Benefit for Amor Para Todos Happens April 30
Gary Carnivele
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UNITED, NOT UNIFORM: LESBIAN VISIBILITY WEEK STARTS ON MONDAY, APRIL 22ND WITH EVENTS UNFOLDING NATIONWIDE
Lesbian Visibility Week (#LVW24) kicks off on Monday, April 22nd with a private event at the London Stock Exchange USA headquarters in New York City. This exclusive gathering marks the beginning of a week-long celebration filled with virtual and in-person events happening across the nation, in addition to the unveiling of the highly anticipated 2024 Curve Power List, a popular who’s who that honors the achievements of LGBTQ+ women and nonbinary trailblazers, as nominated by the public.
This year’s Lesbian Visibility Week runs through Sunday, April 28th and focuses on the theme “United, Not Uniform,” a commitment to solidarity with all LGBTQ+ women and nonbinary people and designed to promote unity, uplift those who face the greatest marginalization within the community, and to celebrate the joy and strength of sisterhood by highlighting remarkable contributions across generations, disciplines, and nations worldwide.
“What began as a day of recognition in 2008 has blossomed into a full week of festivities, thanks to the visionary efforts of Linda Riley at DIVA Magazine in 2020, and bolstered by White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s pronouncements in 2023. Lesbian Visibility Week is a celebration of the diversity, resilience, and beauty of the Curve community — which includes all LGBTQ+ women and nonbinary people.” — Franco Stevens, founder of Curve Magazine and
co-founder of The Curve Foundation
Highlights from the week include the Netflix premiere of the award-winning documentary “AHEAD OF THE CURVE.” Directed by Jen Rainin and Rivkah Beth Medow, the film chronicles Stevens’ inspiring efforts to amplify the voices of LGBTQ+ women and nonbinary individuals over the 30-year run of Curve Magazine, the most successful lesbian magazine in the world.
Featuring popular cover stars such as Lea Delaria and Melissa Etheridge, AHEAD OF THE CURVE celebrates resilience, community, and the transformative power of lesbian visibility, showcasing the evolution of Curve from its humble beginnings to its profound impact on queer representation, through to today and the inception of The Curve Foundation.
Additional highlights from Lesbian Visibility Week include:
- Curve Magazine releases its Lesbian Visibility Week issue
- “Beyond the Rainbow” Two-Spirit Healing Water Ceremony and Panel Discussion
- “Beyond the Rainbow” Queer Women of Color Leaders Panel Discussion
- “Beyond the Rainbow” Archiving Our History Panel with Joan Nestle
- Lighting of San Francisco Hall (San Francisco, CA)
- Sapphic Saturday Music Festival (Indianapolis, IN)
- Full week of events in Provincetown, MA – visit https://lesbianvisibilityweekptown.com
The full Lesbian Visibility Week calendar is available at https://lesbianvisibilityweekusa.com. Organizations hosting their own #LVW24 events are invited to submit them for publication in the calendar and to access an activation pack of helpful materials and planning information.
ABOUT THE CURVE FOUNDATIONThe only national nonprofit championing LGBTQ+ women and nonbinary people’s culture and stories, The Curve Foundation works to empower and amplify the voices of the Curve Community – lesbians, queer women, trans women, and nonbinary people of all races, ages, and abilities. In addition to Lesbian Visibility Week and the Curve Power List, the Curve Foundation’s programming includes: the Curve Award for Emerging Journalists, created to recognize emerging journalists and raise the visibility of LGBTQ+ women and nonbinary people; and the Curve Archive, a permanent and searchable archive of 30 years of magazine issues.
For more information about the organization, visit https://thecurvefoundation.org.
