Travesti and transgender are two terms which, in translation, can get lost in the other’s connotations. By better understanding the overlaps and complexities between travesti and transgender identities and needs in Brazil, activists from both Latin America and the English-speaking world can envision political self-determiniation from different subject positions.

AFP PHOTO/Mauricio LIMA. Some Rights Reserved.

As we often note on this blog, “transgender” and “transsexual” are English terms which create problems in translation. They’re often used as umbrella terms, meant to include a variety of gender non-conforming people across the world. At the same time, due to their origins, they can erase the specificity of gender identities of Indigenous and non-Anglophone (non English-speaking) people. As comparative literature professor Keja J. Valens puts it, this can further “the colonial and neocolonial traditions that impose Euro-American conceptions of gender…”¹. But as Valens also notes, the term helps make communication easier across countries and languages, and because of this “…activists use [trans] for the international intelligibility and the openness to broad-based activism it offers as an umbrella term”².

“Travesti” is a term in both Spanish and Portuguese which is also used to describe a broad group of gender-nonconforming people; almost exclusively, those who are assigned male at birth and take part in a feminization of their appearance through clothing, makeup, hormones, and/or silicone injections³. The term has a specificity of geography and language, as well as class and race, and its use varies across Latin America⁴. One example of the class significance is that, as Félix Rodriguez’ 2008 Diccionario gay-lésbico (Gay-Lesbian Dictionary) says: “El significado más corriente [de ‘travesti’], y casi el único que aparece en los medios, es el asosiado con la prostitución”⁵. (“The most current meaning [of travesti], and almost the only one that appears in the media, is the association with prostitution”⁶).

Travesti Identity in Salvador, Brazil

Anthropologist Don Kulick’s 2009 ethnographic book Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes follows the lives of a community of travestis in the Brazilian city of Salvador, and attempts to explain the context of their gender identities, including how they differ from transgender or transsexual women. In his book, Kulick explains that the travestis he studied grounded their identity in a gender system where an inclination towards passivity in penetrative sex with a penis compels those who are passive to embody an ideal femininity, which is meant to appeal to a masculine gaze. For these travestis, to embody this ideal of womanhood through feminine names, pronouns, clothing, makeup, as well as hormonal and surgical interventions is part of a life of male homosexuality.

While he claims that the travestis he studied don’t see themselves as or wish to be women, Kulick argues that the travestis he studied “share a gender with women” because of their largely overlapping “…spectrum of tastes, perceptions, behaviors, styles, feelings, and desires.”⁷ Though this idea may sound paradoxical from certain outside perspectives, I think it’s helpful, because it reflects that gender is an idea and a system with effects that are more complicated than just grouping people together.

Gender is a system which empowers and disempowers people differently by giving cultural, economic, and political value to certain behaviors, desires, and bodies. The travestis of whom Kulick writes may not group themselves with women, but they are linked to them by the way they interact with culture and society. While Kulick’s study is small-scale and should not be used to represent some universal travesti identity, it shows the specific ways that gender identity forms. Kulick’s analysis shows the connection between a dominant (cisgender heterosexual) culture and people who are presumed to transgress its norms.

Travesti, not Trans

The specificity of travesti life represented in Kulick’s study helps us to see the things that could be ignored and erased through the use of umbrella translations like transgender and transsexual. That being said, these terms are also used in Latin America; and they too carry certain implications of class. Another anthropologist, Alvaro Jarrín, breaks down the split between between travesti and trans (transgender or transsexual) identity in Brazil this way:

As an identity, transsexuality seems more prevalent among middle-class individuals who have come into contact with anglophone LGBT labels and associate them with cosmopolitanism, while travesti identity is more common in working-class contexts that reject the anglophone terminology.⁸

Jarrín calls this distinction between transsexuals and travestis “liminal”⁹ because it isn’t perfectly fixed or stable. As the Latin American and Trans Studies scholar Cole Rizki writes, “…trans and travesti identifications are constantly shifting and should not be understood as mutually exclusive.”¹⁰ That said, not all travestis are comfortable with the label “transgender” or “transsexual.”

