Naming as the Locus of Trans*National Struggle

Introduction

Since the mid-2000s, Spain has presented itself as being at the forefront of sexual and gender legal rights, especially after the approval of a same-sex marriage law of 2005 and the creation of the new Ministry of Equality in 2008. Such landmark legal and political gains are frequently used globally as a measure of a country’s “egalitarian status.” ¹ However, such achievements are often not contrasted with the actual experiences of citizens in relation to how their social class, migrant status, gender, sexuality, and access to opportunities in life, among other inequalities, intersect. ² Although sexual minorities achieved important rights in Spain during the early 2000s (domestic partnerships, same-sex marriage, the right to change one’s name and gender in official documents for transgender people, and access to abortion for sixteen and seventeen year-olds), immigration legislation has become more restrictive. ³ The conservative government in power since 2011 has used the global economic crisis to systematically dismantle the Spanish democracy that was created after Franco’s dictatorship. ⁴ The backlash began with the Socialist Party’s responses to the economic crash in 2009, but the current Conservative Government, led by Mariano Rajoy, habitually treats citizens as if they were suspects (for example, see the 2014 Bill regarding “Citizen’s Safety,” commonly known as “Ley Mordaza” or “Gag Law,” which bans and criminalizes citizen protests and demonstrations; this law set the ground for the brutal repression in the Catalonia independence referendum, October 1st 2017). Furthermore, this government routinely tries to pass laws that increase citizens’ obligations while their rights are curtailed. In the meantime, the gap between the rich and the poor in Spain has become the highest in the OECD countries. ⁵ In summary, the very concepts of citizenship and democracy are currently compromised in Spain.

This context has afforded a widely divergent set of opportunities for different subjects to enact their sexual citizenship rights, despite the “formal equality” stated by the legal system. ⁶ For instance, Organic Law 2/2009 regulating immigration, which allows familial regrouping for the claimant’s “spouse or [person in an] analogous status,” is open to same-sex couples who have one year of legal residence and whose residence has been extended for another year. But the law does not clearly state the requirements needed to prove marital status, which can be problematic and result in limiting the rights of same-sex couples. ⁷

Domestic partnerships present another example of the diversity of sexual citizenship rights available in Spain. Between 1994 and 2005, domestic partnerships were regulated through Municipal Domestic Partnership Registries existing in every town, and they were originally recognized in regional laws throughout most of Spain. ⁸ However, since 2012 some of these registries have been closed down for a number of diverse reasons. For example, in the case of Catalonia, the registries were closed pursuant to the implementation of a new addition to the Catalonian Civil Code (Law 25/2010), which allows couples to prove cohabitation—a preliminary step for demonstrating de facto familial/matrimonial relationships in cases in which the couple is not married—by demonstrating joint home ownership, or by being jointly registered in the census for at least two years. ⁹ Nonetheless, this new law is not the key reason for why domestic partnership registries have been closed. Many registries have closed because they were being accused of allowing couples with one migrant partner to commit immigration fraud. ¹⁰ The underlying argument for closing registries, then, seems to be that every foreign person from a “poor country” may be a potential scammer, thus simplifying the heterogeneity of migrants’ experiences and motivations to migrate by reductively casting suspicion of entering fraudulent unions on all migrants who form a partnership with a Spaniard, thus further justifying the need for special surveillance of immigrants. Furthermore, the closing of domestic partner registries also affects gay widowers and lesbian widows’ inheritance rights, making it very difficult for the bereaved partner to prove that he or she has spent a life together with the deceased spouse for the purpose of collecting a pension. ¹¹

The difficulties queer migrants face in Spain include: racist raids organized by police in every city and that target people by their ethnic appearance; the existence of Migrant Detention Centers (Centros de Internamiento de Inmigrantes) in which police abuse is common; ¹² the difficulties that immigrants face when they have to prove that they identify as sexually non-normative and/or gender-non-conforming to become eligible to receive political asylum; ¹³ and having to confront the unfair yet widespread notion that “illegal” aliens try to abuse the system and take advantage of national resources, challenging the endurance of the welfare state. All of these instances contribute to a generalized racist and xenophobic social and political environment.