7th Annual Sonoma Valley Authors Festival Announces World-Class Lineup of Authors
The Sonoma Valley Authors Festival (SVAF) announces its impressive lineup of world-class authors and speakers for its seventh annual event on April 26-28, 2024, at the Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn & Spa. The three-day event delivers a highly curated experience designed to “stimulate the minds and nurture the souls of readers.” This year’s speakers include: Doris Kearns Goodwin, David Grann, Hampton Sides, Amy Tan, Colm Tóibín, Jonathan Eig, Elliot Ackerman, Admiral James Stavridis, Kori Schake, Akhil Reed Amar, Dr. Deepak Srivastava, Wade Davis, Anita Gail Jones, Luis A. Miranda Jr., Craig Frazier, PBS NewsHour’s Jeffrey Brown, with more authors and speakers to be announced.
Founded in 2018 by Ginny and David Freeman as a 501(c)(3) non-profit public charity focused on education and community involvement, the Sonoma Valley Authors Festival has quickly become a must-attend event for those committed to enriching their lives through literature, learning, science, technology, and medicine.
Though the festival Pavilion is limited to 400 seats, the sponsors in those seats make substantial donations that fund the other free events – Students Day, Authors on the Plaza, the Virtual Festival, and special events that engage thousands of community members. The festival currently has a matching gift program in place to leverage all donations to help extend the reach of free access.
“The intimacy of the Sonoma Valley Authors Festival creates amazing synergies, where the audience is as interesting as the speakers!” says Ginny Freeman, one of the festival co-founders. “The festival audience is well-educated, well-traveled, and dedicated to lifelong learning and life enrichment. The atmosphere engages speakers and audiences alike, forming connections among audience members that are as equally magical as that of the audience and speakers.”
The festival’s programming offers a series of Ted Talk-style sessions in the main pavilion and breakout sessions. Over the three-day immersion weekend, attendees will hear from over 20+ authors from various literary genres who discuss advances being made in science, technology, and medicine.
The intimate setting of the Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn & Spa provides the perfect environment for attendees to meet and interact with the 20+ authors and speakers. Return interviewer Jeffrey Brown, Senior Correspondent and Chief Arts Correspondent for PBS News-Hour, aptly describes the experience, “One of the nice things for the people who attend the festival is they get to talk to the authors. Not only hear them speak, but actually ask the authors their own questions – they can share what they like about the book, and in turn get to know the authors.”
Since the inception of the festival, Students Day at Sonoma Valley High School and other local schools, aims to inspire intellectual curiosity in the next generation. This April, over 1,400 young scholars will have the chance to meet and engage with speakers and receive free books written by the presenting authors. Each year, 3,000 to 4,000 books written are given free to the students, all supported by private donations. Due to campus safety protocols, Students Day is not open to the public.
In addition to the main event, SVAF hosts Authors on the Plaza, the free and open to the public event for the Sonoma community. The event is held on Saturday, April 27, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m, under the trees on the lawn of the historic Sonoma Plaza. This year’s event will feature David Grann, Amy Tan and Colm Tóibín.
Three-day VIP Festival Passes start at $2,750 and include access to all presentations, two on-site breakfasts and lunches, an exclusive dinner with the authors, and free access to the Virtual Festival. More than 50% of each VIP pass is a tax-deductible donation. For more information about the 2024 Sonoma Valley Authors Festival and to purchase passes, please visit the website.
The Sonoma Valley Authors Festival is made possible through the generous support of individual donors, corporate sponsors, and committed volunteers. Co-founders Ginny and David Freeman have dedicated time and personal financial commitment to ensure the success of this non-profit 501(c)(3) organization.
About Sonoma Valley Authors Festival: The Sonoma Valley Authors Festival (SVAF) was founded in 2018 by Ginny and David Freeman as a 501(c)(3) non-profit public charity focused on education and community involvement. This annual event brings together literature enthusiasts and lifelong learners to engage with world-class authors of all genres and speakers in science, technology, and medicine. SVAF is supported by individual donors, corporate sponsors, and dedicated local volunteers. Past authors have included: Isabel Allende, Dave Barry, Bill Browder, Bonnie Garmus, Amor Towles, Billy Collins, and Abraham Verghese.
Two military members denied promotions for having HIV just won their lawsuit
An Air Force cadet and a Navy midshipman have won their lawsuit after being denied promotions for being HIV-positive.