Why might travestis reject “transgender” and “transsexual” as identifiers? Their reasons vary, and I believe it’s best to hear them in their own words. Sofia Favero is a travesti activist and, in a 2014 Facebook blog post, she offered this explanation of why she identified with the term “travesti” instead of “transsexual”:

If ‘Travesti’ was a word with connotations akin to an aberration, an anomaly, a chimera, something disgusting, etc., I had to become defensive… I realized, then, that it was necessary that I present myself as travesti, colliding with the mental image people have, and thus turn my body into a political weapon! (Favero 2014)¹¹

By interviewing doctors and studying hospitals and clinics in Brazil, Jarrín found that travestis were viewed within these institutions as having a less legitimate claim to medical feminization than self-identified transsexuals, because transsexual identity is seen as originating in a medical need; namely the pathology of “gender identity disorder.”¹² In her travesti self-identification Favero, a college-educated travesti, pushes back against the stereotypes of travestis and their unequal treatment within the medical establishment. In doing this, she enacts a politics of gender self-determination and testifies to her rights to respect and medical care. I think this is a crucial part of her message, and it’s enlightening because advocacy for self-determination of gender has also been central to the history of transgender activism in the United States and around the world. With this, we can begin to see the deeper connections between travesti and transgender life and politics.

Travesti and Trans Political Unity

Keja J. Valens penned an entry in the massive Global Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) History, published in 2019, titled “Travesti and Trans Activism in Latin America and the Caribbean,” which reports some of the overlapping political and social work done by travesti and trans activists in recent history. Valens cautions that “[h]istorical documentation and academic investigation lag behind travesti and trans political and social activism”¹³ because scholars tend to exclude and neglect these groups, and thus no study can adequately describe the current or past situation of this activism. That being said, Valens’ research clearly shows that travesti and trans voices have emerged together from within gay and lesbian activism since the 1990s to form a distinct movement.

Due to their shared needs for legal rights, accessible and understanding medical care, and relief from overwhelming violence, travestis and transgender people form organizations which “focus on legal and legislative rights activism, antiviolence activism, sex-work activism, and health-care activism”¹⁴.The contemporary and historical work of the travesti and trans movements includes:

• “…legislative efforts to pass gender identity bills allowing changes of name, gender, and sex on identity cards and other official documents that are used to access legal work, health care, and social security”¹⁵.

• “…public protests, in social and traditional media, and in mounting public and legal pressure for the investigation, arrest, and prosecution of those responsible” for transphobic violence.¹⁶

• advocacy for “legal protections for sex workers and to offer travesti and trans sex workers pathways to other careers.”¹⁷

• “HIV/AIDS prevention and care activism.”¹⁸

• the creation and sustenance of “…performance spaces, street corners, and beauty salons” which “…provide social spaces that allow for a sense of belonging and safety and the exchange of vital information” and “…provide job opportunities, housing, and distribution sites for health-care information and materials.”¹⁹

As their identities both overlap and differ, travestis and trans women share experiences of oppression and collaborate on organized resistance to it. However, the need for self-determined medical care which unites them also relates to a point of tension. The medical establishment in Brazil is entrenched in both a dominant cisgender heterosexual patriarchal culture, as well as anglophone global influence. Because of this travestis, who generally do not seek sex reassignment surgery (SRS), are thought “to be inauthentic and ineligible for health-care services.”²⁰ Transsexuals, as a category originating in the anglophone world and viewed institutionally as pathological sufferers of gender identity disorder, are more likely to be recognized by the establishment and receive certain forms of gender-affirming medical care. Though transsexuals too are looked down upon and denied access to medical care across Latin America, their identity is at least sometimes recognized within the institutional framework of understanding.

The matter is complicated further. Jarrín cites another researcher, who found that “[t]ravesti and transsexual activists… are wary that pushing for the de-pathologization of trans identity will result in the redesignation of most gender modifications as elective procedures not eligible under the public health-care system.”²¹ These ‘gender modifications’ could include SRS and hormone therapy, the second of which is a common factor for many (though not all) travestis and transsexuals. Thus, the medicalized understanding of transsexuality is a problem without easy solutions.

