I started identifying and came out as a transgender male in July of 2010 and have been identifying as gay for the past two years as well, so naturally I like to know the rights of the LGBT community of the country I’ll be living in for a month so I did a little bit of research. I was satisfied to discover that France is actually one of the most accepting countries in the world, even more so than my own in some ways. To start with, sexual activity between members of the same sex has been legal in France since 1791 and has only been legal in the United States since 2003. There have been anti-discrimination laws for employment in all of France since 1985 while America is still making these laws state by state. There are still 16 states that have no state level protection for LGBT employees, while the level of protection and type varies in the rest of the states. Same sex marriage was legalized nationwide in France in 2013. Same sex marriage was being legalized on a state by state basis in America until 2015, when it was legalized nationwide. Moving onto transgender centered rights, French citizens have had the right to change their legal gender since 1992, but sex reassignment surgery was required to do so. This has since been changed to allow citizens to legally change their gender without having medically transitioned since 2012. In America, it still varies from state to state. Currently, 18 states do not require a sex reassignment surgery or any amounts of hormone therapy in order to change your gender on legal documents. 28 states require surgery and/or being on hormones for a certain amount of time in order to legally change your gender. In the United States there are still 4 states with a complete ban on legal gender changes. Being transgender has been declassified as an illness since 2009 in France and since 2012 in America. Transitioning medically in France with hormone therapy and surgeries is completely free for citizens who use public “official” teams of doctors who specialize in treating transgender patients, but the downside is that the wait for them can be very long. There is also the option to transition with private companies which can be a faster process but this does require some payment from the patient. Transitioning privately is still partially covered by Sécurité Sociale in France. Hormone therapy and surgeries are only partially covered in America and the amount of coverage (if any, as it isn’t legally required for health care companies to cover treatments for transgender people) varies from company to company. I have not yet started hormone therapy or even begun to seek out potential surgeons for when I medically transition, but I do know that I will have to pay for most of it out of pocket. After doing this research and familiarizing myself with the country that I’m in, I feel overall safer and more accepted. French laws have given LGBT people equal rights for a longer time than the United States and in my opinion the laws have been better than the laws in the US. I especially like that the laws are nationwide in France as opposed to the US where the laws are state by state.
I didn’t know that in the US in order to legally change your name and gender on official papers you had to be on the track of hormone therapy and/ or the sexual reassignment surgery. Thank you for posting this, I think we all could educate ourselves a little more on topics we can’t fully understand.
Nice post! I’d like to think France is pretty progressive, but honestly once you leave Paris, people often aren’t quite as accepting. Still, there is an extensive history of famous and beloved French LGBT people, going at least as far back as the Revolution. I think maybe the fact that French culture values art so much really helps. I hope you keep looking into this!
I agree with Holly. This certainly helped educate me more about parts of the LGBT community I really didn’t know a lot about, especially transgender rights in both the US and in France. I wonder what other countries in Europe are just as progressive and accepting as here.