“Trans people’s unemployment is a form of punishment,” explains academic, writer and border activist Sayak Valencia. The aim, she says, is to inhibit recognition and prevent survival in the labour market.
In other words, this is a system that does not allow trans people to be recognized or remain in spaces outside of sex work or feminized forms of work. This same behavior of expulsion, says Sayak, is replicated for all those people who do not identify with the binary categories that capital imposed on the State and the State on people.
“Everything that escapes that (the reproduction of capital) is a threat, not only symbolic, but real because it shows other forms of socialization, subjectivation and also of production that are not linked to the concentration of wealth,” says Sayak.
Numerical reality assists the researcher. According to information published in the National Survey on Sexuality and Gender Diversity (ENDISEG), the probability of suffering discrimination in a workplace increases by 36.9% if you identify as a trans woman; 18.3% if you identify as a trans man and 16.6% if you belong to the non-binary population. These numbers, recently incorporated into the statistical analysis of the Mexican State, help us size, define and problematize the topic that Sayak Valencia explains.
For example, according to 2021 data published in 2022, there are almost one million trans people in Mexico. Of these, only 486,617 were economically active (although in the data the populations are segmented because the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) eliminated the labor categories, making it impossible to know whether it is a paid job or not) at the time of the survey. Of these people, 144,045 thought about taking their own lives (one fifth) for various reasons.
Among the working conditions reported in said INEGI study, 27,322 trans people had been threatened or sexually attacked by a school or work authority; 38,880 had been attacked by a school or work colleague; and 17,176 reported having been humiliated by work or school authorities. In 69,257 of the cases, the humiliations were committed by a co-worker.
One of the reasons that could define this reality, explains Sayak, is that trans people, as well as migrants or other human realities that oppose (voluntarily or involuntarily) reproducing systems of resource concentration, will simply be the object of this ridicule.
Broadly speaking, Sayak argues, the State, having been thought of as masculine, constantly expels trans populations from its structures, reproducing this practice of misgendering in the social programs that the State implements for that population. Its consequences exceed the threats of oblivion.
“Without material conditions, life becomes impossible and therefore there is, in some way, a condemnation, a social death that can become material due to the conditions, it is simply a lesson,” Valencia concludes.
Companies do not comply, not even with the basics…
The nightmare became reality. As Sayak tells it, it happened to a trans woman from Guadalajara, who tried to attend the march for pride in sexual diversity in Mexico City and ended up being expelled from the Cinemex restrooms. Paulette, who leads a movement for sex workers as an activist, was hit by a car after leading a protest against transphobia.
Paulette’s story cannot be told without that day. The day when workers at the said cinema chain exposed her in front of hundreds of people, because according to the criteria of the company, part of Grupo México owned by the magnate Germán Larrea: “trans people should not use those spaces.”
“Since 2020, I have received attacks from the PAN (National Action Party) deputy América Rangel, for leading a protest with other colleagues where we denounced the Cinemex company for acts of transphobia. Then she started thanking the company for taking me out of the bathroom saying that I was a man. I never responded to him but I did denounce the discrimination,” she says.
The activist for sex workers also denounces that after that disagreement with the legislator, she was a victim of intimidation, harassment and attempted transfemicide. After the events that occurred in the Congress of the Union, Paulette decided to present the corresponding complaints and take her case to the final consequences.
This is how he managed to get the Council to Prevent and Eliminate Discrimination in Mexico City (Copred) to issue a statement against the Cinemex company on April 27, 2022 for the obvious violations of the law committed by its employees.
“They tried to murder me after starting activism in Mexico City. It is difficult and will be difficult for everyone. Few people imagine the harassment that we experience every day from the moment we wake up until we go to sleep. And it frustrates me that they don’t understand that we don’t want to occupy anyone’s space, we just want to know that we can have a space and that space is not death. We are not going to take anything away from them, we just want to live,” he concludes.
Although Paulette does not blame the representative for the events, she does explain that this attack may derive from the hate speeches issued by the legislator during the conflict with the company.
