I read a paper on the travesti last night. They are a group of Brazilian “Transwomen” &globally,they receive the most violence and murder of that demographic. I put Transwomen in quotes though because they do not share exactly the same western conception of what Transwomen are.

Like many cultures where Queer Theory has not taken root they don’t generally view themselves as women (though the western view is on the rise).Those the author spoke to went so far as to say they thought it would be madness to believe they were women,given they were born male

For me,reading abt Transwomen in at least some other cultures gives me perspective. It makes me even more aware this is an entitlement movement here with nothing,really,to do with the phenomenon of feminine males who live “like women” which is consistently found in many cultures

This isn’t to say gender roles&their enforcement aren’t generating this phenomenon given the discomfort with homosexuality itself that is present in many of these cultures,but it does at least show there are other ways to concieve of this. And other ways to demarcate their group

It is interesting that it is harder to find references to AGP’s in a lot of other cultures. It’s been suggested to me by several people that this is because it is just something occurring in the western world. I don’t believe that, honestly.

As around 3 percent of the male population are AGP here, I’d be very surprised if we didn’t see at least an amount of that in other lands. One hint that might be the case was in this paper about the travesti.

A vast majority of them are prostitutes (up to 79%) and some of their male clients liked to be referred to as she and to dress up as women during sex. These men sound at least on the cursory reference they receive in this paper to be autogynephiles

One of the more startling things about travesti is how they modify their bodies to appear more feminine. They take extremely high doses of hormones that they buy over the counter, and then, in Salvador at least, they inject themselves with industrial silicone.

This is the kind of plastic used to make dashboards etc,and they use it to give themselves the appearance of feminine hips and bottoms.They live difficult lives&are often subjected to police brutality and extreme poverty. They frequently die young and rarely reach 50.

Their reality, their pain and their murders are nonetheless both collapsed and exploited to justify mantras such as “Transwomen are women” in our countries. They are used to assert that it is literal violence to oppose even the most extreme demands of trans activists.

Reading about them made me very sad for so much of what they suffer, and in a world we wish to be just I believe we should definitely help them suffer less. We should do something.

That something, however, is not the dismantling of women’s rights in our own countries.

@threadreaderapp please unroll