Abstract

Transgender groups studies in non-Western societies inevitably touch the issue of the term Third Gender, coined by M. Kay Martin and Barbara Voorhies in 1975, presented as a heuristic concept that raised the nonconformity of binary gender patterns and sexuality to interpret non-Western cultures.

Following feminist studies from the 1980s and the political strengthening of the transgender movement by the expansion of sexual rights, to Towle & Morgan (2002) the mention of Third Gender could both strengthen emancipatory projects of dismantling gender binaries and sexuality, including those groups in the same imagined community, as well as strengthen the exoticization of non-Western groups, treating them as static, original  or prototransgenders: a monocultural understanding of history that would relegate non-Western groups to the past as opposed to the dynamism of Western modernity, a west and the rest discourse already well known and criticised in post-colonial studies.

In this sense, we propose (a) how Western interpretations of Brazilian transvestites (transgender women sex workers) justified a set of knowledges that have been disputed based on the classic study by Don Kulick (1998). And (b) what are the implications of these analyses for self-recognition, subjective demands and policies of these women when immigrating to Europe, a time when they are objectively confronted with the western reading of their identity, desires, problems and empowerment strategies.

Cited articles:

Kulick, Don (1998), Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes, University Of Chicago Press.

Towle, Evan B. & Lynn M. Morgan (2006), ‘Romancing the Transgender Native: rethinking the use of the “Third gender” Concept’, in Stryker, Susan and Stephen Whittle (eds.), The transgender studies reader, New York: Routledge, 666-84.

Further readings:

Towle, Evan B.; Lynn M. Morgan (2006), “Romancing the Transgender Native: rethinking the use of the Third Gender concept”, in Susan Striker; Whittle Stephen (orgs.), The Transgender studies reader. New York: Routledge, 666-684. [To access the articles up for discussion send an email to gw@ces.uc.pt]

Bio note

Fernanda Branco Belizário is Brazilian, Ph.D. Candidate in Post Colonialisms and Global Citizenship at Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra. Holds a Master's Degree in Communication and Consumption and Bachelor's degrees in Social Communication and Social Sciences.Worked for important public and nonprofit organizations on project management and content edition. Her fields of study are sociology of consumption, social movements and epistemologies of the south.