Transgender flag / Ink Drop/Shutterstock

Tlaxcala, Mexico, May 26, 2021 / 12:52 pm (CNA).

To avoid being left out of the 2021 Mexican elections because of a constitutional principle of “gender parity”, 18 male candidates from the Force for Mexico party in Tlaxcala state have filed for candidacy as trans women.

They did so in order to conform to the 2019 constitutional reform that requires that the slate of candidates of political parties throughout Mexico be made up of 50% women and 50% men.

Mexico is holding legislative, gubernatorial, and local elections June 6.

The progressive Force for Mexico was founded in 2020. 

Faced with criticism, the president of Force for Mexico, Luis Vargas, said on a Televisa news program that his party’s candidates “are not fake” trans: “The trans issue is three-pronged: transgender, transsexual, and transvestite. And the issue for the (trans) community is very broad. I can’t get into people’s privacy and tell them ‘you yes and you no.’”

Speaking about the “fake trans” report on Televisa, Mexican journalist Denise Maerker said that 18 candidates from Force for Mexico have taken on the trans identity and designated themselves as trans. 

Speaking with ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language news partner, Marcial Padilla, director of ConParticipación, an organization that promotes family values, said that “there are some occasions when the saying ‘the snake bites its tail’ comes true.”

Here they could say “don’t judge me or don’t discriminate against me because of my gender expression,” he said.

“Finally, gender ideology, being a matter of subjective confusion and chaos, also reaches a crisis point when monetary, political or other interests can demonstrate its lies and confusion,” Padilla pointed out.

“This will be one of many cases that we are going to see in Mexico and in other countries.”

“For sure, gender ideology will find ways to try to repress this. But let’s remember, reality always catches up with you,” he said.

“If you’re a man you’ll always be one , if you’re a woman you’ll always be one. It’s not just a subjective feature, it’s an objective fact,” he stressed.

Padilla acknowledged that  “it’s true there are men who perceive themselves as women, but that perception doesn’t make them stop being men. They are people who need to be welcomed, respected, and helped.”