Travestis

The term travesti () is used in Latin America—to designate people who were assigned male at birth, but develop a gender identity according to different expressions of femininity. Other terms have been invented and are used in South America in an attempt to further distinguish it from cross-dressing, drag, or pathologizing connotations. In Spain, the term was used in a similar way during the Franco era, but it was replaced with the advent of the medical model of transsexuality in the late 1980s and early 1990s, in order to rule out negative stereotypes. The arrival of these concepts occurred later in Latin America than in Europe, so the concept of travesti lasted over time with various connotations.

Travesti identities are heterogeneous and multiple, so it is difficult to reduce them to universal explanations. They have been studied by various disciplines, especially anthropology, which has extensively documented the phenomenon in both classical and more recent ethnographies. Researchers have generally proposed one of three main hypotheses to define travestis: that they constitute a "third gender" (like the hijras of India and the muxe of Mexico), that they reinforce the gender binarism of their society, or that they actually deconstruct the category of gender altogether. Although it is a concept widely used in Latin America, the definition of travesti is controversial, and it is still regarded as a transphobic slur depending on the context. Very similar groups exist across the region, with names such as , , , , , , and , among others.

Travestis not only dress contrary to their assigned sex, but also adopt female names and pronouns and often undergo cosmetic practices, hormone replacement therapy, filler injections and cosmetic surgeries to obtain female body features, although generally without modifying their genitality nor considering themselves as women. The travesti population has historically been socially vulnerable and criminalized, subjected to social exclusion and structural violence, with discrimination, harassment, arbitrary detentions, torture and murder being commonplace throughout Latin America. As a result, most travestis resort to prostitution as their only source of income, which in turn, plays an important role in their identity. The word "travesti", originally pejorative in nature, was reappropriated by Peruvian, Brazilian and Argentine activists, as it has a regional specificity that combines a generalized condition of social vulnerability, an association with sex work, the exclusion of basic rights and its recognition as a non-binary and political identity. Notable travesti rights activists include Argentinians Lohana Berkins, Claudia Pía Baudracco, Diana Sacayán, Marlene Wayar and Susy Shock, and Yren Rotela from Paraguay.

Terminology

Although the use of the term is still common in Spanish, some contemporary authors reject it to avoid confusion with the practice of cross-dressing, as well as the use of the suffix ''-ism'', which comes from the medical sciences and is considered pathologizing. In response to this, the use of the terms ( (Portuguese) or ) (Spanish) has become widespread in Brazilian academic literature since the 2000s, and has been adopted by some Spanish-speaking authors, while others have opted for the words (roughly "travestity"), or (roughly "transvestivity"). In the same way, the words and (roughly "transvestiteness" or "transvestment") are used as an alternative to "transvestism", but to designate (i.e. drag performers). The Hispanicism ''travestism'' ( en, transvestism) is sometimes seen in articles in English about the topic, especially by South American authors.

The use of the term precedes that of "transgender" in the region and its differentiation from the notions of "transsexual" and "trans woman" is complex and can vary depending on the context, ranging from considering it a regional equivalent to a unique identity. The original use of the word refers to the act of cross-dressing, and became extended in the 1960s to refer to individuals who dressed as women as a performance or in their day-to-day lives. However, travestis not only choose to dress contrary to their assigned sex, but also adopt female names and pronouns and often undergo cosmetic practices, hormone replacement therapy, filler injections and cosmetic surgeries to obtain female body features, although generally without modifying their genitals nor considering themselves as women.Kulick, 1998, p. 5 As such, they may be described as a transfeminine gender identity, and have been considered a regional equivalent to the notion of " pre-op transsexual".

