Autocracy and femininity don't mix. The world seems to be opting more and more for controlling leaders who all share the same characteristic: machismo. It doesn't mean they are competent or admirable, it just means they spray their alpha male scent over everything. One thing that the regimes in places as diverse as Afghanistan, the USA, China, Iran, Hungary or Russia share is macho rhetoric and dominance through the threat of force. All governments whatsoever hold power by force, of course, but the hard-line ones make a big deal of the violence they can wield against the supposed badness of outsiders and nonconformists. It's a very male trait. Of course, one hardliner's xenophobia and expansionism is incompatible with that of the maniac next door and so we may be warming up to a whole succession of military conflicts. With Russia's invasion of Ukraine and with China and the USA's posturing, it's fairly clear that the post-WW2 order is being dismantled by the very powers that created that order. So it's not a good time to be a woman or trans. Frankly, it's not a good time to be a normal human, but many people don't realise that so let's concentrate here on protecting trans people and what can be done about it.
This week I have some suggestions about getting out of a country that's going to the dogs and opting for another place to live.
What do you do when your world goes bananas? Don't stick around with a bad bunch. Photo by salame.
I myself was newborn when the country I had just been born in went crazy and my expatriate parents escaped riot and revolution by returning home to Britain by a roundabout route. Then, with the chaos of Britain's exit from the European Union - and few people realise how close to the brink the UK was in 2019 - I decided to clear out again, this time to Italy since I have always been automatically considered an Italian citizen by the Italian government. You may ask how and it's because, by Italy's ius sanguinis law of 1912, any person who had a male ancestor who was an Italian citizen after Italy was created in 1860, or who had a female ancestor who was an Italian citizen after 1948, is automatically deemed an Italian citizen themselves. This law arises because Italy lost a third of its population to emigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in an age when population represented national wealth. The law was passed to ensure that children, grandchildren and even later generations could return to the mother country and swell its economy damaged by this high outflow of people. If you think about it, a man alive in 1860 might well have been born in the eighteenth century! That's how far back we are going. Given how many people in the USA alone must have had some Italian citizen ancestor born since the American revolution of the 1770s-80s, many tens of millions of Americans today probably don't know that the Italian government considers them to be its citizens in addition to any US or other citizenship they may have. My brother-in-law, although unmistakably from South London, also happens to be one of these Italian citizens because just one of his eight great grandparents was an Italian man who emigrated to Britain around 1900. One of the reasons why Italy has a world-beating football team is that many black players had Italian ancestors who took a fancy to the local ladies in Africa in colonial times. My route to Italian citizenship is a different one but the result is the same. So if you are worried about what it means to be trans in Trump's America, for instance, you might want to look into your family tree and see if you have this option, too.
It can be similar for other countries. The Republic of Ireland, for instance, has an ancestry rule that covers parents and grandparents born anywhere on the island of Ireland, including Northern Ireland even though that is ruled by the UK.
If ancestry is not your luck, then marriage and/or residence might gain you citizenship elsewhere, or simply investment if you have the funds. These options give you the right to clear out of where you are now if you have to, and not even necessarily to the country in question. In Malta, for instance, you can simply invest in property to a certain value for a certain time and that will grant you citizenship. Maltese citizenship also makes you a citizen of the European Union, which expands your options to 26 other countries easily enough. The same in other places (I've just been alerted to a similar scheme in St Kitts in the Caribbean if the Med isn't your thing). Costa Rica has a much lower rate of investment, about a quarter of that of Malta, and I'm told it's a sunny, friendly and politically stable place.
I've always been involved in the international side of things and keeping your options open and flexible is wise especially if you have a flexible gender or similar situation. Every country has its crazies who could take power so getting out is one possibility if things get horrible.
Another time I'll make suggestions on how to react to the crazies if you're stuck at home.
Stay safe, girls.
Sue x
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