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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
The most popular narrative about transsexuality suggests that some people are born in the wrong body - that their bodies do not correspond to their inner experience and that their bodies should therefore be transformed. But in the view of the sociologist and trans activist Miguel Missé, this narrative is a harmful myth. It is rooted in a medical paradigm that typically leads to medical intervention - to the use of hormones and surgical operations. By proposing a particular solution (modifying one's body), doctors and psychiatrists make it difficult for trans people to overcome malaise about their body in other ways and prevent them from recognizing the burden of social norms. Drawing on his own personal experience, Missé makes the case for a different way of thinking about trans embodiment which focuses on gender identity. The trajectory that leads people to become trans is shaped by the rigidity of gender norms, where the only two models available to individuals are the masculine man and the feminine woman. But these are not the only possible choices, and by critically interrogating the rigidity of gender norms, Missé opens up a different way of thinking about being trans, beyond the essentialism of the medical paradigm.
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CONTENTS
Cover
Dedication
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Introduction
Part I The Source of Suffering
1 Story of a Robbery
Incurable Illness, Chronic Treatment
We Are (Not) Desert Islands
Market Niche
2 Uncovering an Alternate Narrative
The Gender Identity Problem
Estrangement
Our Parents Are Our Gender Identity
Simply Put, We Lie
Our Other Identities: Divorcee, Catalan, etc.
No One Is Born Transgender
Rigidity
Archeology of Empathy
We Are Truman
Gender Expression, Divine Treasure
3 Photo Albums, Guerrillas, Cabarets, and Other Trenches. Activism as a Lifeline
Or as a Body-saver
Photo Albums
Guerrillas
Cabarets
Other Trenches
Part II The Flood
4 Trans is Pop
Trans is Pop
5 Trojan Horses in a Trans Revolution
The Emergence of Trans Minors: A New Identity
The Discovery of Transgender Minors or the Colonization of Gender Diversity
Sleeping with the Enemy
The Sooner the Better
Instructions for How to Empty Out a Radical Proposal
Spain is Trans or the Fable of a Country Against a Bus
It’s All Fun and Games …
Part III Toward a Critical Trans Corporal Ethic
6 Passing
Tailor-made Bodies
The Trophy of Passing
Self-Made Trans
Passing Eats Bodies
Corporal Ethic
7 Reconciliation
Bodily Self-Esteem
The Other Wrong Bodies
A Window, a Seed
Epilogue: I Remain Trapped in a Body but it’s no Longer Wrong
Bibliography
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Dedication
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Introduction
Begin Reading
Epilogue
Bibliography
End User License Agreement
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Dedication
For Lauraunbeatable companion in the fight against my self-censorship,who unknowingly lit the spark for this bookand continues to fuel my conquests.
For Blancamy other part in some part,who dared to defy the gender that oppresses us.
For Andreu and Carmenmy mentors in this craft,for your willingness to read, write, and debate,think and love.
The Myth of the Wrong Body
MIQUEL MISSÉ
Translated from Spanish by Frances Riddle
polity
Originally published in Spanish as A la conquista del cuerpo equivocado, 2018.Editorial Egales, S.L., Spain. © MIQUEL MISSÉ
This English edition © Polity Press, 2022
Support for the translation of this book was provided byAcción Cultural Española, AC/E.