In this general scenario, an analysis of queer and trans rights benefits from the framework of homonationalism, ¹⁴ which highlights the growing convergence of and complicity between nationalist and homonormative citizenship agendas. ¹⁵ One recent example can be found in the paradox that, while a bill trying to restrict access to abortion was being presented, same-sex marriage was ruled constitutional in 2013. Despite on-going accusations of corruption, ¹⁶ the current Government wants to present Spain as a modern, European-oriented, economically stable country that meets the European Commission (EC), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) ¹⁷ strict requirements and a country that pays its international debt, while it simultaneously uses racism, classism, sexism, homo-, and transphobia to discipline those citizens who cannot or do not want to meet standards of normalcy. Belonging to the European Union requires meeting certain legal standards in terms of gender equality and sexual rights, even while it leaves room for organized state violence. Migrants from Latin America, North Africa, and elsewhere who have come to Spain, attracted by the country’s propaganda about its supposed progressive rights of equality and freedom, face intense racism and disenfranchisement.

It is vital to consider this context to understand the politics of naming in Spain, for Spanish-born citizens and also for immigrants, who face specific problems regarding the name they use or chose in their processes of migration. The current legal and social frameworks in Spain are intertwined with queer and trans people’s strategies for asserting their agency in regard to their names. In this essay, I will analyze how some cis and trans people’s artistic and activist production, about how and why they choose to change their names, fosters important and productive debates about “what’s in a name.” Specifically, I discus two important works: Yera Moreno’s video art project Name to Name (N2N) ¹⁸ These sources underscore the intersectional effects of name-changing and the window of opportunity opened up for a transnational activism in which the transits between Spain and Latin America generate shared struggles.

What’s in a name?

“It is curious to call ‘nombre personal’ [first name] those imposed by others” – Cabello/Carceller in N2N (2012)

First or given names—in Spanish, nombres de pila—with their power to name someone, have a strong impact on how people are conceived, not only in terms of kinship, gender, class, race, migration, marital status, or belonging to different social groups, but also in regards to how people understand themselves. Names refer to a sense of relational identity, and are the subject of social norms, morality, and power dynamics among individuals. Nonetheless, identities also can be changed, traded, or hidden through names, which reveals the political power located in the capacity to name. ¹⁹

There are several legal and bureaucratic procedures intended to attempt to fix people’s identities. In Spain, specifically, a person’s identity is regulated through a variety of practices, such as the mandatory inscription of babies in the Civil Registry and the issuing of birth certificates; the requirement to keep an officially sanctioned “Family Book” (Libro de familia); the issuing of National Identity Cards (I.D.), passports, driving licenses; and the census registration process; among many other practices. ²⁰ In addition, there is a property-like potential in names that transact social value, which also reveals a powerful connection between name and self-identity.

States, such as Spain, limit what is considered an appropriate name for a person, which always has a gender (only a few names are unisex), and manifests important geopolitical, cultural, religious and social influences. In Spain, the authority to determine what is an appropriate name, and who can effect a name change belongs to the Civil Registries and the judges who supervise them. However, the Registries and the judges must also consider laws affecting immigration and transgender rights, which also regulate name propriety. Names and naming cannot be understood as neutral facts, since there is a certain sense of intelligibility embedded in a name. Naming has to do with tying down someone through certain social categories, through the reiteration of certain rites, names and norms that provide meaning, making names intelligible. ²¹

It is also relevant that identification and recognition find a common place in personal names, which can be subject to self- and hetero-designation processes that may not coincide with each other. Some people feel the need to change the name they got at birth for different reasons. Some of these reasons have to do with wanting to break with their family lineage; detaching themselves from former partners; marking a different gender; adapting their names to a new linguistic or geopolitical context; using a family or intimate nickname that identifies them better than their “official names”; or for many other reasons. Sometimes, changing names has to do with the need to show that one’s new identity no longer corresponds with the one your family chose, or with one’s current life moment. On one hand, these changes contradict the lineal sense of time and unity of identity that Western societies privilege. They invite us to think in terms of queer time and space ²² which is often performed as presentism ²³ and contradicting a certain notion of heterofuturibility. ²⁴ On the other hand, changing one’s name shows that one has will and agency over how one wants to be identified, and therefore, over how one conceives of oneself beyond the constraints of the dominant sense of time and identity.

