Transsomatechnics was amazing! I had such a great time. It was just damn awful that Mauro Cabral was denied a visa. In the spirit of solidarity, here I include some work that draws on Cabral's own. He is a very insightful scholar.
Model citizens and models of citizenship – natural rights or the right to have rights?
The impasse which travestis face – socially, legally and in terms of access and livelihood – is severely compounded by neoliberalist policy and the way that it has both in terms of economy and ideology reshaped the terms of citizenship. Even if such a policy and philosophy is increasingly placed in check or outright rejected in Latin America, it has still reshaped the possibilities of citizenship. As Néstor García Canclini observes, the definition of citizenship in the global age has less to do with state protections and recognition and is more concerned the the capacity to participate in consumption and own things. One’s sense of belonging culturally and one’s possibilities of social recognition and participation are mediated through consumption. But they might also be mediated by the measure that one is deemed to be productive, as one’s work value under capitalism is linked to the ability to consume and thus participate in the market of concrete and symbolic goods.
Like economic liberalism, the liberalist model of citizenship assumes an ‘always already’ state of equality between individuals. Individuals exercise their rights which are natural rights guaranteed by the freedom and autonomy of the democratic capitalism system. Individuals can, and do, work from a level playing field. This level playing field scenario assumes that we all have the same basic faculties, start off with the same abilities, income, potential access and agency, and that the world is made up of individuals whose inherent goal is to be efficient, perform, participate via consumption and an unfettered global flow of products, information and symbolic capital. The liberal model of citizenship, familiar in the West but also increasingly elsewhere, obviates the place of state institutions in elaborating the limits of citizenship. And while the liberal may have obtained some real ideological purchase, juridical and cultural realities persist that suggest that the more traditional model of the state and subject, whose excesses can be seen in totalitarian epochs in Argentina, Chile and other places, still obtains for marginalised groups like travestis. As such, travesti activism as seen in these countries chiefly interpellates the state in addressing citizenship. Their activist response, however, sometimes underlines an awareness of the way citizenship is being reshaped by commercial interests, and how travestis experience of exclusion is part and parcel of the sidelining effects of neoliberalism for diverse sectors, product of the increasing corporatisation of basic services like those denied to travestis, and the erosion of the public sector and the place of civil society.
The question of citizenship occupies a central role in travesti activist discourse. Travesti discourse questions the liberal model of citizenship, as it does not view rights as natural and available to all in an equal playing field, which are the basic presuppositions of the liberal model as we have seen. Rather, the right to have rights must be forged. While ideally rights should be universal, not everyone is equal and blessed with these rights nor guaranteed them. The ideal of a universal application of citizenship should not lead one to think of it as a given; nor should one be led to assume that there is even such a thing as a universal subject with the same life project, prior experiences and present needs. Rather, all subjects are different. Travesti activist discourse demands a recognition of this difference, and proceeds from an understanding that travesti citizenship, like other diverse forms of citizenship, are corporeally and culturally situated.
As Mauro Cabral, Argentinian trans and intersex academic and activist, asserts, the Kantian notion of liberal citizenship was first interrogated by feminists who insisted on the necessity of dismantling the abstract notion of citizenship in order to particularise and corporealise it. Historically, even under the civic republican notion of the citizen (whose origins were in Ancient Greece), women were excluded. Indeed, as a field of intellectual inquiry itself, ‘studies of citizenship have traditionally paid little attention to women, trans and intersex people, and non-heterosexuals. The “citizen” is generally assumed to be a white, male, heterosexual, able-bodied person’ (147), as Monro notes.
Cabral goes on to detail how feminist interrogations of citizenship force a recognition of the way in which the composition of the citizen is contingent on identifying features which constitute diverse subjects according to race, age, sexuality, physical ability etc. Travesti notions of citizenship bring this to the fore and contest the summation that the horizon of citizenship is duly invested with fairness and equality, regardless of difference. Difference and its positive recognition becomes the point at which one is invested with citizenship; its denial effects a divestment of the same. Such an approach is clearly influenced by feminist revisions and critiques of ‘citizenship’.
At some point travesti activist discourse around citizenship clearly departs from the more traditional feminist models. Sexual difference, notes Cabral, has been key to feminist interrogations of the citizen. Unfortunately, sexual difference has been determined as a bioanatomical reality of men or women in two types of mutually exclusive sexed bodies. Such a view cannot account for the diversity of sexes and genders whose expression may or often does change dynamically through the term of a person’s life. Such is the life project represented by travestis. The two sex model also does not conceive of intersex bodies, bodies that are neither unambiguously male or female. Feminism may have challenged the move that makes the masculine subject the implicit universal subject of citizenship, thereby disappearing others, but it assumes, nonetheless, that all subjects are either male or female since birth; travesti citizenship, which inscribes itself through the terms of sexual citizenship proposes dimensions that do not rely on sexual difference as a fact, but, rather, as a normatively proscribed state of affairs. Their very existence as travestis contravenes the principle of ‘natural’ genders.
