CRIA (Center for Research in Anthropology)

Los aportes feministas en torno a la dicotomía sexo/género así como los debates entre esencialistas y constructivistas han permitido que el cuerpo se convierta en un elemento central para repensar las identidades sexuales. A nivel teórico, el cuerpo se ha entendido como un “texto” que refleja el simbolismo de la sociedad o como un agente del mundo social. Sin embargo, ¿qué lugar tiene el cuerpo material en estas discusiones? ¿Por qué las identidades se presentan cada vez más descorporeizadas? ¿Se puede escapar de un cuerpo natural que justifica la subordinación de quienes se alejan del modelo heterosexual y normativo? Mediante un estudio etnográfico sobre la transexualidad femenina y las modificaciones corporales que llevan a cabo para actuar y representar una cierta noción de feminidad, se argumentará que el cuerpo sigue siendo el espejo para las construcciones de género, un cuerpo dotado de una materialidad que tiene un origen social e histórico.

En este artículo la autora reflexionará sobre la gestión del espacio público en Barcelona a través del caso del trabajo sexual. Se analizarán las distintas modalidades que el Ayuntamiento de Barcelona ha promovido para, en definitiva, controlar y restringir el libre ejercicio del trabajo sexual callejero. Partiendo del reconocimiento que los espacios no son plenamente accesibles para todas y todos, se explicará el modelo de 'civismo' que Barcelona pretende implementar. Mediante antiguas prácticas de zonificación, se observa una voluntad política de invisibilizar esta actividad al mismo tiempo que se perpetúa la vulnerabilidad de las propias trabajadoras.

In this paper, the author will reflect on the management of public spaces in Barcelona through the case of sex work. The different ways that the Barcelona City Council has promoted the control and restriction of the free exercise of street sex work will be discussed. Recognizing that the spaces are not fully accessible to everyone, the model of 'civility' that Barcelona plans to implement will be explained. As a result of former zoning practices, there is a political will to make this activity 'invisible', which perpetuates the vulnerability of sex workers themselves.

Esta tesis se centra en la construcción de las identidades de travestis brasileñas migrantes. Las travestis, que no son transformistas ni transexuales, constituyen un tipo de identidad de género que no sólo pone de relieve cómo se hace el género, sino que al mismo tiempo descentran la manera en que los cuerpos se convierten en legibles. Las travestis encarnan un tipo ideal y ficcional de mujer y, simultáneamente, hacen uso de una genitalidad típicamente “masculina”. Lo femenino y lo masculino interactúan, negocian, juegan y se articulan en un mismo cuerpo travesti. Específicamente, en este estudio se analizan los tránsitos corporales y espaciales de travestis brasileñas que migran a Río de Janeiro y a Barcelona en tanto dos escalas, entre otras, en las que aprenden a transformarse en travestis y a empoderarse.

Los jóvenes gays y futuras travestis suelen abandonar sus pueblos o pequeñas ciudades de origen para comenzar a vivir sus identidades de género de manera plena. Río de Janeiro es una gran escuela para transformarse definitivamente en travestis. Ingresan en un sistema jerárquico de relaciones sociales, aprenden a modificar sus cuerpos y performar una determinada manera de entender la feminidad, se entrenan como profesionales del sexo y se preparan para dar el siguiente paso: Europa. Este continente es importante para entender las historias, pasadas y presentes, de sus migraciones transnacionales. En tanto “europeas”, “exitosas” y, algunas, “tops”, muchas pueden conseguir un estatus material, social y simbólico que las distingue del resto de sus compañeras. Estos tránsitos geográficos/espaciales son, asimismo, acompañados por transformaciones corporales concretas. Desde sus primeros “montajes” y tomas de hormonas, pasando por los sucesivos “bombeos” de silicona líquida industrial, hasta llegar a las tan codiciadas cirugías estéticas, ellas transitan sus propios itinerarios identitarios. En definitiva, cuando las travestis migran no sólo transitan por distintos territorios, sino que al mismo tiempo están construyendo su propia identidad como travestis.

Utilizo el concepto ‘migración trans’ para reflejar que sus movilizaciones espaciales no se efectúan exclusivamente para ganar dinero como trabajadoras del sexo, sino también para satisfacer demandas más amplias a nivel corporal (feminizar sus cuerpos), social (ser respetadas por la sociedad y admiradas por el resto de las travestis) y sexual/genérico (vivir con mayor libertad sus prácticas sexuales e identidades de género). En suma, en la tesis se reflexiona acerca de los cuerpos, la sexualidad y las migraciones de las travestis brasileñas que buscan un lugar –muchas veces frágil- en el mundo. Este recorrido teórico y etnográfico atraviesa los contornos de una geografía travesti que se revela curvilínea, “femenina”, “bella” y, simultáneamente, “viril”.

This article offers an exploration into the ways in which the researcher’s body enters into a permanent dialogue with the practices and the discourses of the research participants, and is transformed into an essential investigative tool. Based on my ethnographic experience amongst a group of Brazilian travesti sex workers, I will show how my own ‘imperfect’ body, according to the travesti canons of feminine aesthetics, became an element that awarded me visibility and served as a bridge to interaction with them. At the same time, I was accidentally interpreted by the group as the ‘photographer’. From this corporeal interaction, and via the medium of the camera, I was able to legitimize my position amongst travestis and open a new field of theoretical enquiry, developing, therefore, Wacquant’s proposal (2004) on a ‘corporeal sociology’ in the understanding of the active role that the body takes in the research process.

