The November-December 2020 issue of the magazine Paediatrics (vol. 27, no. 6) publishes a draft law by Amigay, an association of LGBTI or Friendly doctors and health professionals, concerning intersex children (very rare cases of sexual 'uncertainty' at birth, i.e. children with physical abnormalities) and 'gender variant' minors, whose behaviour does not conform to gender stereotypes (i.e. dysphoric girls and boys, suffering from an identity disorder) making it a single category.
Point 4 of the bill proposes "expert team or centre (psychologists for parents, paediatric urologists-endocrinologists, psychologists and psychiatrists trained for LGBTI minors, surgeons, andrologists, gynaecologists), at least one in each capital city, to ensure freedom of choice and the physical and psychological well-being of intersex and gender variant children". Point 7 talks about taking care of the child through a therapeutic project the signing of an individualised rehabilitation plan, the treatment agreement between specialists, parents and the child who will be able to choose his or her gender identity between the ages of 5 and 8 (sic!).
Feminist Post is keeping a close eye on the issue of children's transitions and on this page you will find many contributions dedicated to this issue. Here are some reflections by Angela Giuffrida from our webinar Returning Women - Stories of Detransition (which you can see here)
"The dramatic stories that animated the meeting deserve serious reflection in order to grasp and untangle their knots. The belief that one organism can be radically transformed into another, through various 'adjustments', reveals in fact considerable gaps in the system of thought that we forcibly internalise from birth because it governs the societies in which we live. For example, the inadequacy of dominant thinking to grasp the infinite richness and intimate complexity of reality, although it is the main theme of the meeting, it struggles to emerge clearly so it needs to be made explicit.
The girls interviewed understood that why they wanted to change sex did not concern the rejection of the female body per se; what was rejected was the stereotype that forced them to adhere to standards to which they could not, or simply did not want to conform. Becoming male appeared to them to be the right solution to avoid the pressures of the day. expectations - being nice, submissive, always dependent on the judgement of others - that patricentric communities shower on womenhindering their full realisation as persons.
It seems that the female demand for transition is prevalent and increasing dramatically, which is quite unusual considering that the male is totally dependent on the female to exist and to survive his own death. The male condition cannot be desirable for women, who in the change undergo a major downsizing, losing the creative power of their bodies and with it their unquestionable centrality..
Unfortunately, however, for millennia man refuses to take his place in the natural order and arrogates to himself the right to play the role of leader which is naturally the woman'sas the creator of the species, and by culture as the bearer of organic knowledge. Posing as only holder of Reason with a capital R, has claimed to organise communities on its ownso without comparison it became theonly model to follow. It has relegated women to a subordinate role, defining them in a contradictory way as angelic figures on the one hand, inferior witches and whores on the other, but never as beings endowed with reason. In a large part of the planet she is still subject to the male will that tyrannizes her and demands obedience and obsequiousness.
With the exception of the still existing matriarchal communities, thehe masculine thought system runs the entire planet with harmful consequences as it atomises reality and is therefore destructive.. This view includes even living bodies that are torn to pieces in the same way; soma and psyche are separated and divided into parts, these into other parts, and so on until the whole, concrete body evaporates and no trace of it remains either in philosophy, biology, medicine or any other branch of knowledge. To replace it are a body reduced to a thing and a soul-spirit-reason that is evanescent because it has no foundation.
The breakdown of the organism is responsible for the dissociation from the body felt by girls who have experienced at first hand the serious damage that the partiality and rigidity of dominant thinking can do to living beings. The peregrine idea of having been born in a wrong body springs, as we have seen, from the laceration that the male mind produces in the organism perceived as a simple container. of an alien reason with which it comes into conflict.
In reality, far from being an inert envelope of mass and matter, it is an obstacle to reason, the body is the source from which thought comes. What distinguishes a living person from a non-living person is the sensitivity that enables them to experience, and it is experience that produces the knowledge on which thought is nourished. To break down gender stereotypes, as Valentina proposes, we have to get out of the endless traps of male oppositional thinking, which produces enmity even among us, and we regain our vision of the world and of the containment and connective mental categories.
We have no alternative. The male thinking system is putting on a despicable farce that has now turned into a tragedy and is driving the species towards extinction. Since we are the ones creating new life, it is up to us to protect it.
Angela Giuffrida (author of The body thinks. Humanity or Femininity? and of Female rationality the only antidote to war)