Naming discloses a geography of power relations and civil liberties. Naming is also associated with specific forms of mobilization and the construction of problems that become public and social identity formation at different points in time. ²⁵ Naming also presents several ways to acknowledge power in a Foucauldian sense: the top-down actions of the State to fix everyone’s identity and, also, the bottom-up possibilities that subjects create to intervene in the power that attempts to bind them by modifying their names. The next section is organized according to these two levels of governance, i.e. State regulation and citizens’ agency.

State Regulation

All too often, the official documents that attempt to fix sexual identity become a battlefield for transgender rights. Documents like birth certificates, passports, identity documents, driving licenses, and other official paperwork serve to establish identity, providing a sense of stability and fixity, and visibility to the state. These documents contain names, which—with the exception of a few that could belong to both men and women—clearly imply a gender that must coincide with the box marked “sex.” In turn, sex markers affect how photographs are interpreted, corroborating coherence and intelligibility with an official identity. In most Anglo-Saxon countries, trans people, in their struggles to change their names and identities, have targeted the modification of the birth certificate or driving licenses. However, in Spain, it is the National Identity Document (DNI, which stands for Documento Nacional de Identidad) that has driven transgender activism. This is because the DNI is the most important compulsory official document used to assess a citizen’s identity ²⁶ :

Physical documents are not unproblematic texts. At a hospital, with an ID in my hand, I said “Raquel” and the person wrote down “Miguel” or “Raúl.” They never called my name [Raquel], and I had to wait for two hours…, because the visual image of me and my name did not fit together. Not even a written paper is fixed enough not to leave room for interpretation, when people are questioning you with it. . . . There are changes in your life that are directly implied with your name’s drift” ²⁷

The DNI was created in March 1944, during Franco’s rule, to identify and control citizens in a post-war dictatorship, as was also the case in other countries with fascist legacies. It included several markers of identity, such as a person’s lineage (father and mother’s names and last names), sex, place and date of birth, profession, and address. Significantly, between 1962 and 1981, the sex marker disappeared from this mandatory ID card. ²⁸ This was probably because during the early part of the dictatorship, strict gender binaries were highly reinforced and policed, ²⁹ because there could be no mistaking a person’s gender. Despite trans radical activism (such as the one enacted by the “Colectivo de Transexuales de Cataluña”) in the 1990s demanding the abolition of any reference to sex in the DNI, ³⁰ it is surprising that today there are no actual demands from social movements or politicians to challenge the existence of a sex marker in IDs. The mere idea of its absence seems unthinkable.

Currently in Spain, the ID card is of compulsory use in all daily transactions. As Carmen Romero-Bachiller indicates, “a seemingly unproblematic object like the DNI can be a powerful registration mechanism in which rules and legislation are updated and enforced.” ³¹ Not only does the DNI associate a person’s geopolitical and ethnic origin with a number and establishes kinship with a biological family, it also ties a person’s photograph to a gender, for which there are only two possible gender options. The legislation affirms that each person identified in a DNI must have a clearly-gendered name, a disposition which has a clear negative impact on intersex and transgender people. ³²

The 2007 Law Regulating the Rectification of the Civil Registry Concerning a Person’s Sex grants adult Spanish citizens the right to change their legal name and sex marker in all legal documents. ³³ However, in order to change their name, applicants are required to have received a diagnosis of so-called gender dysphoria and they must have undergone at least two years of “medical treatment” (this is usually interpreted as hormone treatment). Elderly transgender people or in poor health are exempt from that last requirement. In addition, the applicant must be a Spanish citizen. In contrast to other jurisdictions, sterility is not required. ³⁴ Finally, inspired by the irreversibility of the registry and of gender identity, even though the law allows name changes, the law requires that the new name chosen must be unambiguously gendered.