After a long period of criminalization, " sexual deviations" became an object of study in the medical and sexual sciences, which established the different forms of deviation.Fernández, 2004. p. 22 In a first period, between 1870 and 1920, a large amount of research was produced about people who cross-dressed or wished to adopt the role assigned to the opposite sex. In 1910, the renowned German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld coined the term transvestite ( in Spanish and Portuguese), introduced in his text ''Transvestites: The Erotic Drive To Cross Dress'' (german: Die Transvestiten: ein Untersuchung über den erotischen Verkleidungstrieb).Fernández, 2004. p. 29 Hirschfeld used the term to describe "people who feel a compulsion to wear clothes of the opposite sex" and rejected the idea that they were a variant of homosexuality, which at that time was a very widespread conception within sexology. Between 1920 and 1950, the terms transvestism and eonism were incorporated into the scientific literature, although generally these reports only supplemented those of previous years.Fernández, 2004. p. 23 During the 1950s the term transsexual—first used by American sexologist David Oliver Cauldwell—gained relevance at the same time that sexual identity clinics and sex change surgery emerged.Fernández, 2004. p. 31 In this way, since the late 1960s and during the 1970s, transvestism was put aside as a topic of medical interest. The term transgender was popularized by American activist Virginia Prince in the late 1960s to designate those who transgressed gender norms but did not identify with the or transsexual categories, and by the 1980s its widespread use in core countries was established. However, the "trans" and "transgender" categories cannot be easily translated outside core countries, due to the complexity of practices they encompass. The use of the term precedes theirs in Latin America, and their differentiation is complex and can vary depending on the context. Scholar Cole Rizki pointed out that "trans and identifications are constantly shifting and should not be understood as mutually exclusive. The tensions between trans and as identificatory categories are often untranslatable, leading us to ask what sorts of limitations and possibilities are embedded within the terms' distinctions and critical affinities."

Despite being an emic concept widely used throughout the region, the definition of is a source of controversy, as it refers to heterogeneous and multiple identities, hence being paradoxical to reduce them to universal explanations. Groups very similar to travestis exist across Latin America, with names such as , , , , ,
, among others.Kulick, 1998, p. 231 Writing for the ''Latin American Research Review'' in 2020, Joseph M. Pierce claimed that in Hispanic American countries, "as a general category, (transgender) or the more popular ''trans'' ..refers to people who make identitarian, corporeal, and social efforts to live as members of the gender that differs from the normative sex that they were assigned at birth." Comparing it to the term , he noted that:

in Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile, [] refers most frequently to people assigned male sex at birth and who feminize their bodies, dress, and behavior; prefer feminine pronouns and forms of address; and often make significant bodily transformations by injecting silicone or taking hormonal treatments but do not necessarily seek sex-reassignment surgery. ..... the specific Latin American conceptual and identity marker involves gender variance but not always gendered difference. While ''transgender'', ''trans'', and ''transsexual'' are terms that refer to changing gender and sex through legal, corporeal, or social mechanisms, a may have been assigned "male" at birth but does not necessarily consider herself a woman (though some do). ..For many travestis the term ''transgender'' depoliticizes a violent history of social and economic marginalization. The term , in contrast, retains this class difference and popular resonance, and is thus a political, rather than a psychological, or even corporeal identification.

According to Brazilian activist Amara Moira, the terms ''trans woman'' and are synonymous, with many people using the former to avoid the negative connotations associated with the latter. The imposition of the transgender and transvestite categories by Anglo-American academics over identities has been considered by some to be colonizing and westernizing in nature, and has been met with resistance by the community. Originally used colloquially as a pejorative term, the category has been reappropriated by Brazilian, Peruvian and especially Argentine activists since the 1990s,Raíces Montero, ed., 2010. p. 61 as it has a regional specificity that combines a generalized condition of social vulnerability, an association with sex work, the exclusion of basic rights and its recognition as a non-binary and political identity. As they are excluded from the educational and labor system, stigmatized and reified as objects of theoretical criticism or media consumption, one of the main struggles of activism since its emergence in the 1990s was the creation of their own political subjectivities. Argentine activist Lohana Berkins pointed out in 2006:

We hold the identity not only by resorting to linguistic regionalism, but also by circumstances and characteristics that make travestism a different phenomenon from North American and European transgenderism. In the first place, we travestis live different circumstances compared to those experienced by many transgenders from other countries, who (...) have the objective of rearranging themselves in the binary logic as women or men. A large part of Latin American travestis claim the option of occupying a position outside of binarism and it is our objective to destabilize the male and female categories. Second, the word transgenderism originated from theoretical works developed within the framework of the North American academy. In contrast, (...) the term in Latin America comes from medicine and has been appropriated, reworked and embodied by travestis to call themselves. This is the term in which we recognize ourselves and that we choose to construct ourselves as subjects of rights. (...) The term "travesti" has been and continues to be used as a synonym for AIDS, thief, scandalous, infected, marginal. We decided to give new meanings to the word and link it with struggle, resistance, dignity and happiness.