Articulating sexual citizenship / ciudadanía sexual
The term ‘sexual citizenship’ first appeared in academic parlance with the 1993 publication in English of David Evans’s Sexual Citizenship: The Material Construction of Sexualities. The usage of the term in Spanish is more recent, however. As Omar Feliciano from the group CODISEX observes, even concepts of diversity in citizenship already very common in English such as multicultural or multiethnic citizenship, have yet to obtain purchase in Spanish, let alone sexual citizenship! Whether travesti groups use the term implicitly or explicitly, their framing of citizenship shares much with what has been elaborated under the banner of sexual citizenship. Sexual citizenship breaks with the notion that some issues fall into the public domain and others are strictly private. Such a division is intrinsic to civic republican notions of a citizen’s rights and obligations. If this model of citizenship has historically disappeared anyone but men, that is because women were said to belong to the private realm and men to the public. The sexual citizenship model discards such a view as it pertains to sexual difference, but also as it pertains to sexuality and and sexual rights. These become public as well as private concerns, at the state and global levels, as they participate in the social realm and have material impacts, many and varied as we see in the case of travestis. The main proposition is to seek social and juridical legitimation of different identities and sexual practices, via the support of law reform and policy change, including, for instance, anti-discrimination legislation, and, of course, legal sex/gender change both in terms of access to transition therapy and document changes.
Clearly the work of groups like ALITT (Association for the Struggle for Travesti Transsexual Identity), deploy this framework in arguing for the recognition of travesti identity as a real and valid one. And at a very practical level, this constitutes a major move to dismantling the range of exclusions that travestis suffer. Part of the demand, as we have seen, would allow travestis to modify personal details of name and gender to reflect their lived condition. ALITT’s mission statement, included to support their application for personería jurídica, features the following points:
1. To fight for the acceptance of travesti identity by state and society as a real identity
2. To achieve full legal personhood for travestis and transsexuals in Argentina
3. To obtain a better quality of life for travestis
4. The implementation of a campaign in favour of travesti-transsexual citizenship, demanding rights to health, education, work, housing and other social benefits; to be achieved via education awareness campaigns, participatory workshops, state and civil organisation training programs and conferences to debate and work towards non-discrimination… undertaken via the distribution of information, publications and workshops by travesti groups in the places they live and work
5. The provision of spaces of reflection, campaigns to spread ideas and support to contribute to the above and the development of sex/gender rights and anti-discrimination materials by a network of researchers in travesti groups and in other non-government organizations that work with human rights
6. To encourage the participation of ALITT in national and international fora for human rights.
When the application for personería jurídica was made in previous to and including 2003, the Argentinian state rejected it, arguing that:
It does not seem […] that ‘To fight for recognition of transvestism as an identity by both society and the State’ nor ‘building travesti-transsexual citizenship’ offer a valuable framework for the development of coexistence, becoming part of the community’s spiritual and cultural heritage (‘Protest’).
The terms of travesti citizenship, a sexual citizenship that would imply the right to a self-determined identity, the right to move, unhindered, through the world according to one’s own deep-seated forms of expression and personal desires, was clearly unintelligible to the State. Moreover, travesti citizenship was rejected as not being ‘Argentinian’, ‘part of the community’ or in the interests of the ‘common good’ or social harmony/co-existence (convivencia). This rejection of travestis as citizens reflects the daily reproduction of exclusion which denies them status as members of society in material and structural senses too. In this way, the terms of citizenship directly interface with the terms of inclusion and exclusion. It matters little, also, if we see citizenship as obtained via consumption and participation in the symbolic field or legally guaranteed, as they end up being one and the same. This common good is not just a result of Argentina’s heritage, but also, its present orientation, and the literal welfare of society. The welfare of travestis is seen as is divorced from the welfare of society. The ALITT statement shows that travesti activists do not just see citizenship as obtained via legal guarantees, but also as exercised via full participation in the society in whose name the High Court rejected ALITT’s application. Mercifully, after years of struggling, the personería juridical of ALITT was finally granted in 2005.
Sexual citizenship, it would seem, does have the possibility of inserting itself into contemporary debates on citizenship in the region. However, ALITT’s recognition of a legally functioning organization does not spell the end to what activists name as the ciudadanía menguada, as Cabral and others describe it, experienced by travestis in Latin America. Given their experience of social and institutional exclusion, outlined at the beginning of this paper, theirs is hardly a full citizenship. Even in the field of sexual citizenship, travestis are not given full consideration as it stands. Although a radical view of sexual citizenship views it part and parcel of the full package of political, social and civic rights, a necessary added dimension that ‘concerns the choices people make about their bodies, emotions, relationships, gender identities and desires’ (Plummer qtd in Monro 154), ‘dentro de la bolsa común de los derechos sexuales y reproductivos, lo sexual se ha esfumado’, according to Susana Rance. Policies, to cite again this commentator ‘se centran excesivamente en los procesos reproductivos de las mujeres-madres y en el supuesto de la pareja heterosexual’. Is this because sex and sexuality, more than sexual difference, still retain their condition as taboos in Latin American societies? Certainly travesti citizenship is highly delimited by moral considerations of that nature that are reinscribed in law.
