My Gender on My ID: Gender Identity Discussion Reaches Ecuadorian Parliament

Dear friends,

We are very excited about the reception our draft amendment to the Ecuadorian Civil Registry Statute recognizing Gender Identity on official documents has had in Ecuadorian Parliament. We wanted to share these good news with you as well as the video "My Gender on My ID: One Letter away from Exercizing Citizenship" with which the draft law was officially presented this past September 13, 2012. Fifty trans and intersex leaders from twelve Ecuadorian provinces were at the act, including the campaign's spokespersons, Geovanni Jaramillo, from the Ecuadorian Confederation of Trans and Intersex Communities, Diane Rodriguez, from Silueta X Association, Maria Jose Guevara from Project Transgender/The Trans House, representatives from Yerbabuena Foundation, Building Equality Platform and other feminist and transfeminist allies.

The act was extremely political and closed with transmasculine activist Matias Pinos taking off his shirt to demand the State "not to ignore but to look at trans bodies".

The draft law was first presented in June to feminist Member of Parliament Paola Pabon who then took it on to the Administrative Decentralization Commission; the parliamentary division in charge of revising acts and statutes that deal with issues currently pertaining to the central administrative system, such as identification. The fact that Ecuador has a 50% female composition in Parliament (as in all public institutions by constitutional mandate), including self-defined feminist MPs, has played a key role. We begin to yield the results of the Constitutional and institutional refoundation Ecuador has gone through in the past four years.

First debate is scheduled for February 2013. If the draft is passed, the notion of "sex" will be discarded on official documents in favour of the notion of "gender" to match Ecuador's 2008 constitutional recognition of Gender Identity (article 11.2) and other constitutional norms that further develop the concept that gender is self-perceived.

We look forward to your comments and hope you can help us spread the campaign!

Best, 

Ecuadorian Confederation of Trans and Intersex Communities, Silueta X Association, Project Transgender/ The Trans House, Yerbabuena Foundation, Building Equality Platform.