“Ir despacio y con cautela porque son cambios radicales”: narrativas de profesionales psi en torno a las intervenciones corporales por motivos de identidad de género en Buenos Aires, Argentina

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to analyze the narratives of psychologists and psychiatrists in terms of how they address matters concerning gender and sexuality. The qualitative research, which began in 2020, involved thirty in-depth interviews with psychologists and psychiatrists working in Buenos Aires. The approach used to conduct the study of the data was narrative analysis. Specifically, the focus is on exploring the narratives related to gender-affirming medical interventions among the LGTBIQ+ community. The unique features of the Argentine context, with its advancements in acquired rights through sexual dissident activism in the last decade, make this study particularly relevant and offer an original contribution from the field of socioanthropological health studies. In particular, the Gender Identity Law enacted in 2012 regulates name change, registry updates, and access to medical interventions (surgical and hormonal) without the need for psychiatric/psychological consultations. This aspect sparks debates within expert knowledge circles, where pathologizing notions are problematized. Simultaneously, it instigates discussions about certain bodily schemas that are more or less recognized/accepted. While the analysis reveals an increasing number of spaces working from a gender perspective, in other cases, conceptions persist that are influenced by a heteronormative and cissexist logic. In these cases, conceptions of corporeality come into play that reproduce, based on the notion of sex as something biological, the female/male binary. Thus, certain practices and bodily interventions fall within the realm of what is expected, while others, such as when the self-perceived gender does not align with the assigned gender at birth, give rise to narratives emphasizing the importance of “going slowly,” referencing their “radical” nature, and the “irreversibility” involved.

Keywords

• bodily interventions
• gender and sexuality
• lgtbiq+ people
• narratives
• psi knowledge