Spain’s Minister of Family, Youth, and Social Affairs in Madrid is raising alarm bells after locating multiple cases in which men convicted of domestic violence changed their legal gender identity. In a letter issued to the Minister of Equality, Ana Dávila-Ponce de León Municio detailed her concerns that the safety of female victims of violence was at risk due to Spain’s “progressive” approach towards gender identity.
In her letter, issued March 18, Minister Dávila-Ponce de León noted that she had become aware of six cases in the autonomous region of Madrid where men charged with violence against women had changed their legal gender identity — a process that was streamlined and made significantly easier following the enactment of Spain’s “Trans Law” in 2023.
In addition to updating their registered sex, three of the men made requests to stay in women’s shelters with the wives and children who had been escaping from them. So far, concerned staff at the shelters have blocked their access but may be violating the nation’s gender discrimination laws as a result.
But perhaps most disturbingly, an abuser changing his legal sex has a tremendous impact on the resources the victims are able to access. In one of the cases recently highlighted by El Mundo, a female victim of sexual assault was stripped of the special protection provided for victims of physical and sexual abuse because officials told her that her aggressor, who drugged and raped her in front of her young daughter, “was no longer registered as a man, but as a woman.”
In Spain, special gender-based violence charges exist, providing female victims of male violence specific protections and resolutions which can impact divorce or separation proceedings, custody, and other important factors. Victims of gender-based violence can also access special protections intended to ensure they are safe from their male abuser.
Because a female cannot be convicted of gender-based violence, male abusers who change their legal sex can avoid this charge and deny their female victims of those legal protections.
As previously reported by Reduxx, a man in Spain who abused his female partner for opposing his gender transition avoided charges of gender-based violence by legally changing his identification to “female” and adopting a woman’s name. As a result, his victim was unable to obtain a specific protection order for intimate partner violence which would typically result in the male abuser being removed from the home to minimize the financial impact to the woman at a time where they are most vulnerable.
Despite only one year passing since the Trans Law was enacted by Spanish parliament, making it easier for people to “self-identify” their gender on their legal documents, several cases have emerged involving men using the law to receive financial, social, or legal benefits. The phenomenon is now being referred to as “trans fraud.”
Earlier this month, Reduxx reported that dozens of male civil servants in one small Spanish community changed their gender identity reportedly just to get benefits allocated for females. Among them was Roberto Perdigones, a 35-year-old Army corporal, who boasted of changing his legal sex to “female” after deciding he identified as an “intersex bigender” person.
From that moment on, he began to enjoy the benefits: the day he got his new ID card, he showed up at the barracks with earrings, long hair and a beard, now able to disregard mandatory dress code regulations without repercussions.
But the benefits are not limited to aesthetic issues, with Perdigones also now qualifying for a mother’s pension as he is a “woman” with a child.
“By changing my sex, as I have been informed, my pension has gone up. Because women receive more in retirement pensions to compensate for the inequality. In addition, I get 15% more because I have a child,” he boasted.
“I even have a private room in the barracks, all to myself, with a private bathroom. Because, being a woman, I can’t be with the men, and I didn’t consider it appropriate to be with the biological women out of respect for them. I’ve had the room to myself since the sex change.”
Perdigones also intends to seek a promotion and will be utilizing the so-called “affirmative action measures” designed to increase female presence in the Armed Forces command.
As Perdigones is approaching the mandatory age of retirement for temporary soldiers, obtaining a permanent position would be beneficial for him. Perdigones will be applying as a “woman,” since the physical tests are less demanding and because certain positions are seeking more female representation.