“I had to declare myself crazy. Affected by a very particular type of madness called dysphoria…” Thus begins Dysphoria mundi (Anagram), a monumental essay in which its author, the philosopher Paul B Preciado, between theory and the daily intimate, part of her own transformation (she went from a radical lesbian to a non-binary person and finally to a trans man) to analyze the state of the world after the pandemic and “the great planetary revolution” that is taking place. “Dysphorics of the world, unite!” is his call to revolt.
The question is no longer who we are but what we want to become?
Not so much what we want to be, because it is not only a question of will, but rather what we are going to be able to be collectively. What we are has ceased to be clear, has ceased to be binary, definitive. The binarism of the petrosexorracial or colonial taxonomy of modernity (heterosexual-homosexual, man-woman, machine-organism, animal-human, living-dead…) is being dismantled and is going to give rise to another paradigm. While he was writing it he was thinking of a manual for the new generations. Suddenly I found myself 50 years old, sick with covid and talking to many trans children, children of heterosexual families, very normal all my life, who have a five-year-old boy who suddenly tells them that his name is not Pablo but that he wants to be called Teresa. And the parents, who don’t know what to do, take him to the psychiatrist. Others call me and ask me to talk to them. I’m finishing a film, an adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, featuring twenty-five Orlandos of all ages. To understand what is happening today it is necessary to go through classic identity politics. There were struggles for the rights of women, homosexuals, workers… But today we are no longer workers, we are something else, although we don’t really know what we are. And we are not exactly women -although I say so, it has fabric-, but, well, we are not men either. In the end, naturalized identities are very exclusionary, they do not produce freedom, only norms… That is why the opportunity lies in this dislocation: dysphorics of the world, unite! living bodies of the world, unite!
You were a victim of covid, “normal AIDS”, and even temporarily lost the vision in one eye. In the book he says that he got sick in the 21st century and woke up in the 22nd century. What is it that the virus has changed in such a radical way?
It’s true, that’s how I felt. Covid is the AIDS of those who considered themselves immune. Until now there have been pandemics for others, for gays, for migrant women, for sex workers, for drug addicts, etc. All policies, both national and European, have been thought of as immunity policies. Here we are fine, let’s close borders. For now all the notions that have allowed us to define what it was to be safe have been put into motion. It is what I call an epistemic dance. We live in a time of total confusion. I don’t understand how we are constantly connected to technologies like Twitter, like Facebook, like Instagram, even like TikTok. They are technologies that we know absolutely nothing about and that are totally dominated by capital with far-right discourses. How can it be that we see a space of freedom there? That we think that avoiding them would be like not existing? I am not in any of them and I feel comfortable.
It announces that there is a revolution in progress. Is it an observation or a wish? At some point he speaks of optimism as a strategy for change.
Of course there is a revolution underway! Things can be looked at in very different ways. In other words, if one gets carried away by the normative discourse that is now dominated by the right, obviously what is happening is that we are in a situation of apocalypse. The world’s clocks have been synchronized for the first time to the rhythm of Meetoo, Black Lives Matter, queer movements, against global warming… And in the face of this paradigm shift, as a reaction, there is a return to the most reactionary ways of using of technologies of violence as technologies of government. New racist, transphobic, misogynist discourses emerge…, from a misogyny practically prior to the 19th century. But it is true that I am optimistic by political methodology. That is something I learned from Angela Davis, when as a student in the United States I heard her say: “Everything is going wrong and that is precisely why we are full of enthusiasm”. What does this woman say? How is it possible? The engine of politics is not foreign policy as we think of it, politicking; the key to everything is desire, it is the transformation of desire, what we think is worth fighting for. Petrosexoracial capitalism is totally fossil-based, meat-eating, heterocentric, misogynistic, and racist capitalism. If we start to see it for what it is, disgusting, brutal and deadly, we can start talking about change. If not, turn off and let’s go.
One of the things that she points out as essential for the historians of the future is that for the first time raped women leave the closet of sexual abuse.
It is extraordinary, of incredible importance. It is part of that rebellion against the technologies of death. Rape is not a sexual practice, it is a very precise technology of government, historically used against the body of women and, I think this is interesting, children, adolescents and also men are beginning to think that it can also be used against they. Obviously, hundreds of thousands of women taking the floor to say that they have been raped is impressive. We are not yet aware of what that can mean. The very appearance of those words that were practically inaudible before and that touch instances such as the Church or the Episcopal Conference is extraordinary. And that is also a paradigm shift.
