The new trans law recognizes gender self-determination

BarcelonaThe trans and equality law for the LGTBIQ community will be approved in the ordinary Council of Ministers, which has to close years of demands and months of negotiations between the two partners of the Spanish government. The law recognizes what some regional laws already recognize: the free determination of gender. That is, it makes it official that transsexuality is not a mental illness and from now on it will only require an administrative procedure in the offices of the Civil Registry. Also minors, from 14 to 18 years old, will have the same requirements but only if they are accompanied by their parents or legal guardians.

Finally, the law goes ahead in the terms defended by the Minister of Equality, Irene Moreno, facing the Vice President of the government, the socialist Carmen Calvo and some veterans of the feminist movement, who believe that the rule "blurs and erases" women and jeopardizes some rights and social gains that have been achieved, such as the law on gender violence. On the contrary, the defenders of the new legislation claim that it finally corrects a "historical debt" with a group that still suffers discrimination.

The new law updates the 2007 one, which has already eliminated the obligation to have undergone surgery to start the sex change procedures, but still left medical treatment and psychological reports as requirements to determine sex dysphoria. that is, the disagreement between biological sex and meaning. In 2018 the World Health Organization already removed transsexuality from the list of mental illnesses and three years earlier, in 2015, the Council of Europe recommended to member countries to facilitate the procedures for sex change and base them on gender self-determination.