On ‘Transexualidades’ by Miquel Missé

Book #2 in my Trans Rights Readathon week

Person by Pexels from Pixabay

For the #TransRightsReadathon, I want to tell you about Miquel Missé’s 2013 book Transexualidades: Otras miradas posibles, of which I have the 2014 second edition in Spanish.

Travesti, Transexual, Transgénero

Missé, who was born in Barcelona in the mid-1980s, is especially interested in the word transexualidad [transsexuality]. It’s a word that operates along various paradigms (“diversos paradigmas”) and has a history full of conquests, paradoxes, myths and frustrations (“una historia llena de conquistas, paradojas, mitos y frustraciones”).

• In Spanish contexts (“el contexto español”): Historically, the concept of “transvestido” or “travesti” — literally, crossdresser — came first. This word carries distinct meanings in Latin America. At the beginning of the 20th century, it included effeminate men and masculine women (“a hombres afeminados y a mujeres masculinas”) who occasionally dressed as the opposite sex (“que esporádicamente se visten y actúan con los códigos del género opuesto”).
• In the 1950s, with the increasing availability of hormones and surgery, the word “transexual” (with a double-“s” in English) marked those who sought to reassign their sex by changing their bodies. In 1980…