In 2011 a Law regulating the Civil Registry (20/2011) was passed ³⁵ that, probably unintentionally, opened up new opportunities for changing a name, such as allowing citizens to prove the use of the name. This new law does not require that there be coherence between the chosen name and the person’s sex (see art. 50, 51 and 52), and despite the expectations it raised, its application mostly ties the use of the name with the gender assigned.

Citizens’ Agency: Name to Name (N2N) and Migrantes Transgresorxs

In everyday life, far from formal political decision-making contexts, subjects “are quick to pick up” situations that could be transformed for their benefit. ³⁶ People make utilitarian use of institutions, laws or situations for their benefit, showing some degree of resistance against social norms, as the following quotation, posted as a reaction to the Name to Name (N2N) project—a political art video by artist Yera Moreno—in Pikara Magazine (March 16, 2014), demonstrates:

I once changed my name. Some years ago. The goal was that my aggressor could not find me. This small-town habit of placing María before any [women’s] name saved me when the law did not allow me to change my name legally. In Spain, well into the twenty-first century, with a Comprehensive Law against gender violence in force, the only way to live was to rename myself. The process was difficult. It wasn’t a voluntary decision, but a lesser evil. Nowadays I am a totally different woman. I am not quite my old me, but I am not completely María, either. I am a woman with a dead life and an alive life; sharing time and space. Two names are two identities, even though my I.D. doesn’t change. I am still a white, heterosexual, bourgeois and urban woman. I look the same, but I know I am not [the same]. Other people’s gaze cannot appreciate my personal revolution and, with time, that has made me feel powerful. I know how to handle a defensive weapon. I cannot imagine, though, what it will be like when that change also modifies the gaze of the other. Naming oneself to cover yourself up, or to discover yourself ³⁷

The Spanish Catholic Church’s demand that all names of male and some female saints that were to be given to women be anteceded by María, as in “María José” (but sometimes also after male names, such as the very common “José María” for men), was legally unavoidable prior to the democracy. Franco’s regime required baptizing all children with Catholic names, thus reinforcing the use of “María” before or after other names that were not linked to the Catholic faith. Ironically, however, this practice also granted people the possibility of going by either the first or the second name (Spaniards do not use the notion of a middle name), as in “María” or “José.” Also, people are often named after a relative, and if the relationship with that relative becomes problematic, they may want to detach from the person they dislike. This is the case of Iñaka (who made up an uncommon female name from the very common male diminutive for Ignacio, Iñaki):

A name is a burden…. The name is given when you are born. One of my uncles, my mother’s brother, lived at [our] home, he was single, and his name was Ignacio. People called him Iñaki. I was his oldest niece. When he was around the neighborhood… My uncle dressed in a peculiar way, and so did I. My uncle’s friends used to say, there comes the “Iñakita.” For some reasons, that [moniker] was seared in my memory… The day I could not take it anymore, I thought: “I am no longer Leonor.” “I hate you so much that I don’t want to be named like you,” I told my aunt. I needed a name. And I thought that I could hurt her by choosing Iñaka. She also disliked my mother’s brother. It was a little salutary lesson. ³⁸

Like any other citizen, queer and trans individuals use any opportunity available to them to maximize their capacity to decide on how to conduct their lives. Choosing a name that is gender-neutral allows trans people to negotiate the legal procedures (without having to conform thoroughly to the law’s demands to prove Gender Dysphoria Disorder and two years of medical treatment), and “only” having to prove that they have been using that particular name for two to three years. Choosing gender-neutral names has been a common tactic for trans people, so much so that the Madrid Civil Registry started preventing trans people from choosing common Catholic gender-neutral names such as “Trinidad” since, according to the Director of the LGTB Information and Consultancy Office in Madrid (Programa de Información y Asesoría a personas LGTB), “at one point, almost every transwoman was [choosing] Trinidad.” ³⁹ Furthermore, it is widely known that employees of different Civil Registries respond differently to a person’s request to change their name by being more or less flexible in accepting a particular name, thus leading a trans person to attempt to circumvent, when possible, filing their name-change petitions in certain particularly unfriendly Civil Registry offices.

