Beatrice chose freedom. Beatrice was 14 years old, she was Sicilian, and she chose freedom. From this world plagued by transmisogyny, from this country whose nationalist government continues to ignore the south, Beatrice chose freedom. But Beatrice was also suicides by that same transmisogyny and anti-southern sentiment, the intersection of which still weighs heavily on the shoulders of so many southern Dolls. I am also Sicilian and can imagine the conditions that led Beatrice to take such an extreme step. At 36 years old, I am surprised to still be here myself.

Sicily is a territory completely abandoned to itself and its parallel government, whose lives are already inferior and ignorable, as reconfirmed by the climatic destruction of recent weeks, where the only chance for dignity is to leave, one way or another. A territory that, in order to try to survive systematic destruction, chooses the only means possible, those of conservatism, because we are not allowed to have anything else, reduced to a caricatured tourist destination that is fully gentrifiable and expropriable, whose backward inhabitants can only bow to the will of those above them. In this shadowy setting, the monsters that plague our South are born. Not only the mafia and the code of silence, not only the lack of work and vote buying, but also the monstrous Patriarchy finds fertile ground here. We cannot forget the territory when we talk about Beatrice’s suicide because that territory is one of the causes, because every trans suicide is a transicide. Always.

Because for the monstrous Patriarchy, nothing is more dangerous than a Doll. Beatrice was driven to suicide by the intersection of transmisogyny and anti-Southernism, which also manifests itself in the overdetermination and bourgeois denial of this intersection. We Dolls know transmisogyny well: it is the intersection between transphobia and misogyny, the effects of which we experience every day when we are harassed on the street, are denied a job or housing, when systemic transmedicalist oppression denies us access to the medical care necessary for the dignity we deserve just because we are trans women. This is compounded by life in the South, and the effects are multiplied to a level that we may not yet be fully aware of, but which we must have the courage to analyze and fully address. The struggle that we, as Dolls from the South, must carry on must take on not only the historical lineage of other, better-known Sisters from the past, but also and above all our most direct Sisters, those from the South, those like Beatrice. We must fight the intersection between transmisogyny and anti-Southernism, we must fight patriarchy and Northern supremacy in the name of all the Sisters who have been taken from us.

It is with our Sisters in our hearts that we must carry on the struggle for our liberation because only Love for our Sisters, which is systematically denied us by our families of origin, our territories, the State, Capital, and Patriarchy, can lead us to Victory. And Victory will not be ours, but that of the Sisters taken away. Beatrice included.

Arm the Dolls.

Magnus Hirschfeld is undoubtedly one of the key figures in LGBTQIA+ history and one of the most prominent activists for gay rights1, a gay Jewish man who was brutally targeted by Nazi repression (the first book burning, in fact, was that of the library at his Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, the Institute for Sexual Research). Crucially, he was the first to distinguish between what we now call sexual orientation and gender identity, and to reject the idea that the latter was rooted in a paraphilia. I also wish to emphasize that, in the book in which he first described the trans condition in positive terms, Die Transvestiten: Eine Untersuchung über den Erotischen Verkleidungstrieb (Transvestites: A Study of the Erotic Drive to Cross-Dress), the adjective “erotic” was not used in a sexual or genital sense, but in the sense of a vital impulse; and, based on the limited material freely available online in languages other than German—which I do not speak—it is also made explicit that “the innate impulse toward transvestism is often stronger than sexual desire itself.” Furthermore, Hirschfeld created an incredible support network for trans people for the time, both medically and legally; however, Hirschfeld was no queer saint: he was a eugenicist2 (though not aligned with Nazi eugenics, but rather with a social democratic perspective—his was a common position in Germany at the time), a racist, and he had a relationship with a much younger man…These are all elements that cannot be ignored when discussing the quintessential pioneer of medicine for trans people and LGBTQIA+ rights in general, especially since Hirschfeld mentored another doctor who, more than Hirschfeld himself, laid the foundations for modern systemic transmedicalism: Harry Benjamin.

Harry Benjamin is generally regarded as the physician whose work first laid the foundations for the modern system of transmedicalism, beginning with the Sex Orientation Scale (SOS, hereafter the Benjamin Scale), which, of course, was primarily concerned with classifying the degree of transsexuality among trans women: the scale, in fact, identified six types of transsexuals divided into three groups based on the intensity with which the medical transition—or more precisely, the sex reassignment surgery—was desired by the woman in question, identifying the “true transsexual” in the group with the highest intensity. In particular, and this appears to be evident from a correspondence between Benjamin and his colleague Elmer Belt3, the creation of this scale was not aimed at understanding the phenomenon of transsexuality—that is, the need of people (and, again, particularly trans women) to access the medical care necessary for their dignity, which medical technology was perfectly capable of providing— nor to protect a small group of cisgender people, as Julia Serano, for example, suggests in Whipping Girl in the chapter “Moving Beyond Cissexist Models of Transsexuality,” but to protect the surgeon in the event of regret on the part of the woman who had undergone the surgery and who might eventually seek “legal or personal revenge”.

A lot to unpack here, especially in light of the correspondence in question. First of all, cissexism; starting from Serano’s definition—which describes the tendency to judge the experiences of trans people according to standards different from those of cis people—it is clear that the Benjamin Scale is based precisely on this discriminatory idea: to my knowledge, straight cis people are not analyzed using scales based on their inner needs regarding sexual attraction and/or gender, but are taken for granted; they are the norm. Hormone replacement therapy is provided to cisgender people without much question, to name one example. Furthermore, as already mentioned, the Benjamin Scale outlined the approach to take regarding trans women based on the intensity of their desire to undergo sex reassignment surgery, and the correspondence reveals Belt and Benjamin’s fear of a trans woman potentially regretting the procedure, which was thus defined as the ultimate and final stage of the transition; In addition to a fundamental phallocentrism and the fear—which strikes me as entirely self-referential—of the removal of the symbol of masculinity, I believe the first emergence of the trans woman as a concrete threat to the “true man”4 also becomes apparent. In the Benjamin Scale, in fact, the intensity of the desire to undergo the reassignment procedure was calculated not only based on sexual orientation (Type VI, the “true transsexual” with high intensity, is a heterosexual woman) but also on gender performance: both in the correspondence and in Sandy Stone’s The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto5, it is emphasized that the Benjamin Scale, contained in the book The Transsexual Phenomenon, was very well known precisely by the women seeking access to the necessary medical care, and how they conformed to the behaviors required by Benjamin and his Scale.

The label transsexual is therefore entirely artificial, and is itself a surgical artifact based on certain cisgender men’s ideas about how trans women should be—and that they were someone to be erased: if, for Benjamin, there existed a scale of intensity whereby only the true transsexual was fully entitled to gender reassignment surgery, this true transsexual had to adopt behaviors appropriate to the gender they were experiencing, and be able to pass adequately (or rather, disappear as a violation of the norm). From a transmedicalist perspective, the trans experience becomes the property of the doctor who must evaluate it, and the transsexual person in question can only conform to this external ownership of their own life by basing their testimony on the fears of those who own their experience. This dynamic, which in my view mirrors the capitalist appropriation of surplus value, creates a profound subjugation of the trans person to medical authority that reflects patriarchal, prescriptive, cissexist, and oppositional ideas about how the lower class should behave, what to desire, and how to be. And although several decades have passed since the publication of The Transsexual Phenomenon, its effects are still present: in 1978, the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA) was founded, which set out to create a standard model for trans people’s access to medical care.

