Chile: Transsexuals Demand a Place in Postponed Anti-Discrimination Law · Global Voices
Katie Manning

A  few weeks ago Valentina Verbal, 40, tucked into a tidy lacquered table  next to her three laughing friends. No one threw her a sideways glance  in the chatty diner near the center of Santiago, Chile. She wore relaxed  jeans, unlabeled white sneakers and a soft layer of makeup. On the  average day, she said, she sticks to what she knows such as this lunch  spot. But when she steps out of her routine, like when she’s penning  through a job application, the fact that her I.D. says “hombre,” but her  fuschia lipstick says lady, can be a hurdle.
This  might soon change. An anti-discrimination law – six years in the making  – was up for vote in the Senate this week. Much to the chagrin of the  LGBT community, a low turnout among the senators pushed back the vote to  November 8. As it stands now, the legislation forbids any  discrimination based on: race, age, sex, gender, religion, belief,  political or other opinion, birth, national origin, cultural or  socioeconomic standing, language, marital status, sexual orientation,  illness, disability, genetic structure or any other status. Verbal and  others who switched their outward gender identity didn’t make the  original list. Now, they are fighting to be included.
Verbal,  who harnesses social media to win trans supporters, wants Chileans to  freely choose their legal sexual identity without facing discrimination  or having surgery. “Most of us have internal problems caused by our  society. Society is what complicates things,” she said.
Even  though her place in the anti-discrimination law hangs in the air, she  tweeted [es] that she shares the frustration popping up on social networks.  Citizen reactions to the delay are still swimming through twitter under  the hashtag #LeyAntidiscriminación.
Rodrigo Guendelman (@guendelman) tweeted:
Más de 6 años lleva empantanada la #LeyAntidiscriminación y hoy el Senado vuelve a suspender la votación. Qué verguenza!!!
Andres  Soffia Vega, a spokesperson for a pro-sexual diversity organization  called Iguales, sees this as an opportunity to reinforce their efforts.  He tweeted under @ahsoffia:
Sumemos fuerza para el 8 de noviembre y sigamos trabajando.
Gay Pride March. Photo by Katie Manning
The  LGBT community recently crossed a major bridge.  Last month, the  government passed a bill legalizing civil unions for gay and lesbian  couples. Transsexuals also are legally allowed to change their gender  in Chile. Verbal aims to step past the status quo. “We should have the  same rights under the same name,” she said. This means gay marriage,  which Chile’s neighbor, Argentina, just approved last year.
In 2009, the Chilean government signed [es] a  United Nations declaration against discrimination based on gender identity. The  trans community says this anti-discrimination law offers the government  the ideal opportunity to make good on their pledge.
Even  if trans people make it into the new legislation, Verbal said that Chile still drags  miles behind international standards. Same sex couples are still not  allowed to adopt in Chile, which in turn applies to many transgendered  couples. The legal age of sexual consent is 14 for straight couples, while  it’s 18 for same sex couples.
Alongside interviews across a medley of media outlets, Verbal blogs [es] to tell Chile why inclusion matters. She wrote in El Dinamo [es]:
Sufren  una serie de barreras sociales que les impide llevar una vida  digna. La   primera de estas barreras es la laboral. Mucha de ellas, no  obstante  sus capacidades y sin tener una apariencia llamativa (como  muchas veces  se cree), no tienen acceso a trabajos dignos, precisamente  por no  corresponder su identidad legal con la de género.
Chile’s  right-wing President Sebastian Piñera, whose approval rating remains in the  gutter at 33 percent, has a surprising ally among many transsexuals.  Piñera supported the civil-union bill. In Chile, LGBT rights aren’t  strictly part of the left or right side of politics, but some  transsexuals worry that politicians posing for pictures at gay pride  marches won’t translate into results on the Senate floor.
Andres  Rivera, 47, began sporting a deep voice and a goatee in a very  public way nine years ago when he documented his sex change in a  television report. Now, he pours his energy into working as a trans  activist. He founded the Organization of Transsexuals for Dignity and Diversity [es], the first Chilean NGO fighting for trans rights, and tweets under @andresrivera. He said, “I believe that Piñera is opening his mind to transsexuals.”
At the same time, the former University of Rancagua professor [es] questions the authenticity  of most politicians’ commitment. He said, “They use us. The right and  the left sell us like meat to make political agreements amongst  themselves.”
When  Rivera overhauled his outward appearance, he said, he suffered major  social snubbing in his hometown of Rancagua, a dusty ranching and mining  city just south of Santiago.
“This  decision lost me my job. My employers fought me on this. It severed me  from my family… Everything went to waste. I wandered around eating  things off the street. It was a terrible situation,” he said. He patched  things up with his Roman-Catholic family, and now he’s determined to  ensure that other transsexuals can transform their physical appearance  in a less traumatic way.
Rivera  noted a distinction between the struggle of transsexuals and the gay  community. “We don’t have the same opportunities as heterosexuals or  even gays. We’re punished from infancy” for not conforming to gender  norms, according to Rivera.
Verbal  hasn’t gone under the knife or taken female hormones. “I’ve always felt  like a woman,” she said, but when she adjusted her outward appearance  at 37, “I was really afraid of what my family would think, what society  would think.”  Verbal said that Chile needs to understand “there is no  difference between normal and abnormal or healthy and unhealthy.”