Former Navy midshipman Kevin Deese and former Air Force cadet John Doe (a pseudonym) filed the lawsuit against the Department of Defense in 2018 when they were denied commissions after graduating from their respective service academies simply because they are living with HIV.
The settlement, announced Monday, will see that the two are commissioned as officers “in recognition of the status and military careers they qualified for and earned years ago,” according to a Lambda Legal press release.
“Joining my brave co-plaintiff in this case was, for me, about demonstrating the very leadership that inspired me to a military career. I follow the mantra of 2004 Naval Academy graduate Travis Manion — ‘If not me, then who?’” Deese said in a statement. “Now, 10 years after my Naval Academy graduation, future midshipmen and cadets living with HIV will be able to commission with their classmates upon graduation. And I could not be more proud to finally be commissioning.”
The DoD announced policy changes in June, 2022 that rescinded some of the military’s former restrictions discriminating against service members living with HIV. Now, those who are asymptomatic with undetectable viral load “will have no restrictions applied to their deployment or to their ability to commission … solely on the basis of their HIV-positive status.”
“We are gratified that our clients, who were denied officer commissions they had earned because of the U.S. military’s discriminatory policy of withholding career advancement opportunities from HIV-positive service members, will now be able to achieve their goals,” said Kara Ingelhart, senior attorney at Lambda Legal. “Service members living with HIV, once affected by an outdated, discriminatory policy, no longer face discharge, bans on commissioning, or bans on deployment simply because they are living with HIV.”
The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics transgender women from competing in women’s sports
The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, or NAIA, which oversees more than 83,000 athletes at mostly smaller colleges, has rolled out a new policy that bans transgender women from competing in women’s sports, making it the first major college sports governing body in the U.S. to do so.
The policy states that only student athletes whose assigned sex at birth is female will be allowed to compete on NAIA-sponsored women’s sports teams. The organization’s Council of Presidents voted 20-0 to approve the policy on Monday, and it will take effect Aug. 1.
Under the new policy, transgender men and trans masculine students can compete on women’s teams if they haven’t started masculinizing hormone therapy. Those who have will also be barred from NAIA competition, but they can participate in workouts, practices and team activities for women’s teams. However, the NAIA policy states their participation is “at the discretion” of their college. All students, including trans men and trans women, will be allowed to compete on men’s teams, according to the policy.
The NAIA did not immediately return a request for comment. Jim Carr, the organization’s president and CEO, told The Associated Press that the policy was deemed best for member schools but also acknowledged that it will likely be seen as controversial.
“We know there are a lot of opinions, and a lot of people have a very emotional reaction to this, and we want to be respectful of all that,” Carr said. “But we feel like our primary responsibility is fairness in competition, so we are following that path. And we’ve tried as best we could to allow for some participation by all.”
The move makes the NAIA, which oversees more than 200 schools, the latest sports governing body to restrict the participation of transgender students as trans people’s participation in various aspects of public life has become increasingly politicized. Half of states have passed laws or regulations in recent years that restrict or completely bar trans students from competing on the elementary, middle, high school and/or college sports teams that align with their gender identities.
The NAIA had a transgender sports policy that was similar to the NCAA’s, the body that oversees collegiate athletics for more than 1,000 colleges and universities. Since 2011, the NCAA allowed trans women to compete on women’s sports teams if they underwent one year of testosterone suppression.
The NCAA changed that policy in January 2022, following controversy over Lia Thomas, a trans University of Pennsylvania swimmer who won a number of racesearly in her season and went on to win an NCAA championship. The NCAA adopted a sport-by-sport approach that determines eligibility based on guidelines set by the national or international governing body of each sport.
In response to the NCAA’s policy change, the NAIA formed a Transgender Task Force in April 2022.
The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organization, denounced the NAIA’s new policy Monday.
