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ELIZABETH: Certain Western feminists and trans and queer activists from the British stage have two critiques. The first, shared with gay assimilationists, is a reproach to Joey as a foreigner: What right does Joey have to burst into the political arena of a country that is not his? Won’t he be doing it with a colonial perspective? Ironically, we think that the colonial bias that should be avoided is the assumption of Joey’s hierarchical position in this cross-cultural collaboration instead of finding out about it: Joey’s contributions certainly enrich a political proposal that is nevertheless Ecuadorian in origin. The second critique is at the other logical extreme of the mainstream critique: while the corporate gays reject that a person who is “trans” can also be a “man” and “gay,” and resent the appropriation of a category they consider theirs (“gay”), European post-feminist and queer activism claims that “man” and “gay” are categories that we should have already surpassed, or at least that Joey has surpassed. Why, then, is he taking them back on? The answer is: because categories need to be used in order to be surpassed. In this historical moment in Ecuador, and in the political strategy of this project, it was necessary to use the categories of “man” and “gay” and “gay marriage.”
JOEY: Western feminists write to me angrily saying, “Since when did you identify as gay? You’re not gay! When did you identify as a man? They fail to understand that we couldn’t say “pan-sexual, trans-gender or gender-queer wedding”.
ELIZABETH: Or maybe we could have used those terms, but then we would have created a language barrier against a huge sector of the population, and also, we wouldn’t have been able to cause as much trouble in the system as we wanted to. We would have again become “the fringe”; “the exception” that supports rather than challenges the rule.
One critique that hasn’t been heard as much as I expected is the more traditional, anti-marriage feminist critique. Clara Merino, from the feminist organization, “Luna Creciente” did let me know that a project that puts all its energy into publicizing such an outdated and patriarchal institution seemed absolutely useless to her and that the only worthwhile effort around such an institution is to fight for its disappearance. But we did not have a real debate.
Another interesting critique was mentioned by journalist Lucia Real from the Diversity Section of the Daily Telegraph: it seemed to them a throwback that a trans person would hold on to his letter “F” when one of the most important demands by trans people throughout the world deals specifically with the recognition of legal sex changes. And it seemed to them also a “convenient” use “inconsistent” with the struggle; as if “when it works to my advantage, I use the legal sex I was assigned, and when it doesn’t, I reject it.” However, from the alternativist viewpoint, we value the strategic use of a tyrannical institution, such as civil sex, as an act of liberation. When all is said and done, the traditional transsexual movement has been placed in the subordinate position of “begging for the F and M” much like the assimilationist gay movement begs for marriage. The idea that we need marriage and civil sex from the State in order to be normal is challenged by this project, in that we tell the Civil Registry that we are beyond their F and their M. We are not the legal sex of the State, nor is that legal sex the thing that makes us “men” or “women.”
MARIA AMELIA: To wrap up this interesting and engaging conversation, what comes next?
JOEY: Now it is important for me to change my sex legally, because I asked the Gender Clinic to do that a few years ago in the UK, and was told without hormones or surgery the Gender Recognition Panel wouldn’t probably agree. The fact that I can just do a little bit of testosterone now, would put me even more in the middle, and then I could come back with my sex changed to Ecuador and say “please change my sex here too so I can be a man married to a man’ which will completely freak the system out, we’re hoping. Unfortunately, if I take my marriage with Hugo back to England and change my sex our marriage is null and void.
ELIZABETH: The British legal system already foresaw the possibility that in the context of marriage, one of the spouses changes sex and it already has established a rule: the marriage is annulled automatically. Here the system just doesn’t make that many rules, so we can still upset it in ways we couldn’t in England. The idea is to throw a wrench into the works, to find blind spots in the system that will make it implode, and allow us to present more emancipatory civil possibilities. In that sense, the first gay marriage in Ecuador inserts itself into that years-old transfeminist political process I mentioned earlier. As the next step, I aspire to launch a campaign seeking the removal of the mention of legal sex categories altogether on Ecuadorian identification cards.
NOTES:
(1) Elizabeth Vásquez is a transfeminist lawyer whose activism in the areas of gender and sexual diversity is based on the original design and execution of “alternative uses of the law”, abbreviated as “AULs”. She founded the Legal Patrol and Project Transgender - ”Different Bodies, Same Rights, and is she who has established the principle lines of discourse and action of this organization. Contact: esetos@gmail.com; www.proyecto-transgenero.org.
Joey Hateley is a transfeminist experimental theatre artist — practitioner, writer, director, educator and art-activist. He creates innovative transformative cross-cultural performance work that focuses on issues of identity, diversity, inclusion and empowerment. He is the Artistic Director of TransAction Theatre Company, an organization that devises socio-political interdisciplinary performance. Contact: genderjoey@hotmail.com; www.transactiontheatre.co.uk.
María Amelia Viteri addresses the fields of gender, sexuality, identity, and citizenship in LGBT, Latino and immigrant communities, mainly in the United States and Ecuador. Contact: maviteri@flasco.org.ec; www.desbordesdegenero.org
(2) The video, “Matrimonio Gay Ecuador: ¿Qué es Falso y qué es Real?” [Translation: “Ecuadorian Gay Wedding: What is True and What is False?”], available at http://www.proyecto-transgenero.org/videos.php, puts together the three most important photography sessions from the project with the rap “Lo falso y lo real” [Translation: “Truth and Falsehood” or “Fact and Fiction”]. The photomontage is by Ana Belén Jarrín.
(3) She makes reference to a credit card that identifies the gender of the card holder, in other words, a 'gendered visa'.
* Click here to read Part 1 of The first gay marriage in Ecuador *
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