The new Spain's "Trans Law" 🏳️‍⚧️ is historical. It doesn’t only improve rights for trans people but also for lesbian cis-women and intersex people.

I haven't read much info about it in English and I believe it’s such a good Christmas 🎁 for the LGBT community so I'll explain it 👇

👉 Gender self-determination

The registry change of the name and gender in the ID will happen by judicial endorsement at ages 12—14; by the legal representatives' consent at ages 14—16; and free from the age of 16. It was already regulated in 15 out of 17 regions of Spain

👉 Depathologization

The text eliminates the medical requirements that until now were necessary: 2 years under hormones and a medical or psychological report that endorsed the existence of gender dysphoria, a term no longer accepted by the scientific community

👉 Conversion therapy ban and fines

Fines up to €150,000 to the promotion or practice of aversion or conversion methods and therapies, whether psychological, physical or through drugs that are intended to modify the sexual orientation, sexual identity or gender expression

👉 Children of unmarried lesbian couples or trans men with capacity to gestate

They will be able to proceed to the non-marital affiliation by declaration of agreement in the same terms as in the case of heterosexual couples.

Until now, in Spain, for the biological mother's unmarried partner to be able to appear as the child’s parent, they had to adopt them, which meant a processing time during which this second parent had no right or obligation to the child

👉 Rights for intersex people

The norm prohibits all those practices of genital modification in children under 12 years of age, except in cases in which medical indications are required to protect the health of the person.

👉 LGBT people in rural areas

Equality in access to services for LGTBI people in rural areas, in the same conditions as people residing in urban areas.

Study and data collection of the LGBT migration from their local residences due to rejection, discrimination or violence.

Source in Spanish by
El Pais: https://elpais.com/sociedad/2022-12-22/el-congreso-aprueba-la-ley-trans.html

Bonus track:

This is the emotional video when the Spanish parliament approved the Trans Law, this past Thursday. 🥹👏

https://twitter.com/rtvenoticias/status/1605924538708946944

El Congreso aprueba la ‘ley trans’ con apoyo del PSOE pero con la abstención de Carmen Calvo

Con 188 votos a favor, 150 en contra y siete abstenciones, la norma deberá ahora pasar por el Senado

El País

Edit: Many people are asking about "gender dysphoria being a term no longer accepted by the scientific community".

I think the original source (El País) refers to WHO removing ‘Gender Identity Disorder’ from their diagnostic guidelines:

https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/gender-identity-disorder/65852/

I'm not an expert in the topic, so sorry if I mix terms. I'm just trying to translate as better as possible to English.

WHO removes 'Gender Identity Disorder' diagnosis

The World Health Organization (WHO) removed 'Gender Identity Disorder' from their guidelines; so Trans individuals across the world should not be dismissed

Open Access Government

@marinaaisa Yo hablo de oídas nada más. Creo que antes la disforia se entendía como que tu mente estaba mal porque no aceptaba el sexo de tu cuerpo, es decir, trataban el ser trans como una enfermedad.

Ahora creo que se usa disforia para referirse a que sientes que tu cuerpo no es como tiene que ser, pero se considera una cosa a tratar más sobre el cuerpo, no como un problema mental.

En el fondo es lo mismo pero reconociendo la identidad de género como algo no patológico. Creo

@marinaaisa I seem to recall that gender dysphoria was removed but distress due to gender dysphoria remained on the DSM.
@marinaaisa
Utterly joyous. This is wonderful - to see Spain and Scotland joining countries like Argentina, Denmark, Iceland and Malta shows that #trans people's #HumanRights can be respected and celebrated.
@marinaaisa so happy so happy🙏🙏awesome!
@marinaaisa Thank you so much for providing this info, Marina. Spain always seems to be so far ahead of the rest of the free world, when it comes to LGBTQ+ issues.
@marinaaisa I have read several news stories since I saw this post, and have seen nothing about intersex rights. (Possible the news just doesn’t care enough to report on it). Do you have a source for this?
El Congreso aprueba la ‘ley trans’ con apoyo del PSOE pero con la abstención de Carmen Calvo

Con 188 votos a favor, 150 en contra y siete abstenciones, la norma deberá ahora pasar por el Senado

El País
@marinaaisa thank you for sharing this!! I didn't know about the intersex clause, that's wonderful to hear 🥲🥰 we tried to get this included in the legal change in Iceland a few years back but due to pressure and lobbying by doctors it was removed 🤬 do you have an idea of how effective this will be? I wonder bc often doctors will make up a medical reason for intersex surgeries that sound necessary even when they are not needed at all 😖
@villiljos I wish to know more about this topic but I don't, sorry. Thanks for your interest tho! I'm glad you liked it :)
@villiljos @marinaaisa
the text machine translated says "All those practices of genital modification in persons under 12 years of age are prohibited. Except in cases where medical indications require otherwise in order to protect the health of the person"
@villiljos @marinaaisa I skipped the caveat it gives for those over 12 for brevity, my source is this pdf from 11 days before passing, they didn't ammend it so it should be the same https://www.congreso.es/public_oficiales/L14/CONG/BOCG/A/BOCG-14-A-113-1.PDF page 31
@villiljos @marinaaisa I spoke with a citizen (i'm an immigrant and so spanish legalese is a bit weird to me), and they're pretty sure "indicaciones medicas" means impediments to the draining of biological fluids or the child being in pain, and similar things, and anything ridiculous would open the doctor up to being sued when the kid turns 18+15 years (statute of limitations)

@amymagdalena @villiljos @marinaaisa the criteria here would be set by the college of medicine, basically the licensing body, based on evidence-based research. Ultimately the courts get to decide in the case of a malpractice suit.

That being the case, unnecessary operations are not the norm here, due to much of the healthcare being public, and so resources are managed to avoid that. Specifically, circumcision on any set of genitals is not the norm.

@moof @amymagdalena @marinaaisa the problem for intersex people is that their genital mutilation has always been approved, even mandated by colleges of medicine all over the world even though they're completely unnecessary & even when they mean lifelong medical interventions such as hormone replacement therapy that would otherwise not have been needed. The medical community at large seems convinced these are necessary regardless of any evidence to the contrary😔
@amymagdalena @marinaaisa thank you! That sounds like it's pretty fail safe and difficult to misinterpret 😁 hopefully doctors are also getting informed about how unnecessary these surgeries are, it's truly ridiculous how many of them seem convinced of their necessity 😵‍💫
@marinaaisa oh that’s fascinating. Does it apply to circ*mcision as well? (I’m not sure about here, but on the birdsite you can’t mention the word without getting deluged by spammers.)
@Muppetk There isn't text search of Mastodon (not easily or built in) so you don't have to worry so much about that. Some people might have it filtered out, but that's not going to be a problem.
@ariaflame *blink* I hadn’t realized that!! Thank you! Huh, that’s going to make it harder to find my own past posts but that might be worth the greatly reduced trolling!
@Muppetk @ariaflame Use #hashtags if you want people to find a post, or to find what’s been posted on topics of interest
@tolortslubor @ariaflame good point, thank you! I mostly used hashtags for humor or for letting people mute a topic easily in the other place. Using them so that I can find something again makes a lot of sense! ❤️
@Muppetk I believe that practice is not common in Spain, but good question
@marinaaisa does this ban circumcision in Spain? I hope so. However, taking pleasure away from men is not entirely a bad idea.
@kumarvibe Circumcision in Spain is only performed in case of medical necessity (in case there's some actual medical problem caused by the foreskin)