A March 31 Interview with Venezuelan Trans Rights Activist, Tamara Adrian

In honour of International Day of Transgender Visibility we spoke with Tamara Adrian – Venezuelan lawyer, law professor, human rights activist and all round international trans rights activist. She spoke about transgender visibility in international arenas, the new ‘revolution’ in gender identity laws in Latin America, and some key questions facing trans communities in contemporary Venezuela.

Interview by Claire House
Tamara, I know this is available on the internet elsewhere, but could you briefly introduce yourself and your work?
Well I’m a lawyer. I have a doctorate in law from Paris university. I’m a law professor in Venezuela, in three different universities, the Universidad Central de Venezuela, the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello and the Universidad Metropolitana. I’m part of several movements in Venezuela. I have an organisation called DIVERLEX, which is the acting world trans secretariat of ILGA. I’m also part of an organisation that is close to a party of the left, Voluntad Popular, and the organisation that I have there is called Pro-Inclusión (Pro-Inclusion). As well, I am part of several other organisations in the area of women’s rights, democracy and the protection of human rights. I’m also, well, as I told you the acting world trans secretary of ILGA at the moment.
Perhaps you could start by speaking a bit about what trans rights are like in the Venezuelan context and what your experiences – as an international figurehead, if you like, for trans activism – are as well?
Okay let me change a little bit your question, if I may, and start from the international point of view, and then to the Latin American, and then to Venezuela. I think its much more useful to do it that way. The trans community was almost invisible until 2005-2006. Although in this alphabet soup we have this “T” present since the late 1990s in almost every organisation, in practice what happened was that gay – mostly gay – movements were co-opting trans movements, and deciding what the trans movement should be within their organisations – not being trans themselves. So in general, well, trans movements were co-opted and invisibilised in almost every LGBTI organisation. Many of these organisations addressed trans issues, as I told you, from the perspective of gay men at that time – and still now, as they are still running most of these organisations. At that time part of the HIV organisations were starting to take into account the specific needs of trans populations. But as with the World Health Organisation and with various Latin American organisations, trans movements were commonly considered to be MSM (Men who have Sex with Men) and were therefore co-opted and invisibilised also, in the description of MSM.
That was pretty much the situation until 2004, 2005, 2006. By around that time, two things happened. One, several trans organisations were starting to have a proper voice. Two, the mainstream philosophical and gender movements started to take into account the discourse of the early trans activists, and incorporated it into the mainstream. This was the case with Judith Butler but also with other philosophers, social activists or researchers, etc.
So the idea of gender as dichotomous started because of trans activism, slowly, and yet then it was co-opted again by the mainstream philosophers, social workers, social researchers etc. So as you see the visibility of trans movements was a very sad story for a very long time because it was a story of trying to be visible and to be co-opted, and to be invisibilised by either the LGBTI organisations or the mainstream philosophers and researchers.
Do you think it is around this time that the question of trans autonomy, from LGB groups, becomes stronger?
Yeah there have been – since the late 1990s, but much more so since the early 2000s – a certain number of trans groups that started to organise towards the aim of having equal rights from the perspective of trans movements and not from the perspective of other external movements. I like sometimes to quote Martin Luther King – once referring to those white people who talk about equal rights in the United States. He addressed them, and he thanked them very much for their support, but what he said to them was something like: “do not talk for me, talk by me”. And this was pretty much the circumstances that surrounded, for a long time, the trans movements.
The fundamental reason for this is that, in general – as opposed to the LGB movements – the T movement was very late, because trans men and women are without any doubt for me the most vulnerable of any groups comprising the LGBTQI or whatever. They are the most vulnerable. And all of the studies – the few studies – that have been conducted about education, social, economic, cultural and work conditions, of the T groups, refer to very hard, very difficult situations, because of exclusion and discrimination; meaning that transphobia is 1,000% times worse than homophobia or lesbophobia.
For example, if you look at bullying cases – which mean that people quit school very early, sometimes before finishing the first stage of school – a great many of them refer to trans people, and not to lesbian or gay people. These are findings that are being reflected in new studies, about bullying and I think it’s pretty much the case. Which is why many trans people have a very poor education, and because of this low degree of education they are condemned in a way to have a very low proficiency in different fields. And their voices then cannot be heard, because they don’t have the means to properly talk about, or analyse sufficiently their situation.
So what changed?
What changed is that very few – but strong – trans activists start to come out from their closets after having accomplished their studies. This is my case, and this is the case of many others. So, what happened is that somehow you are in a much better position to talk and to analyse, and to describe, and to get to conclusions, and to conduct research, than the people who have only completed primary school or high school. So what changed is that this small group of new trans activists – that already had a profession or were pushing to have a place in national and international events – worked to promote arguments that were actually coming directly from the trans groups and reflecting trans needs. That is, not what the gays believed to be trans needs, and not what philosophers or social workers reported to be trans needs. And not only the discourse of trans people actually suffering discrimination, but having the ability to analyse, argue, promote and contend for equal rights.
So by 2005, many of these activists start to be working in international arenas. In 2006 in the ILGA international meeting in Geneva – for the first time they had a one and a half day pre-conference, devoted only to trans issues. So other activists – gay and lesbian activists – came to the sessions of the trans groups and realised that trans people had a new voice, a different voice, and that they were pushing for equal rights on the basis of much more powerful arguments. At that time, in a way, the discourse of lesbians and gays was relating really to only having equal rights for marriage and to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
But the trans groups started to talk about gender identity, gender expressions and gender non-conformity. And they started talking about the fact that gender theory should include trans people, because it was reflected in international treaties and the rights of women. Many argued that gender was a construction, a social construction. And many argued that if you are fighting against discrimination on the basis of gender then you have also to fight on the basis of non-conforming gender behaviour. And non-conforming gender behaviour would also cover lesbians and gays, because discrimination against lesbians and gays starts when they don’t conform to the stereotypes of gender and so on.