Drawing on my fieldwork experience with Brazilian travesti1 sex workers in Rio de Janeiro, I argue that travestis’ desire for beauty both structures their daily experiences and empowers them. Travestis have to engage with a complicated, dangerous and expensive career in order to construct their identities. The attainment of a beautiful body is at the heart of their interest. Travestis seek a sense of ‘perfection’, that is, they strive to be like women, but beautiful and desirable ones. Their aim is to create bodies that can achieve feminine and glamorous shapes. Every bodily improvement reinforces their self-identity and status within the group. Although their lives can be very hard – it is difficult to be a travesti in Brazilian society, which is rather intolerant of sexual and gender diversity – it is through the processes they engage in to produce beautiful and feminine bodies that travestis give meaning to their existence and find a place for themselves in their communities and in the world, despite that place being uncertain and marginalised. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, the article focuses on the embodied experiences of a group of Brazilian travestis. Instead of considering travestis’ beauty as a mere imitation of normative femininity, my goal is to redefine beauty in relation to its capacity to create identities and subjects who feel empowered and desired. Finally, travestis’ creation of agency through beauty is analysed against the background of heteronormativity and ongoing transphobic violence in Brazil.

Most literature on prostitution centres exclusively on street and female sex workers. Considering the lack of inclusion of trans sex workers within research agendas and public policies, in this article I analyse websites where trans women offer their services in Portugal and the United Kingdom. I examine the way trans women escorts present themselves to potential clients through detailed descriptions of their bodies’ sizes, physical attributes, personal characteristics, and lovemaking skills, and how they negotiate gender, nationality, race, ethnicity and sexuality in relation to the cultural and socio-economic demands of the market. An intersectional framework provides the critical perspective from which to consider how certain trans narratives are displayed through these online advertisements while decentring hegemonic notions (mainly, white and middle class) of representing trans experiences. This exploratory research aims to better understand the online trans sex industry as a place of empowerment where ‘beautiful’ trans escorts can strategically position themselves in order to succeed in a competitive market and, simultaneously, lay claim for a certain degree of (finite) recognition.

This book sheds new light on the interconnections between identity, gender and geographical displacement. At its centre are Brazilian travesti migrants, assigned as male at birth but later seeking to convey the aesthetic attributes of women by repeatedly performing a minutely-studied type of femininity. Despite the fact that they have been migrating between Brazil and Europe for more than forty years, very little is know about them, especially in the English-speaking world. This work therefore fills a significant lacuna in our understandings of sexualities, bodies and trans issues, whilst rejecting hegemonic terms such as 'transsexual' and 'transgender' in favour of the specificity of the travesti. What it presents is an ethnographical study of their bodily and geographic-spatial migrations, analysing how they become travestis through the gendered modification of their bodies, their involvement in sex work, and the transnational migrations to Europe that many of them make. Examining their lives in both Brazil and Europe, it also analyses how their migrations influence the construction of their subjectivities. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Brazil and Barcelona, this exciting book will appeal to all those interested in gender, sexuality and transgender issues.

During 2002, the extensive archaeological excavations of the ancient Constância necropolis (Centre of Portugal), dated from 14th-19th centuries, resulted in the exhumation of 151 individuals. Among the several paleopathological cases, a middle-aged female skeleton with osteolytic lesions in her skull, axial skeleton, upper limbs and femurs was observed. These pathological findings are characterised by an asymmetric pattern with osteolytic focus of distinct size and irregular shape. Some skeletal elements display both osteolytic and osteoblastic lesions. The latter exhibit deposition of fine layers of woven bone. Lesions were observed macroscopically and radiology was used as a complementary method of scrutiny, especially in cases of unclear observation. The case was diagnosed as that of a probable metastatic carcinoma due to the multifocal distribution of the lesions in areas of intense haematopoietic activity, their morphology and some osteoblastic responses, as well as the presence of pathological fractures in the ribs. The skeleton's sex and age at death are in agreement with the proposed diagnostic, constituting the first case of malignant carcinoma detected in non-identified Portuguese human skeletal remains.

Trauma has incapacitated humans and their ancestors throughout time. Although, the interpretation of injuries aetiology among past populations is very difficult, if not impossible, especially in what concerns the study of interpersonal violence. In this paper, the evidence of trauma was investigated in a well‑preserved skeletal from the roman necropolis of Quinta da Torrinha/Quinta de Santo António (Monte da Caparica) (AD III‑V). The skeleton of an elderly male, and probably a roman soldier, exhibits multiple fractures focalized in the right clavicle and first metacarpal bone, left ribs, vertebrae and sacrum. The right fibula exhibits a bone growth, eventually secondary to a muscle pull. The morphology and distribution of the lesions may suggest interpersonal violence, however, the skeletal evidence is rarely conclusive and the possibility of being the result of daily hazards can not be rejected.

O trauma é responsável por alguma incapacidade física entre os humanos actuais, tal como terá sido entre os nossos ancestrais. Apesar desta presença constante, a interpretação das lesões e a respectiva etiologia é bastante difícil em populações do passado, senão mesmo impossível, principalmente no que concerne ao estudo da violência interpessoal. Neste trabalho, as evidências de trauma foram investigadas num esqueleto bem preservado, exumado da necrópole romana da Quinta da Torrinha/Quinta de Santo António (Monte da Caparica) (séculos III‑V d.C.). O indivíduo idoso do sexo masculino, provavelmente um soldado romano, exibia múltiplas fracturas focalizadas na clavícula e no primeiro metacárpico direitos, nas costelas esquerdas, nas vértebras e no sacro. O perónio direito apresentava um crescimento ósseo, eventualmente secundário a uma luxação. A morfologia e a distribuição das lesões poderão sugerir violência interpessoal. O facto das evidências osteológicas não serem conclusivas, impede que se exclua a hipótese dos traumatismos decorrerem de acidentes.