LThe first sentence you read when opening my Instagram profile is: “I’m trans but I can explain to you”. This “but” is a quote from a book, I love you but I can explain, by Guido Catalano. I like the syntactic game, it’s an invitation to curiosity. As if to say: “Don’t think you know everything. Ask, get informed.” In my book, Female skeletonstory of my journey and the title comes from one of the many transphobic comments I’ve heard made: “When you die, your skeleton will still be female.” Choosing it meant reclaiming an insult and giving it a new meaning.
There is a lot of curiosity and a lot of misinformation about transgenderism. I heard myself asked the most absurd questions, sometimes without limits of discretion. “How do you have sex?”. Would you ask this question to a stranger? I have always tried to share every aspect of my journey that I think could be useful, both for other trans people and for possible allies. And in these years I have been able to expose myself because I am a person with many privileges: my family supports me, I have a strong network of friends, a home, financial resources. Not to forget mine passing (the ability of a trans person to be perceived according to the chosen gender, ed) which, despite being a double-edged sword – if I didn’t explicitly say that I am a trans person, almost no one would know and this would make my path invisible -, it protects me from many discriminations. People “accept me” – as if their approval is required – because
“I turned out well”. Like cakes.
Francesco Cicconetti author, popularizer on gender issues (on Instagram @mehths). (Photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images for ABA)
Among companies, “rainbow washing” is still strong, pretending to be gender-inclusive. This is also why I collaborate with many of them for training meetings. In general, there is a huge amount of work to be done on language.
Words matter
From the LGBTQIA+ community (lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals, queers, intersexuals, asexuals and anyone who doesn’t define themselves as heterosexual, ed.) too often people who don’t actually belong speak, so there is the risk that they do so in a stereotyped way. In the newspapers I read expressions such as: “Born female”, “the trapped body”, “the trans”.
The right expression to define me is “trans man”. This encapsulates my entire journey. I am not a “brave hero”, a “poor guy”. The dichotomy is always this and we are never told for what we are: normal people, immersed in everyday life like any cisgender person.
The work to be done concerns all generations, even if on different levels. Among young and very young people there is more awareness, there is more talk about gender identity, but this is not synonymous with inclusiveness or empathy.
In the end, tools like the schwa, writing “car* tutti*” in emails or the “3” that I used in this textare a first attempt at an answer – still fallacious, we know – to shortcomings of our language. There is someone who is not represented or poorly represented and finding a remedy must be a collective journey.
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