POLÍTICAS DE IDENTIDAD Y GESTIÓN SEXUAL DE LOS
CUERPOS: UN ANÁLISIS DE LOS DISCURSOS LEGISLATIVOS ACERCA DE LA GESTIÓN ESTATAL
DEL CONFLICTO TRANS EN CHILE
POLICIES OF IDENTITY
AND SEXUAL MANAGEMENT OF THE BODY: AN ANALYSIS OF LEGISLATIVE SPEECHES ON MANAGEMENT
BY THE STATE OF THE TRANS CONFLICT IN CHILE
Dariela Milen Cristi
Donoso[1]
Resumen
Estos últimos años
en Chile, hemos presenciado un incremento de las políticas públicas relativas a
la identidad de género en el intento de otorgar soluciones a la problemática
que significa para las identidades trans desenvolverse en una estructura social
y político-administrativa que les excluye. En ese contexto, este artículo
propone una problematización de los discursos legislativos en torno a la
gestión estatal del conflicto trans, con el objetivo de analizar
cuáles han sido y cómo se han configurado las nuevas modalidades de integración
de las identidades sexuales disidentes, y qué implicancias tienen éstas para el escenario
sociopolítico chileno.
Esta investigación se articula desde
los planteamientos de la sociología jurídica, la teoría feminista y la noción
de gubernamentalidad. La
metodología utilizada fue la investigación documental y el análisis
crítico del discurso de todos los documentos emitidos oficialmente por el poder
ejecutivo y el poder legislativo de Chile entre el 2007 y el 2017. Los
principales resultados apuntan a la ciencia biomédica como el paradigma
epistemológico desde el cual se fundamentan los discursos legislativos. Por
otro lado, se identifica una matriz ideológica basada en una relación causal
lineal entre sexo-género-cuerpo como axioma de la concepción hegemónica
respecto a la problemática trans. En ese sentido, hemos evidenciado cómo las
estrategias gubernamentales han delimitado aquellas identidades sexuales que
ponen en tensión la taxonomía binaria, bajo los marcos de inteligibilidad de la
misma matriz conceptual que los excluye, y con ello han configurado nuevas
modalidades de normalización. Lo que resulta
clave para la reconfiguración de una ciudadanía excluyente, en cuanto se
institucionalizan normas socio-sexuales que definirían las nociones emergentes
de la figura de ciudadano/a, evidenciando que se enmarca en las
fronteras del no-ser a toda corporalidad que no se manifieste bajo los márgenes
de inteligibilidad que impone la lógica científica-colonial y la estructura
político-administrativa del país.
Palabras
clave: identidad de género, políticas públicas,
conflicto trans, cuerpo sexuado, discurso legislativo
Abstract
In recent
years in Chile, we have seen an increase in the number of public policies relating
to gender identity, that attempt to provide solutions to the problem for trans
identities of having to live in a social and political-administrative structure
that excludes them. In this context, this paper proposes a problematization of
the legislative discourses on the State’s handling of the trans conflict, in
order to analyze what the new modalities of the integration of sexually
dissident identities have been, how they are shaped, and what implications they
have for the Chilean socio-political scene.
The research
is based on proposals from the sociology of law, feminist theory and “governmentality”
theory. The methodology used was documentary research and a critical analysis
of the discourse in all the documents
officially issued by the executive and the legislative powers in Chile between
2007 and 2017. The main
results of our research point to biomedical science as being the
epistemological paradigm on which legislative discourses are based. Also, an
ideological matrix based on a linear causal relationship, between sex, gender,
and body, is identified, as an axiom of the hegemonic conception of the problem of trans. In this regard, we have
produced evidence to show how government strategies have defined those sexual
identities that put pressure on the binary taxonomy, within the frameworks
of intelligibility of the same conceptual
matrix that excludes them, and in this way, have produced new modalities of
standardization. This is crucial for the reconfiguration of an exclusionary
citizenship, in so far as the socio-sexual norms that define the emerging
notions of the figure of the (male or female) citizen are institutionalized, with
evidence to show that it is very close to treating as non-existent all
corporality that does not manifest itself within the margins of intelligibility
imposed by a scientific-colonial logic and the political-administrative
structure of the country.
Keywords: gender identity, public policies, trans conflict, sexed body,
legislative discourses
recepción: 6 de septiembre de 2019 / aceptación: 7 de febrero de 2020
Statement of the problem
In recent
decades, LGBTI+ movements have brought to light the many instances of violence
that directed against their members, and the consequence has been that the problem
of so-called “sexual diversity” has found a place on the political agenda. In
Chile, this has meant a series of public policy initiatives designed for the
protection of these identities, policies – along with others that are concerned
with sexual reproduction and the prevention of gender violence – that are a
sign of how the State has extended its reach into different areas of life, going
beyond what is understood as public, and inserting itself into the private
sphere as a new space for political intervention. Julieta Kirkwood (2010) calls
this the socio-emotional turn of
public policies, which implies the regulation of “how life is to be reproduced
and under what conditions, and how it should be lived and how it should protect
itself” (Sabsay, 2011, p. 22). This could
also be understood through the Foucaultian notion of “governmentality”.
The Argentinian sociologist Leticia Sabsay (2011) proposes that to
secure this “governmentality” in neoliberal democracies, it was necessary to
work on the formation of citizenship and the construction of subjectivities. Which
is further compounded if we refer specifically to policies having to do with the
recognition and protection of sexual identities. In the way they are
designed, these policies necessarily define such identities, in so far as they
classify the differences, in taxonomies, and institutionalize certain
socio-sexual norms, with the aim of broadening the frames of intelligibility of
political citizenship, and so integrate those sexual identities that had
previously been marginalized.
It is in the context of this socio-political and theoretical scene that
I propose that there is a trans conflict which
is developing in two directions at the same time. Firstly, it is difficult for
trans people to function in a social and political-administrative structure
that excludes them and marginalizes their frames of intelligibility, making it
harder for them to proceed with dignity. Secondly, the notion of trans creates conflict in the
socio-sexual structure itself, to the extent that these identities in
particular overflow the binary and dichotomous classification of sex and gender;
which makes it a threat to the heterosexual matrix on the basis of which the
social and political-administrative structure of the Nation State is built.
In this regard, it is relevant to ask what the frames
of intelligibility are on the basis of which the judicial frames are built
today, and how these change or adapt as demands concerning respect for sexual
rights are registered in society. Which makes it essential to explore the
process by which these State strategies have created transformations in
previously established classifications, which litigations and pressures have
been created with this modification, and how this dispute is managed by the
institutions of power. To
this effect our research paper proposes to problematize the legislative
discourses on the State’s management of the
trans conflict, with the aim of establishing
what the new modalities of integration for these dissident sexual identities are,
and how they have taken shape. In line with this aim, and in order to revel
these relations, a number of questions arose, which we seek to answer in this
paper: Which have been the State’s strategies for dealing with this
trans conflict and how have they been applied? What is the epistemological
paradigm that this legislative discourse is founded upon? Which are the
pressures and the transformations that we were able to note in these legislative
discourses? And what implications do they have for the socio-political context in
Chile? These considerations brought us to the general objective of the
research: which is to Analyze the composition of the legislative discourses on
management by the State of the trans conflict between 2007 and 2017 in Chile.
Social-historical background
For the
purposes of this research it is essential to characterize the socio-political
context in the world and in Chile, in order to identify the social-historical
conditions that made it possible for these legislative discourses in particular
to arise.
In 1954, the endocrinologist Harry Benjamin introduced the term transsexuality
into his studies, as a diagnosis given to people who lived or wished to live in
the gender role opposite to that of the sex assigned at birth. This made it
possible for certain foundations or clinics to be set up at the end of the
1960s, where a significant number of sex-change operations began to be
performed. In the face of this situation, it became necessary to conceptualize
scientifically the criteria which psychiatry would have to respect for diagnosing
those who wanted this reassignment of their sex. And in 1980, the third
diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-III) came
out with the terms Gender Identity Disorder and Transsexualism
included in it. These categories were replaced in the fourth Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), of 1994, by Gender Identity
Disorder and Transvestic Fetishism, and these were ratified in the
year 2000, finally ending up as Gender Dysphoria in DSM-V, published in
2013. Further, the most recent International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10)
(valid till 1 January 2022), published by the World Health
Organization in 1992 (the year that homosexuality was removed from the list),
puts transsexualism into the chapter on Mental and Behavioural Disorders,
specifically in the section on Gender Identity Disorders, where it goes by the
names of Transsexualism and Transvestism, or Gender Identity Disorder
With regard to the legal system worldwide, we have been able to see
during the last ten years an increase in the number of policies for the
protection and recognition of sexual identities marginalized in the political
system, and in the preparation of various protocols and international
agreements to encourage the treatment of
people in this category with dignity, thanks to pressure from the work of LGBTI+ movements, who have
brought to light the infringement of human rights for sexual dissenters in the
course of history.
In Chile, until ten years ago, there was no government regulation for
the health care of trans people, but sex-change operations had been going on
for over forty years, and these depended entirely on the goodwill of the doctor
and the ethical committee of the hospital. Then in 2008, when a number of hospitals
refused treatment, many public denunciations were made by LGBTI+ movements,
which allowed gender dysphoria to be
admitted as a public health problem. In this situation, the Homosexual Integration
and Liberation Movement, Movimiento de
Integración y Liberación Homosexual (Movilh) delivered a proposal addressed
to the Chilean Ministry of Health, Ministerio
de Salud de Chile (Minsal), which called for the passing of a “clinical
roadmap for the care of persons with a discrepancy between their physical sex
and their gender identity” (though the wording of the official title when the
law was passed differs significantly from that of this proposal; see below),
the Vía clínica de Atención a personas
con discordancia entre sexo físico e identidad de género, which was the
responsibility of the Department for the Control and Prevention of Diseases, of
the Subsecretariat of Public Health. With this first pilot plan, came a torrent
of notifications that came to complement the regulations for the medical care
of trans persons.
Now as there is no specific
regulation in Chile that allows transgender persons to change their name and
sex, law n°17.344
Theoretical Framework
Performativity of the sexed body and
gender
Feminist theory has developed the analytical notion of a sex-gender
system
One of the first
criticisms of the conception of a sex-gender system was that of Monique Wittig, who showed that it implied a
dichotomous conception of nature versus nurture, proposing that women “are a social category;
the product of an economic relation of exploitation and of an ideological
construction” (Wittig, 2006, p. 34). This is demonstrably true, if we consider
that it was not until the 18th century, with the emergence of science as a
paradigm of knowledge, that the single-sex model was surpassed, and the notion
of sexual dimorphism was established, under a bio-statistical conception of health,
in which a standard that went on to acquire the value of a norm, was defined on
the basis of statistical methods that made it possible to establish parameters
for measurement, which act as a normalizing power. In this case, a normalizing
power over sexed bodies.
Following
the same line of thought, Judith Butler (2007) proposes that neither sex nor
the body have an origin that predates culture and language, but are constructed
through the same discursive practices and expressions of gender that operate
through the institutionalization and repetition of certain gender norms. And in
this way they come to form one of the most consolidated truth regimes in our
cultures, through what she calls the performativity of the body, sex and gender. So she proposes a
re-formulation of how the body had been understood under the conception of a
sex-gender system, now no longer conceiving of it as a passive receiver of a
cultural meaning, but placing it instead under a constructivist and dialogical
conception. This meant an epistemological break with the classical
nature-nurture dichotomy, which went on to call into question the essentiality
of sexual categories, on which first wave
and second wave feminism had been based, thus transforming the meanings
that had been given up till then to the relation of sex to gender and body.
The performativity of scientific and legal discourse
The theory of the performativity of
discourse has as its base the so-called linguistic turn given to
post-structuralism, making the power of the structuring agency of the discourse
over social reality apparent. Following this idea, Foucault (1992; 1996) proposes that
discourse is a material network of symbolisms and representations, operating as
a mechanism of political power to the extent that its action takes part in the
construction and installation of certain frames of intelligibility, which would
come to support the explicative models that the installing of an
epistemological paradigm made possible. Hence the importance of studying the
configuration and the exercise of the discourse, with the aim of conducting a
historical reconstruction of the truth regimes that are installed, through
their relation with other mechanisms that exercise their power over the social
body, such as the legal and scientific powers. At this point the Critical
Analysis of Discourse (Dijk, 2016)
comes onto the stage, conceiving of discourse
as a social product but also as a political device that is a reflection of the
prevailing ideology, studying discourses in their social interaction, and in
their power relations, by means of its capacity for action as producer and
reproducer of the socio-political structure and the cognitive structures in use.
In this way, scientific discourse
takes the form of a significant practice productive of social representations,
from which defined frameworks of thought and intelligibility are installed. This
constructivist view of science has been developed by Feminist Epistemology (Abreu, 2009;
Harding, 1996; Ortiz, 1997; Sedeño, 2008), which has given examples of the
power relations that exist in the various fields of the production of
knowledge, and especially in scientific knowledge. It has elaborated a
consistent critique of the classical foundations of science, by questioning science’s
claim to be neutral and its dichotomous conception of the relation of the subject
to the object of knowledge. This way it has recognized the scientific paradigm
of a producer of truth as one on the basis of which systems of representations are
made that make it possible for a particular social and conceptual order to be
established.
Following
on from the performativity of discourse, the sociology of law (Durkheim, 1997), corresponding to the sociological study of the laws
that emanate from the organs of State, considers the law and its public
policies as discursive constructions by institutionalized power, which act as
the basis for legitimizing the socio-political order. Ochy Curiel, (2013) a Colombian
anthropologist, states that legal and legislative discourses are a reflection
of the existing power relations in social reality and a manifestation of the
hegemony of a country, from which the social imaginary materializes. In this
sense, the legislative discourse would operate as a mechanism of power not only
in the exercise of establishing laws and social norms, but also in the
configuration of representations of the social world.
Governmentality
The notion of governmentality (Foucault, 2006) refers to a mode of operation in which biopolitical
practices work silently on life, in order to direct its conduct through its own
self-regulation by means of inculcating an ideal that conditions the desires
and the aspirations within the subjects themselves, and acts as a mechanism for
the production of subjectivity. Preciado (2013) takes the Foucaultian notion of
governmentality and places it at the heart of neoliberalism, where, she says,
the verification mechanism is transformed and becomes more complex, as it is no
longer scientific but mercantile and mediatic. Then, what Preciado calls a pharmaceutical-political regime is introduced
onto this scene, corresponding to a set of endocrinological and clinical
techniques, whose aim is to keep up the production of a body that consumes
these in order to adapt itself to an ideal that has been transmitted through
the media and produces a process of interiorizing discourse, that leads people to
identify with the normalization apparatus of certain specific frameworks of
intelligibility.
Methodological
framework
This research paper describes our study, of a
qualitative kind, of documentary research into data of a secondary type,
consisting of all the government and legislative documents that have as a
prerequisite of being included: (1) that they must be documents issued and
officially published between the years 2007 and 2017, and (2) that they have, directly stated among their objectives, a regulation having to
do with the rights of trans persons.
In this framework, the documents to be studied are:
1. The protocol for medical attention: “Vía Clínica para la
adecuación corporal en personas con incongruencia entre sexo físico e identidad
de género”.
2. Circular n°31: “Gives instructions for attention to
trans persons and to fortify a hospital structure friendly to persons of sexual
diversity in establishments belonging to the assistance network”.
3. Circular n°21: “Reiterates instructions on
attention to trans persons in the network of assistance”.
4. Minutes of
the session in the Senate of the Law on gender identity 21/01/14
5. Minutes of the session in the Senate of the Law on gender identity 12/11/16
6. Minutes of the session in the Senate of the Law on gender identity 31/05/17
7. Minutes of the session in the Senate
of the Law on gender identity 07/06/17
8. Minutes of the session in the Senate of the
Law on gender identity 13/06/17
9. Minutes of
the session in the Senate of the Law on gender identity 14/06/17
10. Minutes of the session in the Senate of the Law on gender identity 16/06/17
11. Bulletin N°8.924-07 of 10.03.14. Indications
formulated during the general debate on the proposed law, in the first
constitutional procedure, that recognizes, and gives protection to, the right
to a gender identity.
12. Bulletin N°8.924-07 of 13.11.14. Indications formulated during the
general debate on the proposed law, in the first constitutional procedure, that
recognizes, and gives protection to, the right to a gender identity.
13. Bulletin N°8.924-07.
Indications VII of 13.07.15: Indications
formulated for the proposed law, in the first constitutional procedure, that
recognizes, and gives protection to, the right to a gender identity.
14. Report of
the Committee for Human Rights, Nationality and Citizenship devolved in the proposed law, in the first constitutional
procedure, that recognizes, and gives protection to, the right to a gender
identity. Bulletin N° 8.924-07 of 27.06.2013
15. Second Report of
the Committee for Human Rights, Nationality and Citizenship devolved in the proposed law, in the first constitutional
procedure, that recognizes, and gives protection to, the right to a gender
identity. Bulletin N° 8.924-07 del 15.12.2015
16. New Second Report of the Committee for Human Rights, Nationality
and Citizenship devolved in the proposed
law, in the first constitutional procedure, that recognizes, and gives
protection to, the right to a gender identity. Bulletin N°8.924-07 of 26.05.2017
17. Proposed law presented
03/05/2013
18. Proposal by MOVILCH: “Counselling
and medical attention for transsexual persons in Chile”.
The analytical techniques used correspond to
sociological discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis.
Sociological discourse analysis adopts three levels of analysis: textual,
contextual and interpretative. The textual level refers to description and
analysis of the content of the discourse to be studied. On this level, the
second specific objective, of describing the contents of public policies, is
analyzed. The contextual level refers to analysis of the social context in
which discourses arise, are produced, and are enunciated. It is on this level
of analysis that the first specific objective, which corresponds to
characterizing the socio-political scene of the process of elaboration of the
Chilean public policies relating to the management of the trans conflict, is addressed.
Finally, the interpretative level corresponds
to the relation that is made between the findings of the two previous levels of
analysis. The second proposal of analysis corresponds to a critical analysis of
the discourse (Dijk, 1999), which can be matched to the interpretative level of sociological
discourse analysis, combined with the fact that it proposes to explore the
power relations of the context of the enunciation in which the discourses
arise. In this case, an attempt is made to reconstruct the context in which the
narratives and practices that go to form the hegemonic State derived discourses,
with regard to the concepts at play in the management of trans identities, take
place. So it is from this proposal of analysis that the third, fourth and fifth
specific objectives are developed, which correspond to examining the social
representations present in the conceptualization of the
trans conflict in the
legislative discourses; identifying the epistemological paradigm that forms the
basis of the legislative discourse on the State’s management of the trans conflict; and inferring what the
implications of these discursive strategies are, for the socio-political scene
in Chile.
But apart from this, we shall direct the analysis by means of a
codification undertaken of the key concepts developed in the theoretical framework
of the analytical dimensions[3] identified for each specific object, that will
orientate the questions to be made of the corpus (See Appendix 1).
Principal findings
Deployment of the State’s strategies with regard to management of the
problem
Firstly, it was seen that the only two areas that
these legislative changes were directed to were: (1) the administrative area, where
the proposed law recognizing and
providing protection for the right to a gender identity, submitted to congress in 2013, took
concrete form (2) the area of health, where the protocol for medical attention,
Clinical roadmap to adaptation of the
body for persons with a discrepancy between physical sex and gender identity,
papers N°34 and N°21, had Instructions
for attention to trans persons and fortifying the structure of a hospital
friendly to persons of sexual diversity in establishments of the assistance
network[4] (Subsecretaría de Salud Pública, 14
de Junio 2012) (Subsecretaría de
Salud Pública, 13 de Septiembre del 2011).
Theoretical assumptions: The representations behind the principal
conceptualizations
It is of
fundamental importance to explore what the theoretical assumptions that lie
behind the arguments and conceptualizations that run across the trans conflict
are.
Firstly, the
notion of sex as a constituent part
of the body is one of the most unified and congruent conceptions we could find.
In spite of the different
political-moral postures that exist behind the arguments of every sector, we
can see that sex is unanimously conceived of as an objective, natural element,
related to biology and, especially, dichotomous.
Another quite
homogeneous conception is one to do with gender,
where all perspectives come together in agreeing that this is a socio-cultural
expression that defines differentiated roles and expectations on the basis of
sexual dimorphism. Another important idea is that gender is understood as a
central element in the process of building an identity. This representation
fits into what feminist theory has called a sex-gender system, in which gender
cannot be understood without sex, as gender is conceived of as being the
cultural expression that causes the sexed body.
With regard
to the conception of gender identity, we observe two shared premises. (1) That sexual identity is a component of
every human being. And (2) that it is dichotomous,
with only two genders recognized: male and female. Disagreement comes over its
construction and composition. One side sees it as a personal experience built
in a cultural structure of gender, and another side give it a “biological”
component by proposing that it is made up on an anatomical-physiological base.
Representations
concerning the trans conflict would
appear to have the most disagreements and discursive tensions; however, a
representation of the conflict is seen to run through the differences stemming from
the point of view of scientific-biological logic, as set out in the proposed Clinical
Roadmap of Medical Attention, elaborated by Movilh:
There
are important structural and neurochemical similarities between the brains of
transsexual persons and the typical brain of a person of the sex that they feel
identified with (...) the study reports, after explaining that alterations in
gender identity may develop as the result of an altered interaction between the
development of the brain and sexual hormones (Movilh,
2007, p. 6).
The same idea
can be appreciated in the objectives made explicit in the first official
government-produced document to do with the material studied, the Clinical Roadmap
of Clinical Attention issued by MINSAL:
Directed to attending to persons with discrepancies between their
physical sex and gender identity who are more than minimally affected, where
sanitary measures may be justified. (...) facilitating hormone treatments and
operations of genital re-assignation to help people adapt their bodies to their
true identity (VCAC, 2011, p. 4).
Behind these words can be detected an
individualization of the conception of a trans
conflict, understanding it on the basis of an inner incongruity that
relates its neuronal dimension to the physical. Here we can see that a mind-body
duality is one of the principal axioms running through the different bases of
these discourses, in so far as the discrepancy between sex and gender identity
appears in all the arguments as the cause of the trans conflict. In effect,
what is found behind these proposals is the idea of the “wrong body”. It is
understood that gender identity corresponds to a particular body, hence the
discrepancy. This allows us to identify the conception of a linear causal
relation between body, sex and gender behind these representations.
Another element
that appears to be a requirement in these new laws is the expression of gender.
Thus we infer that gender identity is still regarded as the particular
expression of a gender, apparent in the image of the body. This gives grounds for believing that there is a need
for a social and legal demonstration that ratifies the gender identity itself, not
just from the political-administrative apparatus, but also from an image of
definite sociocultural patterns.
Hegemonic epistemological paradigm
To proceed
with the analysis, it was of fundamental importance to explore the
epistemological paradigm that is found behind the basic assumptions of the
legislative discourses, seeing as how this provides us with the frameworks of
intelligibility within which reality is read. In other words, it is an
organized corpus of knowledge, and the system of cognitive reference that is
found at the base of the structures of thought of the social actors
participating in the political spaces of discussion and construction of these public
policies. The insights for the analysis of this come to us from identifying the
theoretical assumptions previously explained, the validated voices that are
able to accede to political speech in a formal space, and the requirements for
acceding to the rights enshrined in these public policies.
In this systematizing we could confirm the great quantity of expert voices in the shape of medical
surgeons, endocrinologists, psychiatrists, lawyers, and others; who are far
more numerous than the trans persons who were allowed to be considered direct
beneficiaries of this public policy. So their recognition, from the formal
political realm, would be from subjugation, and not from a place of agency and
self-determination, even though it was political actors who made the large
scale of visibility given to this problem, possible. These people are extracted
from their political word, to be arbitrarily represented by voices that have
been legitimized and validated by the socio-political system. Which is apparent
in the very organizations representing the beneficiaries, where the same logic
of validation by this expert and technical knowledge can be appreciated. Which
shows the power relations of the different fields of knowledge production established
in our society. In this case, a legitimizing of technical knowledge, that is specifically
biomedical and legal, over empirical and biographical knowledge, proper to the
first person’s daily experience of living with a trans corporality and identity.
