Misgendering and Transgender Women: Between Minority Stress, Resistance, and Embedded Imaginary

The essay, based on research conducted on a sample of transgender women, highlights a form of violence that has been little explored by Italian and international research: misgendering, understood as a discursive practice – in some cases, a veritable form of hate speech – aimed at denying the gender expressed by transgender individuals (Coppola, Masullo, 2023; 2024). Through biographical interviews (Bichi, 2002), the research examines the discursive strategies employed by these women in attempting to resist misgendering, the negative emotions they experience, and how these intentional and unintentional practices of disavowal impact the choices about the transition process itself. Considering the centrality of this journey to the level of perceived health, which will be better highlighted in the next section, the latter is often compromised by the discrimination and various forms of social exclusion experienced by transgender individuals in their social and relational lives (Punziano, Coppola, Avellino, 2022).