Interview with Karine Solene Espineira

Karine Solene Espineira stands as one of the most brilliant and influential voices in contemporary transgender thought. Born in Santiago in 1967 and shaped by a life that spans Chile, France, activism, scholarship, and cinema, she has spent decades mapping the cultural, social, and political landscapes that define trans identities in our world today. Her work as a sociologist and researcher at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, as well as her role in the Gender and Sexuality Studies Laboratory at the University of Paris VIII, has made her a leading authority on the media constructions of trans identities, transfeminism, and the cultural frameworks that shape how society perceives gender itself. She has also been a driving force in international activism, contributing her expertise to the Stop Trans Pathologization campaign and serving on scientific committees dedicated to fighting racism, antisemitism, and anti-LGBT hatred.

 

At the same time, her creative life as a filmmaker, writer, and longtime community organizer has rooted her work in lived experience and collective memory. Her journey from Santiago to the heart of French academia is marked by an unshakeable commitment to widening the cultural lens through which society understands gender. Whether dissecting media narratives, documenting the hidden histories of trans communities, or challenging institutional norms, she has never stopped pushing for a world where knowledge and lived experience meet on equal ground. Her work shows how scholarship can carry the pulse of activism and how activism can carry the precision of scholarship, creating a vibrant space where trans voices do not merely react to culture but actively shape it. Karine is a woman whose intellectual courage, humor, and unwavering commitment to justice have helped shape the modern transgender movement in France and far beyond.

 

Monika: Today it is my pleasure and honor to interview Karine Solene Espineira, a Chilean-born transgender activist from France, widely recognized as one of the most inspirational and charismatic leaders of the French transgender community. She is a blogger and the author of Transidentité: Ordre et panique de genre (2015), Médiacultures: La transidentité en télévision (2015), and La Transyclopédie: Tout savoir sur les transidentités (2012), an extensive encyclopedia on trans identities in France. She is also a researcher at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis and a member of the coordination team of the international campaign Stop Trans Pathologization. Hello Karine! 

Karine: Hello Monika! I’m very enchanted by this interview. Thank you for it. It is an honor to contribute to your blog, which is a precious source of information about our community. Our stories can contribute to the culture of our groups but also to the common culture. I also have to apologize for my English, but my Spanish is better, and my French is fantastic!

 

Monika: You have often been described as one of the key historians of the French transgender movement. In your view, who and what played the most important roles in shaping the transgender movement in France?

Karine: As is often the case, people and movements of resistance and revolt meet each other in this history, in France as well as elsewhere. We can define this history in three periods that are specific to France: 1965 to 1985, 1986 to 1999, and the 2000s until today. The first period is marked by the creation of the first trans association in Paris in 1965, the Association des malades hormonaux, established by Marie-André Schwindenhammer.

La Transyclopédie.

Monika: What was the importance of this first association, and how was it received within the community?

Karine: This association and the personality of its founder did not reach a consensus within the trans community of that period. For example, Bambi said that she and some of her friends did not wish to join it. We can regard this as an early refusal of pathologization, even if we describe it today with more modern concepts. The transgender cabaret culture embodied by Coccinelle and Bambi, among others, together with this first association, was a turning point. Trans people began to organize and to help each other. With the Homosexual Front of Revolutionary Action in 1971, personalities such as Marie-France and Hélène Hazera asserted themselves in intellectual, artistic, and political spheres. Until the beginning of the 1980s, other associations emerged in France, but the trans movement still did not appear as a united movement. The main concern for people was simply to be accepted in a society where trans people were considered marginal or treated as pariahs.

Monika: How did the second period of the movement differ from the first?

Karine: The second period is marked by the emergence of a new form of associations. In 1992, the PASTT, founded by Camille Cabral, worked in AIDS prevention among trans people involved in prostitution, while also providing general support and specific help with administrative procedures to various trans communities. The ASB and the Caritig were established in 1994 by Tom Reucher and others, and in 1995 by Armand Hotimsky and others. These associations not only offered support but also began to demand rights for trans people. This commitment was a common feature of these three very important organizations.

Monika: When did you personally become involved in activism, and how did your work develop?

Karine: I became involved in the trans movement in 1996. In 1998, together with Maud-Yeuse Thomas, I joined the Zoo of sociologist Marie-Hélène Bourcier, which worked on queer theory and gave us access to Anglo-Saxon transgender studies. We believed that if we wanted to claim rights, we also had to develop theory about the living conditions of trans people, and we wanted to join women’s movements and libertarian movements in particular. During that period we understood that we also had to think from a trans standpoint.

Karine in 2005.

Monika: How would you describe the most recent phase of the movement?

Karine: The third period is the one taking place now. The 2000s saw an explosion of associations and collectives in France. This growth seems to have been facilitated by new information and communication technologies, at first through websites and forums and now with the wider web. It would be boring to list every group, but among the most politicized are the Activist Group Trans, STS 67, and Sans Contrefaçon. A second generation of associations has emerged from feminist concerns, trans rights, the situation of foreign trans people and trans sex workers, and the visibility of trans men, including Chrysalis, Outrans, Acceptess Transgenre, and others.

Monika: Looking at the movement as a whole, when would you say it truly came into being? 