“Today, the NAIA decided to bar an entire category of people from competition simply because of a right-wing outrage campaign that purposefully misrepresents and distorts the realities of transgender athletes while doing nothing to support women’s sports,” Kelley Robinson, the organization’s president, said in a statement. “The benefits of sports to the mind, body, and spirit are well known. Every student, including transgender student athletes, deserve the opportunity to be a part of a team and to learn about sportsmanship, self-discipline, perseverance and more.”
Sasha Buchert, director of the Nonbinary and Transgender Rights Project at Lambda Legal, a national LGBTQ rights legal organization, went a step further, saying the NAIA’s new policy is “inconsistent with the law and science.”
“It is unconscionable that an organization that touts its ‘strong history of advocacy’ has chosen to use its power to smack down, rather than lift up these vulnerable athletes,” Buchert said in a statement.
Both Buchert and Robinson touted recent comments by South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley, who said before her team won the NCAA championship game on Sunday that she supports trans women’s inclusion on women’s sports teams.
“I’m on the opinion of, if you’re a woman you should play,” Staley told reporters Saturday. “If you consider yourself a woman and you want to play sports, or vice versa, you should be able to play. That’s my opinion.”
LGBTQ rights organizations have filed lawsuits against a number of states with laws restricting transgender student athlete participation, arguing that they violate Title IX, a federal law that protects students from sex-based discrimination in federally funded schools, and the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
Carr, the NAIA president, said he believes the group’s new policy conforms with Title IX. “For us, we believed our first responsibility was to create fairness and competition in the NAIA,” he told CBS Sports. “We also think it aligns with the reasons Title IX was created. You’re allowed to have separate but equal opportunities for women to compete.”
So far, President Joe Biden’s administration has largely supported trans students’ access to sports teams that align with their gender identities, but more recently said it might allow some restrictions on their participation. In January 2021, the Education Department published a federal notice that it would interpret Title IX to protect LGBTQ students from discrimination.
Then, in April 2023, the department proposed a rule that would change Title IX to bar blanket prohibitions on trans students competing on sports teams that align with their gender identities. However, the measure would permit some restrictions in more elite levels of sports competition, such as high school and college. The department planned to finalize and release that rule in March, though there have been multiple delays.
Evidence around youth gender care ‘remarkably weak’, major English review says
Medical evidence underlying gender care for adolescents is “remarkably weak” and provides little clarity on long-term outcomes, according to an in-depth review of care commissioned by England’s state-funded National Health Service.
Gender care can include anything from counselling to medications related to gender issues, including drugs that can pause puberty.
The final report of the Cass Review, led by prominent pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass and which includes research from independent academics at the University of York as well as input from families and clinicians was released on Wednesday.
The report concludes that young people with gender dysphoria — the distress of identifying as a gender different from the one assigned at birth — deserve better care but stresses that there is a lack of good evidence about how best to provide that.
The review was commissioned by the National Health Service in 2020, after the service — in line with other countries in Europe as well as the United States — saw increasing numbers of young people seeking gender care and differing opinions among experts about how best to help them.
The NHS has already announced that, in future, puberty-blocking drugs in England will only be available for young people experiencing gender distress in the context of a clinical trial. It acted after the Cass Review published interim recommendations in 2022. There is little detail yet on how this trial may work.
As part of plans to widen access to gender care and broaden the professionals involved, the NHS has also closed the previous provider of gender care for young people and replaced it with two new services in London and northwest England.
However, there is a huge backlog of cases after delays in getting services operational, and several thousand young people remain stuck in limbo on years-long waiting lists.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he welcomed the “care and compassion” of the review.
“We simply do not know the long-term impacts of medical treatment or social transitioning… and we should therefore exercise extreme caution,” he said.
The Cass Review urges extreme caution around providing masculinizing or feminizing hormones before the age of 18.
But on social transition — changing names or pronouns — it concludes there is a lack of good evidence on the impact. It recommends professionals are consulted early on for pre-pubertal children, but for adolescents, “exploration is a normal process and rigid binary gender stereotypes can be unhelpful.”
