About a year ago, Assignment Review’s “Tranståget och teenårsflickorna” was released, which consists of two parts of the program focusing on trans care in Sweden. Aleksa Lundberg chose to participate in part two and released in connection with that also and debate article that she probably would not make her gender correction today.
Since then, she has chosen to be transparent about how she experienced the time after her gender correction, something she has received criticism for, but also tributes. She was awarded the “Hero Prize 2020” from the Association for Transgender People (FPES). Since November, she has also been a columnist for the magazine ETC.
– My first chronicle was about the role of the filter bubbles in the debate and how it leads to us not listening to what our opponent says.
When you enter the trans debate today, what are you talking about then?
–A bit of everything, at first I told my story, to come out as gay and later as a trance girl. Homophobia, transphobia, trans rights got a lot of focus, how vulnerable you are.
“Yes, I was born a man, but is there something wrong with that?”
Do you still stand for those opinions?
– Obvious. But I have clarified my position in some areas. For example, I do not think that trans rights are synonymous with being allowed to operate, just by having a claim and a certain gender identity.
Aleksa feels that the debate has mixed up certain things. Trans rights for her are not, as the proposal for a new gender affiliation suggests, to lower the age limit for genital surgery from 18 to 15 years. Nor is it a right to avoid being questioned by a gender investigator, but she is.
– In the beginning I did not want to express these thoughts, I was afraid of being considered to abandon “the vulnerable”. I wrote a debate article about the fact that a new gender affiliation law is important and very active in mentioning the proposal to lower the age limit for genital surgery. But I come to a point where I could not close my eyes to problems anymore.
That point gives me in connection with her watching UG’s “Tranståget” and seeing the so-called “Mika”, who regretted her gender correction. In the episode, “Mika’s” face had been “blurred” when she told about her remorse after the treatments.
– I saw my opinion comrades go to UG and think that the program was transphobic. I got a lump in my stomach, no one listened to “Mika”.
JK Rowling, Gardet and other controversies in the trans issue
In recent years, the trans issue has been in the hot air. JK Rowling created a twitter storm when she wrote in June: “deleting the concept can take away our ability to discuss our lives”, which can start up and up a mixed writer, where some backed her and others express their place for transgender people. In Sweden, the issue has received attention in several places. Among other things, a writer on the feminist side Gardet wrote that “trans women are men” and Kajsa Ekis Ekman has long pushed the issue of identity and gender, something she has been criticized for.
– I can agree with some of the statements in substance. For example, yes I was born a man, but is there something wrong with that? There is an extreme phalanx, which means that I would be a privileged patriarch who took on me and female persona and now claims that I am “most oppressed”. I’m not going to sign it, for natural reasons (laughs). But anyone who criticizes the emerging view of gender is not extreme, on the contrary, JK Rowling, for example, has several important points.
Aleksa himself has become a watershed in the debate. As mentioned, she received criticism from parts of the trans movement for her participation in Assignment Review’s “Tranståget”. But earlier this year, she was awarded the “Hero Prize 2020” from FPES (Association for Transgender People).
– You are both devil and angel in the same body (laughs).
What does it mean to you?
– I was thrilled. I really did not think so, rather that I would get RFSL’s “Thistle” (laughs). But I felt very seen and I am aware that many in FPES were critical of UG’s review. But they made a difference and the importance of more stories being told.
What is the most important thing in the trans movement?
– I think that organizations like RFSL have a huge responsibility, which I doubt if they understand. Recently, they released a series of interviews about trans people who feel helped by trans care. I would have supported that initiative if it were not for the fact that, in connection with publication, they wrote: “we want to tell about how it really is based on people who actually know”. They mean that everyone who testifies about something else, both care recipients, researchers and doctors do not know what they are talking about. RFSL shall be an organization for the rights of all LGBTQ people. Who will fight for the LGBTQ people who have been harmed by trans care?
Going forward, Aleksa will work on projects that do not primarily revolve around trans issues. She does not abandon the debate, human rights are another matter of the heart, she says, but being fair is difficult, and for her it is not a straight line in conviction and obviousness.
– Justice can be, if we are to talk trans now, to get a no from a doctor to undergo gender reassignment. A few years later, when you have been beaten and cried and wondered what is wrong with the world, you may come to the conclusion that it was not physical intervention you mainly needed, but something completely different.
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