Delgado Gómez was born in Güímar, Tenerife. He was trained at the Conservatorio de Música y Arte Dramático in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. He then moved to Madrid, and as the Francoist vagrancy laws, under which one could be imprisoned merely for being gay or trans, were modified in 1979, Gómez as Carla Antonelli was able to transition by age 20.
She recorded a television documentary on transsexuality in 1980 for TVE-2, but the censors withheld it until after the attempted coup by Colonel Antonio Tejero in 1981. She was active for 10 years with Grupo de Gays, Lesbianas y Transexuales del PSOE (Socialist Workers' Party of Spain), and notably campaigned for and helped to draft the Ley de Identidad de Género (Gender Identity Law).
Carla's extensive web site was one of the first to feature positive images of trans women, and is the most popular trans site in Spain. This inspired Lynn Conway's TS Women Successes page in 2000, and Carla was one of the first trans women featured on Lynn's site, but after complaints that she is not post-operative, and the mediation of June Hingle, she was removed. However Lynn still gives a special thanks to Carla.
In 2003 she was honoured by the Colectivo de Transexuales de Madrid.
In 2004, PSOE became the government, and quickly implemented gay marriage, but kept delaying the Gender Identity Law until Antonelli threatened a hunger strike and this attracted international press attention. After the Ley de Identidad de Género was passed in 2007, she was the first in the Madrid area to change her legal identity.She then resigned her position as the co-ordinator of the GLT group but continues to support PSOE. She also agitated against the prohibition of prostitution in that many trans women can find no other employment. At that time she began to record the television series Antena 3.
She continued as spokesperson of the LGTB Federation and of the Madrid Transsexual Collective after violent attacks by NeoNazis. She has lectured at universities and at the Congress of Sexology. She was invited by transsexual groups in Venezuela, Chile and Mexico, appearing on television, in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies and at the Univerity of Merida.
She was awarded the Baeza Award for visibility. In 2009 the municipality of Güímar, Tenerife gave her a lifetime award.
The Spanish HBS people, and Charlotte Goiar in particular, do not care for transsexuals to be represented by a non-op person, and even object that the Ley de Identidad de Género permits one to change one's name and gender in the Civil Registry without undergoing surgery. A Carla-Antonelli.blogspot.com was set up by an anonymous third party which pretended to be by Carla and that she was a prostitute and that she was transphobic. After a couple of years of harassment, Carla complained to the police in May 2009.
Carla has played in 6 movies and 3 television series and is often seen on Spanish television and on the stage.
From 2011-15 she was a PSOE List member of the Madrid Assembly, where she was feisty in raising trans and LGBT issues, but often did not get the support of even her own party.
- www.carlaantonelli.com.
- Lynn Conway. "Acknowledgements". Transsexual Women's Successes: Links and Photos. http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TSsuccesses/TSsuccesses.html.
- Carla Antonelli. "Denuncias en Guardia Civil, Policia Nacional y Juzgado". Diario Digital Transexual, 05 May 2009. www.carlaantonelli.com/foros/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=13740.
- Miriam Rubio. "La denuncia por acoso de Carla Antonelli". Vanitatis, 08/05/2009. http://www.vanitatis.com/cache/2009/05/08/noticias_5_denuncia_acoso_carla_antonelli.html.
- June Hingle. Comments on Another Senseless Gay Slaying. Aria Blue, 10/04/2010. http://ariablue.wordpress.com/2010/04/10/another-senseless-gay-slaying. No Longer Available
- June Hingle. Comments on Charlotte Goiar. A Gender Variance Who's Who, 7/1/11. http://zagria.blogspot.com/2009/03/charlotte-goiar-1972-hbs-activist.html.
- "Carla Antonelli se despide como diputada de la IX legislatura de la Asamblea de Madrid defendiendo una vez más los derechos LGTB". Doz Manzanas, 13 marzo 2015. www.dosmanzanas.com/2015/03/carla-antonelli-se-despide-como-diputada-de-la-ix-legislatura-de-la-asamblea-de-madrid-defendiendo-una-vez-mas-los-derechos-lgtb.html.
June Hingle maintains that the dissension between Charlotte and Carla was created by Mariana Casas writing under various names.
June, who was also featured early in Lynn Conway's TS Women Successes page, asked to be removed in that she does not like to be regarded as a post-op transsexual.
IMDB gives Carla's birth year as 1970. That would make her 10 years old when she was in the first television documentary.
The es.wikipedia article says nothing about the feud with HBS.
There is no Wikipedia page on the Spanish Ley de Identidad de Género.
(Comment update April 2016: IMDB still gives Carla's birth year as 1970. Most of the comments below are sour grapes by HBS persons. Maybe I should remove them as HBS imploded some years back. See my Short History of HBS. I leave them for now for historical reasons.)
Carla Antonelli is a transgender person, who never had sex reasignment surgery, she is not a person with HBS :-)
ReplyDeleteShe don't fit into the HBS movement so thats why she is against it.
By the way, SHB in Spanish means Síndrome de Harry Benjamin, while in English is HBS - Harry Benjamin's Syndrome, a condition that this transgender person doesnt suffer, as she/him keeps his/her male genitalia.
"Carla completed transition by age 20"
ReplyDeleteThis is false, when she/him has 20 years old, sex reasigment surgery was forbiden by law in Spain. Its very well know in Spain that she is a transgenderist, not a person really suffering from HBS neither looking for "complete transition"
What is the point of saying that Carla is "a transgender person"? Who says that she is not? Like Charlotte Goiar and Margaret O'Hartigan, she is transgendered. Unlike them she apparently is not post-op.
