Transsexuality. To conquer the wrong body

Article by Gonzalo Fernandez published on the Blog Libertalia, magazine of Philosophy and Human Sciences (Spain), on October 5, 2019, freely translated by Sara Ciuti

Traditionally, transsexuality was understood as an imbalance between "the soul and body ", caused by a certain error produced in the biological development of the person; So today it is a habit of talking about "Men trapped in women's bodies"Or vice versa, to describe the situation in which the trans people live. The solution seems, therefore, obvious: just change the body.

In “A Conquest of the Wrong Body"(To conquer the wrong body (Ediz. Eagles, 2018), the transsexual writer Miquel Missé opposes this conception by offering us a new way of understanding transsexuality.

After years of struggles against the pathologization of transsexuality, Missé states that what many live as a victory - being able to change their body - is not actually the solution.

Al contrario, per quanto paradossale possa sembrare, la modifica del corpo è una toppa, un rimedio più che imperfetto, prodotto da quella stessa concezione limitata e sessista della persona che è quella che procura il malessere primario. Ossia, quella cultura che stabilisce quali gusti, stili, modi di fare e capacità mentali siano propri e adatti ad alcuni corpi e inappropriati per altri, è la stessa che ora offre il bisturi ai suoi dissidenti. 

Ma questo bisturi, dice Missé, non costituisce la risposta. Rappresenta bensì un’altra faccia del problema o, se si vuole, un sottoprodotto del problema stesso.

Ora, attenzione. È ovvio che una persona ha diritto di scegliere di assumere ormoni o di cambiare il proprio corpo come vuole, ci mancherebbe altro. Missé infatti non scrive tutto ciò per “mutilare” l’autonomia decisionale della persona sul proprio corpo.

Quello che invece propone è di farla finita di vedere queste modificazioni come delle riparazioni di uno squilibrio primigenio tra l’identità di una persona (“la sua anima di uomo o donna”) e come essa invece appare (il suo corpo), giacché non è affatto vero che esiste un tale squilibrio.

In altre parole, il fatto che, per così dire, una donna preferisca il blu al rosa, la boxe al balletto e i cavalieri alle principesse, non sta necessariamente a significare che ella “è un uomo intrappolato nel corpo di una donna", But it can simply indicate that there is a person who likes certain things rather than others and that for randomness has a vagina, an uterus, of the XX chromosomes, etc.

And as we would not say that a male and homosexual man is actually "a woman trapped in the body of a man" because of her "atypical" sexual preference for men, in the same way the same reductive logic must not be applied to other cases.

In this way, the author suggests that the malaise that some people feel for their body has not originated from the body itself, but by the meanings or binary roles to which that body is socially assigned. To put it in another way, in a truly free society (ie stripped of the so-called "sex-genere system") transsexuality would be something completely different, perhaps even non-existent.

Thanks to the description, made in two ink strokes, of the history of the most recent Barcelonese transactivism, thanks to an analysis on media visibility of transsexuality and a reflection on trans minors, the book "A Conquest of the Wrong Body" (To conquer the wrong body) It offers a truly original vision regarding this theme, a vision that seeks as much as possible to avoid any type of obsolete essentialism, which instead today dominates the sinister as the right ones.

With some marginal exceptions, Missé shuns from that metaphorical and excessively sentimental rhetoric with which these topics are usually treated.

On the contrary, the author manages to combine intimate and conversational tones on the one hand with, on the other, a sober and concise explanation. And, although not few moments in which a more explicit explanation of certain assumptions and technical terms would be desired, you are still faced with a synthetic text with an excellent logical thread in which it is very simple to follow the author in each of his argumentative steps.

It is a proposal written in a lovable and colloquial way but which, moving away from goodism, launches a challenge to very sedimented ideas, even running the risk of being accused of transfobia.

It is not a text for self -indulgence or to make the tolerant, modern and "fig" reader feel, but on the contrary, in the text a reflection is proposed which is uncomfortable for any type of audience, a reflection that is declaredly opposed to the rampant identity thought and dogmatism of the politically correct. 

"A Conquest of the Wrong Body " (To conquer the wrong body) It is a highly recommended book and, as Missé confesses, it is a work that he himself, some time ago, would have gladly reduced to ashes.

Miquel Missé, in Conquest of the Wrong Body (To conquer the wrong body), Editore Eagles, 2018.

Original text: To the conquest of the cuerpo equivocado, Miquel Missé (2018)