Mema's House, Mexico City: On Transvestites, Queens, and Machos 9780226682587

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Mema’s House, Mexico City

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The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London 0 1998 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 1998 Printed in the United States of America 10 09 08 0 7 06 05 04 0 3 02 01 2 3 4 5 6 ISBN: 0-226-68256-0 (cloth) ISBN: 0-226-68257-9 (paper) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-PublicationData Prieur, Annick. Bscenesettelser av k j 0 n . English] Mema’s house, Mexico City : on transvestites, queens, and machos / Annick Prieur. p. cm. Rev. translation of the author’s thesis (doctoral-University of Oslo, 1994) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-226-68256-0 (cloth). - ISBN 0-226-68257-9 (pbk.) I . Transvestites-Mexico-Mexico City. I. Title. ~ ~ 7 7 . ~ 6 81997 13 97-25986 306.77-dc2 I CIP

8The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements

of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI 239.48-1992.

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Preface / vii

Introdmion: The First Night / ix I

The Setting and the Approach / r

z Everyday Life of a Jota / 4 1

3 Little Boys in Mother’s Wardrobe: On the Origins of Homosexuality and Effeminacy /

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4 Stealing Femininity: On Bodily and Symbolic Constructions / 140 5 Machos and Mayates: Masculinity and Bisexuality / 179 6 On Love, Domination, and Penetration / 234 Concluding Notes / 2 7 I Author’s Update / 27r Bibliography / 277 Index / 289

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More than eight years have passed since my first, accidental, encounter with Gerard0 Rub& Ortega Zurita, “Mema,” an encounter that led to a brief visit to his house in a suburb of Mexico City and, after that, to the fieldwork that lies behind this book. Without his support, I would not have been able to do this study (nor, in fact, would I ever have got the idea of doing it). Thanks to his being widely respected, I was received with openness and warmth by those who became my informants. H e was there to explain things and to discuss them with me all through the fieldwork; we also went through the final manuscript together. In addition to being a door-opener and an eyeopener, he was also my host, my cook, my driver, and my bodyguard. And he was, and still is, one of the closest friends I have. H e made the period of fieldwork a very pleasurable one for me. People keep asking me how I managed, as if I must have greatly suffered in the field. I will not deny that the fieldwork demanded a certain capacity for adaptation. But the truth is I very much enjoyed it-perhaps exactly because life there is so different from my ordinary life. I enjoyed having a lot of people around me and feeling myself to be part of a community. I enjoyed the lack of routines, of structure, of planning. I enjoyed the colors, the smells, and the noises. I was deeply impressed with my informants’ unconcerned lifestyle, with their ability always to find sources of pleasure and fun, and with their lack of shyness. I am very grateful for what I learned from them, and the only thing I regret is that they have made me

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PREFACE

miss them and worry about them, because they live such dangerous and difficult lives. This book is a rewritten and updated version of my doctoral thesis in sociology, which was written and published in Norwegian. I have received much help from colleagues-especially from Ivar Franes, my supervisor, and from Marit Melhuus, but I am also grateful for many valuable comments on earlier versions of this manuscript from Henning Bech, Birgt Bjerck, Tordis Borchgrevink, Liv Finstad, Elisabeth L. Furst, Cecilie Haigird, Kristi-Anne Stalen, Arnhild Taksdal, Karin Widerberg, and the late Sverre Lysgaard. For this English version I have received very valuable comments and encouragement from Pierre Bourdieu and Dominique Pasquier, as well as from the readers chosen by the University of Chicago Press, and who have revealed their identity: Joseph Carrier and Peter Nardi. All the above-mentioned have influenced the final result, and the sum of their contributions is amazing-it makes me realize to what degree scientific work is and should be a collective work. Without these scholars’ generosity, without both the encouragement from some and the nitty-gritty criticism from others, my work would have suffered much from lack of knowledge, of nuances, of depth, but also from lack of boldness. I also want to thank Cristina Pulido, who put forth great effort in transcribing the interview tapes, a work that not only required fluency in Spanish, but also a lot of patience; and Susan Haivik, who provided indispensable linguistic assistance for the English version. Last, but not least, let me thank my sponsors: the Department of Sociology at the University of Oslo, where I was employed during the fieldwork and while I prepared my dissertation; the Norwegian Research Council and the Scandinavian Council for Criminology, who covered some of the fieldwork expenses; and the Centre de Sociologie Europkenne at the Collkge de France, who hosted me during my work on the English version. A.P.

Paris, january 1997

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The First Night

W e met at an international conference on AIDS, in Ixtapa on Mexico’s Pacific coast, in the fall of 1988. Mema, a former sex worker, attended the conference as representative for a peer-education project for sex workers. After a brief conversation I wangled an invitation to visit the project, and to stay in his home. “My home is very poor, and I don’t know if you will like it there.” I told him not to worry, and that I was very glad to have the invitation. H e was to pick me up at the airport in Mexico City a few days later, on a Saturday night. My plane is late. It is almost midnight, but he is there waiting, with his eyes narrowed, maybe unsure if he will recognize me among all the arriving American tourists. I have no trouble spotting him, with his bleached hair, beret, and purple shirt. H e greets me warmly, and introduces me to three teenagers, Guillermo, El Chino, and Lupita. W e shake hands. They look shy. Chino is a bit effeminate, although more discreetly so than Mema. Lupita is wearing a very short minislart and heavy makeup. She is small and lively, and talks a lot, but it is hard for me to understand her. She speaks fast, and swallows the words. I am struck by how deep her voice is. Mema gets Guillermo and Chino to carry my luggage. “We’ll have to take the underground,” he explains. “DOwe have far to go?”I ask. “No, my home is close to the airport,” he says. I suggest we take a taxi. They tell

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me we are going to Ciudad Nezahualcoyotl, and they laugh when I try to repeat the name. T h e cab is a very tired Volkswagen where the front seat for a passenger is missing. Somehow the five of us manage to squeeze into it, while Mema discusses the fare with the driver. After twenty minutes of fast traveling through dimly lit, almost empty avenues, over surprising speed bumps, I start realizing “close” cannot mean the same thing in Mexico City as it does in my country. Finally we arrive. Mema’s house is on a dusty, narrow street. A high gate leads to a yard, where I can see some potted flowers, a wreck of a car and an old sink to the left, a chalk-white house to the right. It has a kitchen, a living room, a bedroom, and a bathroom, while there is a second bedroom with its own entrance from the yard. They smirk a little and explain, “We call that room the Maidens’ Bower” (rincdn de ias virgenes). My luggage is brought to the first bedroom, and Mema tells me I can choose between sharing his king-size bed or sleeping on the sofa in the living room. I have had a glance at the sofa, which seems once to have been the back seat of a bus. It is narrow and looks hard. Thinking quickly, I decide that in any case it is better for me to be cool. “If you’re sure it’s O.K., I prefer to share your bed.”‘ H e shows me the toilet, and reminds me that the toilet paper has to be thrown in a bucket, while water for flushing has to be poured from another bucket. This is no surprise, as I know this precaution from other Latin American cities with poor sewer systems. T h e other three have started to make some food, and ask me if I am hungry. I am not, but accept a cup of atok when Mema says it is like cocoa. After tasting it I don’t know if I agree, but it’s not badin small doses. Unfortunately my cup is full. “How long are you going to stay?” Mema asks me. “Until Wednesday,” I answer. H e then says I’ll have to use my time well, and suggests that we go right away to a disco where many prostitutes go before or after work. And it is not far away. T o get a taxi, Lupita strikes a pose halfway out in the main street. T h e first one that stops is too expensive, says Mema. The next driver I . It takes two years before he tells me he never had expected me to choose his bed, and that he was pretty embarrassed.Although the number of people in Mexican households usually oumumber by far the number of beds, he had never shared his with a woman before. But in a way he liked my choice, too, he tells me, as one of his favorite pastimes when meeting gringos is to violate their personal space and watch them step back until they reach the wall.

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who stops opens his fly as Lupita opens the door, but even though she laughs and makes him a proposition, they don’t agree on the fare. I don’t understand all that happens, but it seems he would rather I took Lupita’s place. W e let him go, and walk down to the crossing a few blocks away. I hear screams and see a man running away at the other side of the street, with several others following him. They catch up with him, knock him down, and start kicking him. I try to attract Mema’s attention, but he just takes me by the arm and pulls me along. “Don’t bother. It would be dangerous to get mixed up in that.” We get hold of a cab, and when we arrive at the disco, Mema asks me what time it is. I tell him it is two o’clock. “Oh, then we’ve probably missed the show.” I say I will pay for us, and am pleased to discover it is not expensive a t all. At the entrance we are searched. Lupita seems amused by the guard who feels her up. Inside it is crowded, and the music is loud. Salsa. Mema immediately runs into people he knows, and presents me to Lidia, a tall girl in a mini dress. W e try to make our way further through the crowd, Mema first, holding me by the hand, with Lupita behind me, her hands on my hips. Mema bends back to shout in my ear that there is no point trying to get a table, “because then we’d have to buy a whole bottle of rum for the table.” He hands our coats over to Lupita and pulls me out on the dance floor. He proves to be a brilliant dancer, smooth and rapid, and I am particularly impressed by the way he makes his big buttocks shake. Here are many good dancers, and I sincerely hope that nobody is watching me too closely. But many probably are, since I seem to be the only foreigner (I am rather tall for a woman, and blond). In all other aspects the audience is really very mixed. Some boys are dancing together, and they look more or less like many gays in Europe or in the States, slightly effeminate. Some girls are dancing together, too, one or both dressed like boys and moving like boys. But most couples are male/female. For the most part they look like other urban young people I have seen so far in Mexico. Most of the boys are wearing jeans and T-shirts, many with jogging shoes. The girls are a bit more dressed up. Some are particularly sexily dressed and heavily made up, and I assume they are among the sex workers we were supposed to meet. Some of them dance with young boys; others with adult men, some of whom are wearing suits and ties. A plump, big-breasted woman with masses of curly hair is wearing only nylon stockings and a feather boa. She leans backward while she shakes her breasts; her partner laughs as he pushes his leg between hers. She laughs too, and they almost fall on the floor.

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Mema takes me around the disco before we return to the others. He stops and talks with a tall woman wearing a tight, very low-cut blouse. She is skinny, but her bosom is impressive. I cannot hear what they say. Mema draws me closer, and tells me to take a good look at her breasts: “So that you can see what we can make here in Mexico.” She draws out one of her breasts, and asks me to touch it. It feels a bit strange, almost like when you squeeze a half-full bag of flour. The lights are turned up, and people flock to the bar counter. The men feel up the girls in the line, the girls shriek. “Give Lupita some money to buy some drinks?”Mema asks me. I wonder why we are to drink something now, when it is all over, and he tells me that if we don’t we won’t be allowed to leave. Everyone has to drink, but if they do it too early, they are not given exit tickets with their drinks, and that means they have to drink more. A guy approaches, and asks me to go with him. I wave him away, but another one shows up, making his proposal in some sort of English, also without success. Mema narrows his eyes (he had not wanted to wear his glasses at this disco) as he looks at a young boy standing some feet away, “HOW do you find him? Is he handsome?” “He looks O.K., but I don’t know your taste!” I answer. Mema takes a cigarette, walks over and asks for a light. Lupita comes back with the glasses, coke with a dash of rum. We get out and start walking. It is said to be easier to get a taxi in the main street some blocks away. The boy Mema invited follows us, and catches up with me. He says his name is Daniel and that he is studying computer science. He stays with me while we walk along. I try to make him talk about his studies, but he wants me to tell him about my home country. After half an hour of walking we manage to find a taxi. It too is a tired Volkswagen, and now we are six passengers who somehow find a place in it. When we arrive, Lupita, Chino, and Guillermo go to sleep in the Maidens’ Bower, where they share a bed. “If you give me a blanket, I’ll sleep on the sofa,” I tell Mema. He objects. He has offered me his bed and I am to sleep there. He takes a blanket for himself, I wish him a good night and go into the bedroom and start to undress. Then Daniel enters the room. Mema tells him to come back: “I don’t think you are going to sleep with her.” He turns on the radio. There is just a curtain between the two rooms. I am not used to sleeping with tropical music and radio commercials blasting away, so it takes time to fall asleep. I wake up when Mema gets into the bed beside me. He tells me Daniel has left, and

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asks if it was all right that he told Daniel to come back to him. “Maybe you wanted him to stay with you?” he asks. I laugh and tell him no, that was not the case, and ask him if Daniel is homosexual. “It is not that simple,” Mema says. Daniel had had to pretend he was to be with me in order to avoid some trouble with himself. “He is what we call a mayate, but he doesn’t want to accept he likes men.” I should not believe that he was studying computer science either. “That’s what they all say.” I now ask Mema about the people we met at the disco. Were there many transsexuals among them? “No, were there any? Maybe a couple, I don’t remember.”

I wondered about this, as I had noticed several strikingly tall and muscular women. But I did not say anything then. Little by little things got clearer in the days to follow. I met a girl, Cristina, a beautiful hairdresser, who after a couple of hours of small talk complained about having to sit on her testicles. Other girls presented themselves as homosemales, or jotos. They knew not all homosemales were like themselves. They were “dressed”-veStidaS. Little Lupita was one of them. I had hardly been in Mema’s house more than a night before I found myself intrigued by most of the questions that this book will try to answer. I had seen men dressing like women, and transforming their bodies to resemble women’s bodies, and I wondered about their most basic motives. I had seen them get into relationships with masculine-looking men who did not consider themselves homosexual, and I wondered about this. I had come to understand that many of the transvestites were prostitutes, that several of them were hairdressers for a local clientele, that most of them lived with their families, and that they participated quite naturally at a disco attended by local youth. All this surprised me. I had imagined transvestite prostitutes would have a more shady existence, in the back streets of the city. Curiosity is a researcher’s best stimulant, and I will let this analysis be guided by the questions to which I myself wanted to find answers. 4ft i r having studied gender and sex issues for some years, I had found myself confronted with an exemplary case: feminine men, men dressing like women and having relationships with masculine men, and doing so in a society not only with a strong norm of gender complementarity but also extremely male-dominated, the very society from which the now internationally known word machismo stems. I had

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here a unique occasion to study mechanisms of male dominance, including the subtleties of adaptation and resistance to it. I believed that these feminine, homosexual men would bring to light deeply embedded truths about gender, since they were both a provocation against the gender order and a logical result of it. As men who had renounced their masculinity in a society where males were dominant, they were in an extremely contradictory position. I had here a possibility to study gender constructions very concretely, through the formation of gender categories as well as through social, bodily, and sexual practices. One rarely sees such clear cases of social fashioning of the body. Here, too, I would be able to study the complex interplay of strategies of adaptation to dominance, of categories of perception and appreciation, of class-determined aesthetics, and of creativity. These topics-of sex, gender constructions, and bodily practices-are very fashionable in social science today, but the way they are treated differs a lot. There are many purely theoretical works that, as I see it, lack sensitivity to how these questions are handled in social practice; and many empirical works are superficial, jump too fast to unnuanced conclusions. Even good and thoroughgoing empirical works sometimes get lost in the particularities of their cases and do not elicit more general implications. My ambition is to study these questions through a detailed case study, starting from the conviction that it is only through empirical studies that theoretical questions may be addressed meaningfully, and through theory that these studies become interesting. The case I have studied is also an exemplary case for a discussion of more traditional sociological questions, such as the issues of class domination and social integration. For instance, I intend to show that treating social integration and marginalization as broad antonyms is inadequate-that it is as false to state that “Mexican homosexual transvestites are socially integrated” as to state that they are marginalized. I believe the homosexual men also provide a very good case for an analysis of the Mexican family: by being those who seemingly do not fit in but still are compelled to reintegrate the family, they may reveal a lot about the values and the functioning of the family. And I believe the concrete analysis I will give of a very specific subculture may reveal functions that many other youth subcultures also have, such as the way in which a subculture gives meaning to the participants’ existence. Further, such cases may enable us to study questions regarding

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the limits of what can be understood in sociological concepts, where sociology ends and biology begins. This is particularly relevant in the discussion of the origins of homosexuality and of effeminacy. And the importance of the motivation for sexual pleasure is a theme underlying the whole book, as well as a reminder that we sociologists should be very careful about not forgetting the importance of pleasure and joy in our interpretations of human actions. In the field under study, the quest for sexual pleasure is at least as important as the concerns for day-to-day survival.

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Anyone who has arrived in Mexico City by plane will have been astonished by the vast dimensions of this metropolis. By night it spreads out like a beautiful, never ending sea of light. By day the sight is gray and dusty, for there is a heavy smog over this city situated on a plateau at an altitude of 7,350 feet and surrounded by snow-covered volcanic mountains. When its whole urban agglomeration is considered, Mexico City is one of the largest cities in the world, possibly the largest. Official counts are at about fifteen million people, depending on how much of the agglomeration gets counted. However, counting inhabitants is said to be not just an empirical question but also a political one, since the ruling party has an interest in keeping the figure down. So some sources say that the whole urban area actually may reach thirty million people before the year 2 0 0 0 , with about half of the population living in shantytowns (see, for instance, the estimations in Libiration [1993], based on United Nations’ figures). There are currently about three million cars, and the traffic problems are dramatic: accidents, gas- and time-consuming traffic jams, and pollution. Mexico City is a strangely divided city, with residential areas reminiscent of Beverly Hills lying close to the shantytowns. Mexico itself is both a very rich and a very poor country, in between the industrialized world and the third world. In natural resources it is undoubtedly rich, but if a great many Mexicans have left Mexico to seek low-paid and often illegal work in the United States, it is because they would

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have been even poorer if they had stayed at home. In regard to education, life expectancy, fertility rates, and food consumption, Mexico approximates the levels of many industrialized countries (United Nations 1992, 1993, 1995a, 1995b). But the distribution of wealth is extremely unequal. By 1990 the government reported that forty-one million people, nearly half the population, fell below the poverty line, with seventeen million living in conditions of great poverty (Barry 1992:96). Other reports (cf. AvilCs 1996) show that 10 percent of the population possess 70 percent of the national income. Owing to inflation, the general caloric and protein intake declined dramatically during the 1980s (Barry 1992:95). From a consumer price index of IOO in 1980 the prices for food had risen to 19,983 in 1993, as compared to 163 in the United States in the same period (United Nations 1995b), while the purchasing power of the minimum wage in 1991 was only about a third of what it was in 1978 (Barry 1992:97). At the start of the 1990s unemployment was estimated at about 18 percent, and underemployment affects 2 5 to 40 percent of the population. An indicator of the declining ability of the Mexican economy to provide employment may be the startling growth of the informal sector. The number of people working outside the formal economy, mostly as street vendors, increased by more than 80 percent between 1982 and 1990, and may involve more than one-quarter of the economically active population (Barry 1992:98, 102). In the nineties an economic crisis has struck Mexico, with devaluation of the peso, privatizations, and other liberal reforms. Considering all economic aspects, it is highly probable that the situation in 1997 is a good deal worse than these statistics indicate. When it comes to human rights (I quote from the InterHemispheric Education Resource Center’s documentation on Mexico [Barry 1992:63]):“The abuse of human rights is institutionalized in Mexico, a situation that has remained largely unchanged since the Mexican Revolution. . . . Torture, arbitrary detention, imprisonment on political grounds, disappearances, abysmal prison conditions, repression of the labor movement, censorship, electoral fraud, and abuse of indigenous and rural populations are persistent human rights violations within the Mexican system.” The rate of death caused by homicide or injury purposely inflicted by other persons was at 17.2 per IOO,OOO in 1991-compared to 9.8 in the United States in 1990 (United Nations 1995a). When I was back in 1996, I had a firm impression that the violence had become even more widespread than it had been only a few years before. This is certainly

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a consequence of the negative economic evolution, but may also have to do with the fact that the drug traffic has become much more important in Mexico in the last years, after the invasion of Panama in 1989 (Avilb 1996). T h e political influence of the drug cartels, through corruption, is considered to be very strong (AvilCs 1996). Ci&d

Nezahvakbyotl

Ciudad Nezahualc6yotl, or “Neza,” is built on a drained lake, and grew, according to Vdez-Ibaiiez’s sources (1983:31-33), from about ten thousand inhabitants in 1957 to an estimated 2 . 3 million in 1980. T h e increase was expected to continue. But the official figures are far more moderate: 1 . 2 5 million in 1996 (from Instituto Nacional Estadistica Geografia e Informitica). People living there, however, used to give me figures that were up to four or five times the official one. I am not able to evaluate the reliability of the official figure, nor to say why many inhabitants seemed not to trust it. In any case, Neza is a big city, but it does not even figure on most maps ofMexico, and has no postcards to offer its visitors. Neza is considered to be a part of Mexico City, a suburb for people worlung in the city. A sign by a heavily trafficked road wishes you Bienvenidosa Ciudad Nezahualcciyotl-without the sign you would not have noticed you were leaving Mexico City. T h e sign seems ironic, as nobody except those who live in Neza would go there. Why should they? There are no industrial plants of importance in Neza, nor any recreation areas or even any downtown. Neza has a very bad reputation, too: dirty, dangerous and poor. Middle- and upper-class citizens of Mexico City have told me they would never dream of venturing into Neza. It is true that Neza is dusty. Most of its streets are not asphalted. It is true that there is a lot of garbage in the streets and that the antiquated buses are terrible polluters, making an earsplitting noise and belching out black exhaust. It is also true that the youth gangs may make life outdoors after dark somewhat hazardous. Neza is undoubtedly a poor, lower-class area. Most of those who live in Neza are first- or second-generation immigrants from the countryside, malung a living as workers or craftsmen, or in the unofficial economy (small service work, petty commerce, etc.). Neza grew up as a shantytown. A large proportion of the new inhabitants settled into their lots before purchase or before initiating any legal procedures to take possession of the lots (see Vdez-Ibaiiez [1983] for the history of this settlement). There was no electricity, water, sewer system, garbage

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collection, or public transport when they arrived, and on the outskirts of Neza there are areas that still lack these services. But the main parts of the city have them all today, and the dusty streets are becoming asphalted one after the other. More and more people have telephones, albeit the lines are cut pretty often, owing to unpaid bills. Neza’s poor reputation seems unfair, because it is also a nice place, with its small houses in lively colors, the rows of pennants flying like semi-permanent decorations for some fiesta or other, the tropical music blaring everywhere from a myriad of transistor radios, the neighborhood women chattering in the gates, the crowded markets where traditionally clad older women sell all kinds of exotic fruits, the small shops with the shy young girls attending, and the narrow plots of land where youngsters play soccer, between the heavily trafficked main streets. In The Children of Sanchez ( I 96 I ) the North American anthropologist Oscar Lewis has described an area of Mexico City that in many ways resembles the later Neza. H e wrote about “people who are marginal even when they live in the heart of a great city” (p. xxvi); they have a low level of education and literacy, they do not belong to a labor union or a political party, they have no health insurance nor do they adhere to the national welfare agency, and they have no bank account. Some have regular work, but many survive from day to day, through a miscellany of unslulled occupations, child labor, pawning of personal goods and borrowing from local moneylenders at usurious rates of interest. But first and foremost they survive thanks to the help of local networks: family, neighbors and friends. Lewis describes the social and psychologcal characteristics of what he names the culture of poverty (pp. mi-vii): Some of the social and psychological characteristics include living in crowded quarters, a lack of privacy, gregariousness, a high incidence of alcoholism, frequent resort to violence in the training of children, wife beating, early initiation into sex, free unions or consensual marriages, a relatively high incidence of the abandonment of mothers and children, a trend toward mother-centered families and a much greater knowledge of maternal relatives, the predominance of the nuclear family, a strong predisposition to authoritarianism,and a great emphasis upon family solidarity-an ideal only rarely achieved. Other traits include a strong present time orientation with relatively little ability to defer gratification and plan for the future, a sense of resignation and fatalism based upon the realities of their difficult life situation, a belief in male superiority which reaches its crystallization in machismo or the cult of masculinity, a corre-

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sponding martyr complex among women, and finally, a high tolerance for psychological pathology of all sorts.

This description is very harsh, but through the accounts of the SLnchez children we can also see the mutual solidarity among neighbors and the moral obligations among family members. T h e book has, I would claim, in many cases wrongly been read as a description of social disorganization, whereas Lewis actually uncovers the very strong, informal organization of the society. T he anthropologist Larissa Adler Lomnitz (1977) describes a similar area on the outskirts of Mexico City in the early I ~ ~ OCerrada S, del C6ndor. She does not deny having seen the same conditions: dirt, overcrowding, quarrels, and fights. But her focus is definitely on the cohesive forces. Most of the inhabitants are marginalized in the sense that they live with economic insecurity. They have no job security, they often have only irregular income and they earn less than the legal minimum wage, they have no savings and no pension to look forward to. Most of them had moved there because they already had some family members living in Cerrada del C6ndor who could provide them with housing or work or would let them stay until they found housing elsewhere, usually nearby. They have no bank accounts, but put up informal rotating credit clubs (tandas), where all the members contribute with a certain amount weekly or monthly, and each of them has his or her turn to pocket the total sum. They make networks of reciprocal exchanges, based on trust, with family members or neighbors. Th e parents and the godparents are obliged to treat each other with respect, and help each other in case of need. All in all, Adler Lomnitz shows that this seemingly disorganized society is highly structured, indeed, through the reciprocity network.' While there are shantytowns on the outskirts of Neza, most parts of the city had by the late I @os/early I 990s a stronger infrastructure and better supply of public services than the areas described by Lewis and Adler Lomnitz. All the same, family structure and way of life show several greatly similar features. Neza is probably much like I . It could be tempting to explain the networks of economic solidarity as purely rationally motivated: that although the obligations of solidarity make it impossible for anybody to save up enough money to get out of poverty, one is protected against the worst alternative, against starving and freezing. But the whole system is far more complicated and symbolically loaded. For instance, the compadrazgo (fictive kinship or godparenthood) is not a union between equals, with equal obligations. T h e cornpadre is obliged to give more, economically, than he receives in return, but he gains respect and recognition-a purely symbolic capital.

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many other poor barrios around several big cities in Mexico. What I have observed there can probably be found in those other banios, too, with some variations. I have so far described the physical and the social space in which is inscribed the phenomenon that this book deals with. The physical space is Neza, on the outskirts of a very big city, but far from its center and far from its prestigious places, far from where the economic, cultural, and symbolic capital of a city is concentrated (cf. Bourdieu et al. 1993 on physical and social space). Neza is poor in all senses of the word, and it is crowded. The physical space reflects the social space: people living here are deprived of economic and cultural capital, and have no symbolic capital but what they may achieve in their daily interactions. Their possibilities for upward social mobility are scarce, and the most efficient way to improve life conditions will be through escape-by becoming illegal immigrants in the United States. But they all know they could be far worse off: many inhabitants send money to relatives in the countryside who have an even harder living, and everyone can see the shantytowns worse than Neza that surround Mexico City. My field of research is situated in a marginal corner of the physical space, and in a very marginal position within the social space. Almost all of my informants belong to the lower layer of the worlung class. Only a few have education beyond primary school. And, in addition to being relatively deprived of economic and cultural capital, the majority of my informants are homosexual men who are particularly deprived of symbolic capital, since they have traded their male honor for a life as recognizable, feminine homosexuals. They live their lives as feminine men in a society where masculinity really counts, where it is a value of utmost social importance. Mema’s House

The point of departure for my study is Mema’s house in Neza. Mema spent much of his childhood in this house, and chose to stay behind when other family members moved to better-off areas. Only his grandparents stayed, in the house next door. His family is somewhat mixed, but may be labeled lower middle class. His brothers have had upward mobility-the one through studies, the other through politics. Mema has never tried to make any kind of professional career, although he has had several opportunities. He has been a prostitute, a hairdresser, a cook, a clerk, and a vendor, but in recent years he

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has mainly worked as an AIDS educator for male sex workers. For a long time he has been an activist and leader in the gay movement, and has also participated in national political campaigns. Mema is always surrounded by people-lots of them. He never goes anywhere alone, but is accompanied by his lovers, or by some of his “daughters,” as he calls the young homosexual boys who surround him. They respond by calling him abuelita or anciana-grandmother or old woman (by the time of the fieldwork, he was in his middle thirties). Mema is the leader of his gang in very much the same way as the sociological hero Doc was in William Foote Whyte’s (1969 [I943]) study from “C~rnerville.’~ Th e leader is the center; without him, the gang splits up. H e takes decisions, he acts when it is needed. H e is trusted, he is reliable. He gives advice and encouragement. H e is sensitive, and he resolves conflicts. H e is in charge of the “external diplomacy,” contact with other gangs. H e does not need always to be the best, the cleverest, but he should have solid competence in the central activities of his group. Doc was not the best bowler: it was his communicative talent that made him a leader. Likewise with Mema-he is not the most beautiful, in a context where beauty is of great importance, but he is a good dancer and a slulled seducer of handsome young men, and these are both very central activities. And, first and foremost, he has impressive social and communicative talents. His house is a gathering place for young people from the neighborhood, especially for young boys with a homosexual preference. But they are not the only ones who gather here. Usually some ten to twenty persons stop by every day, mostly in the evening. They gather to chat, flirt, listen to music, smoke marihuana, and maybe also have sex. Since most of them live with their parents, Mema’s house is a sanctuary for all these activities that cannot so easily be carried out at home. This house, though, does have its own rules, and Mema is the boss. There are almost always some who are living in his house, usually young homosexual boys. Th e youngest ones get some time to try out the homosexual life. Often they come because their parents cannot accept their effeminacy and/or homosexuality, and have been giving them a hard time at home. Whenever Mema has had a stable lover, he has usually lived there. Some women or girls have also lived in Mema’s house, among them a young mother who wanted to get away from her children for a while, leaving them with her parents, and a young girl whose parents could not accept her wild lifestyle.

