MADRID (AP) – Victòria Martínez continues to sign official documents with the name that she, her partner and two daughters abandoned four years ago. Unless there is any surprise, she hopes that the Spanish government will recognize her as Victòria until May, ending an exhausting and well-known chapter for transgender people around the world.
Changing her legal identity at a civil registry office in Barcelona will allow Martínez to update her passport and driver’s license and carry a health card that correctly states that she is a woman. But the process, which the pandemic has prolonged, has been, in her words, “humiliating” – requiring a psychiatric diagnosis, reports from three doctors and court approval.
“Did I want to be stigmatized for being labeled crazy? I wanted to voluntarily apply for a report from the psychiatrist that says so, so that a judge can decide if I can be what I already am? ”Martínez, 44, remembers asking herself. “The whole thing was emotionally draining.”
A new law proposed by the extreme left party in Spain’s coalition government would make it easier for residents to change genders for official purposes. A bill sponsored by Equality Minister Irene Montero aims to make gender self-determination – without the need for diagnosis, medical treatment or a judge – the norm, with eligibility from the age of 16. Almost 20 countries, eight of them in the European Union, already have similar laws.
Catholic Church and extreme right factions focused their opposition to the bill on the fact that it would also allow children under 16 to circumvent their parents’ objections and seek the help of a judge to get treatment for gender dysphoria, the term medical for the psychological suffering that results from a conflict between an individual’s identity and the sex attributed to birth.
Less expected has been the fierce resistance of some feminists and from within the government led by Spain’s socialists.
“I am fundamentally concerned with the idea that if the gender can be chosen only with will or desire, it could jeopardize the identity criteria of 47 million Spaniards,” said Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo, a veteran socialist and for women’s rights lawyer, said last week.
Opponents argue that allowing people to choose their gender would eventually lead to “wiping out” women from the public sphere: if more registered Spaniards from male at birth switched to female, they say, it would distort national statistics and create more competition between women for everything from jobs to sports trophies.
The split in Spain reflects a debate between a branch of feminist theorists and LGBTQ rights movements around the world. On the one hand, activists often called TERFs (radical transsexual exclusives) postulate that advancing transgender rights could undermine efforts to eradicate sexism and misogyny by denying the existence of biological sexes.
The State Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Transgenders and Bisexuals says that if passed in its current form, the law would help end discrimination against transgender people and jump Spain to the European forefront of protecting LGBTQ rights.
Montero’s project, however, sparked an unusual fury on online platforms, where critics express alarm over the provisions that assign public toilets and prisons according to the “registered gender”. Confluencia Feminista, an alliance of dozens of women’s rights organizations, has also spoken out against any change in existing legislation in Spain.
The concern of Alexandra Paniagua, one of the activists on the new platform, revolves around the idea that, by eliminating the opinions of doctors and judges, hormones subsidized by the State and gender reassignment surgeries would ultimately become more available, “ promoting ”more dysphoria among young people.
“More people will see easier access to invasive treatment, especially girls who have heard that their bodies are less dignified in our society,” she said.
But Trans Platform Federation President Mar Cambrollé argues that some of the fears cited as reasons for maintaining existing obstacles are based on outdated ideas that reduce boys and girls, men and women to a handful of socially prescribed characteristics and roles.
“Transphobic attitudes irritate me,” said Cambrollé. “As a woman, I was discriminated against for being a woman in a world made by men for men, but also by cis (gender) people who built it with other cis people in mind.”
Finding a deal soon seems like an insurmountable task, judging by the virulence of the online debate. Cambrollé sued Lidia Falcón, 85, founder of the Feminist Party of Spain, for repeatedly saying that transgenders and gays promote pedophilia; prosecutors are investigating Falcón’s statements as a possible hate crime.
Ángela Rodríguez, Montero’s advisor on LGBTQ issues, said the timing of the project has increased tension, with International Women’s Day coming up on March 8.
“There is a dispute over the hegemony of the message in the feminist movement,” said Rodríguez during a recent panel discussion.
What for many is a theoretical debate is painfully real for Martínez, who closed most of his social media accounts. She says that constant conversation seems both “personal” and “perverse, generalizing about what a trans person is”.
“Unfortunately, even today, it is easier for people who look at you when you are walking on the street and manage to reconcile a certain type of face with a pair of breasts,” said Martínez, who wears round-rimmed glasses and her hair in a bun to smooth out your sharp facial contours.
To be transgender, first for herself and then for her partner, Martínez developed a type of confidence that was not part of her growth as a boy in Spain in the 1980s. There were suicide attempts before she started living as Victòria and she did not considers herself brave.
“For me,” she said, “there was simply no other choice.”
Even so, Martínez hesitated to take hormones and update his civil registry. She fought hard to be proud of the woman she is, with a deep voice and a way of behaving that stands out. Didn’t she want to break with traditional gender patterns, including expectations that transgender women should embody stereotyped femininity?
In the end, she decided it would be easier to navigate the world with a more socially conformed appearance and an identity card that confirms that she is a woman, even if it meant bowing to existing legal requirements and the notions of people who still think of binary. terms.
“I lived in hiding for 40 years,” she said. “Now I protect myself, but I don’t hide.”
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AP reporters Emilio Morenatti and Renata Brito contributed to the report.