Despite its reappropriation by some as a political identity, in some places (especially Spain) is still regarded as a transphobic slur, often used to invalidate people who prefer the terms transsexual or transgender. For example, in 2020 a Spanish journalist caused controversy and had to make a public apology after using the term to refer to late media personality La Veneno.

History and culture

Argentina

An important historical source in the history of the travesti community during the 20th century are the firsthand accounts of Malva Solís, who emigrated from Chile as a teenager and lived in Argentina until her death in 2015 at the age of 93, being regarded as the longest-lived travesti from the country. After collecting testimonies from travestis over the age of seventy, Josefina Fernández found in 2004 that most of them regarded the first period of Juan Perón's government—who ruled Argentina between 1946 and 1955—as "the one that most clearly began the persecution of gay men and travestis, whether or not they practiced street prostitution." In those years, travestis (identified at that time as ''mariconas'') began to be regularly imprisoned at the Devoto prison, as "sex offenders." The prison was a recurring meeting point for travestis and continued to be so until the 21st-century. Despite its repressive aspects, the prison space gave them the possibility of generating solidarity strategies and forging links that would later spread outside. They even developed their own argot known as ''carrilche'', which was nourished by prison jargon. As anthropologist María Soledad Cutuli explains: "Today this code is known as the ''teje''. It consists of taking up elements of prison jargon or " olicelunfardo", deforming some syllables of certain words, and also using invented terms such as ''cirilqui'' to refer to the police, or even the polysemic ''teje'' (Spanish for "weaving"), which can mean, depending on the context, 'lie, story, argument, affair.' To say that someone is a ''tejedora'' implies a subtle way of qualifying her as a liar; to ask 'what are they ''tejiendo''?' refers to assuming that a meeting or conversation may have ulterior motives".

The Carnival was historically regarded as the popular festivity of travestis, as it was the only time of the year in which they could express themselves freely in the public space without suffering police persecution. As a travesti from Buenos Aires recalled in 2019: "They were 6 days of freedom and 350 in prison. I'm not exaggerating. So it was for us. This is how it was before and after the dictatorship, even worse after the dictatorship. Those days it was something magical: because from being discriminated against we would turn into diva-like. If there were no travestis in a carnival parade, it seemed like something was missing." The Buenos Aires Carnival's ''murgas'' first incorporated "messy" cross-dressing acts in the 1940s and 1950s to entertain audiences, a modality that later gave way to the ''transformista'' figure (i.e. drag queens)—defined as "the luxuriously dressed ''maricón''"—becoming an attraction for the public. According to Malva Solís, two travestis from La Boca's carnival parade named Cualo and Pepa "La Carbonera" pioneered of the figure of the "''murga''s vedette", an innovation that began around 1961. This little-documented phenomenon known as the "travesti carnival movement" marked a milestone in the parades of the 1960s and 1970s, and had the participation of make-up artists, costume designers and choreographers from Buenos Aires' revue theatrical scene, all of them ''maricones''. A 1968 ''Primera Plana'' article on the Carnival of Buenos Aires reported: "Those who resist disappearing are travestis, who began by exaggerating their feminine charms and have ended up in a dangerous refinement. Wigs and modern cosmetics turned them into suggestive stars, whose sexual identity was no longer so simple to grasp." In 2011, Solís reflected on the importance of Carnival celebrations for travestis: "I think to myself, that the leitmotif of the travestis who integrated the ''murgas'' was to bring out from the bottom of their soul their repressed self of the rest of the year. Everyone saw them and applauded them, but could not understand that behind that bright facade there was a desire, the desire to be recognized and accepted in order to live in freedom."