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Gerard0 Ortega (Mema) and Josefina.

T h e teenagers move in and out of the house, usually from their parents, house. Some move back out when they want to straighten themselves up, go back to school or start work, since life in Mema’s house is not so easy to combine with homework and early rising. Or they may have started in prostitution and be earning enough to live on their own, or, owing to the added income, to be better accepted by their families. O r they may move out because they do not straighten themselves up. Several have been told to leave because they would not do their share of the housework, used too much alcohol or drugs, or stole from Mema. All of them sleep in the Maidens’ Bower. (When I came, there was only one big bed and a sofa in the room, but two years later the bed had been replaced by three bunkbeds.) They have some blankets, but no sheets, and they are always quarreling about who is to sleep where, sharing their bed with whom, etc. These are complicated discussions, since very often some friends are also staying the night. Everything they own-just some clothes and some makeup-is kept in a cardboard box pushed under the bed, so “loans” and thefts become another recurrent topic of quarrels. Th e radio and record rack

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Fig. 2 . Juana, Chetos, Diana, Gina, the author, Josefina, Nayeli, and Hany. The photo is taken on my second night in Mema’s house, and I have just discovered I am the only woman present. (Photo taken by Mema.)

is in Mema’s living room, with a connected loudspeaker in the Maidens’ Bower. When Mema goes to sleep, he turns off the music, locks the gate and the door to his own rooms. Nobody will be let in or out until he gets up the next morning. This is for safety reasons, but also because the young people would continue their party all night if they could. In the morning, Mema puts on music to wake up those in the Maidens’ Bower and order them into activity, if they want breakfast. All who live there are supposed to do some housework, unless they bring money to the household-which they practically never do. T h e least larcenous is admitted to tidy up Mema’s bedroom, make his bed, sweep and clean, and do errands. Doing the dishes, tidying up the Maidens’ Bower, sweeping the yard, and, after Mema got rabbits, tidying up the rabbit hutch-these are all tasks with less prestige. Mema usually directs the preparation of food himself, ordering any idle hands to help out. Everyone who contributes has a right to food, and there are very often other guests as well. Mema serves the food, with everything ordered according to status: seat (close to him or further away, or standing if there are no seats lefi), the h n d of plate and glass (new or much scratched plastic), how much each person gets of the best food (avocados, fried bananas, cream,

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Fig. 3. Mema wakes all those who had slept in the Maidens’ Bower that night.

cakes, soft drinks), and whether one is allowed to refuse something one does not like. But nobody leaves hungry, thanks to an abundance of tortillas, rice, and beans, accompanied by the hottest chili sauce in town. Mema is a good cook-on that they all agree. I am always impressed by how much the teenagers devour, and how quickly. In this I guess they resemble most teenagers-but still I get the feeling that to have enough to eat was not something they take for granted. Mema calls it the syndrome of scarcity-to fill up whenever there is a possibility for it. T h e hierarchy is confirmed in other ways, too: who can ask whom to go and buy cigarettes, who can get whom to carry their bags, who gets listened to, who can be teased, and how, etc. Mema is the boss; after him comes whoever is closest to him, as his lover or the one he trusts the most, usually Lupita. After that, ranking depends on age and on economic independence. T h e passing of the joint is often a very clear expression of rank. Marihuana and alcohol in moderate amounts are the only drugs permitted in his house. T h e fact that the teenagers steal a lot is looked upon as normal-but they must not do it from the shops nearby, and, above all, they must not steal from each other. Selling sex is totally accepted, and an active sexual life is seen as desirable. There is no obligation for visitors to have sex when they come to Mema’s, but at least they should show a positive attitude. Once a

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Fig. 4. Supper at Mema’s.

boy was asked to not come back, since Mema felt he inhibited his friends by never talung part himself. Mema’s house is well known locally as a gathering place for homosexual men. There is often music or noise very late at night. All the same, Mema is on good terms with his neighbors, thanks to intensive diplomatic activity when needed. Once when he was away, a gang of the regular visitors gathered in the street outside his house, sniffing glue and making a lot of noise. This led to complaints from the neighbors when he got back. H e then spent several hours talking it over with the neighbors, and scolded the teenagers in question. T h e sons of neighbors on the same street are hesitant about going to Mema’s house too openly, but some do come after dark. On the other hand, Mema tries to protect his relationship with the most immediate neighbors by not letting their sons in. Most of the people who come to the house live in Neza. And almost all belong to the workmg class-not necessarily in a strict Marxian sense, where the question is the relationship to the means of production, but at least in a Bourdieusian sense, where the question is rather about lifestyle: the fathers, when they live with the family, are skilled or unskilled workers, often unemployed or only precariously employed, or craftsmen or shopkeepers. Some of the teenagers who

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come to Mema’s house, both among the feminine homosexuals and among their bisexual partners, are still at school, and among the older there are a couple of office workers. But most of the feminine homosexuals earn their living as hairdressers, prostitutes, or thieves; most of the bisexual boys and men are workers or craftsmen, usually unor low-skilled; and among the few women who are regular visitors, there are two factory workers while the others are unemployed and unskilled. The visitors have various kinds of ties to the house. It is not possible to tell how many can be said to belong to this social set. This is not only a question of the frequency of their visits, as some are people that everybody knows even if they do not show up often, whereas the presence of others is barely noticed even if they come daily. During my stays at Mema’s, five young people have lived in the house, but not necessarily all the time: Lupita, Flaca, and Pancha, all homosexuals and aged fifteen to eighteen when I first met them (1988); Maria, a girl of fifteen; and Irma, a woman of about twenty-five. These five together with fifteen others make up what I will regard as the inner circle of persons who have either lived in the house, stayed overnight frequently, or at least used at certain times to show up several times a week. Of these twenty, three are heterosexual women. Of the remaining seventeen, eleven are effeminate boys or men, and six are ordinary-looking boys or men. The former I classify as homosexuals, as they have all or almost all their sexual encounters with men, while I classify the latter as bisexuals, since they have sexual relationships with both women and men. The next circle is composed of about fifty other persons, who have showed up more than once during my stays; and the last circle includes about a hundred persons that I have seen only once at Mema’s. The proportion of bisexuals is higher in these last two circles, since they are composed partly of the more or less casual partners of those actually living at Mema’s. (I will explain the distinction I have made so far between feminine homosexual men and bisexual men later in this chapter.) The Fieldwork

It is first and foremost the social setting in and around Mema’s house that I know and write about. After my first, brief visit in 1988, I returned four times, malung in all six months of fieldwork, from 1989 to 1991. I always stayed in Mema’s house. I came back to Mexico City for two weeks in 1993, but did not spend so much time in Neza

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because I had come to visit Mema and Josefina in prison in order to see if I could help them (they had been falsely accused of rape and kept in detention for a year, until they were acquitted). However, on this occasion I got good information about the prison conditions for recognizably homosexual men. I was back for another two weeks in 1996, but spent most of the time in the city of Morelia, where Mema lives now. W e used much of the time to go through this manuscript, but spent also some days together in Neza, and I got the opportunity to update the information about most of my main informants, and I also got some indirect information about almost all of those I did not get to meet this time. This means that I have followed many of them over a period of eight years. I was also able to see that the subculture had recruited new and younger members, and that they resembled very much their predecessors. Six to seven months is usually considered to be a rather short time for fieldwork, but this time was intensively used. I did not have to waste any time in finding my informants, or in trying to get in touch with them. They gathered where I was living, and as a friend of Mema, guaranteed by him, I was immediately accepted by everybody. And I lived with them day and night, right in their midst. Usually, whenever I left the house, it was also together with the people living there. I have been a t least ten times to discos frequented by homosexual men in Neza or in Mexico City (five different places), and to similar discos or bars in other cities or villages eight times (six different places). I have followed Mema on innumerable rounds in the prostitution district, handing out condoms. And I have witnessed sexual games among men at various other scenes: marketplaces, public transport, jails. I have also visited the homes of eight homosexual boys or men in Neza, six of them living with their families so that I also met their parents, and some of their brothers and sisters. Usually I wrote up my field notes at night, before going to sleep, or the next morning, while the rhythm in the house was still slow. Although I did not hide my writing, I preferred to be alone, to avoid any questions about what I was writing. I never took notes during the interaction (which means that in this text, when I refer to what informants said in particular contexts-in an interaction, at a disco, etc.-it is always written from memory). My observation was overt in the sense that to people who did not know me, I was usually presented as a researcher and as a sociologist, and I often explained that I was studying the life of the homosexual

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men in Neza. Sometimes this led to a discussion about the differences between Neza and Europe, but I did not get so many questions about my research. I do not think those who knew me really considered that I was working-but most of them worked as little as possible themselves. I have also done covert observation, in the sense that I have not always had the opportunity to present myself as a researcher, many times not to present myself at all. This is of course the case for all the observations made in public places, in the streets or in the discos, but also sometimes in closed settings, as in Mema’s house, where newcomers or people who just dropped by would not know I was observing them as a researcher, nor did the people in the jails, except for those I had come to visit. But I never concealed my presence, so I consider it ethically unproblematic to use this information, as long as anonymity is respected. I must admit that I, like most participant observers, did experience various minor problems with the fieldwork. In the beginning I had some problems understanding my informants, when they were speaking to each other, using a lot of local expressions and referring to persons and events I did not know. T h e eternal music did not help. And I was also a bit uncomfortable with the nightly rhythm of life, since I often felt ready to sleep just when things started to happen. At times the fieldwork demanded more concentration and discipline than I could manage to mobilize. But at least, I stayed rather disciplined about my field notes, and tried to write them up as soon as possible after the events. Throughout the fieldwork, Mema was the ideal key informant. W e were together almost day and night during my stays. H e took me around and introduced me to people. He is a very respected and liked person, so I was always guaranteed a warm welcome when I was introduced as a friend of his. He is also a very good observer, a lay ethnographer, and he directed my attention to many things that I probably would not have seen, or understood, without his help. As he himself belongs to the subculture I was studying, but at the same time belongs partly to the middle class, and has lived in other surroundings, among different people, he has the distance required to understand and explain what was opaque to me, matters the others might have taken for granted. In fact, Mema has consciously chosen a style that can ensure him this double identity. H e leaves no doubt about his sexual preferences, with his body movements and his tight clothes in flashy colors. This style corresponds to popular and not

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to middle-class taste. H e does not dress in women’s clothes and has never wanted breasts, or even to have his earlobes pierced, since he wants to be able to change easily over to a more discreet presentation of himself whenever needed-in his work, for his political activities, or for private purposes. Both because of this “borderline” position and because he cannot be rendered anonymous, I do not make use of information about him in this book, although I may report interactions he has with others, where the latter are in focus. When Mema introduced me to people, he would explain that I was a researcher who was studying his community-but he used to do this in a very flattering manner, stressing my education, my post a t the university, the number of languages I speak, etc. I tried to make him understand I would prefer a more low-key presentation vis-i-vis people with very little formal education. But he knew it would be to my advantage to be respected, and that most people would have respect for my formal education. Th e young people in and around his house perceived immediately that I had money, that I earned my own living and was independent. T h e distinction between being financially dependent and independent is very important for them. Looks are also very important; being blond, blue-eyed and fair-skinned, I had some advantages, according to their standards, although I would have needed more opulent curves for a top ranking. To reiterate, the hierarchy of Mema’s house is clearly expressed in many different ways. By virtue of the traits just mentioned, but above all because Mema so designated me, I had status as the person next to him. This gave me the right to be treated with respect, and the only housework that was distinguished enough for me was cooking-but there I admitted to second-rate competence. A distinguished, but very disagreeable, task that fell to me was to be in command when Mema was absent. I was expected to get a group of youngsters, who in another society would all have been diagnosed as having severe social adjustment problems, to tidy up the house and do the chores-while all they wanted to do was to dance, make love, smoke marihuana, snatch goodies from the refrigerator, and test out my limits. At first I tried to resolve all problems in an intellectual, soft, and democratic way, with reasons and discussion, but with very little success. I ended up tearing both my own hair and theirs, if they had not already run away. But when I started to pull their hair, everything went a lot better. It took me some time to accept my position in the hierarchy, and to accept the corresponding behavior that was expected. I had wanted to stay more on the

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outside of their social system, but I could not live with them and still stay outside nor could I expect them to adopt my democratic ideals and pacific methods: I had to adopt their ideals and methods. When the asymmetry between researcher and informants regarding cultural and economic capital is as strong as it was indeed in this case, there is always a danger that the research relationship becomes a sort of symbolic violence (Bourdieu 1996): the informants may feel objectified and judged by a person who represents the dominant categories of their society. On the basis of his research among gang members in the Parisian suburbs, the French sociologist GCrard Mauger (199 I) suggests such a research situation-a meeting between an intellectual and persons who have endured defeats in the educational system-will bring up the latter’s memories from school and influence their attitudes toward the researcher. The researcher is a representative of what is culturally legitimate, and the informants may expect the researcher to share dominant views of them. This may make them withdraw from dialogue, or take on an aggressive and combative attitude toward the researcher. The researcher may try to compensate for this asymmetry by arriving alone, and by allowing herself to be tested by them. Pierre Bourdieu (1996) recommends that the researcher should already know the informant or have common acquaintances, and that they preferably also should have some traits in common that makes it possible somehow to change the objectifymg you to we, to create a situation where the two may try to reach an understanding together. In my case the asymmetry was balanced out in some ways. I was on the home territory of my informants, and I shared their life. As a foreigner, I spoke their language as well as I could and certainly not in an academic manner (never having studied Spanish at school). They exhibited their superiority in many ways: in excelling in verbal games, in dancing or cooking-and several of them considered they surpassed me when it came to femininity as well. Still, my higher position in the social hierarchy did remain, but it did not keep me from making friends. Friendship does not necessarily mean a relationship between equals in Mexico, but is often modeled rather like the relationships between siblings, where a difference in age corresponds to a difference in authority. In fact, I believe that the remaining differences in status were seen as natural and easy to accept-and indeed a lot easier for them to accept than for me. Here the question of money comes in. Mema is usually the main provider for the household. His incomes vary, but he is always able

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to afford some basic food. H e is very discreet about his income, and lets nobody know too much about how and how much he earns. When I was there, he usually was not working, so I passed money over to him. That made me the main provider then, but most of the others did not know about that. I also assisted Mema in designing and negotiating an AIDS-prevention project for male sex workers that got funding, with him as a project leader, for three years from the Norwegian government, through a Norwegian gay organization. I also used to pay for all of us, usually four to six persons, when we went to discos and other places of entertainment. This was of course noticed, but was also expected. In the beginning I felt uncomfortable about this mixing of personal and economic relationships. I was used either to the Scandinavian practice of letting everybody pay their own way or to the more continental practice, where one may pay for the others on the understanding that one of them will take the turn next time. But I realized that here things were different: the one who has money invites those he or she wants to invite and pays for everybody. Next time it might be somebody else who invites, but it might also be the same person, who will at best receive authority in return, at worst will be seen as a good person to keep on exploiting. My friends seemed to take it as a matter of course that the one who had money paid, and they usually did not thank me or make any fuss about it. On the other hand, they almost never asked me to pay anything for them either, which proves there were clear limits. In the beginning they were curious about me, wanting me to talk about Europe, or say a few words in Norwegian or French. They taught me local expressions, and made me repeat their favorite insults, which always made them laugh a lot. They called me their mascot, and treated me like that, showing me off to strangers. I often got far more attention than I wanted-for instance a t parties where there was dancing, and everybody wanted to see how I danced, but only the most reckless would dare to ask me to dance. I did not enjoy this attention, for several reasons: of course because I wanted to observe without disturbing, but also because it made me very shy, as I have no natural talent for salsa, cumbia, or mambo. My friends teased me, calling me a plank. Th e worst incident occurred at a crammed disco, where during the floor show an almost naked male dancer pulled me out onto the floor to dance with him. I was praying for the earth to swallow me up, but understood that refusing would be worse than making a bad show. Th e North American anthropologist Joseph Carrier (1995:93) arrived at the same conclusion: he tried

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to keep in the background during interaction but once even had to participate in a strip show for fifteen male spectators-to chicken out was impossible. I once had a similar, but more limited experience: I was obliged to participate in a spontaneous breast contest at Mema’s, where young men with breast implants, hormonized small breasts, or without breasts at all “competed” with the three women present (but there were no “real men” present). Soon the attention paid to me diminished, and the homosexuals instead chatted about what I suppose they usually chat about-men, sex, parties, clothes, hairstyles, makeup, mixed with jokes and teasing of each other. I was easily admitted as a rather passive participant, and I feel confident that my influence on the social setting then was minimal. I was not a possible sexual partner for them, nor too much of a rival either, as I did not show any sexual interest in the men they tried to seduce. But these men were definitely more disturbed by my presence. Several regarded me, a blond European woman, as an attractive sexual partner, which meant I was diverting their attention from the very sexual games that I wanted to observe. And even when they were not paying any interest to me, I often felt I intimidated them with my presence, since their homosexual relationships belonged to their secret garden, where only those who were involved themselves were to be admitted. However, some managed to get used to me, and lost their shyness. When I felt I was a disturbing influence, I often withdrew from the scene. In Mema’s house I could go to bed before the others, knowing that Mema or some of the others would give me a report of the events afterward. Still, to balance the account, I should not omit to mention that I often was not noticed at all. It happened that strangers asked the transvestites whether I was one of them, too. Once a man at a disco invited me to dance, and gave me a flattering compliment: “You are a very beautiful woman, even though you are a man.” So far I’ve discussed how I judge my unintended influence on the interaction I wanted to observe. But as I, together with Mema and by virtue of age and authority, became some sort of a parent for the teenagers who were living in his house, I also tried consciously to influence them in some very specific ways. They were leading very self-destructive and dangerous lives, with hard drug use and exposure to violence and sexually transmitted diseases. I tried to influence them in the same direction as Mema did: I scolded them when they had sniffed glue, I counseled them in love affairs, I corrected their makeup and put condoms in their pockets when they went to a party.

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But I did not try to make them stop stealing or selling sex, which would probably have created a distance between us. In any case, my educational efforts seemed to have very little effect. I soon felt accepted by the regulars in Mema’s house, but that does not mean they forgot my cultural difference. A small, but very instructive example is a sudden incident of violence between two central persons in this setting. I was not at all involved, but afterward several asked me if I had got scared-a clear demonstration of their expectations that I should be more delicate than them. And I certainly am, but even if it was impossible to eliminate this completely, I consciously sought to downplay such differences because they could have been seen as a rejection on my part. I tried never to look shocked and laughed at their jokes. Although I found their perpetually raw sexual humor a bit monotonous in the beginning, I must admit I came to enjoy it, and even participate. I ate and drank what they did. I let them get close to me physically, touch me and comb my hair, as they do with each other. I enjoyed their music, and let them try to teach me to dance. Erving G o f h a n (1989) stresses that participant observation is bodily participation. You have to experience the informants’ life conditions on your own body in order to understand their experiences, their worldview. Therefore you must be committed to the field, abandoned to the field, and not reserve for yourself the possibility of withdrawing to your own cozy home and dear family during the fieldwork. Further, you must “tune your body up,” get to tap the rhythm of the music with the foot, and, as Goffman suggests, even to react sexually to local participants of the opposite sex. G o f h a n defends the necessity of “going native,” in order to understand. When it came to which sex I should react to, I was left rather free, and took advantage of being a woman, since a male researcher would not have been able to stay aloof from the sexual games. On the other hand, of course, a male researcher might have got a lot of information through his own participation in the sexual games that I missed (see Kulick and Willson 1995 for reports on anthropologists’ sexual participation in the field). There can be no doubt that Joseph Carrier (1995), thanks to being a gay man himself who was not a t all uninterested in the erotic plays among Mexican men, had direct access to information that I at best could have indirect access to. In all other respects my participation was indeed physical. And I did “go native.” It is said that a common evolution through fieldwork is to start as a non-participant observer and end as a non-observing

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participant. Without some distance, observation is not possible, as everything is just taken for granted. I was alone among people who knew each other very well, while nobody had known me for more than a short time. I spoke their language, and partly even learned it while speaking with them, since they had their own argot. This made me vulnerable and easy to influence, susceptible to internalizing their categories of perception. An incident may show just how native I got. Maria, a sixteen-yearold girl living in Mema’s house, started greeting me each morning in a way I did not appreciate: she would stick a hand up my groin and cry out “iCuconai,” meaning a woman with a big pussy. At first I just pushed her away. But she repeated it, and I realized I had to fight back, so as not to lose respect-because there was always several others watching and laughing. One day I came over her as she was picking up something from the floor, with her behind up in the air, and wearing a minislurt as usual. I jumped on her, she screamed and laughed and asked me to let her go, but I did not before I had pulled down her underpants. What I did not realize until too late, was that a pair of Norwegian eyes were watching me, a friend of a friend who had dropped by, and she was horrified by the scene. I felt terribly embarrassed, because that made me see myself through Norwegian eyes, according to which, evidently, a serious-working sociologist has nothing to do under a teenager’s miniskirt . . . When the researcher becomes that native, feels “the comfortable sense of being at home” (Hammersley and Atkinson 1983), it can be wise to take a break from the fieldwork, to gain some distance and a fresh view. After some time in the field, impressions get weaker, notes shorter, with participation replacing observation. I never stayed more than two months at a time. While breaking up was always painful (we all cried at the airport), and returns were also painful (each time I had a hard time readapting to the noise and the lifestyle), this made me use the time I was there more efficiently for observation, and the time I was away for analysis. I came to see myself as plastic and inconsistent. Not only did I do a lot of things I do not do at home, but I also had opinions I usually do not have. This is also to go native, to take over a local point of view. Several phenomena that shocked me in the beginning, as I used my European and intellectual categories of perception, became very understandable in terms of local categories of perception. Examples could be the young boys’ transformations of their bodies toward female bodies, the early and intense sexual activity, the prosti-

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tution, the drugs, the thefts, the violence. With time, I came to understand that transforming one’s body in order to get female curves was to become beautiful, selling sex could be a way to gain independence, taking drugs a way to get some entertainment, stealing a way to win self-respect, that violence is just the order of things, and that sexual experience is the meaning of life. I believe it is necessary and valuable to try to understand a culture in the way the participants understand it themselves, to take on their own point of view-to dare to take on their point of view-regardless of how politically and morally incorrect it may be. But at the same time an account would be no more than a collection of personal testimonies if it stopped there. T he challenge is to go beyond the informants’ perception of the world, to try to understand why their perception is the way it is. Observation and participation in the daily activities were by far the richest sources of data for me. These data were supplemented by taped interviews, which confirmed the observations, filled them out, and gave richer and more precise information on some topics, specially about childhood experiences and trajectories. Interviews were conducted with seven bisexual men and with eleven feminine homosexuals, out of whom two were re-interviewed one year after the first interview. Of the eighteen interviewed, fifteen belonged to the inner circle of twenty persons. This means they were therefore among the persons that I knew the best, but I cannot see that in any other respect they differ systematically from all the others I could have interviewed. I would have liked to have had more interviewees than eighteen, but even if there was no lack of people to recruit for interviews, it took time to carry out interviewing. I had another fourteen shorter talks on some of the main topics of my research; here I spoke with three men with a bisexual practice and with one young, masculine-loolung sex worker; the other ten were self-defined homosexuals. These talks were written down afterward, from memory. If I count Mema as well, this gives me direct information from thirtythree persons in the field. I knew most of my subjects well before interview, and had asked each of them for an interview. They always responded positively, but when we made an appointment, they almost never showed up. They would come by some days later, telling me they had forgot it, that they could unfortunately not do it right now, but they promised to come back the day after-always maiiana. I knew that all kinds of appointments are very difficult among these people. Most of them do not have watches, and in any case their time is not so structured.

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So I understood I had to insist on having the interview immediately, whatever time of day or night it was. Mema helped me to get some of the interviews-he ordered a couple of the young ones who had not shown up for an appointment to do the interview immediately, and recruited two others, also by putting some pressure on them. One of them was a boy I had not even met before the interview. I was happy to get the interviews, but not at all happy for that kind of pressure, which in two or three cases seemed to have made them accept although they did not really want to participate. These two interviews became short and vague. A third interview was broken off halfway through; he was drunk, and more interested in seducing me than in talking about his life. In all other cases they seemed to be positive about the interview. I myself consider the interviews to be of good quality, most of them even very extensive and openhearted. Openhearted, yes, but not on everything. It is a positivist naiveti to take what people say as simple truth. What they gwe me are not facts about themselves and others, but their vision of themselves and of others, or, rather, the vision of themselves and others that they want to give me. T h e combination of observations and interviews was not only an advantage, but a necessity. T h e knowledge we already had of each other formed the basis for trust. They knew I accepted them, because they knew I lived with them. T h e observations, our common experiences, were used in the interview, to make them comment. I knew quite a lot about them already, and they knew I knew. This made it of course easier to talk about touchy issues. But it made it also possible for me to identify what the touchy issues were, and also understand the unsaid. For instance, I knew from others about the difficulties some homosexuals had had in being accepted by their families. In some of the interviews I could hear how they sought to downplay that, and I understood that in this indirect way they were informing me about the strength of family values and family loyalty which makes it so terribly humiliating not to be accepted by one’s family. Being condemned by one’s family members is painful, condemning these family members for it is equally painful. My interviews with bisexual men were more difficult, since what was in the center of my interest, their homosexual contacts, was something embarrassing for most of them. T h e only reason they could talk to me about it at all was that they knew I already knew about it. Still, they downplayed these experiences, compared to what I had heard from other sources or had seen myself. I tried by some gentle hints to put on a little pressure, but I wanted to respect their limits,

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for ethical reasons. And in turn, I made these limits my object of research: they are far more interesting than what I possibly could have made my subjects admit by pressuring. T h e discrepancies between what I saw and what I heard are very indicative, and have helped me to understand the sensitive nature of several topics.’ T h e interviews were basically unstructured, and carried out in a very informal way. W e usually went to Mema’s bedroom, where we were left in peace by the other residents. I used a little Walkman for the recording, and had no papers, no questionnaire, only some memorized questions. W e would lie on the bed, we relaxed and talked. I tried to guide all of them through some specific topics, but let them talk freely whenever they got started on something, without interrupting. I believe a more structured type of interviewing would have been felt much more alienating in this context, given the interviewees’ low level of education and lack of formal structure in daily life. All names have been altered in this presentation. Some of my informants wanted me to use their real names, or rather their female nicknames, because they felt they had nothing to hide and would even enjoy being recognized. I have hesitated about this, but decided not to use their names, since in many cases they not only talk about very intimate matters but also about illegal activities. They also talk about family members, lovers, and others who have a right to anonymity. For the photographs, however, I have used their real names (or rather their real nicknames). I have taken care that they should not be able to recognize each other in those very few cases where what they told me was not yet known by everybody. As the female nicknames are most used among the self-identified homosexuals, I have chosen such names for them, too. The choice of pronouns is more difficult. Among each other the homosexuals usually use female pronouns and adjectives (Spanish is a gendered language throughout), about themselves, too, but they easily switch to male names and pronouns. At home most of them are called by their Christian names z.

These and other concerns are given a thorough discussion in Bourdieu et al.: La

misire du monde (1993; see also 1996). Bourdieu warns that the interview may become an

act of symbolic violence. This can happen in several ways: one is when the social distance between the interviewed and the interviewer is considerable; the interviewed may then feel the other’s, the superior’s, view of him or her as a humiliation. Further, the interview can become like a police interrogation if the interviewer follows the advice given by positivist manuals on methods which urge verifying that the subjects tell a “truth” they may have many reasons for not telling, maybe for not even admitting to themselves.

