COVID-19 has had unique impacts on transgender people, from social distancing policies that are based on gender to health care discrimination that transgender people face when seeking medical care for COVID-19.

Photo by Adam Nieścioruk on Unsplash.

With COVID-19, transgender people are dealing with unique consequences of the pandemic, from postponed gender identity surgeries to discrimination when receiving health care. In addition to health care based consequences, some government policies unintentionally affect trans people.

In numerous Latin American countries, governments have implemented gender-based curfew policies, only allowing men or women in public at a given time, depending on the day. As you might imagine, enforcement of these policies can lead to discrimination against people who don’t look “man enough” or “woman enough” on a certain days, affecting many gender non-conforming people. In addition, if enforcement policies include checking a government ID, trans people may not have an ID that matches their gender.

Colombia

Bogotá, Colombia (Colombia’s capital) has instituted social distancing policies that restrict the days in which their citizens can go out of their homes for essential errands by gender: men can leave their homes on even numbered days and women on odd days.¹

The mayor of Bogotá is Claudia López, the first woman first openly lesbian mayor of the city. According to the New York Times, López has defended the policy as the easiest way to split the population, and that enforcers of the policy should respect “diverse gender manifestations.”² \

However, Reuters reports that authorities have not been so respectful. Alis Nicolette Rodriguez, a transfeminine student in Bogotá, told Reuters that “If you don’t go out with make-up on, with a skirt… If you don’t comply with those stereotypes and gender roles then you can’t identify yourself or be in a public space.”³

Other Colombian cities have not relied on gender to enforce social distancing. For example, Medellin imposes daily curfew based on ID number.⁴

Panama

Panama has also implemented a gender-based curfew, for which it has received much criticism. Bárbara Delgado is a trans health worker in Panama, and she was detained after being out on the “wrong day.”⁵ Authorities “verify” someone’s gender using the gender on their ID; in Panama, where sex reassignment surgery (SRS) is required to update one’s ID, many trans people do not have updated gender information on their ID. The Humans Rights Watch documents many cases of discrimination against trans people because of this policy in a letter they wrote to the president of Panama, H.E. Laurentino Cortizo Cohen.⁶ Read the letter the Human Rights Watch wrote here for more information on how the gender-based policy has affected transgender people.

General Concerns

Beyond gender-based curfews that lead to discrimination against trans people, trans people are dealing with other concerns as well during the pandemic. Access to trans-related health care such as gender confirmation surgeries and hormone care have been interrupted. In addition, transgender people are more likely to have chronic conditions like HIV, which negatively impacts recovery from coronavirus.⁷ In addition, trans people often face discrimination from health care professionals when seeking medical care for non-trans related health issues or for normal checkups.⁸

The Human Rights Campaign hosted a discussion (in Spanish) on April 14, 2020, with translatina leaders about the impacts of COVID-19 on the trans community in Latin America.

In the discussion, leaders discussed concerns about access to health care, job losses, helping vulnerable populations, and of course the gender-based quarantines.⁹

Further reading

This article is not comprehensive, but here are some more resources to learn more about how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting transgender people in Latin America.

The TransLatin@ Coalition has been helping the trans Latina immigrant population in the United States.

The Los Angeles Blade, an LGBT news source in the United States, reported on the effects of COVID-19 on trans people.

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Coalition

Notes