In 2007, the HBIGDA became the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), which, fortunately, has been relaxing its restrictive criteria for access to care over the past few decades, up to the latest edition of its Standards of Care in 2022 (SOC8), which points toward a personalized model that also includes guidelines for non-binary experiences with a focus on informed consent without an absolute requirement for a psychiatric diagnosis; however, it remains a model heavily based on medical authority, emphasizing in some areas a “comprehensive and multidisciplinary assessment.” As I also wrote in my previous article, Who’s Afraid of Science?, the biopsychosocial model is indeed the most advanced, but in that article I did not analyze the potential for gatekeeping and the superdetermination of medical authority over our experiences: what, in fact, assures us that the individual doctor or medical team evaluating our personal experience is not a victim of the same fears as Benjamin and Belt? You only need to talk to a random trans person to discover how the doctor’s fears often take precedence over the trans person’s well-being; furthermore, the existence of a new, more open SOC—more inclusive, if you will—does not automatically imply that it is put into practice. In many countries, a formal diagnosis of gender dysphoria is still required to access medical care, and in many cases it takes a long time to obtain it; again, just talk to any random trans person to discover that you often have to switch psychiatrists two or three times to finally find one who is willing—at the cost of a lot of time and/or money, nonetheless—to put the person’s well-being first without making excuses like “not being consistent enough” in experiencing dysphoria, or an endocrinologist who doesn’t have to be begged to prescribe a dose of hormones that actually does something to our bodies; at the same time, life-saving medical care can be denied for any reason that indicates belonging to an inferior class, such as body type (fat or thin), disability (a pre-existing diagnosis of neurodivergence greatly slows down the process of obtaining a diagnosis of dysphoria), and so on6. We are truly far, far away from a complete depathologization of our experiences that would grant us access to life-saving medical care.

One final point that I think will piss some people off, but I’ll be blunt: I couldn’t care less about your feelings because lives are at stake here. Denying access to this medical care is just as transmedicalist whether it comes from a cisgender doctor or from someone in the LGBTQIA+ community. It is, unfortunately, an extremely common experience that, within the community itself, transmedicalism is shifted from being a systemic phenomenon—as analyzed in the article and the sources provided—to certain people who are chronically online and promote ideas similar to Benjamin’s, moving from a universalist gender-abolitionist perspective (which I will discuss in depth in the future). It is not those seeking medical transition who are transmedicalists, but those who prevent access to it; at the same time, setting aside the actual existence of a vocal minority on those cursed sites that are Tumblr and Reddit, I ask you directly: how many transmedicalist trans people have you actually met in your life? You’ll be able to count them on one hand. For people like me, this is a matter of life-saving medical care, as I have repeated several times in this article, and the discourse on validity regardless of everything else—so in vogue in recent years—is simply harmful. Not needing medical care to affirm one’s existence is merely a privilege, not a universal rule. Nor does saying that gender is a social construct serve much purpose, because it fundamentally demonstrates a lack of understanding of the concept and the subsequent conflation of this misunderstood concept with gender identity: saying that “blue is the color for boys and pink is the color for girls” (gender as a social construct) has nothing to do with the experience of feeling discomfort due to the incongruity between body and inner self (gender identity). It is to resolve this incongruity that medical treatments exist, and if we truly are all under the same umbrella, then your commitment should be to help us fight for easier access to medical care and to streamline legal processes—not to erase transsexuality, as Benjamin wanted.

Last week I published a short article discussing a certain issue that was met with nonsensical criticism, mainly because the critics did not address the substance of the argument, completely distorted what I had written—as I was also told by third parties—and simply ridiculed it. Clearly, the fact that a logical fallacy was used proves exactly what it proves, but since the person who acted in this way also has significant visibility, I believe it is my duty to provide accurate information, starting precisely with what I was told I had claimed—namely, that a person’s gender identity has a biological basis: if this prominent figure, instead of relying on slogans and witty remarks (no wittiness detected), were to study what is actually said in the scientific community—including to effectively help trans people—they would know that gender identity is also influenced by biological factors. What slogans promote, however, are the offspring of a culture (those are indeed) that has simplified the discourse so much as to have created the monster of people who define themselves as non-binary for political reasons1, among other things. So in this unscheduled essay, I will examine how gender identity is not a cultural product—since current culture wants us all dead—but rather a biopsychosocial one. It will also serve to clarify—though I’m fairly certain it won’t be once and for all—that talking about “biological sex” and “biology” when discussing trans people can be done in a non-denigrating way and without fostering any sense of inferiority toward trans people; what I seem to notice, in fact, is that many trans people, especially those involved in some form of activism, still have high levels of internalized cissexism, according to Julia Serano’s definition: “he belief that transsexuals’ identified genders are inferior to, or less authentic than, those of cissexuals” and everything that follows from it. Not that I don’t understand it—the attacks we face are shamefully petty—but that cannot prevent us from using science to our advantage: science, in fact, is never neutral, whatever anyone may say, but as I wrote in the article whose criticisms prompted me to write this one:

The biology they use to hurt us every day is, in fact, at a second-grade level—at best. That’s what I actually wrote. Truly understanding science without resorting to petty determinism and false dichotomies—which follow the same line of thinking as those who seek to erase trans experiences—and without resorting to ridicule, as certain self-proclaimed left-wing forces often do, is the only truly effective way to bring about positive change. For this reason as well, I invite you once again to reread the previous article and watch Julia Serano’s insightful video—I remind you that she is both a trans woman and a biologist—Trans People and Biological Sex: What the Science Says, which I’ve included directly below:

