The draft of the law for the real and effective equality of trans people, known as
trans law
, saw the light this week mired in controversy.
It is a rule included in the Government agreement, but that divides the partners, PSOE and United We Can.
Different trans collectives applaud it but part of feminism is suspicious of its content.
EL PAÍS on Friday invited two women to discuss the content, possible risks and key aspects through Zoom.
Ángeles Álvarez is a former PSOE deputy, feminist activist and one of the members of the platform Against the Erasure of Women.
Marina Sáenz is an LGTBI activist and was the first transsexual woman to obtain a chair in Spain, that of Commercial Law at the University of Valladolid.
Why are you for / against
trans law
?
Ángeles Álvarez (Á. Á.).
Those of us who question some of the proposed measures are not against the laws on transsexuality, but against a draft bill that actually calls into question other rights.
We are calling on Spanish society to take into account that this law is not exclusively about transsexuality but that it transcends that concept.
Under the trans label, sex is denied and annulled, among other things, as a biological reality and as a legal category.
These are the two aspects that are fundamentally worrying us.
Marina Sáenz (MS).
I am in favor of the law because finally we are going to do something for the social inclusion of a very marginalized group, because we will comply with the mandate of the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court on minors, with the European Court, with the recommendations of the European Agency for Fundamental Rights.
And this is following the path of countries such as Portugal, Greece, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway or Argentina, which have already taken this step without any of the threats that are announced to us.
It is not true that it questions the rights of anyone or that it affects the rights of any woman.
Why is this law important?
MS
Because finally we are going to attend and protect the childhoods of trans minors following the indications of pediatric associations.
Because we are going to try to do something with the unemployment of this group that is around 75%, according to reports from the International Labor Organization.
Because we are going to put an end to the chaos in health treatments, which are offered or not depending on which community you live in.
Because we will no longer be considered subjects that need guardianship, it seems that we have a social danger, to treat ourselves with the same dignity as the rest.
TO.
TO.
It is an absolutely tricky text that uses transsexual people to introduce a vision of the world that calls into question incontestable realities.
Of course, feminism does not question the rights of transgender people.
We have accompanied these demands for a long time, but it is not true that there are no problems.
What is happening in women's sports is truly scandalous.
The incorporation of people who have competitive advantages is putting women's podiums at risk.
What we are questioning here is that there are elements of the legislative proposals that question the rights that women have taken many decades to achieve.
We have a problem and it is legitimate for Spanish society to know about it and for the legislator to know about it to avoid conflicts.
MS
In the rules of the International Olympic Committee we have been admitted in relation to hormone levels since 2015. There is not a single transsexual person who has had that competitive advantage and has obtained a medal.
Phantom threat is alleged.
The facts are stubborn and do not justify all this noise.
TO.
TO.
What we are looking at is what is happening in third countries and making an alert, because we are in time to enact legislation that respects the rights of all people without the need for them to collide with the conquered rights of women.
The 'trans law' opens a new gap between PSOE and United We Can in the Government
The proposed 'trans law' clashes with the rules of sport
How many people does it benefit?
That changes?
Questions and answers about 'trans law'
What does free gender self-determination mean?
TO.
TO.
In reality it supposes the free self-determination of sex, which is one of the traps they are making us.
In other words, it comes to legislate subjectivity and denies biological reality.
Manifesting differences does not have to be discriminatory.
Now, this draft of Irene Montero's ministry uses sex and gender synonymously and when it talks about gender self-determination, it is actually referring to sex self-determination.
This means eliminating a biological category as something verifiable in legal terms and opens a melon whose consequences we will see.
MS It
means that we are going to stop being considered upset, in need of guardianship and instead we are going to give weight to our statement, which was the only proof that the psychiatrists had when they made our diagnoses.
It will not bring an arbitrary or banal choice of sex.
And it is not true that we are denying the reality of sex, what happens is that sex is something more than the genitality that one has at birth, other factors also make us sexed beings.
And this is recognized by the Supreme Court since 1987, in the first ruling that recognized transsexuality.
In the Civil Registry, men and women will continue to be registered as now, that will not disappear.
I do not understand, they are proposing a society in which it is not very clear what place we can occupy even in a toilet.
Because it seems that we can be asked about what we have in our fly when we go to enter him if you seem to someone not very feminine.
Why do you think it has caused controversy?
MS
I cannot understand it, because the PSOE has defended free gender self-determination since 2014 in all its proposals for regional laws and in the proposal to reform the 2007 law that entered Parliament in 2017 and that Mrs. Ángeles Álvarez signed as a member of parliament when she was the spokesperson for the Equality Commission.
What we also see to some extent is a struggle for the hegemony of feminism, for the control of institutions, but it seems immoral to us that our lives are being used as a battlefield.
TO.
TO.
Feminism in general was not attentive to all this that was happening.
What you have done is become aware, and awareness is not a phobia.
That piece of paper you are talking about is a presentation report that was never voted on in committee.
The PSOE and this one who speaks began to become aware of some problems just when those laws began to be debated.
It is legitimate for feminism to raise it and it is mandatory for Spanish society to know it.
The health part referring to minors, for example, will show us how the care model of this
Montero law
comes to place professionals who would be almost obliged to accept a single and homogeneous answer almost from the beginning: that my identity does not match my sexed body and this is the only thing that has value.
When in the educational system, in parallel, we are telling girls that if they have behaviors that are not in accordance with their sex that can compete with transsexuality, we are generating a time bomb.
A girl who plays soccer is neither a lesbian girl nor a transsexual girl, she is just a girl who is playing soccer, as the illustrated Feminist collective says.
We are leading a generation to we do not know where, honestly.
MS
It is being frivolized that as soon as a girl plays soccer or has a little tomboy behavior, she is redirected towards transsexuality.
Is not true.
It is not a whim and talking to the families of trans children is very revealing.
They are parents who have worried about minors, who have tried to avoid this in any way because they saw it as an undesirable option, they have not been encouraging it.
Most of the time there has even been resistance.
And in the end what happens is that when a person comes out that their gender identity is what it is, you cannot take the stripes from a tiger.
Some of us have tried for years to skip that and can't.