far it clashed with your activism?

Lenka: Not yet. but that is also because I do not do that much activism right now. Because as I said, the law that allowed trans people to change their gender in their ID without forced sterilization or hormonal therapy was passed and there is not much more to do. So, as I said right now I am more of an influencer and podcaster.

In your Instagram post you also said that you joined the party because you want to become a representative in the Senate in the 2028 elections. Do you think it is feasible for a trans woman to become a politician in the current Czech far-right political climate?

Lenka: I think it is feasible, otherwise I would not go for it. Right now it is more about feelings. However, a good indicator is the listeners of my podcasts, who are from different age groups. Surprisingly, I even have some conservatives listening. I believe it is because I do not usually use very radical language. Sometimes I do but still I think there is potential. And of course the visibility helps a lot. One of the reasons I also  chose the Senate is because it is more about personalities and less about parties. In short, I think it is feasible!

There recently was a controversy where the Pirate party paid a very well-known Czech influencer Sugar Denny to promote the party before the parliamentary elections because her demographic matches the demographic of the Pirate Party. As a new member of the Pirate Party and as an influencer yourself, what do you think of politicians using influencers to promote their parties? 

Lenka: I mean it is logical because that is just how it works. Social media has changed the political landscape and for certain the demographic groups involved. Traditional media simply does not work. It is logical but of course it is risky because well yeah… The influencers can do stuff that you later on disagree with.*

*Sugar Denny released a video where she talked about Zionism and the Pirate Party has since publicly distanced itself from her.

Are you a fan of Sugar Denny? 

Lenka: I never actually watched her content but I, as Lenka, had a relationship of three years with a woman twenty years younger than me, so I was living and sharing a household with a Gen Z woman and we had Sugar Denny’s podcasts instead of a fireplace. [laughs] So I passively heard a lot of her content. I do not think I am her target group but as I met her a couple of times and she is a very nice person and I like her a lot. 

“V Tranzu” and importance of highlighting trans and other marginalized peoples stories:

You started your podcast V Tranzu about six or seven months after you transitioned. What motivated you to do that? Was it the media monopolizing the portrayals of trans people and was that part of your efforts to humanize them?

Lenka: There was nothing deep in the original intention. It was the COVID times and I just had a group of friends, people around the Trans*parent organization that I talked about already. There was a guy also from Gen Z [laugh] and he had an idea that we could do a podcast just for fun. Back then I was also working at a company that had their own podcast studio; we started there without thinking too deeply about the intention or having any particular plans.

Later on, the guy withdrew from the project and he asked me to delete the videos he was in. So, that was like the first half a year of V Tranzu is forever gone. Then,I started doing it on my own and that was when I had the idea that I could do interviews with other trans people,ecause when we started doing the podcast, we thought that there are maybe three or four trans people in the whole country that are willing to show their faces on camera.

The original plan for the podcast was that we will be doing interviews with experts, lawyers, doctors, but not with trans people. Then I made an interview with an actress who was in the Show Jana Krause* so I thought, okay, if you show your face in Show Jana Krause you do not have trouble speaking in front of the camera. Then I realized that there are actually many trans people who do not mind showing their face on camera if it is with a good intention.

*Show Jana Krause  is a late night show that is equivalent to the Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon. 

The most important thing is that I always start by talking about their life in the first half of the interview, so it is not about their bodies. This is what the Czech media were presenting for decades whenever there was an article about trans people in the media, it was always about surgeries, hormones and stuff like that. Being trans was everything that defined you back then. 

In my podcasts I just talk about their lives; about what they do for a living, what their hobbies are and so on. Only then, in the second part of the interview, we start talking about their journey and about the transition as such. Before I came out there were maybe two or three visible trans people in the country and I just brought one hundred more in front of the camera. It just shows the diversity and how unique each story is. 

Is there a story of one of your guests that really stayed with you?

Lenka: There were some very special interviews. The most special and personal one was definitely the interview with my ex-wife, from whom I separated following my coming out. My wife did not take my coming out very well and while we had to collaborate as co-parents, we weren’t otherwise on very good terms. Though somehow time healed it and now we are friends. We were together for fifteen years and she is the mom of my kid. I once asked her if she would like to do an interview about what she went through because it [transition] is also difficult for the partners and she said yes. For me, this is the most special interview of them all because it is the most personal one and the one I was the most scared of. 

There is one more that stands out. I actually did a few interviews in English and one of them was with a girl from a post-Soviet country, which she was scared to name. If she wouldn’t have left, she would have gone  to jail for three years for being trans. She was intensely bullied at school and she told me a story of how she once looked out of a window at her school and there was a group of around thirty guys waiting and shouting at her to come out. They were ready to beat her up. She mobilized her friends and they made a circle around her to protect her and brought her to a taxi and she never went to the school again. 

She ended up in a refugee camp at Zastávka u Brna [a village in the Czech Republic] where she received a temporary passport. She started crying immediately after receiving it because she was finally free and she was praising Czechia as being a heaven on Earth. I know things are not ideal here, especially compared to some Western countries or Scandinavian countries but for some people it is really a heaven on Earth. It was a very emotional story and I understood how lucky I am to live in a democracy and how crucial it is to protect it.

Ema: Thank you for sharing the stories and thank you for amplifying trans stories in general!

In your video ‘Why am I trans?’ you said something: that you don’t know why you are trans but that you just are and it is society that is problematic, which really touched me as a queer person.  So, I wonder if there is something you would like to say to the cis people?

Lenka: Well, I say it all the time. Trans people are just people like everyone else. We have an extra struggle that we have to face but that is about it. I really like to compare it to left-handedness because there was a lot of stigma around it in the past and it was also pathologized. However, when you realize that all you need to do is to learn how to write differently and use different tools from time to time, it is all you need to be part of society. The problem is that our gender, our bodies and our genitals are being sexualized. If your left-hand would be the most sexual part of your body then left-handed people would probably have the same struggle as trans people have right now.

What I am trying to do right now is to de-sexualize the topic. Czechia is now the last country in Europe where if you want to undergo transition, you have to find a sexologist. What I like to say is that a week has roughly about ten thousand minutes and you can just think about how many of them you actually use for sexual activity and how important it is in your life.  Being trans is about life. It is about living in your gender 24/7 and sex is just a tiny part of that, just like for everyone else. Though for decades it was presented as something sexual, presenting us as some sort of sexual deviants, and that therefore we need to have our genitals surgically changed. I just want to show cis people that transitioning is about social life; I did this to live as a woman 24/7. 

In the same video you said that a lot of cis people feel like being trans is something hard, that trans people take a long time to come to terms with. I want to sort of flip the question and instead of asking about the hardships of transition, I wonder what brings you joy in your everyday life? 

Lenka: Other than smoking weed? 

Ema: Doesn’t that bring joy to everyone though?

Lenka: [laugh] I like meeting friends and people who I have fun with and I have a kid who brings me a lot of joy. I like walking in nature, going to the theater, and watching movies. Simple stuff really, nothing deep. 

Ema: Thank you for this interview!

Photo Source: Lenka Králová