NewsSpain will allow changing sex in the civil registry...

Spain will allow changing sex in the civil registry with only the will

The Spanish government approved this Tuesday a bill that will allow from the age of 14 to change sex in the civil registry with an administrative procedure, without evidence or witnesses, and ends the need for health reports and medical and legal guardianship for proceed to such modification.

The project, which created strong tensions in the governing coalition between Pedro Sánchez’s socialists and their radical left minority ally Podemos, would make Spain one of the few countries in Europe that allow gender self-determination.

The Minister of Equality and leader of Podemos, Irene Montero, said that the project will “guarantee the real and effective equality of trans people”, as well as “an important battery of rights for LGTBI people, which are currently being violated.”

“We intend to overcome this historical invisibility, stigmatization and lack of recognition of the rights of LGTBI people,” argued the spokesperson for the Executive, the socialist María Jesús Montero, at a press conference.

According to a preliminary version of the project to which the AFP agency had access, “any person of Spanish nationality over the age of sixteen may apply for himself before the Civil Registry to rectify the registration mention of sex.”

The draft provides that minors under the age of 12 and 13 will need a judicial authorization to change their sex in the civil registry, while from the age of 14 anyone can do so with an administrative procedure.

Therefore, this law will allow the person who wishes to change their name and gender in their documentation, if required, without having to provide medical reports or follow hormonal treatment.

The draft bill still has to go through a series of consultation procedures before being sent to the Spanish Parliament for a vote.

The two government partners eventually understood each other thanks to the inclusion of a period of three months between the formalization of the request and its validation by the plaintiff, so that he can confirm his decision to change gender.

“Within a maximum period of three months from the date of the appearance and request for initial rectification, the person in charge of the Civil Registry must summon the person entitled to appear again and ratify his request, asserting the persistence of his decision”, stipulates the draft law.

The text also foresees opening this possibility for young people between 14 and 16 years of age if they are accompanied throughout the process by their legal representatives.

A confrontation between the feminist movement and LGBT groups

This project has received criticism from a sector of the feminist movement in Spain, which believes that this law would mean a “erasure of women”.

“This is a feminist law that understands that either we all arrive or none arrive,” the spokeswoman Montero responded to those reproaches, and stressed that Spain “makes history” with this legislation.

“We therefore recognize the right to self-determination of gender identity, we undertake ‘depathologization’, that is, trans people are no longer going to be considered sick in our country,” explained Minister Montero, a great defender of self-determination. of genre.

It was this point in particular that exploded the tensions within the government: the number two executive, the socialist Carmen Calvo, had said in February that she was concerned about the idea of “thinking that gender is chosen without more than mere will or will. desire, putting at risk the identity criteria of the rest of the 47 million Spaniards ”.

Gender self-determination is an issue that has become “complicated” in recent years due to “opposing voices”, underlines Uge Sangil, president of the State Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Trans and Bisexuals.

These currents come, according to the activist to the AFP, from an “exclusive feminism”, in opposition to the inclusive vision that defends the rights of transsexuals.

That feminism, for Sangil, “is closer to the discourse of the extreme right than to the voices of the left.”

Accusation that refutes Tasia Aránguez, a member of the feminist collective “Against the erasure of women”, who denounces a law “devoid of legal guarantees”, and that could, for example, allow “men with a criminal record of sexual assault to change their registered sex ”.

Therefore, Aránguez demands that the obligation of a medical diagnosis be maintained.

The two government partners eventually understood each other thanks to the inclusion of a period of three months between the formalization of the request and its validation by the plaintiff, so that he can confirm his decision to change gender.

“Within a maximum period of three months from the date of the appearance and request for initial rectification, the person in charge of the Civil Registry must summon the person entitled to appear again and ratify his request, asserting the persistence of his decision”, stipulates the draft law.

The text also foresees opening this possibility for young people between 14 and 16 years of age if they are accompanied throughout the process by their legal representatives.

An advance for the trans population, but insufficient

The law will stop considering trans people sick and, in addition, conversion, aversion or counterconditioning therapies aimed at modifying sexual orientation, identity or expression will be prohibited.