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and use male gender about themselves. I will let the gendering remain mixed and somewhat confused, exactly as it is among them, but where those who have a consequent feminine presentation almost always are referred to as “she,” while those with more ambiguous or altering presentations are referred to as both “he” and “she,” and those with a consistent masculine presentation as “he.” Quotations of the interviewees are usually from taped interviews and are close to being verbatim, but have of course been translated. I say “close to” verbatim because some of the quotations have been slightly condensed, and, I must also admit, a certain degree of interpretation was sometimes required. In addition to the standard transcription problems, Spanish is a language that often permits considerable ambiguity since the subject usually is omitted; popular language often lacks respect for grammar and vocabulary; and the interviewees’ wordings were often vague, or internal, referring to some supposed mutual and tacit understanding between us. When I am not sure about my interpretation, I mention this. Sometimes I quote what persons said in interaction with each other. These quotations are based on memory, and are therefore not verbatim, although they were noted rather soon afterward. In such cases, I always present the context to make it clear that this is not a direct interview quotation. Vestih, Jot., Tortilla, Mayate, or Buga?

In The History of Sexuality (I 984:43), Michel Foucault describes how medical science in the nineteenth century started to “entomologize” human beings according to their sexual likings, by giving strange names to all the different kmds. It was in this way the notions of homo- and bisexuals were formed, notions that connected particular sexual acts to particular personalities, and later the notions of transvestites and of transsexuals. T h e Mexican “entomologists” classify, too, but follow different criteria, and have as many words for different kinds of homo- or bisexual men as Lapps have for different kinds of snow. T h e efforts of Fidel-also called Fifi-to initiate me into the local jargon may illustrate this: “A mayate is a man who does it with jotos. A tonilla is a man who likes to fuck ajoto, and also likes to have the j o t 0 fuck him. Bugas are those who say they don’t do it with jotos-only with women. Then there are the heterosexuales, who like to fuck menwhich mean jotas who like to tick men. And bisexuales are those who

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fuck men, and the men who fuckjotos. They are the bisexuales mayates. They are tortillas. My experience is that most men that I have been with are mayates. And some rare times bisexuales. And bugas-the truth is that I don’t think they exist anymore. Because now any man will be with a j o t 0 or with a woman.” Perhaps this was not crystal clear, but there is an underlying logic. T h e words j o t 0 or jota (the same word but in feminine gender) are slang words used synonymously with the Spanish noun homosexual. Homosexual has the same meaning as in English, but in the group under study it is used to refer only to a male who has a clear erotic preference for his own sex. And as this preference in this group usually implies also a preference for the passive sexual role, and a tendency to have a feminine appearance, the meaning of the word fleets between these different significations. One explanation I have been given for the term j o t 0 is that it is the name of a Spanish dance where men move in ways that are seen as feminine. But Buffington (1997) states that the word comes from the cell block “J” (pronouncedjota in Spanish) of the Federal Penitentiary in Mexico City where formerly the overtly homosexual inmates were isolated. Other words are also used, such as loca, which means crazy in female gender and is used as a synonym for j o t 0 or homosexual but with emphasis on the femininity, more or less like English “queen.” Puto, literally “whore” in the masculine gender, is commonly used negatively, more or less like faggot, but many self-defined homosexuals have appropriated the term and use it themselves. Marich, probably a male-gendered version of Maria, is also a pejorative term, but is relatively rarely used by those who are designated by the term. Some of those who call themselves homosemales sometimes use the term gay, borrowed from English. Because this term has connotations of a specific and modern way of experiencing male same-sex relationships in Europe and North America, I will not use it except when it occurs in interview quotations, where I usually leave their own category terms untranslated, marked in italics. Some homosexuales are transvestites in the sense that they wear women’s clothes; they are called vestidas. T h e word means “dressed,” in feminine gender. T h e Spanish word bisexual is often used locally as a term for men who have an androgynous appearance, who do not hide that they are men, but have some female characteristics. Perhaps it is just a haircut, a flowered shirt, and a pair of pants that are a bit high-waisted. Perhaps it is their movements and voice. They are expected to have sex with men who resemble themselves, trading off being active and pas-

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sive, and it is in this sense that they are considered “bisexual.” Masculine men who sleep with other masculine men can also be called bisexuales, precisely because they are expected to have the same changing of roles. Many of my informants did, however, know the correct use (according to the dictionary) of the word bisemal, meaning relations h p s with both sexes, and the meaning of the word could vary between these significations-since masculine men who have a sexual relationship with other men appear to be susceptible to “even having relationships with women.” T h e term, then, refers partially to appearance, partially to sexual practice, and there is an expectation of a correlation between appearance and practice. In the local terminology, trading off between being active and passive is also called being internacional, perhaps because foreigners are supposed to do this more often than Mexicans (as Carrier suggests, 1989a:134), but maybe just because it implies doing an idaa departure, being active-and a vuelta-an arrival or return, being passive. It is also called being a tortilla or tortillera, from the flat corn pancake made by hand by turning the dough between the hands and patting it on both sides. A tortillera is the woman who bakes the tortillas. T h e terms express the expectation of a correlation between androgynous appearance and a sexual practice where one “gets it from both sides,” where one is both penetrating and penetrated; that is, acting both like a man and a woman. This appearance is more typical of middle- and upper-class homosexual men than of the popular classes, but it is not their privilege, and I have met several males with a same-sex preference in Neza who have this style, too, among them some waiters and hairdressers. T h e Spanish word heterosexual is rarely used, so many do not have an opinion of what it means, but some think that being heterosexual is being a man, or being nomal-and here a man is a man or is nomal as long as he looks like a man and sticks to the active role, regardless of whether he has sex with women or men. I have heard the term la prostitucihz heterosexual being used to designate the prostitution of young boys who stick to the active role with their male customers. According to the same logic, Fifi spoke about jotos heterosexuales above-meaning homosexual men who like to penetrate men. A mayate is a man who looks like a man and has sex with men who are regarded as homosexuules, and usually also with women. H e is commonly expected to be the active part. But some mayates are

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also penetrated by the men they are with, which makes them tortillas, even though there is nothing feminine about their appearance. They can also be called mayates bisexuales. I have been told that the word mayate originated as the name of the scarab beetle-which makes a ball out of dung, lays its eggs in it, and then pushes the ball in front of itself using its snout. This reflects the expectation that mayates are supposed to be the active party during anal intercourse. Carrier (I 995: I 2 ) provides another explanation, however: the signification of mayate was a bright green poisonous beetle, and the word was then used to designate a man who likes to wear loud, flashy clothes (this is the definition used as well by Murray and Dynes 199s). Mema regards this to be a misunderstanding, but says that in some parts of Mexico the word mayate is actually used to designate a homosexual man. Murray and Dynes report that the term has come to mean a black pimp in Chicano argot. Whichever explanation is correct, most of those who use it are probably ignorant about the orign of the word. Mayate is first and foremost a term by which those designated as homosexuales designate their partners. Only very rarely have I heard any of the men so designated use the term about themselves. T h e term buga is used by those who are themselves designated as homosexuales to describe men who they believe have sex only with women and therefore take only the penetrating role. Sometimes the term is used also for men who pretend to have sex only with women, or for men whom the homosexuales perceive as very manly, hombrehombre (man-man) or machin (meaning very macho, very male), and whom they would like to seduce-even if the buga would thereby cease to be a buga. In Freud’s classic analysis (Three Essays on the Theoq of Sexuality I 962 [ I 9051) of sexual development, he made the distinction between sexual object and sexual aim, and defined homosexuality as the choice of a sexual object of the same sex. This view on homosexuality is the dominant one in Europe and North America. But in the terminology presented above by Fifi homosexuality is defined primarily as a particular choice of sexual aim. T h e terminology focuses primarily on sexual actions and roles which blend with appearances, because appearance is normally seen as a signal of sexual actions and roles. Femininity in a man is a signal that he wants to be penetrated, masculinity is seen as the desire to penetrate, with the more androgynous, who want both, somewhere in the middle. But the choice of object also lies in these terms: in order to be penetrated, men need other men,

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and to penetrate, men need women and/or other men. Any dictionary will state that the “correct” way to use the terms homo-, bi-, and heterosexual in English as well as in Spanish is as a reference to practice as it relates to choice of object. But more vulgar usage is in several languages more in line with these examples, with emphasis on the concrete sexual actions (like cocksucker in English, encule‘ in French). The difference in focus, on actions or on persons, is not only a cultural difference but often a historical one as well. In Britain, sodomy was a criminal act for which capital punishment could be applied until 1861, whether a man did it with another man, with a woman, or with an animal (Weeks 1989:33). The definition of homosexuals as effeminate men who are penetrated by other men corresponds to a more general perception of homosexuals in Mexico, also known from several other Latin American countries (on Mexico: Carrier 1995, Alonso and Koreck 1988, Taylor 1986; on Nicaragua: Lancaster 1988, 1992; on Guatemala: Whitam and Mathy 1986; on Cuba: Lumsden 1996; on Brazil: Parker 1986, 1989, 1990, Mend&-Leite 1988, 1993, Kulick, forthcoming, and Whitam and Mathy 1986; on Mexicans in the United States: Almaguer 1991; on various Latin American countries: the collection of articles edited by Murray 1995a). Transvestic homosexuality, or flamboyant femininity among men who define themselves as homosexuals, is known in all these countries, and probably exists in all other Latin American countries, too. It is usually connected to the lower classes. I want to underline that of all men who have sex with men in Latin America, there is but a minority who define themselves as homosexuals. And again, within this minority, these locas, as they often are called, constitute probably but a minority. So my study concerns a subculture within a subculture. I will not pronounce myself on the history of transvestic homosexuality, as the sources are scarce. There are reports on transvestic homosexuality among the Aztecs and the Mayans (Greenberg 1988: 163 ff.; Guilhem 1991), but since there is no reason to assume a continuity from homosexuality in these societies to homosexuality in Mexico today, I will not go any further into it (see also Taylor 1995). The perception of homosexual men as effeminate and passive is then a common perception of homosexuals in Mexico today, but it is not the only perception. This perception is contested first and foremost by many homosexuals from the middle class who seem to perceive themselves more in line with European and North American gay men, and structure their relationships accordingly-the ideal be-

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ing a relationship between equally masculine or feminine partners. There are bars for men in Mexico City, mostly frequented by a middle-class clientele, where a masculine presentation is obligatory. There is a tradition of homosexual encounters between men who are equally masculine-looking, as illustrated by Luis Zapata in his novel about a young male prostitute in Mexico City (El vampiro de la colonia Roma 1996 [1979]). But the dominant definition of the homosexual is as an effeminate and passive male, and thejotos take this definition of themselves as a point of departure, but subdivide themselves into smaller categories. They also label and classify their masculineloolung partners. But their labeling power is weak, and their classifications of their partners are barely known: T h e masculine-looking men’s self-understanding reigns, and they do not see themselves as mayates, but as men tout cou9-t. T o be active with a homosexual partner is subsumed under the more general category of being active, which again characterizes male sexual behavior. This in turn is a reflection of the fact that male domination also implies linguistic domination (cf. Nencel 1996), a labeling power that consists both of the power to label and the power not to be labeled. Of course: far from all of the lower-worlung-class males with a homosexual preference are like thejotas I have studied, and far from all middle-class males with the same preference have a gay style. And between the middle-class gays and the lower-lower-class vestidas there is a whole range of ways of being a homosexual man. In Neza I met several only slightly effeminate young men who considered themselves to be homosexuales, and I also met a few very masculine-loolung males with a preference for other masculine-looking males. On the other hand I have not met any homosexual transvestites with middleor upper-class origins, but Mema tells me there exists a few of them. In any case, variation of male homosexual styles and patterning of relationships exists within Mexico, of course, but also within Neza, or within the urban, working class. My study concerns a subculture that does not include all this diversity. But even if other styles or patternings of relationships exist within the urban working class in Mexico, it is not a coincidence that the subculture I have studied is an urban, worlung-class one. T h e broadest study of Mexican male homosexuality is Joseph Carrier’s (1971, 1976, 1985, 1989a,b, 1995). His work is mostly from Guadalajara, where he has done participant observation, structured and unstructured interviewing for a period of more than twenty-five years. His study covers the whole range of homo- and bisexually be-

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having males in Mexico, from all socioeconomic levels. He mentions transvestites, or drag queens as he usually calls them, several times, and also mentions very feminine homosexuals (“queens”), and some of his main informants dress up in drag from time to time. But this is a very marginal phenomenon in his study, and their effeminacy is therefore not explicitly discussed. My main focus is on a population that was hardly represented in his study and which is recruited only from the lower urban working class, and I suppose that although Carrier’s study and my own concur on most issues, the divergences that exist stem from this difference in focus. Lesbian relationships in the working classes in Mexico are to a large degree perceived and structured in the same way as the male homosexual relationships. In Neza, those who are called lesbianas, or sometimesfitbaleras since they often play soccer, tend to have short hair, wear jeans and jogging shoes, and have a masculine gait. This rarely is enough to make them look like men, however, and it seems that they usually keep their female names and use female gender when they speak about themselves (although I have observed that at public places many of them use the men’s toilet). They customarily date girls who are more feminine than themselves, and who are not perceived as real lesbians, and I have often seen the lesbianas treat their girlfriends in a rather macho way; controlling, dominating, showing jealousy. But the end of the love story is often, it is said, that their girlfriends break up with them in order to marry a man and have children. It is difficult for me to choose words to designate my informants. In quotations from interviews, I will as far as possible leave their own terms. Whenever I use the term “homosexuals,” it is to designate persons who locally are designated by the most general term “homosexuales.” But I will mainly use their own and more specific categories. j o t 0 will be used as homosexual, while jota will be used only for the visibly effeminate homosexuales-both those who dress like women and those who are strikingly effeminate without going that far. Whenever I use the term “transvestite,” it is to designate a person who in this group was called a vestida, which is the term I will usually employ. In the population that was in the center of my interest, that is those who gravitated around Mema’s house, all homosexuales were effeminate. I will therefore use the term jotas to refer to the core population of my study. T h e majority of thejotas, of the effeminate

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homosexuales in this population, were vestidas, in the sense that they usually dressed as women. (Actually fifteen of the twenty-five effeminate homosemales that I have counted as the closest to the house did so, and of the remaining ten, four sometimes dressed as women). When it comes to the jotas’ masculine-looking partners, the use of words is even more difficult, since one of the characteristics of these men is that they do not designate themselves as anything else than men. But for the purpose of my analysis I must designate them, and whenever I use the term “mayate,” it will refer to a man who is perceived as such by thejotas, and is not directed to how he perceives himself. And whenever I use the term “bisexual man” it is to refer to a person who is designated mayate by those who themselves are designated as “bomosexuules,” and it is therefore without any presumption about self-identity. These definitions are rather tortuous: the categories are not objective categories, but categories of perception. They may therefore not be defined absolutely, but only in relation to each other. A Constructivist Approach

The interpretation of the quotation from Fifi presented above was a practical work of deconstruction of gendered categories. The main topic of this book is gender construction, and it seems appropriate to say some words about my approach. A completely essentialist approach would see biological sex as determining masculinity, femininity, and all differences between women and men. For social science it seems evident, however, that sex has a social existence that cannot be reduced to biology, and “gender” has emerged as a concept used to cover the social part (which sometimes is called “sex role”). In psychology, various gender markers may be used (cf. Bolin 1994:459):biological sex, gender identity, gender role or social identity, and sexual orientation. But from a sociological perspective one might want to add structural gender (division of labor, male domination, etc.) and symbolic gender (cultural gender symbolism). Each of these manifestations of sex or gender may be deconstructed yet further. Biological sex, for instance, is composed of internal and external sexual organs, of chromosomes and of hormones, and the different components are not always unambiguous; neither are they always in harmony with each others. Hermaphrodites do exist, with both kinds or ambiguous sexual organs.

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And other chromosome combinations than XX or XY exist, such as XXY or XYY,not to mention diversity regarding hormonal conditions. Proceeding to a further deconstruction, inspired by my informant Fifi (and by Ssndergaard 1996), I may, in the present study, discern the following forms of existence of sex and gender: -Biological sex. All my informants were born with male sexual organs. Although some state they were very feminine already as infants, I have no specific reason to believe that their chromosomes and hormones indicated anything other than male sex. But what about the one who has undergone a surgical “sex reassignment”? And what about the one who started to take female hormones before puberty, and never developed completely as a male? Despite these examples of ambiguity, sexual organs are without any doubt very important components of the gender constructions of my Mexican informants. -Other bodily signs. T h e passage over to other bodily signs is more fluid. Breasts, beard, muscles, etc., are bodily sexual signs, but even if they may be attributed to one sex, there is no necessary linkthere exist flat-chested women and beardless men. And in addition to this natural variation come the voluntary transformations, at which some of my informants are experts. Breasts are added, hormones injected, beard removed, oil injected to give buttocks and hips a feminine shape. They thereby create a female body with a penis. -Appearance. Whether gestures, manners, voice, and walking should be labeled bodily signs or appearance is not evident. Clothes, hairstyle and makeup are more evidently external. All these signs are gendered, in the sense that they are associated with one biological sex more than the other-but they may more or less easily be appropriated by persons who wish to give the appearance of belonging to the other sex than that to which the interpretation of their sexual organs would assign them. Some of my informants add a perfect female appearance to a female body with a penis. -Sexual orientation. Whether erotic desire is directed toward one’s own or toward the other sex contributes to the attribution to a gendered category. But since the definition of the sex one is attracted to is as complex as the definition of one’s own sex, there are a multitude of possible combinations: Biological men with male bodily signs may be attracted to biological women with female bodily signs, to biological men with female bodily signs, to biological men with

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male bodily signs, etc. And for my informants these are all important distinctions. --Sexual positions. For my informants it is not only important to know whom one is attracted to, but also what they do in bed-the basic question being whether one penetrates, is penetrated, or both. Thejotas often used expressions such as “He was the man” or “I did it as a woman,” referring to the position as insertor or insertee. This means it is possible for biological males to be men in all the senses mentioned this far, but to not act like men in bed. This shows that sexual position makes an independent contribution to the gendered categories. -Psychological aspects. Gender identity is usually defined as the sex to which one feels that one belongs, and for most people there is a correspondence between this psychological experience and the other aspects of gender. But the fact that there also exist male-to-female transsexuals who after the operation live as lesbians shows that there are inner aspects of gender that may work independently of the other aspects. T h e fact that psychologists have elaborated tests of degrees of masculinity or femininity, or simply that we may say about a woman that she has a masculine character, are other signs of this. A further example would be that in many places of the world (but probably not all) aggression and competitiveness are seen as masculine character traits, while concern for others is seen as a feminine trait. I will show later (chapter 4) that such psychological aspects of gender exist also for my informants, although they seemed of less importance for them than for me. -Practices. In most societies there exists a sexual division of labor and practices that structures men’s and women’s activities and our perception of these. Deviance with respect to the division of labor is very often linked to other deviances-men who do women’s work may be suspected of being homosexual, etc. These aspects of gender are definitely at work among my informants-for instance, with only two exceptions, there is no overlapping between the professional activities of those of my informants who are labeled mayates and those who are labeled jotas. They also diverge regarding household activities. -Gender symbolism. Gender also has a symbolic existence that may be considered as transcending all its other aspects. There is a symbolic structure that links biological sex, appearance, sexual positions, practices, and, for instance, colors (blue or pink for babies),

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space (men’s space, like bars and the street after dark, and women’s space, like the kitchen) or food (masculine value given to spicy meat dishes, strong drink, etc.). T h e symbolism is also inscribed in the language-in Spanish, all nouns are gendered. According to Bourdieu (1990; see also Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992), different aspects of gender are inscribed into a more general symbolic structure, which is itself composed of cultural schemata that structure our perception and evaluation of the world. These schemata reflect the objective structure of the world, its material and its social structure, and so we tend to reproduce those structures through our acts. O n the basis of his study of the Kabyls of Algeria, Bourdieu depicts schemata composed of oppositions between high and low, large and small, front and back, right and left, light and dark, outside and inside, etcetera. These schemata of naturally occurring oppositions are at the same time schemata for evaluation, where the first-mentioned qualities of these pairs are positively valued and associated with the masculine. There is an immediate agreement of social structures as expressed in the sexual division of labor and in the social organization of space and time with the cognitive structures inscribed in bodies and in minds. This is what gives male domination its seeming naturalness. It is inscribed in the physical and the social space and thereby becomes evident-a social construction becomes essentialized. Male domination is embedded in the perception of the world, through categorizations and evaluations that always will tend to favor the dominant. And as the dominated-the women-apply the same schemata in perceiving and evaluating the world, they contribute to their own domination, by for instance excluding themselves from the part of the physical space not attributed to them. Thereby male domination becomes a violence exercised on women with their complicity, which is a case of what Bourdieu names symbolic violence. Exactly for these reasons, gender becomes a particularly difficult topic for research. As Bourdieu points out (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992:171),‘‘Weare dealing in this case with an institution that has been inscribed for millennia in the objectivity of social structures and in the subjectivity of mental structures, so that the analyst has every chance of using as instmments of knowledge categories of perception and of thought which he or she should treat as objects of knowledge.” Bourdieu considered a study of gender in a society quite different from his own a device for circumventing this difficulty. T h e present study is first and foremost a study of a particular so-

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cia1 construction of gender, an investigation into how gendered schemata of perception and evaluation work in a particular context (the physical and cultural environment around Mema’s house) and create particular representations (such as the labels presented above). This focus on perception and evaluation in a context of domination imply that my overall theoretical perspective will be borrowed from Bourdieu. I also rely, however, heavily on a long and strong, albeit very heterogeneous constructivist research tradition in gender and sexuality studies. One branch of these studies is the anthropologrcal one, and has a starting point with Bronislaw Malinowski (Sex and Repression in Savage Society, 1927; The Sexual L$e o f Savages, 1929) and Margaret Mead (Coming of Age in Samoa 1943 [1928]; Sex and Temperament, I 93 5). These studies were among the first to reveal the cultural arbitrariness of the Euro-American understanding of gender and institutionalization of sexuality. Of more direct importance for my work are the much later studies of Mediterranean, Latin, or Latin American gender constructions, the foundation of which was established by J. G. Peristiany’s collection of articles (1974) with its demonstration of how the ideas of honor and shame structured the perception and evaluation of men’s and women’s behavior. Another source of influence are the structuralist and feminist-inspired anthropological studies of relationships between men and women from the 1970s. I will take just one example: Sherry Ormer (1974),who holds that the secondary status of woman in society is one of the true universals, while the cultural conceptions and symbolizations of woman are extraordinarily diverse. She finds the underlying logic of cultural thinking that assumes the inferiority of women in what she holds to be another universal: the hierarchical opposition between nature and culture, where women are understood as being closer to nature than men are. In a later work, written together with Harriet Whitehead (Ortner and Whitehead 198I), the supposition of universality of the nature/culture opposition is modified, into a supposition that the differences between men and women tend to be conceptualized in terms of sets of metaphorically associated binary oppositions, such as nature/culture or domestic/public, and that the male sphere encompasses the female and is accorded higher value. While the gender system in itself is a prestige structure, Ortner and Whitehead suggest, the structures of greatest import for the cultural construction of gender in any given society are the general structures of prestige. T he last work I would like to cite among the studies of sexual

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cultures is very different, although it also deals with representations of sex and gender: Bodies, Pleasures and Passions by the North American anthropologist Richard Parker (199 I), about Brazilian sexual culture. Parker has the merit of having written one of the very few sexuality studies that have clear erotic qualities! His informants speak in an open and unbridled way about their sexual pleasures, using a language that is indeed very direct, despite being filled with images and metaphors. Parker discerns the symbolic dimensions of their experiences and their ways of telling about these. Another branch of gender and sexuality studies may be labeled the feminist tradition, or women’s studies, where Simone de Beauvoir’s ( I 960) investigation into how females become women, and into how femininity has been understood in different historical periods, may be considered a pioneer work. T h e theoretical positions have been diverse, but a common thread in women’s studies, gender or feminist studies, is the opposition against essentialist understandings of gender-against the understanding that sex and gender is one and the same thing, and that it also is the same regardless of historic and social context. For this reason primary socialization of boys and girls has been a very central topic, with the aim of showing how differences are produced. Some very scattered examples could be Nancy Chodorow’s (1978) analysis of gender identity, gender differences, and female subordination as results of the fact that boys and girls all have the mother as the primary caregiver but experience very different relations of mothering; Carol Gilligan’s (I 982) study of how differences between boys and girls regarding moral evaluations are created; and Frigga Haug’s (1987) about the bodily socialization of girls, named sexualization. Essentialist views had legitimized the oppression of women for such a long time that it was understandable that they were rejected by feminist scholars. But a new trend in feminist studies, from the late I ~ ~ O influenced S , by psychoanalysis, has given the sex-specific bodily experiences more importance, particularly regarding women’s reproductive capacities. Another trend has come to question the implicit assumption of sameness among women that underlies the idea of differences between genders and the idea of gendered identities, and to question the idea of sex as a fixed entity standing in a necessary relationship to gender. Within this trend one of the most influential scholars is Judith Butler (1990), who argues against the very notions of “men” and “women”; they are no longer stable notions, their meanings are troubled and unfixed. She sees the categories as effects of institutions, practices, and discourses, as

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constructed through language, where there is no pre-discursive access to the world. She further argues against the division between “sex” and “gender,” pointing to the ways in which “sex” too is a cultural construct. This trend in feminist studies has also influenced studies of men and masculinity, and the sustaining idea of the collection of articles edited by Andrea Cornwall and Nancy Lindisfarne (Dislocating Masculinity I 994) is precisely the focus on differences within the same gender category, among men. Although this work is a case study of the production of differences among men, I will not run up the postmodernist flag, because, among other things, I am convinced it still is meaningful to talk about common identities, and my aim is precisely to show how some such identities are formed. I do not want to adhere to any specific standpoint inside the tradition of feminist, gender, or women’s studies, but my work belongs to this tradition insofar as it concerns the social construction of gender, insofar as it seeks to understand these constructions in the light of male domination, and insofar as the way of proceeding is through an analysis of everyday realities and of bodily practices. I believe I am also indebted to the tradition in my inclination to work in a way somewhat more inductive than deductive, and in my endeavors to write in a positioned manner, to make my presence in the field and my standpoint clear, and not to veil my subjectivity. A third branch of research on gender and sexuality that has been important for me is the studies of homosexuality. Alfred Kinsey’s (1948, 1953)revelations about the variety of practices have had an enormous impact on knowledge about sexual behavior, although he contributed very little to the understanding of it (and his survey data were of poor quality-see O’Connell Davidson and Layder 1994). Still, there were very few sociological and anthropological studies of sexuality until the I 980s-with Kenneth Plummer’s Sexual Stigma (1975) as one of the more outstanding exceptions, a study of rich ethnography and original theoretical approach, based on labeling theory. T h e spark to the new research on sexuality came with Michel Foucault’s Histoq of Sexuality (first volume published in French in 1976, the two subsequent in 1984; in English 1984, 1987, and 1988). One may wonder how well Foucault’s work was understood, but it certainly gave a generation of sex researchers both a lot of new ideas and a new self-confidence, as the field of research gained academic recognition on the basis of his work. Among the studies that have been particularly important in terms

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of this work, I will first point to the North American anthropologist Gilbert Herdt’s study of representations of homosexuality in different cultures and of how anthropologists’ interpretations of these often are colored by their own cultural representations (1991 a,b), as well as his discussion of third sexes and third genders in different cultures (1994 a,b). This is an important reminder of the difficulties inherent in the field of gender and sexuality studies: one needs a reflexive distance both from the local representations and from one’s own. Another support for my own work are the studies that present different forms of homosexuality with the aim of seeing how these are related to the social and cultural conditions that have produced them. The North American anthropologist David Greenberg’s thorough The Construction of Homosexuality (1988) impresses with the masses of literature he presents in giving an overview of homosexuality not only in different parts of the world, but also in different historical periods. He tries to draw some historic lines, and, to put it roughly, his conclusion is that the evolution of modern science together with the formation of big cities have made the formation of subcultures possible, whereupon broader cultural changes toward secularization and individualism have brought forward new forms of homosexual identities. The Danish sociologist Henning Bech (I 997) focuses on the present form of male homosexuality in the industrialized world. Homosexual men have been, Bech holds, particularly exposed to modern conditions of life-“the city, the collapse of norms, the absence of safe and secure communities and identities, the struggle of the sexes, the images and the stagings, the institutions of art, the theory and practice of liberal democracy, the external surveillance of the police and the internal analysing of science” (p. 154). As an answer to these conditions and problems, homosexual men have developed a particular form of existence based on reflexivity over the presentation of self and on a highly developed sensitivity. The studies of homosexuality in different cultures show cultural variety. But, again, the fact that there exist differences does not imply that categorizations have no meaning. As the North American sociologist Stephen Murray (1995b:q) reminds us, although there is intercultural as well as intracultural diversity, conceptions do not vary endlessly, and the patternings of homosexuality that have actually been found somewhere in the world may be grouped into only four categories: age-structured, gender-structured, class- or professionstructured and egalitarian relations. The one I study is basically

