RIGHT TO GENDER IDENTITY
There are over 10,000 transsexuals in Spain alone. The term ‘transsexual” describes people whose gender identity, that recognised as their own, doesn’t coincide with their biological (and therefore legal and social) sex. A transsexual woman is born with a male body, and a transsexual man, with a woman’s body.
Overcoming this divergence, affecting all areas of their lives, is a top priority for transsexuals implying a long, difficult road full of legal, financial and social obstacles.
From discrimination at work, to social rejection, transsexuals of both kinds suffer the infringement of several of their fundamental rights. This said, the worst infringement is the one affecting their right to gender identity. Except in a few countries (the UK, France, Sweden, Italy, Denmark, Turkey, the Netherlands, Belgium), a list to which Spain has recently added its name, transsexuals are unable to change, by means of a general administrative procedure, the sex and name with which they were entered in the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages.
Transsexuals also demand public health cover for the clinical treatment of their sex change, an enormously expensive process. This cover should also include, in the words of the Spanish Lesbian, Gay and Transgender Organisation, “psychotherapeutic attention for the diagnosis and backing of transsexual people, hormonal treatment with periodical endocrinological controls and the different plastic surgery operations, including surgery to change their sex”.
Greater effort also has to be made by the public administrations and social agents with respect to education and awareness, with a view to eradicating the labour and social discrimination suffered by transsexuals, who must recover the rights wrested from them for reasons of intolerance and ignorance.