Adding an additional option to the gender markers on documents would mean accepting a hierarchy that is worth questioning. The author of this text, whose case has opened a crack in the Foreigners' Registry, reflects on the possibilities of a future without gender checkboxes.
Legal recognition
- Resource
Last year Alana, supported by their lawyer Olga Burgos, achieved a ground-breaking sentence from the High Court of Justice of Andalucia (TSJA in Spanish), which came to the conclusion that they needed to be registered in the Central Registry of Foreigners with a "not specified" sex, as"non-binary" or with "X", as they have this recognised in their country of origin.
- Resource
You can change your name and sex/gender with the Andalusian Health Service (SAS), even if you have not changed them at the Civil Registry. This may be especially useful for people with a non-Spanish nationality who cannot change their name and sex/gender in their country (and also not in Spain with the Trans Law), or for non-binary people or other identities in Spain for which the Trans Law does not apply.
- Article
Published in El Salto, 16 February 2020 (original in Spanish)
After more than three years, and more than five years of the recognition of the free determination of gender identity in Andalusia, in November 2019, I finally achieved exactly this: that the Andalusian Health Service recognized my gender identity outside the binary of man and woman, as, in my case 'indeterminate' (not to say 'genderqueer'). It has been a long and sometimes frustrating struggle.