Darío Gael Blanco: "Being trans is neither a whim nor an ordeal"

When I arrive at the appointment, the interviewee is posing between shy and defiant for the photographer's camera in the alleyway of the Mary Read bookstore, in Madrid, specialized in LGTBIQ+ books and culture, where people like him go in search of intellectual references and meat and bone.

It's nice to see his poise at the same time cool and vulnerable.

It is, later, in the basement of the premises, luminous white and with mirrors everywhere, as if to conjure the historical invisibility of many of its authors, and of their clientele, when we chat long and hard, without filters or cover, warming our hands with a chocolate courtesy of the house.

Only a few days ago the Congress of Deputies approved the

and Darío lives mixed feelings and emotions about it.

How does this law change your life?

In almost nothing, really.

I already have everything changed.

But there are trains that I have already missed, such as having been able to freeze ovules before my transition, or access sunscreens in my adolescence, and cumbersome and arbitrary procedures that I have had to eat yes or yes to change my sex on the DNI.

When did you start to feel different from your girl friends?

I always felt between two waters.

Perhaps because of my appearance, I was not always perceived as a girl.

I was excited when they treated me as masculine, but I didn't reject my feminine part either.

The same thing happened to me with the issue of whether I liked boys or girls.

At home, my parents created an environment in which it was not necessary to define oneself.

That ambiguity served me for years to survive.

It was at the age of 23, on Erasmus in Berlin, living alone, when I was able to listen to myself, without interference, I decided that I couldn't take the decision any longer, and I started on the road.

What is being trans?

In my case, being clear from very early on what it was not, and the fact that they forced me to do arbitrary things based on it, caused me immense discomfort and real socialization problems.

That is what certain feminists propose:

But they never talk about abolishing the gender of their male partners, who can be very careful machirulos, by the way.

They state that, due to the fact of having one thing or another between your legs, from the moment you are born until you die, you have to be and be perceived in a certain way.

It is a fixation with the genitals that borders on the pathological.

You haven't told me what it's like to be trans.

It's almost easier to say what it isn't.

It is not, or not only, a feeling or a will.

It is simply being who you are and being named as such.

Being trans is neither a whim nor is it an ordeal.

Trans is non-binary.

For me, the ultimate goal of activism is that there are no watertight compartments, that everyone is allowed to be whoever we are.

We contribute more than we subtract.

Do you understand parents who fear that a trans child will “touch” them because of what they are going to suffer in life?

You will suffer anyway.

All teenagers suffer.

That was my mother's pain at first.

But, really, that suffering is not your thing, but the rest, which we reproduce ourselves, true, but which can be changed.

If the parents do not want them to suffer, it is up to them to make their way passable.

Whichever.

The operations are terrible.

We are already giving our opinion for him, or her.

Maybe she doesn't need operations.

That, precisely, is made possible by this law.

Being able to self-determine without the need to prove hormonal or surgeries.

The genitals do not define us more than being tall or short or attractive or ugly to others.

The obsession with the genitals comes to us from outside.

Do you consider

I believe that it is the world that makes it difficult for us, but I do not consider it a handicap at all.

What's more, it has enriched me.

There are certain nuances of happiness that I would not have known without being trans

feeling part of a community, feeling validated, that instant complicity that is established with someone you don't know at all, but who would kill for you or you would kill for him or her , if anything happened to you.

Do you have a trans-radar?

Yes. I think that, in general, all the groups that are marginalized generate those kinds of survival strategies and mutual recognition that we wish we didn't have to build, but that have a precious part.

She illustrated her transition by showing off her body on Twitter.

Vanity, self-affirmation, activism?

The mere fact of existing as I am is already activism.

When there is a whole system so that you do not exist and, if you do exist, you lead a life in the shadows, without disturbing, there is a kind of rebellion in saying: look, this is me, and this is my body.

And then I do not deny that there is also a part of the ego, since I spent so much time until I was able to change the DNI, when they address you by name they make you want to say thank you, and I no longer tell you when, ever, I a compliment falls

Those things, before, for me, were Martian.

It is a kind of second adolescence, and it has been good for me that it was late, because I was already emotionally mature.