It is often the case that queer and trans people use several personal names according to the context. In Spain, changing one’s “official name” is not easy. But also, some people do not want to change their official name or choose other ways to avoid this change, such as using compound names, thus consciously becoming “uncomfortable citizens” or “dissident citizens.” ⁴⁰ Nonetheless, queer and trans people act on their need to rename themselves, showing that their “failed” name opens up a new opportunity to acknowledge and present themselves differently:

I had another name that pigeonholed me in the feminine. I didn’t feel okay or comfortable with being a woman. I don’t know why, but when I was little my mom called me by a nickname, sometimes in an affectionate way, for some reason, she called me… “Alex.” Even my aunt did. “Alex this, and that.” I felt happy, I thought “finally they realized!” Since I was really young, I have identified a lot with the name Alex. When I was called Alex I was happy . . . . Later on, my mom realized my sexual orientation, that I liked women. And she stopped calling me Alex and started using my other name. Alex is, like, very neutral for men or women. . . . Yes, I re-appropriated this name [Alex], because when I was young I liked being called this and I didn’t want to lose it. ⁴¹

Obviously, choosing and being called by gender-neutral names are, in fact, ways to achieve recognition and to displace the constraining norms that regulate gender and sex. Such name ambiguity can be useful in understanding the uses of identity that are especially visible in the playful performance involved in drag kinging. Identities on trial, used part-time, or created for recreational purposes can affect how perception works, both for others and self-produced:

One day I picked [my name]. In fact, it wasn’t something I reflected on. It was the name that suited me; the name that popped up. I have always been Mario since then. Sometimes, it happens when you perform as a drag king. For me, changing from my other name to Mario is something that I alternate, and it changes so much [depending on] how people treat me and how they read me. The fact of giving a name to a different identity somehow consolidates the perception of such identity. It becomes much more credible. When people are in doubt about your identity and they ask and you can provide a name, it calms them down. ⁴²

