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Transgender children and their caregivers face constant social scrutiny that forces them to justify their gender identities. This situation is exacerbated by misinformation and myths spread by anti-rights groups. These groups have attempted to manipulate public perception against legal reforms that support transgender rights.  

Misinformation surrounding the identities of transgender children is having a global impact. And in countries like the United States the United Kingdom , policies and legal reforms already exist that limit and deny their human rights.

In Latin America, these disinformation narratives are disseminated and promoted by far-right politicians and anti-rights groups. They use social media and traditional media to spread false ideas about what it means to guarantee the human rights of transgender children.

Globally, no gender identity law seeks to "mutilate", "hormone" or "operate" on trans girls, boys and children. 

According to the ILGA World database , at the regional level, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile have guidelines, laws, or precedents that guarantee the recognition of gender identity for minors. In some cases, this is guaranteed administratively, in others through the courts. And in no case is medical or surgical accreditation or hormonal treatment required.

Advisory Opinion 24/17 of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ( IACHR ) maintains that the recognition of gender identity of trans people, minors and adults, must be guaranteed without them having to prove medical or surgical interventions, hormonal treatments or other procedures.

In Mexico, three states recognize the gender identity of transgender children without age restrictions, and five states recognize it starting at age 12.

Gender identity is not a choice 

Members of parliament and anti-rights groups who oppose the human rights of transgender children use this argument: “They lack the intellectual maturity to know who they are. They are not old enough to decide,” to determine that these children have no agency over themselves and their gender identity. 

Gender identity is not a choice, a phase, or a trend. It can't be changed or imposed. In fact, you and the person next to you both have a gender identity. Everyone has one, and we don't choose it; we simply live and express it.

• In Mexico, since 2017, the National Constitution recognizes gender identity as a right of all Mexican people. 

• According to the National Population Council ( CONAPO ), of the 6.8 million adolescents between the ages of 13 and 14 living in Mexico, between 1.2% and 2.7% have a gender identity different from the one assigned to them at birth. That is, between 81,000 and 183,000 are transgender adolescents.

• (ENDISEG, 2021 ), 62.4% of people realized before the age of 7 that their gender identity is different from the one assigned to them at birth.

• To date, 23 of Mexico's 32 states recognize the right to identity for transgender people. However, only Jalisco and Sinaloa guarantee this right without age limits; and in Mexico City, Oaxaca, Morelos, Baja California, and Baja California Sur, it is possible for transgender people over the age of 12. In no case is a psychiatric or medical certificate, or proof of hormone treatment, required to guarantee their right to identity.

The misnamed "conversion therapies"

In Mexico in 2023, deputies from the National Action Party, a party that in 2021 formed an alliance with Vox, the far-right Spanish party that opposes legislative advances in favor of the lives and rights of LGBTI+ people, presented initiatives in three states that seek to criminalize families and health professionals who accompany trans children in their gender affirmation processes.

Furthermore, every time a reform is presented that includes the right to identity for minors, misleading narratives emerge, such as that it is the mothers and fathers who "impose" a gender identity on their trans children.

As we explained earlier: gender identity is not a choice. On the contrary, imposing, attempting to change, “correct,” or repressing the gender identity with which each person identifies would be practicing ECOSIG, or so-called conversion therapy , a practice categorized by the UN as “torture.”

The IACHR, in its 2015 report Violence against LGBTI+ people in the Americas , has documented that ECOSIGs occur in different forms such as: coercion and lack of consent, illegal deprivation of liberty, verbal violence and threats, forced use of medications, sexual rape, aversion therapies, electroshocks and/or exorcisms.

In Mexico, since June 7, 2024, ECOSIG (Efforts to Correct Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity), falsely known as “conversion therapies”, have been banned at the federal level.