Breaking with his party, the PSOE, and sending a signal to European left-wing women, who are generally aligned in defence of transactivist right-wingism, the Federación de Mujeres Progresistas launches a courageous manifesto against Ley Trans desired by the governing majority in Spain (PSOE and Podemos) and being approved by an emergency procedure, without any real parliamentary debate or broad public discussion. The initiative also stems from in response to the resounding break between historic Spanish feminism -united in the cartel Contraborrado- and the largest party of the left to enter into dialogue with the People's Party.
Also in Italy, feminism had to fight with its bare hands to break the silence whereby the Zan ddl was about to surreptitiously introduce free gender identity without discussion into our legal system. We did it, and the bill did not become law. The danger has been averted for now but not definitively. The interests at stake are colossal.
In 2023 Spain will go to the vote: the left-wing majority is risking and the Ley Trans could be the final blow to the PSOE: this is the framework in which the manifesto of the Mujeres Progresistas was conceived.
We bring it up again because enumerates many good arguments against transactivist claims (on some of these topics we maintain some reservations). And perhaps could inspire an act of courage in their PD and Italian left-wing counterparts who have put up an insurmountable wall in the face of the excellent arguments put forward by radical feminism against free gender identity and in particular against the pharmacological and surgical manipulation of girls and children with behaviours gender nonconforming.
Horribly the brand new guidelines of theWorld Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) lower the age limits for puberty blockers, hormones or surgery to 9 years in order to enlarge the market for the benefit of Big Pharma and maximise the transfactor's profits, advising health professionals to 'challenging' parents who do not support the medical transition: We will talk about it soon.
After the autonomous 'trans laws' already approved and in force, the Council of Ministers approved a draft of a state 'trans law', which was transmitted to the Cortes (29-6-22) providing for the emergency procedure. We oppose this bill (as well as the 'trans laws' already passed, which should be repealed) for the following reasons:
The bill defines 'trans persons' as those 'whose sexual identity does not correspond to the sex assigned at birth' (Art. 3, J). In turn, 'sexual identity' is defined as 'the internal, individual experience of sex as each person feels and self-defines it' (Art. 3, h). Such vague and subjective 'definitions' prevent the object of the right from being defined and its specific requirements from being met.
Faced with people expressing discomfort about their sex/gender, the draft law imposes the so-called 'affirmative treatment' (consisting of acceptance of the patient's self-diagnosis claiming to have another gender identity). Any other diagnosis can be considered to be covered by the 'methods, programmes and aversion, conversion or counterconditioning therapies, in any form whatsoever, intended to change the sexual orientation or gender identity or expression of persons even if they have the consent of the person concerned. person'. These interventions are prohibited (Art. 17) and involve penalties of up to EUR 150,000 (Arts. 75, 4 and 76.3).
Accordingly, these people lose their right to:
A. a psychological assessment (they will go directly to endocrinology or family medicine), which is necessary to assess the presence and intensity of discomfort (dysphoria) and detect concomitant comorbidities (anxiety, depression, autism spectrum disorders, or abuse situations, etc.) and a differential diagnosis with other similar situations
B. psychological support that addresses the causes of discomfortThese may have to do with various issues, including: lack of self-esteem, conflicts with the assigned gender role, difficulties experienced in relationships, the search for sexual orientation, etc. Furthermore, by imposing this 'affirmative model' the draft law prevents us from analysing and addressing increasingly frequent phenomena, such as:
a. 'sudden onset gender dysphoria', often associated with the social contagion (groups of friends declaring themselves trans at the same time) and the increase (4.000% in ten years) minors, mostly females, who declare themselves trans.
b. detransitions (people who, after hormone treatment and/or irreversible surgery, want to go back).
