„Does the world change if I change my gender?“
In recent years, something revealing has taken place in the world: the appearance in public of trans girls and boys, who, accompanied by their families, demand that their rights be addressed, under slogans such as „my right to exist“. Transsexuality has always existed, but historically, the first place of exclusion of a trans experience was the family. Then, other institutions (social, school, legal, health, etc.) also discriminated against these people. Often, many adult transgender people say that they had a „lost childhood“ because they did not receive support.
With the Convention on the „Rights of the Child“ in 1989, children were recognized as subjects of rights, but these rights are constructed on the basis of cisgender childhood, denying that there are diverse ways of inhabiting the world. Trans childhood reflects the change of a cisheteronormative and adultcentric system that begins to accept little by little the diversity and autonomy of childhoods. It was only in June 2018 that the OMS removed transsexuality from its list of mental illnesses. Nevertheless, trans children are among the most vulnerable to bullying, violent attacks, self-harm and suicide.
I met Cora in 2018 when she was 7 years old, at her home in Barcelona, two autumns after having her transition. She belongs to the first generation to make her transit as a young child becoming the youngest person to belong to the association of trans families in Spain.
With my CORA`s series, I want to show the beauty of being who you are, make visible a childhood invisible, and contribute with photography to the transformation of a world that loves diversity. And above all, to demonstrate that it is possible to be trans and be happy.