“We are not just our chromosomes.” This is the starting point of an in-depth note by Ilaria Bacciocchi of the PSD, who has entered the debate sparked by the recent discussion in the Grand and General Council (Consiglio Grande e Generale) of Arengo petitions concerning the rights of transgender people.
Bacciocchi is responding to remarks made by don Luca Bernardi, who in his own address had started from the biological data and the distinction between XX and XY chromosomes.
“The biological fact exists. No one denies it,” the PSD representative states. “But the problem begins when one tries to derive, directly from that biological fact, a conclusion about the person and, above all, a legal rule. A human being is certainly a biological being. But it is not only a biological being.”
In her reflection, Bacciocchi highlights how human history has been marked by our capacity to intervene in nature and not be entirely determined by it. “We have learned to correct our eyesight with a pair of glasses. To replace a diseased heart. To intervene on fertility. To modify the environment in which we live. Today we intervene on DNA, we build artificial intelligences and we send machines to other planets.”
“Even our most natural impulses do not fully determine us. A person can be hungry and decide to fast. They can turn desire into a poem, into music, into a work of art. This capacity not to be simply determined by nature is one of the most profound features of human experience.”
From here comes the central point of the note: chromosomal data alone cannot resolve the question of personal identity and the rules that the State is called upon to establish.
“Nature and culture, body and consciousness, biology and identity are not separate worlds. They coexist within the same person. And it is precisely here that the reasoning based on chromosomes becomes insufficient. No one claims that a gender transition turns an X chromosome into a Y chromosome. But we cannot resolve everything by saying: XX and XY exist, therefore the problem doesn’t exist. The problem exists because there are people who live it.”
According to Bacciocchi, politics should neither push a person toward gender transition nor try to prevent it. Its task, instead, is to build a serious regulatory framework, capable of verifying the freedom and awareness behind such a choice and of protecting the most vulnerable people.
“The State must build rules. It must verify that so important a choice is free and informed. It must provide for serious procedures when they are needed. It must protect vulnerable people. It must examine the health consequences of its own decisions. But, especially when we are talking about adults, it must also recognise a limit to its own power: it cannot claim to live their lives for them.”
The PSD representative also addresses the relationship between these issues and Catholic conscience, referring to the document Dignitas infinita. Bacciocchi acknowledges that the Church expresses a strongly critical position toward gender theory and sex-change interventions, but also points to its emphasis on the dignity belonging to every person.
“That same document begins by recalling something that should never be forgotten: there exists an ‘inalienable’ dignity belonging to every person, regardless of the situation they find themselves in. And it calls for a duty to avoid discrimination, aggression and exclusion.”
For Bacciocchi, it is precisely from this principle that a dialogue between believers and non-believers can begin, even without reaching the same conclusions on the body, on identity and on gender transition.
“It is not necessary to share the same idea of humanity. It is not necessary to share the same idea of the body. It is not even necessary to consider the same choices morally right. What is needed, however, is to look at the person in front of us. A transgender person is not a debate about chromosomes. They are a person. They may be at peace or they may suffer. They may have certainties or doubts. They may make choices we share or choices we do not understand. And it is precisely when we fail to understand another person’s life that the word ‘dignity’ is put to the test.”
The note also urges caution in the use of data relating to suicide. “These are matters too serious to turn a correlation into a cause. And it is precisely for this reason that we need medicine, prudence, support and research.”
Finally, Bacciocchi clarifies the political meaning of the vote cast by the Grand and General Council. “We did not vote to establish that everyone must consider gender transition a good thing. We did not vote to change biology. And we certainly have not abolished chromosomes. We addressed a problem that concerns people who are part of our community.”
“Politics can ignore them. It can judge them. Or it can try to build a legal system capable of taking care of even those lives that do not fit neatly into the categories in which each of us feels most secure. This is an important distinction. Because a free society is not measured by the ability to live as the majority lives. That is easy. It is measured above all by the space it manages to leave for those who live differently, without asking others to give up their own convictions.”
The question, the PSD representative concludes, is therefore not whether XX and XY chromosomes exist, but how far the State can go in deciding who an adult person must be.
“On this, science can help us enormously. Faith can challenge our consciences. Philosophy can offer us categories for reasoning. But politics is left with a different and very concrete task: finding rules capable of allowing people to live together who may hold profoundly different views on life, on the body and even on what it means to be human — without any of them, for this reason, having to stop being recognised as a person.”
