Two new legislations: Mexico and Sweden
Mexico
Past August Mexico City approved a Law call Trans’ Law because it will allow change of gender identity in born acts. This fact is closely related with transsexual, transgender and transvestite people that nowadays don’t have any legal documentation that recognize their truly identity.
To take advantages of this Law it is necessary have Mexican nationality, be older than 18 or have the approved of a legal tutor and had started the treatment to sexual reassign at least five month ago.
Anyway this is a good step for equal rights for trans population, this procedures had a high cost, it is necessary to pay one thousand five hundred Mexican pesos which is like one hundred fifty dollars, that amount it is not possible for a lot of people, specially if we consider that minimum salary is about the same amount, one hundred sixty dollars or one thousand six hundred Mexican pesos. It means that this law is only allow for those who have the money to pay that are not the majority, and that poor trans people don’t have the right to use this law for change their identity. Also it is a law only valid in Mexico City, which means that all the rest of the country can’t access to this new legislation. This problem could make us think about it the real impact of this law.
Sweden
After Thomas Beatie, a transsexual man, take the decision to gestate his own baby because her wife was infertile, in Sweden there is an initiative to include castration for allow sexual reassign surgery, it means, complete removed of all sexual organs. Usually procedure that use hormones imply a natural impossibility to have kids because hormones had that effect, but it could be reverse, as did Beatie, different for castration that is a definitive procedure.
Many organizations had rejected this initiative, as The Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights (RFSL) and we hope it couldn’t success. But, in an article before about genocide written by Jeremy Kidd and Tarynn Witten said trans population that systematic violence could be become genocide when they want to forbidden reproduction of the group. That fact was already include in the legislation in the requisite of two years of hormone, which had an sterile effect, and also was explicit in other legislation (Holland, Austria, Finland, Germany y Belgium), and we are taking the risk that become a generalization with this initiative by Sweden.
Reference:
Sweden Law
http://www.thelocal.se:80/13448/20080802/
