Between moral issues and clinical practices: professionals pioneering trans bodily construction treatments in Argentina (1998-2012)

Abstract

This article studies the emergence and development of medical practices implemented in response to bodily construction desires of trans people in the late 1990s in Argentina. Since those medical practices were socially rejected and forbidden by law, it analyzes the arguments developed by health professionals who pioneered them. It compares their discourses with the ones that historically focused on the regulation of non-normative bodies and sexualities, such as criminology, hygienism and legal medicine.
Criminology, hygienism, clinical medicine and discourses held by the pioneering professionals processed the requests for treatments of corporal construction from a moral prism. They affirmed particular definitions of what is good, desirable, inappropriate and risky for people in relation to their bodies. They were in line with moral values developed towards gender and sexuality issues at the time they were produced.