1. See the ILGA’s Gay and Lesbian Rights maps: http://ilga.org/what-we-do/maps-sexual-orientation-laws/[↑]
2. Gabriel Giorgi, “Madrid en tránsito. Travelers, Visibility, and Gay Identity.” GLQ 8, nos. 1-2: 57-79.[↑]
3. See Organic Law 2/2009 On the Rights and Liberties of Foreign Citizens, Organic Law 2/2009 of 11 December 2009, Reforming Organic Law 4/2000 of 11 January 2000, On The Duties and Freedoms of Foreign People in Spain and Their Social Integration (Ley Orgánica 2/2009, de 11 de diciembre, de reforma de la Ley Orgánica 4/2000, de 11 de enero, sobre derechos y libertades de los extranjeros en España y su integración social). BOE 299, December 12, 2009:104986-105031.[↑]
4. This government was elected on November 20, 2011, a relevant day in Spain, because it is the date on which both the Spanish dictator, Francisco Franco, and the leader of the Spanish Fascist Party (Falange Española), José Antonio Primo de Rivera, died (albeit in different years: Franco died in 1975 and Primo de Rivera in 1936).[↑]
5. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development analyzes thirty-four countries, including the USA. Also see, EFE España es el país con la mayor brecha entre ricos y pobres de la OCDE, March 3, 2014.[↑]
6. David Evans, Sexual Citizenship: The Material Construction of Sexualities, (London: Routledge, 1993); Diane Richardson, “Sexuality and Citizenship,” Sociology, 32 (1; 1998): 83–100; ibid, “Constructing Sexual Citizenship,” Critical Social Policy, 20(1):105–135; Jeffrey Weeks, “The Sexual Citizen,” Theory, Culture & Society, 15 (3–4; 1998): 35–52; Engin Isin and Patricia Wood, Citizenship and Identity, (London: Sage, 1999); David Bell and John Binnie The Sexual Citizenship: Queer Theory and Beyond (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000); Ruth Lister, “Sexual Citizenship,” in Handbook of Citizenship Studies, Isin Engin and Bryan Turner, eds. (London: Sage, 2002), 191-207; Michael Brown, “Sexual citizenship, political obligation and disease ecology in gay Seattle,” Political Geography 25, no. 8: 874–898; Emily Grabham, “Citizen Bodies, Intersex Citizenship,” Sexualities, 10 (1): 29-48, http://kar.kent.ac.uk/791/; Kelly Burns and Cristyn Davies, “Producing Cosmopolitan Sexual Citizens on ‘The L Word,’” The Journal of Lesbian Studies 13, no. 2 (2009): 174–188; Angelia Wilson, “The ‘Neat Concept’ of Sexual Citizenship: A Cautionary Tale for Human Rights Discourse. Contemporary Politics 15, no. 1 (2009): 73-85; Ana Cristina Santos, “Disclosed and Willing: Towards a Queer Public Sociology,” Social Movement Studies 11, (2, 2012): 1–14; ibid, Social Movements and Sexual Citizenship in Southern Europe, (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2013).[↑]
7. The way in which this Law is applied can be surmised from analyzing several key court rulings. For instance, in 2010, the Spanish Supreme Court recognized that foreign citizens could acquire legal residence as “relatives” of a Spanish or European person as long as they could prove kinship by registering as domestic partners or by being married.[↑]
8. There are Regional Registries and Laws in most of Spain. In the chronological order in which they were passed, the laws are: Catalonia (Law 10/1998; Law 3/2005); Aragon (Law 6/1999); Navarra (Statutory Law 6/2000); Valencia (Law 1/2001; 5/2012); Madrid (Law 11/2001); Balearic Islands (Law 18/2001); Asturias (Law 4/2002); Andalusia (Law 5/2002); Canary Islands (Law 5/2005); Extremadura (Law 5/2003); Basque Country (2/2003); Cantabria (Law 1/2005). In other regions, there are registries that function without specific laws and instead function by decrees, this is the case of Castilla-La Mancha (Decree 124/2000); Castilla-León (Decree 117/2002); Galicia (Decree 248(2007); La Rioja (Decree 30/2010); lastly, Murcia does not have legislation but it has a Civil Registry. [↑]
9. Law 25/2010 of 29 July 2010, from the Second Book of the Catalonian Civil Code (Ley 25/2010, de 29 de julio, del libro segundo del Código Civil de Cataluña). BOE 203, 29 July 2010, pp. 73429- 73525. [↑]
10. Rosa Sanz, “Compuestos y sin registro,” El Periódico.com January 26, 2012.[↑]
