Traveling through seas, rivers, dunes and dry leaves: the in-between place of transmasculinities in northeastern Brazil
transmasculinities; northeast; cisgenderism; transfeminism, etnocartography
Guided by the general objective of discussing the possibilities of masculinities that permeate the experiences of trans men/transmasculine people in the Brazilian Northeast, the research presented here is an ethnocartography produced from the life story narratives of the researcher: a trans man, psychologist and from the Northeast, with other trans men/transmasculine people from the Brazilian Northeast. To this end, meetings were held in the states of Maranhao, Pernambuco, and Piaui, where field diary records and semi-structured interviews were used as methodological tools, which were recorded and later transcribed. The field also includes ethnocartographic experiences carried out in Alagoas and Rio Grande do Norte, through the author's activism in the trans movement. Based on decolonial, transfeminist, and post-structuralist theoretical frameworks, I present: 1) the theoretical location of studies on transmasculinities, resulting from an integrative literature review; 2) gender relations and coloniality situated in the health system and their impacts on access to public policies by trans men/transmasculine people; and 3) a debate on how the constructions of masculinities of trans men/transmasculine people are permeated by signs of a northeastern imaginary that correlates with the meanings produced by hegemonic masculinity while deconstructing them, forming a complexity of expressions of masculinities. This complexity, understood as a necessary contradiction, presents itself as part of the mobility of power relations that are inscribed in the different ways of being/making man, and, for this reason, are situated in an in-between place.