By Agencia Presentes (Spanish), May 15th
In March this year, a historic verdict by Buenos Aires City’s Civil Court 7 favored trans activist Lara Bertolini’s petition to have her gender marker on her ID changed to reflect her self-perceived identity: “trans femininity”. But now the RENAPER (the Argentinian National Registry) has appealed the verdict and refuses to validate another gender marker on the grounds that “there are only two sexes”, thus opposing the spirit of the Gender Identity Law 26743 that was enacted 7 years ago.
“Now we have to respond to those arguments and request that the appeal be rejected and the verdict confirmed. The Renaper’s appeal outrageously claims that ‘trans femininity’ is not part of the regulation, as if an identity had to be regulated. Besides, they pretend to burden Lara with the expenses of all the legal procedures. Not only do they deny her the right to her identity but also they want to make her pay for it,” said Bertolini’s lawyer Emilio Buggiani to Presentes.
Bertolini, who studies Law and works as a judicial employee, had made the request some months ago because she did not feel at ease with the binary gender category “feminine”. The verdict that the Renaper has appealed consists of 12 pages and includes local and foreign case-law, with a special emphasis on the Argentinian Gender Identity Law, which “acknowledges every person’s right to the recognition of their gender identity, their free personal development in accordance with their gender identity, their right to be treated with respect to their gender identity and, particularly, to be identified as they wish in all those documents used to prove their identity.”
“The Renaper does not acknowledge the existence of gender, they claim it’s merely subjective. That there are only two sexes. And this contradicts the Gender Identity Law, which recognizes self-perceived genders. I am demanding a gender marker that suits my self-perceived gender. I demand the broadening of a right. They claim that it should be treated in the Congress, but an identity cannot be subjected to votes. An identity just is,” said Bertolini to Presentes.
“It should be noted that the Argentinian legal system is based on the pairing feminine-masculine. And that has several implications when it comes to granting rights, in the most diverse spheres of everyday life”, reads the Renaper’s appeal.
“The Renaper alludes to the Congress and crime law ignoring that the law already recognizes the trans identity, that there was an exemplary verdict about Diana Sacayán’s transfemicide that considered the hatred toward gender identity as an aggravating circumstance. They refuse to acknowledge these things based on the reductive biological perspective that there are only two sexes. Furthermore, they go against human rights and international law,” denounced Bertolini.
