Why is it that brazilian girls all have balls?

[TJ347]

Most tgirls who still have dicks still have balls too, and I'll bet good money on that. I have no sources other than personal experiences and common sense, and in truth, need no source other than that last one.

[LG]

its based on several articles some of which have been posted on this very site...

There was this older post by seanchai too:

The reality might be worse than what you would probably like to hear but without naming specific models (as I don't know) most of them have probably died of Aids. Although many of the TS's in Brazil have became more aware recently, it's still frustrating to see so many more openly having unprotected sex. I'm don't get their mind-set at all on why they'd do that knowing what the chances are but Brazilians in general, seem to like to live young and beautiful. I know of a number of models that members of this site lust/have lusted over who were HIV+ and still working in the industry.
My attitude on Brazil - admire from afar and if you do go down there BE VERY SAFE.
Others may have relocated (especially to Europe) or still work in the industry as "pimps/madames" and such. Others may revert back to their male selves.
seanchai

I think seanchai, Louie Damazo and a handful of others might be able to enlighten us on how frequently this kind of thing happens.

[DJ_Asia]

Yes Lisa Lawer did change her identity back to homme...and to my knowledge thats it.Perhaps I was having a nap when one or 2 other bonecas reverted back to male and they forgot to notify me, but even if anyone can provide 50 brasilian girls who changed back...so what...your generalization is groundless TSNTX since there are so many girls in Brasil to begin with those 50 would represent like 0.1% of the total head count of Brasilian trannies.

[odelay24]

I don't know if it's worth noting, but Brazilian society is one of heteronormativity, so it would be more acceptable to be trans than gay.


Oh and in the case of Lisa Lawer, I think it's obvious that the reason she went back was because she 'found God'.

[peggygee]

Travesti



As the author puts it, "I was riding [while visiting Salvador, Brazil] ... on a bus. ... I noticed a number of scantily-clad figures ... talking and laughing and clearly looking out for customers to pick them up for sex ... many of them seemed to lack breasts ... and their voices were definitely not women's. Although I had no plans to do fieldwork in Brazil ... the figures on the corners intrigued me."

The fact that the author is gay is an asset as he devotes a year to living with these prostitutes in one of the poorest sections of Salvador. He hangs out with the travesti (as they are called), records their conversations (many of which appear in the book verbatim), asks them pointed yet friendly questions, and tries to delve into their reality.

Early on, he learns that "Travesti find themselves obligated to continually reassert their rights to occupy urban space." Most of them share a common background: growing up with feminine sensibilities, having an early homoerotic experience (being penetrated), being kicked out or rejected by parents, accidentally meeting a travesti, liking what they see, and joining the "life."

However, there's nothing romantic about the life. The travesti rob their clients, inject silicone and take hormones to make their bodies more womanlike, are beaten up, live in postage-stamp-size rooms, can only hold boyfriends by giving them money and gifts, get AIDS, grow old, sometimes become drug-addicted, and rarely have financial security. They steal from each other, fight over boyfriends, and feel unloved.

But author Kulick finds that they share a sharp perception of their reality (for one thing, they don't claim to be women). Also, they make much more money at prostitution than they would otherwise, sometimes enjoy their sexual experiences, and are able to express their femininity.

Yet, and here is where the book seems most valuable, the travesti phenomena is a result of Brazil's sexual mores and gender traditions. Despite the image many have of a free-spirited, wide-open Brazil (Carnival comes to mind), the everyday reality is much different. This is the Brazil where gays and lesbians are mostly underground, and heterosexuality is exalted. Yet, as everywhere, there are "regular" men who are turned on by women with cocks.

The author wonders why gender-bending takes the form of travesti in Brazil, where feminine men keep their penises and become prostitutes, while men with similar traits in the Northern Hemisphere often choose surgical sex changes. Perhaps it's because in Brazil gender is determined by whether one wants to penetrate or be penetrated, while up north gender is usually determined by whether one has a penis or a vagina.

Contradictions abound. Travesti have penises, but despise men who act like women. If a live-in boyfriend asks (after having been the penetrator in the sex act) to be penetrated by a travesti, he is typically cast out. The show has been ruined.

Kulick's descriptions of travesti injecting silicone -- as much as several liters -- is bound to turn a few stomachs.

The author takes issue with some other sociologists' takes on travesti and about prostitution in general. In particular, he is intrigued that travesti have found ways to exert power over their lives and their customers, and have found ways to exist in a threatening environment.

(Reviewer: Valory Gravois) (Copyright ©1999 by Alchemist/Light Publishing

http://www.alchemist-light.com/reviews/revf.htm

Travesti
Nonfiction by Don Kulick
Copyright 1998, 269 pages (with photographs)
University of Chicago Press
ISBN 0-226-46100-9

Capsule: Taking a sociologist's under-the-microscope approach, Don Kulick spends a year living among Brazilian homosexual, crossdressing prostitutes. He portrays them as a society-within-a-society, comes to some unconventional conclusions, and does a lot of thinking about Brazilian sexuality versus that of other countries.

[mbf]

bc the brasillian ones are only "TS" for the money/escort/porn scene... when theyve had enough they go back to being men.

hear, hear, the expert on Brazil ts matters is giving a free lecture. based on exactly what? the (in)famous Lisa Lawer-case? or your personal experience, as a white, young, middle class TS born and raised in an OECD country, probably not speaking portugese, never been to brazil not knowing any brazil tgirl personally (note: these are all assumptions, correct me if i am wrong) - is this a fien example of western arrogance or just sloppiness?

the fact that youre a ts yourself isnt a free ticket for posting unbased rubbish

and you dont know more about the brazil or thai ts-scene than the everage guy whio comes here.