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gender-structured, with relations between one feminine-looking and one masculine-looking part. But aspects of age and class structure interfere, especially in the prostitution relations where there often are considerable age and class differences between the sex workers and their clients, and some of thejotas are experimenting with more egalitarian relationships with their lovers. What I have here lumped together under the label of consuuctivist approaches are indeed very different works based on often incompatible theoretical assumptions. One point of divergence is the status given to biology or to the body. Another, and more recent, controversy regards the relationship between discourses and material and structural conditions, and between discourses and identities (see Bech’s review of Butler’s work-1995). This concerns again the importance given to diversity versus shared identities. In the present work the focus of my investigation is on representations of gender-in speech, in appearances, and in practices, including sexual practices. I will try to link these representations to biological, material, and social conditions. Representations form the body, but the body imposes its limits; sexual organs are objective facts that form the representations of gender and the identities. My informants’ bodies are bodies that feel pain, that may starve, that may get infected with HW, that feel desire and pleasure. While bodies are not destinies in any absolute sense, they do form social experiences, and they are formed by social experiences. Further, the urban room, the big city (with its possibilities for the formation of subcultures and for a multitude of sexual encounters) and the economic necessities are material conditions that together with social conditions such as family structure, class domination, the sexual division of labor, and male domination have decisive influence on the life-forms, the representations, and the identities that are under study in this volume. In addition, I observe that categorizations are used by my informants, and indeed correspond to an experience of common identities, albeit the limits of each group formed by the categorization are always difficult to draw, and the definition the categorization is given may be rather fuzzy. T h e persons I call jotas indeed form a group with a common identity as feminine men with a homosexual preference, and they use this term, as well as other more or less synonym terms, to designate themselves. They have many shared traits concerning appearance, style, life-form, and values, and they are exposed to more or less the same life conditions. T h e other major category,

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the one of mayates, is much less easy to delimit, and does not correspond to an experience of shared identity. I regard this, however, not as a conceptual problem, but as afinding, actually one of the major findings that I want to try to understand in the following analysis. My way of approaching the general, theoretical questions raised here will be through ethnographic description, where I will aim a t what Clifford Geertz (1973) named “thick description.” While a “thin description” only refers to what could be observed, what actually happened, a “thick description” adds statements about the meaning the different agents may have given to what happened, their interpretations of it, as well as the researcher’s interpretation of it. And in order to pve such an interpretation, the researcher must be able to integrate the observations in a more general system of meaning, to see how microscopic events reflect general questions. However, I believe a researcher should not only keep a general meaning system in his or her mind in order to interpret observed events, but must also have a vision of the social space in which they take place, of the underlying material, economic, and social conditions. T o search for meaning implies a danger of reductionism, since not everything in the world has a meaning (cf. Bech 1994).T h e city, the poverty, the informants’ youth are examples of objective conditions that may carry meanings (as when poverty is associated with specific moral qualities), but they cannot be reduced to these meanings. T h e body is a particularly difficult object of research because it has both objective and symbolic aspects. Some of the agents try to modify the given body, and thus to treat it as a carrier of signs (when a given male body is transformed to carry signs of femininity). But there are biological limits to the transformations that are possible. Desire is another difficult object of research. An explanation of desire may paradoxically resemble a denial of it (as when male homosexual desire is explained with the absence of sexually available women). Desire cannot be reduced to its social aspects; it is not in itself socially produced, only socially channeled, and I believe it should be regarded as a force on its own, one that often runs contrary to social forces. There can be no doubt that sexual desire, and more in general the seeking for pleasure, are strong motivating forces for the social agents here described. As a social scientist I must limit myself to a discussion of the social aspects of these phenomenabut part of this discussion is about where the boundary between SOcia1 and non-social aspects is to be drawn.

O n the one hand: Transvestites who live together with their parents, and contribute to the family household with their earnings as prostitutes. Mothers who brag about how much their sons-or maybe they should call them daughters-care for their families. Vendors in the marketplace who joke and flirt with the jotas as they pass by, and guests at local parties who invite them to dance. Hairdressers who change from male to female clothes in front of their clients, while the latter compliment them on their beauty. O n the other hand: Parents who try to beat the homosexuality out of feminine boys. Teachers who humiliate them and fellow pupils who pester them. Neighborhood streets which Mema says we have to avoid after dark, because of the gangs. Transvestite prostitutes who are arrested by the police, and released with their purses empty and their heads shaved. Scandal sheets that publish pictures of transvestites who are said to have robbed their male partners. Homosexual men who are gang-raped in prisons. Transvestites’ bodies that are found in hotel rooms or in ditches, shot or stabbed. T h e situation of the feminine homosexuales in Neza is ambiguous. A scale where social integration and marginalization are the only poles cannot grasp the complexity of it. “Social integration’’ has several aspects. One is cultural, through the sharing of categories of perception and evaluation (values), of language and cultural expression. Another is economic integration, to have a place within the division of labor. A third and purely social aspect is to be found in

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social networks, kinship and friendship structures. Following this analysis, to be socially integrated would be to participate in the reproduction of society, be it the reproduction of culture or of economic or social relations. As I will show in this chapter, the ambiguity of the jotas’ social situation lies partly in the fact that while they are poorly integrated into working life, they are well integrated culturally, and, perhaps more surprisingly, rather we11 integrated in the family structure as well. When it comes to the violence they are subjected to, I believe a large part of it has to do with the ambivalent feelings of attraction and aggression that these homosexuales may provoke in many men, a situation which I will examine in the final chapters of this book. Family Relations: Violence, Respect, and Care

The population of Neza is basically first- or second-generation city dwellers, which means that its members are particularly vulnerable to the gap between traditional family values and modem life conditions, with geographic mobility, workplace separated from residence, social contact with a high number of persons, etcetera. The families are big-the average number of siblings among the jotas I interviewed was eight, ranging from three to fourteen-and the older siblings may have children who are the same age as the youngest siblings. They often live all together, in tiny houses with not only several persons per bedroom, but also per bed. The large number of children may mean less care and economic resources for each. But siblings are usually seen as important, as they take care of and help each other in many ways, often throughout life. Young children may be left to older siblings, or to join neighbor children and play in the streets. In Neza, most children attend school, but since the schools are overcrowded, half of them go to school in the morning and half of them in the afternoon. The rest of the time they are very much left to themselves. The family is not usually a production unit, but indeed a consumption unit. Property and goods are shared, tasks as well. Family solidarity is strong. If someone needs an employee or a person to share hidher work, it is a matter of course to make the offer to somebody in the family before asking an outsider. The family network is the only functioning form of social security in Mexico today, and it is only by virtue of this solidarity that so many may survive with so little. Still, all my informants have known poverty. And all have

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known violence. I know only one who did not get corporal punishment from his parents as a child; in addition, they have experienced in childhood and youth the frequent squabbles and actual fights among their peers. Almost all the jotas have had severe conflicts with their families regarding both their homosexuality and their effeminacy. Their effeminacy made their homosexuality so visible that their parents had understood, and usually when the sons were teenagers. T h ejotas had then often been forced to leave their homes, at least for a while. At the time of the interviews, only two of the eleven interviewed jotas had settled in their own apartments, and they were both immigrants to the city. Six were living with their families (but four of these had lived for some time away from their families). T h e remaining three were the three youngest, and they alternated between living at home, with friends, in jails or in the streets. All three were again living with their families when I met them in 1996. Among the otherjotas who used to come to Mema’s house, the pattern was the same: a large majority lived with their parents. It is not usual for young people in Mexico to move out before they marry, and not even always when they marry. This is true regardless of sexual orientation and regardless of class (see Murray I ~ ~ s cand ) , it is true for thejotas. To have an apartment alone would be too expensive for most of them, but that is not the only reason. To have to live away from one’s family is seen as a sad fate; they need their families, and feel their families need them. T h e only reason for leaving would be a conflict, or going to work in another city. And if they had to live away from their families, they would certainly not live alone, since to live alone-like being alone in general-seems to be regarded as boring and dreary. Coming from a rather individualistic society, I was often struck by how unthinkable it seemed to be for my Mexican friends to do anything alone. At workplaces tasks are often shared, and the preferred sports are collective. (Once I happened to be the only person who used a swimming pool to swim from one end to the other and back again, while at least fifty Mexicans were playmg in the water, in couples or in groups.) Lupita told me it was not a problem to be accepted at home: “I thought that they would not accept me, since my father was still a soldier at that time. And they are known to be very hombre-hombres, machos, you know. So I said to myself that it would be terrible. But he talked to me in a fine way. H e told me that if I liked . . . in a very vulgar way he said that if I liked dicks, ‘that is your problem, I like

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Fig. 5. Gina.

pussies and I don’t care what you are.’ That was how he said it. And from then on they came to accept me. But there was a time when they said ‘No, don’t dress like a woman, you should dress like a man.’ And then I started to dress like a man, but that did not last long, because I said ‘Oh no, I’m homosexual.’ So I started again to dress like a woman, just like a woman.” They had accepted it at home now. Her parents and siblings continued to call her Luis, but if somebody came to the house and asked for Lupita, they played the game and did not reveal her real name. Lupita had no stable work, but alternated between prostitution and hairdressing. She enjoyed the easy life with parties and heavy drinking, but her health was not good. I asked her whether her parents didn’t criticize her lifestyle: “HOW could they say something? They are down and out, too. So we all are like that because they never gave us an education, but left us to what would

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Fig. 6. Claudia’s eighteenth birthday.

happen.” Both of her parents drank, and several of her nine siblings left home and have been living the wild life, too. One of them is a sister who left after an abortion. Her father had made her pregnant one night when he was drunk. A couple of years after the interview the mother died, and Lupita moved home to take care of her youngest siblings. Flaca had not managed to be accepted by his family. His father was a drug dealer and was very violent with the mother before he left, when Flaca was just a baby. H e had met his father only once, when he was eight, and was then immediately heavily beaten by him. His father was murdered shortly afterward. Two of Flaca’s four siblings use drugs, as he does, and one of them has been in prison, as he has, too. And at the time of the interview his fourteen-year-old sister had just moved in with a man who beat her. Flaca started to run away from home a t the age of eight, and has lived with his family for only short periods since he reached the age of fourteen. When I interviewed him, he was sixteen and lived in Mema’s house, although Mema had kicked him out repeatedly, because Flaca took too much drugs, stole too much, and always tried to shirk his share of the

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household chores. He hoped he would be accepted by his mother so that he could live at home. Flaca said, “My mother doesn’t love me, and my brother and my sisters didn’t speak to me. They rejected me. My mother once yelled to me that it would be better if I was dead.” He wished his mother would let him wear makeup and dresses at home, and let his hair grow and even have breasts. His brother Jesus often came to Mema’s house. Once when he was there, we listened to Madonna on the radio, singing “When you call my name, it’s like a little prayer, I’m down on my knees, I wanna take you there.” Jesus asked me to translate, but Flaca broke in: “Tell him it means that even if your brother is jotzto, you should accept him and love him.” I asked Jesus if he didn’t, and he said he did. Flaca did not protest, and went on to say that the real problem was their mother: “Just think about it, every time I go home she says I have to cut my hair, get rid of the dye, take off my padding, not use makeup, move like a man. But I’m not a man, and I can’t be one! And she knows, ’cause we’ve seen three psychologists’ and they’ve all said I’m right, I’m a puto. But then she says my little sister must not see me like that, she must be protected. As if she didn’t already understand. She’s ten and a lot smarter than my mum. And she asks me why I can’t live at home, all of us together. I want tits, and my mother doesn’t understand me. She refuses me that. I want hormone injections. I can’t be no man.” Jesus protested a little. He said it also had to do with Flaca’s way of life. He did not go to school, and he did not work either. Carmen broke in: “You cannot expect them to accept you at home as long as you don’t contribute with something. Look at me, why is it that I can look the way I do and live a t home?” Carmen, twenty-five, has used hormones for several years, and is always well made up. She really does look like a woman. She has her own hairdressing parlor, but has also worked as a prostitute for several years. I asked her if she did not get accepted before she started to maintain her family: I . Actually, at least three of my informants were taken by their parents to see a psychologist because of their femininity and/or homosexuality. This is perhaps surprising, given the general life conditions. But the psychologists were only consulted, and the children were not taken into therapy. I did not ask how the psychologists were found, but would guess that they were contacted through the school or through the parents’ health facilities at the workplace or through the governmental family service agency Desarrollo Integral de la Familia.

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“I have almost always maintained them, at least for the last eight years or so. But Mema helped me in the beginning. H e came and talked to my mother.” Mema joined in to criticize Flaca: “As long as you don’t care about working or going to school, but only use your life to hang around and steal and sniff glue, you can’t expect any respect. You must contribute with something.” T o achieve respect is obviously a common goal, it means being adult. T h e way to achieve it is to contribute to the household, preferably with money. Flaca told me afterward he wanted me to meet his mother. Only when we were on the way to her house did I understand why. He wanted me to speak to his mother so that she would accept him better. He hoped that she would listen to me, an educated person. Outside the house we met his youngest sister, who told us their mother was ill. Flaca asked his sister to go and ask if we could come in. Meanwhile he entered the yard, found a bucket of water and started to wash away his makeup. His sister returned, telling us their mother would prefer that we come back another day. Flaca protested, since I was going to leave a few days later. After some negotiations we were let in. His mother was in bed. She was in the thirties, good-loolung and self-assured, but a dry, reserved woman. W e greeted her, and sat down at the foot of the bed. On the second bed in the room, together with two young children, was a woman Flaca presented to me as his godmother. T h e children were sent out when Flaca had explained what he had come for. Flaca said he wanted to speak with his mother about why she could not accept him as a homosexual. But she said he was wrong, she had no problems accepting that Flaca-or Manuel, as she called himwas homosexual. What she could not accept was his way of lifeidling, stealing, tahng drugs. She pointed out that if he wanted to live like that, it was his own business. But she could not accept that he do so when living under her roof. However, after some discussion she admitted she could not accept his way of dressing either. There were many homosemales who looked normal and behaved correctly. If he did, too, she would accept him. But never as long as he dressed like a woman. I asked her why. “Because I gave birth to a son.” “But children get their own life when they grow up, and parents have to accept that they don’t always turn out the way they had expected.” “I don’t accept it.”

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“But that is the way he is. When it is so, what’s the point of not accepting it?” I felt obliged to defend thejotas’ own essentialist view of themselves. “That is the way it is. I’ll never accept it.” “Why not?” “I’m not used to it.” “But couldn’t you get used to it?” She gave a twisted smile, but no answer. Flaca intervened, but the result was a vociferous quarrel. She turned to me and said, “NOW you see how he is. He’s got no respect for his mother.” I told her I could see how much he suffered from the conflict with her, and that I had even seen him crying as a result of it. She seemed not to believe me. Then I hinted that it is a drastic measure to reject a son. She answered: “I was thrown out myself by my family when I was fourteen, and that has only served me.” “But when it happened, didn’t you think it was hard of your parents to reject you like that?” “Of course. But still I treated my mother with respect. And I understood later that it had been good for me, it helped me to get ahead in life, to take care of myself, not to depend on anybody.” Flaca said he took care of himself, too. And he had picked up Carmen’s advice, but was unfortunate in the way he expressed it: “If I work in prostitution, I can earn a lot of money, and I could buy you some land or something.” She burst out, “You take your mother for a pimp who would accept that hnd of money! Never in my life, I’d rather starve than receive money my son has fucked to earn. I see a lot of that here in Neza, parents living on that. But I tell you you’ll never get your mother to do that. I won’t touch anything you’ve stolen neither. You keep on bringing things home that you’ve stolen, but I won’t have that in my house!” (The stolen goods he brings home usually disappear, but Flaca is not convinced that his mother really throws them away.) Flaca shouted back at her, upon which she shouted at him that he should not shout at her. He hinted to her that they resembled each other, and I asked her how she could reject a son that resembled her that much. Again that twisted smile, while Flaca jumped up, and I understood he thought I had not shown enough respect for his mother. Our visit was not useful. We left, and the parrot screeched as we

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passed. Flaca claimed it was screeching “joto, joto” (queer), and that his brother had taught it to do that whenever Flaca was there. In Mexico, the relationship between mother and son is so central that a conflict is necessarily very painful. Flaca’s mother does not fulfill the ideal of perpetual indulgence, and of acceptance of the fate that children make a mother suffer. In turn, Flaca does not fulfill the ideal of a loving son who respects his mother. Despite her hard words, when her son needed her, she did turn up. Flaca and Pancha were arrested, and kept in detention in a juvenile ward. Flaca’s mother went there immediately, bringing food, since detainees are not given food because their families are supposed to bring it to them. She brought food for Pancha, too, since she knew his family would not do that. She also came to Mema’s house, where they both had been living at the time, to fetch some clothes, and only laughed when Mema stuffed the pockets full of condoms. She understood they might be needed. Then she sat down for a while and scolded her son in his absence, using strong expressions like gue poca madre tiene (((solittle mother he has,” meaning that he is misbehaving, supposedly owing to lack of upbringing), and este hyo de la chingada (“this son of a raped woman,” a common insult). T h e expressions are so widespread that one has to be a stranger to really hear what is being said. As for Pancha, at the time he was also sixteen. H e started to run away from home at the age of eight, and has lived some time in the streets and a long time with Mema. H e told me he left home because when he wanted to spend evenings out, he was attacked by the dog when he returned home. This was because he had to climb the gate, since he had no key. H e denied that his leaving home had anything to do with his family. But Mema told me Pancha had been very badly treated in his home, and made to sleep in the yard. One year later, however, I reinterviewed Pancha, and at that time he admitted that he had left home because his stepfather had beaten him. Pancha had told me that his mother had become aware of his homosexual manners when he was ten: “She asked me whether I was a man or a woman. If I were a woman, she would get me a slurt I could wear in the streets. If I was a man I should behave like one. But with time she understood, and she has accepted me the way I am now. Of course she doesn’t accept my wearing makeup at home, but she accepts me. She did not like me to wear tight pants and women’s blouses, and to have long hair that I dyed. They always cut it. But

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now they let me let my hair and nails grow. My mum understands me. She’s the one who supports me the most, and I love her a lot because she understands me. The truth is that I don’t wear makeup at home because I respect her more than anything else.” When Pancha was arrested together with Flaca, Mema went to his mother to inform her about it. I must admit I did not recognize that understanding, loving mother he had told me about. Her only reaction to the news was: “So fine.” Not a question about where, why, how long, how was he, did he get food etc.-nothing. Mema knew that Pancha’s mother was in the habit of saylng that it was Mema who had led her son astray, so he took this occasion to tell her what he thought about that. Pancha, he said, had been homosexual since he was a little kid, had learnt to use drugs from his sister, and to steal long before he came to Mema’s house. “And I cannot accept seeing children live in the streets just because their parents cannot accept they are homosexuales, or letting them sleep under the washstand in the yard like dogs.” Pancha’s mother did not answer. When this was reported to Pancha, he was very embarrassed. Several times I noticed that the youngsters felt it was shameful not to be cared for and respected by their parents. For the young jotas the proof of being respected is to have the right to dress and make themselves up the way they want to. Every little detail of their presentation of themselves is subject to a fight in their families. Pancha moved home again one year later. I noticed that he carried a key, and made a remark about that to him. He answered that he had always been able to enter his home with or without keys. But he admitted the situation was better now, as he could dress as he wanted now: “I wash my paddings and hang them right up on the drying rack. I hang up my bra the same place!” In 1996 I visited him in his home, where I also met his mother. Pancha is the only remaining child in the house now, and since his mother is seriously ill, he helps her a lot. The house is rather big and nice, by Neza standards. But when I visited him both the telephone and the electricity had been cut recently, because they were not able to pay the bills. Pancha basically earns his living by selling sex, but not regularly, and he also gains a little by doing some haircuts for the neighbors. He contributes to his household, but not on a regular basis, his stepfather being the main provider. Carmen is regarded as a successful transvestite in several ways. As a little boy Carlos had started to play with his sisters’ clothes; one

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day he put them on and sat down in front of the mirror. As his father, a factory worker, always cut the boy’s hair very short, Carlos put a big towel around his head, and let it hang as if it were long hair. When his father arrived, he was shocked. First he beat Carlos with his belt, then he fetched a gun and screamed out that he could just as well shoot his son. But Carlos’s mother intervened, and said then he would have to shoot her, too. Since his father did not shoot, Carlos thought afterward that he had nothing to fear, and continued to cross-dress and to try out makeup. His father continued to beat him. Carlos was then taken to a psychologist, who told his parents to stop beating him. His mother cried and begged him to respect his home, and told him she suffered when she heard people say her son was puto. For a while he only cross-dressed away from home and away from the neighborhood, and then gradually decreased the distance. By this time his father had left the family, and Carlos became Carmen also a t home. Now her family even calls her by her female nickname. Carmen has provided for her family most of the time since her father left. She has had a hairdressing parlor for several years, and has worked in prostitution as well. She is among the oldest of eight siblings, three of whom have university degrees now. Their studies have been partly financed with grants, but had it not been for Carmen’s good earnings they would have had to quit their studies and start to work to help their family, too. Carmen brought her younger brother to a party at Mema’s house. H e is also a self-defined homosexual, but in a very discreet way. I asked him, a student at medical school, how the family accepted Carmen. “YOUhave to accept your own family.” It was that simple. H e went on to say that he considered Carmen to be so feminine that she was more of a sister than a brother to him now.2 I was invited to dinner a few days later. Their mother is fat, almost toothless, warm and smiling. T h e kitchen table was near to breakdown, with a gaping hole just beside my plate. But there were several signs of increasing wealth, among them a brand-new stove. At the 2 . Arturo Ripstein depicts the beauty and the cruelty of this family solidarity in the movie Principioy Fin (1993). After the death of the father and breadwinner, the mother makes all the older siblings sacrifice themselves and work hard to invest the money in the education of the youngest brother, in the hope that he in turn will be able to take care of them. The paradox that he studies law while, in order to pay for his doing so, his sister resorts to prostitution and one of his brothers to drug dealing confirms some cases of surprising social mobility that I have seen myself.

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table we discussed how much money one could earn as a prostitute, but how easily one squandered it. A lively discussion, but the younger children preferred to finish their dinner and go to watch T V in the living room. A teenager came by to visit one of Carmen’s sisters. The mother said to Mema that she adored this boy. “Yes, he certainly is a piece for you,” Mema joked, “I guess you would not mind corrupting minors.” She laughed, and said that maybe she should leave that boy to Carmen. Fidel-“Fifi”-told me he enjoyed the games girls played when he was a child. He started to have sex with older boys in the neighborhood at the age of eight. Some soon commented upon what they considered his homosexual manners, but in his family nobody noticed until he was sixteen. He talked about the succeeding two hard years. He was locked out, left to sleep in the yard, and not given food. But he was not able to say whether it was because of his homosexual manners or because of his idle lifestyle. He had dropped out of school and was not working. Everything changed as soon as he started to work as a hairdresser. “I said to my brothers ‘you may be as macho as you want to, but I’ve got money, and you don’t.’ Money talks, you know. Money is what helps you.” Money helps, and time helps, too. His father told Fidel, after having rejected him for a time, that after all Fidel was his son, and he loved him as he loved his other nine children. Now Fidel felt accepted, which he defined as having the right to dress as he wants at home. “I can go around as I want to in my home. I could wear a dress or a slurt, but out of respect for them, I wear pants.” Fidel has also had the advantage of having an elder sister who is lesbian. She had been very easily accepted because she was the first of the siblings to bring home money. And she had of course an advantage in being one of the oldest. “Either you have to be the oldest, or you have to earn a lot of money if you want to be listened to,” sighed Sara, who suffers from being the youngest and the poorest of six. AngOl-Angela-started to dress as a girl at the age of ten. Only two years later he was initiated into the use of female hormones by homosexual friends. He was taken to a psychologist, but his family easily accepted his femininity, and his mother thinks he has always been like that. He wears dresses all the time now, and looks completely like a woman. Even at home the female nickname is used, and everybody says “she” about Angela. She lives with her parents, about ten of her brothers and sisters, and some of their children, too. Angela’s mother was forty-three

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when I met her. She was very fat and well into her seventeenth pregnancy. According to Mema, she follows her religious beliefs, and “receives what the Lord sends her.” She seemed exhausted, and had a black eye. She nodded in a way that seemed to indicate that the culprit was sleeping in the next room. Angela said she did not really know what her father does for a living, but that she thought he worked for the municipality. In any case the family is totally dependent on the economic contributions from the older siblings. For a long time now, Angela has made a good contribution, mainly working as a prostitute. This is known by everybody in the family. In a discussion at Mema’s house some said they felt that Angela was exploited by her family, and not shown due respect. She had to do the dishes, and she had to ask for money for her personal needs. This was not considered appropriate when she was providing for the family. But her friends seemed to be surprised when they saw how the family joined forces to help her when she was arrested once, suspected of robbery. Her family was afraid she would be placed in a male ward, which could prove to be very dangerous for her. Her mother collected as much money as she could, and a sister-in-law sold her car. All the money was used for bribes, to ensure that Angela was released as fast as possible. Her mother told that one of the people she bribed had asked for more, and alluded to the fact that since Angela was arrested for robbery, it should be possible to get some more. She said she had answered him that she would never receive stolen goods from her children. She supplied the bribes by waiting in the corridors, in order to nag the attorney and other persons responsible whenever they passed. Angela got out after some weeks, and we celebrated the event in her home. They were to see her lawyer the day after. Angela said: “What do you think I ought to wear then, mum?” Mema interrupted, “I don’t think you should wear a miniskirt.” Her mother said, “Unless you can get in a little work there!” Even in the family prostitution may be joked about. Angela is loved and respected by her parents and siblings, and she loves and respects them. However, she also told me that her father used to be very violent, and that she was heavily battered as a child. It still happened that he beat his wife, but now the older siblings intervened to stop him. However, they had never fought back, and I asked her why. “No, he’s our father, how should we lack respect for him? H e could be the worst asshole of all, but he’s our father. There’s no reason we should lack respect for him.”

