Trans Embodiment Technologies and Knowledge Production in Argentina
4:00pm - 5:15pm /
Friday 27th September 2024
/ Venue: The Nelson Yu Room, 3rd Floor School of Law & Social Justice
Type: Seminar /
Category: Research
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- Admission: Free to attend, please register
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Abstract:
Unlike other countries where gender affirmation surgery access was restricted but still allowed under certain conditions, Argentina has prohibited any treatment that affected reproductive organs since 1967. Different legal codes have penalised people dressed as the “opposite sex” since the 1930s. This criminalisation has threatened trans people’s right to existence and made gender affirmation practices clandestine, expensive and dangerous. This presentation analyses how male and female trans people challenged state restrictions by producing knowledge and homemade technologies to affirm their gender. He explores the history of a vast repertoire of medical and social practices, such as self-injected hormones or liquid industrial silicone. The presentation also explores how people have experimented with their bodies, performing them in living laboratories to affirm their gender beyond legal and medical control, and how this pushed them to precarious conditions. Finally, it addresses how activists have formulated an alternative body discourse that challenges the biotechnological promise of an alleged “correct body” as an undeniable trans future.
*Please note this talk will contain images of nudity and people using medical materials.
Biography
Patricio Simonetto is a Lecturer in Gender and Social Policy at the University of Leeds. His research focuses on the queer histories of Latin America. He is the author of Entre la injuria y la revolución. El Frente de Liberación Homosexual en la Argentina (UNQ, 2017), El dinero no es todo. La compra y venta de sexo en la Argentina del siglo XX (Biblos, 2019), A Body of One’s Own: A Trans History of Argentina (University of Texas Press, 2024) and Money is Not Everything. The Purchase and Sale of Sex in Argentina in the Twentieth Century (The University of North Carolina, 2024). He was awarded the Carlos Monsivais Prize from the Latin American Studies Association in 2021.
Unlike other countries where gender affirmation surgery access was restricted but still allowed under certain conditions, Argentina has prohibited any treatment that affected reproductive organs since 1967. Different legal codes have penalised people dressed as the “opposite sex” since the 1930s. This criminalisation has threatened trans people’s right to existence and made gender affirmation practices clandestine, expensive and dangerous. This presentation analyses how male and female trans people challenged state restrictions by producing knowledge and homemade technologies to affirm their gender. He explores the history of a vast repertoire of medical and social practices, such as self-injected hormones or liquid industrial silicone. The presentation also explores how people have experimented with their bodies, performing them in living laboratories to affirm their gender beyond legal and medical control, and how this pushed them to precarious conditions. Finally, it addresses how activists have formulated an alternative body discourse that challenges the biotechnological promise of an alleged “correct body” as an undeniable trans future.
*Please note this talk will contain images of nudity and people using medical materials.
Biography
Patricio Simonetto is a Lecturer in Gender and Social Policy at the University of Leeds. His research focuses on the queer histories of Latin America. He is the author of Entre la injuria y la revolución. El Frente de Liberación Homosexual en la Argentina (UNQ, 2017), El dinero no es todo. La compra y venta de sexo en la Argentina del siglo XX (Biblos, 2019), A Body of One’s Own: A Trans History of Argentina (University of Texas Press, 2024) and Money is Not Everything. The Purchase and Sale of Sex in Argentina in the Twentieth Century (The University of North Carolina, 2024). He was awarded the Carlos Monsivais Prize from the Latin American Studies Association in 2021.