Traveling through seas, rivers, dunes and dry leaves: the in-between place of transmasculinities in northeastern Brazil
Trans men; transmasculinities; northeast; cisgenderism; transfeminism
Guided by the general objective of dialoguing with the possibilities of masculinities that traverse the experiences of trans/transmasculine men in northeastern Brazil, the work presented here is an ethnocartography produced by a trans man, a psychologist and northeasterner, based on the stitching together of narratives between his life story and those of other trans/transmasculine men in northeastern Brazil. To carry out this research, meetings were held in the states of Alagoas, Maranhão, Pernambuco, Piauí and Rio Grande do Norte, producing field diary entries and interviews with open-ended questions that were recorded and later transcribed. Based on the analyses of Paul Preciado (2014), Raewyn Connell (2003), Letícia Nascimento (2016) and Viviane Vergueiro (2015;2016), I discuss the interlocution of the normative construction of cisgender as a process that is produced by the structure of masculinity and as such produces, with regard to transmasculinities, an in-between place. The thesis is divided into three chapters, the first of which is an integrative literature review of research produced in Brazil on transmasculinities. In the second, I develop the methodological aspects of how the ethnocartographic field was designed and, in the third chapter, I go more directly into the narratives produced to think about how this in-between place unfolds in relation to the construction of masculinities, access to public policies and the notion of visibility vs. invisibility that permeates discussions about trans/transmasculine men.