Negociando com as normas: transexualidades masculinas, reconhecimentos e agências

Abstract

From the life histories of three transsexual men, we sought to contribute to an anthropological listening about transsexuality, understanding it as a complex socio-historical phenomenon. Through the accounts presented, we tried to analyze different forms of social interaction that these subjects go through and the ways they face them. In order to do so, we have observed the individual experiences of self-construction and self-understanding, as well as that of the comprehension of social norms, on which such experiences are forged, starting from a notion of a subject formed in the relationships and which cannot exist outside the normative frameworks that establish the terms of their recognition and the conditions to intersubjective recognition. A subject whose reflexive and action ability is understood as possible in negotiation with the norms. It was prioritized a textual and theoretical elaboration that departed from the accounts given by the interviewees and, together with them, the main themes addressed in this research were elaborated: the recognition of self as a trans person; the disputes arising in the fields of family, love and work relations, among others; and how transsexuality fits in a larger picture of gender studies. Another important point, whose debate proved fruitful from the analyzed accounts, was the suggestion of “ceding” as a form of agency - in view of the conceptualization proposed by Saba Mahmood (2006) -, which would occur in a gradation variable according to with each social situation.