[peggygee]

Carnival time for Brazil's female men


John Ryle
Monday March 9, 1998
Guardian Unlimited

The RuPaul lookalike in a lace microskirt plying his trade on the Avenida Augusto Severo in downtown Rio is one of the wonders of the world. His eyelashes are like spider's webs; his hair, straightened and dyed, tumbles to his shoulders; his decolletage would put Pamela Anderson to shame. And there are others. They are wearing satin hot-pants, leather bikinis and denim cut-offs, carmine lipstick and six-inch heels: all the dress-sense of international hookerdom.

Cross dressing is cross cultural, maybe universal, but the startling visibility of travestis on the streets of Rio and other Brazilian cities is unique. They are easier to find than female prostitutes, easier than hustlers, or drug dealers, or agents of the illegal numbers game, easiest to find of all purveyors of illicit pleasures. In Brazil, travestis and their clientele are a more-or-less acknowledged part of the economy of desire.
During carnival in Rio, men en travesti are highly visible, on the street, in the pages of glossy magazines, and on the floats of some minor samba schools. There are even carnival groups that parade entirely in drag. These are mostly amateurs, though, out for the day. They would not want to be called travestis, a word that, in Brazilian Portuguese, normally implies a sex worker. For professional travestis the partial inversion of social order that is one of the features of carnival - and the unrestrained pursuit of pleasure that accompanies it - are a year-round phenomenon. For them it's a business.

And what exactly do their clients want? The travestis, it has been argued, shape themselves deliberately in the image of the sexual fantasies of their patrons, the respectably-dressed middle-aged men peering out of the windows of shiny cars that cruise along the avenue where they are on parade. By this interpretation they are not freaks; they are walking embodiments of the perverse desires of these patrons, soi-disant straight men.

A poor gay boy from the boondocks doesn't have a lot of choices in Brazil; becoming a travesti is one - dangerous but glamorous. One or two travestis have jumped the ghetto, being courted by public figures and feted in the salons of Rio. Most, of course, have the hard lives of prostitutes anywhere. To play the role they must have adapted themselves to painful and sometimes life-threatening surgical procedures, often self-administered.

Hormones and injections of silicone simulate female secondary characteristics. Nips and tucks do the rest. What travestis do not go in for are sex-change operations. Such operations are illegal anyway in Brazil, despite its reputation as the world capital of cosmetic surgery. But this is not why travestis don't go the whole way; it is because, by their account - and there is no other available source of information - their clients are looking for a sexual partner who is neither male nor female, but a paradoxical combination of the two, a sexual chimera, a fantasy of polymorphous perversity, with the look and feel of the feminine and the penetrative capacity of the male.

Travestis - those I've spoken to and those few who have spoken or written on the subject for publication - say that most of their clients want to take the passive role in sex, but with someone who is visibly a women. Travestis are thus, in the blunter language of Boogie Nights, the film about the porn industry in California, chicks with dicks.

There's a book about this, just published in Brazil, called Erotic Engineering, an assemblage of photographs and interviews with travestis - and one or two of their mothers. I was sitting on the plane home reading it. It's a curious book, halfway between a medical text and a chat-show transcript, with pictures to make your eyebrow stud rattle. It certainly kept my neighbours elbow of the armrest.

I found myself reflecting on the wider field of body modification, another cultural universal. We have had castratos. And female genital mutilation. We have body piercing and cosmetic surgery. We have anorexia. If travestis are particularly shocking, it is because cross-dressing in Anglo-Saxon countries has been publicly domesticated as a form of stage entertainment. Only in Brazil, where sex is theatre, has it become a particular species of debauchery. The lives of travestis are as difficult as those of prostitutes anywhere. But they manage to make something spectacular out of the frequently grim constrains of their existence.

[LG]

Interesting stuff, Peggy. I think I've seen the Guardian article before. But I think we need to make a distinction between what we define as transsexuals and the travesti. I would guess that a more correct translation of 'travesti' would be 'transvestite' or even 'crossdresser' as the travesti do not identify themselves as women and do not intend to go through transformation. Some may take hormones but I doubt many have any surgery.

I have heard the word 'boneca' (which means 'doll') being used for TSs in Brazil but don't know if this is the word most commonly used and how clearly the Brazilians define between TV and TS.

I would be keen to hear what more of our Brazilian friends and those who have experience of the industry in Brazil have to say about this.

[Kabuki]

Obviously, praetor could offer some real insight here. I know I'm curious to hear what he has to say. As an individual from the states, I know I can't address the topic. I've heard certain opinions before this thread was created. I would like to hear some facts on the subject, or studies to support individual views though.

[tsntx]

bc the brasillian ones are only "TS" for the money/escort/porn scene... when theyve had enough they go back to being men.

hear, hear, the expert on Brazil ts matters is giving a free lecture. based on exactly what? the (in)famous Lisa Lawer-case? or your personal experience, as a white, young, middle class TS born and raised in an OECD country, probably not speaking portugese, never been to brazil not knowing any brazil tgirl personally (note: these are all assumptions, correct me if i am wrong) - is this a fien example of western arrogance or just sloppiness?

the fact that youre a ts yourself isnt a free ticket for posting unbased rubbish

and you dont know more about the brazil or thai ts-scene than the everage guy whio comes here.

i happen to know 4 so you jerk offs can talk all the crap you want... i didnt say ALL... i didnt claim to be the know all and as usual peggy posted a relevant article that only further BACKED what i said up... so keep dreaming you jackasses that have met 1 ts if any at all know what the fuck your talking about... w/ the exception of dj... but that still doesnt mean just bc there is one well known case shes the only.