Trans-exclusionary Discourses on Social Media in Spain

What made current Spanish feminism shift toward transfeminism? Based on in-depth interviews and literature reviews, we explore what factors facilitated the participation of trans
women in Spanish feminism. Tracing the history through relevant events such as the National Feminist Conferences, it becomes clear that trans
women participated in the 1993, 2000, and 2009 conferences, posing relevant issues regarding prostitution, transgenderism, and the political subject of feminism. Our research allows a break with global oppositional narratives, in which these movements are in conflict, and highlights the importance of understanding the vernacular nuances that take place in a particular geopolitical context.

The social and political debates on transgender rights in Spain is the focus of this article: it seeks to place current initiatives, claims and policy developments as well as political actors in their social, political and institutional context. It also explores new develop- ments in the cultural, social and political ‘trans’ agenda. Particular attention is then paid to mapping trans discourses, made possible through theories of frame analysis and problem representation. Also, I discuss the benefits and limits of different kinds of framing strategies and discourses that have been used in the struggle for transgender rights, in which one of the most relevant criteria that organize the representations is the so-called ‘gender dysphoria’ frame. As a result, the emphasis on a medical and legal diagnosis has led to a new mobilization: anti-psychiatrization activism, which questions the binary organization of society.

2016

European Journal of Women's Studies, 2023

Trans-exclusionary feminists are using the trope of ‘protecting women’ as their main weapon while accusing trans-inclusive feminisms of misogyny. It is a rhetorical figure that we can call ‘the weaponization of accusations of violence’. And we witness it as a strategy cutting across many contexts, for example, blanket accusations of anti-Semitism against anti-Zionists, accusations of Hinduphobia to shut down resistance against Hindutva, and accusations of misogyny and sexual violence against transfeminism or trans-inclusive feminism. In this article, I discuss such accusations of violence together with examples that demonstrate that they often come with an absolute incapacity to conceive of the most basic intersectional analysis. I argue that trans-exclusionary feminism is getting the very paradigms of what misogyny is and what kind of intersectional, transnational feminisms are needed to fight it, completely wrong. With this, anti-trans feminism reveals itself to be inherently anti-feminist. We are currently witnessing a supernational unification of far right, centrist and leftist agents using anti-gender, anti-feminist and transphobic mobilisations, populist affects and strategic disinformation as accelerators for hateful and anti-democratic agendas. Ultimately, this leads to a consolidation of the global shift to the right.

2021

The aim of this article is to trace genealogies of transfeminism in France and in Spain. It examines the relationship of transfeminism alongside third-wave and second-wave feminist political objectives, the struggle against transpathologization, and the resistance to the binary sex/gender system. It also addresses the politics of translating queer in the European context, showing how transfeminism is a critique of Anglo white queer theory and its capacity for disembodiment. The postporn movement—a distinctive feature of Spanish transfeminism—is offered as a productive use of the body as a means to resist biopower through creative counterproduction and space occupation. The authors argue that transfeminism is about not only resignification but also rematerialization and is a way of getting away from English as an imperialistic language and a reaction against the theoretical excesses of US first-wave white queer theory.

Critical Social Policy, 2020

Beatriz Espejo has worked in Barcelona as a trans-sex-worker since the 1980s, and in 1993 she founded the CTC, one of the leading activist organisations in the Spanish trans movement during the '00s. The CTC had a direct impact on the definition of the Spanish law on gender identity. Although it may seem like a success story, this activist articu-lation has been conflicted and complicated: alliances between multiple and divergent political positions have proven difficult. This article explores the interconnections between personal experiences, implications of social policies, academic reflections and historical documents in order to unfold memories about im/possible articulations and dis/ tensions between and among asymmetric positions; stories about how the sustainability of collective action may need institutional support and require unclear tactical transformations of political demands.

The Age of Human Rights Journal

Between the summer of 2019 and the summer of 2021, a violent discussion about trans rights took place in Spain. This paper argues that the discussion can be understood as an instance of ‘social problems work’, more specifically as part of a moral crusade or a moral panic episode. Implicit in this is the idea that there has been an over-reaction to trans recognition and trans equality laws, publicly presented as a major social problem. This paper also provides legal arguments against the fears voiced in the discussion, by summarizing relevant ECHR case-law that agrees with an alternative feminist account of trans rights that de-pathologizes gender-identity self-determination. The paper thus suggests that a ‘cultural war’ over gender identity has been ignited and has yet to be fully fought and won.

TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, 2015

In this essay, I draw on my experience as a trans, Francophone, feminist researcher to share my reflections on the difficulties encountered within Francophone contexts in the development of knowledge that moves beyond “the familiar and overly simplistic dichotomy often drawn between an exclusionary transphobic feminism and an inclusive trans-affirming feminism” (Call for papers, TSQ). Without reducing the work of the few Francophone researchers interested in trans/feminisms, including mine, to the fight against exclusionary, transphobic feminist theories, policies, and practices, I demonstrate how problematic it is to articulate our work in terms other than the exclusion/inclusion of trans people within feminism. I offer as a case study the 2015 edition of the 7e Congrès international des recherches féministes dans la francophonie (7th International Conference of Francophone Feminist Research), currently the world’s most important Francophone feminist conference, to illustrate the near total silence that reigns on trans issues in Francophone feminist communities. Link: http://tsq.dukejournals.org/content/3/1-2/40.abstract

Trans Liberalism, capitalist restructuring, and the praxis of radical transfeminism In regards to the position of trans people, our current historical moment is one of materialising fresh extremes. While, in the West, public discourse and consciousness of trans issues is increasing, with increased positive media representation and trans celebrities, intertwined with a fresh push for transgender legal rights (such as legal gender recognition, employment rights, rights for trans-related healthcare, marriage rights, etc.), the stratification of liveable trans and gender non-conforming lives along the line of race, class, gender, dis/ability, indigeneity and migration status remains firmly and increasingly in place. This paper will argue that our current moment of liberal transgender politics -of 'trans liberalism' -harmonises and reassures global capitalist restructuring and this stratification. Such capitalist restructuring takes forms known as austerity, structural adjustment and the extraction of wealth from surplus populations (such as incarcerated people, alongside migrant people and refugees). Now is the key moment to ask if a socially reformist trans rights agender is predicated on the inclusion of a privileged few into capitalist society, pulling up the ladder and dividing trans and gender non-conforming populations along material hierarchies of race and class, gender, dis/ability and migration status.