A speech and presentation on trans issues I gave during the IPPF EN conference. The transcript of the lecture is located below this description.
Important: Before reading: Download the presentation below.
Be sure to check out http://tgeu.org where the Trans Map along with its index has been published.
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Bodies without human rights. Transgender people, sexuality and parenthood
Good morning everyone and thank you for inviting me to this important event. The importance of it, seems even greater today, two days after the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has passed a resolution (1945 (2013)) which not only condemns forced sterilizations and castrations in the region but also urges Council of Europe member states to end any kind of activities which result in breaching a person’s physical integrity in that matter. The resolution also urges states to change existing laws and policies which allow for those to still take place.
I must say, to some extent, I could just read this resolution and the presentation would have been over, especially that the document – less than two pages long – mentions the following groups threatened by coerced sterilizations and castrations: Roma women, convicted sex offenders, transgender persons, persons with disabilities, and the marginalized, stigmatized, or those considered unable to cope. In other words, it is a very inclusive document, one that should definitely be circulated within your network and respective organizations.
It is titled: Resolution 1945 (2013), Putting an end to coerced sterilisations and castrations and is available at http://assembly.coe.int.
A note on content and language
Before I came to this conference, I was given a 2007 issue of IPPF’s “Choices” on sexual and reproductive health rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Europe. I found it extremely helpful in terms of structuring this presentation. It saddens me that the one-page article published six years ago could have been easily reprinted today, since things have been moving very slowly for transgender people in individual Council of Europe member states, even though we have seen a lot of international support from various other international institutions, including the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Torture and Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
To bring you closer to the context of transgender issues, I will be speaking both as an expert and as a transgender person myself, since I cannot and do not want to deny my own experiences which have led me to explore the vast world of transgender human rights.
I already apologize if my presentation touches definitions and terms of which some of you might think that they are very basic. It is quite important from my point of view that we all understand the issues we are discussing.
Gender and sex in your own lives
If you look into your national IDs, passports or other documents aimed to identify you in the eyes of the law and the general public, you will find a category which some of you might never have been preoccupied with, something which comes to you as a natural fact, a small detail. It is the “sex” category or, as us, transgender activists like to put it, your legal gender marker. The either F or M, and in some countries also X (but not within the Council of Europe) which is assigned to you shortly after you are born and what in our language, and hopefully soon in other languages, is identified as the gender assigned at birth.
A peculiar process surrounds this “assignment”. With your first breath in this world, you are being sentenced to live as society dictates. The words “it’s a girl” or “it’s a boy” clearly determine your future, or rather – the future everyone perceives as obvious. Sometimes your social assignment takes place even sooner and once you are born, you are expected to fulfill what has been already established by – for example – identifying your chromosomal configuration.
Still, the physical aspect of your body, however it might play out in the complicated genome game, does not have to correspond with what you feel inside and what you identify with. Your gender identity – the inner feeling of being either male or female, beyond it, not being them at all – is what constitutes you as a gendered entity in your own life, and not only to you, but others around. This deep independent feeling creates your personal perception of the gendered system.
Apart from having an identity, you also choose various types of social behavior corresponding with the idea of gender, you choose how to visually present yourself, how you communicate and therefore you can influence how people see and perceive you. This is your gender expression which in the end does not have to correspond with your gender identity. Gender expression is to gender identity as a book cover is to its content. Never judge a book by its cover.
How you use those various features constitutes your experience. Your gender life story.
Transgender
Today, we are talking about transgender people or transgender persons, NOT “transgenders” as some media like to portray us. We call ourselves in many different ways and work differently with the system that we have been born into and brought up in. We are transgender or transsexual men and women, we are genderqueer, we are beyond male and female, we are agender, bigender, trigender, we are trans masculine and trans feminine, or simply trans – we are what our identities, expressions and experiences have made us.
I would also like to underline that I am not speaking on behalf of every trans person on Earth, but rather use the collective “we” to determine a common human rights activism perspective.