Grassomoxoa at Occidental Center for the Arts Saturday, April 20
Saturday April 20 @ 8 pm. Grassomoxoa at Occidental Center for the Arts. Don’t miss this awesome 420 show at OCA! Grassomoxoa performs bluegrass music of the Grateful Dead and more. Featuring Scotty Brown, Riley Hill, Isaac Cantor and Bud Dillard, this will be one dance party you don’t want to miss! Tickets $20 GA, $15 OCA members@ www.occidentalcenterforthearts.org; or at the door. Doors open at 7:30 pm. Limited seating. Fine refreshments available, Art Gallery open. OCA is accessible to mobility-challenged patrons. 3850 Doris Murphy Ct. Occidental, CA. 95465. 707-874-9392.
Trans and nonbinary migrants file complaint over treatment at ICE detention facility
Activists have filed a civil rights complaint with the Department of Homeland Security on behalf of five transgender and nonbinary migrants who say they were mistreated at an immigration detention center in Colorado.
They are currently detained at the Aurora Contract Detention Facility, a prison privately owned and operated by the GEO Group, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement incarcerates people who have pending or recently concluded immigration legal matters.
The complaint, filed Wednesday, says the five suffered medical neglect, inadequate access to necessary medical and mental health care, dehumanizing treatment, and more. It calls for major changes in ICE’s handling of transgenderand nonbinary migrants. The migrants are represented by the National Immigration Project, Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, and American Immigration Council.
“Our clients and medical experts reveal that ICE cannot safely and humanely incarcerate people who are transgender and nonbinary (‘TNB’),” the complaint states. “Immigration detention negatively impacts their mental health, impedes timely access to gender affirming care, and triggers prior trauma. … We call for an end to the practice of detaining people who are TNB in civil immigration detention. At a minimum, ICE must both implement new policies that provide more robust safeguards to TNB people in the agency’s custody as well as exert regular oversight to ensure that protective policies are followed in practice.”
Under President Barack Obama’s administration, DHS implemented policies aimed at mitigating some of the worst outcomes faced by trans people in ICE custody, “but the policies clearly failed to improve conditions of confinement,” the complaint says.
The migrants are identified by pseudonyms in the complaint to protect their privacy. One of them, Charlotte, sought transfer to the Aurora facility from an ICE detention center in Georgia and was told that she would have better access to gender-affirming care at Aurora, according to the complaint. But in Aurora, she and other trans women she is detained with are locked in their dorm for at least 23 hours a day, she says.
“I thought they’d take care of us, give us more freedom, recognize that we have suffered the most, we are the most vulnerable,” she says in the document. “We came from our countries being horribly treated and we get here and they treat us horribly.”
Another, Victoria, “who has been detained in ICE custody for more than two years, is on hormone replacement therapy but has faced months-long waits to see doctors about her hypertension,” the complaint says. “She recalls that on one occasion her ‘blood pressure was so high, [she] thought she was going to die.’”
“The traumatic experiences detailed in this complaint make clear that ICE is incapable of safely and humanely incarcerating transgender and nonbinary people,” Ann Garcia, staff attorney at the National Immigration Project, said in a press release. “As a result, we urge DHS to put an immediate and permanent end to ICE’s practice of detaining transgender and nonbinary people. Until that happens, at a minimum, ICE must immediately implement new policies to provide safeguards to transgender and nonbinary people in their custody while also implementing regular oversight practices to guarantee adherence to these protective policies. Ultimately, however, we know the abuse and mistreatment documented in this complaint are emblematic of a detention system that is inherently inhumane and flawed beyond repair, and we will continue fighting to end this cruel and harmful system.”
New research helps explain why lesbians report more orgasms than straight women
Research over the last decade has found that lesbians have more orgasms than straight women, but questions remained as to why.
A new study published this month in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science found that these differences when it comes to pleasure could be in part due to sexual scripts — or what people expect to happen during sex based on what they’ve seen in movies, television or even pornography. Cisgender women’s expectations for those sexual scripts and for orgasms can vary based on the gender of their partner, the study found.