Karine: We can consider that the trans movement in France was born in the 1990s, with many difficulties, that it has asserted itself since the 2000s, and that it has benefited from the work of many personalities and groups since the 1970s. 
Monika: France has long had a reputation as a conservative country where transsexualism was treated as a psychological illness, yet at the same time the public adored Le Carousel, Bambi, Coccinelle, Marie-France, and many other travesti cabaret performers. How do you explain this contrast?

Karine: We can treat the French case as paradoxical. The psy disciplines, psychoanalysis and psychiatry, developed strongly in France and have remained influential until today. From Jacques Lacan to Colette Chiland, there was a certain continuity that reflected the conservatism of these fields, which often viewed the gender claimed by trans people as an illusion, a kind of lie.

Karine with her cat (2005).

Monika: How did trans people respond to this psychiatric framework?

Karine: In reaction to psychiatrization, transgender identifications became increasingly anti-authority and were often expressed through refusals of assignment in a sex of arrival, meaning a socially expected sex role. This is illustrated by acronyms such as Ft*, FtU, MtX, and FtX.

Monika: At the same time, France was known for its vibrant cabaret scene. How did that cultural space shape public attitudes?

Karine: France was one of the centers of the golden age of cabaret, especially transgender cabaret. Everything changed in 1979 when hospital teams began to organize and regulate all transitions. Hormones were no longer freely available, for example, and changes of civil status became impossible in France until the European Court of Human Rights condemned this situation in 1992. My analysis of this coexistence shows that the popular enthusiasm for cabaret symbolized a fascination with trans people, but only within a space defined as outside ordinary public life.

Monika: Did this enthusiasm translate into real public acceptance?

Karine: Inside the public sphere, cabaret celebrities still faced difficulties with the police, for example. Trans people seemed to be tolerated only as long as they stayed out of common spaces and did not claim visibility.

Monika: Was there a moment that revealed the limits of this tolerance?

Karine: This political and cultural limit was illustrated by the reactions to the first church marriage of Coccinelle in 1960. The media attention surrounding the marriage caused a scandal in France and led to a political and legislative backlash that made it impossible to change civil status and therefore impossible to marry or adopt. Society adored trans performers on one side and repressed them on the other. Since the 1960s there has been a kind of French hypocrisy, which we can also find in other countries, in the acceptance of cabaret trans people contrasted with the denial of rights for all trans people.

editions-harmattan.fr

Monika: What role did medical and legal systems play in this contradiction?

Karine: Psychiatrization and pathologization were political tools of control and sometimes of repression. 
Monika: How would you describe the situation of transgender women in French society today?

Karine: It is difficult to say whether the situation has truly improved in terms of social progress. The increasing visibility of trans men and trans women could suggest that living conditions are getting better. In practice, however, trans women still tend to be treated as exotic objects or rarities in the media, at the university, and in other public spaces. In activist circles, the situation for trans women seems, in my opinion, to be moving in the right direction. 

Monika: What elements influence how trans women are perceived in society?

Karine: In society generally, everything depends on the images presented by the media. The French context has recently shown a rather violent conservatism, and this has not helped in building a positive image of trans people. The situation will improve only when real obstacles are addressed, including changes of civil status, access to health services, jobs, and housing.
Monika: Do French political parties differ in how they address the needs and rights of the transgender community?

Karine: The differences are real. The left-wing parties are more open, that is undeniable. However, even among the so-called progressive or left parties, compared with other more conservative ones, there are also differences in how they analyze the needs and rights of trans people.

Karine in 2012. Photo by Leya Smith.

Monika: What is the main challenge you see in how political parties approach trans issues? 

Karine: The problem with all the parties is that they do not truly understand trans issues. They want to act for the well-being of the trans community, but they do so without consulting trans people. This is why the various proposals for legal amendments concerning civil status are imperfect and create divisions among associations and collectives.

Monika: How does this lack of understanding show itself in policy discussions?

Karine: Politics still relies on a vision based solely on the transsexual model created by forensic medicine and psychiatry, without taking into account the diversity of the needs of the trans population, which vary according to each person’s transition or life path, even before considering the social experience of daily life. Even in health-related matters, being trans is not limited to hormones and surgeries. Political actors and policies struggle to understand this and do not give themselves the means to do so because they do not listen to trans people, do not give them a voice, and often do not even try to meet them in real life.

Monika: How would you describe President Hollande’s approach to the needs and rights of the transgender community?

Karine: President François Hollande was a great disappointment in this regard because he did not keep his campaign promises. After the outburst of violence from the most conservative Christian lobbies against marriage for all, the Socialist Party became afraid of provoking these groups again with a law in favor of trans people, especially since the republican parties ride the wave of these lobbies and sometimes maintain very shady relations with them. There is therefore little chance that the rights of trans people will progress under this legislature.

Karine in 2012. Photo by Leya Smith.

Monika: Politics often involves negotiating with different interest groups pursuing their own goals. How effectively has the French transgender community been able to advocate for itself in this context?

Karine: One of the specificities of the French case is its pioneering role in the pathologization or psychiatrization of identity. Any analysis must take this into account to understand the French resistance to progress. The policies of the alliances focus on their own interests. Within the LGB movements, for example, the push for psychiatric emancipation from protocols is often misunderstood. Trans identity was associated for so long with psychiatric follow-ups that other groups have difficulty understanding that trans people are capable of completing transitions without psychiatrists if they so choose.

END OF PART 1

PART 2

 

All the photos: Courtesy of Karine Solene Espineira.

The main photo credit: Naőel

© 2015 - Monika Kowalska

You may also like