To be or not to be, that is the dilemma

There are two situations that must be analyzed. On one side, we have the fact that someone else, in this case The Trans Latinamerican Net, assumes as itself the power, the right, and authority to determine who or what institution is trans or not. On the other hand, the very conception of TRANSSA to see itself as a valid interlocutor and activist in the trans community.

When the Trans Latinoamerican Net questions the members of TRANSSA because they are transformists and for not having adopted the trans identity (transvestite, transgender, transsexual) they open a big gap so that another instance, whether the church, the state, any person, could say "you are NOT a woman, you are NOT a man, you are not what you say you are." With this, we do not mean that no one can have a personal mind, but there is a difference between questioning a politician who promised something and did not fulfilled, because there's a specific reference, and to question the identity of someone who genuinely feels what he or she is.

It is not the first time that an institution is challenged by another (The Trans House of Ecuador was also delegitimized), or one person by someone else, it also happens in the feminist movement and has certainly happened in all the socialists, communists, environmentalists and other organizations. Then, the question fits, how and from which parameters can an identity be legitimized?, should we have the role to legitimize or delegitimize those who work for some identity or ideology?

Let’s go to the second point. TRANSSA defines itself as "a group of transformists, transvestites, transsexuals and transgender (trans) that works towards the unification and improvement of quality in life of its population through the major issues affecting our community in the field of Human Rights: Work, health care and education, promoting leadership, emotional support, and respect to any trans in Dominican Republic. They have an active participation defending the rights of trans people, supporting women's rights (against violence, in favor of abortion) against anything that goes against human rights, the respect for dignity, justice and other civil rights.

The claim came from the word or the transformist identity. However, the transvestism is known as a way of transformism, perhaps this last definition is used with an idea of transitory state and the transvestism about a more permanent status, but then the term has a dispute with transgender identity, someone who wear clothes, adopts a position, the role of another gender without undergoing a surgery; when it becomes even more permanent and the body has a physical and sexual change, the person becomes transsexual. Therefore, the limits are very narrow, they usually change.

In this way, the trans identities, where we include transformism, have the richness of breaking the binary system, disrupting our conventional way of understanding the gender, sex and identity of a single eternal and dormant manner. For that reason, we must be very careful when instead of gathering efforts, some groups tend to weaken the fragile trans community and the actions that each corner of the planet from various institutions.

We do not want to ban the dialogue and different enriching points of view, about the concepts, experiences, strategies, successes and mistakes of the trans community. We are rejecting a mega authority to define the other, to deny others just to detract as valid interlocutors and partners towards the same struggle. That attitude can only lead to isolation and authoritarianism, instead of creating a real global community, and politically able to work for human rights and especially for trans people.