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Disrupting Dichotomous Boundaries of Gender and Sexuality

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Brazilian 'Travesti' Migrations

Part of the book series: Genders and Sexualities in the Social Sciences ((GSSS))

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Abstract

This chapter reviews the main theoretical frameworks used to question the sex/gender binary system. Anthropologist and feminist scholars have contributed to destabilising the male/female binary and visualising the fictional character of sex. The deconstructionist turn, particularly through queer theory and politics, has used trans issues as the paradigm of disruption and transgression. However, queer theory has also been criticised for its radical indeterminacy and neglect of materiality and trans people’s lived experiences. I discuss how travestis’ embodiments, despite the absence of a political will of transgression, interpellate heteronormativity. Concurrently, I explain how they also reinforce a normalised heterosexuality while strengthening the male/female binary through their sexual practices.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Before Butler and queer analysis, ethnomethodologists Garfinkel (1967), and Kessler and McKenna (1978) analysed transsexuality as an example that provides ‘key evidence about how gender categories are sustained in everyday practices of speech, styles of interaction, and divisions of labor’ (Connell 2012, 860).

  2. 2.

    Although these categories are explained further in Chap. 4, travestis create symbolic and corporeal hierarchies that organise them as ‘successful’ or not according to—mostly—the degree of beauty achieved.

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  1. Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Julieta Vartabedian

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Vartabedian, J. (2018). Disrupting Dichotomous Boundaries of Gender and Sexuality. In: Brazilian 'Travesti' Migrations. Genders and Sexualities in the Social Sciences. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77101-4_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77101-4_2

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