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press101 Station LandingSuite 300Medford, MA 02155, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-5189-7
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022930008
The publisher has used its best endeavors to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
Acknowledgments
This book drove me mad for a year but, luckily, I was able to count on the best possible support team on this adventure. First of all, I want to thank my amazing publisher, Egales, who are standing strong during the storm that the Spanish publishing industry is experiencing and who persist in their belief that we should keep reading a plurality of voices and ideas on the issues of gender and sexuality in Spanish. Thank you so much for opening your door to me once again with your unfailing smiles. Secondly, I want to thank the people who have sat down, pen in hand, to read and reread my drafts with patience, love, and care: Gerard Coll-Planas, Cristina Garaizabal, Laura Macaya, and Blanca Missé. Your task was not an easy one and, despite this fact, you told me what you honestly felt. I especially want to thank Gerard for his enormous generosity, for inspiring me with his discipline, his critical thinking skills, and his enormous sense of humor but, most of all, for challenging me when he disagreed. I also want to thank the people who inspired this book, the people who gave life to the initiatives of Cultura Trans and who filled the Friday evenings of Espai Trans and the Transfamilia group with their stories of resistance. I especially want to thank Pol Galofre for all the adventures we’ve shared: he has been the best possible partner in crafting ambitious plans with practically zero resources, almost always in over our heads but never losing the blind faith that we have to share all trans narratives no matter how minoritarian they may be. Thanks to Gracia Camps and Judit Fuster for their creativity and perseverance in the Trans Art Cabaret, our most daring attempt to promote a critical trans culture. I can’t forget the team of artists who have created a shining jewel of trans culture, the creators and performers of the LIMBO show. What you’ve done has been very, very important for our audience, for me in particular. I also want to give thanks to my colleagues in the OASIS project, without a doubt the most passionate professional initiative I’ve encountered up to now: Alba Badia, Edurne Jiménez, Sara Barrientos, Silvia Merino, and Abel Huete, a brave and sensitive team with whom I’ve shared experiences and debates until very late into the night on how to best empower and improve the self-esteem of trans teens. And, lastly, I want to give a more personal thank you to those who have followed my process of writing this book very closely and helped ensure that I didn’t get lost along the way: to Gerard, Ramon, Cris, and Empar, my unbeatable team; to Marina, for trusting me despite the distance; to Paloma, for taking the best care of me; to my small family, Carmen, Andreu, and Blanca, for being the infinite roots I always return to like a talisman. And, of course, Laura, who has taught me most of the things that I talk about in this book.
Prologue
I have the strangest feeling that my body has been stolen from me. In fact, I have the sensation that trans people in general have been robbed. It’s an impression I have; I don’t claim that it is the truth. But it is an intense and violent sensation, which has motivated me to write this book. I’m referring to the fact that we’ve been stripped of any possibility of experiencing our bodies another way. One single interpretation of some parts of our bodies has been imposed on us. As a way to explain our suffering, we’ve been told that we were born in the wrong bodies, but that we can make them more appropriate through hormonal treatments and certain surgical interventions. I’ve often felt that my body has been ravaged and for some time now I’ve also felt that I wanted to recover what I could of it, if there was still time. That body I hated so much, I’d now like to reconquer. I’d like to embrace it and apologize for abandoning it. The verb “to conquer,” according to the Macmillan English dictionary, means: “to take control of land or people using soldiers.” But there are more nuanced meanings that the dictionary includes if, as is always the case, you read to the end. I use the word conquer in italics because I want to specify that I’m referring to a conquest in the sense of “earning the love or respect of someone” (definition 4), and “gaining control of a situation or emotion by making a great physical or mental effort” (definition 2) but by no means through violence. Writing this book forms part of an almost therapeutic process of recovering my body, reconquering it through love, and it is also part of the political process of denouncing this uncomfortable sensation of having been robbed. But, above all, writing this book is my way of connecting with other persons who have also felt, or are feeling, that they have had something taken from them. Of course, the symbolic violence exerted on bodies in our society does not only impact trans people, so I hope this book may also serve as a bridge to dialogue with other people who, although they are not trans, have also felt or feel that they are being robbed.
