Spanish lawmakers were yesterday to vote on a transgender rights bill that allows anyone aged 16 or older to change the gender on their ID card, legislation that has sparked divisions within the left-wing Spanish government and its feminist movement.
The draft bill seeks to simplify the procedure for changing gender on a person’s national identity card, allowing them to request the change based on a simple statement.
However, the bill has sparked a bitter dispute among Spain’s powerful feminist lobby and LGBTQ equality campaigners.
Photo: EPA-EFE
If it passes its first reading in the Spanish Congress of Deputies, the bill would move to the Spanish Senate and if left unchanged, as expected, would become law within weeks.
It would make Spain one of the few countries in the world to allow transgender people to change their status with a simple declaration. In Europe, Denmark was the first country to grant such a right in 2014.
Until now, only adults have been allowed to request the change in Spain. They have to provide a medical report attesting to gender dysphoria and proof of hormonal treatment for two years.
Photo: Bloomberg
The new law would drop that requirement and allow anyone from age 16 to freely change their gender on their ID card. Even those as young as 12 could apply, but only under certain conditions.
After submitting the request, the applicant must confirm the demand three months later, then it would become valid.
The legislation is one of the flagship projects of the Spanish Ministry of Equality, which is held by Podemos, the left-wing junior partner in Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist-led coalition.
“At last this law depathologizes trans lives and guarantees trans people’s rights,” said Spanish Minister of Equality Irene Montero, a strong advocate of gender self-identification who has been robust in her approach to any opposition. “Today the feminist majority in [the Congress of Deputies] responds to transphobia.”
Adopted by the Cabinet in June last year, the bill has sparked tensions between Podemos, the driving force behind the legislation, and the Socialists, which have tried in vain to modify it.
It has also divided the feminist movement between those supporting Montero and the powerful feminist lobby allied with the Socialists who are implacably opposed to the text.
“The state has to provide answers for transgender people, but gender is neither voluntary nor optional,” said Carmen Calvo, a former deputy prime minister in Sanchez’s administration who also headed the equality ministry when it was held by the Socialists.
“When gender is asserted over biological sex, it does not seem to me to be a step forward in a progressive direction; it seems to be a step backwards,” she told El Mundo newspaper in September.
Some women’s rights advocates fear the law will be open to abuse and erode those rights, allowing men who self-identify as women to compete in women’s sport or request a transfer to women’s prisons.
They have also raised the alarm about minors having the right to self-determine gender — with parental authorization from the age of 14, and with parental and judicial approval from age 12.
Although the Socialists pushed for an amendment that would have extended judicial authorization to include 14 and 15-year-olds, it was ultimately rejected in what was widely seen as a victory for Montero and Podemos.
Tensions over the legislation prompted Socialist LGBTQ rights advocate Carla Antonelli — the first and only trans woman to serve as a Spanish lawmaker — to resign from the party after decades of campaigning.
“One more step and it will be law, the triumph of reason over hatred,” she wrote on Twitter on Wednesday.
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