Why do you think he is triggering such violent speeches and breaking feminism?
Well, I think that fracture has always existed in feminism. I’ve been in the military for 30 years and when I started doing what I do, nobody understood it. And not only that, but they thought it was in poor taste and wanted to shut me up. It bothered. And yet it seemed absolutely necessary and vital to me and to the people around me. And that practice, which was underground, has spread progressively. I believe in the political power of small gestures. Nothing is changed from above, everything is changed from multiple gestures in collective alliance, from below. The feminists who oppose represent a feminism of white, heterosexual, binary privilege and that are not recognized as privileged. White European women took centuries to acquire the privilege of being considered as political subjects, of having the right to vote. And the funny thing is that as soon as that group of women acquired the right to vote, they closed it to any other type of woman. That happened in the 19th century, at the first convention of American feminists in which white feminists closed the door to black feminists and told them: ‘Excuse me, we are going to acquire that right to vote, but you wait, it will come . It is not convenient for you to enter here.’ I think it is exactly the same thing that is happening now. For me every time I hear TERF feminists, I’m still hearing 19th century feminists who reject black feminists or even blue collar feminists. It is a battle of privileges.
And you, by becoming a man, or at least with the appearance of a man, are you not also acquiring a privilege?
Well, talking about privilege, from the moment you’re trans… That’s what feminists don’t understand. They do not understand that it is a position of tremendous political fragility. It has taken me more than five years to get a passport. During all that time I did not have a passport or a Social Security card. I couldn’t travel anywhere and I couldn’t even go to the bank to withdraw money. You are in a situation of total dispossession of your rights as a political citizen, only comparable to that of migrants, stateless people. I don’t think there is a body with such great political vulnerability, perhaps those of the disabled and the elderly, whom nobody talks about and who during covid have been treated as if they were scum. That is why it seems so important to me to think about that alliance of bodies that resist power. I cannot consider myself a man because when I say that I am trans, the thing is lost. My body is a non-binary body. When I was sick with covid, they put me on a stretcher naked in the middle of a corridor and it is a situation of enormous visual violence: people passing by look at you as if you were a monster lying there. For me, what the trans law is asking for is nothing. As a philosopher, I would ask for the abolition of the inclusion of sexual difference in birth, because for me that inscription is discriminatory. In a hundred years, I will not see it, but it will be gone.
Since when is it like this?
The inscription of sexual difference in the identity card dates back to the 19th century and begins with colonization. Because? Well, because the price of women and men slaves was not the same because women have reproductive capacity. That is the reason we are marked at birth. And that someone like a feminist does not see that this is the debate today, access to the minimum living conditions in a democratic society, seems incredible to me. Obviously, if you are considered gender dysphoric, therefore mentally ill, and on top of that you don’t have papers, then imagine the situation. I know people who have been waiting for papers for 20 years. The trans law does not harm women but benefits the entire population. According to Amelia Valcárcel’s argument, for example, if we cannot apply any technique to the body to modify it, then we cannot apply contraceptive techniques. Forget the pill, ladies. And we will not be able to apply abortion, for example.
Has moving through life in the guise of a man given you a different view of the world?
Sure, going from the position assigned at birth as a woman to being recognized as a man in public space is incredible. It is much more incredible than you could imagine, especially since heterosexuality is an absolutely virulent regime and one only realizes how virulent it is when they have crossed to the other side. When you’re in a supposedly male group, and they all start talking about women like they’re exotic creatures from another planet, you say, well, look, sorry, that’s absurd, I’m one of those exotic beings. But, I insist, no privilege. As a trans person, when you cross a border you can be searched for anything, and when you’re naked your rights go to waste. The person in front of you can rape you because he considers a body like yours to be more or less garbage that should be raped.
During the pandemic, he spoke daily with his parents. Finally, do you think they have understood it?
They are older and it is as if they have passed, they have thrown in the towel. They say well, look, we no longer understand very well what you are, but it doesn’t matter, because we have come very close. The other day my mother was unwell and she was trying to explain to a nurse what was wrong. “Mom, but what hurts?” I asked her to help her. And she answers me, “Do you remember when you had your period? Well anyway.” Then I see the nurse, who doesn’t understand anything. In other words, what I want to say is that I am not a man, I have the memory of that body, and for me the transformation is a feminist path. A feminist possibility.