A sexual citizenship that can properly validate and include travesti lives and bodies would recognize the fields of gender and sexuality as part of the life process and the life project of individuals, whose impacts fan outward socially and economically. Such a recognition could extend to all subjects and thus radically alter citizenship. Activists argue that this type of extension in citizenship strengthens and broadens ideals of democracy, the formation of civil society and would help to draw a line between the society we want to live in – free from legalized exclusion and oppression and forms of discrimination that essentially belong to the past. Travestis may be one of the few groups who still suffer the kinds of conditions most identifiable in the previous totalitarian regimes: enforced invisibilisation, curfew, harassment, violence and torture by state actors as well as social ghettoisation, all conceived as being now relegated to history. But this notion, after all, acts as an apologia for the post-dictatorial liberalism and transition to market democracy as seen in states in the southern cone. Travesti citizenship interventions – which interpellate the state and specific institutions – contradict the faith inherent in the idea that market liberalism produces democracy and that consumption guarantees citizenship. How can one benefit from a market – access to public or private health services, housing, employment and so on – when one is excluded from the very terms of the game from the start?
Travesti communities have not caught the eye of novel businessmen keen to develop community specific goods, services and lifestyle products. They have not obtained mainstream consumer accommodation and the commercial context of their lives, as it exists in the informal labour of prostitution, is heavily criminalized and opposed by both state and business actors, as we have seen, from Guayaquil to Bogotá, from San Salvador to Quito. Evans, cited as the originator of the term ‘sexual citizenship’ observed that capitalism allows a certain amount of non-normative sexual expression, provided it is beneficial to the economy. Gays and lesbians from middle class backgrounds have begun to be seen as citizens in some of these countries and tolerance is touted to the extent that it might prove useful to the market, creating a more specialist commercial target and ever more novel ways to attract consumption. In a depressed economy, this is vital. It may even attract tourism and foreign investment. But that tolerance has its limits and acceptance of one ‘profitable group’ as citizens like any other comes at a price – the less acceptable forms of sexual diversity are shut out: i.e. visible and maligned sexual minorities, esp. those involved in street prostitution.
In the drive for cost cutting and optimisation of business returns, social justice issues for the most vulnerable are off the radar, all the more so for a group stigmatised for their gender identity and involvement in prostitution. In countries where historically the development of stable, civil society has been interrupted by civil war as is the case of Guatemala or El Salvador, or the presence of militarised right wing regimes involved in armed conflict (see Colombia and Honduras), the rule of law is seriously undermined and spaces for violent acts against gays and transpeople are blown wide open. It is in these countries that we have seen acts of so-called social cleansing of undesirable elements, persecution of advocacy groups and the sinister encouragement of this setting by shadowy Church leaders and politicians.
A politics of cynicism, scape goating and individualism has evolved in nations where neoliberalist policy has had greatest hold. Far from creating social freedom and general improvement of people’s lives, neoliberalist policies have polarised society, instituting economic elites in the position as the main power holders. These corporate forces now obtain the loyalty of the police to protect their interests, as well as the media and corrupt politicians. In fact, travestis, especially those involved in sex work, have been exploited in this scenario. An alarming triad of business owners, corrupt local politicos and armed units have worked together in some places to perform crackdowns on the most socially-maligned sectors of culture, including travestis in sex work, to gain votes, restore confidence in public control and safety. People are manipulated this way via ‘morality’, as leaders play with their fears and deep-seated prejudices and pit one group against another, diverting any focus on the real issues with sensational spectacles which sell papers and put television ratings through the roof.
The great challenge to travesti activists in Latin America is to overcome these systemic and institutional forms of social and economic exile. Since the mid-nineties, a network of transgender activist groups, community organisations, travesti sex worker unions and leaders have emerged in many countries, most notably in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Mexico. All claim the right to have rights, to participate and dialogue as persons with their own needs and voices in order to help in the construction of a civil society and citizenship eroded by the liberal-consumerist model. They have armed themselves well by emphasising the need for humane and universal health care that includes them, critiquing social services cuts brought about by current neoliberalist approaches. In Argentina, they have participated in actions for social and economic justice, fighting alongside the piqueteros, for instance, and even las Madres de Plaza de Mayo. Their critique of the limits of the liberal model and the insertion of the sexual back into sexual citizenship offers much for contemporary forms of action and debate on the subject of citizenship and social justice.
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