And suddenly it was a totally different discourse in these arenas, where it used to be the discourse of lesbians and gays, and it is new until now for many of them – let’s be frank. And in a very short period, let’s say 2005 to 2007, this discourse was so powerful, and was then adopted and included by many feminist organisations. And that started to create very powerful alliances with these groups, that were traditionally quite apart from the sexual diversity movements – and which are mainly the feminist movement, movements for racial equality etc. – they started to realise that there was a common goal. That the arguments which excluded women from equal opportunities were the same arguments that were used to exclude LGBTI persons from equal opportunities as well.
This was the work of a few activists at that time, and then suddenly it started to bloom this beautiful, and much more broader, gender protective movement, at the level of the UN at the level of the OAS (Organisation of American States), at the ECHR and so on. And suddenly you see the British gender identity law of 2004 and the gender identity law of Spain in 2008, when they start to allow legal changes of name and sex, without any kind of gender surgery – irrespective of what you genitalia is. And this was followed by many other countries very rapidly – in Europe you also have the gender identity law in Portugal, and so on.
And then we come to Latin America where, in Mexico city in 2009, they adopted a modification of the civil code in order to allow trans people to gain recognition of their gender identity, regardless of one’s genitalia. And then you have the same law that is approved – the gender identity law – in Uruguay in 2008, and in Argentina in 2012. You also have several other decisions in other countries in Latin America: some in Brazil, but also in Peru and Bolivia where they start to recognise your gender, irrespective of what your genitalia is. In a different sense you have another movement in Ecuador where you can change your name but not your sex, in the documents. And in Colombia you have exactly the same situation: you can have your name changed by a very easy procedure, but you cannot change your sex without genital surgery. So there is a movement to recognise gender without reassignment surgery.
In the case of Venezuela, it was actually one of the very first countries in the world to legally recognise transsexual identity, in 1977, by the standards of that time. And over the next twenty years there were many favourable decisions to recognise trans identity. But after 1998, when Chavez came in, there has not been a single legal recognition of trans identity in Venezuela. They have been totally reluctant to discuss anything in favour of equal rights for trans people, and have always blocked discussion on these matters.
What we do have is a local law – or civil registry law– which I was involved in drafting. What happened is that I was an advisor for the commission and I introduced a proposal to make it possible to change your name and sex, by means of a legal decision (pretty much what is of now, in the Argentinean law). But they limited it in the law; guaranteeing only the possibility of changing one’s name but not sex (a little bit like what is happening in Brazil with the discussion of “nome social” or social name).
However, it is theoretically allowed by this law. The law entered into effect in 2010 and since then we have filed about 70 petitions, and of these only one was decided, and it was decided against the petitioner – saying that sex and gender were the same thing. All the rest have not been decided, many of them dating back almost three years. Last year in November a group of trans women allied to Chavez, requested for the recognition of their names and until now and they haven’t received any response either. We have requested to the National Electoral Council which is the organ in charge of the civil registry, to rule in favour of name changes for trans people. I have made several petitions myself and other NGOs have also done this. We also had a meeting with the chief officer of the civil registry and in his opinion we are not going to get anything because in his view sex and gender were the same things. So we have to go again before the National Assembly in order to get a modification.
So when you see the situation and you compare it with what is happening in the rest of Latin America, particularly in Colombia, Ecuador, Uruguay and Argentina and somehow also in Brazil – although they have a lot of contradictions in their jurisprudence – or in Peru and Bolivia. You are going to see that, unfortunately, much of this so-called revolution is pretty fundamentalist with regard to gender identity issues.
In Venezuela, we don’t have any kind of public health assistance for trans people, we don’t have any programmes relating to healthcare for trans people, nor with regard to hormone therapy. So people are by themselves, without any healthcare consideration or in some cases, just following the counsels of a friend. You know what that means – someone is taking hormones and ’ah, take these and this and this and this’. And finally there are some cases where they are able to pay, in private practice, but not in the public health system.
So in fact, the trans movement from the point of view of public policies, the point of view of equal rights, is certainly invisibilised in Venezuela. But as opposite to that, there is starting to be a strong trans movement in Venezuela.
And what about trans men?
Trans men in Venezuela are now, much more present in trans movements, I think for two reasons. One is the fact that many trans men conduct their transitions, some, with the help of private doctors that are specialised in gender issues and, as opposite to what happened with trans women (who would normally take care of hormones by themselves without any supervision), in the case of trans men it is much more common for them to use these health services.
And two, in general they have a higher level of education, than trans women. On average this movement is of people who have completed at least high school and some of them have university diplomas. So in fact they are much more trained than trans women. So what is happening now, and it is unfortunate, is that because we are not able to get any legal gains, and most trans men have a formal work, they are not willing to expose themselves to public knowledge, that they are trans men so they are starting to be quiet. I conducted a number of interviews last year and most of them had formal work, and not bad formal work – I mean the people who they work for normally appreciated their work and they got promotions etc., provided they keep quiet about their gender identity. That is a key difference I think between trans women and trans men. Trans women in a sense are not allowed to be invisible and are rarely invisible.
You can find out more about Tamara’s views and work by logging onto her blog, or following her page on facebook.