A year ago, Spain introduced gender self-ID, and the results have been predictably disastrous for women, with predatory men granting themselves access to female spaces. Spiked‘s Lauren Smith investigates.
Barely a year after Spain passed its ‘trans equality’ law, gender self-identification is wreaking havoc across the country. To almost no one’s surprise, the law that makes it significantly easier for anyone to legally change their gender has turned out to be a predator’s charter.
Since early 2023, it has become astonishingly easy to change your legal gender in Spain. All you have to do is make two official declarations at a registry office, three months apart. There is no medical consultation or intervention needed, nor do you need to show proof that you actually intend to live life as your chosen gender. You don’t even need to be over 18. Sixteen-year-olds can legally change their name and gender, while 14- and 15-year-olds can do so with parental consent. Even children as young as 12 can legally make the switch with a judge’s approval.
The new law has taken a shredder to women’s rights. As anyone could have predicted, single-sex spaces have been all but abolished. And many other legal protections that women once fought for have disappeared overnight.
Last week, Ana Dávila-Ponce de León, councillor for family, youth and social affairs in Madrid, sent a letter to Spanish equality minister Ana Redondo García denouncing the new law. She had been made aware of a number of cases in Madrid in which men accused of crimes against women have abused the self-ID rules.
These cases, detailed in El Mundo and reported on in English by Reduxx, are truly chilling. According to records, there have been six known cases so far in Madrid of men accused of violence against women legally changing their gender. In three of these cases, the men went on to apply to stay in women’s shelters. So far, it appears that shelter staff have refused them entry. But this is technically illegal under the trans-equality law. It is only a matter of time before a woman’s shelter is punished simply for doing its job – namely, for protecting women from predatory men.
In one particularly disturbing case, a woman reported a man to the police for allegedly drugging and raping her in front of her young daughter. She later found out that he had legally changed his gender. This meant that a number of protections she would ordinarily be entitled to have now been taken away.
Worth reading in full.
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