11. Widowhood inheritance rights assume a “stable couple.” Nevertheless, the notion of a “stable couple” is suspended when it comes to same-sex partnerships, whereas for heterosexual married couples it is taken for granted. It is not widely known that, in order to access widowhood pensions for same-sex couples, the 2007 Law on Social Security Actions requires the couple to have had children. In 2013 this requirement was suspended, when the Supreme Court ruled it was discriminatory, adding that, “for biological reasons [this requirement] is impossible to fulfill in same-sex partnerships.” This statement assumes that lesbians and gays are sterile, ignoring that there are several ways by which same-sex couples can and do have children. Unfortunately, this statement did not protect a gay widower who unsuccessfully sued in 2008 to obtain his deceased partner’s social security pension.[↑]
12. Report by Amnesty International’s Spanish Delegation, “No to the Detention of Migrant People. Comments to the Government’s Draft Regulations for Foreign Citizens Detention Centers.” See: Amnesty International Spain Hay alternativas. No a la detención de personas migrantes. Comentarios al borrador del Gobierno sobre el reglamento de los centros de internamiento de extranjeros https://doc.es.amnesty.org/cgi-bin/ai/BRSCGI/Informe%20CIEs?CMD=VEROBJ&MLKOB=32229590404.[↑]
13. In 2009, a pregnant African lesbian applied for asylum. It was denied on the basis that she was not deemed to be credible as a lesbian. See: Europa Press, “España deniega el asilo a una mujer perseguida por lesbiana en su país,” Elideal.es, February 5, 2009.[↑]
14. Jasbir K. Puar, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007).[↑]
15. Jin Haritaworn, “Colorful Bodies in the Multikulti Metropolis: Vitality, Victimology and Transgressive Citizenship” in Berlin: Transgender Migrations. The Bodies, Borders, and Politics of Transition, Trystan T. Cotten, ed.. (New York: Routledge, 2012), 11-31.[↑]
16. Fernando J. Pérez “Prime Minister Rajoy will have to appear as witness in Gürtel case,” El País, April, 18, 2017.[↑]
17. This triumvirate is commonly known as “the Troika” in contemporary Spanish parlance.[↑]
18. See full video here: Name to Name) —in which a series of interviewees describe the reasons why they changed their names—and Migrantes Transgresorxs—an important Madrid trans activist group—that engages in creative activist interventions. ((Migrantes Transgresorxs http://migrantestransgresorxs.blogspot.com.es.[↑]
19. Barbara Bodenhorn and Gabriele vom Bruck, eds., An Anthropology of Names and Naming, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 2.[↑]
20. These procedures materialize a child’s right to have a name (see the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child). Although this right is important, it hardly recognizes the fact that a name means something in particular to an individual person, nor does it make explicit the link between the name and the person.[↑]
21. Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex,’ (New York: Routledge, 1993). [↑]
22. Jack Halberstam, In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives, (New York: New York University Press, 2005).[↑]
23. José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia. The Then and There of Queer Futurity (New York: New York University Press, 2009).[↑]
24. Lee Edelman, No Future, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005).[↑]
25. R. Lucas Platero, “The Narratives of Transgender Rights Mobilization in Spain,” Sexualities, 14 (5; 2011): 597-614.[↑]
26. Ibid.[↑]
27. “Los documentos físicos no son textos aproblemáticos. Con un DNI en la mano yo he dicho ‘Raquel’ y una persona ha escrito Miguel, o Raúl y en un hospital no han conseguido llamarme por mi nombre y he estado dos horas esperando a que me llamen… porque no casa la imagen con el nombre. Ni siquiera un papel escrito es lo suficientemente fijo para que no quepa sitio para la interpretación cuando una persona te interpela con él (…) Hay cambios en tu vida que están directamente implicados con la deriva de tu nombre.” Lucas (Lucas in N2N, 2012).[↑]
28. More research is needed on the history of the DNI and the inclusion or elision of certain markers throughout is existence. For a history of the DNI, see Javier Caballero and Daniel Izeddin, “DNI: Franco tiene el 1; el Rey, el 10. Historia. 60 Años de carné de identidad.” El Mundo, 7 March: 438.[↑]
29. Gema Pérez-Sánchez, Queer Transitions in Contemporary Spanish Culture: From Franco to La Movida, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007).[↑]
30. Juana Ramos, “Las Asociaciones de Transexuales,” in Transexualidad. La búsqueda de una identidad, Antonio Becerra Fernández, ed. (Madrid: Díaz de Santos, 2003), 125–142.[↑]
31. Carmen Romero Bachiller, “Documentos y otras extensiones protésicas, o como apuntalar la ‘identidad,’” Política y Sociedad 45, (3, 2008): 139-157.[↑]
