The Spanish Socialist Party, in a historic decision, has abandoned the fight for women’s rights.
POSITIONING OF THE ALLIANCE AGAINST THE ERASURE OF WOMEN IN VIEW OF THE REFERRAL TO THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS OF THE DRAFT BILL FOR REAL AND EFFECTIVE EQUALITY OF TRANS PEOPLE
In flagrant contradiction to its own Position Statement of June 2020, in which the party warned about the dangers and legal uncertainty that derive from denying sex, today, however, it endorses the post-modern and neo-liberal theses that consider sex an irrelevant legal category.
The Socialist Party has ignored the repeated alarms of the feminist movement and its organisations, with whom it has not even agreed to meet, and has disregarded their legitimate concerns about the dire consequences of turning sex, an objective biological reality, into a fiction.
The PSOE, contrary to its own party statements, has as a government yielded both to coercion from groups threatening to ban its presence on Pride Day and to pressure from its minority partner in government.
Urged on by its minority partner, it has resorted to a legal subterfuge: in the draft bill, the term «gender identity» is removed and replaced by «sexual identity», as misrepresented by one of the associations that participated in the drafting of the text. These associations understand «sexual identity» to mean: «the subconscious psychological sex felt as one’s own by each person and which defines him or her as male or female». A definition far removed from what is scientifically understood as sexual identity.
Gender self-identification creates legal and health insecurity for transsexual people
The government that barely a month ago claimed that the main stumbling block was legal sex self-ID, today gives the green light, allowing legal sex change without any kind of accreditation or qualified verification of transsexuality. The mere will of the individual is neither a legal nor a health guarantee.
The government feeds the ceremony of confusion
This Bill is not aimed at transsexual people but at anyone who wishes to change their legal sex. The Explanatory Memorandum itself warns that the term «transsexual persons» «shall henceforth be replaced by trans persons».
The conspicuous absence of definitions in the Draft Bill is a ruse to include people who are neither transsexual nor gender dysphoric.
The consequences of making sex category irrelevant and allowing a general fictionalisation of sex available to the whole population have been repeatedly pointed out by feminism. It is not only the concept of «women» that is redefined. It allows men who self-identify as women to access women’s sport (Art. 25), equal representation quotas, the aid provided for women, and even allows men convicted of sexual assault to change their legal sex and access women’s prisons…
This endangers not only gender balance but also sex categories in sport, and the safety and protection of women from harassment and violence.
Specific laws and policies to defend women’s rights are being watered down
As a consequence of accepting the general fictionalisation of legal sex, public policies and laws in favour of equality between women and men and against violence against women, all of which are based on feminist analysis, are diluted: we are killed, we are raped, we are paid less… for being born women, not for «feeling like women».
The Draft Bill does not preserve the best interests of minors. It promotes conversion therapy for gay and lesbian minors by making them believe that their rejection of stereotypical gender mandates stems from being born into the wrong body (Section 8). They are led to believe that they must modify their bodies through hormones and surgeries. It is a form of indoctrination that has already shown its harmful effects in the UK or Sweden, among other countries.
Widows as «surviving pregnant spouses»
Although the Draft Bill has corrected some excesses of language present in the drafts of the Ministry of Equality, misogynist terms are maintained in the articles to refer to mother as «pregnant parent» (Final Provision One.5) or to widows as «surviving pregnant spouses» (Final Provision One.13). This dehumanisation of women is an insult repeated in all legal sex self-ID laws.
A new chapter in the Gag Law: we are now forbidden to talk about sex
The legal text’s intention to gag is made clear in the chapter on penalties in the Draft Bill (Title IV. Art. 72-78). The aspiration to coerce freedom of expression and opinion, which are not in accordance with the new trans dogma, is evident.
Fines of 150,000 euros are envisaged for health professionals who inquire into the reasons why someone rejects their sex, thus pushing health professionals to be complicit in deception.
The sanctions for those who in social networks or in the media do not uncritically accept the existence of a «felt sex» are an example of this desire to muzzle dissenting opinions. This draft bill establishes a single way of thinking.
Feminism, women’s organisations, will not stand idly by and watch this undisguised attack on women’s rights. The Sánchez Castejón government has chosen to confront us. And it will have us in front of it.
ALLIANCE AGAINST THE ERASURE OF WOMEN
Madrid, 21 June 2021.
