Breathe
By Erika Salinas, Founder of Sociedad Activa, an organization that defends and promotes human rights through education and art.
When I was 21 years old, I fell in love for the first time. Then I went to confession to my father at church and told him that I was very much in love, to which he replied: "but that's not bad, daughter".
- But it's from a woman, I told him.
- Now that's a sin," he condemned.
He immediately began a series of very strong and painful penitences that lasted three years; three years where only love increased but also guilt, I would go to sleep praying to God to make me a normal person, I could no longer bear so much pain, so much guilt. Until one day, seeing that his techniques did not work, the father ordered me to go to the psychiatrist to give me electroshocks, "that will erase those sinful thoughts", while he passed me a little card through the confessional, which also had the number of a gynecologist, "she will give you hormones to recover your lost femininity and with that, you will be cured".
The word cure echoed in my head, cure, cure of what, I was just in love, I just wanted to be happy! At that moment I ran away and never went back to that place again, however, the psychological and psychiatric after-effects had already taken their toll on me.
I had to go through many therapeutic processes, to heal depression and anxiety, education and cinema were my salvation, making my short film ("For Sarah", 2021) denouncing what happened to me, was what made me recover my life. Researching for my script I discovered that what they had done with me had a name and they were called "therapies" of conversion, although the correct term is ECOSIG, which are practices of different types, which are intended to change the sexual orientation, identity or gender expression of homosexual, bisexual and trans people to what has been established as the normative "a binary heterosexuality cisgender cisgender", through psychological sessions, psychiatry, religious, academic talks and in the case of women, are usually more violent, reaching corrective rapes, which unfortunately is not surprising, because as Minister Arturo Zaldivar says "we live in a country that tolerates gender violence, that perpetuates, reproduces and invisibilizes it".
These dantesque practices have been typified by the UN as torture, since, since 1990 the WHO declared that homosexuality is not a mental illness, the same for transsexuality in 2018, therefore, without a diagnosis, there is no illness, and therefore "nothing, absolutely, nothing to cure". However, according to the National Survey on sexual and gender diversity ENDISEG (INEGI 2022) more than half a million LGBT+ people, we have been victims of these cruel, inhuman and degrading treatments.
Last October 11, 2023, the Senate of the Republic approved its prohibition and it is currently in the Chamber of Deputies, so that it can finally be banned throughout Mexico . Will there be deputies capable of being on the side of the torturers?
ECOSIGs are ignorance, ECOSIGs are torture and a serious violation of human rights, to legislate to prohibit them is to save lives, besides it is a responsibility of the State to protect and guarantee the human rights of all people. This demand is made by thousands of activists for those who are no longer here, for those who preferred to take their own lives rather than survive in this society that discriminates and violates, for those who still cannot "come out of the closet", for those who are still afraid, this demand is made for those who are coming behind, those girls, boys and teenagers who deserve to live free and in fullness, we need to guarantee them a better future than we had, that no one, never again, suffers torture for being who they are. We want to be the last generation to suffer violence for being from the LGBT+ community!
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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