Socialist elected representatives and associative activists oppose this text which, by erasing the notion of sex, would harm the fight against men-female inequality.
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“Trans will finally stop being considered sick in Spain”, welcomed the Spanish Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, at the opening of the pride march. After two years of intense debate within the feminist movement and one year of harsh negotiations within the government between the socialist branch and its coalition partner Unidas Podemos, the Spanish executive approved, Monday, June 27, the bill for the equality of transsexual people. A text, highly anticipated by LGBTI associations, and one of the most controversial, too, of the legislature.
The bill consecrates the right to “free determination of gender identity” and the “exthologization” of transsexuality. It allows transsexual people over 16 years old to change the sex mentioned on their identity documents, without any other approach than to go to the civil register, to indicate its gender and to confirm it three months later. No more psychological examination or medical report, even less obligation to submit to hormone treatment for two years: the only public expression of their genre will be enough to modify their civil status. Between 14 and 16 years old, there will be a parental authorization and between 12 and 14 years old, a judicial authorization.
“The State recognizes the trans persons their right to be what they are,” summed up with satisfaction in the Council of Ministers M me Montero. From the party of the Radical Left Unidas Podemos, she defended beak and nail this text in the last months, regularly returning to the media, to accentuate the pressure on the head of government, Pedro Sanchez, who did not seem in a hurry to approve the bill. No doubt because this text, on the table since 2020, has divided the Spanish workers’ socialist (PSOE) and the feminist movement. So much so that, for the first time, the last demonstration of March 8 in favor of women’s rights has split into two distinct processions, for or against the law.
parliamentary course
The former vice-president of the government and socialist reference of feminist struggle, Carmen Calvo, current president of the parliamentary committee of equality between men and women, was one of the most virulent voices against the text, Before a first version was approved in the form of a bill, in June 2021. “I am fundamentally worried about the idea of thinking that you choose your genre without anything more than simple will or Desire, “she said. “If we deny sex, we deny the inequality that is measured and built on the basis of this biological fact”, she stressed after having signed an argument put in circulation among elected officials.
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