In spite of everything, the change, above all, is noticeable inside.

Is today how you always wanted to be?

I have always been the same.

I have already told you that it is not about wanting to be.

If you mean the physique, I didn't have the typical idea of ​​a bearded guy, neither very masculine, nor very normative, nor very macho.

There is a lot of myth and a lot of morbidity about that too.

Testosterone, in my case, did not give me more or less sexual desire.

I have noticed, mind you, that it is more difficult for me to cry over personal things.

And the thing about growing a mustache was practically a joke with my wife.

Also, my dearest grandmother loved it, and I wear it almost because of her.

His grandmother recently passed away.

Did you need to explain?

There was a very beautiful thing with my grandmother, and with some neighboring friends who are almost like my parents, and that is that it was never necessary to explain anything to them.

If they have had or have any questions, they have asked me.

Maybe they have been informed in their own way or, simply, they have not cared because they see me happy.

The people who have surprised me the most are the simplest, the ones who have not asked me even an invasive question.

The best compliments were from my grandmother: she used to say that I looked like Robert Taylor [laughs].

Luckily, she got to know my partner, Paola, with whom I've been with since the year after I started my transition and, since I looked so good and so happy, she died with the peace of mind of leaving me stoned [laughs].

Self-described radical feminists maintain that the law erases women, but they say nothing about trans men.

The ones that erase us are they us.

Because they consider us women and because, even if they see us as men, they believe that we want to stop being women because we hate women, and thus we reinforce their discourse.

No one erases anyone, but letting diversity be makes more people happy.

Look, it's such a weird paranoia that sometimes I don't even understand it.

This is not a question of black and white.

I, now, allow myself to be much more feminine than before.

Some trans-exclusionary feminists have such narrow standards for what it is to be a man or a woman that not many of them would pass them.

What things offend you?

I am very tanned.

Sometimes I feel sorry.

One of the things that annoys me the most is that hate speech is spread, or that there are round tables on

without a single trans person at the table.

We are.

we exist.

We are in all professions, we are in all worlds, not just one.

Furthermore, lives are lived, not debated.

Does a transsexual sex worker have less legitimacy to talk about

than a philosophy academic who has not written anything relevant in the last 20 years and who calls a trans woman with the M for woman on her ID “uncle”?

Really?

I think that some are trying to put dikes on the sea because they know that they are going to lose their share of power.

Why have you fought so hard for a law that no longer affects you?

Because I don't want anyone to have to go through what I, even being privileged, have gone through.

I don't want anyone's time to be delayed if it's not his wish.

I don't want anyone to have to take hormones or undergo surgery or the judgment of a psychiatrist to prove anything to anyone.

What would you say to a parent whose 13-year-old son or daughter tells you they are trans and wants to transition?

That they listen, that they accompany and that they support.

There will be no mutilations, that is not what is pursued by the law, but to delay a process to block the onset of puberty so that the child can start a path.

There are irreversible actions.

Many things that can be done are reversible, anyone who is informed at all can see it.

One of the most striking things about this entire debate has been the amount of hoaxes that circulate about it.

In any case, in the very few cases in which a person decides to retrace the path, they must be accompanied.

In all cases, that person deserves to be valued, accompanied, listened to and that no one else decides for them.

What does the expression

I really want someone to finance me well financed.

Seriously, it makes me laugh for not crying.

Is happy?

Everything that can be in this system that annoys us so much.

But, when it comes to trans, yes, of course.

I would not change absolutely anything in my life, except for everything that has been a pain imposed from outside.

I am comfortable with myself and with my life.

@SENORCITO

It is the nom de guerre of Darío Gael Blanco on Twitter, from whose account he recounts his day-to-day work as a writer and translator at

magazine and at home, where he lives with his partner, Paola, and their cats.

Blanco managed to change his name and sex on the DNI a few years ago, after going through all the procedures and meeting all the mandatory requirements before the approval of the

last December, for which he has fought the most, even if it's late for him.

Co-author of the books

,

and

This "non-binary trans man" is committed to "happy and optimistic" activism without giving up denouncing when necessary, to counter "hate speech and ignoring trans people" that, according to him, are propagated by some "trans-exclusionary feminists ". 

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