Barcelona“Far from contributing to inclusion, removing our acronyms makes us more vulnerable to those who want to erase our existence.” This is how forceful the rejection of the LGBTI Platform of Catalonia has been to the PSOE’s decision to eliminate the Q and the + in its legislative texts. This is an amendment agreed by the Socialist party at its 41st federal congress, which was held this weekend in Seville with the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, at the helm. For the organization, this decision represents a “setback in the recognition of diverse identities”, as well as in the efforts that the collective has made over the years of struggle.
The classic feminists of the PSOE have succeeded and eliminated the Q and the +, which refer to people who are outside the male-female binary system, asexuals and pansexuals, among others. For the Platform, the LGBTIQ+ acronyms are not just letters, but “represent millions of people who have fought and continue to fight for their visibility, dignity and rights”. That is why they believe that changing this symbolic and political framework implies “invisibility” of these communities and dismantling decades of work in favor of equality and diversity.
The entity has also warned that the measure proposed by the PSOE comes “at a particularly worrying time” in which LGBTI-phobic attacks are growing and in which fundamental rights are being questioned in various political formations. Sumar, the governing partner of the Socialists, has already charged against the decision because he believes that the fight for fundamental rights cannot leave anyone behind. “You don’t fight the extreme right with the ideas of the extreme right,” the party said through X. Other groups such as Podemos and Més Madrid have also criticized the decision.
Rights of trans people
Another decision of the PSOE that has raised dust this weekend has been the approval of an amendment to exclude trans women from women’s sports competitions and that only people with “female biological sex” can participate. Three years ago, at the Federal Congress that the PSOE held in Valencia, the feminist currents opposed to the trans law lost the battle and the central government, then in coalition with Podemos, pushed forward a rule that opened the door to the ‘gender self-determination.
At the congress this weekend, however, the socialists have set new limits so that “no person of the male sex can participate in the categories intended for women”. It is one of the recurring arguments of the feminist currents that opposed the trans law, since they consider that gender self-determination would end up harming women’s rights: a man could define himself as a woman and participate in female competitions, with the consequent advantage due to his physical characteristics.
Faced with this decision, the Trans Platform has shown its “repulsion and indignation” for the amendment approved by the party, which it has accused of making a “perverse use” of feminism. “It is similar to when the ultra-right criminalizes migrants as the cause of crime,” the organization argued. The president of the platform, Mar Cambrollé, criticized the socialist decision and recalled that in the last year murders due to hatred of the trans population have increased, according to a report by Transgender Europe. According to Cambrollé, this increase in crimes is due to the hate speech, the targeting and stigmatization of the trans group by the far right.