Some of us are comfortable with how the system works and simply choose to “change sides” (although I use the word change, I strongly underline that we hate the expression “sex change” as it deprives us from our dignity, marking our lives unimportant by reducing them to a mere procedure of which most of society does not have a sufficient knowledge) and visually become one of the many, some of us defy the system and even though we might present ourselves normative, we are certainly not. And then there are those of us who choose to express themselves outside of what one would consider “norm” or “normative”.
We have our own language on our issues, we go through legal gender recognition when we want to change our legal data – name, surname, gender marker, etc. and through gender reassignment, when we somehow alternate our bodies to match our gendered needs. Whenever we change our position from our initial assigned status, we transition.
Sometimes we even write our trans category with an asterisk at the end to let you and other members of our communities know how diverse we really are. That simply saying trans opens so many possibilities that we decide to alarm you even before you really get to know us.
Our communities use different cultural possibilities to express how they feel about gender, one of which are pronouns – those words which define us in language categories. We try to be polite about it and, especially when speaking English, ask about a preferred pronoun. Because no one wants to be called a name they do not like. We treat respect to pronouns very seriously, since some of us have been denied them for a significant part of our lives. That is why we demand respect.
Within this we try to understand our own differences and work together to ensure that our rights as human beings (living in certain economic conditions, who have various educational backgrounds, experiences with harassment and violence and other) are respected, protected by law and seen as human rights, which is sometimes, sadly, not the case.
We also have a word for those who never had issues with the gender system, whose upbringing as either male or female did not bring them to a conclusion that they would like to explore “the other side”, look for other options within the gender spectrum or travel through it in a way that brings them to a completely new perspective on gender. A perspective teaching us that male and female are in many cases identities bottled up with assumptions, labeled as either “obvious characteristics” or “simply facts”. These non-travelers are cisgender. Cis, as oppose to trans means to not move, to stay in the same place, to stay still. Those who did not take the self-discovering journey of gender, are cisgender.
That said, I would like to officially introduce myself. My name is Wiktor Dynarski, my preferred pronoun is they, my gender marker is male, I was assigned female at birth 26 years ago in a small town in Poland. And, as you might have already noticed, gender bothers me in many, many ways.
Transgender reproductive and sexual rights
What are transgender reproductive rights? In the Council of Europe context, family rights and recognition of family are of great concern, especially in asylum cases of the same-legal gender couples struggle (often labeled simply as LGBT), but many transgender people are being denied the possibility to become biological parents. They are being subjected to forced sterilizations or castrations – procedures treated as a prerequisite for legal gender recognition. Moreover, hormone therapy is in many countries of the Council of Europe region treated as a must, creating a false impression that every person desiring legal recognition is willing to subject themselves to such procedures, but also dangerously putting a lot of power into the hands of medical professionals instead having them simply provide services to their clients. We call this method gatekeeping.
There are many concerns in terms of parenting rights of transgender people as well – many of the Council of Europe member states lack the legal framework to protect families of transgender people from discrimination and sometimes even fail to provide recognition for those families whose members decided to transition. This is usually executed by not allowing to change one’s parental status, not reviewing unclear policies which do not give transgender people and their families the security that once they decide to change their legal status, they do not need to worry about their legal relations with their children. This is especially a concerns for parents of minors and other youth under the age of 18. And it of course also affects various forms of parental benefits.
Another great concern is the parenthood recognition of those transgender people who became parents after legal gender recognition, especially when a country does not give their citizens a possibility to include same-legal gender parents on a child’s birth certificate or any kind of other documentation. This matter is also extremely important to trans masculine persons who give birth, as they can have issues in accessing proper health care, especially in countries where pregnancy-related services are defined to be of female concern only.
Of significant importance is also marriage and/or registered partnership where applicable. In most countries to execute legal gender recognition a transgender person is expected to be of “unmarried” status, which for many individuals means that they are expected to divorce their spouse. In many cases the practice destroys those relationships altogether. In some Council of Europe members states a divorce is not a simple procedure, but a long court process, which in addition might end in creating an impression that it is the person’s transgender status that is the reason of the divorce and not unfair procedures.
