Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered ProstitutesIn this dramatic and compelling narrative, anthropologist Don Kulick follows the lives of a group of transgendered prostitutes (called travestis in Portuguese) in the Brazilian city Salvador. Travestis are males who, often beginning at ages as young as ten, adopt female names, clothing styles, hairstyles, and linguistic pronouns. More dramatically, they ingest massive doses of female hormones and inject up to twenty liters of industrial silicone into their bodies to create breasts, wide hips, and large thighs and buttocks. Despite such irreversible physiological changes, virtually no travesti identifies herself as a woman. Moreover, travestis regard any male who does so as mentally disturbed. Kulick analyzes the various ways travestis modify their bodies, explores the motivations that lead them to choose this particular gendered identity, and examines the complex relationships that they maintain with one another, their boyfriends, and their families. Kulick also looks at how travestis earn their living through prostitution and discusses the reasons prostitution, for most travestis, is a positive and affirmative experience. Arguing that transgenderism never occurs in a "natural" or arbitrary form, Kulick shows how it is created in specific social contexts and assumes specific social forms. Furthermore, Kulick suggests that travestis—far from deviating from normative gendered expectations—may in fact distill and perfect the messages that give meaning to gender throughout Brazilian society and possibly throughout much of Latin America. Through Kulick's engaging voice and sharp analysis, this elegantly rendered account is not only a landmark study in its discipline but also a fascinating read for anyone interested in sexuality and gender. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 19 | |
Two Becoming a Travesti | 44 |
Three A Man in the House | 96 |
Four The Pleasure of Prostitution | 134 |
Five Travesti Gendered Subjectivity | 191 |
Notes | 239 |
References | 257 |
Index | 265 |
Other editions - View all
Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture Among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes Don Kulick Limited preview - 1998 |
Common terms and phrases
Adriana agora Albuquerque Angélica asked attractive Bahia Banana beautiful began bicha body bombadeira botar boyfriend boyzinho Brazil Brazilian breasts buceta buttocks candomblé Carlinhos Carnival Chica Cintia clients clothes coisa condoms context cultural desire dick dress earn Edilson Elisa Erica feel female prostitutes feminine Fernanda Francisco Street gender gente give gonna gostosa hair heterosexual homem homens homosexual hormones Italy Keila Lalesca laughs liters of silicone look Mabel Magdala majority of travestis male maricona Martinha masculine mona mother mulher não never night Pastinha Paulo penetrated penis Pituba police programa reais relationships Rio de Janeiro Rita Lee Roberta Close São Paulo sexual silicone injections social syringe things third gender Tiane Tina Tina's told transsexuals travesti talk travestis I know travestis in Salvador travestis live Treze understand vestis viado vícios woman women words Yeah
Popular passages
Page 230 - Does sex have a history? Does each sex have a different history, or histories? Is there a history of how the duality of sex was established, a genealogy that might expose the binary options as a variable construction? Are the ostensibly natural facts of sex discursively produced by various scientific discourses in the service of other political and social interests? If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called 'sex...
Page 110 - He left the room and returned a few minutes later with a girl under each arm, held in his huge bear-like hug which made the girls seem like children.
Page 255 - To those . . . who might be inclined to diagnose the transsexual's focus on the genitals as obsessive or fetishistic, the response is that they are, in fact, simply conforming to their culture's criteria for gender assignment" (emphasis mine). This statement points to deeper workings, to hidden discourses and experiential pluralities within the transsexual monolith. They are not yet clinically or academically visible, and with good reason. For example, in pursuit of differential diagnosis a question...
Page 230 - ... facts' for us? Does sex have a history? Does each sex have a different history, or histories? Is there a history of how the duality of sex was established, a genealogy that might expose the binary options as variable construction? Are the ostensibly natural facts of sex discursively produced by various scientific discourses in the service of other political and social interests?
Page 124 - ... that the travestis draw on and invoke is that a male classified as a man will not be interested in another male's penis. A man, in this interpretive framework, will happily penetrate another male's anus. But he will not touch or express any desire for another male's penis. For him to do so would be tantamount to relinquishing his status as a man. The sexual act freighted with the most significance here is to dar o cu, as it is called in Brazilian Portuguese - to "give the ass,
Page 132 - ... be symbolically and socially different from, not similar to, themselves. Therefore, a travesti does not want her boyfriend to notice, comment on, or in any way concern himself with her penis, even during sex. Sex with a boyfriend, consists, for the most part, of the travesti sucking the boyfriend's penis and of her boyfriend penetrating her, most often from behind, with the travesti on all fours or lying on her stomach on the bed. If the boyfriend touches the travesti at all, he will caress her...
Page 183 - Prostitution is the use of a woman's body by a man for his own satisfaction. There is no desire or satisfaction on the part of the prostitute. Prostitution is not mutual, pleasurable exchange of the use of bodies, but the unilateral use of a woman's body by a man in exchange for money.
Page 235 - ... place, a way of denying and defending against the possibilities that exist within the gender system itself for males to shift from one category to the other.17 During the time I have spent in Brazil, I have also noted that the harshest scorn is reserved for unattractive travestis. Travestis such as Roberta Close and some of my own acquaintances in Salvador who closely approximate cultural ideals of feminine beauty are generally not publicly insulted and mocked and addressed as men. On the contrary,...
Page 222 - Indeed, travestis are so ostentatiously homosexual that some of them can argue with great eloquence that travestis are radical homosexuals who have more or less single-handedly created a homosexual space in an otherwise rigidly heterosexual Brazil. They note that while the majority of gay men and lesbians in Brazil are still afraid to come out in public and let people know they are homosexual, travestis, at tremendous personal cost, publicly proclaim their homosexuality through their dress and demeanor.