#anti-translaws

[i-circe]

This is how I fight. (quoting: Dharma Kelleher)

This is how I fight. (quoting: Dharma Kelleher)

I came across a post from a sister thriller writer who says she writes as an act of activism in the face of anti-LGBTQ violence and anti-trans laws. I’m ad-libbing as these are not her exact words. However, I think she says, “This is why I write. This is how I fight.” Her words brought it home for me, not that I wasn’t aware of why I was doing what I’d been doing after my transition all those…

[hiddeningrid]

I’ve been trying to find information about the “new translaw” campaign in my country. updating our translaws (that include forced sterelization & being unmarried upon transitioning etc) have been talked about with renewed vigor since same-sex marriage was approved by the parliament in 2014 (taking effect in 2017). it’s supposed to be the next big LGBT legislative breakthrough in our country.

amnesty turned in their “new translaw”-petition to our prime minister a couple months ago, and it was signed by ~350,000 people worldwide, but only by ~20,000 finns. to scale, the citizen’s initiative for same-sex marriage gathered ~120,000 finnish votes (obvs only finnish citizens can vote for a citizen’s initiative). there were mass demonstrations for it to pass. for several years, pride was a big “I DO“-demonstration, and when the citizen’s initiative came around, people were gathering votes for it out on the street. it was a massive effort by all LGBT organizations that finally came to fruition in 2017.

like i’m definitely not shitting on the translaw activists who are keeping the movement going, i‘m just thinking, it took all that for all those years to change the marriage laws... it’s gonna need an equal push for new translaws. sure, our religious anti-abortion PM will take amnesty’s petition in. sure, many party members seem positive about the new translaw and agree the old one is outdated. but the new translaw has been on ice the past two parliamentary seasons (or whatever they’re called in english). already in 2017 the EU commission demanded our country to change our translaws because of human rights violations.

everything’s in place in our parliament for the new translaw, but a few parties (you know which ones) are against it, so it’s on seemingly eternal ice. and at the same time, trans people are being forcefully sterilized in order to transition. but most of those same parties were against same-sex marriage, and it was achieved.

it’s already 2018, and now... new elections are coming, so the new translaw is going nowhere this season. Amnesty and EU are petitioning our government, yet nothing happens. our neighbor, sweden, has started to compensate trans people who were forcefully sterilized by the swedish government when they had similar laws to... our current ones.

when they were voting for same sex marriage i remember the mass demonstration at the foot of the parliament building. it’s the biggest demonstration i’ve ever taken part in. i’d love to see something like that happen with the new translaw. i’m just feeling hopeless, and though the campaign is still on-going, i can’t see a lot of options for me to volunteer etc. pride this year is most likely gonna have a continuing theme of campaigning for the new translaw, but it’s a single event with a lot of fractions inside it.

i just wish it were a law already. the current law is gross AF and inhuman. i don’t quite understand why there isn’t a citizen’s initiative in place for it. like i was a loose part of the same-sex marriage initiative for like... probably five years. and i just feel like i can’t do much for the new translaw. it’s just sitting in our parliament, while the parliament changes seats around for new seasons like a game of musical chairs.