Going back to the purpose of this article, then, a fundamental disclaimer: I am not a scientist. My knowledge is entirely self-taught, and although I read studies—and have read many to write this new essay—I clearly lack the expertise to fully grasp all the explanations; since I believe this is a trait I share with many of my readers, I’ve included abstracts and conclusions that summarize the key concepts in much more accessible language. Of course, each study will be linked to give readers the chance to see for themselves what I’m talking about. It is essential for me, to avoid misunderstandings—if not outright misinterpretations—to emphasize that this article, like the previous one, does not aim to identify a single biological cause or pathologize the existence of trans people: despite the personal opinions of those who criticize me, I am not a transmedicalist; that is, I do not believe that being trans is essentially a medical issue, even though medicine is an important factor in our well-being, and the studies I present in this article will serve precisely to demonstrate this. What I write is grounded in solid evidence and is not built on slogans. The proposal I put forward in the previous article was, in fact, to view trans lives from a holistic perspective, and the same is suggested by the most recent scientific research. Finally, I believe it is also worth noting that these studies will never be exhaustive, both due to the very complexity of the human biological system and its non-biological derivatives, but also—and perhaps above all—because most of the time, trans lives are not considered worth studying by the public. Let’s start, however, with the basics: the American Psychological Association states that “There is no single explanation for why some people are transgender. The diversity of transgender expression and experiences argues against any simple or unitary explanation (and thus also the claim that gender identity is “a product of culture, period,” as asserted by my detractor, ed.). Many experts believe that biological factors such as genetic influences and prenatal hormone levels, early experiences, and experiences later in adolescence or adulthood may all contribute to the development of transgender identities.” Here we can already see something I tried to convey in my previous piece, namely that a single cause can never explain why a person is trans. Precisely because the human biological system is extremely complex, nothing can truly be defined by a single cause—neither hair color nor height nor why one is trans; even when discussing genetic causes, we cannot define which genes or mechanisms lead to the emergence of gender incongruence: the January 2020 study Brain Sex Differences Related to Gender Identity Development: Genes or Hormones? discusses precisely how “little is still known about the specific biological activity of sex hormones on brain structures: in particular, further studies should examine the role of brain androgen and estrogen receptors” and, while confident that “it is well established that biology plays a major role” in the development of gender identity (both cis and trans, since cis people also have one, even if they are almost always unaware of it), it concludes by stating that “prenatal and pubertal sex hormones seem to permanently affect human behaviour and, in addition, heritability studies have demonstrated a role of genetic components. However, a convincing candidate gene has not been identified. Future studies (i.e., genome wide studies) are needed to better clarify the complex interaction between genes, anatomy and hormonal influences on psychosexual development.” Similarly, the 2018 study The Biological Contributions to Gender Identity and Gender Diversity: Bringing Data to the Table, a review of a wide range of previous studies, states in its abstract: “Based on the data reviewed, we hypothesize that gender identity is a multifactorial complex trait with a heritable polygenic component. We argue that increasing the awareness of the biological diversity underlying gender identity development is relevant to all domains of social, medical, and neuroscience research and foundational for reducing health disparities and promoting human-rights protections for gender minorities.” I find this latest study fascinating because it openly states in its introduction that “the goal of this review is to provoke thoughtful consideration of the crucial role that human genetics can play in making society more open and equitable for gender minorities”: despite the fear of the unknown and any internalized cissexism, I —even though I am not a scientist—believe it is essential that science can offer us vital tools for political struggle. Faced with the exploitation of pseudo-scientific examples like the Cass Review—which is perhaps the tool most frequently used by the anti-trans faction—or Blanchard’s theory of autogynephilia that resurfaces every now and then, I personally do not believe it is enough to simply state that the study has been criticized; rather, it becomes necessary to demonstrate the basis for those criticisms (not that I have any faith that a group of people with supremacist ideas can truly appreciate scientific research conducted with method and integrity, let’s be clear) and that there is a plethora of scientific studies that instead demonstrate how our lives are perfectly natural without falling into determinisms of various kinds. If the fear of certain liberal activism is that the public won’t understand, well… get over it. Returning to the 2018 study, let’s conclude with a sentence that I personally consider deeply scientific, in the purest sense of science as research: “several studies appeared in the past decade focused on individual candidate genes. Most candidate gene studies have focused on sex-hormone receptors, such as androgen and oestrogen receptor genes, or genes involved in sex hormone pathways. To date, no conclusive associations have been identified […]. As the genetic architecture of most complex human traits is characterized by very small effect sizes of multiple common genes of most complex human traits is characterized by very small effects of multiple common genes, the inconclusive results thus far are most likely due to the small sample sizes and focus on individual genes.”; furthermore, he concludes by stating that “we have provided evidence from other fields that this research can be used to reduce stigma, particularly among health care providers, though we caution that such efforts are not without some risk of increased stigma.”—which I believe is the best possible conclusion and aligns with my own line of thinking.

The previous study focuses on the genetic factors underlying gender identity and how that perspective alone reveals a great deal of complexity; things become much more complex when we broaden our perspective. The most common trend in recent years, at least since 2013—the year Gender Identity Development: A Biopsychosocial Perspective was published—has been to view trans lives in their entirety as subjectivities shaped by biological, social, and psychological factors. Clearly, much has changed since 2013; just consider how looking at certain areas of the brain as possible factors in the development of a cis or trans gender identity is no longer given the same weight as in the previous decade, but the approach in general remains the same: trans people specifically, but all people in general, are much more than the sum of their parts, and the mechanistic reductionism of science from a few decades ago—despite still being championed by those who subscribe to scientistic views—is no longer valid. A good example of this approach is the 2025 article New Advances in Biomedical Research on Sex, Gender & Gender Incongruence, which begins precisely by stating the “growing awareness of the complex interplay between biological, psychological, and social dimensions that shape human identity.” The two studies published by Istanbul University (of which, unfortunately, I am familiar only with the abstracts, as I found the full texts only in Turkish)—Gender Dysphoria in Children and Adolescents and Gender Dysphoria: Psychiatric Diagnosis, Evaluation, and Documentation Protocols—highlight “the importance of the biopsychosocial model as a holistic template for gender dysphoria” and that “a single approach will not suffice; rather a combination of biological, psychological and societal factors might be determining,” respectively. The WPATH’s Standard of Care itself, while not directly specifying any probable cause for gender non-conformity, states that “transgender health care is greater than the sum of its parts, involving holistic inter- and multidisciplinary care between endocrinology, surgery, voice and communication, primary care, reproductive health, sexual health and mental health disciplines to support gender-affirming interventions as well as preventive care and chronic disease management.” This is yet another reason why asserting a single cause for gender identity—whether conforming or not—as being either one thing or the other—whether brain regions or culture (which, as you will see, is never mentioned at any point in the studies presented, unlike what those who ridicule my work do)—is laughable nonsense, not because I wish to stoop to the same appeals to ridicule that have been directed at me, but because it is not supported by any data.

I could go on at length and keep citing study after study, but I think I’ve made my point, even though I have little faith in the intellectual honesty of those who disparage me: science is not merely a finite and immutable system, and gender identity is the result of complex mechanisms involving various aspects of the person. Culture is not one of them.

Essentialism: “Essentialism is most commonly understood as a belief in the real, true essence of things, the invariable and fixed properties which define the 'whatness' of a given entity.” (from Wikipedia). Essentialism is precisely what we—especially trans women—fight against when our identity as women is denied, when people like J. K. Rowling defines a woman as “a human being who produces large gametes” to name a fairly recent example. In contrast, we have a deconstructionist position, which makes a clear distinction between the physical body or biological sex and gender, viewing the latter as a social construct—that is, as a model built by social convention and, as such, lacking innate value or qualities. Clearly, I do not disagree with the fact that gender-based roles, customs, and behaviors differ depending on the geographical location or historical period in question; I believe this is an objective fact that should not be questioned. What must be questioned is how this relates to my transsexual experience. After beginning my transition, I often asked myself why it took me 35 years to accept that I am a trans woman, and, setting aside patriarchal dynamics, it has everything to do with the fact that considering gender a social construct has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I am a woman; indeed, framing the issue from this perspective automatically leads me to think that for those who claim gender is a social construct, then in another era or another place—or if gender roles were less restrictive and prescriptive—I could have been a slightly more flamboyant and feminine cis man. This language—the mainstream one—despite presenting itself as the most progressive, in reality continues to systematically ignore something that lies at a much deeper level than the social one; and while the idea of a “brain sex” is itself highly controversial and essentialist, it is certain that socialization alone cannot account for our identities. The most famous historical example is undoubtedly that of David Reimer, about whom so much has been written and said. Reimer’s story is tragic and has also been exploited to our disadvantage, yet knowing it is essential because it demonstrates that socialization alone is not enough to define who we are, especially considering how the forced imposition of a sex through non-consensual interventions is exactly what happens to intersex people. Furthermore, our brain is a highly complex structure, and although I myself have in the past looked to the brain as a place to find validation of my identity, a study supporting this viewpoint will be contradicted by another and vice versa, precisely because our biology is, in general, extremely complex, and focusing on a single physical characteristic cannot explain why I am trans any more than socialization can: I’ve also written about socialization in the past, and I encourage you to read that post; essentialist views that seek a single physical cause almost automatically open the door to eugenic aspirations. As Serano explains in the video linked at the beginning, in the brains of both cis and trans people, we can find a mosaic of characteristics that tend to be associated with one sex or the other.

