Modificazioni corporee e cittadinanza transgender. Il caso del Movimento Identità Transessuale (MIT) di Bologna.

This qualitative research project explores the relationship that develops between the categories of body, gender, self-determination and citizenship in the context of transsexual and transgender experiences in contemporary Italian society. The overall research objective was to observe individual projects of body modification, drawing on the highly privileged observational setting offered by the Bologna-based MIT (Movimento Identità Transessuale, Transsexual identity movement) association, which has offered a public clinic for gender transition since 1994, the only of its kind in Europe. This exploration began from the realization that there is a contradiction between trans peoples’ (ostensible) individual rights over their own bodies, as established by Italian law 164/1982 governing the correction of personal information and sex in official registries and the more recent Constitutional Court ruling 221/2015, and the fact that these bodies are actually subject to supervision and control by the binary logic of heterosexuality. After creating an initial map of the historical and social-political context in which trans experiences gained visibility and claimed legal and social recognition, I went on to concentrate on the origins and development of the chosen case study. By conducting participant observation and 24 in-depth interviews with individuals who have undergone (and are currently undergoing) gender transition, I was able to observe the processes of self-determination and myriad choices involved in the trajectories of changing body and gender undertaken in and around MIT. Thanks to 6 additional interviews with medical personnel involved in clinic activities, it was possible to compare the spaces of self-determination asserted by the research participants with the spaces of action and control established by the technicians in charge of managing the transition process. To complete this picture, the research also explored MIT’s role in protecting the rights of trans people, first and foremost their right to health and well-being. Three central thematic nodes emerged from the empirical work. The first focused on describing the processes of un/identification interviewees experienced when moving away from the gender they had been assigned at birth by exploring the multiple techniques and strategies they adopted to re-appropriate their own bodies and selves. A second node delved more deeply into the period of bodily re/invention, focusing on hormone therapy and pharmaceutical bio-technologies aimed at masculinizing/feminizing the subjects’ experiences of gendered embodiment. And, lastly, I explored the period of bodily re/construction in which the research participants made surgical choices (removal/reconstruction, but also aesthetic and cosmetic operations) in pursuit of closer anatomical correspondence between their physical selves and subjective gender identities. The thesis concludes by considering the relationship between trans bodies and citizenship, an issue central to this investigation: I analyzed the opportunities and contradictions in the possibility of trans citizenship in the Italian context, examining the role MIT has played in this process as well.