Society for the Study of Social Problems

Travesti is an ethnography of male to female (MtF) transgendered individuals living in a poor section of Brazil. The author's purpose is to examine the bodily and social practices of travestis and how they construct their own realities. Don Kulick, spent years living within the same neighborhood (and building) as the people he interviewed. Travesti's, he states, "adopt female names, clothing styles, hairstyles, cosmetic practices, and linguistic pronouns, and they ingest large amounts of female hormones and pay other travestis to inject up to twenty liters of industrial silicone directly into their bodies in order to acquire feminine bodily features such as breasts, wide hips, large thighs, and, most importantly, expansive buttocks. Despite all these changes travestis do not wish to remove their penis, and they do not consider themselves to be (emphasis his) women" (pg. 5-6). Regardless of the physical changes travestis go through, they self-identify as homosexual not transsexual (or transgender for that matter), thus Dr. Kulick proposes that this makes them unique in a world (he includes hijras within this category along with American trans-people Kate Bornstein and Sandy Stone). Dr. Kulick then moves to discuss the social place of travestis within Brazilian culture (they are prominent in their media which alternate admiring them for their looks and dismissing them as criminals) and how the social commentaries have little to do with the reality that many travestis live within (poverty, at risk of experiencing violence [especially from the police], drug abuse, HIV and other STDs). He wishes to correct the inaccurate presentation of tranvestis that has appeared within the media, both public and academic. Read more....