Abstract

BAZ REYES, Héctor Luis; CID, Augusto Claudio Andrés Obando  and  SOUZA, Regina Maria de. The Danish Girl: How to Read a Body in Transfeminism. Psic. da Ed. [online]. 2024, n.57, pp.94-103.  Epub Mar 05, 2025. ISSN 2175-3520.  https://doi.org/10.23925/2175-3520.2024i57p94-103.

This study focuses on the film The Danish girl, based on the eponymous novel by David Ebershoff, which narrates the transformation of Einar Wegener, husband of Gerda Wegener, into Lili Elbe, the first transgender woman to undergo gender reassignment surgery. The story is set in 1920s Copenhagen, where, at the request of his wife Gerda, Einar replaces a model for a painting, initiating a quest for self-identity. This process leads to a confrontation with the moral canons of the time and institutions, particularly psychiatric medicine, which defined what was considered normal and abnormal. The aim of this work is to explore the themes of confession, power, and control from a Foucauldian perspective on questions of sex and gender, interrogating gender technologies as proposed by De Lauretis (1987), which position bodies and compel them to exist or cease to exist, according to Butler (2019). It also examines sex technologies, which employ biology and medicine as discourses and practices that fabricate bodies, as highlighted by Preciado (2002). The film allows us to question not only gender performance but also the institutions that construct sex and gender, enabling, in some cases, subjectivation to resist technologies of domination.

Keywords : Sexuality; Gender identity; Sexual differences; Trans woman; Transsexuality.