Transvestism and transsexuality in Argentine medical journals, 1971-1982. / Travestismo y transexualidad en las revistas argentinas de medicina, 1971-1982.

This article deals with the discourses produced by the Argentine medical field relating to body transformation initiatives on the part of transvestites and transsexuals in Argentina from 1971-1982. Based on the compilation and analysis of a set of articles published in academic medical journals, it examines the meanings that health professionals assigned to these initiatives prior to the legal rulings and national legislation that recognized gender identity as a human right. This analysis helps identify the particular features of those body transformation initiatives during the period studied, as well as the ways in which the medical field in Argentina attached moral, technical and professional meanings to them.

Travestismo y transexualidad en las revistas argentinas de medicina, 1971-1982 / Transvestism and transsexuality in Argentine medical journals, 1971-1982

Resumen El presente artículo aborda los discursos producidos por el campo médico argentino en torno a las iniciativas de corporización de travestis y transexuales en Argentina entre 1971 y 1982. A través del relevamiento y análisis de una selección de artículos publicados en revistas académicas de medicina, se analizan los sentidos que profesionales de la salud asignaron a las mismas antes de la producción de fallos judiciales y normativas nacionales que reconocen la identidad de género como un derecho humano. El análisis realizado permite identificar las particularidades que asumían dichas iniciativas de corporización en el período de estudio, así como las formas en las que el campo médico argentino les imprimió sentidos morales, técnicos y profesionales.

Abstract This article deals with the discourses produced by the Argentine medical field relating to body transformation initiatives on the part of transvestites and transsexuals in Argentina from 1971-1982. Based on the compilation and analysis of a set of articles published in academic medical journals, it examines the meanings that health professionals assigned to these initiatives prior to the legal rulings and national legislation that recognized gender identity as a human right. This analysis helps identify the particular features of those body transformation initiatives during the period studied, as well as the ways in which the medical field in Argentina attached moral, technical and professional meanings to them.

Policing the social body: Medicine and the administration of legal gender recognition in France and Italy, an historical perspective.

This paper explores the role of medicine in the regulation of legal gender recognition for trans and gender diverse people in France and Italy. I focus on the processes that led the two countries to establish for the first time a procedure for legal gender change in the 1980s/1990s. Despite the differences, both in France and in Italy medical knowledge and technologies were embedded in the procedures for legal gender change and health professionals took a role as gatekeepers to gender recognition. The medicalization of legal gender recognition, I argue, was part of the deploying of a bio-political apparatus that aimed at regulating and controlling "gender transitions" through regulation and normalization rather then through repression.

The evolution of transgender surgery.

An estimated 1.4% of the population worldwide has been diagnosed with Gender Dysphoria, as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Gender reassignment, which holistically encompasses psychotherapy, hormonal therapy and genital and nongenital surgeries, is considered the most effective treatment for transgender nonconforming patients afflicted with gender dysphoria. Little research is currently available identifying the psychosocial needs of the transgender population and their access to preventative and primary care during this transitioning process. This article presents an overview of the evolution and current approaches to genital surgical procedures available for both male-to-female, as well as female-to-male gender-affirmation surgeries. Clin. Anat. 31:878-886, 2018. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Preserving the reproductive potential of transgender and intersex people.

BACKGROUND: The bodies of some transgender and intersex people have been mutilated and their minds subjected to immense distress. Their gender has often been determined by others. Loss of fertility used to be considered an inevitable consequence of treatment. OBJECTIVE: To review the issue of preserving the reproductive potential of transgender and intersex people. METHODS: A narrative review based on a wide-ranging search of the literature in multiple disciplines. RESULTS: Major technological advances have facilitated reproduction for transgender and intersex people in the last few years. A majority of trans-adults believe that fertility preservation should be offered to them. Deferment of surgery for intersex people is often best practice; gonadectomy in infancy closes off fertility options and determines a gender they may later regret. CONCLUSIONS: Transgender and intersex people should be able to consent to or decline treatment, especially radical surgery, themselves. Preservation of reproductive potential and sexual function must be given a high priority. Treatment by multidisciplinary teams can provide a strong emphasis on mental health and well-being. Detailed information about options, an absence of any coercion and enough time are all needed in order to make complex, life-changing decisions.

Visual representations of Iranian transgenders.

Transsexuality in Iran has gained much attention and media coverage in the past few years, particularly in its questionable depiction as a permitted loophole for homosexuality, which is prohibited under Iran's Islamic-inspired legal system. Of course, attention in the West is also encouraged by the "shock" that sex change is available in Iran, a country that Western media and society delights in portraying as monolithically repressive. As a result, Iranian filmmakers inevitably have their own agendas, which are unsurprisingly brought into the film making process­from a desire to sell a product that will appeal to the Western market, to films that endorse specific socio-political agendas. This paper is an attempt to situate sex change and representations of sex change in Iran within a wider theoretical framework than the frequently reiterated conflation with homosexuality, and to open and engage with a wider debate concerning transsexuality in Iran, as well as to specifically analyze the representation of transexuality, in view of its current prominent presence in media.

Am I my brain or my genitals? A nature-culture controversy in the hermaphrodite debate from the mid-1960s to the late 1990s.

The groundbreaking and prophetic rhetoric of neuroscience has recently highlighted the fetal brain as the most promising organ for understanding why transsexuals feel "trapped in the wrong body", and for predicting whether children born with "ambiguous" genitalia will grow up to feel like a man or a woman.This article proposes a recent history of the cerebralization of intersexuality and of transsexuality as atypical neurodevelopmental conditions. It examines the ways in which the organizational theory of brain sex differentiation developed in the late 1950s in behavioral neuroendocrinology has gained increased prominence in and through controversies over best practice issues in the case management of intersex newborns, and the etiology of transsexuality.It focuses on the American context and on the leading warrior in this battle: Milton Diamond, now a most prominent figure in professional debates about the clinical management of intersexuality, and the intersex person's best friend. Persons with an intersexed or transsexual condition consider, not their gonads, but their brains, their core sense of self, as the primary determinant of sex. (Diamond and Beh 2005, 6-7, note 1)

Robert Stoller's Sex and Gender: 40 years on.

By its title, Sex and Gender announced a conceptual breakthrough in distinguishing basic elements of human experience. In Robert Stoller's first book, patients illustrating this divergence were lucidly presented. Transvestites and the newly publicized transsexuals were two examples. Clinical and dynamic distinctions between the two formed a basis for Stoller's criteria for patient selection for "sex change." They remain current. The complex identity of the intersexed was described with sensitivity and insight. It, too, remains timely. An innovative description of the genesis of boyhood transsexualism was presented in considerable detail. This finding is less commonly reported today but is also not looked for. Stoller was sympathetic to the request for sex change. He credited a biological contribution to the development of masculinity and femininity. Both stances were remarkable for a psychoanalyst. Robert Stoller introduced the term "gender identity." It is now our vocabulary when we articulate this bedrock of personhood.