Looking at the headlines coming out of Spain this week, you might be confused as to whether the stories were actually taking place in the United States. The socialist-led government in Barcelona is currently considering a bill that would essentially eliminate the concept of gender from their entire system. (Sounding familiar yet?) The policy would basically remove any and all barriers to someone legally changing not just their name, but their gender on all government documents. This ability would extend to some children as well. But there are still many more conservative people, primarily Catholics, who are pushing back against such a proposal. And they’re finding unexpected allies among feminist women. Yes, the Spanish are having their own version of the “TERF wars” that we’ve been seeing here in America. (Associated Press)
A new law proposed by the far-left party in Spain’s coalition government would make it easier for residents to change genders for official purposes. A bill sponsored by Equality Minister Irene Montero aims to make gender self-determination — no diagnosis, medical treatment or judge required — the norm, with eligibility starting at age 16. Nearly 20 countries, eight of them in the European Union, already have similar laws.
Factions of the Catholic Church and the far-right have focused their opposition to the bill on the fact that it also would allow children under 16 to bypass parental objections and seek a judge’s assistance in accessing treatment for gender dysphoria, the medical term for the psychological distress that results from a conflict between an individual’s identity and birth-assigned sex.
Less expected has been the fierce resistance from some feminists and from within Spain’s Socialist-led government.
Unlike the current rules of the road in the United States, this bill would allow anyone at least sixteen years of age to simply fill out a card and make the change. There would be no requirement for a medical diagnosis, to say nothing of gender dysphoria treatment, and no legal process to go through. It would also remove the ability of parents to intervene when their sixteen-year-old children decide to embark on such a process.
Similar to proposals in America, the bill would also immediately assign public toilets and prisons to people based on their “registered gender.” As noted by some observers there, you can count on seeing a lot of male convicts suddenly deciding that they are female so they can be sent to a women’s prison rather than the ones designated for men.
Confluencia Feminista, a coalition of dozens of women’s rights groups across the country, has come out in opposition to the bill. They cite the negative impact such a change will have on women’s sports, as well as distorting public records in terms of social services. These are the women that the transgender lobby refers to as TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists). Their major arguments against such a change are mostly rooted in a fear that the government is in the process of “erasing women.” Rooting out misogyny and sexism becomes an even greater challenge when you’re not allowed to point out that actual women exist.
The European Union is already zooming into this strange world of a genderless society far faster than the United States, but liberals in this country are rushing to catch up. It’s yet another example of the “party of science” being more than happy to ignore, or even deny thousands of years of scientific data when it suits their political purposes. Sadly, they have found allies in the medical profession willing to ride along with them on this strange journey. Thus far there doesn’t seem to be any will inside the government to prevent girls from being shut out of women’s sports or to stop doctors from pumping dangerous puberty-blocking drugs into the bodies of “trans children,” despite those drugs never having been approved by the FDA for such purposes.
While I wouldn’t wish it on them, perhaps Spain can serve as a laboratory experiment to help inform the rest of the world, assuming they actually enact this measure. This is simply madness, but we appear to be living in a mad, mad world now.
