Men, Women, and Other Jobs by Miguel Missé

Yesterday, March 5, 2025, Miguel Missé, sociologist and consultant on gender and sexuality issues and collaborator on the radio program Vosté Primer on RAC 1, visited TBS Education – Barcelona to give an insightful talk on one of today’s most relevant and important topics: transsexuality. Having worked on various research projects and training on gender diversity, and having published several essays on the subject, the talk focused on reflecting on why people transition, exploring the elements that form gender identity.

The Concept of Passing

The talk was centered around the English concept of Passing, which refers to how trans people try to pass unnoticed in terms of the gender they identify with by sharing the universal language that helps us identify one gender from another.

By giving examples and showing relevant images, he encouraged the audience to ask themselves these questions. He pointed out that while this term is often used to refer to trans people, it also applies to cisgender people. Not only through body modification technology but also through substances like testosterone, exactly in the same way that a trans person does, to emphasize and enhance the body they want and consider ideal.

We Live in a Contradictory Society

Although we live in a time when diversity is celebrated, as Miguel pointed out, people with little passing are penalized, making it harder for them to access housing, employment, or even go to the gym.

We need role models to reduce the focus on passing: images, cultural references, literature, and more representation in general. This will help increase the visibility of trans bodies and allow new generations to imagine other inhabitable bodies.

Gender Norms in Our Society

Inevitably, gender norms are present in our daily lives. One example of this is how, as Miguel mentioned in his talk, passing is something that both trans and cisgender people do. If this weren’t the case, aesthetic surgeries wouldn’t be on the rise.

These norms are ingrained in all aspects of our lives: how we do things, the clothes we choose, cosmetics, and so on. Therefore, it’s necessary to move away from the idea of exceptionalism and erase the boundary between the trans/cis scenes, or fiction, toward a shared normativity. It’s not about shifting from celebration to guilt.

With this, Miguel aimed to offer his audience a reflection on how these gender norms work, the society we live in, and the tools we have to deal with them. The goal, once again, is to seek normalization and prevent it from being an exception—something that can be talked about, shown, and mentioned with total normality, making us feel good about ourselves.