Earning a living as a trans man
Genre: documentary
Country: Ecuador
Running time: 5.34 (first part) y 6.16 (second part)
Produced by: Kunka Libre Productions
The Trans House (Transfeminist Political Residence) sent us from Ecuador “Earning a living as a trans man: masculinity and working experience”, a very interesting mini-documentary presented by the Ecuatorian Federation of trans and intersex identities (Confetrans) and the Transgender Project, and sponsored by the Central-American Women's Fund.
The documentary is presented in two parts in which Coli Fernández tells us about his work experience. The first thing that strikes us is the tender age at which he starts working (13 years old), charging money in a bus. From that first job until his current job as assistant in a school, he has had to hide his legal identity and has had to fight to keep that secret.
His journey took him from working in a bus to being a carpenter, working at a shoemaker's, as a clerk in a hardware shop, as assistant in a printing press and in many other jobs in with different grades of success. One of the problems has been the strength needed to carry out some of the jobs – there have been some for which he hasn't been strong enough, like at the carpentry or the printing press because of the weight of damp wood and paper packages. This lack of physical strength sometimes arose the suspicion that he was homosexual. Furthermore, sometimes he lost his job immediately when circumstances out of his control caused his identity to be revealed.
All along he hasn't had medical insurance, nor the work stability that his years of service should guarantee him, and all of that because he says he has lost his identity card to avoid having to face the incongruence between his identity and the one that the legal documents assign him. This is another case that shows the importance of trans people having documents that register their identity, not as a reflection of their sex, but of the conviction of who they are, in order to diminish the instability in which they live.
The great lesson that Coli gives us is that he is not looking forward to be a man because he already is one. In his own words, “for me, being a man is being as I am”, a man is not defined because he imitates others' parameters, but by the way he carries on with his life, as the man he was since he was a boy.
We congratulate this initiative and the support that the Trans House gives to people like Coli.
Go to the documental