Contrary to the 1950s, the 1970s are considered an era of "artistic travesti 'uncover'" (Spanish: "''destape''"), which began with the arrival of a Brazilian travesti who performed in a well-known theater in Buenos Aires.Fernández, 2004, p. 35 Her show paved the way door to later performances by local travestis. According to Solís, the use of the term ''travesti'' began to be used in the 1960s, initially as a way to refer to the cross-dressing and transsexual performers who came from abroad to do shows. In 1963, French entertainer Coccinelle visited Buenos Aires to perform at the Teatro Maipo and made a big impact among local ''mariconas''. Solís told researcher María Soledad Cutuli in 2013: "Beginning with Coccinelle (...) there is a whole opening, something new that is coming. A lot of 'siliconized' erformerscame, plastic surgeries; social openness, (...) new opportunities for ''mariconas'', 'the travesti artist' is inaugurated. (...) From then on a new way of life opened. (...) The culture of the ''puto'' artist, all of them were already walking around with cotton stuffing to make their breasts, and they were already going out to sing, to dance..." The stage became the only place where travestis could publicly dress as women, as it was forbidden to do so on the streets. Around 1964, travesti artists—at that time named ''lenci'', in reference to a type of cloth, because they "were like little rag dolls"—met at an apartment on Avenida Callao, where they rehearsed musical acts and prepared to go out to nightclubs or theaters shows. Since the use of silicone had not yet become widespread, they resorted to the use of female hormones to "be able to show their breasts on stage as aesthetically as possible". According to writer Daniela Vizgarra: "If you didn't have an Anovlar 21 in your makeup bag, apparently you were nonexistent." Travestis emulated a contoured figure—which emphasized breasts and buttocks—through paddings called ''truquis'', ''piu-piú'' or ''colchón'' (), first using cotton fabrics and later foam rubber. While padding had been in use since at least the 1950s, the arrival of lycra in the 1960s allowed them to "build more realistic physical contours." The feminine beauty ideal put forward by American television also included small and pointed noses but, as surgeries were too expensive, most travestis settled for temporary arrangements, resorting to the use of glue and objects that could emulate a prosthesis. María Belén Correa argues that the emergence of travesti stage performers such Vanessa Show, Evelyn, Brigitte Gambini and Ana Lupe Chaparro in the 1960s and 1970s constituted "another way of activism". According to Evelyn—one of the first people to popularize ''transformismo'' in the theater scene—the "first travestis to appear in Buenos Aires" were a group called Les Girls in 1972, followed by Vanessa Show and Ana Lupez. She also mentioned the travestis of the "following era", which included Graciela Scott, Claudia Prado and herself, who debuted in 1977.

The arrival of industrial silicone in Buenos Aires radically transformed travesti bodies and subjectivities. It was brought from France to Brazil, and from there to neighboring countries.Kulick, 1998, p. 73 In the 1980s, famous actress and vedette Moria Casán became a role model for local travestis, not only for her voluptuous body, but also for her public image of sexual ease. This contoured body type ideal began to shift in the 1990s, when "more stylized and androgynous female forms" were popularized. With the appearance of silicone, a new "hierarchy between the bodies" of travestis arose, differentiating between those that had or did not have silicone, but also regarding the amount used and the quality of the final results. As researcher Ana Grabiela Álvarez explains: "The arrival of industrial silicone brings them closer to a generic female construction and fixes both bodily transformations and a particular prostitution niche". In the 1980s, the Pan-American Highway—which connects the City of Buenos Aires with the Buenos Aires Province's different districts—established itself as the most important area in which travestis worked as prostitutes, and thus became one of the definitive aspects of the travesti identity for Argentine society and media culture. In 1986, Canal 9 journalist José de Zer reported and at the same time denounced, with testimonial resources, the murder of travestis working on the Pan-American Highway. Due to the television report, both the journalist and the channel were sued and faced trial, so travestis had to organize themselves during the following years so as to make their ignored identity appear in the mass media. Travestis broke into Argentine public opinion in the 1990s,Fernández, 2004. p. 38 and their first appearances on television coincided with the organized appearance of the travestis on the public scene and in the streets of Buenos Aires. In 1991, Keny de Michelli became the first travesti to appear on free-to-air television, appearing in various programs in order to visibilize the community. These appearances were quickly trivialized and presented as a peculiar hyper-feminine expression of masculinity. After gaining popularity as a vedette in 1995, Cris Miró caused a media sensation for her gender identity and expression. As the first travesti to become a national celebrity, she is regarded as a symbol of the social milieu of the 1990s and paved the way for other Argentine travestis and trans women to gain popularity as vedettes, most notably Flor de la V. Parallel to Miró's rise to notoriety, the political organization of Argentine travestis was emerging, with activists making their first appearances in local media. The vedette's celebrity was initially criticized by a portion of these activists, who resented the unequal treatment they received and her attempt to embody an idealized vision of the perfect woman.