But as we’ve already seen, differences and difficulties still give rise to unified political activism by travestis and trans people. The overlapping, non-identical groups stand up to the medical institutions whose services they need, and as Jarrín explains, “travestis and transsexuals present a united political front that seeks to reduce the importance of sexual reassignment surgery as the defining characteristic of a nongender-conforming individual.”²²

As an example of this unity, Jarrín points to legal advocacy for the right to change one’s name and legal sex identification by the National Association of Travestis and Transsexuals (ANTRA). In the early 2010’s, three Brazilian transgender women who stated that they planned to get SRS – but did not expect to be able to for years – won in court the ability to change their legal names because they already presented as women in their daily lives. Because many travestis also live as consistently woman-presenting, a travesti activist named Mally Malta used the same argument and also won in court, creating an analogous precedent in her state for name-change rights between travestis and trans women.²³

Indeterminacy and Self-Determination: An insight for the transgender anglosophere

I find Mally Malta’s strategy remarkable, and I think it points to some deep lessons for thinking about any politics labeled as “trans” around the world, especially in the anglosphere. There is something profoundly indeterminable in translating travesti and trans, and I think that this indeterminacy is a source of power.

Throughout this blog post, I’ve tried and struggled to consistently speak of travestis and trans women in the correct manner. They are identities whose meanings vary across time and place. They are not the same, but they can be held by the same person. They aren’t considered the same group by every institution with power over them, but they are nevertheless grouped together in their struggles. Mally Malta’s legal battle illustrates that the overlapping needs of travesti and trans communities require an indeterminate politics of self-determination. Gender-nonconforming lives warrant a form of justice which guarantees self-determination without perfect identifiability with a distinct and sanctioned category.

When I say that this is a lesson for the anglosphere, I mean that our situation is not so different. The diversity of self-identified transgender people and the philosophy behind the field of Trans Studies show how variable the subjective lives of trans people really are. While some in the community still identify with being “born in the wrong body,” many have found other distinct narratives that give meaning to their lived experience as gender non-conforming people. “Transsexual” is, in the anglosphere, becoming a dated term which is often unused by transgender people who don’t desire SRS as well as those who do. However, the all-encompassing trans label can hide the heterogeneity of the community. “Travesti and trans” is an imperfect, faltering attempt to represent multiple overlapping heterogeneous groups. However, the phrase’s very indeterminacy also makes it possible to articulate (as ANTRA and Mally Malta show) the most urgent political need for self-determination of these groups.

There is much I’ve failed to say about the varying meaning of “travesti” across the huge and heterogenous space called Latin America. I suggest the following for further readings about the contemporary and historical work and life of travestis:

“The Museo Travesti del Perú and the Histories We Deserve” by Giuseppe Campuzano and Miguel Lopez

Reclaiming Travesti Histories

Transvestism and Public Space: Transvestism and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,

Transvestite, and Transsexual Movement

Bibliography

華岡小天王. BRAZIL-SAO PAULO-GAY PARADE. September 21, 2007. Photo. https://www.flickr.com/photos/rb_taffy/1415871329/.

González, Félix Rodríguez. Diccionario gay-lésbico: vocabulario general y argot de la homosexualidad. Gredos, 2008.

Jarrín, Alvaro. “Untranslatable Subjects: Travesti Access to Public Health Care in Brazil.” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 3, no. 3–4 (November 1, 2016): 357–75. https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-3545095.

Kulick, Don. Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes. University of Chicago Press, 1998.

Rizki, Cole. “Latin/x American Trans Studies: Toward a Travesti-Trans Analytic.” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 6, no. 2 (May 1, 2019): 145–55. https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-7348426.

Valens, Keja. “Travesti and Trans Activism in Latin America and the Caribbean.” In Global Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) History, edited by Howard Chiang, Anjali Arondekar, Marc Epprecht, Jennifer Evans, Ross G. Forman, Hanadi Al-Samman, Emily Skidmore, and Zeb Tortorici, 1649–58. Farmington Hills, MI: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2019. https://link.gale.com/apps/pub/9FFF/GVRL?u=claremont_main&sid=GVRL.

Notes