32. Moisés Martínez, “Mi cuerpo no es mío. Transexualidad masculina y presiones sociales de sexo.” In El eje del mal es heterosexual. Figuraciones, prácticas y movimientos feministas queer, eds. Carmen Romero Bachiller, Silvia García Dauder, and Carlos Bargueiras Martínez (GtQ), (Madrid: Traficantes de Sueños, 2005) 113–129.[↑]
33. Transgenderism is defined by law as “the existence of dissonance between the morphological sex or physiological gender initially assigned and the applicant’s gender identity or psychological sex, and the stability and persistence of this dissonance” (3/2007 Law). Law 3/2007, of 15 March 2007, Regulating the Rectification of the Civil Registry Concerning a Person’s Sex. BOE 65, 16 March 2007. [↑]
34. However, it can be argued that two years of hormonal process may cause sterilization.[↑]
35. Ley 20/2011, de 21 de julio, del Registro Civil. BOE, 175 de 22 de julio de 2011.[↑]
36. Michel de Certeau, La invención de lo cotidiano, Artes de hacer, (México: Universidad Iberoaméricana Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente, 1990).[↑]
37. Reaction to an article I published explaining Name to Name, a video art project by Yera Moreno: http://www.pikaramagazine.com/2014/03/si-me-cambio-de-nombre-sigo-siendo-la-misma/#sthash.NNYSo5Wh.dpuf.. In the original Spanish: “Una vez cambié de nombre. Hace algunos años. El objetivo era que mi maltratador no me encontrara. Esa costumbre pueblerina de anteponer un María a cualquier nombre fue mi salvación cuando la justicia no me permitió hacerlo de forma legal. En España, en pleno siglo XXI, con una Ley Integral contra la violencia de género vigente mi única forma de vivir fue renombrarme. El proceso fue difícil. No había sido una decisión voluntaria sino el mal menor. Ahora yo soy otra. No soy del todo mi yo anterior, tampoco soy del todo María. Soy una mujer con una vida muerta y una vida viva. Compartiendo espacio y tiempo. Dos nombres son dos identidades, aunque el DNI no cambie. Sigo siendo una mujer blanca, heterosexual, burguesa y urbanita. Parezco la misma pero sé que no lo soy. La mirada ajena no alcanza a apreciar la revolución personal y eso, con el tiempo, me ha hecho sentir poderosa. Sé manejar un arma defensiva. No puedo, sin embargo, imaginar qué será que ese cambio modifique también la mirada del/la otrx. Nombrarte para cubrirte o para descubrirte.”[↑]
38. Taken from Name to Name video art project. “El nombre es un lastre… El nombre te lo imponen cuando naces. Un tío mío, hermano de mi madre, vivía en casa, estaba soltero y se llamaba Ignacio. Le llamaban Iñaki. Yo era su sobrina mayor. Cuando iba por el barrio… Mi tío tenía una forma muy peculiar de vestirse y yo también. Los amigos de mi tío decían, por ahí viene “la Iñakita.” Por algún motivo aquello se me quedó grabado… El día que ya no pude más, ya no me vuelvo a llamar más Leonor. Te odio tanto que no me quiero llamar como tú, le dije a mi tía. Me tenía que llamar de alguna manera. Y pensé que la forma de hacerle daño era llamarme Iñaka. A ella le caía también muy mal el hermano de mi madre. Fue un poco revulsivo.”[↑]
39. Personal interview, February 2014.[↑]
40. David Bell and John Binnie The Sexual Citizenship: Queer Theory and Beyond (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000).[↑]
41. “Tenía otro nombre que me encasillaba en lo femenino. El hecho de ser mujer y todo… No me sentía a gusto, cómodo. De pequeño me decía mi madre, a veces por cariño, no sé, por un apodo “Alex”, a veces mi tía. Alex esto y lo otro. Me sentía feliz, pensé ¡por fin se dieron cuenta!! Me identificaba mucho desde pequeño con Alex . . . . Mi madre después se dio cuenta de mi orientación sexual, que me gustaban las mujeres. Y dejó de llamarme Alex y comenzó a llamarme por mi otro nombre. Alex es como muy neutral para hombres y para mujer. . . . . Sí me reapropié de este nombre porque me gustaba de pequeño que me llamen así.”[↑]
42. “Un día lo elegí. En realidad no fue algo reflexionado. Fue el nombre que me iba bien y el nombre que me surgió. Desde entonces he sido Mario siempre. A veces pasa cuando haces dragking. Para mí, el cambiar a mi otro nombre a Mario, porque el cambio de nombre es algo que alterno, cambia mucho cómo te tratan los demás, cómo te leen los demás. El hecho de dar un nombre para una identidad distinta de alguna manera consolida la percepción de esa identidad. Se vuelve mucho más creíble. Cuando la gente está dudando de tu identidad y te pregunta y les das un nombre, esto les tranquiliza.” (Mario, M en Conflicto, N2N).[↑]