- Context: There is no legal gender recognition (LGR) law in the Philippines that allows transgender people and non-binary people to legally change their sex or gender marker on birth certificates and other legal documents, thus affecting their access to legal safeguards and social services
- Human rights: Civil and political rights, right to privacy, right to equal protection before the law, right to self-determination, access to basic social services
- Rights-holder: LGBTQIA+ people, transgender and non-binary individuals, general public
- Duty-bearer: Philippine government
The absence of legal gender recognition could result in a mismatch of identification records which would then hinder access of affected persons to decent work, mobility, and even social services. It also makes them vulnerable to harassment and discrimination.
“Transgender people are experiencing cultural, physical, and political violence. The cultural and physical violence comes from our doctrines such as religious frameworks that forced us to believe and assimilate,” said Rocky Rinabor, Pioneer Filipino Trans Men Movement (FTM) Executive Director.
Political violence refers to the institutionalization of sanctions against identities viewed to be contradictory to the traditional or conservative perspective of gender that there are only male and female. Rinabor said that this manifests in schools, media, churches, homes, workplaces, public spaces, and even government institutions.
In 2018, the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) documented several instances of how the lack of legal gender recognition adversely affects transgender people.
- Work: A transgender human resource manager attested how hiring officers failed applicants because they were transgender. Meanwhile in a public office, a transgender woman employee was shamed when her supervisor issued a pronouncement to all subordinated officers that ordered employees to use only their legal names and not their preferred name.
- Education: In a requirement for a master’s degree, a transgender woman had to undergo a physical medical examination. Upon getting to the university clinic, she requested a female doctor. The nurse on duty told her that it is not the policy of the clinic to have a “male person to be examined by a female doctor.”
- Public spaces and mobility: A club barred entry to a trans woman due to her Philippine-issued ID listing her as female.
- Social security services: A transgender man failed to obtain a loan from the Social Security Services (SSS) due to discrepancy in documents– his driver’s license bore a female gender marker and his SSS records.
- Public records: Birth certificate is the primary document on which many other legal documents are based, including passport and other identification cards. However, there are no options for transgender people to change their first names or their gender markers on this document.
These cases are only the tip of the iceberg. Generally, trans women are often mixed with male persons deprived of liberty (PDL), where many of them experienced abuse. On the other hand, the policy review noted that transgender men are placed with women PDL in consideration of their “safety.”
“The respect of transgender people’s human rights encompasses the obligation to refrain from doing actions that violate those human rights. These include that States cannot criminalise gender expression, or put abusive eligibility criteria in place for legal gender recognition,” the policy review stated. “States also have positive obligations to protect people’s human rights (for example, against discriminatory practices), and also to fulfil them, by putting all necessary legislative, budgetary and other measures in place.”
Pioneer FTM’s data show that there have been more than 300 documented murders of transgender Filipinos due to transphobia. These cases are perceived to be lower, Rinabor said, due to misgendering, underreporting, family concealment, and limitations in the monitoring system.
Bulatlat asked the Philippine National Police (PNP) for the 10-year data of victims of homicide and murder, stratified by gender identity, including transgender people. The agency has yet to provide the information.
Meanwhile, the international project Trans Murder Monitoring revealed that there are more than 100 LGBTQ+ related killings in the Philippines.
Philippine laws deny transgender individuals the right to have their gender legally recognized. The Clerical Error Law (2001) only allows “correction” of the sex entry when it was a result of clerical typographical error, and not a person’s practice of self-determination of their identity— effectively closing off one of the few administrative avenues available to transgender people.
This exclusion was further cemented by a landmark 2007 Supreme Court (SC) ruling in Silverio v. Republic, in which the SC denied a transgender woman’s petition to have her name and gender marker corrected on her birth certificate. The SC held that a person’s sex is determined at birth by the attending medical professional, and that the legal definition of “sex” does not extend to individuals who have undergone gender reassignment procedures.
Due to this decision, the SC established a legal obstacle for transgender Filipinos pursuing gender recognition. Without legislative reform, transgender individuals will remain unable to obtain identity documents that reflect who they are, exposing them to ongoing discrimination, social exclusion, and barriers to accessing basic services.
“Some people transition. Some people do not. While, some of us cannot transition at all because of barriers: lack of support systems, access to healthcare, financial constraints, and stigma,” Rinabor said. “Legal gender recognition is both a concept, process, and a principle of recognition.” (RTS, DAA)
Save as PDF