Paper short abstract:

Based on an ethnography of trans refugee’ reception in Italy, the paper focuses on hormones as subject activating substances, lightening the merges and frictions between the medicalised model of gender affirmation, and the practices, body representations and gender models of trans refugee

Paper long abstract:

Dozens of trans, intersex and non-binary people leave their families and villages every year because of persecution due to their sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression perpetuated both by state agents, and by more widespread social, political or religious agents. In Italy, thanks to a Court of Milan decision, they are granted access to public care treatment for gender affirmation, i.e. to hormone replacement therapies and to sexual surgery.

Drawing on an ethnography of the reception of trans and non-binary refugees conducted in northern Italy between 2018 and 2022, in this communication I will consider the mergers and frictions between the medicalised model of gender affirmation, and the practices, body representations and gender models of trans refugee hosted in a reception’ shelter dedicated to them in Bologna. As my ethnography shows, in hormones lies the very possibility of doing and undoing gender that influences trans refugees’ practices and desires and that often collides with the institutionalised care paths defined by specific regulatory acts and therapeutic practices. Messengers of sex that activate a technical know-how, sexual hormones are considered magic substances that shape and mould the desired body. Nonetheless the trans subject affect HRT efficacy through their behaviours and practices. They also produce knowledge and representations about the body and the gender production work that hormones do in the body.