Oct 272012
Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes (Worlds of Desire: The Chicago Series on Sexuality, Gender, and Culture)
In 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, an
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excellent work,
I was actually in the field in Salvador Bahia at the same time as Don Kulick was doing his fieldwork for this book, and I also read the manuscript before it was published. He and I have discussed at length various theoretical aspects of the book (I have a different interpretation of how gender works in Brazil). Knowing the accuracy of his ethnography as I do, I think this is one of the important books to have been published in anthropology and gender in recent years. It is also an engaging, insightful and fascinating read.
I write this review to counter some insinuating remarks I have just read here about Dr. Kulick and the nature of his fieldwork. Dr. Kuluck is a linguist; he studied Portuguese intensively when he arrived in Brazil and was very soon completely fluent. His understanding of Bahia slang–very much needed for any work on the streets–is superb. In order to get the in-depth ethnography that he did, he had to stay in the horrific tenement conditions in which many of the transvestites with whom he worked live in Salvador, he also stayed with them on the streets until late, recording conversations. As with most field situations, Dr. Kulick was quite fond of some of his informants, less so of others (as would be expected); as a gay man, he was neither a potential client nor boyfriend (since these are people who consider themselves ‘straight’), a situation that, I believe, aided him in gaining the trust and acceptance of his informants. My impression was that, although he empathized with his informants in many ways, he certainly did not ‘identify’ with them.
The controversy this book has sparked speaks more to its breaking new ground than anything else. I highly recommend it.
Margaret Willson (author of “Dance Lest We All Fall Down: A Journey of Friendship, Poverty, Power and Peace”)
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|O bicho pegou!,
I found this book to be very well written and, in several instances, it made me long to return to my anthropological studies at NYU. Had I only been a curious reader I probably would have found this book brilliant, but my reading was shaded by the fact that I personally know many travestis in Salvador (Peruco, Xuxuca, Kit Mahoney, Angelica) and therefore found the exclusion of several things to be particularly odd.
The importance of having a basic understanding of the language and culture of a country in order to do fieldwork and understand anything in that country cannot be overstated, and the fact that Professor Kulick went into the “field” totally green must have put him at a significant disadvantage. This disadvantage would explain his cultural missteps and failure to see his “subjects” within the larger Brazilian context. The lack of contextualization is akin to discussing America’s obesity problem without discussing the automobile, the microwave, women in the workforce, lack of school physical education programs, etc. A population teeming with 300-lb. people seems very strange indeed when not seen in context.
Though far more thorough than most researchers, it’s incomprehensible to me that he barely discusses race/ color and class at all. It’s important to note that nearly all travestis are negra (black) and mulata/ morena (brown) and come from the lowest social classes and everyone knows that, in Brazil, the primary contribution that negras and morenas are thought to offer society is their sexual services (mulata e pra transar, branca e pra casar).
It’s also strange that there is hardly any discussion of religion and, being a gringo and all, Professor Kulick seems to look down on Candomble and tries to defend his new travesti friends by asserting that they are not “devotees” of the religion. All of the travestis that I know practice Candomble, but would never admit it to a prejudiced gringo who doesn’t seem to understand the religion anyway. In fact, by ignoring Candomble, Professor Kulick missed a crucial element in understanding the place of the travesti in society. It is in the terreiro that Brazilians become accustomed to seeing men dressed as women and learn to respect their special status.
This book, though thoughtfully put together, lacks an understanding of Brazilian norms which would have made the work more complete. The knowledge that, for instance, Brazilians are used to mixture (e.g. being culturally/ racially mixed, practicing Candomble and Catholicism simultaneously) means that travestis are one of many hybrid classes in a highly hybridized nation.
Further, knowing what I know about baiano travestis, I am certain that they would not have allowed Professor Kulick to hang out with them if they didn’t consider him to be one of them. It’s clear to me in his writing that he greatly enjoyed spending time with the bichada and was “se sentindo” just as much as they were.
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|How gender transcends categoric definition!,
I had the opportunity to read this manuscript before it was published, while taking a class with Prof. Kulick. My criticisms of it then still stand now…though I have in many ways only deepened my respect for the finer points of this work. I thoroughly applaud the way that Kulick attempts to make clear the way in which the travesti gender identity is a complexity of biological definition, social categorization, and personal identification. Certainly, the way in which Kulick has encouraged his subjects to share their understanding of gender and sexuality SO openly may help all gender theorists and anthropologists better take to task gender issues like these. As criticism, the book simply does not contextualize the travesti experience. Kulick mentions little and/or nothing about the outside understandings of travesti identity…or the ways in which the broader categories of Brazilian sexual identity might encourage the development of a travesti individual. As well, Kulick is almost TOO involved with his sources. I am certainly NOT preaching anthropological objectivity here (an impossible task) but felt that about 60% of the dialogue in the book was about Kulick’s personal desire to “share” in the travesti experience and/or to be identified as an “insider,” something which we could have figured out from a decisive, close-knit, introspection of the travesti culture.
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