As I was saying, our biology is extremely complex, and reducing sex to a single characteristic is misleading; in fact, there are many human sexual parameters, including chromosomes, gonads, genitals and other reproductive organs, hormones, and secondary sexual characteristics (which are what shape the external perception of our gender and/or sex in everyday life) and, despite the creation of standards to define a person as belonging to one sex or the other, these characteristics are extremely variable in every person—even in endosexual individuals, that is, those who are not intersex—and all this without even considering the rest of the complexity and possible combinations of interactions between genes, proteins, hormone receptors, and other various characteristics, including how individual variations can exist separately from one another. Our transitions also demonstrate how almost all of these parameters are perfectly manipulable and that the human body possesses within itself the capacity to change these characteristics, possessing, for example, receptors for both androgens and estrogens, thus making us biologically women—with all due disrespect to Rowling—if not on the chromosomal level (until proven otherwise, since, like most people, I have never had a karyotype test) at least on many other levels. It is precisely the malleability of our sexual characteristics, the fact that secondary sexual characteristics, and not others (since we don’t go around showing people our karyotype test results or what genitals we usually have) are what the external perception of our gender identity is based on, along with the existence of standards for classifying a person into one category or another, including within these standards all possible interventions to erase various intersex conditions and those who fall under these conditions, serves to demonstrate that sex, too, is a social construct—that is, a binary and oppositional normative system of categorization and homogenization of human complexity. In fact, the purpose of writing this short essay is not simply to go against the mainstream discourse, but to bring intersex issues alongside trans issues without positioning ourselves as superior as the general silence within trans circles regarding intersex conditions and the co-optation of the AGAB (assigned gender at birth) definition, without ever considering the value it holds within intersex communities themselves, lead me to believe is happening. Our experiences, intersex and trans, have much in common, and using language that simplifies biological sex or lived gender is an injustice to both. Using impoverished language based solely on opposition to essentialism and the cissexism derived from it cannot lead to any positive change or to the majority of the population understanding our concerns and demands.

Question number 1: “But why do you want to be a woman? It sucks.” Now, it is obvious that in Patriarchy, one of whose characteristics is that it is a male-centered hierarchy, being anything other than a man (especially a white, Western, able-bodied man from one of the upper classes, consider a few intersections) is no walk in the park; above all, actively working to leave the male class and descend in the hierarchy becomes kind of a living hell, but that is already a topic for a slightly more advanced analysis. I want to stay with the underlying misogyny of such a statement—because, net of the difficulties of being not-man, this type of statement stems from a patriarchal view, unable to move outside the constraints of class and the forced assignment of a sex at birth. In addition to the concept of wanting to be, as if I could avoid it, as if I were appropriating something that does not belong to me, rather than considering my unconscious sex as natural (and thus revealing a good dose of cissexism), the choice to want to be perceived as a woman remains an enigma even for certain feminisms who, unable to look at the world through non-patriarchal lenses, reject femininity as a monolithic and artificial concept useful only for keeping women submissive. Even within certain feminist circles, it is still impossible to view femininity as something worthy of dignity, nor can it be imagined that a person can feel good while expressing a “stereotypical” femininity. Even before this conversation, I found myself confronted by certain feminists who, based on their experience as cis women with a less feminine gender expression, almost made me feel mortified because I want to have laser treatment to finally get rid of the myriad of hairs covering my body, one of the most visible damages that testosterone has done to me, because having hair is fine and having to shave is just a gender role. The same thing was brought up by the person whose questions led me to write this article, who emphasized that hair removal is necessary to attract males. A hug to the lesbians and bi+ femme women reading this article, since I myself, despite defining myself as bisexual, have at least a 90% preference for women, both sexually and romantically—which is why, for intellectual honesty, I don’t define myself as a lesbian: sometimes I can find a man attractive, but every time it ends as soon as he starts talking. My femininity, although not overly stereotypical, despite the fact that I love wearing makeup and get my nails done every month, does not exist to attract potential partners, neither men nor women: it exists because it exists. I don’t want to be a woman, nor do I identify as one: I am a woman and this goes beyond my sexual orientation. I say this in response to another question: “So you like men?” Another hug to lesbians and bi+ cis and trans women. There is nothing wrong with femininity and being a woman: being a woman does not mean having to religiously follow a submissive role created to satisfy men, just as there is nothing wrong with wanting to feel beautiful and therefore following certain practices such as wearing makeup or going to the gym to achieve a certain type of physique. Although it is practically obvious that certain standards of beauty are unattainable, actively working to prevent women from freely engaging in behaviors that make them feel good by accusing them of reinforcing gender roles (something that happens constantly to trans women, but almost never to cis women) is one of the most anti-feminist things I can think of: feminism should be concerned with preventing the creation of hierarchies, not creating new and opposing ones. This is because, quite simply, people fail to understand that misogyny is not just hatred towards women, but above all hatred towards femininity. Although there are few examples of cis feminist women who have a very femme gender expression (for example, on Instagram there are some cis women who talk about gender issues while putting on makeup), masculinity is still not subject to the same level of scrutiny that we subject femininity to, which remains artificial, frivolous, and impractical, while the former is still natural, worthy of seriousness, and practical.

Finally, the question I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been asked: “Do you want to complete the transition?”, which needs a separate paragraph. Apart from the rudeness of asking questions about people’s genitals, the surgery is always what fascinates cis people the most—as if that were the only type of intervention that existed, as if it were an obligation that satisfies, albeit only partially, the essentialist view, because having a penis cannot really make me a woman, even if I would still be missing the “right” chromosomes, even if no one I know has ever had their chromosomes tested, or missing uterus and ovaries that would prevent me from reproducing, and so on. Personally, if I could, the first surgery I would undergo would be to have my rib cage narrowed and my hips widened; other trans women are more interested in face feminization surgery (or FFS), while others may want something else. Considering sex reassignment surgery as the highest point and completion of a gender transition, when the discussion does not come from the very people who undergo it or would like to undergo it, demonstrates the morbidity of cis people around trans lives, especially trans women, whose position within the hierarchical structure is more akin to that of a never-defined limbo, without ever truly belonging to a gender class: it is impossible to understand how one cannot want a phallus, but want another sexual apparatus; at the same time, they cannot be considered women without removal (which is not even a removal, but imagine if, in the common imagination, one could imagine otherwise) occurring. This is because our society, so essentialist and cissexist, is still steeped in phallocentrism, even in feminist circles: power is associated with the phallus, whispering that, because they have a penis, trans women will therefore have male power and privileges and that only surgery can truly neutralize them, rendering them helpless and feminine (without considering the issue of socialization, which I have also written about). The phallus is the enemy of women, and by still having one or having had one, trans women are, in reality, enemies, male enemies, of course. This is another reason why, even today, many trans women are excluded from spaces designed for women, despite the fact that trans men and cis butch women are often accepted.