The Copred document, in the hands of PODER, is addressed to Operadora de Cinemas SA de CV together with its controlling companies, subsidiaries, affiliates and companies under the control of Grupo Cinemex. In it, they explain how several employees of the company aggressively removed Paulette, arguing that “he was a gentleman” and that “that was not his bathroom.”
Under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP), companies have a responsibility to respect the human rights of all people in their operations and conduct themselves with due diligence. In other words, in their human rights risk analyses, corporations should include a gender, diversity and intersectionality perspective in order to respond to possible negative impacts on human rights, including those of the LGBTIQ+ population. Despite that, the reality for Paulette was different.
An effort in Cristero land and the companions in Latam
Not everything is oppression and violence. From the Mexican shoal, the first openly homosexual deputy in the history of the Congress of Aguascalientes, Juan Regalado Ugarte, is promoting a bill that aims to include at least 2 percent of people in the state’s contracting mechanisms. trans as workers.
And, although his party has a minority of seats, the precedent already shows, at least, an outline of political will to raise the issue in a town where religious and business morality are everyday things.
“The 2018 LGBT Diversity and Talent Survey indicates that 41 percent of trans people in Mexico have university studies and, even so, they are the ones who have the most difficulty finding employment and those who least generate work experience among diversity groups. sexual and gender.”, quotes the initiative document in the hands of PODER.
Regulation to expand job access for the trans population had already been proposed previously and, fortunately, we can talk about success stories. In this regard, the activist, literature academic and founder of the Trans Collective of Uruguay, Collette Spinetti, talks to us about the effectiveness of these inclusion schemes, which she, she assures, are possible.
The activist’s main observation is the need to diversify the programs because all human realities are different. And it is essential, to achieve exemplary results, that these realities are contemplated in affirmative action programs and in general in the entire social assistance apparatus.
“Affirmative action policies for non-binary people are definitely viable. Now, these policies cannot be general because they do not take intersectionalities into account. For example, this positive policy is not the same for a white trans woman who has had access to education as it is for an Afro-descendant trans woman living in poverty,” she explains.
Another example of the viability of implementing programs that integrate the trans population into public policies comes from Ecuador. Along the same lines as Collette, Gabriela Alejandra Rivadeneira, former Secretary of Government of Ecuador during Rafael Correa’s term, explains exclusively to PODER some of the challenges that arise when implementing public policies in favor of priority attention populations.
As she tells it, her experience as Secretary of State to apply integration policies to vulnerable populations was complex. The above, she explains, is due to the fact that the structure “continues to be that of a liberal State”, so social policies do not have the approval of all sectors.
Another explanation offered by Rivadeneira arises from a critical analysis of the model he calls “planned capitalism” (sic), where he points to the International Monetary Fund limiting the actions of the State and strengthening the private sector for social “services” that have come to supplant the responsibilities of nations with regard to the rights of the people. Therefore, the construction of agreements is complex.
Despite the above, the former official comments that for her, the fight from the State is and continues to be essential to achieve well-being.
“Strengthened State institutions are the best tool for development in democracy, for compliance with the International Human Rights Treaties to which our countries are parties and for the full exercise of individual and collective rights,” he explains.
Finally, regarding the particularity of serving female populations and sexual diversity, Rivadeneira comments that, for example in Ecuador (and in some cases the world):
“More than half of the population are women and the recognition of gender diversity has shown that the population requiring priority attention is far from continuing to be minorities (…) The problem is that the patriarchy inherent to capitalism has rooted stereotypes that make it impossible to expand structural debates, for example the recognition of policies for equality and non-discrimination. That is why the political participation of representatives of these population sectors is important and should be a priority. The first laws should be those of the recognition of parity and mandatory alternation, as well as positive actions for peoples and nationalities, people with disabilities, migrations and gender diversity,” she concludes.
Thus, under the experience of all the people consulted, the reality, at least that which includes Mexico, Ecuador and Uruguay, is unfavorable for trans women and gender or sex diversities. However, the routes through community organization, the regulation of companies and the implementation of welfare measures from the State have served and will serve to improve the lives of those who do not identify with the gender binomial offered by the economic and market system. The reality is diverse.
Ricardo Balderas is an investigative journalist at PODER Latin America.
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