ReplyDeleteTransition does not necessarily include surgery. That is a personal choice. Does Carla claim that she "suffers from HBS", other than that the HBS people badmouth her.
Carla has done a lot more for Spanish trans people than Charlotte Goiar ever will
Of course Carla has done a lot more for Spanish people than Charlotte ever will, because Charlotte is not focused on the rights of the GLBT communities as Carla, Charlotte is focused in the rights of people living with the condition of HBS, a form of Intersex, not transex. These are different fights, it's logical that Transgender people fight for their rights, it's also logical that people with HBS fight for their health rights defending their condition as an intersex coverse neurological condition far away from the current DSM or ICD of these people as mental sick. Eventually the HBS activism will have a very positive effect on the transsexual community because they will be not considered mental sick anymore, if HBS movements all around the world succeed on it.
ReplyDeleteKen
Also I would like to add another comment: Carla Antonelli was removed in year 2000 from Lynn Conway's Transsexual Women Successes Page for the simple reason that she was a non-op person. Furthermore Carla is opposed to Lynn Conway's reasonings on TSism, while Charlotte is in the same line of Lynn Conway's reasonings about TSism, this you can see clearly in this page:
ReplyDeletehttp://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/TS.html#anchor279530
Carla and her friends are opposed to this, as they are opposed to many other reasonings Lynn stated through her pages.
Ken
Ken, Are we to take it from your name that you are a trans man? In which case why do you talk only about trans women?
ReplyDeleteI fail to see that Carla is opposed to Lynn's opinions. Please give a link to where Carla says this, in either English or Spanish.
I have not noticed that Lynn has added Charlotte to her Transsexual Women Successes Page.
I am not a trans man :-)
ReplyDeleteI am an intersex man born with HBS.
Carla was always opposed to Lynn's reasonings, it is of common knowdlege among people who knows her and her friends, they support the idea that everybody is born without gender and they develop their gender identity through time, education and social influences. She repeat the same once and again in Spanish TV reality shows.
It is normal that Charlotte is not in the Transsexual Women Successes page, because she is not a transsexual, she is intersexual, and she would refuse to be included in such pages.
Ken
Also, HBS in Spain is doing a very intense activism for people with HBS have their Sex Affirmation Surgery approved by Law in Spain:
ReplyDeletehttp://shb-info.org/shbactup.html
However Carla, once the law about changing name and sex in non-ops was approved she left activism and resigned from the PSOE, political party in which she was active before.
Also, not only Carla by herself achieved the law for non-ops right to change sex and name in Spain, many other TS/TG groups in Spain worked on it. They achieved these rights, which is good.
Now the HBS activists in Spain are working to achieve that the national health system cover Sex Reasignment Surgery or Sex Affirmation Surgery as in the HBS groups calls it, in all Spain, and with full resources guaranteed by law.
As you see, these are very different lobbies, GLBT people needs their rights, as well as people with HBS needs yours too.
There is not reason to to deny these rights to any of these groups of people.
Ken
Real intersex persons are not antagonistic to trans persons. See the OII site.
ReplyDeleteCould you point us to an HBS man who is a spokesman for HBS. I ask because I have not found such a spokesman.
Carla can have different opinions from Lynn without being opposed to her reasonings. It is the HBS people whom I have frequently seen badmouthing Lynn. I have not seen Carla badmouthing her. You cite only gossip of something that may have been on television. Carla has a large bilingual web site. If what you say is true, point us to the page on the web site where she is opposed to Lynn.
"Carla Antonelli (1970 - ) actress, activist."
ReplyDeleteCarla was born before this date, in a recent interview you can read in the following link, she is about 50 years old now:
http://www.carlaantonelli.com/noticias.htm#4
It puts the following:
"Mi nombre es Carla Antonelli, soy actriz y una mujer transexual .... A punto de cumplir 50 años, detrás unos ojos brillantes y azules como el mismo cielo, enseña una mirada serena y una elegancia que cultiva desde el fondo de sí misma por mucho que intente "escupir día a día los demonios" y no odiar, o odiar lo mínimo, porque "el odio te limita la felicidad".
Ken
"Could you point us to an HBS man who is a spokesman for HBS. I ask because I have not found such a spokesman."
ReplyDeleteHBS International ( http://shb-info.org/hbs.html ) is still in its infancy, in fact its first offices will be open in London later this year.
Although it is already in the media all around the world, as instance in BBC News:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7013579.stm
A so recently created organization have not public spokesman, however many men are into the HBS International forums and some men had contributed to be "spokesman" in the mean time the Organization is not well established, as instance:
http://shb-info.org/colombia.html
This young man also contributed as spokesman in the radio of his country:
http://www.radiocaracol.com.co/noticias/au408519.asp
With only 16 years old.
Ken
The BBC news item, which admittedly uses the expression "Harry Benjamin Syndrome", is about a transsexual as part of the GLBT community. The president of the Argentine homosexual community, Cesar Cigliutti, is quoted. This is not HBS separatism.
ReplyDeleteDummy, HBS is not a type of TGism. So get off of your Charlotte-bashing fetish. ALL TGISM is a CHOICE. TGs are men born with male identities and choose to pretend to be what they are not. They are crossdressers. MtF crossdressers/TGs are men who choose to be what they are not. Their lives are trivial and they harm and mock women.
ReplyDeleteWhat is you problem, won't Charlotte have sex with you? Why can't you be happy with yourself as the transgender man you are and get out of the way of the people with the medical condition of HBS/TS/IS? Why must you rape HBS persons be lying and accusing them of being a part of the chosen perverts of the LGBTg community? It is not about being superior, just being separate and alone.