During the early-to-mid 2000s, the musical and literary career of Susy Shock, a renowned travesti activist, was built and gained visibility through LGBT cultural spaces such as Casa Mutual Giribone in Buenos Aires and the Asentamiento 8 de Mayo in José León Suárez, Buenos Aires Province.

In November 2007, the first issue of ''El Teje'', the first periodical written by travestis in Latin America, was published in a joint initiative between activists and the Ricardo Rojas Cultural Center. In travesti jargon, ''teje'' is a polysemic word that comes from prostitution life, as explained by ''El Teje''s director Marlene Wayar: "It is the complicit word between us, which we don't want the other to find out about: bring me the ''teje'', because of the cocaine; or look at the ''teje'', it is when he clienthas a wallet with money. And that is the name of the magazine.

In the late 2010s, the travesti community of Buenos Aires and its surroundings has gained recognition for its creative and artistic contributions, inserting itself in the "queer countercultural scene", a circuit of theaters, bars and cultural centers such as Casa Brandon, Tierra Violeta, MU Trinchera Boutique and, more recently, Feliza and Maricafé. As researcher Patricia Fogelman pointed out in 2020: "In this set of spaces, travestis are seen more and more frequently performing theater, stand-up monologues, reciting poetry, doing performances, accompanying musical bands, etc. On the other hand, within the same extended community there is a clear interest in incorporating ravestisand highlighting them as central characters in novels, plays and songs. Thus, we could say that around the figure of traveestis there is a recognition and a forceful attempt to put them in places of visibility, especially, by lesbian authors of novels and music for alternative young people."

'' Las malas'', the debut novel by travesti writer and actress Camila Sosa Villada—first published in 2019 in Argentina and the following year in Spain—has been a widespread critical and commercial success. It focuses on the lives of a group of travestis from Córdoba, Argentina and their work as prostitutes at Sarmiento Park. However, Sosa Villada has denied that the book was conceived as an act of activism or visibility, claiming that focusing discussions about travestis around marginality and sex work silences their current cultural contributions to society. The ongoing editorial success of ''Las malas'' has sparked local interest in local transgender literature, and has been framed within a so-called "new Latin American boom", with several non-male authors from the region capturing the attention of the international market.

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in Argentina in March 2020, travestis were one of the groups most affected by the lockdown, since most of them resort to prostitution and live from day to day, leaving them without income and, in many cases, under threat of eviction from the hotels where they were already paying elevated prices. The situation was so delicate that different NGOs came out to face the emergency, such as 100% Diversidad y Derechos and La Rosa Naranja.

In 2021, Flor de la V—one of the most visible transgender people in the country— announced that she no longer identified as a trans woman but as a travesti, writing: "I discovered a more correct way to get in touch with how I feel: neither woman, nor heterosexual, nor homosexual, nor bisexual. I am a dissident of the gender system, my political construction in this society is that of a pure-bred travesti. That what I am and what I want and choose to be."

