Religion and trans/sexuality in Bernardo Santareno’s ‘A Confissão’ (1979)

Abstract

A Confissão, drama published in 1979 and taken to the scene the following year by Seiva-Trupe (Oporto), a few months before the death of Bernardo Santareno, denounces the conservative and hypocritical moralism that continues to prevail in post-revolutionary Portugal. Through the analysis of the dialogues between the priest-confessor, a humble parishioner and a transvestite decided to carry out a sexual reassignment surgery, we will observe the totalitarian obsession of the Church in policing the sexual practices of believers and thus controlling their conscience. We will examine how, in exercising its power over the individual bodies to normalize and subdue them, what the religious institution wishes is to dominate the social body itself, thus contributing to maintaining a socio-political organization characteristic of the Old Regime. Unlike the woman of the people, without strength to resist the religious authority (which subjects her to the violence of male domination), the transsexual Françoise will finally emancipate herself radically, regaining control of her life, without worrying about the judgment of society. It should be noted, however, that, although solidary with the working classes, Françoise only receives contempt from them. A victim of gender stereotypes not only from the members of the elite, who hypocritically use her for their sexual fantasies, but also from other oppressed people like her, this “revolutionary” character is therefore doubly betrayed and marginalized.