Olivia Alonso
Madrid, Jun 29 (EFE).- “It’s degrading and horrible to have to justify yourself every minute of the day,” said non-binary trans artist Ondina Maldonado in an interview with EFE, in which she denounced the “level of violence” to which the group is exposed daily for “breaking with gender.”
A decision that, he assures, is not made to attract attention or for fashion and for which he demands space. “We have to begin to understand that this is a reality and that the opinion of others is not going to determine our existence. That you think that I am not making the right decision does not change my decision, nor my life, nor my feelings” .
Maldonado (Getafe, Madrid, 1987), who has just performed the play ‘No Gender’ at the Teatros del Canal in Madrid, does not hesitate to describe having to constantly claim the same rights as “a real shame” and calls for an effort to that people be appointed according to their needs.
“I spent months stuttering, unable to speak because there was no connection between what my brain was thinking and what came out in words. There was a huge battle there. And in that battle, people find that the ‘e’ is a letter that defines them and that it does not correspond to either the ‘a’ or the ‘o’. And it is very valid, very correct and very real,” he says.
“When did you realize it? That’s the big question you’re always asked,” says Maldonado, 37, and reveals that the answer is that “you’ve always known it, but you don’t have the tools to name it.”
According to his story, it was during confinement and because of the concept of non-binaryism that he understood “where things were going.” “When you have discovered what your sexual orientation is, which in my case is bisexual, there is another layer that has to do with identity,” says the artist.
And on the road to visibility, another question arises within the group: “The age at which society would give us permission to consider ourselves trans people. If you say it too late, they will tell you that it is a bit late for you to have realized now and if you are too young, that you are not old enough to know who you are,” she points out.
In this sense, he details that his ‘lateness’ had to do with not having had references, with not having had visibility and with not having had where to look and where to see options.
She also explains that “when you are a trans person you try to escape from this reality because there is something about trying to be consistent with what you are supposed to be and what they tell you. I failed all the time as the girl I was. And suddenly, you realize that you are not that, and the wall you have been hitting yourself against breaks.”
She argues that gender in itself does not exist. “This is not poetry, it is reality, it is science, gender is a social convention. It is habits, characteristics and a lot of other things that we have attributed to one gender or another and that, therefore, do not exist.”
And he explains that, “on the basis that we must break with that idea”, its reality also surpasses the fact of “having to be in one of the two places.” “I could tell you: I am a trans person, so now I am a boy… but I would still be in the same prison I was before.”
“It’s not about that,” she claims, while emphasizing that “beyond whether I get hormones or not, or whether I name myself with one letter or another, what I am doing, saying and living is the break with that duality of gender and with that imposition of what I am supposed to be socially as a woman or as a man.”
In this sense, she affirms that “we are in a moment of transition” and that we must make room for new realities,” while pointing out that the same person who tells her that she does not take hormones because she does not need them – or because she considers that she does not need them – is the one who, in turn, tells her that he is not going to speak to her in the masculine if she does not have a “boyish appearance.”
“So what do I do?” she asks herself, while acknowledging that like everyone else, she wants to be loved and be desirable, so in the end “it’s impossible for me not to go along with things that I might not go along with if I were in a different environment.”
At the beginning of June, Maldonado performed ‘No Gender’ in Madrid, an investigation into gender, an approach to what it means and how it affects everyone, “whether you are part of the collective or not”, according to the artist, highlighting that the feedback from people “has been brutal” in the face of a work that did not try to “indoctrinate” or seek empathy with the artist.
Its objective was to open a dialogue and reach an audience that was not only the group in which the actor exposed a reality “with which you can situate yourself and understand where it places you, where you place yourself with all this, and what you think you of what happens with gender”.
Tired of having to justify and explain himself every day, he recognizes that he cannot escape his speech because it is his reality.
“It’s like going into a bathroom and being told off. In the women’s bathroom, people always say something to me, and when I go to the men’s bathroom I tend to go unnoticed, but there are also strange looks.”
“What do I do with this?” he asks when referring to the open debate on mixed bathrooms. “Your opinion seems very good to me, but I have to live and I have to go to the bathroom. What do I do? How do I fit in here? she concludes. EFE
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