In summary, as always the discussion I had two days ago that prompted me to write this article shows the fundamental transmisogyny to which we are subjected, even by people who consider themselves to be the most progressive. The issue could be even more complex than this, but since these same topics are not yet the subject of analysis and reflection by a wide audience, I will stop here. As always, I am available for questions both in the comments here and on my Instagram @nerio_fenix.

“The personal is political,” as they often say, not in the usual sense of “everything you do has political significance,” but in the sense that hierarchical power structures have a direct influence on everyday life and that this has political significance. Moving as usual from the personal dimension, I want to make a political reflection on the power structures that rule our lives. This introduction is not necessary, as it is my usual way of writing: it just helps me buy some time while I find the courage to write this piece.

What best represents my life is a stolen childhood. I never had a childhood. As I have recounted many times in the past, I am the last of my family born in a male body. What’s more, my family is extremely patriarchal, in ways that often leave my psychologist speechless, such as when I told her how my father often told my sisters that we should look up to him as a god because that was how he looked up to his father. As a result, I was subjected to the most violent scrutiny possible because, in their minds poisoned by patriarchy, I was supposed to follow in his footsteps and become like him. I was supposed to want to be like him, and I couldn’t have imagined a way out. That’s how it was for a long time, so long that I only began my transition as an adult. From an early age, he reminded me how he behaved towards his father, how he followed him in every situation and how I should do the same, how he had always wanted to do his father’s job and how I should want the same, how he behaved towards other people and how I should do the same because that was what it meant to be a man. I could never just be a little trans girl because from the day I was born, my training to be the next patriarch of my family’s imaginary dynasty began; and I mean that literally because I was reminded at least once a year of when, at my birth, my grandfather thanked my mother for my birth. Some of my earliest memories revolve around how my father used tricks to convince me to go with him on short business trips, especially taking me to McDonald’s when we were done, and how he often left me alone at McDonald’s to go do who knows what when I was only a few years old. Imagine a neurodivergent trans girl alone in a McDonald’s in Palermo (not the safest place for a kid if you’ve never been there, asany big city) and tell me how you would feel. Or when my father talked to his friend and they both complained that mothers made their sons weak. A whole life like that, listening to the Patriarchy manifesting itself through my father.

But Patriarchy also manifested itself through other agents, who became every single person I ever knew in my small town in the Sicilian province. It manifested itself through my mother, who was the good wife of the patriarch, who then left her for the mistress he had had for about a decade—and when they broke up, according to him, I had no right to feel bad because at that time I was living in Rome, far away from them. Especially after my father left her, she became totally unreasonable, but I was already past adolescence and my childhood was long gone. Certainly, she never managed to give me the love that a neurodivergent trans child deserved because she also thought it was right for me to become the next head of the family and that my training had to be followed. She never knew me: the most practical example, which happened shortly after my 30th birthday, was when she bought me hot dogs because “I had always liked them.” I had been vegan for several months, and hot dogs had never entered my home. Or when I was secretly researching the diagnosis of autism, and she would tell me how I was “a lively child with lots of friends”, which obviously clashed fundamentally with what I had experienced and what I was being told by other people. And then there was the patriarchal cop of my life, my younger sister, who never hesitated to point out any behavior that was not masculine: “you sit like a woman,” “you drink like a woman,” “you walk like a woman.” Unconsciously, she was super careful not to let me stray from the established script. Finally, my violated body.

These are memories that I have recently recovered and am still processing, but I believe it is necessary to talk about them. I won’t go into too much detail, but Patriarchy also manifests itself in this way, through a child slightly older than you who pushes you to touch him. Patriarchy also manifests itself, in the male gender, in the unconscious submission to unwanted and unsought sexual acts towards those who cannot be conformed. I know that my story is much less serious than many others because it only happened two or three times and was limited to non-penetrative acts, but it did happen and it is one of the ways in which patriarchy prevents the emergence of divergent characteristics, at least in my personal experience. I am convinced that, at least on an unconscious level, my transness was already emerging and therefore had to be defeated, and those two or three times when I was forced into those acts prevented an awareness of my transness before it could become too strong to stop. Similarly, the Patriarchy reminded me of my penis every time the women in my family affectionately called me ciuccaredda, little penis, or ciocca d’oru, golden penis, or when my mother, even during my adolescence, tried to touch it because, according to her, it would be normal for a mother to want to do so. I never heard this from other boys, not even the nicknames, and it took a lot of anger well into adolescence to make her stop.

My transness is closely linked to my stolen childhood, not only in the sense of the time lost before my transition, but in how, by ensuring that I did not experience childhood and did not go against the discovery of myself, the Patriarchy blocked the emergence of my transness by every means possible, leaving me with wounds much deeper than I thought and which I will probably have to deal with for the rest of my life. These wounds still hurt a lot, but this pain is what drives me to pursue the political research and activism that define me. They are the reason why I have been silent on so many issues in recent weeks, but I also know that, once I have processed everything, I will have many more lenses through which to analyze and I will be able to see the dynamics from points of view that I cannot even imagine at the moment. Because, ultimately, this is the meaning of “the personal is political.”

I carry my paternal grandfather’s name. I never really felt it was mine, but always my grandfather’s. My family, especially my father, created a cult around my grandfather, elevated him to the status of a semi-divinity, and I promise you I am not exaggerating. In the years after the war, my grandfather had the ability to build something very big, even too big. A simple tailor had had the ability to create a small empire, and my family was really very well off, at least until the early 1990s. My father, who just happens to be the person who most truly worships his father, always remembers a phrase he heard him say once when he was a little boy: it was at the end of the day and my grandfather was counting the bills the size of sheets from those years and he said, “I can’t take any more of making money.” I believe that my father was truly scarred by that sentence and that, like many other sons, he had seen, and still sees, his father as an initiate, a knower of a magical secret that he never fully revealed to him. He always tried in every way to imitate his father, assumed his father’s postures and attitudes.

I, as a child, was considered the heir; of what, I still do not know, but I have heard it for as long as I can remember. My father never hid his desire to be seen by me and my sisters in the same way he looked at his father, as a being capable of everything, only to be worshipped, and he always bore little resentment that, to me, his business and his life did not matter; so he always did everything he could to dominate me. I know all the sins of him, which he tried to pass or spill on me, and he always considered me weak, given also my health and a decidedly calm and gentle disposition, never quite male by his standards. One of the main ways he reminded me of who I was supposed to be, in his sick view, was to remind me of what my name was: once on my Instagram page for December 6 , my name day, I was reflecting on how the name we are given only reflects our parents’ idea of who we are supposed to be; he, in response, wrote to me that he could never give me a different name, writing it in all caps.

The name I bear was the first chain in my life and it is also the hardest to remove: by some absurd trick of the blood, I draw my signature exactly as my grandfather did without ever having seen it, and I have always been reminded of this, too, when the opportunity presented itself. My grandfather was always seen as a demigod by my family: I am often reminded how, at my birth, the first thing he did was to thank my mother. I am the last male in my family’s imaginary dynasty and bear my grandfather’s first and last name. My first patriarchal chain.

Words written before my transition, but they still carry some meaning.

