Transsexualism in Spain: A Cultural and Legal Perspective

In this paper I will present an overview of the current legal, social and political situation of transsexual and transgendered people in Spain. The study is based on qualitative data gathered from in-depth interviews with transsexual people, transgendered activists and legal experts in Spain, including some aspects of a cross-cultural comparison between Spain and the UK. The empirical study accounts for the development of social policies related to sex-reassignment and their evolution in the last decade in Spain, as well as for transsexual associations and activism, issues of social exclusion and prostitution. The study on transsexuals consists of qualitative interviews with selected individuals of the transsexual community in Scotland and Catalonia about their life experiences. The analysis of the qualitative data explores the cultural assumptions underlying the legal aspects of sex-reassignment. Amongst other issues, the paper will deal with Spanish juridical procedures for documental reorientation and its potential role as incentive for undergoing sex-reassignment operation, and the performative character of transsexualism as a scientific category and folk gender myths in the shaping of gender. The cross-cultural comparison concerns scientific terminology and funding, as well as cultural and legal aspects of sex-reassignment. The study reveals the performative character of scientific categories, the mobilisation of conflicting discourses in the negotiation of meaning, the circularity and self-referentiality of the terms used both in expert and folk discourse. Moreover, the cross-cultural comparison demonstrates the conventionality of transsexualism as a scientific category and some of the ways in which social institutions act to perpetuate the erasure of gender fluidity.