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So while the children have had to try to do something to deserve respect, the father has the right to be respected by virtue of what he is. Respect is in both cases linked to position. Children should respect their parents, the younger the older, the penniless those who have money. Martin’s parents discovered that their son was being sexually abused by a neighbor when Mam’n was eight or nine. The neighbor was driven away, but the parents became more vigilant, and noticed their son had feminine manners. His father, a construction worker, started to bring the son with him to work shortly after, hoping that physical work would masculinize the boy. When these efforts proved futile, Mam’n was taken at age eleven to a doctor who gave him some injections of male hormones. At the same time, he was forced to quit school, also as a result of his homosexual manners. His parents beat him and chased him out. He came to Mema’s house, where he found a more supportive environment. After some time he was able to return to his parents, where he still lives. Marta (Martin’s chosen name) is the main provider now, since her father does not earn much. She is a sex worker on the highways, and most of her clients are truck drivers. She hands over a part of her earnings to her mother every day, and still has what she needs to dress nicely and have some fun, and to pay “for a pencil or a pair of shoes” for her youngest sisters when they need it. But it has been a long process. Thanks to Marta, new constructions have been added to the house, so that several brothers could stay there when they married. Even so, she has had so much trouble at home that she has been forced at times to live elsewhere. But now she has her own room and will soon have a hairdressing parlor at home, too. They live in a particularly poor area. Marta received us the first time I went there. She was dressed in a very low-cut, glistening blue dress that might be a nightgown, I could not decide. Even without makeup she looked like a woman. Her parents were tired; her mother was lying on the sofa in the living room, and complaining about her health. She referred to Marta as Martin, and said “he.” When Mema asked her how many children she had, she answered, “I’ve got eight. Four boys and four girls . . . well, there’s that one, then,” nodding in Marta’s direction. She started to talk about how afraid she always was when Mam’n works. One of Marta’s colleagues was killed at work the preceding week: just one week before that she had come to visit them, and had been sitting in the same chair that Flaca was sitting

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in right now. Flaca jumped up and looked around for another chair, but there were none left. Afterward Mema commented to me on Marta’s mother, saying that she complained a lot about Marta’s work but that she certainly knew how to appreciate the money Marta earned. Mema said, “They are so dependent on Marta that they all serve her at home, they bring her anything she wants.” Marta’s father does not know how she earns her money; he thinks she is a hairdresser, according to Marta. I asked Marta what her mother had to say about the sex work: “That I must be careful. She gives me a benediction and asks me to take care. Before, my mother was a little reserved toward me, but now she loves me more than you can imagine. I’m her confidant. She loves me, ’cause she saw how much I suffered, from living a while in one house, a while in another-it makes you just like dead people, after three days they stink. She saw how I was suffering, and started to think, and said, ‘Well, even if you are what you are, you are my son, and don’t cease to be my son.’” From these stories that emphasize the importance of money, it might seem as if the children must buy their parents’ love. But while such an interpretation may suit a rich society, it does not necessarily apply in a poor one. Money talks, as Fifi put it. But what does the money say? T h e message of the money is above all a moral one. What is important is not to earn money in itself, nor how the money is earned: what is important is how the money is spent. T o spend it on your family, your brothers’ and sisters’ schooling or for your old parents’ health-that is a sign of feelings of responsibility, of gratefulness toward the parents who brought you up, and respect for them. Doing this, showing respect, you may also expect respect. With a position as providers, jotas may remain perfectly integrated in the family structure. They gain respect through money. But while a heterosexual brother who provided for the whole family in the same way could expect to become jefe de familia, “the boss of the family,” the homosexual son will rarely get this position. Poor people cannot afford to separate economic considerations from emotions. Silvia is a friend of Mema, and comes regularly to his house. At thirty-six, she was already a grandmother. She had had an affair with Ernesto, another friend of the house, but she did not want to continue. One night Ernesto was drunk and jealous, and Silvia was afraid of him. But she told me, “I cannot have any affair with him. H e doesn’t bring me anything.” With all my European naivetk, I thought she meant emotionally, because he is married. But

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then she explained that she meant economically, and said it was because of her children. “It is not prostitution, but I have to think about them.” She has four children. Her husband left her when she was twenty-five; he wanted a younger woman, she said. Her oldest daughter has two children; her husband has left her, too, and her children are being brought up by Silvia’s mother. Silvia’s younger children are at school, so these eight persons have to live on what Silvia and her oldest daughter earn at the factory. Some gifts from a lover would indeed be welcome. Another woman, being maintained by her lover, a married man, put it even more frankly: “Before I go with anybody, I want to know how much he pays.” And to justify herself: “I’ve got to think about my children.” It is difficult for a mother to reject her son, and neither can she hide him away, since the cramped quarters and the nearness of neighbors leave few possibilities for privacy. This also means that people get used to seeing those who deviate in some way or another. With families being so big, there is a high probability in every family that there will be at least one child who will not live up to the parents’ expectations. There are sons who run away, sons who do not want to work, who drink and fight or are put in jail, and daughters who get pregnant at early age. As Patricia’s mother told me, he is puto, queer, O.K., but he could have been ugly and mean too, and he is not. Then it is not a problem that he is only homosexual. On the other hand, parents with several homosexual children (and I know some) may take it harder. With the strong ties that exist between mother and son, and the perhaps even stronger ideas in Mexico about how strong those ties should be, it is almost impossible for a woman to reject her son, however much he may misbehave. According to the anthropologist Marit Melhuus’s study of Mexican femininity (1992), when a child misbehaves it is the mother who is blamed, as the expression “ p e pocu mudre” indicates. Melhuus studied women in a Mexican village where many young people had left their families and gone to find work in the big cities or the United States. They were expected to send money home, but if they did not, they were not blamed. Their mother was blamed, as though she had failed in their upbringing. If they did not love her enough to care for her, it was because she did not deserve their care. T h e ties between mother and child are more fundamental than those between wife and husband, and a woman’s position as mother, being the summit of womanhood, ranks over her

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position as wife. Melhuus’s analysis is in line with that of Adler Lomnitz (1977:94), who claims that Mexican women often regard men as emotionally immature, and do not get very close to them. Their relations with their children, as well as with their own parents and siblings, are closer. For men, their male friends may be closer to them than their wives are. This may mean that it is also more important for a man to be a son than a husband. In fact, several of my own observations have also led me to believe that married Mexican men tend to have much closer ties to their mothers than to their wives. If this is the case, the j o t a s can maintain their most fundamental position in the kinship system: they do not become husbands and fathers, but they remain sons. And it seems to me that their mothers often discover that these are the sons who remain closest to their mothers, because they do not start to create their own families. It is the strong feeling of attachment to the family that makes it so important for a son to be accepted by his family. But just as he may help his family, his family may also help him. Friends may help in certain cases, but in the long run he will need his family for the social security it bring^.^ If he gets ill, hospitalized, or sent to jail, he needs his family, and he will need it when he gets old: the young j o t a s are very afraid of growing old, which may mean becoming unattractive, poor, and lonely. They will need their younger brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces then. Neighbor and Client Relations: Amused IndiTerence

I was immediately struck by the candor and boldness of the jotas’ daily interaction in the neighborhood. Some descriptions may show what I mean: A middle-aged woman from the neighborhood came to Mema’s house and asked Lupita to give her a permanent. As this was a lengthy 3 . Murray (199jb:38-39) believes that there is a direct relauonship between “gay institutional elaboration” and security about health care within Latin America, and finds, controlling for population size, a significant correlation between the provision of social security and the number of “gay facilities” per capita. He purposes to show that the egalitarian model of “gay” relationships will not be generalized in Latin America until the homosexually behaving males become more independent of their families. His point is an interesting one, but since a definition of “gay facility” is not given (and it must indeed be very difficult to come up with one which includes all forms of such facilities), I cannot judge the validity of the data.

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procedure, she stayed for lunch. She started to complain about her husband: sex was nothing for her any longer, and she asked jokingly if Mema and Lupita would mind stepping in for her. They laughed and said they would prefer her sons. Then they started to discuss her five sons and how large their penises were. T h e openness greatly surprised me, but still there was something that was not said. Mema told me afterward he had already had intimate visits from all five of them! W e visited a man, Miguel, whom Mema knew from political work. His wife and four children were present. Mema invited them all to his birthday party, but warned that it was going to be an orgy. Miguel replied he had been brought up in a neighborhood where a lot of prostitutes and pimps lived, so he did not think anything could shock him. Mema gave a special invitation to the fifteen-year-old twin sons, and told them he found them very handsome. They laughed shyly while their parents laughed loudly. Mema then grabbed the nineyear-old son and asked if he could take him with him. Of course he was a bit young, but with proper training, he would become a perfect husband for Mema. Everybody laughed, the boy most of all. When we left, Mema handed some condoms to the twins, and neither the twins nor their parents made any fuss about that. But the fourteenyear-old daughter did not get any. Most of thejotas are very visible in the streets; they know this and enjoy it. They speak loudly and boldly. Once when we entered the subway, Pancha and Gloria were having one of their usual quarrels: which one was the most beautiful, the most feminine, etc. One of them asked their fellow passengers, “Don’t you agree that I am more beautiful than her?” People laughed. Another time we were standing in a bus as it made a sudden turn. Lupita shrieked and pretended to lose her balance-and landed on the lap of a male passenger. Laughter again. But not all of them want to be so visible. Carmen compares herself with Mema, who is an effeminate and overtly homosexual man. “If I walked around like Mema does, it would hurt me to hear people cry ‘Puto!’ or say ‘Look at that littlejotito!’ Since I look more like a woman than like a man, I can pass unnoticed. And I like that. I’ve suffered enough, ’cause in beginning I didn’t really look like a woman. People criticized me everywhere. Now they leave me more in peace, and I even have more success like that, with men!” In the marketplace, sexualized small talk seems to be very frequent-the vocabulary for fruits and vegetables may easily be used

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in a figurative sense. Mema addressing the lemon vendor: “I’ve been told everything you have is big, even the lemons.” Mema buying papayas: “I don’t really like papayas, but O.K., I’ll take one.” (The word papaya is often used for female sexual organs.) T h e vendor answers: “I guess you prefer cucumbers.” Lupita buying avocados: “They look fine.” A young man is passing and has his eyes glued to her bottom: “Yours look better.” T h e vendor of corncobs asks me to say some words in French, and he answers me in Nahuatl, an Indian language. Flaca asks him to say “bloody queer” in Nahuatl, and simulates getting upset when he so does. As he hands over the corn, Flaca fixes his eyes at the vendor’s fly and says there’s another cob he might like to have. Several people have by now gathered at his stand to watch us. H e serves us a glass of vodka and chats about this and that, while his wife seems to be pouting at the other end of the counter. One night a couple of youngsters came to Mema’s house and invited us to a stag party for a groom on the eve of his wedding, just some blocks away. W e were about a dozen “girls”: vestidas, jotas, Maria, and myself. T h e jotas were very enthusiastic about going to the party, but turned a bit shy when we got there. Nobody wanted to be the first to go in. Mema volunteered, entered and shrieked happily at the sight of about thirty young men. H e took the role as a master of ceremony and introduced all of us who arrived. He started to distribute condoms to the boys, and told them they had to be aware of AIDS. They accepted the condoms, and laughed. Some of the boys started to serve us cubas, while another one put on some music. All of us “girls” were invited to dance, but since there was a surplus of boys, they started pushing and shoving. Some of them nudged those who were dancing, some others pushed a shy youngster over to make him ask somebody to dance. Mema ordered the groom to kiss all the “girls.” Then he started to arrange a wedding, with the roles as bride, the bride’s father, bridesmaids, etc., distributed randomly among the boys. The vestidas made a lot of hullabaloo about making up and dressing those who had been given female roles. T h e bride got a curtain as a veil and a pillow for his belly, and was solemnly wedded to the groom by Mema. In the midst of all the clowning Mema had succeeded in seducing a young boy, and withdrew to the lower of two bunkbeds with him, just behind a curtain that was hanging from the upper bed. Shortly after, another couple joined them, in the same bed. Some of the younger boys pointed at the bed and laughed when they saw how it moved. But

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Fig. 7. Mema hands out condoms to sex workers.

then some others started to pester the couples, pulling away the curtain, or shoving other boys into the bed. They finally drew Mema’s partner out of the bed, and kicked his behind. They were still laughing, so it seemed like some lund of a rough and tumble game rather than an aggressive act. But things got out of control when Mema tried to rebuke the most troublesome of them, and ended up getting sharp lucks in the face himself. W e all had to leave in a hurry to avoid more trouble. One week later Mema and some of his friends were invited to a party a couple of blocks away, to celebrate a girl’s fifteenth birthday party. This is a major event for a family. In addition to the many invited guests, who were let into the house, everybody could join in the dancing in the street outside the house, where huge loudspeakers had been put up. All ages and sexes were mixed. Some young people were dancing with a clenched fist in the corner of their mouth, with the smell of glue wah n g around them. I could see men alternating

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between dancing with women, with vestidas, and with feminine boys. Some of the men got drunk and started to be itchy-fingered and impatient. Mema left for the bathroom first with one man, an hour later with another, some other men followed us home for a nachspiel. Drag shows are a regular feature at gay discos, but are also held at mixed or supposedly ordinary discos. W e went to a disco in Puebla, a city not very far from Mexico City. My blas6 friends from the capital found the show poor; the vestidas were so stuffed with foamrubber padding that they walked stiffly and were hardly able to dance. But the master of ceremonies, a blatant vestida, had more success: she flirted with the public in between telling racist and sexist jokes, and she ended her talk with a warning against AIDS and a distribution of condoms. Some people handed written messages to her, with greetings that she read loud. One girl got greetings for her eighteenth birthday this way: the vestida asked her to stand up, and everybody sang a birthday song for her. She was modestly dressed and looked shy. I saw her family was there with her, an ordinary, probably lower-middle-class family, who certainly cared about the daughters’ reputation, but did not consider it affected by a transvestite telling coarse jokes. This reminds me of what Lumsden ( I 99 I :42) writes concerning a public bathhouse in Mexico City. Many men have sex with other men there, halfway hidden by the steam. A masseur brought his sixteen-year-old son to work there, to wash or do whatever chores there were. I suppose this shows the same ability not to be offended or embarrassed by what strangers do. What strangers do may instead be amusing. A parallel could be the very different reactions to adultery: it is very dramatic for those who are concerned, while those who are not may make fun of it, and the cuckold is a particularly ridiculous figure. There may be a class difference here. Being embarrassed at the sight of indecent behavior on the part of strangers seems to be a privilege of the higher classes. A Norwegian friend wanted to visit me in Neza, but his middle-class Mexican girlfriend could not stand the idea that he should frequent “that land of people,” even for only a couple of hours, and told him that if he went to visit us, he ought never to come back. I suppose the higher degree of tolerance in the urban popular classes stems from the fact that the families are big while the level of privacy is low. In almost every family there will be at least one

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person who is homosexual, alcoholic, delinquent, psychologically disturbed, or deviant in another way, and all the neighbors will know. One reason thejotas seem to fit so well into their immediate surroundings is that they share the local culture in many ways. They make up a subculture, but not a counterculture; they are not in opposition to their surroundings (cf. Hebdige 1991:148). While traditional subculture theory (for instance, Edwin Sutherland 1966 or Albert Cohen 1955)has emphasized the normative differences between the subculture and its mother culture, and the labeling theory approach (for instance, Howard Becker 1963 or Edwin Lemert 1967) has emphasized the production of subcultures as a result of exclusion from participation in the majority culture and the changing self images caused by labeling, I will rather follow more recent British theory (such as “the Birmingham School,” Hall and Jefferson 1980 [1975] and Hebdige 1991 [1979]) and emphasize the subcultures’ own production of differences through style. I will also follow Bourdieu, for whom the content of a culture lies mainly in its categories of perception and evaluation. While it is true that the dominant classes’ categories of perception and evaluation will to a large degree be appropriated by the dominated classes, the latter’s particular living conditions (such as the stronger economic constraints) will ensure a certain autonomy. We have already noted that the jotas do not question the fundamental unit of their society: the family. Very few live alone; most live with their families and care for their families. Even those who live with a partner often live with either one or the other’s family. This is quite different from the situation in industrialized countries, where homosexual men generally seem to have looser ties to their families. Vestidas dress like the opposite sex, but by doing so, they also show respect for the traditional sexual divisions. In effect, they make themselves understandable by becoming as female as they can. A status as some kind of woman gives them access to events like the local parties (see Lumsden 1991:35).A Swiss gay man once told me he had been at a party in Neza together with a Mexican friend. The latter used some makeup, but was not dressed as a woman. Still men approached the Swiss to ask if they could have a dance with his novia (girlfriend). The local community interpret homosexual men in terms of their regular perception of the genders. Thejotas in Neza interpret themselves in the same way, and also reproduce the regular gendered patterns in their own relationships to men. I have heard

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jotas claim that in many ways it is better not to have a stable partner, since they then may go to the parties they want to and dance with the men they want to. On the other hand, a iota would probably not object if a man asked his boyfriend whether he could dance with the jota. The jotas are not feminist^.^ Thejotus are not in opposition to the local culture when it comes to style either, in the way that, for instance, the very few local punks are. Phil Cohen (from Clarke et al. 1980:54) identified four domains for the construction of a style: dress, music, ritual, and argot. In all these areas, thejotas deviate only partially from their mother culture. They buy their clothes locally. Other young people wear tight-fitting flashy clothes, too. The rule is that your body shall be seen through your clothes, at least for the girls, but the boys do not seem to mind showing their bodies either, including their behinds. The jotas do not break with this local code, but simply go one step further, with the shortest miniskirts, the most low-cut necklines, the tightest slacks, and the most garish colors. They also follow the local taste in music. In Neza, as in many other parts of the world, young people identify themselves and others in relation to music. But here most of the young have the same taste in music as older generations: salsa, mmbia, mambo, rancheros, and romantic pop music, all by Mexican or other Latin American artists. T h e only counterculture of any importance in Neza in this period was heavy metal, which was a counterculture in the sense that it created a specific style in dressing around a specific taste in music that was disliked by most other people. The jotas’ conformity when it comes to music makes it easier for them to take part in local events such as parties. Dancing is very important in Mexico, at least for the working classes. T h e jotas are considered good dancers, and since you need a good partner to make a showing as a good dancer, the 4. With this argument, I link transvestic homosexuality to societies with a strong gender complementarity. And in fact, one may observe in the industrialized world that the more the ideal is one of equality between men and women, the more equality becomes an ideal also for the two parmers in a homosexual relationship (such relationships currently have a particular strength in Northern Europe, cf. Halvorsen and Prieur I 996). This argument does appear to be contrary to some findings in comparative anthropology: societies with low sex differentiation are significantly more likely to have male transvestism than those with high sex differentiation (referred to by Greenberg 1988:47). T h e suggested explanation for this is that in societies where women are seen as profoundly inferior to men, it is unthinkable for a man to become a woman. But I suppose that homosexuality based on equality between the parmers is equally unthinkable in these societies (at least as a permanent life-form, cf. Greenberg 1988:66 ff.). So I believe that my argument holds true in comparisons of Latin America with Europe and North America.

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men may be very eager to invite the jotus to dance. The rhythms invite both sexes to move their hips, and the women shake their breasts, too. Compared to the average women, manyjotus are more daring in their movements-but some women can be pretty daring, too. As a foreigner, at first I wondered whether these explicit movements of hips and breasts seemed more sexual to me than to those who performed them. But I got the firm impression that dancing is highly sexualized also for those involved, and the song texts would seem to underscore this. A couple of examples: “Abrizame, apriCtame, acariciame y bbame. iQue se queden fundidas tu piel en mi piel! Quiero amarte una vez, y otra vez y otra vez.” (Hug me, squeeze me, caress me and hss me. So that your skin melts with mine. I will love you once, once more and once more again.) The refrain of one of the most popular songs at the time goes as follows: Male voice“Que lindo es tu cucu. Tan bello es tu cucu. Redondito y suavecito. Que lindo es tu cucu. Cuando te pones p a n t a h , y que te tocas por detris, se me salta el coraz6n, y te quiero mis y m6s y mis . . .” Female voice-“No te metas con mi cucu, tu que tienes tu mujer.” (Male: “What a pretty ass you’ve got. So beautiful your ass is. Small, round, and soft. When you put on trousers, and touch your behind, my heart makes a jump, and I love/want you more and more and more . . .” Female: “Don’t you bother about my ass, you’ve got a womanlwife of your own.” Other songs are more grotesque: “Nena, si quieres que te de la mano, vea que te vea un cirujano. Eso se soluciona con silicona . . . quiero una novia pechugona.” (“Babe, if you want me to give you my hand, you’d better see a surgeon. The problem can be fixed with silicone . . . I want a woman with big boobs.” But sometimes the man is the victim: “Del matriomonio salieron nueve hijos. Ocho salieron rubiecitos . . . el noveno result6 ser bien negrito.” (From that marriage came nine children. Eight turned out to be blond . . . the ninth was very black indeed.) At the end of the song a male voice asks, “‘Dime Capullo, es hijo mio el negrito?’ Ella le contesto: ‘Oye Sorullo, el negrito es el unico tuyo.’ ” (“ ‘Tell me, Capullo, is the black one my son?’ She answered him: ‘Listen, Sorullo, the black one is the only who’s yours.’ ”) The jotus are strihngly sexualized. They dress and act provocatively, they talk a lot about sex and joke about it incessantly, and spend a lot of their time and energy on sexual conquests. In this, they differ from the people around them, but this seems more of a

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difference in degree than in content. They all live in a highly sexualized culture, where sex is treated very openly, as a kind of entertainment. Here let me point out that I am not generalizing about the whole of Mexico; I am speaking about the urban working class. Popular culture abounds with references to homosexuality, too. In 1989 one of the most frequently played salsas in discos was a very sad song about a boy who left his family and went to the United States, where he became a transvestite. His rich father let him down, and did not come to see him at the hospital when he was dying from AIDS. T he refrain was: “NOse puede coregir a la naturaleza, lo que nace doblado nunca se endreza.” (“Nature cannot be corrected, what is born bent will never straighten out.”) In an area like Neza, cartoon booklets with stories for adults are among the most popular reading. In one of those I found a story about two grls from the United States who behave stupidly, get in a lot of trouble in Mexico, and even get arrested. In the paddy wagon they find themselves in the company of some prostitutes. A policeman thinks the latter might be male. These answer, “How can you believe that?” and claim the policeman lacks respect for them, until he pulls off their wigs. H e calls them pigs, and says they will have to stay with the men. They answer, “Terrific!” and “Just what we wanted!” Less good-natured is the presentation of homosexual men in another kind of popular reading; the scandal press with its accounts of murders and other crimes. Homosexuals are here presented as perverted and violent. One example: Peligro (1990) with enormous headlines and a close-up in color. “The degenerated don’t rest . . . they kill, too! Sex and crimes! Terrible acts under low passions. Dressed as women they offered their services to the degenerate. A homosexual gang assaulted their victims and drugged them. They carried out their orgies and thefts in quickie hotels.” Entertainment artists very frequently make jokes about homosexuals, on stage or T V (a point Carrier noticed, as early as in the 1970s-Carrier 1976 and ‘995). T h e role models offered in this way to youngsters who feel a samesex attraction are not very positive. Homosexual men are a t best treated with humor, at worst with contempt. I may compare this with the situation in my home country, Norway, where homosexuality is in effect silenced, culturally nonexistent in the sense that it is rarely mentioned. Certainly, homosexuality is more tolerated in Norway than in many other countries-but only as long as it stays invisible, or at least discreet, as long as the difference is not broadcast. Accep-

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tance is easier the less the difference is visible, so that a masculinelooking homosexual man is more easily accepted than an effeminate one. But this has also to do with the general discretion regarding sexuality, which in Norway is considered to belong to the private sphere. Dressing provocatively is considered very bad taste, likewise the displaying of one’s sexual preferences. Norwegian lesbians and homosexuals themselves often stress their sameness with heterosexuals-it is “only” their partners’ sex that is different: their feelings, their personalities are the same, or as diverse, as those of heterosexuals. When I have been asked to describe Norwegian homosexual men, my Mexican friends have frequently pitied them: the poor souls are so repressed they do not dare display their difference, they do not dare be effeminate . . . Which country then-Mexico or Norway-should be considered the most tolerant? Tolerance means to respect other people’s freedom, opinions, ways of thinking and acting-their difference. It is a paradox that the Declaration of Human Rights, which accords all humans certain basic rights regardless of origin, nationality, or religion, is at the same time a declaration about the basic sameness of all human beings, declaring in effect that some principles have universal validity. The paradox underlies a basic dilemma: Does this mean that we should all become equals or that differences should be accepted? In Norway there can be no doubt that lesbians’ and homosexuals’ basic human rights are better respected than in Mexico, that lesbians and homosexuals are less subject to formal sanctions, violence, and social marginalization. In addition, they are protected by an antidiscrimination law, and have the right to establish partnerships giving almost all the same legal rights as marriages (see Halvorsen and Prieur 1996). But the price is invisibility. In Mexico lesbian and homosexual men officially enjoy legal protection, but are often harassed; they have the right to political organization and to have service organizations such as bars and discos, but must often pay off in order not to be harassed. Homosexuals, at least men, have a higher visibility, including on television programs and in debates, but first and foremost on the streets, at parties, and in family life. But violence is widespread; even murders are rather frequent. In the 1990s several homosexual activists as well as many vestidas have been assassinated. As Taylor (1995) puts it, the blending of homophobia, indifference, and acceptance is paradoxical in Mexico. Cultural unity, as Bourdieu understands it, exists when schemata of evaluation and perception are shared-which implies that the

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traits exhibited by the dominant in a society are also the traits that the dominated evaluate most highly. And inversely, it implies that the dominated tend to evaluate themselves according to the dominants’ evaluation of them. Bourdieu cites the example of homosexuals who have taken over heterosexuals’ perception of them (19go:10,n. 13). To attenuate the difference may then be a way to avoid a too negative perception of oneself, an acknowledgment that too much difference would imply inferiority (which is the claim of Louis Dumont [1986], that the recognition of a difference implies either a conflict or a hierarchical ranking). Inferiority status would certainly be a lot more difficult to accept in a country that, like Norway, so strongly emphasizes equality. I believe it is less problematic for lesbians and homosexuals in Neza to accept inferiority status, because differences in power and rank are generally more accepted. T h e North American anthropologist Roger Lancaster (1992:24142) has noticed that a blending of amusement and contempt is also the normal attitude toward Nicaraguan homosexual men; they are followed by a slightly hidden derision. However, on special occasions, at festivities, transvestites may receive goodwill and encouragement from the whole community (p. 251). Lancaster sees this as a Bakhtinian carnivalesque inversion, where an object of derision becomes a subject who offers his parodic commentary on a whole array of social and sexual relations. I am instead inclined to see an ever present ambiguity. I believe the ambiguity stems from the vision of the homosexual as a man who has lost his manhood, who therefore is an object of contempt and derision, but who also is threatening to men or provocative for men by being a reminder of the fragility of manhood. This will be further analyzed in the final chapter. School and Work Life: Exclun’on

While most of the jotus have found their place inside the family, in the neighborhood, and in the leisure-time arena, they are largely excluded from the educational system and from ordinary working life. In Neza there is definitely nothing extraordinary about leaving school a t an early age. But thejotus say that they chose to or were forced to leave school because of their effeminacy. At school, none of them has dressed as girls-they would have been expelled immediately-but long hair, a little makeup, or just some feminine manners have been enough to subject them to teasing and violence from the

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schoolmates or from the teachers. Patricio said that his teacher tried to dress him as a girl in order to ridicule him in front of the others. Marta was expelled, in spite of his good grades. T h e reason given was that he might deprave his peers. Flaca’s teacher was among the first to notice his feminine traits, and got him to admit he was homosexual. H e was then ten years old. Then the teacher started to have sexual relations with him. Carmen felt lonely at school, because the other boys kept their distance for fear that someone might think they had a sexual relationship with him, while the girls kept their distance for fear of their reputation. After he began to work part-time in a hairdressing parlor, he asked himself why he should accept all this suffering when he could work instead. Six of the eleven interviewed jotas quit school before they finished the semndaria (junior high school), and only one, Patricio, had finished high school. H e wants to study to become a teacher. Lupita has taken up school again, and wants to finish high school. She studies with other adults, and goes to school dressed as a woman now. Only a limited range of professions is available for the vestidas in Neza: almost all I know are either prostitutes or hairdressers. It is easier for the jotas who do not cross-dress. Even among them, though, most of the ones I met were prostitutes and hairdressers. Among the exceptions were a waiter, a tailor, a baker, a circus worker, and a cafe owner. And I have heard about servants, cooks, and vendors. But although practically all the jotas in Neza come from the working class, very rarely does one of them take up a traditional working-class male occupation, such as carpenter, mechanic, or factory worker. I have never met any jotas who practice these occupations, but Mema has said there are some, who have a rather discreet presentation. I do know twojotas who work in public administration, dressed as men, during the week, and dress as women and sell sex on the weekend. One of them is protected by other family members working in the same administration. Th e other, Gata, is protected by being tall and strong, and she told me she had knocked down those who have teased her. She was fired from a job she had earlier in a bus company, because she had had sex at work. She said that now she had sex only with superiors, since this would protect her from being fired. T he jotas who become hairdressers seem often to begin work in another homosexual hairdresser’s parlor. It is not so often, then, that they work for straight people. They prefer to work for each other or on their own. T o have one’s own parlor takes years of experience,

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Fig. 8. Chetos working as a hairdresser.

preferably also some schooling and a certificate, and is an important financial investment. Many of the young jotus live lives too unsteady for achieving all this, but they may succeed when they get older. None of them believe their flagrant homosexuality is a financial liability here-quite the contrary; some claim that everybody knows homosexual men make the best hairdressers, and that it would be a

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Fig. 9. Josefina working as a hairdresser in Mema’s kitchen.

handicap if their dressing as women became too convincing. I do know of some who pass as women vis-i-vis their clients: they work quite far away from where they live so that nobody knows they are men. But most let their maleness be visible. Once I entered Patricia’s parlor, where Lupita works. Lupita was wearing jeans and almost no makeup at all, and looked more like a man than a woman. Then she