In many magical and esoteric traditions, the act of giving and giving yourself a name is an unparalleled creative act. It provides essence and dominion over the things named (which is why, for example, the Tetragrammaton is unutterable; knowing and pronouncing the true name of entities guarantees their obedience), while in some initiations a new name is self-given. My deadname was an incredible chain: yesterday I was taking a shower and a very old memory came back to me, in which I was told that my grandfather’s name was a powerful name, derived from the goddess Nike, and that it would ensure my victory among the peoples. I think I was two or three years old, and I remember how heavy that responsibility, which I had never asked for, already felt. Victory in what sense? In what sense was I supposed to win and place myself above other people? Because that is precisely the meaning of victory that my family tried to convey to me: I was supposed to be superior, stronger, richer. More arrogant, certainly. The subjugation of other people from a warlike perspective. But I have never been warlike; of course, I have fought and I certainly still fight, but not out of a bellicose inclination as much as out of a need to protect myself and those close to me.

Giving myself a new name, as in initiatic traditions, was for me an act of rebirth that highlighted the aspects of my essence that I consider most important: Selini, which more than the moon itself is a name that emphasizes its brightness, she who illuminates even in darkness, whose light is a reflection of the light of the Sun (First Principle almost everywhere, before the patriarchal god). I remember how many times, growing up, I stopped to admire her, in every phase, praying to her to make me like her, long before I realized I was a trans woman. They always tried to stifle my Light because they didn’t have any, but choosing this name emphasizes my deep need to shine despite the patriarchy’s attempts to reduce me to darkness.

Choosing a new name, if you are trans, can go beyond simple mundane necessities: it is a creative act that breaks the limits imposed by the reality into which you are born, placing yourself in a position chosen for yourself and not chosen by others. The Will to tell one’s own story, freeing oneself from the captivity of a narrative imposed by others. Certainly, in initiatic traditions, the name one chose for oneself was kept secret; but I don’t think one can shine without apologizing to anyone if that name is hidden. Beauty, the face of the Will of the Absolute in this world, is not such if it remains a Secret for the few.

Trivially, the forced submission of the subject through continuous humiliation. Throughout my life, I have been subjected to these dynamics: anything that reminded me that I could not escape masculinity, whether it was my father, my friends, the town where I was born in, and that if I wasn’t careful, public ridicule would be the punishment for my sin. I, but I suppose many other Dolls like me, lived my pre-transition life in fear of being “discovered” and of what I would go through: I have recounted, in much more personal writings, how my hometown was inhabited only by Agents, as in the movie The Matrix, and, at least so far, those characters remain a perfect metaphor for the subjugation of trans minds by others, but also for the subjugation we force upon ourselves. One of the Agents who was more present, for example, was my younger sister, always ready to point the finger when I did something “womanly”—like sitting “like a woman” or moving “like a woman”—as well as my teenage “friends,” whom I no longer speak to, always ready to call me a “faggot” at the slightest opportunity. But the supreme Agent was my father.

A friend recommended that I read Bad Girls by Camila Sosa Villada, a semi-autobiographical novel in which the author, a trans woman, tells the stories of some trans sex workers in Argentina. Now, the book has several problematic points in my opinion, in the way it represents trans women, almost with a cis fetishism gaze towards the bodies modified by clandestine surgery. One very powerful passage is about fear and about the father who says:

In my house, fear colored everything. It didn’t depend on the weather or any particular circumstance: fear was my father. There were never any policemen or clients or cruelty that frightened me as much as my father. To be honest, I think he also felt a terrible fear towards me. It is possible that the crying of trans women originates precisely from this: the mutual terror between the father and the young trans woman. The wound opens up to the world and trans women cry.

There is so much to digest in so little. Although in my case things were different from what the autor narrates, because there was never any physical violence, only psychological, the fear was constant and it took me a long time to understand that much of the unease in my life was fear of my father, the patriarchal archetype par excellence. Perhaps he was also afraid of me, as Sosa Villada reflects. Perhaps this is the case for many of us.

As I said, there was never any physical violence in my home. I got a couple of slaps from my mother, but it was literally on two occasions. Even between themselves, my parents never showed any obvious signs of discomfort, and I only saw them argue once. No, the violence was always psychological and subtle. It was the presence of the threat, the unspoken warning that was frightening; acts were never necessary. It was humiliation that kept me in line, never the belt, never the slaps. I began to formulate this in the very first months of my transition: when I made a mistake, no matter how silly, I would insult myself and do so in the masculine form, even though in every other area I referred to myself in the feminine form1. “You’re an idiot, dude” “you’re so stupid, man” “you’re a useless guy” were all attacks on myself. A result of my training, which attempted to conform me to an idea of masculinity that I could not satisfy, a result of my father’s words. At the same time, I am unable to receive a compliment because compliments were never part of my training: as a “failed male,” I have received very few compliments in my life; most of the time, it was attacks and insults.

My father is a... peculiar person. I think he has huge daddy issues and that having a son, especially the last male one in the family, was such a huge honor for him that when I was born, my grandfather, his father, whose name I still legally bear, thanked my mother. I believe that for him, my life was supposed to mean the resolution of his inferiority complex towards his own father through the perfect fulfillment of the patriarchal script: I had his father’s name, I had to grow up strong, tough, and virile like any self-respecting man, I should have had a son to chain with his name just as I was chained by my grandfather’s name, and I should have inherited his inferiority complex towards him. I assure you that I am not harsh: many times my father openly told me and my sisters that we should see him as a god because he saw his father that way. Although I don’t remember exactly the tactics my father used to subjugate me to the patriarchal will of which he was the messenger, I know for sure that they have marked me deeply, and I don’t know how much therapy it will take to free myself from certain forms of obedience that have been forged in my brain and to completely remove the fear.

The transfeminine body is frightening, both consciously and, above all, unconsciously. The father’s fear of his trans daughter is the patriarchy’s fear of the transfeminine body because it represents the shattering of an illusion, the breaking of chains, the end of classes. Patriarchy laid bare is in the body of a transsexual woman. This is why it forces the transfeminine body, long before it can manifest itself as such, into submission, humiliation, and fear of possibility. It cannot do otherwise, as every patriarchal dynamic is mechanical, cold, calculated, and moves on gears that are thousands of years old, like any other hierarchical system that cannot function outside the application of laws through force, and measures the value of people on the basis of their ability to follow these rules: but the transfeminine body, the one that operates in its own flesh the descent into a lower class, breaks them all and for this reason must be punished, chastised, erased. This is also why I cannot accept compliments.

This is not the case. Personally, I would like to be invisible very often, and I am not even that clockable as a trans woman, more as a gender non-conforming person, but I still see the looks, hear the insults and laughter. I also see them directed at people who suffer trans-feminization: a couple of days ago, I was out—on a Friday night, a historic event—and on my way home, I passed a young boy wearing makeup. He reminded me of many cis gay makeup influencers, he even had that haircut. Two men looked at him, since he was more flamboyant than me, who wasn’t wearing makeup that night even though I had gone to a bar to support an independent film about a trans girl, and they started laughing. That taste that laughter leaves in your mouth, even when it’s not directed at you, is something that people like me know well. That taste is one of the things that scares me the most because, even though nothing has ever happened to me because the estrogen hasn’t consumed all my muscles yet, I know that it can be a prelude to the taste of blood.