I recognize that describing what I feel as having had my body stolen could be considered a problematic metaphor for many reasons, mainly because it can be argued that trans people voluntarily choose to modify our bodies. No one forces us to do it (quite the opposite; we’ve fought for many decades for the right to do so). This is true, but from my point of view it is also true that the conditions under which we make this decision have been and continue to be very complex. Without refuting trans people’s agency and autonomy, I think it is worth careful reflection on the lack of viable alternatives to choose from when making decisions with respect to our bodies. When I started my transition I was not aware of any options besides medical treatment to modify my body, which I was told was wrong. This is why I feel like something was taken from me, like I was robbed of the possibility of experiencing my body any other way. But, as I said before, although I have personally felt that my body was wrongfully stolen, I don’t claim this to be a universal truth for all trans people. It’s simply something that I feel, something that pains me.
Making this accusation of robbery would be much easier if I could point out the thieves in a line-up, or exhibit evidence of their crime. But it’s not that simple. I have probably been the main perpetrator in the hijacking of my body. But I am definitely not the only person responsible for the notion that there was something wrong with it. Although no one has physically run off with our bodies, the ideas we have internalized about ourselves, the discourses repeated ad nauseam to the point that they have infiltrated our perception of being transgender, were created by someone. What I’m trying to say is that there are persons responsible for promoting the ideas that have led us to believe the myth of the wrong body. And I think it’s important to single them out.
This book aims to find the source of our notions surrounding trans bodies and to propose possible alternatives. The intention is to create a refuge. A place where we can debunk the myth that trans people have been born into the wrong body as well as the kinder, more modern fable that trans people can only live better by modifying our bodies. Right now, it often seems that the end goal of the trans movements in some parts of the world is the right to access hormonal treatments and surgical interventions in order to alter our bodies. But it is my belief that holding the right to bodily modification as the only solution to our suffering is problematic. Of course, trans people can, should, and must have this right, but centering all trans political aims on this right moves away from a question which, from my point of view, is more relevant: what actually causes the suffering that trans people feel and how can that be addressed? This question is key; the answer will determine the kinds of strategies constructed. In my opinion, this should be the central pillar of the debate on trans politics. It is also the central aim of this book: to further a constructive dialogue on how to articulate trans politics that are critical of gender normativity and, at the same time, to bring in other perspectives on the causes of the suffering felt by trans people and configure other possible solutions.
Introduction
The most popular narrative on identifying as transgender suggests that our bodies are the source of our suffering and should therefore be modified. There are other voices, however, that have tried to challenge that narrative, posing new questions: what if there is nothing wrong with our bodies? Would the solution still reside in altering the body? Finding an answer to these questions is a collective exercise that has been ongoing for decades. This book aims to participate in the effort to shift the discourse away from the myth of the wrong body. Or, said another way: these bodies of ours, which they said were wrong, can be reconquered.
The reflections laid out in this book are born from shared experiences in a specific historical, social, and political environment. They are framed within the Barcelona trans activism scene and its social and cultural context (Barcelonan, Catalan, and Spanish) from the early 2000s up to the publication of this book.
In the last decade, various political movements have tried to break down the notion that transgender people were born into the wrong bodies. This idea, developed by doctors in the United States around the middle of the twentieth century, gained momentum in Spain in the 1980s and 1990s after transgenderism was added to the international catalogues of mental disorders. The movement for transgender depathologization emerged in Barcelona in the mid 2000s, and I count myself fortunate to have been a part of this effort, working alongside many other dedicated people to launch campaigns, organize protests, hold meetings, take trips, write manifestos, and draft communiques. In collaboration with these committed trans activists (who are often not trans themselves) we’ve fought intense battles and, I dare say, we’ve achieved some small success in shifting the collective consciousness on trans issues. In my hometown of Barcelona and in many other places on the planet there are groups working toward this same goal. So, without a doubt, many people have helped lay the foundation for this text.
