MADRID (AP) – Victoria Martinez continues to sign official documents with the name she left behind, her partner and her two daughters four years ago. Unsurprisingly, she hopes the Spanish government will recognize her as Victoria in May, closing a chapter on family patience for transgender people around the world.
Changing her legal identity to a Barcelona civil registry office will allow Martínez to update her passport and driver’s license and carry a health card that correctly indicates that she is a woman. But the process, which the pandemic prolonged, has been, in his words, “humiliating,” requiring a psychiatric diagnosis, according to reports from three doctors and the approval of a court.
“Did he want to be stigmatized for being labeled crazy? I wanted to voluntarily request a reduction report that said so, for a judge to decide if I can be what I already am? “Martinez, 44, remembers wondering.” Everything has been emotionally exhausting. “
A new law proposed by the far-left party in the Spanish coalition government would make it easier for residents to change gender for official purposes. A bill sponsored by the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, aims to make gender self-determination (without diagnosis, medical treatment or judge) the norm, with eligibility from 16 years. Nearly 20 countries, eight of them in the European Union, already have similar laws.
Factions of the Catholic Church and the far right have focused their opposition to the bill on the fact that it would also allow children under 16 to avoid parental objections and seek help from a judge to access the treatment of dysphoria. gender, the medical term for anxiety that results from a conflict between a person’s identity and the sex assigned to birth.
Less expected has been the fierce resistance of some feminists and the Spanish government led by the Socialists.
“I am fundamentally concerned about the idea that if gender can be chosen without the will or desire of oneself, this could jeopardize the identity criteria for 47 million Spaniards,” said the deputy prime minister. Minister Carmen Calvo, a veteran socialist and women’s rights advocate, said last week.
Opponents argue that allowing people to choose their gender would eventually lead to “erasing” women from the public sphere: if more male-registered Spaniards at birth became women, they say, they would skew national statistics and create more competition among women. women for all jobs in sports trophies.
The division in Spain reflects a debate between a branch of feminist theorists and LGBTQ rights movements around the world. At one point, activists often disparagingly referred to as TERF (trans-exclusive radical feminists) argue that advancing transgender rights could undermine efforts to root out sexism and misogyny by denying the existence of biological sexes.
The State Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Transsexuals and Bisexuals says that if approved in its current form, the law would help end discrimination against transgender people and make Spain jump to the European vanguard of rights protection LGBTQ.
However, Montero’s bill has sparked unusual furies on online platforms, where critics express alarm over provisions that would assign public toilets and prisons according to the “registered gender”. Confluencia Feminista, an alliance of dozens of women’s rights organizations, has also been opposed to any change in current Spanish legislation.
The concern of Alexandra Paniagua, one of the activists of the new platform, pivots around the idea that by eliminating the opinions of doctors and judges, state-subsidized hormones and gender reassignment surgery would be more available and , finally, they will “promote” more dysphoria among young people.
“More people will see easier access to invasive treatment, especially girls who have said their bodies are less dignified in our society,” she said.
But the president of the Trans Platform Federation, Mar Cambrollé, argues that some of the fears mentioned as reasons to maintain existing barriers are based on outdated ideas that reduce boys and girls, men and women to a handful. of socially prescribed functions and roles.
“Transphobic attitudes bother me,” Cambrollé said. “As a woman, I have been discriminated against for being a woman in a world created by men for men, but also by cis people (gender) who construct it with other cis people in mind.”
Finding a compromise at any time soon seems like an insurmountable task judging by the virulence of the online debate. Cambrollé has denounced Lidia Falcón, 85, founder of the Spanish Feminist Party, for repeatedly saying that gays and transsexuals promote pedophilia; prosecutors are investigating Falcon’s statements as a possible hate crime.
Ángela Rodríguez, Montero’s adviser on LGBTQ issues, said the bill’s schedule has been added to the tension, with the celebration of International Women’s Day on March 8th.
“There is a dispute over the hegemony of the message in the feminist movement,” Rodriguez said during a recent roundtable.
What for many is a theoretical debate is painfully real for Martinez, who has closed most of his accounts on social media. She says the constant talks feel too “personal” and “perverse, generalizing about what a trans person is.”
“Unfortunately, to this day it’s even easier for people who stare at you when you walk down the street and can reconcile a certain type of face with a pair of breasts,” said Martinez, who wears round-cut glasses and her. hair in a coil to smooth out your sharp facial contours.
To go transgender, first for herself and then for her partner, she required Martinez to create a kind of trust that was not part of growing up as a boy in Spain in the 1980s. There were suicide attempts before she started living as Victoria, and she is not considered brave.
“For me,” he said, “there was no other option.”
However, Martinez hesitated to take hormones and update his civil registry. She struggled a lot to be proud of the woman she is, with a deep voice and a way of behaving that stands out. Didn’t you want to break with traditional gender molds, including the expectations that transgender women should embody stereotypical femininity?
In the end, she decided that it would be easier to navigate the world with a more social appearance and an identity document confirming that she is a woman, even if she wanted to lean towards existing legal requirements and the notions of people who still think and binary. terms.
“I lived in hiding for 40 years,” he said. “Now I protect myself, but I don’t hide.”
___
AP reporters Emilio Morenatti and Renata Brito contributed to this report.