The 'affirmative model' imposed by the bill induces children, adolescents and young people who feel uneasy about their sex/gender to make a 'social transit' (change of name, clothing, etc.), to which it may follow hormonal intervention and frequently surgical treatments: amputations of breasts, genitals, 'construction' of non-functional vaginas or penises with skin from other parts of the body, etc., in search of a biologically impossible 'sex change'.
These treatments and interventions can have (especially if performed in adolescence) serious and irreversible consequences: infertility, anorgasmia and others that are still little known, due to the fact that studies on children and adolescents have only a few years of follow-up.
It is to be expected that in a few years time there will be (in fact, it has already begun) a wave of quereland against the professionals who advised, permitted or performed such treatments.
Aware of these dangers, other countries around us are restricting children's access to this care (Finland, Sweden) and allowing the investigation of thousands of cases of 'trans' minors to examine possible medical liability (United Kingdom).
EMPTIES THE LEGAL CATEGORY 'SEX' OF CONTENT
The bill is not aimed at transgender people, but at the entire population. If approved, anyone can register at the civil registry office and change their legal gender without any obligation (Art. 38).
In this way, turns the legal category 'sex' into something arbitrary, empty, which means nothing. It introduces a new category that will take precedence over that of sex: 'sexual identity'., which it defines as "internal and individual experience of sex as each person feels and defines himself, which may or may not correspond to the sex assigned at birth' (Art. 3 hr). The entire legal structure is thus built on a subjective, non-scientific, indefinable and indemonstrable concept.
UNDERMINES SAFE SPACES, WOMEN-SPECIFIC RIGHTS AND GENDER EQUALITY POLICIES
By allowing any man to be legally considered a woman without any obligation, the bill jeopardises safe spaces and rights (such as equal shares) conquered by women. The door opens in the presence of men, even sexual assaulters, in toilets, locker rooms, sports teams, reception centres, prisons, etc, hitherto reserved for women, as is already the case in other countries.
It cannot be argued that 'there are very few cases' and 'only those who need it will use the law', since we do not know how many 'trans people' there are (it is too undefined a concept), nor can we predict how many people will use the law and for what purposes (legal sex change will be a right of anyone, without motivation or requirements, which makes impossible to distinguish between 'real trannies' and 'frauds'). Moreover, it only takes a small number of individuals to alter the principles of justice, fair play, security, etc., which affect all women, as well as the very concept of 'woman'.
MAKES EQUALITY POLICIES IMPOSSIBLE
Gender equality policies will be impossible if the 'woman' category become independent of biological sex and is redefined to include males.
This would prevent, if the law is passed, the make visible, measure and analyse inequality between men and women. For instance, if male rapists identify themselves as women, before or after the crime, and are counted as such in the statistics, these will no longer adequately describe the reality, making it difficult to act accordingly. Another example: how to understand the wage gap if there is not even a word to define the category of people who can conceive, give birth and breastfeed?
The bill (arts. 72 to 77) provides for very severe penalties (fines of up to EUR 150,000, closure of establishments, disqualification of subsidies...) and of an administrative nature (with no guarantee of legal proceedings) to conduct described in broad and vague terms, such as the 'refusal to serve or assist those who have suffered any kind of discrimination based on sexual orientation and identity, gender expression or sexual characteristics' (Art. 75, c) or the aforementioned 'aversion, conversion or counterconditioning programmes or therapies' (Art. 75, d).
Although queer theory is diverse and complex, what is reaching society is a schematic and simplified version , which we shall call "transgenderist ideology". It is this ideology that we want to criticise, as it is accepted by public opinion and acquires normative force.
Creating the acronym 'LGTBIQ'.transactivism:
A. in an interested manner confuses very different concepts: orientation sexual (lesbian, gay and bisexual), self-identification of genre ('trans people') with very different conditions (simple name change, transvestism, surgery... ) and genetic anomalieshe (intersexuality).
B. fa abusively one with one's cause and the causeactually very different (but much more popular), non-discrimination of homosexuals and bisexuals.
