The trans debate has derailed
share-arrowDela
unsaveSpara
expand-left
full screen Signe Krantz attends Aftonbladet’s editorial training course. She has been an intern on Aftonbladet’s editorial page during March. Photo: Robin Lorentz Allard
In April last year I was threatened with death. A man in a bar told me how he wanted to kill me and said I wasn’t logical. He thought I deserved to die because I “went against the norm” and was “both, a man and a woman at the same time.”
The only thing I had done was sit at the same table as him. He couldn’t focus on anything other than questioning me about my body, my life, and my philosophical views on sex. I believe that most social problems can be solved with conversation and understanding, so I tried to explain as best I could.
The thank you I received was an “unlawful threat with a hate crime motive”, as the police labeled it. They never found him.
But despite the trauma as the event meant, I felt safe. I knew the state was on my side because a few years earlier they had approved my legal gender change.
More trans people deserve that chance.
I almost never speak in public about my experiences as a transgender person. There are more interesting things about me. I’m a woman who is a geek, educated political scientist and has around 30 potted plants in my apartment.
Statistics, team texts and idea debates are more important than what I went through. But the trans debate in Sweden has crossed too many borders. This is about people.
That’s why I’m telling you.
In a journal entry from my gender dysphoria investigation you can read that I have a “well-ordered external and feminine appearance”.
One may ask why a doctor should judge what is feminine and on what grounds. But it wasn’t because she wanted to do it, but because I would need it later.
In order to change my legal gender, I had to convince the National Board of Health and Welfare’s legal advice that I was a woman. My doctors would face it”carefully” describe my experiences. The council – which otherwise makes decisions about late-term abortions and sterilization – would determine how credible I was as a woman.
I knew I needed to give a feminine impression so that the members of the Judicial Council—politicians and doctors who had never met me—would think I was woman enough for them. The Judicial Council has a history of starting from stereotypical gender norms.
pullquote It wasn’t ideology that made me come out
The Judicial Council approved my application. If it had been just a few years earlier, I would have had to sterilize myself too. And swear dearly and holy that I hadn’t saved any gametes. The law aimed to make it impossible for transgender people to pass on their genes.
But despite protests from KD and SD, forced sterilizations ended in 2013.
It has passed a frontier in mass media. I and other trans people are described as cult members or ideologically motivated. Our rights are compared to those of sex offenders. A doctor claims that transgender people are a fabrication created by pharmaceutical companies to sell hormones. Despots like Putin, Trump and Bolsonaro limit transgender people by painting us as an “ideology” rather than a group of people.
It wasn’t ideology that made me stop living my whole life in the closet. On the other hand, it is ideology to think that people should deny themselves because they are not what you think people “should” be.
I can’t define what a woman is more than I can define Swedish. There are too many gray areas and exceptions for a definition that is both consistent and useful. For example, no one checks if someone has a uterus and XX chromosomes before they say “she”. Neither biology nor identity covers all situations.
Nevertheless, I always say “woman”. Because the context makes it clear what I mean.
We will never know why trans people exist, but we know to we are.
Today it can take six years to change legal gender and even longer to vaginal surgery. A new gender identity law, which has been under investigation for over ten years, would shorten that process. Then trans people would also avoid feeling that they are at risk of being rejected because they were wearing the wrong clothes during an appointment with a doctor.
The rest of the Nordic countries have already gone ahead of us in that matter.
When I talk to other trans people, many have lost hope. They no longer believe that healthcare, politics, authorities and the media are on their side. They’ve been burned too many times.
On April 17, Sweden has the chance to regain some of that trust.
Being allowed to change legal gender would mean that the state is on one’s side when one is violated, questioned or hated.
More people deserve that opportunity.