Some countries provide a possibility to automatically transform one’s marriage into registered partnership after the legal gender recognition process has been finalized. This, even though it might seems as a satisfying alternative, is nothing of a kind, since it is still restricting marital rights simply because of gender status and nothing else. Therefore marriage equality is also a transgender concern. But it is not the only perspective, as transgender people are of many various and diverse sexual orientations and also seek marriage equality of the same reasons cisgender lesbian, gay and bisexual persons do.
Sadly, within the Council of Europe, there are still members states which do not allow transgender people to marry after their legal gender recognition, denying them any form of legally establishing a relationship.
And last for this presentation, but not least in terms of how many other issues are there, transgender people are being denied proper sexual healthcare. This includes gynecology services for trans masculine persons as well as andrology and urology for trans feminine persons. Sexual health of transgender people has always been quite problematic for gatekeepers, since it is been only recently that the subject of transgender sexuality has become an open topic, where research is being conducted and transgender people themselves are speaking out on how they view their own sexuality and not how it is viewed by others.
In many countries, we observe a significant lack of knowledge on transgender sexual health and sexual needs, leaving transgender people without proper healthcare, as transgender is not a subject of concern in medical studies and if it is, it is highly pathologized and only viewed through gender recognition procedures and not the actual needs of this specific group. Transgender people are not given proper information on STI prevention, safer-sex, contraception methods and general sexual healthcare, which leads to a significant marginalization of transgender needs. This is extremely worrying when one considers that transgender people are a group in high risk of poverty, being subjected to violence and various other situations which affect their possibility to participate in social processes and societal situations, especially when a person is of transgender and other sensitive status for example, a transgender person of color or a disabled transgender person.
Forced sterilization and castration – an inhumane violation
Before I finish the presentation, I would like to draw your attention to one of our current main concerns in today’s struggle for transgender human rights – forced sterilizations and castrations.
Within the Council of Europe, transgender reproductive rights have not been highlighted for a very long time. Two days ago we have received this wonderful resolution, but we have still a long way to go.
In fact, up to this day the European Court of Human Rights did not rule in any case involving forced sterilization or castration. The Court has even stated that although gender transition is a right which needs to be secured by the Council of Europe member states, it is up to those states to define how this process is executed. In many cases this means creating an environment where sterilization, castration, hormone therapy and other surgeries become part of the legal process, seen as “much needed prerequisites”.
If you look at the map of transgender rights prepared by Transgender Europe and ILGA-Europe you will definitely see that the situation is still alarming. Countries marked in red do not give their citizens and residents the possibility to change their legal gender status, countries marked in orange have legal or practical provisions in place, but requite sterilization or castration before legal recognition and, in the end, we have those few blue countries, where transgender people are not submitted to castration nor sterilization. This does not, of course, mean that the gender recognition process is easy, it does, however, bring a bit of hope to the whole situation.
And, finally, let us recap and use the information gathered during the creation of this map to summarize what is the overall situation of transgender reproductive, parenting and sexual rights
Legal Gender Recognition
Legal Gender Recognition (Change of Name/ Gender marker in key documents) is NOT possible in 16 countries
34 countries have provisions for Legal Gender Recognition, but Out of those:
24 countries require sterilization by law
All countries require a mental health diagnosis/psychological opinion (Not Sweden – please mind that this map was also created before new changes came into practice)
19 countries require divorce
All legal (this is to be changed when Sweden adopts its new law) provisions for a trans person’s gender identity recognition require a mental health diagnosis. Only five countries (Austria, Germany, Portugal, Hungary and UK) allow for these procedures without further violating the right to physical integrity. Though Hungary and UK force a married trans person to divorce as pre-requisite.
Protection from Hatred and transphobic Violence
9 countries protect trans people against hate crime
Asylum
5 countries recognize ‘fear of prosecution on grounds of gender identity’ as asylum ground
Equality and Non-Discrimination
15 countries provide protection against discrimination in employment
The mandate of 21 equality bodies extends to cover trans people
10 countries have trans-inclusive equality action plans
Family
15 countries do not allow a trans person to marry upon legal gender recognition.
With that said, I would like to thank you for your attention and if you have any questions, I am available to answer or at least try to answer any of them. If you do not feel like asking a question at this very moment, I am available throughout the rest of the day and later on via one of the many channels listed in the presentation.
Thank you.
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