But what truly explains my need to write this book is something that happened in the middle of this crusade to reframe views on the trans body. All of a sudden, trans issues became highly visible in the media, like nothing we’d ever seen before. In a matter of two or three years, we witnessed what has been dubbed the “trans revolution” by many media outlets. Our moment had arrived, trans was called to popularize, democratize, define itself, even “solve itself.” And I, like so many other trans activists, was blown away. In shock. People reached out to say things such as “You must be so glad,” “I’m happy that your movement is getting noticed,” “They’re finally giving you the respect you deserve,” and best of all: “This is what you wanted, isn’t it? Congratulations!” And I remained silent. Someone had kicked over the game board and I couldn’t find any pieces to play with. An entire sector of trans activism was frozen in time on another screen, waging wars against the stigmatization and pathologization of being transgender, which seemed like something that belonged to another century in the era of the “trans revolution.” Sometimes I wondered in fear if what I was feeling was rage at no longer having giants to fight, left tilting at windmills, like Don Quixote. Or maybe I was just mad that the revolution was real and we activists hadn’t been the ones to stir it up. Perhaps the trans movement had been romanticized, radicalism and protest fetishized. I was bewildered, so I simply let myself be swept up in the tide. I continued to move, as if by instinct, toward the same places as always, with my now outdated battle cry against the myth of the wrong body. And at the same time I was reading all these news stories and carefully watching all these documentaries, seeing laws passed, associations emerging, and everything changing all around me.
Until I suddenly snapped out of it, and allowed myself to think critically about the avalanche of new trans references, ignoring the insistent voice in my head that said “you must be so glad.” I stopped censoring my thoughts. And they led me back to the source. The myth of the wrong body was still there, it had never gone away: it had been transformed, reinvented, formally reinstated.
This books tells the story of how the myth of the wrong body that the trans person was supposedly born into has taken root in our collective consciousness, how some tried to refute it until, suddenly, a tide of “trans visibility” flooded the scene and left us stranded. Before we could speak up, articulate an opinion, we had to pull out maps and compasses to get our bearings. This story is born from the paradoxical sensation that it seems like something revolutionary is occurring in terms of trans visibility and yet there is the unshakeable sensation that this supposed revolution is tinged with profoundly conservative undertones when it comes to notions surrounding the body, gender, and identity being promoted. This book aims to dig deeper into that paradox through arguments elaborated in three parts.
In Part I, “The Source of Suffering,” I will recount the conflicting narratives on the causes of suffering in trans people. The first chapter in this section, titled “Story of a Robbery,” lays out the biological and medical discourses that gave rise to the myth of the wrong body and have determined the relationship between identity and the body and between gender transition and corporal modification. These discourses have been echoed by the media and public institutions and are therefore the notions that have most deeply penetrated our social consciousness, which is why we say they are hegemonic. The second chapter, “Uncovering an Alternate Narrative,” considers a possible explanation of identifying as transgender that is not biological and innate. Or, said another way, it aims to dispute the biomedical narrative. Here, we will contemplate the relationship between the trans experience and social structure as well as the limits of the concepts of identity and gender expression. The third chapter, “Photo Albums, Guerrillas, Cabarets, and Other Trenches,” briefly recounts my experiences as an activist with some of the trans resistance movements in Barcelona. It does not claim to be a comprehensive historical timeline of the movement but instead a kaleidoscope of sensations, debates, and self-criticisms that outline how we battled for control of the narrative and attempted to break with the classical (medical) notion of transgenderism.
Part II of the book, called “The Flood,” gives a panoramic view of the initiatives that have received massive media attention and granted unprecedented visibility to trans issues in recent years. This part is made up of two chapters. The first, “Trans is Pop,” is a critical analysis of the new trans role models that have emerged in North America and have had an enormous impact on Spanish society due to the influence of this culture in our social consciousness. The next chapter, “Trojan Horses in a Trans Revolution,” deals specifically with the discourses surrounding being transgender in childhood in Spain.
