Manifesto Trans Awareness Day 2023 “Being invisible is not a superpower”

This Friday 31 March marks International Trans Visibility Day.

As every year, this year we commemorate Trans Visibility Day 2023, but this time we do so in particular circumstances: with the law for real and effective equality passed and waiting for its effects to unfold.

In this context, the battle that has been waged in the media in recent years has focused almost exclusively on the criminalisation of trans women as a major feminist issue. However, other trans realities, such as non-binary people and trans men, have been silenced in the debates.

From FELGTBI+ we claim that non-binary people are part of the trans community, which due to political interests, despite the recommendations of the CGPJ’s opinion, have not been included in the regulation proposed by the law. A law that we defend but which is incomplete. And that from today we are committed to fight for this reality to be protected and included in state legislation.

Likewise, the campaign of dehumanisation and hatred that we have experienced in recent years, as I said before, has focused its hatred on the reality of trans women.

Today we want to call for the visibility of trans men and boys and their reality, who are unjustly invisibilised or ignored, and whose right to exist is not respected. That trans masculinity is diverse and is constructed on the basis of new paradigms of masculinity with feminist roots. That gender is something much more complex than a division into two categories and there is no single way of being non-binary. And to seek justification for a non-binary identity in an androgynous appearance is to perpetuate the belief that body and identity always go hand in hand.

That trans men are not butch, masculine lesbians, and that just like trans women, trans men are men.

Men with their own particularities and realities that must be respected. It is intolerable that trans men are attacked, from conservative sectors, as fugitives from their gender assigned at birth. That it is they and only they who should decide their lives, and that the health systems of the autonomous communities should provide specific resources for them in the field of reproductive health and also in the field of emotional health.

The words of high-ranking officials of the autonomous communities referring to the suicides of trans children because of the trans and LGTBI law are just a smokescreen that evidences the ghosting and neglect towards the health of trans people, and trans children in particular, by some administrations.

Non-binary people must also be recognised and not denied. Their identities have become a mockery for some and an easy target for others, but we must remember that what is not talked about does not exist. They are still people with specific needs, trapped in legal loopholes, and rendered invisible by their differences.

Just as we must respect the pronouns of binary people, we must also respect the pronouns of people who choose to speak about themselves with -e. Because many people, beyond health protocols, seek first and foremost an explicit recognition of their identity, a language in which their own names and pronouns are respected.

Because not using neutral language with those who ask for it, claiming that it is incorrect or that it does not exist, is a way of saying that their identities are not correct and do not exist. And we must not lose sight of the fact that there are non-binary people, and binary people too, whose needs are not contemplated by the health system, which establishes a rigid protocol that marks the transition of all of them.

We also denounce the lack of commitments made by administrations, such as the Catalan, Valencian and others, to carry out contracted mastectomies and to put an end to the endless waiting lists, which are nothing more than a hollowing out of the health system for trans people perpetrated by the pressure of the terf lobby.

Finally, we celebrate that we were in the final vote and, finally, the publication and entry into force of the law 4/2023, of 28 February, for the real and effective equality of trans people and for the guarantee of the rights of LGTBI people, is a reality. That this law improves key aspects for trans people, such as access to assisted reproduction for trans people with the capacity to gestate, that conversion therapies are prohibited and that it finally puts an end to the pathologisation of trans identities, in such a way that not only can we self-determine our identity but also that no treatment or reports can be demanded of us.

Undoubtedly, the achievements made in the area of minors and the regime imposed by this law in terms of sanctions and administrative matters are a step forward.

Today, the protagonism that trans women have not asked for is being demanded by trans men and boys and non-binary people. Because their visibility demonstrates their struggle to be and to exist.

Here’s to a vindicative 31st of March!