“Then, Darling, We Will Win the World”: reflections on gender, sexuality and public policy for teenage travesties, feminine boys and other variations

Abstract

Th is article originated in a research that was meant to map out and examine the life conditions of “travesti” (transgender) teenagers and youth living in the city of Campinas, state of São Paulo. We contacted our informants outside the environments usually identifi ed as the common spaces where members of this group spend their time and share their experiences, as a strategy that we believed could enable us to better perceive how they construct their subjectivities. As we began our ethnographic endeavors, we were surprised by the multiplicity of ways in which these young people experimented with gender and sexuality, yet which were, at the same time, accompanied by eff orts to fi t these experiments within available identity categories. Feminine boys, cross dressers and drags thus constructed their own ways of living the feminine, and in doing so, stirred our imagination regarding contemporary experiences and political struggles in the realm of sexuality.