Divide and Conquer: Mind–Body Dualisms in Language and Body Image among Transmasculine Young Adults in Urban Finland

Abstract

Contemporary discussion in urban Finland surrounding transgender activism, healthcare, and politics is characterised by a series of tensions which, I argue, exist not only between institutions and people but also within the imaginaries of individuals. My argument is based on an ethnographic examination of the way in which Finnish linguistic particularities in relation to the concept of sex/gender result in a set of dualistic understandings of the relationship between mind and body, with specific reference to transmasculine identity, transition, and detransition. Essential to these dualisms in the context of Finnish transmasculinity is the desire to hormonally or surgically modify one’s physique, which I present as contingent upon language and life histories. Despite drawing from and building upon anthropological works on “embodiment”, which offer a constructionist approach to sensations often interpreted in medical contexts as innate, I contest the view of biological sex as a naturalised social construct alongside highlighting the limitations of analyses that assume bodies and minds to be separable from one another.