The right to yourself: How in different countries are struggling with transphobia
TRANSPHOBIA - A PARTICULAR CASE OF XENOPHOBIA, which is important to be able to recognize and with which to fight. The life difficulties of transgender people are in one way or another connected with the assertion of the right to personal inviolability - both physical and psychological. In Russia, unfortunately, there is almost no thought about solving the problems of trans people at the legislative level, but there are already indicative precedents in the world. We talk about a few.
Crime as the last straw
In 1991, Spain was shocked by a wild cruelty of history: on October 6 in Barcelona, neo-Nazis beat Sonya Rescalvo to death - a transgender woman who was forced to live on the street and engage in sex work. A company of six teenagers, returning from a party, wandered into the park, where Sonya and her friend Doris spent the night. Having found the women, the teenagers began to beat them with their feet - so much so that when Sonya's body was then discovered by the police, her skin looked dark because of bruises. Doris miraculously survived.
Twenty-seven years ago, transgenderism in Spain was still a sentence: people whose gender identity did not coincide with the biological sex were invisible to the law and often found themselves on the outskirts of life. The press, describing the murder of Sonya, did not show any respect for the victim, calling her a "man named Jose" and a "homosexual transvestite." In 1994, the Spanish court appointed the murderers 310 years in prison for everyone, but then the Supreme Court knocked down the sentence twice.
The murder of Sonia Rescalvo is only a line on the list of victims of transphobia, to which a separate page is devoted to Wikipedia. But her death became a harbinger of change: in 1991, in Catalonia (the first of seventeen autonomous regions of Spain), the prosecutor's office appeared, which deals with hate crimes, including sexism, racism or homophobia. And the point is not only that in a year Barcelona should have taken the Olympic Games, but the glory of the “city of intolerance” is not at all what the Olympic capital needs. The fight against xenophobia has become a state policy for years to come. In 2011, a monument to the victims of homo-, bi-and transphobia appeared near the site of the brutal murder: the stone triangle with pink faces was opened by the mayor of Barcelona, Jordi Yereu. In his speech, he stressed that his city intends to lead the struggle for equal rights for all - regardless of orientation and gender.
Transgender is not a disease
Transgenderness has long been considered a disease that needs to be treated, as official medicine led by WHO adhered to this position; gender dysphoria was classified as an ailment and referred to the section "Mental diseases" (recall that WHO recognized homosexuality as a "variant of the norm" in 1990). In 2018, the ICD came out in the eleventh revision, where transgenderness is no longer considered a disease - now the term “conditions related to sexual health” is used to describe it. In the previous version, transgenderness was assigned to the F64 Disorder of Sexual Identification block, and in ICD-11 it was renamed Gender Incongruence.
“We removed transgenderness from the list of mental diseases because we understood: it is not a disease. Leaving it on this list means stigmatization. To avoid this, as well as to simplify access to medical procedures, we decided to transfer it to another section,” Dr. Lale Say, which deals with the problems of adolescents and risk groups. The trans-community accepted the changes positively - even though the ICD-11 will be fully submitted for approval by the Assembly in May 2019, and will only come into force in 2022.
Surgical operations are not obligatory.
Although ICD-11 essentially equates transgenderness and gender dysphoria, for convenience, they can be distinguished as follows: transgenderness is a condition, while dysphoria is the acute discomfort it causes. In order to harmonize their psychological and physiological state, many people make a transgender transition, which may include, for example, hormone replacement therapy and corrective surgical interventions - including surgery on the mammary glands or genitals. In many countries, it is these interventions that are necessary in order to be able to change documents. Unfortunately, such an approach at times complicates the social transition, although it is he, and not the change in the appearance of the genitals, that is associated with the acceptance of a person by others in a new status. Moreover, operations of this kind are traumatic and expensive, and surgeons capable of such interventions are far from being everywhere.
