The Big Change

A legal change this week placed Colombia in the vanguard of nations which permit their citizens to legally change their gender.

That's right - no psychiatrist or surgeon required. Just sign this notarial form and in five days the government will see you as the other gender.

The facility in switching gender is a victory for transgender people - previously, a gender change required a judge's order and months of waiting - but I wonder whether officials have thot thru the possible consequences.

The easy, no-questions-asked gender switch seems, first of all, out of step with the rest of Colombian culture and laws. After all, Colombia still does not allow same-sex marriage. As a result, two men or two women aren't allowed to marry each other here; but once one of them switched his or her gender, they could marry, creating an even less conventional (and even less Catholic) relationship. Both members of a heterosexual couple could even change gender identities and still remain a heterosexual couple.

And how about criminal consequences? Will Juan Gomez carry the same guilt once he's Juana Gomez? And in which prison will he (or she) do the time?

Thirdly, will gender switching add another cover for people fleeing from the law? How difficult will it be to nab a criminal who's changed not only his (or her) appearance, but also legal name and gender?

Perhaps fortunately, the confusion will be limited by the limit on switching gender only two times in one lifetime, and only once in a ten-year period.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A Healthy LGBT Spectacle?

Bogotá's sexual minority, or LGBTI community, held a big, colorful march thru downtown today in protest against bullying, which has recently received attention here, as it has in many countries. 

Bullying is an ugly thing, and hopefully this march will help reduce it. But I generally ask the same thing about these gay parades, which attract huge crowds of oglers, most of whom presumably are not gay. 

Members of sexual minorities should have equal rights and be treated with the respect due anybody. But do these public spectacles contribute to that? For the sake of employment or residence, a person's sexual orientation should be no more important than whether they are left or right-handed or blue- or brown-eyed. And, undoubtedly, countless gay and lesbian people are our neighbors or co-workers without us knowing it or caring about it if we do. 

The shirt says 'All couples deserve equal rights.'

But spectacles like today's, with extravagantly-dressed transgender beauty queens dancing thru the streets dressed like characters from a fantasy movie or escapees from a freak show, do anything BUT contribute to the idea that LGBT people can also be ordinary friends, neighbors, schoomates and co-workers. Rather, they contribute to a stereotype that these are freaky individuals so different from the rest of us that they serve only as curiosities.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Transsexuals' Anti-AIDS Campaign

A group of transvestites get ready to perform on Plaza Bolivar. 

Transsexuals were out in force this afternoon on La Plaza del Chorro, participating in a consciousness-raising program about HIV/AIDS.

A poster of a transvestite says:
'I live my life, and if you don't
like it that's your problem.'

Colombia's AIDS infection rate is, fortunately, much lower than many other nations - less than one percent of adults - and has actually declined over the last several years. The epidemic here is also still a mostly-male, mostly-gay phenomenon, altho that's no comfort for infected people.

Colombia's armed conflict has, however, worsened the AIDS problem, both because fighters can be AIDS vectors (violence against women is a continuing phenomenon in Colombia's conflict) and because victims of the conflict are more vulnerable to AIDS and other diseases.

As for transsexuals - they seem surprisingly common in Bogota, both in their own 'separate-but-equal' part of the city's central red light district, as well as in the city's parks and neighborhoods. And, of course, in Chapinero, Bogotá's gay neighborhood. Sure, many other people treat them as a spectacle, which is probably inevitable. But, at least, I haven't seen them abused or ridiculed. And, they sometimes seem to want to be a spectacle, with their often flamboyant dress and behavior, particularly during the annual Gay Rights Parade.

A group of transvestites walk down Bogotá's Sunday Ciclovia. 

I won't pretend that I feel comfortable with transvestisism. But, to each his or her own. Still, I can't help but wonder about a few things: Why are almost all transsexuals men turned into women, rather than the reverse? What sort of person goes to a transsexual prostitute, when real women prostitutes are working the streets just a few blocks away? Do almost all transsexuals want to convert themselves into a person of the opposite sex, or are they satisfied just acting like it?

Back on La Plaza del Chorro, a transsexual gives a pep talk.

Finally, I can't resist recalling the only conversation I've ever had with a transsexual, which took place in a women's prison in La Paz, Bolivia.

I was working as a journalist then, and I was interviewing a young South African transsexual who had wanted to have sex-change surgery. But how would she pay for it? She decided to travel to Bolivia, buy cocaine, and smuggle it to Europe, where the profits would pay for the surgery.

But she got searched in the La Paz airport and they found the cocaine, as well as something else which showed she was not born a woman. In court, the South African pleaded guilty: 'Judge, I confess it, I did it, I'll do the time - but please don't put me in the men's prison because God only knows what they'd do to me!'

The judge felt sorry for her and put her in the women's prison, where she was living happily with 300 women. She had decided, however, not to become a woman.

A high-risk population: Transsexual prostitutes in Bogotá's central red light district, in the Santa Fe neighborhood. 

Colombia's National Plan to Combat HIV/AIDS

Colombian League Against HIV/AIDS

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours