bad-mojo: I’m gonna rant a little about a very...

13th January 2012

Post reblogged from džulory ladžala with 101 notes

I’m gonna rant a little about a very important issue and I’m tired and my words aren’t coming out right.

I don’t know how many people following me know this, but to legally change your gender in Sweden, you need to be force sterilized.
You are not allowed to save your eggs or sperm to have any future children.
You are not allowed to be married.

These laws are exactly 40 years old, and while Sweden has a rather dark past when it comes to force sterilization, (they used to do it for a variety of reasons, everything from chronic illness to someone being ‘asocial’), but those laws were repealed in 1976 -unless- you are transsexual.

A majority of the transsexual people NEED to legally change their gender to avoid suicide. It is not a choice for many, it is something you must do in order to survive.
If you are able to be the person you want to be without transition, then by all means, all the power to you, but this is still something that should not be acceptable!

Transsexuals are now the only group of people in Sweden that are denied the right to have children.

This makes me so angry I am seething, and yes, it is something that personally affects me.
My gonads is no one else’s business and the fact that you have to go through an unnecessary surgical procedure to fit into some mould of heteronormative is beyond disgusting and abhorrent.
You become sterile from the hormone treatment in either way (and Gods forbid those who choose NOT to do any surgery at all, who want to keep their bits and their body.)

There is going to be a demostration about this, and I can’t go.

I know what can be done with the power of internet, and I hope that this becomes a recognized issue, because I cannot STAND this law.

I want more people to speak up for this. It sickens me.

Sterilisation or certified sterility is also required in switzerland to get a legal gender change. Marriages must also be dissolved, though they can be transformed into registered partnerships (which in switzerland aren’t legally equivalent do marriages). What makes the swedish requirement for marriages being dissolved particularly galling is that in swedish law registered partnerships are equivalent to marriages. I mean, besides the whole thing being incredibly galling.

France gets even worse: they often require that all kids a trans-man might have had be adult before allowing a legal gender change.

Source: bad-mojo

forever falling