Infancias trans y la noción de niñez en disputa desde la experiencia argentina

Abstract

In the last decades, transgender children and adolescents, and the issues they face, have steadily gained more prominence all around the world and in Argentina. This increase in the visibility of transgender individuals in general, and of transgender children in particular, has not occurred without ardent debates both in the public and in the political arena. In certain social sectors, and often stemming from common sense, the idea that children and adolescents are too young to make decisions perceived as permanent, especially in regards to gender identity, as is the case, is constantly reproduced. This article intends to explore, based on the Argentine experience, the manner in which the existence and background of transgender children and adolescents challenges the Occidental and modern notion that presupposes, among other things, that children and adolescents are unfit to make decisions regarding their own lives and, furthermore, that they lack the capacity to engage in the social spaces they navigate. In order to fulfill the purpose of this article, I will draw upon my ethnographic fieldwork with families of transgender children and adolescents in the city of Bariloche, Argentina, conducted between the years 2022 and 2023.