Michelle Suarez became Uruguay’s first transgender senator Tuesday, vowing to use her position to expand and protect the rights of transgender people in the South American country.<\/p>\n
The 34-year-old lawmaker representing the Communist Party assumed her seat in the upper chamber of congress, where she intends to push a law that would let transgender people change their legal identities without having to get a judge’s approval.<\/p>\n
It would also mandate that 1 percent of government jobs<\/a> be reserved for transgender people and establish a pension to compensate transgender people who were persecuted during Uruguay’s 1973-1985 military dictatorship.<\/p>\n “Uruguay has evolved, but it’s still a discriminatory country,” Suarez told the Associated Press.<\/p>\n Previously, as an activist, she helped draft a bill that legalized gay marriage<\/a> when it became law in 2013.<\/p>\n In an AP interview, Suarez said she was 15 when she acknowledged that she was a woman living in a male body. She added that her parents have always been supportive, but some classmates and teachers discriminated against her growing up.<\/p>\n “It was a tough time,” Suarez said. “People who knew me began to harass me.”<\/p>\n Nevertheless Suarez finished high school with top grades.<\/p>\n Life became somewhat easier when she moved from her small seaside hometown to the capital, Montevideo. But even there a college professor who specialized in human rights refused to grade her work because of who she was, Suarez said.<\/p>\n Suarez later became the first transgender person to earn a university law degree in the country of 3.3 million people.<\/p>\n In 2009 she began working as an activist for gender rights as a way to cope with her mother’s death.<\/p>\n “I had my mother \u2014 that’s the only difference,” she said. “My family didn’t kick me out of our house.”<\/p>\n The milestone for Uruguay comes amid some other gains for transgender rights in a region where macho attitudes are still prevalent and resistance to LGBTQ issues can often be fierce.<\/p>\n In 2012 neighboring Argentina<\/a> allowed people to change their legal and physical gender identity without having to undergo judicial, psychiatric and medical procedures. Earlier this year the country appointed its first transgender police chief.<\/p>\n In Chile the center-left government has been pushing an array of measures for gender rights including greater acceptance for transgender people in general and children in particular.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Michelle Suarez became Uruguay’s first transgender senator Tuesday, vowing to use her position to expand and protect the rights of transgender people in the South American country. The 34-year-old lawmaker representing the Communist Party assumed her seat in the upper chamber of congress, where she intends to push a law that would let transgender people change their legal identities without… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=928"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":929,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928\/revisions\/929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}