It’s a small example, but visibility is not naturally positive: it does not automatically equal safety. In a beautiful post by Jersey Noah, in which he analyzes visibility, a trans woman states:

Trans women are not more visible. We are hyper visible, and our visibility comes with a target on our backs. We are followed down the street in broad daylight. We are refused services and job opportunities. We are killed on our sidewalks, in our homes. Our visibility is not a branding opportunity, it is a public liability that we never asked for and cannot contest.

And again

When I hear trans masculine people mourn their lack of representation and visibility, I want to ask: representation to what end? To be seen and celebrated or to be seen and abused? To be spotlighted or to be policed? to be profiled in a magazine article or eulogized in an obituary?

Serano in Whipping Girl describes the two archetypes of trans women in the media: “the deceptive transsexual” and “the pathetic transsexual”. One of the characters who reflects the characteristics of the deceitful transsexual is Lois Einhorn from Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, which I believe is the best known of the titles offered by Serano, at least as far as my generation is concerned. We have all seen the two scenes, shown below, in which the “transsexual secret” is revealed.

Serano offers more examples, but honestly, I had no idea these films existed before reading Whipping Girl, and I don’t know how well known they were in Italy (which is my home country and the country I mainly write for). However, I think it’s enough just to show these two scenes again, which for me perfectly encapsulate an important part of what was conveyed to me about trans women: inhuman monsters, rapists who deceive men (because women are all straight, but we’ll come back to that in a moment) and their sacred orifices. Ventura’s reactions in the first scene, which lasts almost a minute between vomiting, toothpaste, burned clothes, and a shower while crying in a rare display of homophobia and misogyny, and the shorter but equally homophobic reaction of the police team in the second scene were part of the training I received and the very long block I had in processing my subconscious sex.

Another part is in the fetishization and sexualization of trans women’s bodies, which is part of a larger misogynistic project of fetishization and sexualization of femininity that is only worthy of that. The socialization I underwent, although I tend to disdain this term because it implies that the male training I received is insurmountable and will define me forever, showed me how male sexual desire is forced to become the sexualization of femininity. A small side note: a person can freely want to be sexualized, if it happens in certain ways, consensually. Without false moralism, even I sometimes just want to be taken and used. It can surely be a healthy desire. The point I want to make, however, is different and leads, once again, to the representation, this time medical, of transsexuality as a fetish, as a male desire for possession of the feminine. I am talking about that despicable example of pseudoscience that is autogynephilia, a “theory” by Ray Blanchard, defined as “a man’s propensity to become sexually aroused by imagining himself as a woman”. This piece by Julia Serano on the subject explains why there is nothing scientific about Blanchard’s studies that led to the creation of this definition, but in short:

Blanchard’s experimental design begged the question he was asking and relied on surveys about sexual fantasies that seem purposely designed to produce his desired outcome. He didn’t use any controls, nor did he seriously consider any alternative hypotheses. He mistook correlation for causation. When presented with contradictory evidence, Blanchard accused his subjects of lying and/or invented ad-hoc explanations to handwave that evidence away, thus rendering his hypothesis unfalsifiable.

However, the idea that trans women are men who get aroused by dressing up as women has basically remained. This idea that the male sexualization of femininity can lead them to cross-dress, take hormones, undergo heavy surgery just to enter women’s bathrooms, that we are a mental and sexual disorder is still a point made by many people. Analyzing from the perspective of those who suffer from transmisogyny, the intersection between oppositional sexism and traditional sexism, those two forces that create a society of only straight men and women based on the genitals they are born with, it is inevitable that we are seen in this way. In this context, it is unthinkable that a person born into the better gender class would want to descend in the hierarchy, and if they do, they can only be mentally ill and need to be either cured or eliminated.

One thing I didn’t fully understand until about an hour ago, however, is how much this view has influenced me, a non-heterosexual transsexual woman. I am bisexual (perhaps pan according to the most modern definitions, but I think my attitude towards the current lexicon is clear), attracted mainly to women. I’m not exactly a lesbian, but men tend to be out of the equation. I certainly don’t have any genital preferences, but I tend to feel quite close to the lesbian experience. However, this characteristic of mine, and I only realize this now, has been fundamental in hiding my unconscious gender. I just finished reading the post by Transexile Girls I Grew Up With, which addresses some examples of the representation of trans women, which at one point states:

Most of us lesbians, on the other hand, fell foul to the idea that we were autogynephilic perverts. We tried to convince ourselves we were cis men. We avoided stigma by avoiding ourselves. Women are attracted to men, so transsexuals lesbians surely didn’t exist. We were just gross men who got turned on by the idea of having women’s bodies or wearing women’s clothes. This is the only option the world wanted to give us. Despite appearing heterosexual, many of us were severely punished for who we were or for trying to claim that we were actually girls or women. I cannot speak for others, but deep down, I always knew, but I eventually learned it was safer to hide what I knew even from myself.

I admit that it was quite the blow. I really hadn’t been able to see how my sexuality was also subject to control and how this affected my ability to process the fact that I had an unconscious gender that was not aligned with my biological gender. Returning to the archetype of the deceptive transsexual, as I wrote earlier, we are talking about men dressed as women who attack the sanctity of other men’s orifices, or autogynephiles who get excited at the idea of dressing up as women. Or pathetic creatures who will never be able to hide their essential masculinity despite often boasting that they have already undergone sex reassignment surgery, when it comes to the archetype of the pathetic transsexual. This is the typical representation of the trans woman. This is the kind of visibility that comes from and for the world.

I often, and many other Dolls will tell you the same, just want to be invisible, especially in the face of traditional representations of trans women. Because, despite what mainstream discourse would have us believe, visibility and representation do not automatically equate to safety, rights, and acceptance. They do not automatically equal freedom. Not when we are the first monster in the Liber monstrorum de diversis generibus, which in all honesty could also be an intersex person since the description is not made in today’s terms (but in my opinion it still shows how intertwined the trans and intersex struggles are). Our bodies are monstrous bodies and are treated as monsters. If you look at the list of victims of transphobic violence, you will notice that it is actually transmisogynistic violence. Victims for whom there is no longer any visibility.

Gender is, indeed, a social construct: what is considered ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ is essentially arbitrary and changes over time. For example, at the end of the 17th century, what Anglo-German psychologist John Flügel calls the Great Male Renunciation took place, i.e., the change, inspired by the Enlightenment, whereby men “abandoned their claim to be considered beautiful and aimed at being only useful”: heels, makeup, wigs, and flamboyant clothes were abandoned and became essentially feminine props. In more recent times, there has been an association between the color pink and femininity, whereas not too many decades ago it was considered a slightly more bourgeois and urban variant of red, the color of Mars, war, and strength—and therefore masculine. This was also confirmed to me by my father, who is almost 67 years old and as a child only had white or pink shirts, so it is a change that should still be alive in people’s minds. Even biological sex is socially assigned based on genitals and nothing else, despite the complexity of human biology. However, this does not detract from the fact that a social construct has tangible consequences for people, and the fact that these theories do not make this explicit, i.e., they focus only, in a sort of social anthropological fetishism, on how gender is manufactured by societies, is a crime in my opinion.