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went to the back room and returned wearing a light green mini dress. She took a seat next to the clients and started to make herself up, with heavy colors around the eyes and a garish lipstick. She finished by shading the area around her low neckline: it was supposed to make the cleavage between her small breasts (she takes hormones regularly) seem deeper. T h e clients watched, Patricia continued his work, and there were no comments. I have sometimes heard the hairdressers talk almost as if the clients were not there, for instance reporting which of their prostitute friends had been arrested that week. Their sex talk is less direct than when they are alone with each other, but they allow themselves to flirt with the male clients and to give them compliments. T h e clients usually laugh, sometimes a little embarrassed. Lupita told me a client had asked her what he could do to stop losing his hair. She recommended a solution of female hormones that he could rub into his scalp. H e had answered: “But won’t I then risk becoming like you?” Neighbors and clients a t a disco or in a hairdressing parlor seem then not to be embarrassed by the jotus and vestidas; at most they seem indifferent or amused. Family members, however, have a very different attitude. They are concerned, and not at all amused. In a society where honor and shame count, the behavior of other family members is contagious, and their shame becomes the whole family’s. But first and foremost it is the women’s behavior that contaminates the men (see Pitt-Rivers 1974 on the Mediterranean notion of honor). Thus it is that a homosexual son’s behavior hurts his family members, but he may also more readily be forgiven for it. School and workplace relations may be ranked somewhere in between family relations and more indifferent relations with clients and people in the neighborhood. These relations are too close or too lasting to permit schoolmates, teachers, bosses, or colleagues to take on an indifferent or amused attitude as more distant people can; but on the other hand, they are not important enough to lead to efforts to overcome a conflict or a rupture, as family members try to. T h e result is that most of thejotus drop out of school, and earn their living in professions where they are rather independent of heterosexual persons as employers. Prostitution thus represents a major way of earning a living for the young jotus in Neza. Prices for prostitution in Mexico City are relatively high. At the time of my fieldwork, a transvestite prostitute who sold an intercourse was paid what would correspond to about five days of work at the official minimum salary. (By comparison, the

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average amount obtained by a female street prostitute in San Francisco for an intercourse corresponded to only about one and a half days of work at minimum salary. W e must take into account, however, that the minimum salary in Mexico is very low.) But when we take into account the bribes or fines as well as the typical pattern of consumption that “easy money” often leads to, there is not necessarily so much money left. T h e prostitutes among the jotas look upon prostitution as work. When they talk about it, they usually present it as if they have regular worlung hours, at least five days a week, earning a stable amount of money. In reality most weeks seem to be exceptions, and even if they may earn a lot when they work, the real monthly income seems rather low for most of them. But the sex workers I know live in Neza, quite far from the central prostitution area. When I met them, they usually lived with their families, and always had many excuses for not working this particular night. I am aware that there are sex workers living close to the prostitution area who work much more. They often live in hotels, always eat out and have their laundry done, and in general lead a very expensive life. For the youngjotas who have left school and not had the opportunity to enter the labor market, starting to sell sexual services does not represent a further exclusion, does not mean that the distance from “straight” society increases. In fact, since it often means they can finally earn their own money instead of having to live on what they can bum off their friends or steal, they see it as “straightening up,” as a sign of adulthood. T h e possibility of earning money fast is the most attractive fact about Prostitution. But many find other advantages, as well. T h e youngest appreciate the possibility of gaining a lot of sexual experience, although before long they tire of having sex with men they rarely find attractive. On the other hand, they may appreciate being found attractive, and even more so if they are found to be attractive as women. Gata, forty-two, told me why she liked prostitution. “First, it feeds my ego. Second, it gives me an income. It makes me feel I’m still on the go, in spite of my age. That I’m still attractive.” To “feed the ego” well, she has to work in areas where most prostitutes are female, and try to pass as a woman herself. She claims her clients are real men, not closeted homosexuals. Still, most sex workers recognize prostitution as a difficult and dangerous way of earning a living. One has to watch out for the police, watch out for violence and disease, watch out to make sure one gets paid. “I don’t like prostitution,” said Angela, “because you

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do it with monkeys and with strangers. I can’t know what kinds of diseases they have. Then you can meet one of those assholes who’s going to do something to you. It’s risky, but it is the easiest way to earn money.” Those who work from bars have fewer problems with the police than those who work in the streets, but they are more exposed to clients who get violent, as the clients often believe they are women and get angry if they discover otherwise. In the streets the vestidas keep to the areas where it is known that the prostitutes are transvestites, and few clients are likely to mistake them. But in revenge they are often arrested, or have to pay a lot in order to not be arrested. Prostitution in itself is not prohibited in Mexico, only to “in a scandalous way invite to carnal commerce” (Uribe 1990). T h e police can bring in prostitutes for thirty-six hours of detention, unless they pay a fine, but this they rarely do. More frequently they bribe the policemen, and those bribes often represent a considerable part of their earnings. These arrests create a constant stress for the prostitutes. Income becomes uncertain, and their families wait for them without knowing what has happened. Quite often they do not get anything to eat in detention, and must sleep on cold, concrete floors. Some get arrested very frequently, spending a total of several weeks or even months inside every year. T h e director of one of the detention centers showed me the records of the two most frequent occupants: one had been arrested forty-eight times in the last year, the other I I L times in the past two years. Even if the vestidas may perceive prostitution as straight work, it means a tough and somewhat chaotic life for most of them: parties, drinlung, drugs, thefts, quarrels, detention, violence. Since Gata works as a clerk, dressed as a man, during the week, she resorts to prostitution only on the weekend, when she dresses up as a woman. “I can take the monotony of the week, because I know that I’ll be different on the weekend. Then I can project myself the way I want to, and there will be a new adventure, something unknown-maybe my death, maybe an accident, maybe a quarrel, but there’s always something different.” Drug use is rampant among the prostitutes, both as a consequence of having money and as a measure to relieve the anxiety. Carmen took a lot of pills as a prostitute, usually Rohypnol: “YOU feel more courageous. You feel you’re the most beautiful, the queen, you feel sure about everything. And you tell yourself ‘he’s not going to discover I’m a man.’ You do some tricks, you do the whole work, the sex, you do it so that he doesn’t move. They may discover me,

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and want to beat me up. But with the pills, I fought back. And they saw I wasn’t afraid, that I was very angry, and with some drinks even worse. I started to smash bottles, or mirrors. They got scared and realized that there was no way I was going to give them the money back. So the pills worked-they took my fear away, and I felt good. And if I was caught, they made me sleepy, so I didn’t feel the cold from the concrete floor in the jail. I’d take several then, and lie there like dead, sleeping.” Lupita said, “It’s only after a couple of drinks or when I’m doped that I have the courage to go with anybody, and put myself up without fear or nothing, and almost not watch out for the patrols. I say if they catch me, they catch me, so what? But otherwise, I’m afraid. They’ll catch me, and keep me thirty-six hours. Detention is horrible. They don’t wash there, it’s filthy, it’s sickening, and it’s only stone and it’s crowded.” T h e male sex workers who prostitute themselves looktng like men give the overall impression of a somewhat straighter life than the vestidas. A little sign that they are less dependent on this income could be that one night when it suddenly started pouring rain and I joined Mema for his usual round distributing condoms, there were no boy prostitutes to be seen, though the vestidas were there, huddled under their umbrellas. For the boys, prostitution is often just an extra source of money, besides their income as waiters, vendors, or whatever. This prostitution is also much more discreet. They just wait at a bus stop, and it is only the way they try to catch the eyes of the passing drivers that reveals what they really are waiting for. Mema always has a hard time convincing them that they need condoms, since they always deny that they are selling sex. They are usually quite well dressed, and give me the impression of belonging to a layer of society a little above the one the vestidas belong to. But some of them are in fact very close to the vestidq and may even be their lovers. I know of a couple of such cases (and Zapata [1996] provides another example when the main character of his novel, the male prostitute Adonis, has an effeminate lover who also sells sex). In his study of Brazilian prostitution, Richard Parker (I 990) found the same distinction, with the transvestites coming from the favelas, and the boy prostitutes, the michi?,from the more established working class. T h e latter often sell sexual services only sporadically; for instance, they only take a client on a Friday night in order to have the money to take a girlfriend out to dance on Saturday. But Parker’s description of the transvestites’ social adaptation, their relationships

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with their families, and their reasons for selling sex differs from mine (I 990: I I): Except in some of the most marginalizedfavelus, however, the travesti is rarely tolerated in the poorer, more traditional suburban neighborhoods that are frequently the home of the michL On the contrary, in beginning to cross the lines of gender, the travesti has almost no choice but to leave family and friends behind in moving to the center of cities such as Rio and Siio Paulo, where a mixture of socially marginal and often illegal activities creates not only a kind of moral region but a kind of moral anonymity in which the traditional values of Brazilian society cease to function. Within this world . . . , given pervasive prejudice and discrimination, almost no other options other than prostitution are open to the travesti for earning a living.

Regarding the Mexican transvestite prostitutes, I am less willing to see the prostitution as a simple result of social exclusion. It is true that they have few alternatives, but prostitution is not necessarily the only possibility, and it does not necessarily accompany rejection by their families. On the contrary, quite often it leads to a reintegration into the family. La Malu Vida

Her slart is a bit torn, and Lupita tells what happened. She was at a disco, got drunk, and was picked up by a man who took her to a hotel. When he fell asleep, she stole all his money and his watch and went out in the street. There she immediately got a lift with a couple of young men, but they took her to another place than what they had said, and when they stopped, they took her money and her watch. She was afraid they would beat her up, so she ran away. They followed her, and she had to hide under a car to get rid of them-and that was where the skirt got torn. This little story is fairly typical of the messes the jotas perpetually get involved in, where drinkmg, thefts, sex, and violence intermingled. Most of thejotas in Neza seem to have a rather difficult time during their teens and even before, but things get better when they are in their twenties. During their teens they drop out of school and are rejected by their families. Very few have gone straight from school to work. Most have had a period in between, living rather insecure lives: no regular place to live, drinking and drugs, thefts and prostitution, a lot of sexual experiences, and heavy exposure to violence, illnesses, hunger, cold, imprisonment-sometimes also sudden death.

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T he streets in Mexico City are crowded with children. They play in the streets and often start to work in the streets at an early age, selling chewing gum, shining shoes, or cleaning car windshields. Children turn somersaults in the pedestrian crossing while cars wait for the green light, then they hurry to solicit money before the light changes. Most of them have a home to go to, but some have been thrown out, some have got lost, and many have run away. They learn to survive, with jobs only now and then, by soliciting or stealing, or by selling sexual services. Manuel, Flaca, was eight years old when he went to another city with his family. H e told me that he became separated from them, and could not find them. H e sat down in a cafk and cried. T h e woman who worked there comforted him and was very kind. It was a nice place, with ducks and rabbits. So when she asked how she could find his parents, he answered he did not know. H e stayed with her for two months before he finally told her he knew how she could get hold of his grandmother. H e went back home, but started to run away shortly after. Pancha also started to leave home at the age of eight. At fourteen he settled in a dilapidated moving van, together with Flaca, Maria, and some others. H e told me about this time: “The truth is I came to enjoy it. Thank God nothing happened to me. I never ended up in hospital nor anything. T h e days pass fast in the streets. But it is terrible to always live in the streets. You suffer from hunger, from the cold, from the dirt and all that. But I could take it, ’cause you learn a lot of things in the streets. You can try a bit of everything. I started to leave home because my stepfather beat me. I didn’t like that, and started to go out. Then I didn’t even celebrate the New Year with my mother. I felt bad about that, but I liked to live in the streets for the same reasons that made me go out when I was younger. And now I cannot get used to staying at one place, regular-like. I like to walk around in the streets, and live on the edge. And in the streets I could meet a guy, but I couldn’t take him home. Or I could go to downtown in the afternoon, get very drunk and just stay outside.” Flaca talked about the same period: “We were about ten of us in this big van that was full of old shoes. I went to the markets to steal so we could eat. Once I stole a wallet, with 570,000 pesos [two hundred U.S. dollars]. I bought a big blanket for us, and clothes. And we put up curtains, fixed the van up. Then we sniffed. I swear we

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never even thought about eating. Weeks passed when we did not eat. But then we ate a little, even if we were not hungry. Then I went to steal from the kids at the high school. But then my hair started to fall out, my teeth hurt, and when I hurt myself, I started to bleed. I was rotting.” T h e British youth researcher Paul Corrigan (1980) interviewed boys hanging out at street corners about what they were doing. The answer was, “Nothing.” But this “nothing” contained a lot. They were chatting. About what? Oh, nothing, really. But sometimes somebody “gets a weird idea.” Like what? Smashing milk bottles, maybe. W h a t happens then? Nothing, really. Then there are some fights. Why? N o particular reason. T h e point is just that then something happens at least. T h e fights are breaks from the big nothingness, and therefore a nothing is enough to provoke it. Why the youngsters gather in the streets when nothing happens there must be understood in relation to the alternatives. There is nothing happening a t home either, or in the youth club; at least it is predictable what will happen. In the streets there might be a surprise, something unpredictable in all the nothingness. In Mexico, the young people’s street life seems more diversified; it is both dull and exciting. Dull because there is not much to fill the time with, exciting because when something happens, a lot happens: parties, sex, drinking and drug use, thefts, fights, arrests. Sometimes too much excitement, but still the suffering is less linked to the exciting part of life than to the dull part: cold, hunger, tiredness. Drinking and drugs are perfect solutions, because they fill the day: to get hold of the drugs, then use them, and sleep afterward-and, of course, to talk about it all. Drugs calm the anxiety and the suffering. Many young people in the streets in Neza use any kind of stuff, whatever they can get their hands on. Marihuana, alcohol, often combined with sleeping pills, and airplane glue or paint thinner, which are the cheapest and strongest drugs available. There is almost no intravenous drug use. Amphetamine exists, but is not frequently used, and lately, cocaine has arrived. Until recently this was a drug much too expensive for the young people in Neza; then it became more easily available, but now the devaluations have made it more expensive again. When I was back in Neza in 1996, some of my main informants were still sniffing glue, while Pancha told me she had “gone up to another level”-using cocaine. Thefts are an important source of income, and often accompany

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prostitution. Besides the economic significance, they have symbolic importance. It is the latter that makes them such a popular topic of conversation. Sex workers often take advantage of the physical intimacy with their clients to try to steal something from them. This is known from several countries and applies to sex workers of both sexes. And it is understandable, since prostitution is an asymmetrical relationship where one part enters out of desire while the other enters out of economic necessity. Sex workers often feel contempt for their clients: they may feel abused by them and want to abuse them in turn (see Hnigird and Finstad 1992). The anthropologist Don Kulick (1996: 5) says about Brazilian transvestite prostitutes, “Regardless of who they are and where they encounter them, travestis rob their clients.” From what Mexican transvestite prostitutes have told me, I understand it does not always take much in the way of skill to steal from their clients. The latter often are drunk, and sometimes enjoy bragging about how much money they have and wave their thick wallets to prove it-before they fall asleep. Sometimes the sex workers help them out a little, dropping some sleeping pills in their drinks. Often they do not even leave the meeting place with the client before they rob him. Saturday nights at the disco are perfect occasions-the men are drunk, and very pleased when the “girls” tumble down in their lap, all the while telling the men how handsome they are, caressing them and exploring their pockets. On a Sunday afternoon, Patricia arrived and wanted some advice about where to hide a pile of almost two million pesos (650 U.S. dollars), and how to spend it without her mother getting suspicious. She dresses up as a vestida only on Saturday nights, when going to the disco. She told us she had sat down at a table, and got invited by the man sitting there to have some drinks. She immediately spotted the man’s thick wallet, but another vestida passed by, stopped, and gave the man a hug. Patricia watched the wallet disappear, and understood there was no point staying at that table. She found another man, one who was not attractive at all, according to Patricia, but who had already drunk enough to start bragging about his earnings. When they started to embrace each other, Patricia put a hand into the man’s pocket, and found the first wad of bills, which she then hid in her wig. The man did not notice anything, drove Patricia home, embraced her again-and lost another wad from his other pocket. It is known from female prostitution that prostitutes often want

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to draw a sharp line between sex for money and sex for pleasureone reason that they may refuse to kiss their clients and luss only their lovers and insist on using condoms with clients but not with lovers (Hoigird and Finstad 1992).T h e point is to make a clear difference, and to keep a distance from the clients. The jotas in Neza seem to make less sharp distinctions. There exists a form of sex that is paid-sexopagado-and this is prostitution. Then there is another form of sex that is charged-sexo cobrado. Charged sex is occasional sex motivated by desire, but where one also takes advantage of the intimacy to relieve the other of his wallet or his watch-and sometimes even knocks him down after sex. Flaca told me about one time when, after a night at the disco, she accompanied a man to a hotel. She had noticed that the man-who was wearing a suit and seemed well-off and who had let it be understood he worked for the prosecuting authorities-had put his money in a packet of cigarettes, which he had left in a pocket. While Flaca penetrated him, she reached a hand out to grab the packet from the jacket pocket, but it fell on the floor, and the sound made the man jump up, he grabbed a bottle, broke it, and threatened Flaca. H e searched her, but did not find anything, since Flaca had not yet retrieved the packet of cigarettes. This she did immediately afterward, and hid the packet in the foam-rubber padding she always uses around her slunny hips. As the man did not find the cigarette packet, they quarreled until the proprietor arrived. T h e client asked the proprietor to call the police because “this whore”-pa-had stolen his money. Flaca indignantly responded that she was no puta, but a put0 (whore in male gender), which the man should know perfectly well after having been penetrated. At this, the man got so embarrassed he left the hotel, pulling Flaca with him and into his car, where he told her they were going to wait for the police. But Flaca took one of her high-heeled shoes and hit the man in the head, got out of the car, and ran away. Not only had she robbed the man and finally knocked him down, but while they were having sex, she had placed some hickies in his neck, enjoying the thought that the man’s wife would discover the marks, and she had also penetrated him without a condom, although she believed herself to be HTV-positive a t the time (after a false positive test). A whole series of aggressive acts toward a man who represented everything Flaca was not herself: adult, masculine, married and well-off. On the other hand, it also happens thatjotas get robbed by their

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partners. Mario, a slightly feminine homosexual man, offered a young boy a lift home with Mema’s car. They jumped into the back seat, where I could understand from the noises that something was going on. Mario told me afterward that the boy had tried to snatch his watch and had also asked if Mario could “lend” him some money. I told him I had used to think one either had sex out of desire or out of wish for economic gain, so that this mixture always surprised me. H e answered me that the point of the boy’s attempts probably was more to give himself the pretext he wanted for the homosexual encounter than the economic gain in itself-it would permit him to perceive the sexual act as just a means toward another end, as if he had taken advantage of, tricked, Mario, the homosexual. T o this I objected that the homosexuales did exactly the same, without seeming to need any pretext, since they did not try to dissimulate their taste for men. Mario answered, “In this country, when we meet other people, we always try to find out how we can take advantage of them. It’s not ‘I pay the drinks, so maybe he’ll pay the food,’ we always try to get the other to pay it all. A Mexican wants to be chingoiz [a trickster, one who gets ahead by taking advantage of others].” Here Mario is certainly exaggerating, since anyone can notice that Mexicans are often very generous with their friends and with their family members. But it is indeed a particularistic moral code: the norms for relating to family and friends are not the same as those for relating to strangers. Gata talked to me about what she called her kleptomania: “When I see people attracted to me, and I see they have something that sparkles, my hands get so soft, so delicate that I even don’t notice it, and then I’ve grasped it. I can’t be with them without taking something from them, even if it’s only a lighter. I’ve got the facility of my fingers, and the ability to get them drunk. It’s a vice, but it’s a lucrative one, all right. And I like it. I like it because sometimes there are well-filled wallets, or a piece of jewelry. It’s something that has helped me to survive. They touch me-I charge them. They grab me, I don’t ask them to approach me, they do it themselves. They know the risk. But if I go to somebody’s home, where you serve me, then I don’t even take a cigarette butt, and I’ll ask you for permission before I take a piece of fruit. And never in the shops. I’ve got my job, I don’t need it. It’s just with my clients I do it. And with my lovers. I say to myself W h y shall I accept that we touch each other?’-and zip! That it costs him something! I charge. But with my lovers, I gve it back to them afterward.”

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I believe this blending of sex and theft partly has to do with a cultural situation where women are often perceived as not having sex for their own pleasure, but as giving it in exchange for somethingbe it for money, gifts, upkeep, or love. Then the jotas, too, may want not to “give it for free.” But it surely also has to do with the fact that sex takes place in an unequal situation, where thejotas are subject to domination, whether because the other is richer or more masculine than they are, and where they are subject to contempt, given the cultural perception of them. Stealing things is a way of resisting domination; it allows them to preserve their dignity. T h e other may be richer, he may be more masculine, they may themselves be despised and condemned asjotas-but still, they come out as the smartest, the most chingones. O n the other hand, the young people who stayed at Mema’s did not steal only when they had sex: they stole in shops, in buses, in crowds, and very often a t the market. Without approving their acts, I must admit to having been impressed by their skills-especially as they passed far from unnoticed in these places, with their loud voices, effeminate manners, and taste for screaming colors. They had no regular earnings, and used to steal a lot for their own consumption. But they also stole a lot of useless objects, things they only stole because they enjoyed stealing. I believe stealing should be understood as a risk sport, far cheaper than diving or parachuting, more like reckless driving. Just as driving fast serves to get from one place to another without wasting time, stealing may serve some very practical purposes, but these purposes cannot always explain the acts. Stealing demands skills, training, audacity, and nerves; in return it gives, in addition to the entertainment value, the satisfaction of having proved oneself to have these slulls. Violence is another aspect of la mala vida. These young people have grown up with violence, and seem to perceive it as a natural phenomenon. Almost all of them were beaten as children, by their parents, brothers, and sisters as well as by other children. During one of my stays, Mexican radio and television had a campaign against battering children and youngsters. T h e T V spots showed daily situations where mothers or fathers lost their temper and hit; the message given was that instead, you should pull yourself together and count to ten. T h e campaign confirmed a widespread Nordic image of overly impulsive Latinos, which perhaps corresponds to their self-image. But the violence I observed during my stay was rather controlled and premeditated.

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I have already written about a boozing session for a groom that ended in a fight. A boy had been pestering those who were dancing, had tried to feel me up and to bother Mema and some others who were having sex behind a curtain. Mema was sober as always (he is a teetotaler), and, albeit irritated, he was quiet. He followed the boy outside, and there he hit him. Unfortunately for Mema, some neighbors tried to stop the fighting by grabbing him-so that the boy got a perfect occasion to hit and kick back, and Mema was indeed the one who got most hurt. I asked him afterward why he had wanted to fight. “Because he had bothered you, me and several others.” “That was nothing serious. It did not deserve such a strong reaction.” “Up to a certain limit, you must accept that people pester, but after that, you have to fight back, to keep your status.” “Your status deserved the shiners you’ve got now?” “If I don’t defend myself in that kind of situation, I’ll get into a vicious circle, and will get a lot more trouble later. Everyone will try to assert himself.” The way Mema’s mother reacted when she saw him is also telling. He had tried to hide his black eyes behind a thick layer of makeup, but having scrutinized him she started to scold, asking him what had happened and telling him he was too old for street fights. He smiled, looking embarrassed. Without waiting for an answer, she continued her scolding: “At least I hope you killed whoever did that to you.” The next time I witnessed Mema resorting to violence was when he hit Teresa, a vestida who perceives herself as having the same status as Mema, because she has her own house and her own court, too. Not invited, she crashed a party at Mema’s house, together with some of her followers. She was drunk, and started to insult and pat some other guests. When Mema told her to behave or to leave, she answered meekly that it was up to Mema to decide in his house, but at the same time she tried to pat him-whereupon Mema knocked her down. None of them seemed to be angry, and Teresa did not try to fight back at all, just pleaded with Mema to stop, and then left, followed by her court. As I understood it, Mema had a recognized right to knock her down, and nobody could intervene, since this was on Mema’s territory. I watched this calmly. But those who were closest to me thought I might be scared, so they patted me on the shoulder and told me to relax. In fact, they are no less intrigued by social hierarchies and

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cultural differences than a sociologist is, so the next day Pancha asked Mema a tricky question: “What would you have done if Annick had tried to go between yesterday, to stop the fight?” Mema screamed: “Oh no!!! What could I have done! I would have been forced to withdraw. But 1 would have had a hard time.” It would have been impossible for him to lay a hand on me, a respected guest, in front of everybody. (But he certainly would have scolded me in private afterward.) T h e next episode followed some months later, a t a disco. Teresa met Lupita, who is very close to Mema, and served her some drinks before setting her up against Teresa’s own “second in command.” T h e result was a fight between the two where both got hurt. In The Children of Sanchez, one of the boys explains how he learned to hide his fear and never run from a fight (Lewis 1961:38): Mexicans, and I think everyone in the world, admire the person “with balls,” as we say. T h e character who throws punches and kicks, without stopping to think, is the one who comes out on top. T h e one who has guts enough to stand up against an older, stronger guy is more respected. If someone shouts, you’ve got to shout louder. If any so-and-so comes to me and says “Fuck your mother,” I answer, “Fuck your mother a thousand times.’’ And if he gives one step forward and I take one step back, I lose prestige. But if I go forward too, and pile on and make a fool out of him, then the others will treat me with respect. In a fight, I would never give up or say, “Enough,” even though the other was killing me. I would try to go to my death, smiling. T h a t is what we mean by being “macho,” by being manly.

This aspect of manhood is not rejected by the jotas. They cannot accept humiliations, and try to defend their honor. Teresa had been humiliated, but later took her revenge. Status and respect are keywords to understand this violence. Gata has been teased and mobbed throughout childhood and adolescence, and now, just a glance that is a little bit like a stare may hurt her and make her furious: “I put up a fight for all kinds of foolish things. I’m like that, whether it comes from my character or from everything that has happened to me, I’m always like ‘Oh, don’t you do that to me, ’cause I’ll get you . . .’” Their lifestyle implies a permanent exposure to situations that may become violent. Once, Mema and I had left the house for four days. O n returning, we were told what had happened during those days: Flaca had visited Gata, and got some drinks and Rohypnol

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(sleeping pills). She could not remember anything about what had happened after that until she woke up in a ditch in a part of Neza that is considered very dangerous and discovered that she had been relieved of her shirt and her shoes. Pancha had been at a disco, where two rival gangs had got into a fight; she found herself in the middle of it, but managed to escape. Angela was drunk and hungry, and told us she had just been in a fight with a client who had taken off with all her money. T h e day after, Flaca sniffed glue together with some other teenagers. She started to quarrel with one of them, Hugo, about who was to have the last bag. This turned into a fight, where Hugo probably was surprised to find that Flaca, skinny and feminine, had the upper hand. Hugo ran away, but came back with a gun and a knife. A friend tipped Flaca off, telling her the gun did not work. So Flaca took a stick and attacked, concentrating on the knife. She was unhurt, and Hugo got a few scratches and bruises. Most fights end like that, but there are many of them, and sometimes, more or less accidentally, someone gets seriously injured or killed, and then the other can count on some years in prison. The violence that transvestite prostitutes are subject to is often linked to thefts or to a failed attempt to pass as a woman. And the violence that occurs in the prostitution context is usually the most dangerous (see Kulick [1996] on the violence in Brazilian travesti prostitution). In the winter of 1990 I heard that three vestidas had been murdered in the preceding month. Just then Carla passed by, with her hand bandaged. Before she had said anything, Angela stated, L‘That’s the punishment we putos get when we tell them we’re women.” Carla protested that she had just cut herself, but the rumors had run before her, so she ended up confirming them. She had been picked up by a man, she said, in a street nearby. They had agreed upon fifty thousand pesos for intercourse. In the car, the man told Carla he had recently met a vestida who had tried to pass as a woman, and when he had discovered that, he had killed him. So what was Carla, a man or a woman? Carla was afraid, and thought the most dangerous would be to lie and later be disclosed, so Carla told him the truth. T h e man answered, “Then it will not be fifty, but thirty stabs.” By stab, Carla thought he meant intercourse, but then the man pulled out a knife. Carla got some cuts before she managed to get out of the car and run away. T h e jotas are also subject to violence from strangers, from gangs attackmg them just because of their looks. They live in constant fear.