Past research has found that men have more orgasms than women, creating what researchers call the orgasm gap. Previous studies have also found that lesbians have orgasms at rates similar to men, which shows that there’s “nothing inherently biological” about the orgasm gap, according to Grace Wetzel, one of the study’s authors and a psychology doctoral candidate at Rutgers University. Wetzel said she wanted to look into the “sexual context” missing from that research, or the other psychological and social factors affecting differences in orgasm rates.
“We wanted to look into why that disparity between lesbian and heterosexual women exists so that we could get a better understanding of why the orgasm gap exists in general,” she said.
Wetzel and two other researchers designed two online studies — one of heterosexual women and lesbians and another of bisexual women. The first study asked a mixed group of 476 heterosexual women and lesbians about the importance of orgasms and their expectations about climaxing during sex. It found that lesbians reported more clitoral stimulation in their sexual encounters, higher orgasm expectations, greater orgasm pursuit and having more orgasms than heterosexual women. However, orgasms were equally important to heterosexual women as they were to lesbians.
In the second study of 482 bisexual participants, the researchers asked the women similar questions about their expectations of orgasms and how strongly they would pursue them in a hypothetical sexual encounter with either a man or a woman.
That study found that bisexual women had the same orgasm pursuit and importance regardless of partner gender in the hypothetical scenario, but those partnered with women in those cases had higher expectations for clitoral stimulation and orgasms than those hypothetically partnered with men. This means that partner gender, through varying sexual scripts, is indirectly associated with greater orgasm pursuit, the study found.
The average sexual script, or what people expect to happen during sex based on TV, culture and more, between a man and a woman, according to the study, includes foreplay, then vaginal intercourse, from which the man orgasms, and then sex ends.
“This heterosexual script prioritizes the man’s orgasm, as intercourse alone is associated with the lowest orgasm frequency for women,” the study said. Women who have sex with women are more likely to engage in nonpenetrative acts and don’t adhere as much to any sexual script based on gender, researchers added.
“What we should take away from this research is that when women are having sex with men, in general, they’re typically not experiencing enough clitoral stimulation to facilitate an equal opportunity for orgasm,” Wetzel said, adding that the findings should encourage heterosexual couples to improve communication during sex.
Wetzel noted that the study shouldn’t lead couples to feel pressure, because other research has shown that such pressure will make orgasms less likely and less enjoyable. Rather, couples, regardless of sexuality and gender, could “work to make their sexual encounters more pleasurable in general by including those sex acts that are most likely to result in orgasm for their partner.”
The study is limited in part by its correlational design, Wetzel said. As a result, the researchers don’t know all of the factors that affect the difference in orgasm frequency between lesbians and heterosexual women. Some of the other factors behind that difference could be that women feel more comfortable communicating with other women versus men about what they need to experience orgasm. That’s where the second study is helpful, she said, because the only variation between the hypothetical sexual encounters bisexual women were asked about was the gender of their partner.
“That doesn’t mean there still can’t be other factors at play as well, but because of that experiment in the second study, we feel more confident saying that these sexual scripts are differing based on partner gender,” she said.
Incia Rashid-Dawdy, a counselor with the Expansive Group, a therapy practice based in New York City and Chicago, said the study shows how people in heteronormative relationships have been socially conditioned to see orgasm through vaginal penetration as a “goal,” while people in queer relationships aren’t going into sex with the same gendered expectations.
“When we’re talking about queer relationships, lesbian relationships, we’re talking about how, in order for them to be able to understand how to make each other feel good, they need to talk about it,” she said. “This is a reminder that there’s no one way to have sex.”
Mexico: Guanajuato Should Legally Recognize Trans Identities
Trans people in the Mexican state of Guanajuato suffer economic, medical, and labor discrimination, as well as other onerous legal impediments, because the state has no process for issuing identity documents consistent with their gender, Human Rights Watch said in a documentaryreleased today. Guanajuato’s authorities should urgently create an administrative procedure to allow trans people to reflect their self-declared gender identity on official documents.
