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  • Sonia Sierra

Mothers mobilize in Spain

No es transfobia; es prudencia

«Hasta hace relativamente poco tiempo, la disforia de sexo afectaba a una parte ínfima de la población y, sin embargo, ahora podemos hablar de contagio social»


A few days ago, AMANDA made its public presentation at the headquarters of the Illustrious College of Physicians of Madrid. AMANDA is the acronym for Agrupación de Madres de Adolescentes y Niñas con Disforia Acelerada, but Amanda also means "the one who must be loved", and that's what these mothers do: love their daughters deeply and try not to subject their bodies to mutilations or drugs that make them chronically ill even when they're healthy. It's an association of some three hundred families concerned that their sons, and especially their daughters, suffer from rapid-onset dysphoria, i.e., although they have never felt dissatisfied with their gender, suddenly, in adolescence, they show that they are of the opposite sex. Until relatively recently, gender dysphoria affected only a tiny proportion of the population, but we can now speak of a social contagion: in Great Britain, the number of people with gender dysphoria has risen by 4,000% in ten years. 000% in ten years, and as of 2018, the increase has been worldwide - among teenagers who self-diagnose and who, when they go to medical services, what they find, thanks to regional laws that are carbon copies of each other, are so-called "affirmative" therapies, i.e. they arrive there saying they're trans, the doctor agrees with them and they leave the surgery with a prescription for puberty blockers or transsexual hormones under their arm. This type of medication can lead to serious health problems such as cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, thrombosis, liver damage, vaginal atrophy, inability to have orgasms and infertility. In addition, many girls wear binders, which crush their breasts and cause problems such as chest, shoulder, back and abdominal pain, as well as skin problems such as swelling, infection and scarring. It seems logical that the parents of these children would prefer to find an alternative, but far from being the normal response, it has become heroic, and this is why the AMANDA mothers have earned the nickname "lionesses", as they fight as such against a system that accuses them of transphobia for simply trying to protect their children from something that is already having serious consequences in pioneering trans law countries such as the UK and Sweden, which are now facing lawsuits from those involved. Not to mention that, under the Rhodes Act, they risk losing custody of their children. After the presentation, AMANDA had called for a demonstration in front of the Reina Sofía, which I attended. A friend asked me why I was demonstrating, and I explained to her what queer ideology means, what the various laws inspired by it imply, and the repercussions this can have on children and teenagers. My friend couldn't believe what I was telling her and finally exclaimed, "I can't believe the government is allowing this." "It's not that they allow it, it's that they encourage it," I clarified. Of course, trying not to make too much noise and covering up the aberration of Irene Montero's trans law with hollow statements like "trans rights are human rights". That's why they've speeded up proceedings and prevented debate, so that what's behind it doesn't reach the public, because the majority of people reject it as soon as they hear about it. We must thank AMANDA for its courage, as well as the work of psychologists such as Laura Redondo, José Errati and Marino Pérez, who risk daily cancellations to try to shed light on all the barbarities that occur with this issue. The tireless work of Contra el Borrado de las Mujeres, whose most visible figure is lawyer Paula Fraga, also deserves special mention. So far, I've talked about the repercussions on children and teenagers, because their protection is a fundamental issue, but there's another terrible by-product of the implementation of queer ideology, namely that it's a veritable free-for-all for misogyny. Indeed, the question of what a woman is is constantly being asked - the Minister for Equality, without going any further, is incapable of answering this question - and everything is being done to do away with this word and others like "mother" and replace them with infamous constructions like "menstruating person", "pregnant person" or "breastfeeding person". Language is just the first step in this descent into a misogynist dystopia. Next, women lose their place on sports podiums because any man who declares himself trans, without altering his body one iota - note that the word "transsexual" has disappeared and been replaced by "transgender" or "trans" - and this in places like the USA means losing scholarships. They may also lose their place on electoral rolls to men who have suddenly seen the light and discovered that they are women, even if nothing in their previous biographies matches this good news. And what about top jobs? USA Today named Rachel Levine as one of the Women of the Year, while just ten years ago she was a brilliant married man with two children. But the most serious aspect of these trans laws is that they endanger the physical integrity of girls and women. Simply identifying as a woman means you're considered a woman for all intents and purposes, and you can share women's toilets and changing rooms with all the risk that entails for you: Primark, for example, has decided to make changing rooms gender-neutral and they are now a category of pornographic videos. And the most appalling case of unprotected women is in prisons, where sexual assaults and rapes are committed by these new women with intact penises who enter prison because, suddenly, their life in prison has made them realize that they're not really men. The problem is so serious that in the UK, it has already been announced that people with male genitalia will not be allowed into women's prisons. Unprotected women, healthy children and young people turned chronically ill, healthy breasts mutilated, arms skinned to create fake penises and women raped in what were once safe spaces are more than enough reasons to rethink national and regional trans laws. And no, it's not transphobia: it's caution.


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