Spain approves this Thursday the ‘trans law’ that will allow gender change in the civil registry without medical reports and that advances amid warnings that it could become a new nightmare for the Government, due to the lack of “legal security”.
Authorization from a judge will be required for cases between 12 and 14 years of age and of parents or legal guardians between 14 and 16 years of age, but for those over 16 years of age, the will of the person who wants to change gender will suffice.
In all cases, medical opinions and proof of any hormonal treatment are no longer necessary, as the diploma is intended to remove the burden of gender change pathology.
“trans people [transexuais] they do not need guardianship or witnesses to tell them who they are. Trans people are who they are and our obligation as a State is to recognize them and protect their rights”, said the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, in a debate in Congress last December.
The new legislation took more than a year to pass and along the way split the Socialist Party (PSOE), which rules Spain in coalition with the far-left platform United We Can, of which Irene Montero is a member.
The law was also opposed by feminist associations which, like the critical wing of the PSOE, consider that it could harm the progress made by women in the fight for equal rights.
For these movements, being a woman is not a subjective identity and feminism is the fight against discrimination against an objective identity based on biological gender.
Among these critical voices is the Fundación Mujer and the Association of Women Lawyers Themis, whose leaders repeated this week, in a meeting with the media in Madrid, including the Lusa news agency, that this legislation lacks “legal security” and ” a law cannot have so many holes”.
These two associations are recognized as interlocutors in the legislative processes and are usually heard in parliamentary commissions or through opinions, but this time, their presidents said, in the elaboration of the Spanish “trans law”, “the feminist movement was consulted very little “.
The Spanish law bears similarities with others approved in countries like Scotland, also involved in controversy and which, once in force, uncovered the “holes” of which associations such as Themis or the Women’s Foundation warn.
In question are, for example, situations of men who changed their sex to serve prison sentences in female pavilions. But there is also, say these critical voices, the possibility that opens up for men to participate in sports competitions with women or appear in contests that require physical evidence for their selection and have established different standards for male and female candidates.
These associations also raise awareness about issues in the application of gender equality laws, gender violence or quotas in electoral laws.
The new Spanish law eliminates, on the other hand, the “positive protection” of transsexuals, whose situation falls within the “universal code of guarantees”, without recognizing the specificity of their condition, while producing a “denial of dysphoria of gender” or, at least, that it be relegated to the background, defend Elena Sevillano, president of the Women’s Foundation and former PSOE MEP, and Angela Alemany, lawyer and president of the Themis Association.
Minister Irene Montero said, in a congressional debate, that “trans women are women” and spoke of “transphobia” during the process of debating the law.
The new law will be approved by the majority of the left in the Spanish parliament and is opposed by the parties of the right, who claimed that there was not a sufficiently calm and lasting legislative process to allow all the necessary debates and hearings.
The Popular Party (PP, the majority of the opposition) appealed directly last week to the President of the Government, the socialist Pedro Sánchez, to postpone the final vote on the law, since it was not well done and ran the risk of becoming a new nightmare for the Government, as is happening with the law that changed the classification of sexual crimes, known as the “only yes is yes” law.
This law, in force since October, has already led to the reduction of the sentence of 520 men for rape, which has sparked a controversy that analysts consider the biggest crisis facing the coalition that has governed Spain since 2019.
Also in this case, associations and the PP had warned that the law was not well defended and that there would be a reduction in sentences for those convicted, an effect that the legislator did not intend.
Source: TSF
