Today, November 23rd, is the Transgender Day of Remembrance and in light of that a special event will take place at the City Hall (i. Ráðhúsið) at 17:30. Halla Þórlaug Óskarsdóttir met Ugla Stefanía Jónsdóttir, the chair of Trans-Iceland, at The University Bar (i. Stúdentakjallarinn), for a quick chat about the issues transgender people face in Iceland. When asked about the biggest challenges they’re currently confronting, Ugla immediately mentioned linguistic issues. The definition of transgender people by law is “people having problems with gender identification” which suggests that trans people have a disease.
UGLA: “It’s condescending. Also: Transgender people should have control over their life. Today there is a committee that decides if you can have the reassignment surgery or not. This committee is some sort of “gate-keeper”. Regardless of its work, which is very good in a way, its authority is abnormally great. They could have said to me: “No, you can’t have the surgery, we don’t feel you’re woman enough.”
Hence, the biggest issue is definitely for transgender people to gain control over their life. Having the right to decide for themselves. This makes sense. Who would ever decide to undergo a difficult procedure just for the heck of it? Ugla tells me that Denmark has already adopted “the Argentinian way”; which basically gives every person permission to decide for themself which gender they belong to.
UGLA: “This way being transgender is not defined as a disease. There is still a committee, but its job is to offer support and education. They don’t have anything to do with decision-making. This also gives way for people who don’t necessarily define themselves as either male or female. There they can participate in the process up to some point. In Iceland this is not possible, for the law require you to define your gender and enter the gender reassignment process towards “the opposite gender”. So if you want hormones, you have to define yourself as an individual of the opposite gender.”
Ugla herself has undergone a sex reassignment surgery (SRS) and says that after the procedure she felt a great pressure to become even more “girly” than she already was.
UGLA: “I think I felt even more pressure than my female friends. I felt a pressure to be extremely feminine, extremely pretty and preferably watch chick flicks all day.”
HALLA: “Basically become another person.”
UGLA: “Exactly. Someone very different from myself. But I played the part for a while, because I felt I had to.”
HALLA: “Ironic, since you went through with the whole thing because you felt that your body wasn’t representing the person you were on the inside. And then afterwards you felt the need to pretend to be someone else.”
UGLA: That’s right. But gradually it dawned on me: I’m not some “typical girl”.”
Our talk goes back to the conflicts that the transgender-battle faces, how it sometimes clashes with other ideologies and movements; such as feminism and the Queer movement.
UGLA: “Modern Feminism, for example, focuses on constructivism and socialization. Then all of a sudden some trans-individual arrives and says: “Baby, I was born this way. It’s in my nature.” That doesn’t exactly go together.
As a member of the younger generation of trans-individuals, I have started to criticize the norm, while the trans-people before me basically had no other choice than just walk into the norm as it was.
It’s not different from the waves in other movements, such as feminism, now we’re facing the second wave of trans-people. And they have started challenging the idea of Man and Woman … and started asking the question: What gender do you want to belong to?”
HALLA: “And maybe in what proportions you want to belong to each gender?”
UGLA: “That’s exactly it. Obviously I think gender matters, but at the same time I feel that it doesn’t. It’s difficult, because people are discriminated against based on their gender and that’s why I think it’s an important discussion. It’s also important to think about gender in the sense of what it is and how it’s represented. Because gender is more than just male or female… penis or pussy. It’s personal rather than biological. But then again, I think we’re way too focused on gender in every field.”
And there are other matters Ugla is highly critical of. As a part of an educational group from The National Queer Organization (i. Samtökin ’78) who visit elementary schools to educate children on trans-gender issues, Ugla says that sadly kids don’t get any other education on the matter in school.
UGLA: “I feel that the issues of transgender people should be discussed in biology, sociology and sex education. Transgender kids don’t get any education in school. They have to search for information elsewhere. That’s not okay.”
On the positive note Ugla says that members of Trans-Iceland, which she is chair of, applaud the idea to discontinue the Personal Name Committee of Iceland. The committee has the power to reject names on various grounds. One of them is that women should have female names and men should bear male names.
UGLA: “This name-committee being abolished would mean a lot to the transgender society. Then anyone could go out and change their name to whatever they felt like – without legally being of a certain gender. You could even have a female first name and a male middle name.”
In the beginning we started talking about linguistic issues and it’s evident that the Icelandic language doesn’t make life any easier for transgender people, since it is very gender oriented.
UGLA: “You’re constantly forced to confirm your gender. You can’t say you’re hungry without stating your gender. I was listening to a radio show the other day where a linguistic expert blatantly declared that the pronouns are a closed word group. What a load of crap. Who decides that?”
Obviously gender has nothing to do with the feeling of hunger. And although it’s difficult to mess with the sacred language of Icelandic, it’s probably only a matter of time before the closed group of pronouns will open up for other identities.
Language should definitely encourage the freedom of expression – instead of being a deterrent for a minority group. Everyone should be encouraged to speak up – and not feel forced to shut up, because of language.
How ironic when language itself is making people uncomfortable with speaking.
