Habitando as margens

Patologização das identidades trans e a colonialidade do poder no Brasil

Abstract

This article aims to investigate the process of pathologization of trans identities in Brazil by using cisgenderness, whiteness and coloniality of power as analytical categories. In this sense, we articulate the concept of colonial world-system from the perspective of a whiteworld-cistem, showing how coloniality both acts and is managed in the historical imbrication between these two positions of power. Throughout the article, we dedicate our analysis to the works of David Cauldwell, who coined the term “transsexual” in 1949, and Harry Benjamin, who popularized this term in the 1950s. With this, we seek to show that the pathologizing paradigm of transgenderity, while linking the diversity of human gender identities to diagnostic categories, hence recommending treatments for its "cure", also established heteronormative, white, endosexual and ableist cisgenderity as an implicit norm of existence.