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I think most of them carry knives, and they talk a lot about the areas to be avoided, and so forth. On the other hand, they do take a lot of risks-with the way they dress and behave, with their high heels that make running away difficult, their penchant for getting drunk, letting themselves be picked up, even going off with whole gangs if there’s just one there they find attractive. It seems to me that while they are well aware of the hazards, they do not let the dangers hold them back in the same way that perhaps most women do, but rather accept them as a price to pay for a way of life. Unlike women, they do not enjoy any moral protection. Women are usually seen as deserving protection, as belonging to somebody, unless they show themselves as “indecent” women. Overtly homosexual men are always “indecent,” and are seen by many men as free prey for sex. A small incident may serve as an illustration. One morning Flaca told us some young men we had met at a party the night before had asked her whether I was a vestidu, too. She had said yes, and found it was very amusing that they had believed her. I laughed, too, but Mema scolded Flaca and told her never to do that again. If men believed I were a transvestite, I would lose the protection I had as a woman, which made them respect my refusal to have sex with them. While “gay bashing” is a known phenomenon in many parts of the world, the Mexican version has a characteristic not found everywhere: The attackers will not always content themselves with the battering, but will quite frequently, I am told, also try to rape the victims. In most parts of Europe and North America, this is not likely to happen, since it would make the attackers part of the same thing they condemn the attacked for-homosexuality. In the last part of this book I will look more deeply into this blending of violence and lust. A social scientist should always be careful about mahng statements based on impressions. But the truth is that I was shocked by the amount of stories about violence that were told by thejotux I met in Neza during my brief stay in 1996. They told me first about a vestidu prostitute who had been killed by a gang in the street recently. Sara then told me she had been attacked by a gang, and shot, but had survived. She showed me the scars from the bullets; one had pierced the lung. Pancha had also been attacked on the street, and nearly died after having been stabbed in the stomach. She showed me a long scar from the operation, and another and more recent scar-a boy had used a screwdriver in a recent street fight lately, and nearly pierced her liver. Both Gata and Lupita had needed facial

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operations after fighting-Gata in the street with men, Lupita in a disco with other vefiihs. Flaca also showed me a face full of scars, but was too stoned to tell me anything about it. Carmen told me how her father had died, being shot down by burglars in his own home. I heard several stories about burglars brealung into houses in Mexico City even when people are home, taking them as hostages while they empty the house of valuables. And actually, there are reasons to believe that violence may have increased dramatically during the 1990s. In this decade Mexico has experienced the most severe economic crisis ever, and in addition has become a center for the drug cartels, after the invasion of Panama. A last feature of la mala vida is that it puts the jotas into contact with the penal system. Homosexuality as such has never been illegal in Mexico. The age of consent is eighteen, whether the partners are of the same or of opposite sexes, but it does seem that this law is more frequently applied to homosexuals than to heterosexuals who break it (until recently, it was stated in the law that a man could escape punishment by marrying the young girl in question). This may have to do with another law that condemns the “corruption” of minors-a vague term that may be applied to such different things as getting a youngster to drink, or involving him in criminal acts or prostitution or homosexual encounters. A person having sex with a minor of the oppositesex will not be accused by this law, as to engage in heterosexuality is not seen as “corruption.” A regular homosexual relationship with a minor may in fact be punished by up to ten years of imprisonment. These laws actually represent a lot of problems for homosexual men. The age of eighteen is very high as an age of consent in a country like Mexico, and especially in poor areas like Neza, where young people are initiated to sex at a far earlier age. Even the oldest among the jotas I know cannot see any reason that they should not have sex with consenting boys who are fourteen to fifteen years old. These youngsters are physically mature, and are often themselves very eager to get sexual experience, be it with their own sex or with girls. But it happens that the iota is denounced by the boy’s parents, and may end up spending several years in prison. More often the homosexual partner will pay bribes-as when Cristina was caught in the act having sex with a seventeen year old in a car. The policemen who arrested them brought them to the police station, but let them out after having been paid about three hundred dollars. In addition to these laws, the police may intervene against any-

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thing that might be considered a disturbance of public order or improper behavior in a public place. These rules are obviously arbitrary, permitting harassment, detention, extortion, and bribery. Male prostitutes are particularly vulnerable here, but raids at homosexual discos and other meeting places are also known. Bars and discos where homosexual men meet are regularly closed down, often, it is said, because the owners have not paid enough to make the police or local authorities close their eyes to the “improper behavior” (see also Carrier 1995, Lumsden 1991and Taylor 1986). In Guadalajara the authorities’ harassment of homosexuals went so far that the planned congress of the International Lesbian and Gay Association in 1991 had to be canceled: the organizers asked for police protection, but were told that participants could be arrested for “immoral behavior,” and hotels were threatened that they might be closed down if they offered rooms to the participants.s Among the jotas I know, all those who have sold sexual services have been arrested several times. Many have been arrested for “corruption of minors,” but more frequently they are arrested for theft or violence. T o be arrested, kept in detention, or imprisoned is dangerous in Mexico, and even more so for overtly homosexual men. In addition to hunger, cold, diseases, and violence, they very often are victims of rape. When Flaca talked about the time he had spent inside, it was a story about being beaten by the guards, having his food eaten by other inmates, being put in isolation for two weeks without anything to eat or to drink but what the other inmates threw in to him, having his condoms confiscated, getting gonorrhea, being tested for HIV without his consent, being bought as a slave by a fellow inmate who wanted him to be his lover and paid the director for it. T h e worst thing that happened to him was being raped by about thirty other inmates. I have visited prisons in several countries. While the suffering in terms of security, hygiene, and food seems to be more present in the prisons of Mexico than in those of Europe and the United States, the suffering that stems from boredom, sterility, emptiness, lasting isolation, and senseless routines is less present. In Mexico, inmates 5 . LVhitam and Mathy (1986:73ff., 139ff.) claim that homosexuals are more accepted in Latin America than they are in the United States, and point to the fact that most Latin American countries have never criminalized homosexuality. They also claim it is only in Cuba and Argentina that prostitutes and transvestic homosexuals are subject to police harassment, and that a Latin man who discovers that his sexual partner is not a woman but a transvestite will rarely engage in violence. This is not the impression I have from Mexico.

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are less supervised and more left to each other. At worst this means a violent pechng order; at best it can be somewhat community oriented. In one prison I visited, where Mema and Josefina were detained for one year before they were acquitted: visitors might come three times a week. Several family members used to come together, bringing bags full of food and clothes, sometimes even a radio or a T V set. They would sit down a t a table in the parlor, tip an inmate to go and fetch the person they want to visit, tip another to get a tablecloth and some dishes. So they would eat and drink and talk, staying for several hours, while the children ran around between the tables and a few inmates tried to earn some money playing guitar. However, I was told, the atmosphere would become quite different once the visitors had left. There were at all times about ten to twelve overtly homosexual men in the prison, of a total of 950 inmates, and these homosexuals were kept in four cells in the end of one of the wings. They used to be harassed and treated aggressively by the other inmates in a multitude of ways, making the passage through the wing hazardous, and the use of bathrooms and of the refectory almost impossible. Mema, however, managed to organize a self-defense among thejotus, based on diplomatic activity involving the wing leaders and the director of the prison, and based on counterattacks, among other things taking advantage of the fact that as the prison hairdressers, the jotus had scissors. Once Mema and I arrived late for the visit in a juvenile hall, but since Mema had already tipped the guard well on previous visits, we were let in to see Flaca and Pancha. All the other boys flocked around us, together with the guard, all of us seated on the bunk beds in the dormitory. Mema gave some pesos to the guard and asked him if he could let some boys go out and buy beer and cigarettes. The guard 6. They were accused of rape and corruption of a minor, and actually sentenced to thirteen years of imprisonment before they were acquitted after having appealed. The charges were obviously false. They were supposed to have raped a thirteen-year-old boy by himng his penis until he got an erection, and then they allegedly made him penetrate them by sitting on him. This supposedly happened in the back seat of a car parked in a crowded street. But the medical experts found no traces of sexual intercourse. Many strange things made Mema convinced it was a setup. The police, from another police district, arrived immediately after the boy had started to talk to Mema. When they got to the police station, photographers from the scandal press were waiting-together with the boy’s father, who proved to be a known police informer. And nobody was interested in bribes. Mema believes the reason for the setup may have been that in a TV program on prostitution, he had made severe accusations against the prosecution authorities, or it may have been because he had started to investigate on possible income received by these authorities from prostitution.

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selected the two he thought were most likely to come back, handed over some of the bills Mema had given him, and kept the rest. T h e boys returned with some transparent plastic bags full of beer (it is always so complicated with the return bottles in Mexico). T h e youngest inmate, Jacobo, was only nine years old. H e wanted his share of the beer, but was not allowed. When he wanted a cigarette, he was just given a butt. But he climbed up to the bed above, where he was allowed to sip from his friend’s glass. While Mema spoke with the guard, I emptied the smuggled condoms from my pockets, and slid them under the blanket. Flaca picked up some of them, but dropped a few on the floor. T h e guard noticed, but just laughed. Flaca started to tell me, very loudly, that in the workroom today, she had learned how to knit. “I’m a real woman!” She pointed a t a boy and told me that he was her husband, but Pancha objected, insisting the boy was hers. In an only slightly veiled language they started to inform Mema about the different boys’ penis sizes. T h e discussion was interrupted by Jacobo, who by then had climbed up on a closet and fallen down, malung a terrible noise. When we got up to leave, we were invited to stay the night over, as Patricia, a friend of ours, had done the night before. W e turned down the invitation, Mema perhaps with some regrets, since Patricia had told him she had had a lot of fun. But Mema was conscious he might very easily have been accused of corrupting minors, doing so inside a jail! Flaca and Pancha, minors themselves, obviously had fewer scruples, and told us the next day of their new conquests-among them the only one who was not a minor: the guard. AIDS

At the time of my fieldwork my informants probably were much more aware about AIDS than were almost any other group of homoand bisexual men in Mexico at the time, thanks to Mema’s insistence on the issue. H e very often talked about AIDS, and condoms were always available in his house. H e would not permit sexual relations there without condoms, so he sometimes checked the practice by demanding to see the used condoms. T h e patrons of the house all knew the main routes of transmission; all knew about condoms as a protective measure. Almost all thejotas had taken the H I V test, and all the jotas and almost all the mayates had at least some experience of condom use. When I was living in Mema’s house there were no known H I V positives among those who came there often, but they

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often talked about two who had been there often before and who had AIDS at the time, and one of my main informants proved to be HA7 positive one year after my interview with him. Some other persons who used to come to Mema’s house have since died of AIDS. Behavior changes had occurred among my informants, but seemed inconsistent among most of them. In the following paragraphs I will survey the reasons they gave or that I found for continued risk practice. The population of homo- and bisexual men in Mexico City is a very vulnerable one. Partner turnover is high. Their form of sexual practice is first and foremost anal sex; other sexual acts may be included as foreplay, but will rarely be practiced alone. Various sexually transmitted diseases seem to occur frequently, often treated hastily, if at all. While HA7 is in fact not a very infectious virus, the existence of other infections greatly increases the risk of transmission. The information campaigns started late, and remained for years very discreet (Ortega 1988)-for instance, with the slogan “protect yourself” without any mention of how, and only later with a picture of a condom (decently wrapped). AIDS was first considered a gringo disease in Mexico. From the mid-1980s on it has been considered a disease concerning homosexual men. Still, for thejotas in Neza, they do not seem to have realized until some time had passed that AIDS concerned themselves-and not only those in the center of the city, or the middle-class homosexual men who were thought to be more exposed because they had sex with other homosexuals or were intemzacionales (penetrating and being penetrated). Many bisexual men appear to have continued to think that they are not really at risk because they are not bomosexuaLes. And many bisexual men in Mexico (cf. Daniel and Parker 1993: I I 2 on Brazil) probably do not really consider themselves as engaging in homosexual behavior, and thereby as exposed to risk of HIV transmission. This is due in part, it seems, to the fact that they are not categorized as bisexual, and also because such sexual encounters may be so secret and silent that what happens is perhaps not even given any name by the participants, and thus may remain only semiconscious. When somejotas realized their exposure, they often still felt safe so long as they avoided partners who resembled themselves: the more manly a partner was, the less homosexual experience would he have, and the less probable was it that he had let himself be penetrated. AIDS thus reinforced many jotas’ ideal of selecting manly menmeaning men who only exceptionally would be with a homosexual. “I

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use condoms when I think I ought to use them,” as one7said. “Maybe I’m wrong, but I try to check them up. I see that he’s not homosexual, then there remains the risk that he’s got it from a prostitute. So if I have met him in a bar for prostitutes, I put a condom on him.” Some said they might drop the condoms when with young boys, who equally were supposed to have little homosexual experience. These ideas are not irrational, in the sense that persons with little or no homosexual experience, and with little or no experience of being penetrated, actually have a lower probability of being infected-but the possibility does exist, as well as the possibility of misjudgments, since physical appearance is not a reliable sign of earlier experience. Far less well-founded is the belief that it is possible to recognize HWpositive persons. A prostitute told me she inspected her clients, and refused the most skinny, or those with blotchy skin. If the client gave her an impression of being very careful and clean, she often neglected to use condoms. T h e interviewed mayates considered all homosexuales to be risky partners, and thought they ought to use condoms with them. With women they were more selective, even with prostitutes. One said he had not used condoms with prostitutes who gave the impression of being clean and careful. Another told me he had not used condoms with a prostitute he used to see, and who told him she took the test regularly. One year later he was to regret this, however, since the woman by then had got AIDS (which means she probably had been infected a long time). These examples serve to illustrate how a new phenomenon, in this case AIDS, is perceived and interpreted through existing schemata of evaluation. T h e oppositions between clean and unclean, between careful and not careful, are valid for many other health questions, and are applied to AIDS whether or not they are actually relevant. The opposition between man and homosexual, where the man is positively and the homosexual negatively evaluated, is connected to the labeling of homosexuales as exposed to AIDS-logically then, their opposite becomes protected. By this explicit labeling of homosexuales as risky, “men” are implicitly labeled safe. 7 . Owing to the concern for internal anonymity, I will not use any names here that can be connected to other pieces of information given by that individual, since these might lead to his identification by persons who know this environment. While most of what was communicated in the interviews seemed to be offered rather openly even when other people were present, this was somewhat less the case with the information about risk behavior, perhaps owing to the strong norms against it, which the host, Mema, was continuously communicating.

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While the interviewed jotas used condoms very frequently with casual partners, they seemed to use them far less often in stable relationships. This is a known phenomenon among homosexual couples in many countries. In a study I conducted regarding Norwegian homosexual men early in the AIDS epidemic (Prieur 1988, 1990),they explained this by romantic feelings: the wish to feel close and to show each other that they trusted each other. My Mexican informants simply said they estimated the risk to be low with their lovers. But the reasons for this judgment were often rather vague. “My lover is a healthy person,” one said. “I have noticed it in many things, that he would not be the kind of person who did it with just anybody.” It is common knowledge that fatalism characterizes Mexican mentality, and that Mexican culture even has a kind of fascination for death. When asked whether they were afraid of getting AIDS, several informants used formulations such as: “If I can escape from suffering that early, it would be the best, wouldn’t it? W e only came to this world to suffer.” “You’re speaking to a person who has suffered a lot, who has lived a lot and who has struggled a lot. If I have bad luck and lose my life for a thing like that, so what? I have no goals to reach. I have nobody who will miss me.” Such fatalism may be culturally fashioned, but still it is an understandable response to a life situation that is indeed very difficult, and that will become only more difficult as they grow older. Death is very much in evidence in a society with high infant mortality rates, and high death rates due to accidents and violence. AIDS becomes just one among many dangers. Fatalism is therefore an attitude that emanates from life conditions, and it expresses the violence immanent in these conditions. Both jotas and mayates blame much risk behavior on heavy consumption of alcohol or drugs, which makes them indifferent or unreflective. In some casesjotas report having been sexually abused while unconscious. Rape is rather frequent, especially in prison. Sexual abuse of young children seems to occur frequently, as well. These are evidently situations where one cannot protect oneself. At the time of my fieldwork, my informants got condoms for free and they were easily available, through Mema. But when I was back in 1996, several complained about not having an easy access to condoms anymore; they had to buy them and considered them expensive. Situations had occurred at the time of my fieldwork, too, where an informant did not have one but did not want to refuse to have sex for that reason. Prisons represented a particular problem: con-

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doms were usually not allowed, since sex was not supposed to take place there. Flaca reported that she had been put in isolation as a punishment after the guards, searching for drugs, had found a condom in her bed. As for the mayates, they were more reticent about carrying condoms in their pockets, out of fear their wives should find them. Somejotas and mayates complained about loss of sensitivity or feelings of discomfort with condoms, and some prostitutes found them bothersome, because the clients sometimes lost their erection or needed more time with condoms. These complaints were not cited as reasons for not using condoms, but I do wonder whether a dislike of condoms together with a lack of planning may be the real reasons for not using them much more frequently. Risk behavior may take place because one does not have any condom right then and there, or because one does not really feel like using one-and it is only afterward that the idea that the partner was a safe one (because he was young, manly, clean, or whatever) occurs as a comforting ideaor the safety of the partner may be just a convenient rationalization to present to an interviewer. I never heard any of the jotas or mayates stress that they ought to think about protecting their partners. I suppose it was difficult for them to imagine themselves as infected. But I also got a firm impression that the norm for the homosexual encounters was indeed an individualistic one: everyone was responsible for himself-for his pleasure, for his emotions, for protecting himself against being robbed, or against being penetrated, as well as for protecting his health. Maybe this is due to the fact that homosexual relationships until recently were without almost any consequences (like pregnancy or commitments) and therefore could be left unregulated by social norms of responsibility. Most of the encounters are casual, and except for prostitution, the goal has usually been pleasure and nothing else. But I have also seen that some sort of aggressive attitude sometimes joins and reinforces the individualism. T h e two try in different ways to take advantage of each other. As the jotas are subject to a contempt and to a social rejection they seek to resist, as they live in a world of violence and of exploitation, it should come as no surprise that sexual encounters may take place in a climate of aggression. T h e jotas know the risk of infection is higher when they are penetrated than when they penetrate. This knowledge, together with their contempt for men who let themselves be penetrated, on some occasions has led some of them to use condoms when they were the insertees,

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but to s h p them when they were the insertors. It would perhaps be a paradox to seek to protect a man’s health when he does not himself even protect his manhood. One jotu told me about a sexual encounter he had had the day before: “I met this man, dressed in a suit. I saw him as a real man, a real man. He said ‘Let’s go to the hotel,’ but I said ‘No, first here. If you can take it when I fuck you, I’ll go with you.’ If he didn’t start screaming or waving. But I stood there frozen, because it was like in water. He was so wide! It didn’t hurt him or anything.” This iota has a big penis, which is why he thought it would hurt the man to be penetrated by him. I asked him if he would have enjoyed that: “Oh yes! Then it goes: ‘Ouch, wait you bloody . . .’ And I: Boom, everything in! But he was so wide and loose.” The scene is a poor, seventeen-year-old, feminine-looking boy, target of social contempt, who penetrates a well-dressed, grown-up, masculine and richlooking man. The boy tries to make it painful for him. In addition he does it without a condom, and he steals the man’s wallet afterward. All in all, a small-scale social revolution. But in vain. It did not hurt; the man was too wide. The boy did not manage to ejaculate. And the wallet turned out to be empty. So far I have focused on the reasons for risk behavior. It is easy then to forget what actually has been achieved. My informants were rather well informed at an early stage of the AIDS epidemic, and had integrated condom use in their sexual practice, albeit inconsistently. I have also followed Mema’s preventive work among male prostitutes, and seen that most of them wanted condoms. This makes me more optimistic than Carrier (1989a) was, after a survey of homo- and bisexual men in Guadalajara in 1987, where eighty-seven of one hundred men reported that they never used condoms, and these one hundred reported having had sexual contact with 556 men and fiftyeight women in the two months prior to the time of the interview. But this is not only a population with particular problems, such as a low level of education, poverty, and a rough lifestyle. It is also a group with some particular resources. The jotas are defined as a risk group for AIDS and understand that they are exposed. They form groups where sexual matters are discussed very openly, and where local leaders are listened to. Furthermore, they have a very pragmatic and unromantic attitude toward sex and a matter-of-fact attitude toward condoms. So behavioral changes are possible-but they will take time, and need financial and human resources. Mema’s preventive work cer-

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tainly had effects-but only very limited ones. H e would drive around some nights each week and distribute hundreds of condoms to perhaps fifty male prostitutes each time-in a city where there may be hundreds of thousands of sex workers in all. His project was ended in 1995, since he could no longer get financing for it. Other projects do exist, but the efforts are minuscule in relation to the need (cf. Carter Wilson’s description of the preventive efforts in the region of Yucatan-1995). Growing Older

As I write this, I can look back on eight years of knowing many of those who gather in Mema’s house. T h e lives of thejotus are rather dramatic, things are often happening to them, but now that I have known them for so long, I realize it is very much the same things that happen over and over again-a love affair begins and ends, you get jailed and released, you get a place to live and lose it, you steal a lot of money and spend it, you get into a new fight and the wounds heal. Of the about fifty persons that I got to know fairly well, all were still alive in 1996. But many had bad health. One of the jotas, who in the meantime had spent a long time in prison, had developed severe health problems, and was also H I V positive. She continued to sniff glue. Pancha had nearly been killed twice in assaults, and lived an exposed life in prostitution, but took more care of herself than before when it came to drug consumption. Carmen lost her father (he was killed by burglars), and she had relapsed into heavy drug consumption, mostly pills. Lupita had lost her mother and was living with her sister’s family. She had quit prostitution and opened a hairdressing parlor a t home, but a fight in which her face was injured ruined it all. T h e wound was badly treated at a public hospital, and the surgical intervention left her with ugly scars on her face. She had sold out all she had invested in the parlor in order to have a new surgical intervention done a t a private clinic. She was now back in prostitution, but as this made her very anxious, she had also returned to heavy drug consumption. On the positive side, she was back at school, preparing to obtain her high school diploma, in a school for adults where she was admitted as a vestzda. Some months later, however, I learned that she had run into a new fight, gotten her face injured again, and would need to have more surgery. Patricio, too, was back a t school, but he dressed like a man (in any case, hitherto

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he had only cross-dressed for parties). He had rented out his hairdressing parlor in order to concentrate on school; he wanted to become a teacher. The lover he had had for six years had just left to join the army, but Patricio did not miss him. All in all one could say that Patricio had opted for a gay lifestyle, actually consistent with his lower-middle-class background and with his social ambitions. As for the bisexual men, some had married and some had divorced, some both. And several had become fathers. Silvia, a woman who used to frequent the house, had left with her family for the border area. Maria, a girl of the same age as Flaca and Pancha, had been in love with a man who was known to be a gangster for several years. She got pregnant by him, but the baby was stillborn. She had been imprisoned for violence once, and was back in detention in 1996, for robbery. There is a risk that she will have to stay several years in prison. The jotus do not talk much about the future. I have asked some of them what they would want from their future. The youngest dream about a peaceful life with a regular lover and a hairdressing parlor or a shop. And in fact, some of the older ones do have their own parlor, others have a lover-seldom both. The youngest dream of becoming very beautiful vestidas with big buttocks and breasts. The older have not grown more beautiful with the years, but some have had breast implants and several have injected oil in their buttocks. Those who no longer earn their living as prostitutes have usually opted for a more discreet style than when they were younger: still they are very effeminate, but not necessarily vestidus anymore. T o be a perfect vestida requires a certain investment of time and money. For the younger it is worth it if they thereby may become sexually attractive, since it is then a source of income, of sexual adventures and of admiration from their peers. This investment pays less as they grow older. The youngest among my informants dream of making a lot of money from prostitution while they are young, helping their family, getting a home and a hairdressing parlor or a shop. Some of the older ones have spent some of their money on a parlor, or on their homes, or on their brothers’ and sisters’ schooling, but most of the money has disappeared. Deferred satisfaction of needs and long-term planning are considered more typical of people higher up in society, and especially those on their way up. The working class appreciates much more the immediate pleasures and parties, according to Bourdieu (1984, page 34 and chapter 7). He considers it understandable, since

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they have less reason to expect any profit from delayed gratification. But the taste for immediate pleasures also expresses a popular ethicof solidarity, of enjoying the moment and taking tomorrow as it comes. Chucha was, with his fifty-four years, the oldestjota I met in Mexico. She ran a small cafi where she received her customers with motherly warmth and generous portions of food. She was a bit heavyset and her hair thin; what was left of it was collected in a ponytail. She wore trousers, but her clothes had a feminine flair, as did her voice. T h e thin layer of makeup was not intended to hide Chucha’s sex. When I first met her, she immediately started to talk about the old days with Mema, albeit he is a lot younger. Then, said Chucha, she was young and beautiful, had success with men and went to a lot of parties. Next time I met her was at a disco. She was heavily made up and wearing a long, glittering dress. She stepped out onto the floor, to give an improvised show. In one hand she held a cigarette, a rose, and a microphone, in the other a drink. He r body was stiff with age, the drinks she already had had, and the tightness of her dress. But her mimicry was perfect as she mimed to the song. T h e public, too young to have known her as a great drag artist, certainly understood she had been one, and applauded warmly. In 1996, I asked Mema what had become of Chucha, and he told me he had been to her cafi about two years earlier, and had noticed that she suffered from the economic recession and was serving a very reduced menu for a very reduced clientele. Gata, forty-two a t the time of the interview, showed me her photo album, wanting me to see how beautiful she had been and how many friends she had. I asked her what had happened to the otherjotas on the photos, people who were her friends in her twenties. Three had died from diseases caused by heavy alcohol consumption, she said, and a t least two had been murdered; some had just disappeared. And recently, two had died from AIDS. She looked back on her own life: “I was a boy who did not get much care because my mother had so many children. A boy who was an outsider because I started to have homosexual tendencies. A boy who had to fight not to fall into homosexuality, but who was homosexual. W h o had to accept himself. A boy who fought against a father who hated homosexuality. A boy who fought against an energetic and strict mother without realizing that she might be the reason for his homosexuality. A boy who many times had to swallow his pride and bow his head in situations when

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machos said ‘Either you do that, or we’ll force you to quit this job.’ A boy who lacked everything, who was always ill-treated, who had to fight to be himself and not let himself be dominated by anybody, and say ‘I am who I am, I have to get ahead.’ And it is a never-ending fight. Even now. I walk out and hear people ‘ha, ha, ha.’ I take the underground and ‘ha, ha, ha,’ the same. You cannot be in peace. It hurts me that because of my homosexuality they see me as very low. But they are fools compared to me, I am more than they are.” Her health was bad, a result of too much glue sniffing and of the oil injections in the buttocks. She lived alone, and was afraid of growing older, becoming lonely, though it was hard for her to admit that. She got very angry if anybody dared to hint that she already was lonely. And as a consequence of all this suffering, she said that she did not care so much about the risk of getting AIDS. When I met her again in 1996, she stressed that she took care of her health, but admitted she had not quit glue and the pills. She still lived alone, but had filled her house with cats and birds. She still saw the same lover. She now looked forward to retire from work in five years, and had saved up enough to believe that she would be free of financial worries. In 1991 Dani was twenty-five. H e came from another city and from a family that was a little better off than the families of most of his friends in Neza, until his father squandered all their money. Dani was very worried about the destiny that might be his if he could not manage to escape from it. H e told me he wanted to take courses to become a better-trained hairdresser, to ensure a good future. And he said he was going to marry a girl from his hometown now, in order to avoid a miserable future as an aged homosexual. “The truth is that it makes me very, really terribly sad to think about dying alone, without money. And be homosexual. Some times the life of a homosexual is very difficult. Too difficult. So why? I dream about having a normal family, my wife, my children. Some people say you can never stop being homosexual. T h e truth is I don’t know. Sometimes I like to think about the future, but sometimes not. Better to live in the present . . .” H e was scared, because he knew a homosexual man who was sixty-five years old and living alone in miserable conditions, selling chewing gum in the streets and getting whatever relatives happened to give him when they happened to pass by-“like giving to a dog.” Dani told me, “That old man talks to me about his adventures, shows me photos. H e was one of the best transvestites, had a lot of money, a lot of men. He did not want to have a child because

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he saw himself as a woman. H e tells me I should regret everything I have missed. Maybe, but I don’t want to live like he lives now. It fed my mind; I went back to do my work with more zeal, saying ‘I’m not going to die like that, to be like that.’ It was like therapy for me. I did not go out for two-three months; I dedicated myself to my work, I dressed well and I sent money to my mother.” Dani left Neza, and for a long time nobody knew what had become of him. But he came back, and took up his old life, not talking about marriage anymore. Even if his view on old age for homosexual men may sound particularly pessimistic, there can be no doubt that aging is a real problem for many homosexuales-when they do not get a family, when they do not have a profession that can be exercised as they get older, and when they make sexual conquests a central part of their lives and a primary source of self-esteem. The Friendship G o u p

T h e jotas in Neza stick together-partly because they are rejected or not admitted into other social networks, but first and foremost because they have a lot to give each other. Among them I have seen rivalry and deception, especially in love affairs. But their solidarity is still striking, and it may even include persons who are not considered sympathetic but who are homosexual and from the same neighborhood. In that sense the friendship group has features in common with a family: membership is not purely an achieved status, but partly an ascribed one. Another common feature is the sizable age difference, which leads to a sort of hierarchy according to age (and in part according to economic independence and personal characteristics as well), not unlike the relationship among siblings. T h e older ones take care of the younger, try to educate them and pay for them, while the younger to a certain degree do favors for the older, or do the housework for them if they live in the same house. O r the younger may take care of the older. When I visited Carmen’s hairdressing parlor in 1996, I met Lidia, a forty-three-year-old uestzda who looked much older. Slunny and seemingly ill, she was very drunk. Carmen said she was an alcoholic. Lidia still tried to work in prostitution, but with little success. Carmen said she did cleaning in the parlor and in the house, but I do not believe the work she did could have been very efficient, and I think that probably Carmen kept her on out of pity. T h e friendship group means there will be somebody who will let

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them in if they have nowhere to sleep, give them something to eat if they are hungry, protect them if they are assaulted-not always, but usually, unless they have already exhausted all the friends’ hospitality. There are severe strains on the friendships, and quarrels are frequent. As when Fifi discovered that Marta, who had borrowed her leather jacket, had lent it over to Lupita-and then it had been stolen . . . For a while, Pancha lived in Gata’s home. Gata is twenty-five years older than Pancha. “In Gata’s home we never lacked food, blankets at night, or money. But I don’t like to be commanded. That one says ‘Do that’ or ‘Wash there’ or ‘Wash that, do the dishes, wash the stove, wash the toilet.’ And I don’t like that. ’Cause I’m a free person, I’ve got my life.” T h e situation is almost the same in Mema’s house, so Pancha wanted to return to live with her mother: “When you want to eat something, you can serve yourself, take what there is. Maybe you won’t find what there is in other houses, but there will always be some beans that you can take whenever you feel like it, without anybody checking whether you have done the housework first, and whether you did it well. And you will not have people who take your things, use your makeup and stuff, even if they’re not in your family.” Pancha complained, but she did not find the rules unusual. Whyte (1969) shows how the norms for consumption are different in Doc’s gang than in the middle-class boys’ gang. The latter save and invest; they are stingy. Doc’s boys spend whatever money they have and share with each other. But in both groups spending o n others gives prestige and influence. Doc explains that as loyalty, the other gang leader as what it may bring him in return later. For the comer boys, friendship is a lot more committing, but they are more dependent on it, too. One entry in the International Enyclopedia of the Social Sciences is devoted to friendship (1968; article by the Norwegian sociologist Odd Ramsq). Here it is said about Whyte’s study, Friendship groups are rarely as highly structured in a hierarchy as in Whyte’s community; friends are rarely as dependent on leadership; they are rarely as significant for each other and so often and so regularly in each other’s presence; friends are rarely so sharply segregated from nonfriends; and friends of one person are rarely to such an extent also friends of each other. Whyte described a situation that was unusual, arising as it did from the historical accident of a major depression in a lower-class environment of second-generation immigrants.