“It is a giant step” in advancing the rights of trans and LGTBI people, insisted Irene Montero.

With this law, “I would not have had to give so many explanations, I would not have had to go through this embarrassment with the police when they asked me for my new ID with a mocking face, and many things that have happened,” says Sandra Herrero Ventura, 23 years old. .

Born with the name Mario, Sandra had to undergo psychiatric therapy, in addition to hormonal treatment at the age of 17, a vaginoplasty at 19 and was only able to change her name at 20 thanks to a medical report that diagnosed “gender dysphoria “.

Toni Durán, who advised the Ministry of Equality in the process, acknowledges that there are proposals that have finally been left out of the text, but that others have reached a consensus between the parties.

“What has been left has remained, for minors (fourteen years old) there is no true recognition of self-determination, but on the other hand now we are not only talking about women but about people with the ability to gestate,” he explained to EFE .

“The negotiation process has been so extremely complex that we are clear that the text can be improved but it is a very good beginning,” said José María Núñez, president of the Triángulo Foundation, who in turn regrets the absence of legislation on trans people migrants and non-binary ones.

For Uge Sangil, the model country is Argentina, “where the procedure is much easier”, and since 2012 the change is made through a simple declaration.

The president of the association Euforia Familias Trans-Aliadas, Natalia Aventín, harshly criticized the text of the law and assured that it is a “lie” that it is a law for trans people.

“It is a lie that it is a trans law, it has nothing to be a trans law, they recognize people over 14 years old, they authorize the registration change without reports but they give them three months of reflection, you have to go to the registry three times to reaffirm yourself … “, he shared.

Migrants and non-binary people were not taken into account

One of the most criticized aspects of the law is the lack of protection for migrants and the absence of non-binary people.

Aventín also reproached that migrants are not in the text, since the right of self-determination will only be effective for people of Spanish nationality, and that non-binary people are not named either.

“They have lost us a lot of time, but above all a lot of hope, it is very disappointing,” he concludes.

For Vicky Arely Gómez, a Honduran trans migrant living in Spain, this fact “clearly” hints that migrants “are not deserving” of those rights and thus “the human rights of trans migrants are violated.”

“It is racism and transphobia on the part of the State, we are still in a position of inequality with the rest,” he said bitterly to the Spanish agency, adding that “they only” have left to “continue to claim rights” and fight for nationality to be able to make the name change.

“We are never going to finish, but we are not going to give up,” the Honduran stressed to Efe.

For his part, Rafi Gnecco, a non-binary Spanish, told the EFE agency that the absence of his gender in the text has not caught him by surprise.

“I did not think they were going to mention us, that the law has gone ahead seems like a miracle to me, it is very unfair that they leave us behind but seeing how the political situation is in Spain, that they do not leave us behind, just like migrants and minors, it was the only way to carry out the law, “he says.

In that sense, it recognizes the contribution of the text because it includes “one of the most vital things” for the group: self-determination.

“The non-binary term is much more recent and for the trans struggle it was vital because of the suicides and the compulsory hormone that has caused a lot of dysphoria,” he adds with little hope that the parliamentary process can improve the law: “it would be wonderful, but I think it takes a long time for us to be recognized. “

Within the European Union, the rights of transgender people remain highly variable.

In 2014, Denmark was the first European country to grant the right to self-determination of identity for transgender people.

France, which in 2010 became the first country in the world to remove transsexuality from the list of psychiatric illnesses, since 2017 has authorized the modification of marital status without having to “justify medical treatment, surgical operation or sterilization”, but through of a process in court.

According to the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA), at least 25 UN member states “authorize the legal recognition of gender without prohibitive requirements.”

In some countries, administrative or judicial processes can last for years and include the obligation of a psychiatric diagnosis, hormonal treatment, a sexual reassignment operation or sterilization. A situation criticized by organizations for the defense of human rights and LGTB +.

Only a dozen nations allow transgender people to change their marital status with a simple declaration.

With information from AFP and EFE

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