Part III of the book, “Toward a Critical Trans Corporal Ethic,” proposes a reflection on the models of empowerment that can be derived from the discourses models presented. This section consists of a first chapter entitled “Passing,” a word that in trans slang refers to the ability to pass unnoticed as a trans person. Here, I will argue that trans invisibility is becoming the main currency for social acceptance, with all the problems that this implies. Finally, the last chapter, “Reconciliation,” invites us to consider different forms of trans empowerment by analyzing how the social construction of our desires as well as the dominant heterosexual mindset all impact trans people’s relationships to their bodies. It is also an invitation to step out of our endogamous bubble and listen to others who also live with stigmas and violence and who can provide inspiration for how to reconquer our bodies.
This book closes with an epilogue titled “I Remain Trapped in a Body but it’s no Longer Wrong.” The epilogue, which I considered making the introduction to this book, is where I’d like those readers who feel uncomfortable with my ideas to turn. I accept that, for some people, the ideas in this book will be unpleasant. In many cases they have been unpleasant for me to write, because I talk about painful experiences as well as my wishes for a different life that could have been possible for trans people if we lived in a society with different values surrounding gender and the body. Some chapters call into question notions that many trans people believe very strongly, that they may feel have saved their lives. For all these reasons, I understand that my perspective may incite pain or anger. But I hope that even trans people who feel totally opposed to my ideas will give these reflections a chance. Or, at the very least, before closing this book, please take one final minute to read the epilogue. This last section shares a personal meditation on how this political discourse can translate to everyday life and the concrete ways we can live in a manner consistent with these notions. It is an ending that I hope will temper the helplessness, defeat, and even guilt generated at times by this book’s political position.
Part IThe Source of Suffering
1Story of a Robbery
Much has been written on the origin of the myth of the wrong body (Stryker, 2017; Meyerowitz, 2004) and it is not my objective with this book to tell that story again. But, to briefly frame the concept, it can be summed up as the central notion around which the medical paradigm of transgenderism is constructed. The classic theory on why trans people exist has been constructed around the argument that trans people have a mismatch between their gender identity and their body because of an error in their biological development. The supposed natural order of things would imply that a person born in a male body would identify as a man and be masculine, and someone who is born in a female body will identify as a woman and be feminine. When this chain of events does not occur, it is understood from the medical perspective that there has been some problem of a biological nature. The mismatch is corrected by modifying the body to adapt it to the gender that the person identifies with. From there it has been instilled in the collective consciousness that a trans person is somehow trapped in the wrong body.
The predominance of the myth of the wrong body is what I presented in the prologue using the metaphor of my body having been robbed. As I said before, this robbery is not a single event but a gradual process, perpetrated by the ideas and discourses socially constructed and collectively promoted about transgenderism, even by trans people ourselves. In this chapter I will lay out what in my opinion are the four main forces driving this notion: the medical paradigm, trans people’s own narratives, the market response, and our collective consciousness.
Incurable Illness, Chronic Treatment
In my house, in a folder in a file cabinet covered in dust, I keep the diagnosis that it took me five years to receive from the Gender Identity Disorders Unit (UTIG for its initials in Spanish) of the Psychiatric Department of the Barcelona Hospital Clinic. (They’ve now modernized and removed the word “disorder” from the Unit’s name because it seemed inappropriate in these times, so now it’s just referred to as the UIG.) The first thing that stands out to me when I look at it is the date (2004). It wasn’t issued that long ago; it was fairly recently. I share this because many medical professionals consider the pathologization of identifying as transgender to be an outdated theoretical framework, ideas that “obviously” no one still holds. But it’s not merely a theory, and it’s not old, nor is it uncommon today. In fact, we still hear professionals say that they call identifying as transgender a mental disorder because the nomenclature is useful in explaining it, but that these days it doesn’t have pathologizing connotations. The UIG has gradually modified its language in recent years and no longer dares to include certain terms in its diagnoses; nevertheless, the model they follow has not changed. The UIG remains blind and deaf to what for more than a decade we’ve been trying to challenge through trans activism. But that’s an issue for another book … However, new initiatives have emerged within public healthcare that offer professional medical support to trans people from a truly non-pathologizing perspective, such as the Transit Clinic in Barcelona.