C. appropriates feminist struggles in order to distort and deactivate them.
Feminism uses the concept of 'gender' to analyse the power relations between men and women and refer to a social structure that subordinates women and the set of sexist roles and stereotypes that serve to entrench and justify this subordination. For feminism, 'gender' is something negative, which must be fought to achieve equality.
Transgenderism attributes to the term 'gender' a completely different and positive meaning: an individual, purely subjective 'identity' that is not questioned or fought over but celebrated on the sole condition that it can be chosen independently of biological sex. In this way, transgenderism attacks the waterline of the feminist struggle.
Transgenderism denies the biological definition of the sexes, claiming that being female or male is a mysterious innate 'identity'. "Woman is whoever feels like a woman." But this is a circular and empty definition (If we cannot define 'woman', how does it feel to those who claim to feel like women?).
Basically what transgenderism does is reaffirm old sexist stereotypes: if a girl likes football, prefers to wear trousers, is competitive.... is really a boy, and if a boy is sweet, likes dolls and dresses up as a fairy it is because he is a girl.
Transgenderist ideology pushes children whose behaviour does not conform to gender roles, and who may be homosexual, to identify themselves as persons of the opposite sex (hence, heterosexuals).
It therefore provides an (homophobic) 'explanation' and 'solution' to homosexuality.
Being female or male entails certain bodily experiences, different by sex, that we subjectively process in ways dictated by society and culture.
At the same time, biological sex (such as race or social class, but more clearly and invariably in the case of gender) places each individual in a certain place within a social structure. Being a woman leads to consequences that range - depending on the country and the era - from not being born (selective abortion), to undergoing genital mutilation or being sold, as a girl, into marriage with an older man, to being trafficked into prostitution, to having to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, to earning less than a man for the same work, or to performing compulsory and free domestic and care work.
If 'woman' becomes the name of a group that has no objective definition (it cannot be delimited in biological terms because that would be an 'exclusive' definition), which can include men with no other motivation than their will, which ultimately means nothing or even disappears (replaced by euphemisms such as 'pregnant person', 'menstruators', 'people with wombs', etc.), How can we conceptually unite the different forms of discrimination that are common to all women? How to visualise the historical and geographical continuity of these experiences, their common denominator? How can we be a political subject?
Denying biology, stating that subjective perception has priority over material reality and is able to transform it without limit, transgenderism is a first step along the line of transhumanism. Thus progressing towards a society in which privileged people, those with access to economic, medical, cultural.., can -or will- try to fulfil body-related desires by using come storage for spare parts, the bodies of people, particularly poor women (through 'subrogation' for example).
Feminism has embraced the idea of diversity in a sense of 'intersectionality', i.e. emphasising the inclusion and defence of women who suffer multiple oppression or discrimination, within the principle of equality. Transgenderism forgets equality in favour of 'diversity' which, in practice, means:
A. amalgamating very different problems, that would require specific research and measures: Roma, disabled, migrants or lesbians do not have the same problems.
B. circumvent the demands of half the population for equality, women (a controversial political objective with an economic cost), offering instead the defence of 'different identities', often uncritically (without questioning patriarchal ideas and sexual hierarchies), purely aesthetic and reaffirming stereotypes.
Assuming transgenderist ideology, Much of the left is relegating the material and collective conditions of existence to oblivion, and stating that what matters, what really exists, are subjective and individual perceptions. Instead of working to improve women's living conditions on a collective level, it offers them the illusory solution of choosing to be men. The struggle becomes individual and individualistic, against the collective struggles that have advanced social and equal rights for decades.
Similarly, this left defends desires instead of rights, forgetting that desires exercised by one privileged group at the expense of another that is in a worse situation: the desire for paid sex at the expense of the rights of prostituted women, that of 'intentional parents' at the expense of the rights of the woman who gestates and gives birth for them, that of those who undertake a 'sex change' at the expense of the cancellation of the fight for women's rights .
the original text can be found at here