The solution to this problem is surprisingly simple - to provide a person with the opportunity to independently decide what will be indicated in the column "Sex" in the documents, without requiring a "minimum amount" of interventions. The transition is already stressful: in order to start life in your gender, you need to come out before parents, friends, partner or colleagues. Compare: coercion to surgical intervention is prohibited in all civilized countries of the world - and yet it still remains a necessary measure in bureaucratic issues of gender identity.
Some have already understood the absurdity of such stringent requirements. In the same Spain, from 2007, surgical correction is no longer required to change sex in documents. This practice also exists in other European countries: in Germany, the prohibition to change the passport floor without an operation was declared unconstitutional in 2011, in Ireland in 2015, Greece passed a similar law in 2017. Difficult situation in the USA: some states (among them California, Nevada, Utah) do not require certificates of operation to replace documents. Several states (Florida, Alabama, Mississippi) require surgical correction, while three more states - Kansas, Tennessee and Ohio - do not change the documents in principle. Finally, there is no longer any coercion for transgender people in Russia, but psychiatric examination, the conclusion of which makes it possible to change the gender indicated in the documents, is obligatory.
“Third Gender” and Gender Pluralism
Another method is to introduce the option of the “third” gender in documents, which will eliminate the need to choose between male and female identity. “Third” in this case means not the third of the three possible, but simply different. A person can choose gender X for various reasons, for example, because biology does not match the typical set of "male" or "female" signs (like among intersex people) or because he does not feel himself to fit into the binary gender system.
Today, the “third” sex is legally fixed not only in India, Thailand or Pakistan. In 2014, the existence of people whose self-perception does not fit into the binary system was recognized in Australia. This decision was made because of the claim of the gender person Norrie Mae Alby. In 2017, a similar decision was made by Germany and Canada. "Any Canadian must be able to be who he is, live according to gender identity and express his gender at will. By entering gender X in government documents, we take an important step towards achieving equality for all Canadians, regardless of their gender or its expression ", said Ahmed Hussen, Minister for Immigration, Refugees and Canadian Citizenship.
Not only state structures, but also private organizations are taking steps towards accepting gender diversity. Facebook became a pioneer: back in 2014, on the eve of February 14, users had the opportunity to choose an identity from more than fifty options depending on the country. In addition to the traditional "man" and "woman", there are options "gender-church", "gender" and many others.
Working on laws and creating precedents
Protecting the rights of transgender people is a new topic from the point of view of the law, and it is delicate to approach it: many domestic issues that do not pose a problem for cis-gender citizens can be painful for transperson. For example, visiting toilets in public places: in February 2017, the administration of the newly elected US President Donald Trump nullified the achievement of his predecessor Barack Obama and canceled the right to choose a public toilet in accordance with her own identity. The reason - the indulgence of "traditional values." “Our daughters should not be forced to share private, intimate rooms with male classmates, even if these young people have difficulties in this area,” the BBC quotes Vicki Wilson, a member of the organization “Students and parents for privacy.” - This violates their right on privacy and their dignity. "
To protect the rights of transgender people, bans on discrimination in the areas of medicine, education and employment are necessary. In Germany, an anti-discrimination law was issued in 2006, and in some regions of the country - in Berlin, Brandenburg or throughout the federal state of Thuringia - public display of hatred motivated by sexual orientation or gender identity was prohibited. Similar bans apply in Spain, Australia and the UK. Of particular importance is the emergence of precedents - as, for example, the story of Norrie Mae Alby above. Such cases become the locomotive of progress, since it is in their tracks that progressive liberal laws emerge.
Another way to solve a problem can be high-profile processes affecting hate crimes. Unfortunately, in Russia, transgender people are still invisible to law enforcement agencies - even after they claim threats. “The victims of hate crimes are not only those who directly suffer from them, but all the representatives of the hated community,” recalls Igor Kochetkov, chairman of the Russian LGBT Network. “These crimes therefore have an increased public danger. Society must openly stand up for the victims of hate crimes and loudly condemn them. This is what loud court cases are needed for. "
Photo: Getty Images (3)