The Keys to My Freedom, produced in collaboration with Amicus DH, is released on the heels of International Transgender Day of Visibility. It follows the stories of two transgender women, Ivanna Tovar and Kassandra Mendoza, who have fought to have their gender and names legally recognized in Guanajuato. Eight additional trans people from the state also share brief experiences of discrimination and messages of hope.
“The documentary powerfully shows how trans people in Guanajuato are disadvantaged in work and education and weighed down with legal proceedings due to authorities’ undue delay in recognizing their gender identity,” said Cristian González Cabrera, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The governor and state congress should urgently establish a legal gender recognition procedure that will contribute to reducing discrimination.”
Each of Mexico’s 32 states has the authority to determine its laws and policies in civil, family, and registration matters in accordance with the constitution. It is up to the state legislature or state governor to pass a law or issue an administrative decree that enables legal gender recognition through a simple administrative procedure at a state-level civil registry. Twenty-one Mexican states already have such a procedure. Guanajuato does not.
“It has been difficult to find a job,” says Kassandra Mendoza in the documentary regarding her lack of documents reflecting her gender identity. “[Employers] see my documents, then they see me and say, ‘This doesn’t add up.’ I’ve been made fun of, I’ve even been insulted.”
Ivanna Tovar says in the documentary: “Without a gender identity reform, we [trans people] cannot work in a dignified manner because we are violated, because we are not called by the [legal] names that appear in our documents, and [dealing with that] is the state’s responsibility.” She described gender recognition as her “keys to [her] freedom.”
In October 2021, a state lawmaker, Dessire Ángel Rocha, introduced a legal gender recognition bill, but the bill has not advanced in the current legislature. Previous gender recognition bills presented in February 2019, October 2019, and April 2021 also did not advance.Until last month, the state congress was unwilling to consider bills relating to the rights of LGBT people. In February 2024, the state passed the Law for Persons of Sexual and Gender Diversity. It aims to establish coordination mechanisms between various authorities, as well as guiding principles, “to promote, protect and progressively guarantee” the rights of LGBT people. However, this reform did not address gender recognition for trans people.
Human Rights Watch and Amicus DH, together with the Trans Youth Network and Colmena 41, interviewed 31 trans people from Guanajuato state in April 2022 in the cities of León, Irapuato, and Guanajuato city, as well as remotely, to understand and document the harm related to a lack of legal gender recognition in the state. They found that the absence of a legal gender recognition procedure in Guanajuato leads to serious economic, legal, health, and other ramifications for trans people.
In states like Guanajuato without procedures for legal gender recognition, transgender people have to initiate an onerous legal proceeding to enjoin the state to recognize their gender identity on the basis of the Supreme Court rulings and international law. Federal judges generally grant the injunction, but it can be a lengthy and expensive process which requires hiring an experienced lawyer.
In a successful case, the judge orders the civil registry to permanently seal a trans person’s original birth certificate, meaning it is no longer readily accessible in its information systems, and to issue a corrected certificate. This new state birth certificate is necessary to request new nationally valid identification documents like a voter registration card, a tax number, or a passport.
In 2017, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued an advisory opinion saying that states must establish simple and efficient legal gender recognition procedures based on self-identification, without invasive and pathologizing requirements. The ruling is an authoritative interpretation of the American Convention on Human Rights, which Mexico has ratified.
In 2019, the Mexican Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling with clear guidelines on legal gender recognition. The court said that this must be an administrative process that “meets the standards of privacy, simplicity, expeditiousness, and adequate protection of gender identity” set by the Inter-American Court.
The Supreme Court ruling binds all lower federal courts. The court said that in order to comply with the constitution, state authorities should ensure that trans people can update their legal documents through an administrative process. In 2022, the court expanded the right to legal gender recognition to include adolescents and other children.
“The trans people who shared their stories in the documentary are just a few of the many trans people who are suffering under the state’s inaction on gender recognition,” González said. “Guanajuato should heed activists’ calls and Mexican law and join the majority of Mexican states that uphold the rights of their gender minorities by creating an administrative gender recognition procedure.”