These power relations in the various fields of knowledge are also seen
in the requirements established for people to accede to the rights that these
new legislations grant them. They tend to insist on an authorization by some
psychiatric doctor, thus inhibiting self-determination and the right to
autonomy over one’s body, because of the obligatory nature of having to submit
to examinations in order to be able to show a medical authority a diagnosis of
“gender dysphoria” within the parameters set by DSM-IV or CIE-10. Added to
which, an evaluation of mental health, to see if you are in optimum conditions
for taking this decision. Here we see that the principal paradigm on the basis
of which the trans conflict was
conceived of and therefore its management was directed, is that of the
biomedical paradigm. This is based on the installation of science as a paradigm
of knowledge. The installation of this epistemological paradigm implies a
conception of reality founded on the dichotomies of nature/nurture, categories
that we understand have governed, and have been consolidated, as the foundation
of Western Cartesian thinking, and are the product of modern rationality, on the basis of which our colonial states were established.
In this way, it operates as the main support and foundation of the material and
cognitive authority that is given to the practice of judicial, legislative and
government power.
Implications for the socio-political world
The way in
which these protocols have been elaborated and applied has allowed new forms
and new contents of socio-sexual normativity to be introduced. This has
implications for two different areas that are, however, tightly linked: for the
social and political-administrative structure, on the one hand, and for the
political movement of sexual diversity or dissidence, on the other.
With regard to the first of these, the institutionalizing of these new
socio-sexual norms might come to imply the denaturalization of certain key
notions that had previously ruled in cultural frameworks, which could lead to encouraging
new notions relating to the figure of (male or female) citizen to arise. So for
this figure to still work under this neoliberal governmentality, it is
necessary for there to be a reordering of the socio-political structure that
adapts to the transformations that the socio-cultural field experiences. This
would be achieved through the refitting of the legal and political frameworks
that order the political-administrative structure, and with the production of a
specific type of subjectivity and citizenship.
Thus we can appreciate how the discursive structure of identity
policies, moves the goal posts of what is acceptable, with the aim of including
and making visible those identities and corporalities that did not previously
fit into the frameworks of the social and political-administrative structures, but
not going so far as to question the very frameworks of intelligibility from
which they are permanently excluded, such as the dichotomous conception of
sexuality, and the causal relation between identity and the expression of
gender. This is what Foucault calls “conditions for acceptance”, which modify,
through regulated intervention in the field of possibilities of action for
subjects, the vital conditions that rule their existence, with the purpose of
conditioning their conduct. In this case, by establishing a cognitive order
that allows a transition of gender, but only under certain criteria, in so far
as it limits the possibilities of choice to a binary and dichotomous sexual
taxonomy, if one does not wish to be left in an ambiguous situation. Secondly,
this mobility is only ever made possible when the assigned gender role is
adapted to the identity that the subjects choose, adjusting themselves to the
regulatory framework of the markers of gender legitimacy. In this sense, conducts are directed towards
what is considered legible in the representations of the socio-cultural and
political-administrative context, in this case the transformation of the body
towards a sexual normalization, if it is to be considered a subject with
rights.
Nelly Richard has a very good description of the current state of
socio-political practice in Chile, that identity policies are not excluded from:
The
mechanisms responsible for normalizing the social, were the market and consensus,
under the directive of a (pseudo) integration of the diverse and the plural. (...)
The consensual model of the government of
transition marked a move of politics away from antagonism, to politics as a transaction:
the formula of a pact and the technicalities of its negotiation that should
conciliate or reconcile a divided society around a new equilibrium (Richard, 2001, p 227).
In this
context, political transactions are reflected in the need to adapt that is required
by the legal order in order to gain the right for one’s gender identity to be
recognized and protected. There therefore continues to exist an exclusion of
other identities that do not adjust to these requirements, and, by the way, the
division of a movement that has had to negotiate and give up its autonomy and
self-determination in order to gain access to its basic rights, in so far as
its members now have to submit to being classified as pathological in order to
be able to accede to those rights. Which is effected by standardizing the differences in
respect of those who represent the smallest break with the frames of intelligibility
of the heterosexual matrix as the socio-sexual order. In this
sense, the new legislations only allow access to trans persons who are willing
to transform themselves and their dress to fit the lineaments of the ideal of
subjects permitted in the frames of intelligibility of the political
administrative status quo: that is, as man or a woman.
