MADRID (AP) – Victòria Martínez continues to sign official documents with the name she, her partner and their two daughters threw away four years ago. Despite some surprises, she expects the Spanish government to recognize her as Victoria by May and close a patient chapter known to transgender people around the world.
By changing her legal identity at a civil registry office in Barcelona, Martínez can update her passport and driver’s license and take with her a health card that correctly states that she is a woman. But the process, which prolonged the pandemic, was, in her words, ‘humiliating’ – requiring a psychiatric diagnosis, three doctors reported and court approval.
‘Did I want to be stigmatized by being labeled crazy? Did I voluntarily apply for a shrinking report that says so, to have a judge decide if I can be who I already am? Martínez (44) remembers asking herself. “The whole thing was emotionally exhausting.”
A new law proposed by the far-left party in the Spanish coalition government will make it easier for residents to change gender for official purposes. A bill sponsored by Equality Minister Irene Montero aims to make gender self-determination – requiring no diagnosis, medical treatment or adjudicator – the norm, with eligibility at age 16. Nearly 20 states, of which eight 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 also allows children under the age of 16 to circumvent the objections and seek help from a judge to gain access to treatment for gender dysphoria, the medical term for psychological distress arising from a conflict between an individual’s identity and birth-assigned gender.
Less expected was the fierce resistance of some feminists and within Spain’s socialist government.
“I am fundamentally concerned about the idea that if gender can no longer be chosen beyond one’s will or desire, it could jeopardize the identity criteria for 47 million Spaniards,” said Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo, a veteran. socialist and women’s rights. lawyer, said last week.
Opponents argue that allowing men to ultimately choose their gender will lead to women being “wiped out” of the public sphere: if more Spaniards registered at the birth of men switch to women, national statistics will go awry. and create more competition among women for everything from jobs to sports trophies.
The rift in Spain reflects a debate between a branch of feminist theorists and LGBTQ rights movements around the world. On the one hand, activists often condescendingly say TERFs (trans-exclusive radical feminists) that the promotion of transgender rights can undermine the efforts to eradicate sexism and misogyny by denying the existence of biological sexes.
The state federation of lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual people says that if the law is adopted in its current form, the discrimination of transgender people could end and Spain will start to the European vanguard of LGBTQ rights protection.
The Montero bill has nevertheless provoked unusual anger on online platforms, where critics are sounding the alarm about provisions that will allocate public toilets and prisons according to ‘registered gender’. Confluencia Feminista, an alliance of dozens of women’s organizations, has also called for any changes to existing legislation in Spain.
The concern of Alexandra Paniagua, one of the activists of the new platform, revolves around the idea that state-subsidized hormones and gender reassignment surgery would become more available by eliminating the opinions of doctors and judges and ultimately promoting more dysphoria among young people.
“More people will see easier access to the invasive treatment, especially girls who have said their bodies are less dignified in our society,” she said.
But Trans Platform Federation president Mar Cambrollé argues that some of the fears put forward as reasons to keep existing barriers in place are based on outdated ideas that boys and girls, men and women to a handful of socially prescribed characteristics and roles diminished.
“Transphobic attitudes make me angry,” Cambrollé said. “As a woman, I am discriminated against because I am a woman in a world made by men for men, but also by cis (gender) people who build it with a view to other cis people.”
Finding a compromise soon seems like an insurmountable task, judging by the ominous nature of the debate online. Cambrollé accused 85-year-old Lidia Falcón, the founder of the Feminist Party of Spain, of repeatedly saying that transgender and gay people promote pedophilia; prosecutors are investigating Falcón’s statements as a possible hate crime.
Ángela Rodríguez, a Montero adviser on LGBTQ issues, said the timing of the bill had heightened tensions, with International Women’s Day taking place on March 8.
“There is a dispute over the hegemony of the message in the feminist movement,” Rodríguez said during a recent panel discussion.
What for many is a theoretical debate hurts Martínez, who has closed most of her social media accounts. According to her, the constant chatter feels too “personal” and “perverse, generalized about what a transgender person is.”
“Unfortunately, to this day, it’s even easier for people who stare at you as you walk down the street and can reconcile a certain kind of face with a few tits,” says Martínez, wearing round glasses and her hair a bob to soften her sharp face contours.
Coming out as a transgender, first for herself and then for her partner, required Martínez to evoke a kind of self-confidence 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 does not consider herself brave.
“For me,” she said, “there was just no other choice.”
But Martínez hesitated about using hormones and updating her civil registry. She fought hard to be proud of the woman she is, with a deep voice and a way of carrying herself that stands out. Did she not want to break with traditional gender forms, 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 socially consistent appearance and an identity card that confirms that she is female, even if it means we have to bow to existing legal requirements and ideas. of people who still think in binary terms. provisions.
“I hid for 40 years,” she said. “Now I protect myself, but I do not hide.”
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AP reporters Emilio Morenatti and Renata Brito contributed to this report.