The politics of gender transitioning in Italy

Abstract

In Western societies the sex–gender binary informs individual experiences of gender transitioning. As with every passage of status, gender transition is regulated by formal and social norms aimed at re-establishing the ‘proper’ correspondence between sex and gender. In Italy, national legislation regulates the formal process of transforming one's gender, identifying medical science as the ‘proper’ social authority to manage gender transitioning in society. Only trans people who conform to social standards of sexual ‘normality’ are allowed to officially change their gender. However, in everyday life, alternative modes of gender transitioning exist and constitute a solid foundation to claim formal recognition by the State. This study is based on a qualitative sociological investigation of the process of gender transitioning in Italy that was carried out in Turin between 2008 and 2010.

Keywords:

• gender transitioning
• trans-normativity
• sex–gender binary
• social accomplishment

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the anonymous referees for their valuable comments on a previous version of this article and the editors of this Special Issue for their suggestions. Moreover, she would like to thank all those trans people who trusted in her, sharing their experiences of gender transitioning and making possible her research.

Notes

Notes

1. I use the term ‘trans’ and trans people, instead of transsexual or transgender, in order to preserve the variety of gender transitioning experiences, and to refuse the pathologisation of the practice of transforming one's gender attributed at birth. In my empirical investigation, I considered as ‘trans’ those people who permanently lived in a gender different from that assigned at birth. I use the term ‘transgender’, ‘transvestite(s)’, ‘transsexual(s)’, ‘transsexuality’, ‘transsexualism’, ‘sex reassignment’, and ‘sex change/ing’ when quoting the authors or the interviewees who utilised it.

2. This definition is contained in the present (published in 1994) version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV), which is published by the American Psychiatric Association and provides standard criteria used worldwide for the evaluation of mental illnesses. This version is currently under revision and DSM V is expected to be published in 2013. In 2009 a worldwide campaign was launched by trans organisations to promote the de-pathologisation of the trans condition (http://www.stp2012.info).

3. Turin is one of the biggest cities in the country and is located in the North of Italy. It hosts a large tradition of specialists working with trans people which was formed when a group of professionals started working on the issue of transsexuality in 1982 just after the approval of Law N. 164/82. In the 1990s, these specialists developed the first ad hoc multidisciplinary team attending the needs of trans people at the Mauriziano Hospital. Currently, the group C.I.D.I.GE.M., Interdepartmental Centre on Gender Identity Disorders (Centro Interdipartimentale Disturbi Identità di Genere) is part of the main Hospital Le Molinette.

4. A total of 30 interviews with trans people were carried out: 10 with trans men, and 20 with trans women, all aged between 18 and 64. Moreover, 25 interviews with privileged informants were carried out.

5. West and Zimmerman (1987, 126) define gender as a ‘social accomplishment’, i.e. ‘an achieved property of situated conduct … . Doing gender involves a complex of socially guided perceptual, interactional, and micropolitical activities that cast particular pursuits as expressions of masculine and feminine “natures”’.

6. By ‘competent members of society’ Garfinkel (1967) refers to those people who share a common-sense knowledge about multiple aspects of daily life, including gender.

7. The concept of ‘gender transitioning’ refers to the work of Ekins and King (1999) on ‘transgendering the body’. The authors (1999, 581–82) introduce the concept of ‘transgendering’ referring both to the idea of ‘moving across (transferring) from one pre-existing gender category to the other (either temporarily or permanently)’, and to the idea of ‘transcending or living “beyond gender” altogether’.

8. The German ‘Law on transsexuals’ was approved in 1980. It includes two paths: (1) the ‘small solution’, which allows trans people to change their name (but not their gender) in identity documents without surgical modifications of their genitals; and (2) the ‘big solution’, which consents to a change in both name and gender after undergoing genital surgery.

9. According to Conrad (1992, 209–11), this represents a consistent example of medicalisation. On the medicalisation of the trans experience, see also Arfini (2007) and Sanger (2010).

10. It is not possible to estimate the overall cost of the transitioning process in a public hospital. Trans people have to pay a fee (exemptions apply) for check-ups with various physicians. The hormonal treatment is free of charge during the real life test and until the genital surgery is performed. Moreover, they have to pay for hormonal therapy after genital surgery has taken place. The costs are different for trans men and trans women, depending on the type of hormones, doses and frequency of usage. Genital surgery is free of charge.

11. In a recent case, the Tribunal of Rome authorised a trans woman to change her name and sex, according to the dispositions contained in law 164/82, but without undergoing genital surgery because she could live perfectly well as woman with her male genitals (personal communication). This, however, should still be considered as an exception in the current framework regulating gender transitioning in Italy. The Italian trans movement is still struggling to move towards a broader interpretation of the law, making it possible for trans people to change gender even without genital surgeries.

12. In Europe, recent legislation on gender transitioning allows trans people to be formally recognised as their preferred gender without undergoing genital surgeries. This is the case, for instance, of the Gender Recognition Act approved in the UK in 2004, the Law on Gender Identity approved in Spain in 2007, and the Law on Sex Change and Name approved in Portugal in 2011.

13. Body modifications play a central role in the process of gender transitioning. Gender attribution, in fact, strictly depends on physical appearance; the analysis presented in this article focuses on this aspect.

14. I use the label ‘gender conformists’ in order to evidence that these trans people, as competent members of society, tend to reproduce the dominant gender schema defined as a binary system of two sexes and corresponding genders. This does not mean that they have no agency in performing their process of gender transitioning, or that they are forced by medicine and the law. My analysis, which is based on empirical evidence, differs from that of radical feminists (Raymond 1979; Hausman 1995) because I am not criticising ‘gender conformists’ for reproducing stereotypical masculinity and femininity (as radical feminists do), rather I am trying to show how they act as competent members of society.

15. In medical literature, this refers to the manifestation of ‘gender dysphoria’ in young children, often before puberty. Secondary transsexuals are individuals who start wanting to live in a different gender when already adult (Bullough 1998).

16. This is the reason why trans men are forced to undergo hysterectomy, which makes them sterile.