The Challenges and Experiences of Transgender Students in Italian High Schools: Alias Career and Normalisation

The experience of transgender students in Italian upper secondary education is an ignored field with a severe lack of data, a total lack of school policies by the Ministry of Education and training for teaching and non-teaching staff. As of 2019, some schools have started to adopt the alias career, a device created by the University of Turin to guarantee a gender-affirming school life for trans students. To explore the school experience of transgender people in Italy, the regulations of the alias career of 92 high schools were analysed. In addition, ten trans students, who had access to the device or fought for its introduction at their school, were interviewed. The analyses show that the Italian school system is not ready to address the needs of transgender people and that even schools that have adopted the alias career are not equipped to deal with their needs, mostly due to the pathologisation of gender incongruence, the propagation of “gender ideology” and lack of training and knowledge regarding trans issues. Moreover, in most schools, we can find a strong presence of binarism, cisnormativity, the pathologisation of gender incongruence and control over students’ bodily autonomy, for example by requiring a diagnosis of gender dysphoria to activate the alias career and prohibiting access to bathrooms and changing rooms.