Salvador Vidal-Ortiz

The Figure of the Transwoman of Color Through the Lens of “Doing Gender”

often visit my birth family in Manati, a mid-size town in Puerto Rico.For over 20 years, I have driven on a main road (before the expresswaywas built) that connected the West and the North parts of the Island. At theoutskirts of town, there is often a voluptuous woman—with low hips, darkhair, tight jeans, and more often than not smoking a cigarette. She standsby the side of the road in what seems to be a small pathway to a house.She cruises the passing cars, but sometimes just stands there—waiting tobe noticed. Growing up queer in Manati, I have noticed this woman manytimes in the last two decades; although I have never spoken to her, Ilearned long ago that she is a transwoman. Recently, Mom and I drove by,and I checked to see if she was still there. With the rise of the AIDS epi-demic since the 1980s, and my (erroneous) assumptions about sex workand HIV risk, I have wondered if she is still alive. “Oh she is still there,”says my mom. And I see her. I try to understand why she signifies so muchin my imagination, how she reassures me by being alive, why I need to seeher standing there. This transwoman signifies to me the figure of thetranswoman of color. Who do you imagine her to be? What is your figureof the transwoman of color?This vignette illustrates both my assumptions about what the readermight (not) know, as well as my own position vis-a-vis “trans” people. Asa nontranssexual queer man, I hold a set of readings on gender (West andZimmerman 1987) that shape how I view nontranssexual women andmen, and transpeople. As a professor from a U.S. ethno-racial minoritygroup, I also bring an understanding about the varied raced (and classed)experiences—in general, and of transpeople in particular. The figure of thetranswoman of color helps illustrate the extent to which the “doing gen-der” framework has dealt with transgender/transsexual people.

Displacing the Dominant “Down Low” Discourse: Deviance, Same-Sex Desire, and Craigslist.org

This article troubles the “down low” (DL) discourse by focusing on an Internet forum—Craigslist.org—where people on the “down low” post. The advertisements, gathered from seven cities in two U.S. regions, reinforce some of the “down low” discussion in the previous literature, as they show a pattern of seeking “masculine” men. These ads also depart from general perceptions such as the DL being a term used predominantly by black men. The authors discuss methodological implications in research with posts, and suggest advancing analyses on the relationship between race, sexuality and power, and gender and sexuality in DL research.

Introduction to Retheorizing Homophobias

The first inklings of this special issue surfaced in conversations we had on our seemingly divergent projects ‐ projects that were decidedly not focused on the question of homophobia. Salvador was completing his study of gender and sexuality in Santeria. Karl was working on a social history of the psychiatric diagnosis Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood. While these projects seemed quite distinct, in our conversations we kept coming back to a recurring similarity: discourses of homophobia circulated in each of these sites in ways that created a set of unintended and often nefarious consequences. It seemed to us that the full range of effects of such discourses was not being adequately considered. We offer this special issue as one attempt at more complexly addressing the ways in which discourses of homophobia circulate, and the effects that they produce. This introduction offers a general discussion on the uses of the term ‘homophobia’ in extant scholarship; an overview of some of the problems that have been associated with homophobia, including the subsequent formation of concepts such as heterosexism and heteronormativity that have acted as correctives to some of homophobia’s limitations; and an

Sex Work Among Men Who Have Sex with Men and Transgender Women in Bogotá

This qualitative study examined sex work among internally displaced male and transgender female sex workers in Bogotá, Colombia. Internal displacement has occurred in Colombia as a result of decades of conflict among armed groups and has created large-scale migration from rural to urban areas. Informed by the polymorphous model of sex work, which posits that contextual conditions shape the experience of sex work, we examined three main research questions. The first dealt with how internal displacement was related to the initiation of sex work; the second concerned the effect of agency on sex worker satisfaction; and the third examined how sex work in this context was related to HIV and other risks. Life history interviews were conducted with 26 displaced individuals who had done sex work: 14 were men who have sex with men and 12 were transgender women (natal males). Findings revealed that many participants began doing sex work in the period immediately after displacement, because of a lack of money, housing, and social support. HIV risk was greater during this time due to limited knowledge of HIV and inexperience negotiating safer sex with clients. Other findings indicated that sex workers who exerted more control and choice in the circumstances of their work reported greater satisfaction. In addition, we found that although many sex workers insisted on condom use with clients, several noted that they would sometimes have unprotected sex for additional money. Specific characteristics affecting the experience of sex work among the transgender women were also discussed.

Maricón, "Pájaro," and "Loca": Cuban and Puerto Rican Linguistic Practices, and Sexual Minority Participation, in U.S. Santería

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the United States are, to varying degrees, practitioners of the Afro-Cuban religion popularly known as Santería. Cuban and Puerto Rican forms of referencing LGBT populations are illustrated in this article, which is drawing from interviews and participant observation conducted in the United States, with close to 30 practitioners, many of whom were Cuban, Cuban American, and Puerto Rican. I discuss the ways in which Santería gatherings produce an alternative use of otherwise stigmatized language for “gay” practitioners. Through the use of distinctive language to reference all of these populations, we may rethink the relationship between identities and practices, and within that, gender presentations vis a vis identities.

Sociology of sexualities, Latinas and Latinos: A review of the field

In this essay, we offer a genealogy of the limited yet gradually blossoming area of sexualities theorizing and research on US Latina and Latinos in the USA. Our own personal biographies are both unique and diverse. The first author was born and raised in northern Mexico; the second author was born and raised in Puerto Rico—both migrated to the USA (she to the Southwest, he to the Northeast) in their mid-20s. We are seasoned sexuality scholars whose trajectory owes much to Lionel Cantú Jr’s influence in our careers; we also feel affirmed by the presence and work of Tomás Almaguer, the first sociologist who examined Latino sexuality, when little was said about both the sexual and ethno-racial dimensions. For us as scholars in the USA, it is important to situate Latinas and Latinos as a racialized group in this country, one that is often simplistically understood through a cultural and ethnic lens, but that experiences discrimination and racism as any other traditionally marginalized group does. Our focus on Latinas/os is intentional—Latinas/os are the largest multiracial minority group in the USA, but the scholarship on Latinas/os and sexuality is not as abundant as scholarship on sexuality and other groups. Some of the scholarship we cite focuses on migration or racialization—Latinas/os include both US-born as well as immigrants; we also address scholarship on migration because migration is often an understudied Sexualities 2018, Vol. 21(8) 1282–1286 ! The Author(s) 2018 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/1363460718788350 journals.sagepub.com/home/sex