Despite the technical profile of the new Minister of Equality, Ana Redondo, and the intention to bring policies to areas of consensus in feminism – which there are -, the ministry has already encountered the first controversy in the bosom of the left Sumar and Podemos, as well as trans groups, are criticizing the appointment of Isabel García as director of the Women’s Institute because they consider that her “transphobic” views do not allow her to hold the position. Yesterday, Equality spoke to the new director, recalling her career, especially in defense of LGBTI rights.
The ministry wants to put an end to this first attack while former ministers Irene Montero and Ione Belarra were calling for García’s dismissal. The criticism received by the new director appointed on Wednesday is due to her critical position with the trans law and with the background of the rule. That is to say, and according to some of his tweets, due to the fact that he understands that the rule promoted by Irene Montero makes biological “sex” disappear as a defining element of women and, therefore, “the female political subject “. Also, Isabel García pointed out that the background of the queer theory that inspires the rule “is an attack on women” and the fight for equality. In some comments on the director’s networks collected by Sumar i Podemos, she is criticized for saying that “trans women don’t exist”. A controversy that must be linked to this debate on the conception of sex in relation to the definition of woman.
Feminism was divided last legislature around the drafting of the trans law and specifically on the right to free self-determination of sex in the registers. A debate was also opened on the scope of free determination in minors. With the appointment of Redondo, they wanted to turn the page and focus the ministry on the fight against male violence and equality between men and women. The first rule that the Spanish Government has presented in this new legislature is, and not by chance, that of parity. It is intended to leave behind the division – a complex thing – and the politicization that Montero gave to his portfolio.
But it is clear that not all the profiles of the ministry could have a technical character, since the positions of the feminist movement in this debate have been forceful for and against. In an article published on her website during the processing of the rule, Isabel García claimed “legal certainty” in the debate, and at the same time reminded that the PSOE is in favor of depathologising trans people. In Sumar, its person in charge of feminism, Isabel Duval, considered it regrettable that the Women’s Institute could be led by someone who speaks of “queer dictatorship”. Yolanda Díaz did not speak out yesterday, but she did retweet Carla Antonelli, the first trans senator (Sumar).
At the same time, many feminist associations supported García yesterday, as they understood that the essential core of the fight for equality between men and women can be recovered in the ministry.
García was a federal LGBTI delegate and, as she writes on her blog, she is a lesbian. He believes that lesbian women “are doubly discriminated against” because they are “women in a patriarchal world” and because they are lesbians “in a heteronormative world”.