Gender is a class and as such must be analyzed. As a class, it creates a hierarchy among human beings that we call patriarchy, that is, the social construct that dictates that one gender or sex is naturally superior to another. The basis of classical feminism (hereinafter referred to as cis feminism) is precisely that prejudice against everything that is not male or masculine and that defines the categories of woman and feminine as naturally inferior and less capable. As a transsexual woman (and not transgender as academic discourse would have it, but this distinction is perhaps worthy of its own essay), however, my analysis must necessarily broaden, given that my material conditions are different from those of a cissexual woman. Julia Serano’s analysis in Whipping Girl provides the necessary framework for this broadening. Serano analyzes how patriarchy is based on two forces she calls traditional sexism (previously defined by cis-feminist schools as the prejudice that men are superior to women) and oppositional sexism, i.e., the idea that the categories, or classes, of men and women are rigidly separated and opposed, mutually exclusive. In mainstream vocabulary, the concept most similar to oppositional sexism is gender binary, but it does not correspond perfectly. In Serano’s own words, “oppositional sexism delegitimizes exceptional gender and sexual traits, and can also create hostility and fear toward those who display them” and that “f you believe that a woman is defined as someone who is not male, masculine, or attracted to women, and that a man is defined as someone who is not female, feminine, or attracted to men, then the fact that I have changed my sex, or that I’m a woman who is attracted to other women, will inevitably bring everyone else’s gender and sexuality into question”: there is therefore an explicit definition of the categories “man” and “woman” as classes with material implications—in this case, the attempt to erase those who fall outside these categories, whether due to sexual preferences or expressed or experienced gender, in addition to more famous analyses, like for the gender pay gap, in cis feminism.

Many trans women face greater difficulties, which I will not analyze here, because renouncing the category of man, unless we are reminded that we will always be men and therefore never belong to the category of women, places us outside society. Trans women live in conditions that are significantly worse than earning less than cis men, but this is not directly the subject of this essay. The point is to challenge the attitude, which in my opinion is more childish than anything else, of denying gender as a class identity, which also occurs in what is called the queer community, which I personally have never seen: the tendency, which other sisters have told me about, to deny that a person’s gender can fall into one of the categories of male or female, that a person, despite the gender assigned to them at birth, wants to live exclusively as a person of the opposite biological sex. I too fell into this trap in my search for my gender identity: the fact that I couldn’t consider myself a woman, apart from being a symptom of internalized oppositional sexism as well as the fear of being a trans woman for reasons that I hope are obvious, came precisely from the mainstream discourse on gender. The first step, when I realized I was not a cis man, was to define myself as genderfluid, that is, simply capable of moving between genders. Certainly, there are people who fall into this category, but it is not for me: I am a binary trans woman.

What is not understood through the foggy definitions surrounding gender is that belonging to a binary gender does not automatically make a person an agent of reinforcing binarism: one of the points I hear all too often is that binary trans people reinforce binarism. In this regard, here is a video by Julia Serano that deals with this very topic. In short, the idea that transsexual binary people, such as myself, reinforce gender binary, i.e., that there are only two opposing genders, have a narrow and stereotypical view of male and female categories, and that we must, for some reason that is still unclear to me, follow patriarchal prescriptions on masculinity and femininity, trying to force ourselves into the non binary category is a result of echoes of TERFism that wanted to “destroy gender altogether.” Our voices, the voices of transsexual people who deeply feel an subconscious sex that is not aligned with their biological sex but with the opposite one, who take hormones, undergo surgery, laser and electrolysis treatments, and voice training to feminize or masculinize their voices, are silenced in favor of an imaginary vision of gender that is totally disconnected from the material reality of patriarchy as a hierarchy and system of concrete classes. As a binary transsexual woman, it is my duty to reaffirm my freedom of self-determination both against a cissexist society and against this entity called the queer community: I want to live and be perceived as a woman, and this does not reinforce either the gender binary or patriarchy, nor does it make me a slave to any gender prescription, as the compulsory gender fluidity, even when benevolent, imposes; on the contrary, if you read the data on discrimination and violence against trans people, the vast majority is directed towards people like me. And it is my duty, as a binary transsexual woman, despite the fact that it will appear to be a senseless provocation to “gender rebels” and most people in general, to state that the reason is that a trans woman is the most dangerous thing there is to patriarchy.

In a class system, it is crazy to think that a person would do anything to belong to a lower class, and any attempt to do so, apart from being seen as a symptom of some mental illness, will deny that person’s belonging to society as a whole, creating dynamics that will deny that person’s identity. A trans woman is a person who has been assigned to the male class (the supreme one in patriarchy) and therefore belongs to the highest class, but she renounces it, thus renouncing the supreme privilege of living as a person of the lower class, the female one. Again quoting Serano:

“In a male-centered gender hierarchy, where it is assumed that men are better than women and that masculinity is superior to femininity, there is no greater perceived threat than the existence of trans women, who despite being born male and inheriting male privilege “choose” to be female instead. By embracing our own femaleness and femininity, we, in a sense, cast a shadow of doubt over the supposed supremacy of maleness and masculinity.”

This entire discussion is not intended to be a denial of the existence or “validity”—yet another term used by mainstream discourse to defuse any revolutionary meaning in the lives of those who operate outside patriarchal paradigms— of people who live their life and their identities outside the classes “man” and “woman”, but a trans-feminist claim detached from the anti-feminist logic that is unfortunately also present among those who, in certain supremacist logics, should not fall into it and who, in their essence, deny the reality of patriarchy and classes created on the basis of the genitals with which an individual is born. People who do not fit perfectly into the current definitions of man and woman exist, just as they have always existed; but there have also always been people who feel that they belong to one of the two genders most present in the world as they are normally understood. Furthermore, reducing trans* identities to political experiments ends up making our lives artificial and intellectual products—which is why I personally refuse to use the term identification, which indicates a voluntary choice, to refer to the subconscious sex of a trans* person, and the idea that gender is a performance, a kind of theatrical act. If I am willing to take hormones and undergo surgery, it is not because I am playing a part, but because my gender identity is a need of the flesh.

It is therefore necessary to completely rethink the discourse around trans* lives and bodies by providing tools that are not academicized, and thus rendered harmless for diffusion to the general public, but to provide the tools necessary for trans* lives to truly dismantle the effects of oppositional sexism and patriarchy, both in the relational paradigm between like-minded people and towards the outside world, in order to truly protect those who need it from the never-hidden attempts at erasure by those who have an interest in maintaining gender supremacy because trans existence, and consequently the struggle for our liberation, is not a trend, it is not a political choice of those who want, even rightly so, to remove gender differences by adding a “they” to their Instagram bio. In this sense, it is necessary for trans women to be at the center of this struggle, not for supremacy, but for recognition that our conditions are the most dire, and when we talk about attacks on the trans community in general, we forget to specify that these are attacks on trans women—see the laws against bathrooms that want to protect “real women” or the UK Supreme Court ruling on the definition of “woman.”

A few final words: although I began this essay to dismantle the idea that gender is a vague and difficult-to-define concept because it is fundamentally anti-feminist, I want to conclude by saying that I know that much of what I have written will raise a few eyebrows. However, it was necessary to do so, and above all, it was necessary to lay a genuinely trans-feminist foundation in a context where trans-feminist collectives are composed solely of cis women. It is our duty as Dolls, within the limits of our conditions and possibilities, to talk about issues that are uncomfortable for the masses, but that represent us and affirm our dignity, knowing full well that, almost certainly, it will be something we will have to do without any alliance whatsoever except for the performative T-shirt from which we will never see a penny of the proceeds1, but which will be a struggle fought by the Dolls for the Dolls.