So it is, that this
management of the trans conflict implies a strengthening of the sexual and
gender categories constructed on the basis of a dichotomous and static
codification. The delimitation of a dichotomously sexed citizenship would be a
manifestation of the categorization mechanism, which displays a significant
normative and practical structure that is crucial to the process of constructing
an identity, in so far as it operated as a device to capture and enclose
multiplicities in static limited categories, such as gender identity. This,
according to Lazzaratto (2006) might be understood as a neutralizing of the
potential of the many combinations and possibilities of sexualities.
In this way, through the biomedical and legal institutions, the
heterosexual matrix has assumed the form of another dimension of
governmentality, entering the socio-political field in which individuals develop,
through a process of institutionalizing socio-sexual norms, which allows the
conditions to exist for a performativity of the sexed body, and from which
emerging notions of the citizen are defined, and
this suggests that they would be framed on the borders of the non-existence of
all corporality and subjectivity that is not manifested within the frameworks
of intelligibility imposed by scientific logic and the political-administrative
structure.
Conclusions
We have seen
a legislative discourse that is far from being homogeneous. Not only in
parliamentary discussions, which was to be expected, but also coming from the executive
power itself.
In effect, a transformation was observed of certain conceptualizations
that were crucial when this problem was first addressed. However, even though
the ideas that we met with were heterogeneous, a study of the representations
of the principal elements running though this conflict allowed us to recognize
a number of theoretical assumptions that run through the different arguments of
the various political sectors. Following this line of enquiry, what we find
behind these proposals is the conception that there is a congruence, that is to
say a linear causal relation between sex, body and gender, when we think that the trans conflict
depends on the idea of the wrong body.
So in spite of any differences between the proposals for managing the problem,
we never leave the epistemological framework that makes a distinction between
nature and nurture, and, on the basis of this incongruence, between mind and
body.
In this way, the
individualization of the conflict actually hides the socio-political causes
that run through it, in so far as it does not recognize it as a conflict whose
origin lies at the heart of the discrepancy between physical sex and the social
representations that have been built from it, but only an interior discrepancy
that relates its mental dimension to the physical, and that keeps reproducing
these dichotomies, on which the essentialisms of the structure of gender are
based. Following the same line of thought, these legislations point to an individual
resolution of the conflict, which makes it harder to think of a possible
solution directed at a socio-cultural transformation involving the structure of
gender, to the extent that it does not problematize the conceptual matrix which
these sexual identities are excluded from in advance.
In this way it can be understood that the first legislation was directed
towards the biology and the psychology of individuals, through a collection of
endocrinological and clinical techniques, which Preciado (2013) would call pharmapolitical, as a strategy for management of the body. This
pharmapolitical regime is set in a socio-cultural context overrun by the
mediatizing of an aesthetic and pharmaceutical market. In this sense the
body-image takes a most pertinent role as a primordial element of the present
time in this game of producing subjectivities and corporalities, in this case
unsatisfied subjectivities. Which can be appreciated clearly in exploring the
epistemological paradigm that can be found behind the discourses analyzed,
where the expression of gender (image) and medical authorization (scientific
knowledge) are established as requirements for access to the rights that these
new legislations aim to grant and safeguard.
From this systematizing and analysis of the government’s strategies,
followed these last ten years in Chile, we can affirm that, on the one hand,
these legislations may be considered an advance, in so far as they grant material
possibilities of improvement for those who wish to accede to a sex and
gender change, by allowing this transition to take place. However, on the other
hand, this mobility is limited to the extent that the idea of freedom of choice
is framed on a spectrum of already defined possibilities, and it is only
possible through submission to various requirements set out by the legal order.
The question therefore arises: how does the State propose to give protection to
these alternative identities, without transforming its own matrix, from which
they are produced and excluded?
To conclude, it
should be mentioned that there is a terrible absence of any legislation pointing
towards a socio-cultural change, one that might materialize in projects of training
and raising awareness in the educational world. Which is disconcerting when you
consider that one of the main purposes of these public policies has been to
struggle against the discrimination and violence that trans people are exposed
to. This leaves the Chilean State and
its public institutions with an enormous debt still to pay in matters of
protection.
Appendix
1: Matrix of Analytical Dimensions
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