Brazil

Anthropologist Don Kulick noted that: "Travestis appear to exist throughout Latin America, but in no other country are they as numerous and well known as in Brazil, where they occupy a strikingly visible place in both social space and the cultural imaginary)."Kulick, 1998, p. 6 For this reason, they are frequently invoked by social commentators as symbols of Brazil itself.Kulick, 1998, p. 7

One of the most prominent travestis in the Brazilian cultural imaginary of the late 20th century was Roberta Close, who became a household name in the mid-1980s and was "widely acclaimed to be the most beautiful woman in Brazil," posing in ''Playboy'' and regularly appearing in television and several other publications.

Photographer Madalena Schwartz made a series of portraits of the travesti scene of São Paulo in the 1970s.

In recent years, hiring trans women has become popular in the advertising industry, although at the same time differentiating them from transvestites.

Paraguay

In the 1980s, during Alfredo Stroessner's military dictatorship, twenty travestis were arrested as part of the Palmieri Case (Spanish: ''Caso Palmieri''), among them the well-known Carla and Liz Paola. A 14-year-old teenager, Mario Luis Palmieri, had been found murdered and the hypothesis handled by the police was that of a homosexual crime of passion, unleashing one of the most famous persecutions of LGBT identities in the history of Paraguay.

Paraguayan travestis use a secret language called ''jeito''—originated in the field of prostitution—which they use to protect themselves from clients, the police or any person strange to the places where they work and that threatens the security of the group.Falabella, Augsten, Recalde & Orué Pozzo, 2017. p. 69 Some of its words are ''rua'' (street),Falabella, Augsten, Recalde & Orué Pozzo, 2017. p. 64 ''odara'' (the travesti head of a prostitution area),Falabella, Augsten, Recalde & Orué Pozzo, 2017. p. 70 ''alibán'' (police) and ''fregués'' (clients).Falabella, Augsten, Recalde & Orué Pozzo, 2017. p. 71

Spain

The arrival of the medical model of transsexuality was earlier in Europe than in Latin America, and therefore its impact was different in each region. In Spain, travesti identities are generally included under the category "transsexual" in academic research, since it is perceived as more "politically correct". As a result of the powerful medical institutionalization around transsexuality, calling oneself "travesti" in Spain is considered a discrediting act, due to its close link with prostitution, especially after the migrations of Latin American travestis. Nevertheless, in the 1970s the term "travesti" was widely used to refer to any people who were assigned male at birth but dressed and lived as women, either temporarily or permanently. In fact, the few Spanish self-described "transsexuals" who had sex reassignment surgery were not widely accepted by their peers and were seen as "castrated people". During the Franco era, travestis were persecuted through the creation of a strong legislative and police apparatus.

Between the late 1980s and early 1990s, transsexuals—who no longer called themselves "travestis"—began to organize themselves by creating their own political collectives, demanding the institutionalization of transsexuality in the health system, as well as the end of stereotypes that linked them to HIV/AIDS, prostitution and marginalization—an image embodied in the concept of travesti. Therefore, the travesti specificity in Spain is usually subsumed under the most consensual medical category of "transsexual" or in more politicized terms such as "trans" or "transgender", as this gives greater social legitimacy. Since the vast majority of travestis come from poor social environments with very low education, their differences with transsexual activists are also given by the demands of these more intellectualized groups. Nevertheless, some modern-day people living in Spain choose to label themselves as travestis as a genderfluid gender identity.

Academic research

Overview

Travestis have been studied by disciplines like social psychology, but especially social anthropology, which has extensively documented the phenomenon in both classical and more recent ethnographies.Fernández, 2004. p. 39 Scholarship produced on South American travestis has largely been produced by non-trans academics from both the Global North and Global South, something that has been vocally critiqued by activists. Being the country with the largest population of travestis (where they are even invoked as cultural icons),Kulick, 1998, p. 6Kulick, 1998, p. 7 Brazil is the country with the longest experience in the study of these identities, and the works written in and about Brazil outnumber those of any other Latin American country. While academic interest in Brazilian travesti prostitutes began to spread in the 1990s and early 2000s—through international researches like Don Kulick, Peter Fry and Richard Parker, as well as local authors such as Marcos Renato Benedetti and Helio Silva—travesti identities became a central theme in the country's gender studies during the mid-to-late-2000s, attributed to the growing influence of queer theory, post-structuralism and LGBT activism in academic literature. Anthropological research about the travesti population in the Spanish language is much scarcer than in English and Portuguese, especially among Latin American authors. Some scholars relate this to the late arrival of the medical model of transsexuality, which has also led to the use of "inappropriate" terms to designate identities that do not adhere to gender norms. Relevant Spanish-language studies about travestis come from researchers from Spain, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and Ecuador.

