Iceland review - 2019, Page 114

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Iceland Review
The year is 1996. After spending several years
in Sweden, Anna Kristjánsdóttir moves back to
Iceland. She struggles to find a job, and when she
finally does, harsh bullying leads her to quit. Anna
is a public figure, though not everyone looks at her
in a positive light. But it’s not being abroad that has
made her an outsider: Anna is trans. She was, in
fact, the first trans person to come out publicly in
Iceland. Discussing those years in a recent interview,
Anna said: “You could separate Icelanders into two
groups - those who were curious and wanted to know
more, and those who were prejudiced. The Bishop of
Iceland, for example, prayed for God’s help.”
“That was the first conversation that the
Icelandic nation had about trans people,” Ugla
Stefanía Kristjönudóttir Jónsdóttir tells me. Ugla is
an activist and chairperson of Trans Ísland. We’ve
met to discuss Iceland’s newly minted Gender
Autonomy Act, which she had a big hand in creating.
It’s a piece of legislation four years in the making
and constitutes a huge step forward in trans and
intersex rights.
An imperfect proposal
Ugla tells me how the legislation first came about.
“It started four years ago with me and [intersex
activist] Kitty Anderson sitting down for coffee
after getting an email from the Pirate Party. They
were planning to submit a parliamentary resolution
called ‘The Third Gender.’ It was a good idea, but
somehow mixed together trans and gender-queer
and intersex people. So we told them ‘OK, we like
this idea, but don’t submit it just yet, we’re going to
work on it a little bit.’”
“We put together a group of activists and set up
a meeting where we invited representatives from all
political parties. Most of them accepted the invita-
tion. There was broad agreement that we need to
do something for both trans and intersex people.”
Health Minister Svandís Svavarsdóttir picked up
the ball from there, helping put together a grass-
roots group to draft the bill. It would take dozens of
people four years of hard work (over two changes of
government) before the bill was finally made law last
June.
“We took a long time because we were very ambi-
tious,” Ugla explains. “We wanted to make an act
that was absolutely bulletproof. I think that’s appar-
ent in the regulations that accompany the legisla-
tion, which explain why each article is important and
lay out a plan for how to carry it out. We wanted to
create legislation that would truly mean something.”
Clearing hurdles
But what does the legislation really change? Aagot
Vigdís Óskarsdóttir is a lawyer who worked on the
initial draft of the bill, as well as on its final version.
Before the Gender Autonomy Act, she explains,
trans people faced innumerable hurdles when it
came to changing their registered name or gender.
“Previously, trans people had to go through a
long process and get permission from a special
committee before they could change their regis-
tered gender and get a new name. Under previous
law, trans people had to go through a so-called
trial period, which meant living in the ‘opposite
gender role’ for at least a year. During that time,
they didn’t have ID or a name that matched their
appearance and gender, which caused many trans
people immeasurable discomfort and distress, as
it meant they had to constantly explain their status
and reveal sensitive personal information to various
parties.”
Aagot continues, “The new law completely sep-
arates the official registration of gender on the one
hand and on the other hand the medical treatment
or surgery that trans people may want to undergo in
order to better align their bodies with their gender
identity. It prescribes the unrestricted right of indi-
viduals 18 years and older to decide their registered
gender,” Aagot says.
Another important feature of the legislation is
Previously, trans people had to go through a long process and
get permission from a special committee before they could
change their registered gender and get a new name.