Don Kulick, Travesti

[lupinIII]

Hey all, just wondering if anyone has read Travesti by Don Kulick, I've heard good things about it, apparently it's one of the best ethnographic studies of sex work as well as looking at the social nature of gender and sexuality. I've read a couple of articles by him and he seems to have done a lot of work Brazilian transgendered sex-workers. Just wondering if it's worth picking up the book.

Cheers.

[BrendaQG]

(edited to link to a more complete preview)
I read it and I think it is worth checking out of the Library. You can find some of it on google books.

Travesti by Don Kulick

What it shows to the rest of the world is the reality of life for many transsexual/transgender women. Not just in Brazil but in many third world countries of all stripes in the world.

Brazil is one of those places where we see many video's showing one lovely after the other. We have Roberta Close as a success story. We have HA's own Danielle Foxx as well. So many people assume it must be a TG paradise. It is not (no place in the world is) at least not for most of the girls.

IMO you will learn about more than TS/TG's in Brazil. You will learn some things that would apply in a culturally morphed form around the world. I see things in that book that are very familiar. I see things in other TS/TG groups around the world that are familiar and found in some form in Kulicks book. If you really want to understand something of the minds of the women you fantasize over you will read that book.



What you will learn:

In the book Kulic talks about living with them as a gay man and outsider. He talks about how the police treated the travesti's i.e. mass arrest, beatings, scarring them for life. he talks a bit about Candomoble (sp?) a sort of Cathilico-voodoo they practice, and their general superstitions. He also talks about how they relate to men who wish to be topped (their clients) VS the way they relate to the men who they are submissive to (their boyfriends). He also talks about how the travesti's see sex, SRS and how they are open about the role sex played in their development (that when they tell their life stories attraction to men narratively precedes gender variance. To him this was worth several page of discussion.) I found most interesting their view of physiology and why to them it makes no sense to have SRS given their understanding.

[lupinIII]

It does sound like something I want to read, in essence I'm interested in ethnographies that deal with marginalised groups in urban environments. As opposed to most of the stuff I'm forced to read detailing rituals in rustic rural subsistence communities.

What you mentioned is another thing that's really interesting is the way they define their bodies not as female but as "not a man". I was reading in an article by Kulick in one of my 1st year courses that gender was intrinsically linked to the sexual role and in being bottomed they give up their male status.

That said maybe I'm just a perv trying to rationalise my sexual appetite by exclaiming that 'it's all for academia!!' 'I don't really like sucking dick, I was just trying to get my informants to feel comfortable!!'

Thanks for the reply and the link Brenda.

[BrendaQG]

I aim to please.

It never ceases to amaze me how so much of what life as a transwoman is like remains constant across time and cultures.

[Jacques-alors]

Yes and he also has some articles in American Anthropologist in the 90s when he did the field research. Interesting and quite accessible read.