Main hypotheses

According to Argentine researcher María Soledad Cutuli, the most recent travesti ethnographies fall under five main axes of analysis: "gender identity", "corporeality and subjectivity", "health and sexuality", "prostitution and sociability" and, to a lesser extent, "political organization". Faced with the phenomenon, researchers have generally proposed one of three hypotheses: that travestis constitute a third gender, that travestis reinforce one of the only two genders available in their society (masculine or feminine), or the perspective of authors who argue that travestis challenge the notion of binarism, but "far from being their proposal that of supernumerary or multiple genders, what they do seek is the deconstruction of the category of gender itself."Fernández, 2004. p. 58 Since the 1990 publication of ''Gender Trouble'', several ideas put forward by American philosopher Judith Butler—like the claim that the concept of a biological sex is itself a gendered notion—have been of great impact for the academic analysis of travestis and gender studies in general.Kulick, 1998, p. 230Fernández, 2004, p. 59

As a ''third gender''

A very wide range of anthropological studies has investigated travestis based on a hypothesis that states that they should be interpreted as an expression of a third gender or sex,Fernández, 2004. p. 41 in the same manner of the berdaches of North America,Fernández, 2004. p. 43 the hijras of India, the muxes of Mexico, the kathoey of Thailand, the māhū of Tahiti, the fa'afafine of Samoa and the xanith of Oman, among other identities. One of the first anthropologists to propose the category of third gender were Kay Martin and Barbara Voorhies in 1978, who based their research on the review of classical ethnographies about berdaches.Fernández, 2004. p. 40 The idea of a third gender was later put forward in the mid-1990s by authors such as Gilbert Herdt, Will Roscoe, Hilda Habychain and Anne Bolin; and extended to other non-Western peoples.Fernández, 2004. p. 40 In 1998, Kulick argued that: "Travestis may well be considered to be a 'third,' in some of the senses in which Marjorie Garber uses that term, but they are not a third that is situated outside or beyond a gendered binary."Kulick, 1998, p. 230 Writing for ''The Guardian'' in 2019, Victor Madrigal-Borloz listed the travesti people from Brazil and Argentina as one of the many worldwide identities that are neither male or female, alongside the ''yimpininni'' of the Tiwi people in Australia, as well as fa'afafine in Samoa, two spirit in Canada and the United States and hijra in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.

As a reinforcement of gender binarism

With her 1989 book ''Travestism and the Politics of Gender'', Annie Woodhouse established herself among the researchers within a perspective that considers travestism as a reinforcement of gender identities, in this case the female identity.Fernández, 2004, p. 52 Woodhouse argued that travestis see gender as something that is rigidly demarcated between masculinity and femininity and, in this sense, reproduce traditional gender roles that objectify women.Fernández, 2004, p. 52 In her 1993 and 1995 researches on travestism, Argentine anthropologist Victoria Barreda criticized the third gender category, arguing that travestis construct an identity that necessarily takes gender stereotypes as a reference point.Fernández, 2004, p. 50 Another researcher who follows this trend is Richard Ekins, who described trasvestites as "feminized men".Fernández, 2004, p. 54 Among the research based on participant observation, French anthropologist Annick Prieur has been considered a pioneer for her 1998 ethnography on the travesti community from the suburbs of Mexico City, in which she argued that they reproduce their society's gender binarism. Brazilian researchers Neuza Maria de Oliveira and Hélio Silva—considered the founders of the ethnography about the daily life of Brazilian travestis—also aligned themselves in this view, as did the latter's follower Marcelo José Oliveira. Despite these authors' intention of increasing academic visibility to travestis, they have been widely criticized by their successors for using male pronouns when referring to them.

