After years of discussions and controversies, the Spanish Congress approved this Thursday with a large majority –191 votes in favor, 60 against and 91 abstentions– the first ‘trans law’ of its democracy. This new norm came forward after overcome deep internal discrepancies in the left-wing coalition government and in the face of rejection by the right-wing oppositionalthough with reservations from a part of the feminist movement in relation to the so-called gender self-determination.
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The law for real and effective equality of trans people and for the guarantee of the rights of LGBTI people, known as ‘trans law’, recognizes, for example, the will of any person from the age of 16 as the only requirement to change the ‘sex’ component in their civil registry , by eliminating mandatory hormonal and psychological and medical evaluations as requirements.
Minors between the ages of 14 and 16 may change their sex in the registry as long as they come with their parents or legal guardians, while those between 12 and 14 years of age will need judicial authorization.
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The law also regulates cases of genital modification in minors to authorize it only when medical indications so require and if considered mature enough to make that decision.
For Uge Sangil, president of the LGTBI+ State Federation, which brings together more than 50 entities, this law is historic because it focuses on the depathologization of trans people, as well as on the recognition of gender self-determination.
“It benefits us in rights and freedoms and tells society that we are not sick people,” says Sangil in an interview with this newspaper. The activist herself acknowledges, however: “The challenges that come are many because we must fight hate speech and work on protocols and the implementation of the law, which we know will not be easy.”
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It benefits us in rights and freedoms and tells society that we are not sick people
José María Núñez, president of the Triángulo Foundation, which works for the social equality of LGTBI people in Spain, agrees with this. “We are going to be vigilant regarding how the law is applied and from the organizations we will lend a hand to trans people to prevent implementation from being interrupted,” he adds.
The new legislation also deploys a comprehensive framework of measures that benefit not only trans people, but the entire LGBTI population. Among them, the end of forced marriage for couples of women who want to filiate their sons and daughters, the prohibition of conversion therapies, protocols for trans and intersex people in the field of health or the obligation to promote equality plans LGBTI in companies with more than 50 workers.
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However, Núñez points out that the law left out the comprehensive recognition of migrant trans people and the inclusion of non-binary people, those who do not identify as men or women.
The Parliament also approved this Thursday an abortion reform that allows minors from the age of 16 to interrupt the pregnancy without the need for parental authorization.
Self-determination, the center of contention
Different activist sectors celebrated this Thursday at the gates of Parliament the approval of the law together with its promoter, Irene Montero, Minister of Equality of Spain, while a group of feminists demonstrated calling for her resignation considering that gender self-determination “erases” women if anyone can be just by going to a registry.
Precisely, that was one of the points that generated the greatest tensions in the path that the law took before its approval.
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But the activist Silvia Tostado, from the Triangulo Foundation, explains that self-determination is the right of people to decide and express that their identity is respected, which allows them to access changes in identity documents.
“It’s not about ‘what we want to be.’ Trans people already are. And they have the right to decide the process they want to follow with their identity. Being trans is not a whim (…). Women are erased by the patriarchy. Trans people are not enemies of women”, points out Tostado, and explains that in the discussion fallacious arguments were used, such as that there could be attacks by men on women that would not be addressed as gender violence because the man could transit with his gender using this law.
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But in the norm, as its defenders emphasize, it was stipulated that men who change their sex will not evade convictions for sexist violence, since the legal obligations that any person had before rectifying that component in their documents will be maintained.
This opposition from feminist sectors with a trans-exclusionary tendency has an echo in other countries such as the United Kingdom, where there are some cases of men who changed their sex and were initially admitted to women’s prisons despite having been convicted of sexist violence.
On the other hand, it must be said that The approval of this law in Spain occurs just when other pioneering European countries have recoiled from similar legislation due to how delicate it was for them to implement.
Sweden, for example, decided a year ago to stop hormone therapy for minors, citing the need to observe “precaution”, something Finland had already done two years earlier. In France, meanwhile, the Academy of Medicine called for “great medical caution” in the treatment of young patients. And in the United Kingdom, the government in January blocked a Scottish law similar to the Spanish one adopted in late December by Parliament in Edinburgh after a heated debate.
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The controversy surrounding the Scottish law, in fact, was one of the causes that led to the resignation of the head of the regional government of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, on Wednesday.
The truth is gender self-determination is not a unique right of Spain. According to the most recent trans legal mapping report from the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA World), 96 of the 143 United Nations member states legally recognize the gender identity of trans people.
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Of that number, 25 do not require medical evidence of sex change surgeries or sterilization processes, and only in 16 does the legislation contemplate gender self-determination as a right.
Spain is now joining this group, whose challenge from now on, according to the sources consulted, will be to guarantee with the help of this legislation the advancement of rights for LGBTI people, and especially for the trans population, which faces the highest levels of discrimination in that country. This is what the figures say: 63 percent of trans people in Spain claim to have suffered discrimination in their daily lives and four out of ten have encountered obstacles when looking for a job, according to the most recent European macro-survey.
WILLIAM MORENO HERNANDEZ
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
On twitter: @williammoher
See below for the full document of the law.
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