Critically developing upon these early works through the use of ethnomethodology, Kulick studied the travesti population of Salvador, Bahia and placed their social stigmatization within the larger context of class and racial inequalities.Kulick, 1998, p. 8 Kulick's conclusions are far removed from later postmodern positions, as he argued that the travesti identity is configured from conservative social structures. The author proposed an alternative position, suggesting that travestis base their identity not on anatomical sex differences, but rather on sexual orientation, identifying themselves as a subtype of gay men.Kulick, 1998, p. 227 He used the term "not-men" to refer to travestis, claiming he chose it: "partly for want of a culturally elaborated label and partly to foreground my conviction that the gender system that makes it possible for travestis to emerge and make sense is one that is massively oriented towards, if not determined by, male subjectivity, male desire, and male pleasure, as those are culturally elaborated in Brazil."Kulick, 1998, p. 229 He further explained:

It is important to understand that the claim I am making here is that travestis share a gender with women, not that they ''are'' women (or that women are travesti—even if that latter proposition might be a fruitful one to explore further). The distinction is crucial. Individual travestis will not always or necessarily share individual women's roles, goals, or social status. (...) However, inasmuch as travestis share the same gender with women, they are understood to share (and they feel themselves to share) with women a whole spectrum of tastes, perceptions, behaviors, styles, feelings, and desires.Kulick, 1998, p. 233

Kulick's research had a much broader international impact than that of his predecessors, due to its insertion in North American academia and for being published in English. The aforementioned authors have in common the idea that travesti identity does not subvert gender roles nor heteronormativity.

As a dislocation of gender itself

Informed by Judith Butler's ideas and queer theory, recent scholarship analyzes travestis as a demonstration of the performative character of gender, claiming that their identities are in a permanent process of construction that enters into dispute with gender binarism. As noted by Spanish anthropologist María Fernanda Guerrero Zavala in 2015: "At the academic level, the approaches to identities and bodies from the ''queer'' point of view, which are gaining strength, are proposed as a way out of the static conception of identities and propose angles of theoretical interpretation based on life experiences."

Fernández addresses the travesti issue using critical gender theory.

In a 2012 research on Brazilian travesti immigrants in Barcelona, Spanish anthropologist Julieta Vartabedian Cabral suggested that travestis ''make'' their gender, highlighting the feminization of their bodies and sexual relationships as evidence. Fellow researcher María Fernanda Guerrero Zavala noted that: "Faced with other theorizations that call for the disembodiment of identities and queer and transgender activism, Vartabedian structures a "body" based on the most carnal experiences of transvestites".

Marluce Pereira da Silva, Josefina Fernández, Juliana Frota da Justa Coelho and Andrés García Becerra

The "travesti theory"

A fundamental part of the existing bibliography was produced by travestis themselves, as is the case of activist Lohana Berkins, whose articles, conferences, interviews and compilations are the pillar for the study of this community in Argentina. In recent years, there have been discussions regarding the so-called "travesti theory", a critical theory that proposes the construction of their own paradigm, epistemology and ontology, through which the established discourses can be disarticulated in order to produce new knowledge production modes on the travesti population, from a regional and decolonizing perspective. Peruvian scholar Malú Machuca Rose described travesti as "the refusal to be trans, the refusal to be woman, the refusal to be intelligible. (...) Travesti is classed and raced: it means you do not present femininely all of the time because you cannot afford to." According to Rizki, the "travesti theory" constitutes a " Latin/x American body of work and a body politics with an extensive transregional history", citing South American writers such as Berkins, Giuseppe Campuzano, Claudia Rodríguez and Marlene Wayar as exponents. He defined travesti as "a politics of refusal", as it "disavows coherence and is an always already racialized and classed geopolitical identification that gestures toward the inseparability of indigeneity, blackness, material precarity, sex work, HIV status, and uneven relationships to diverse state formations." According to scholar Dora Silva Santana, travesti is "a negation of an imposed dominant expectation of womanhood that centers on people who are cisgender, heteronormative, able-bodied