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I believe this criticism fails to recognize the many cultural and social differences regarding friendship, instead generalizing a form of experience of friendship that may apply to well-fed Nordic societies where friendships have mainly psychological functions. Whyte described Italian immigrants in a poor area; the friendships he described resemble much of what I have seen among the poor in Mexico, where friendship is all the more important because people need friends for survival. The jotas in Neza experience rejection: they are thrown out of their homes, expelled from school, and not admitted into ordinary work life. They are also subject to ridicule, contempt, and violence. Prostitution and theft become the easiest ways to earn a living, so they often tangle with the police and the court system. Many heavily consume alcohol and drugs. In this difficult situation, it is the friendship group that rescues them, in more than one way. T h e first function of the subculture that the friendship group represents is survival. Friends will give them food and shelter when they cannot get these a t home, and friends will defend them against aggression. If the family does not help them when they are arrested, their friends will; I even know cases where the friends have taken care of funerals. T h e family is the primary social-security network, but those who fall through may be caught by the friendship group. In this very specific sense the subculture serves as a solution appropriate to a group’s particular problems-and this is, according to Albert Cohen (1955), precisely what makes subcultures come into existence. T h e next main function of the subculture involves training in needed skills. They learn to dress, to use makeup, to seduce men, to sell sexual services, to cut and style hair, to steal, to fight and to defend themselves verbally. In many ways this is a training in being an adult, in learning to take care of themselves. The third function involves self-respect. T h e contempt and ridicule which they so often experience are likely to threaten their selfimage, but gets neutralized (see the techniques of neutralization described by Sykes and Matza 1957). Men who show contempt may be assumed to want to have sex with them, a proof they are no better than the jotas. In fact, their sex partners will often consider themselves as superior, as “real men”: they look masculine and they a t least pretend to never let themselves be penetrated. But thejotas will often deny that these men are as masculine as they look, and claim that they are easily penetrated. If women show contempt for thejotas,

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the latter may claim they themselves are freer, more beautiful, and better lovers than these women. Further, if exposed to contempt as sex workers, they may refer to their earnings, and to the fact that they are their own bosses. A fourth function regards authenticity. The self is created in an interplay between the image one gives of oneself and the image one perceives that others have of oneself. If the two do not correspond, the others’ response to the image cannot sustain the self. As the family members are signzficantothers, in the Meadian sense, it is important that they know about the son’s homosexuality, since a life in complete inauthenticity would be a very painful alternative. But thejotas tone down their femininity at home, out of respect for their parents. By contrast, among strangers they tone down their masculinity, concealing it underneath wigs, foam-rubber padding, and makeup. The strangers may then respond positively to their femininity, but this only partly corresponds to their own self-perception. In such a situation, a consistent self would be difficult to maintain-were it not for the friends, these people who know “who they really are,” who respond to all aspects of them. A final and more general function of the subculture is to give meaning to their existence. The subculture offers frames of references, schemata of evaluation and perception that can systematize their feelings of being different, of being attracted to men, of enjoying dresses and high-heeled shoes and so forth. The subculture helps to interpret these experiences, offering the corresponding identity as a jota, which can give a meaning to these experiences and at the same time neutralize some of the stigma involved. The subculture has its own set of norms and values that justifies their way of being and living. They may be different, but they understand why. In this interpretative practice the subculture does not set itself up in opposition to the mother culture, but tries rather to adapt the mother culture’s general gender schemata to a specific exception: homosexual men. The interpretation of homosexual men follows the general pattern for category construction and identity construction: a man showing sexual attraction to other men is consequently seen as a man who has a lot in common with women. The functions of this subculture are not solely constructive. Part of the training implies an involvement in destructive and risky activities. But thereby it offers excitement, giving life a content and some spice. Social interaction must have a content, must concentrate on something in order to be maintained over time. Here the content is

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music, small talk, drugs, and thefts, but above all: sex. It is through common sexual experiences, and tallung and joking about these, that the subculture is created and reproduced. Sex occupies the place that drugs have in drug-user subcultures (cf. S ~ r h a u g1988). It gives a content to daily life, it gives an identity, and, in much the way that drug users may organize their time around the purchase and use of drugs, manyjotas do the same with sex. For a researcher this may seem rather monotonous and uninteresting, which is probably one reason that research on drug users tends to deal with everything but the drugs. But when a researcher does not want to search for the significance of what his or her objects fill their lives with, the ethnography risks becoming very “thin,” in the sense that Geertz (1973) gives to the term. Zapata grasps the philosophy of thejom when he lets his main character, the male prostitute Adonis, say that his first sexual relations taught him (1996:45) “that the worth of life is only the pleasures it may give you that everything else is bullshit and if one is not happy it is for being stupid.” Besides the bodily pleasures and the fact that sex is an inexpensive and even lucrative entertainment for thejotas, I believe the main reasons for their focus on it is that sex grves content to their lives and membership in a subculture, and is fundamental to their identity constructions.

JJ

I ‘I’ ‘I’ J A 13 li 0 Y S I I\’ M 0 ‘I’1.1 E 1: ’ S M’ A 1: I) 1: 0 li 13

On the Origins of Homosexuality and Effeminacy

This chapter deals with the stories the jotas and vestzdas tell about how they became what they are. In these stories becoming or being homosexual cannot be separated from becoming or being feminine, since the jotas regard the two as linked, as two sides of the same coin. They themselves see both phenomena basically as innate; they believe they have become what they are despite all the pressures of social forces, and not as a result of those forces. This leads me to discuss the link between male homosexuality and effeminacy, and the origins of both, and thereby to a presentation of different theories and studies about this topic. My primary interest here is the origins of a stable homosexual identity. But because this identity is based on a sexual preference for other males, on a feeling of sexual attraction toward other men, I cannot explain that identity without examining explanations of the desire itself, even if this is a question that I, a sociologist, consider that I cannot fully answer. Martin’s story may serve as an introduction. He reminisced about his childhood: “We played hide-and-seek; we played with dolls. And I always wanted to be Mom. And I went to bed with a boy, and he was Dad, and we made love. I had already this tendency, I liked dolls, I adored them. For the Holy Kings’ night, they gave me a present, a car or a truck. And then I would play with my cars for a while. But I was more interested in my little sister’s dolls. I played with them,

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I asked her to let me borrow them. And I went off to play with the neighbor girls.” H e also remembered being attracted to men. “I was curious. I liked watching the boys pee. And I was even more fascinated by grown-up men in the bathroom, to see their thing. I already had this . . . that which should lead me to homosexuality. And I don’t regret it, I like it. But what happened was that before wanting to do it, I was forced to do it. A neighbor forced me to make love to him. I was six. H e talked to me, he seduced me with ice-cream. And I had a sweet tooth, he gave me two ice-creams, and I was delighted. But I didn’t know what it was in exchange for. H e went to his bed and started to undress. He took out his thing and started to rub it. And I was also tempted by it, so I got close to him. But out of the curiosity to touch it. So I did, and he started to make love to me. And then it continued, he kept on giving me ice-cream. Then later one of my brothers wanted it with me, too. H e was two years older than me. So I hid under the bed, and we made love, I liked it, but I didn’t know what it was.” I asked whether he was penetrated. “Yes, they penetrated me, but not completely. Imagine, I was only six. T h e neighbor penetrated me a bit more each time, until he really put it all in. And I continued to be his lover, until I was nine. Then my father forced me to do hard work. Because I had this tendency, they saw I was going over to the other sex. H e took me to do construction work, hard work, that’s why I have my hands like they are, with the veins showing. H e took me to work with him, but it didn’t go away, because I had already made love, and I liked it. I stopped being this man’s lover, because they had realized it in my family, and the man had to leave. But there were other neighbors. And I played hideand-seek with them, and we made love. They did it in the same way, putting their thing into me. For sex, I was wideawake from an early age. And I thought I was the only one who was like that, that there was nobody else in the world. And sometimes I felt bad about it, but at the same time I enjoyed it.” I asked him whether he believed the neighbor had noticed his effeminacy before he started to have sex with him. “Probably, no? But who knows? I imagme he had noticed that I had homosexual tendencies. Because, as I said, I followed the boys and men who were going to pee. H e may have noticed, or perhaps he was just a pervert. Someone who likes to make love to hds, and if they were not going to be homosexuales then, they will turn out that way. If a girl is raped

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very young, and has a trauma for all her life and doesn’t like men when she grows up, she might become lesbian, right?” I asked him where he thought his tendencies came from. “I imagine I was just made like that, that I was to be like that. I think I was born like that, because nobody would do it if they didn’t like it. I said that to the doctor who treated me, who injected male hormones into me and told my parents I had too much female hormones. I don’t know if he did that just for the money. But he said that was why I had this tendency to be homosexual. But I have had this since I was six or five years old, that I was attracted to men. And that’s not something you do if you don’t like it.” The only effect the doctor’s treatment had, according to Martin, was that his legs got hairy. He had already been teased at school, for his long eyelashes or for his round behind. “I didn’t want to provoke anybody, I didn’t know what homosexuality was. But they called me puto. Even the teachers told me I wasjotito. I said no, because I was afraid they would tell my parents.” He started junior high school when he was eleven, and there he met other boys who enjoyed having sex with boys, and he got a lover. He said that he was expelled from school at the age of twelve even though he had good marks-it was solely because of his homosexuality, which had become evident. Then he was beaten by his parents and driven from home. At this point, he met other homosexuales. “I thought they were women, but somebody told me no, they are men dressed like women. I didn’t believe it, but I said to myself if they are men, I can join them, I want to be like them. I want to look like a woman. So I got to know them, and they supported me. Mema helped me, thank God he helped me. And he bought me shoes, and clothes. I started to make myself up like a woman, in his hairdressing parlor. I made up my eyelashes, I painted my nails, I let them grow. I went to the parties looking very nice, but still looking like a man, because you don’t change from one day to the next. I didn’t know that homosemales were prostitutes. You could have knocked me down with a feather when I found out. I thought it would be for free to please a man, and to have pleasure yourself. So at the age of thirteen, I learned lots of things. Men came to Mema’s home, to make love. I saw what to do, I charged them money and they paid. So I kept on. I went to gay bars, Mema took me with him.” He was not yet fourteen when some of his new friends took him to the highway to sell sex there. Martin had now made a definite choice, to become Marta: “There comes a moment when you have to decide for yourself. And I felt

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10.

Josefina takes a bath in the yard.

locked in by men’s clothes; there came a moment when I said ‘away, away all men’s clothes. I don’t want it anymore.’ And I put on women’s clothes. I felt like Cinderella, I shed the old clothes and put on the new ones. What I wanted to be.” H e now thought he should never have been born a boy. ‘‘I don’t know why it came out a penis on me.” Marta is one of the very few who definitely would like to change sex surgically, but still he considers himself a homosexual, and not a woman. “I have a lot of pride. I’m homosexual. I’m homosexual, but I have become close to a woman. I mean physically, with everything, with my face and my body. I am a woman, isn’t that so? That doesn’t mean that in order to be a woman, I stop being a homosexual. There are days when it hurts me if people say j o t 0 or maricdn to me. Out of fear of people I hide myself as a woman. But inside myself I’m proud that I as a homosexual have managed to look like a woman. And that people can see that a gay can get where he wants to. Because I have heard that many homosemales have been important people all through history, isn’t it true? Like writers, painters, a lot of things, and in the whole world. So one can feel pride.” Marta’s story is her account of how she became a jota. In many

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ways it resembles the stories individuals considered transsexuals tell in Europe or in the United States. Some readers might be led to think “Marta is transsexual.” This is, however, a reasoning contrary to my constructivist approach. Nobody “is” transsexual orjota, neither “is” somebody gay, h&a (eunuch in India), or berdache (transgendered North American Indian) in any absolute sense. Those are cultural categories applied to interpret some experiences that resemble each other but yet are different. While an American “postsurgical male to female transsexual” may find it hard to understand an Indian &-a’s claim of possessing divine powers, and would never consider herself homosexual as Marta does, the hzyra on her side may find it hard to understand herself in terms of the medically rationalized discourse of the transsexual (cf. Nanda 1994, Bolin 1994). Marta became a vestida, which is a cultural specific category of biological men who have kept their sexual organs while they dress like women, often modify their bodies to look more like women, prefer female nouns and pronouns to speak about themselves, and have sex with men, preferably in the receptive role (though many of them may also enjoy the insertor role). In Marta’s story, we can note several factors that may be relevant to becoming a jota: First, there is the innate, the “tendencies” that always were there and that manifested themselves in liking girls’ games, girls’ clothes, and curiosity about men. This concerns biological and psychological factors. Second, there is the homosexual practice, especially when it occurs at a early age. Presumably this had an impact on the very young child, who was put into a homosexual role long before he had become conscious about his own sexual desires. Third, there is the labeling as a homosew1 that perhaps may have led him to take on this identity, especially when it was followed by exclusion from the “straight” world, such as when he was expelled from school. Fourth, there is the learning from other homosemles, who taught him how to dress and use makeup, and, first and foremost, offered him a more positive identity, one he could take pride in. In the following section, I will discuss each of these factors. It should be borne in mind that apart from a few observations, mainly concerning how the jotas influence each other, this discussion is based on their own retrospective accounts. Of course, these accounts are col-

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ored by the time that has passed, by the most common interpretations of homosexuality and effeminacy that they have learned later, and presumably also by their own wishes to present relatively coherent stories about themselves. And I believe all these factors lead the jotas toward emphasizing the early determination of homosexuality and of effeminacy in their accounts. These men have become what they think they were born to become. Biological and PJychohgical Factors

In telling their stories, thejotas frequently stress that they have always been the way they are, that as little boys they wanted to play with their sisters’ dolls instead of their own toy cars, and that they also played at dressing up in their mother’s clothes. They say that they started early to watch men, to be fascinated by older boys and menand that they also started to have sex with them at a young age, which I will discuss later. All but one of the interviewed agree with Marta that they most probably were born homosexual. Angela has his parents’ words for it, too: “Because as a little boy I always loved to play with dolls, to make small meals, to put on my sisters’ dresses and my mother’s shoes, I already liked to go around as ajottto.” Still he thinks that it could suddenly change, that he could turn into a “normal man” if destiny should so ordain. But he does not consider this likely. “When I did not get like that when I was little, I won’t now that I’m grown up. It is as unlikely as finding a needle in a haystack.” Angela does not believe that it was the fact that a brother who was ten years older started to have sex with him when he was six that made him homosexual; he says that he had already some tendencies. T h e only one who does not think he was born homosexual is Dani, who thinks he became homosexual after some traumatic childhood experiences that he has repressed, or as a result of conflicts with his parents. Seeing a psychologist brought him to the following conclusion: “One aspect is that I deny myself as a man, to hurt my father. And on the other hand I do not let myself be normal, be a man, out of fear of hurting a woman. So it is a terrible contradiction.” Actually, thejotas’opinion is supported by research. According to literature surveys by Whitam and Mathy (I 986), Green (I 987), k s man and Schwartz (1988), Pillard (1991), and Ernulf and Innala (1991), there seems to be agreement as follows: It is difficult to say whether the supposition that homosexuality is a universalphenomenon is supported or not, since all societies cannot

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be examined; in any case, though, it is impossible to state for certain that a given society has no homosexuality at all. Whitam and Mathy (1986) claim that about 5 percent of men in all societies are predominantly homosexual, and that it probably has always been so. But the studies (mostly surveys) on which they base this supposition are not very convincing, and not based on random samples. I think it would be very surprising if social conditions had no impact whatsoever on frequency, as they claim, though they guard their assumption by excluding the more culturally conditioned homosexuals, such as those among the ancient Greeks or the bisexual men in Latin America (they just call the latter heterosexuals . . .). It is interesting that Gilbert Herdt (1981), in his study of the New Guinean Sambis who conceive of gender and sexuality in a way profoundly different from industrialized societies, and where a transitional, homosexual practice period is obligatory for all young men, finds some “deviants”-either men who try to participate as little as possible in this practice or men who will not quit when they are supposed to. He estimates both deviant groups as comprising approximately 5 percent of the male population (1981:252n, 1991b:611). Even if this quantitative estimate should be taken with a pinch of salt, the fact that Herdt has found men with a continued predominantly homosexual practice in this society does give support to a theory about the universal existence of male homosexuality. But even if there exist individuals with homosexual experiences in all societies, the interpretations given to these experiences are certainly profoundly different. So the question becomes whether it is really meaningful to talk about “homosexuality” as a universal phenomenonbecause what might possibly be universal will be reduced to whether there in all societies exist men who have sexual interaction with other men. That, however, does not necessarily mean that these men have an “erotic preference” for men, or “feel attraction” to men. There is little scientific support to theories about hormonal dzferences during infancy or adulthood leading to differences in sexual orientation, but there is some support to theories about prenatal hormonal influence, at least for guinea pigs and rats, who may take on a sexual behavior typical for the other sex if they have been subject to atypical hormonal conditions in the prenatal period or immediately after birth. Humans have fortunately not been subject to such laboratory experiments, but one study (presented by Ernulf and Innala 1991) showed that girls whose mothers had taken synthetic hor-

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mones during pregnancy had shown a greater tendency to become homo- or bisexual as adults. There is considerable support to theories about genetic factors, mainly from studies of twin brothers. If one of the brothers has a homosexual preference, there is a far higher probability with identical twins than with fraternal ones that the other brother also has that preference. T he probability was on the average almost 90 percent for identical twins in the various studies cited by Ernulf and Innala (1991),seven times higher than for the fraternal twins. In a later and more comprehensive study, by Bailey and Pillard (as cited in Cressole 199z), the result is less spectacular, but still clear: among the 167 homosexual men with a twin brother, the probability was 50 percent that the brother was homosexual when they were identical twins, three times higher than for the fraternal twins. However, most of these twins have grown up together, and it is of course likely that the identical twins have been treated more identically and identify more with each other than the fraternal twins do. Several studies are entirely convincing that there is a link between adult male homosexuality and reports of effeminate cbiidboodr. But, as hs m a n and Schwartz (1988) state, this may be due, partly at least, to a reconstruction of the personal biography. It is also difficult to argue that femininity in boys is biologically conditioned in a period where femininity in grrls is seen as more and more socially conditioned. This is a real problem for sociological application of this research. The criteria used to assess femininity in boys may be a lilung for doll games or wanting to dress up. If this is biologically conditioned behavior for gender-role deviant boys, then it certainly must be so for gender-role conforming girls. Several studies from Latin American countries confirm reports on childhood effeminacy. In his study of Guadalajara in Mexico, Carrier (1971, 1995) divided his informants in three groups according to what they said about their sexual preferences in homosexual encounters-anal insertive, anal receptive, and anal insertive and receptive. H e shows that preference for the receptive role is strongly correlated to retrospective accounts of feminine childhoods. Whitam and Mathy (1986) have gathered information about male homosexuals in the United States, Guatemala, the Philippines, and Brazil, as well as some information about heterosexuals in the same countries to enable comparisons. Those classified as homosexuals reported many more instances of having played with dolls and experi-

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mented with girls’ clothes than was found among the heterosexual groups. Pillard (I 991:36) concludes from different psychological studies in the United States that as adults both homosexual men and lesbian women scored significantly higher than heterosexuals on atypical gender items in childhood (doll play, dressing up, preference or avoidance of rough-and-tumble games, etc.). A problem with these studies is of course that they are subject to caprices of memory. This problem was resolved in some longitudinal, prospective studies, by following behaviorally feminine boys from childhood to adulthood. Pillard (I 99 I :34) concludes that the evidence is striking and consistent across studies that homosexual and possibly transsexual men are greatly overrepresented. The most thorough of these studies is by the North American psychiatrist Richard Green (1987), who selected sixty-six such boys, and found forty-four of them again as adults. Thirty-three of these forty-four then reported fantasies that made Green (p. 100)classify them as “more than incidentally homosexual,” while this was the case for none of the boys from a matched comparison group that had also been followed (composed of boys reported to be normally masculine). When it comes to behavior, Green has information for only thirty of the previously feminine boys, and classifies twenty-four of them as “more than incidentally homosexual,” compared to only one of the twenty-five previously masculine boys who were reinterviewed. Theories that explain this early determination with reference to particularfamily waits or to a parent’s personality or behavior (say, absent fathers or dominant mothers) have found little support. Still, Green believes there may exist pertinent differences in family traits, though probably of a much more subtle kind. Small differences, for instance regarding how the mothers had reacted to feminine traits in the child, may only be seen through statistical analysis, but the variability is high, and the analysis gives no single factor predictive value. It is only through a qualitative analysis of the individual stories that the factors may contribute to an understanding. In Green’s synthesis (pp. 379ff.), innate contributions of the child are put together with psychological features of the parents and sociological patterns of the environment. A father who was himself less conventionally masculine in boyhood, or a mother who had a distant relationship to her own mother, may have a desire for a girl during the pregnancy; may afterward see the son as a particularly “beautiful infant”; may spend relatively less time with their young son; and may have less

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negative reactions to early cross-gender behavior than other parents. Particular experiences, such as a hospitalization, may make the parents consider the boy as frail, and treat him accordingly. A little difference may be enlarged if the boy does not compete with his peers, if their games are too rude for him, and they label him a sissy. If he feels rejected by his father and his peers, he may suffer from a maleaffect starvation that, finally, homosexual relationships remedy, and this affective component in turn may render early sexual experiences with males distinctive from those other young males may have. Green puts the components together in ways that make individual biographies understandable, but it is impossible to extract general hypotheses. I believe the conclusion that may be drawn is that sexual development is a very complex process, and any theory about simple relationships is too reductionist to be of interest. And even though it is not possible to give one single factor from childhood a specific, explanatory value, a rejection of the importance of early socialization is for me impossible. Given all that is known about the importance of early childhood in the formation of adult personalities and in emotional life, it seems unthinkable that it should not also have an impact on erotic preferences-but obviously in much more subtle ways than the most vulgarized Freudianism has argued (“dominant mother + distant father = homosexual son”). Theories claiming that nurture is @anger than nature seem to have lost support lately. This view had a strong position in the 1970s and 1980s, after the studies of Stoller (1968) and of Money and Ehrhardt (1972). Based on a study of intersexed persons, Stoller’s (p. 65 ff.) conclusion was that most of them developed a gender identity appropriate to the sex ascribed to them. He believed biological forces provided some of the drive energy for gender identity, too, and he gave some examples where these forces had been “stronger” than the psychological ones, but still concluded that (p. 83) “by far the most powerful effects comes from postnatal psychodynamic factors”-such as the anatomy and physiology of the external genitalia and the attitudinal forces from parents, siblings, and peers. Money and Ehrhardt held that the patterns of rearing have an extraordinary influence on shaping a child’s psychosexual differentiation and the ultimate outcome of female or male gender identity. For example, they say the following about hermaphrodites (p. 152): “To use the Pygmalion allegory, one may begin with the same clay and fashion a god or a goddess.” Gender identity appeared to be so deeply appropriated by children already a t the age of two and half years old that if one later

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discovered that the identity was based on an error, it would be better to correct the biological gender surgically than to try to alter the gender identity (see also Herdt 1994a:3I). Heterosexuality, meaning the attraction to the other gender than the one a person had been assigned to, was expected to be the most frequent outcome, owing to the power of social contingency learning (Money and Ehrhardt I 972 :t 3 4 , although the authors believed that every individual is born with certain dispositions for sexual orientation laid down in the brain, too. One of Money and Ehrhardt’s best-known cases @. I 18ff.) was a boy who lost his penis in a surgical mishap occurring when he was circumcised at the age of seven months. He was reassigned as a girl, surgical genital reconstruction as a female was undertaken, and he was brought up as a girl, while his identical twin brother remained a boy. The former was said to have adapted well to the female gender role, albeit she showed some tomboyish traits, such as abundant physical energy and dominant behavior, while her genetically identical brother was a normally masculine boy. But Green (1987:43) reports that a subsequent documentary broadcast brought serious doubt about the success of this sex reassignment: as a young adolescent the reassigned child had a masculine gait, looked masculine, and was teased by her peers; and it seemed less obvious that she would make her adjustment as a woman. I do not know of any later followup of the case. Another well-known case is the eighteen Dominican “girls who grew up to be men.” Owing to a genetic disorder, these persons had been born with female-looking genitals, but when they reached puberty their bodies masculinized, and a penis grew out. It was reported (by Imperato-McGinley et al., referred to in Herdt 1994b) that they had been reared as completely normal girls, but at puberty sixteen of them switched to a male gender role, and did so without any social or psychological influence from others. The study, frequently referred to in sexological literature, has been used as some kind of natural experiment bringing evidence that “nature is stronger than education,” but Herdt shows that the study cannot be used that way, because there are many reasons to believe that these intersexed individuals were not regarded simply as ordinary girls when they were children, nor as ordinary men when they became adults. The phenomenon was well known locally, and even had a specific namepevedocbe, meaning “penis at twelve,” referring to the age when they were expected to get a penis. This local and nuanced understanding

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was not grasped by the researchers, who remained inside a dichotomous gender paradigm. Green (1987) has a case that may suggest that biology “is the strongest” when it comes to sexual orientation: T h e monozygotic twins Paul and Frank developed very differently. Frank, the firstborn, was named after their father. Paul fell ill, had a long period of illness during which he was taken care of by his mother and after which he became less physically active, and felt rejected by his father. Frank became very masculine, while Paul became a sissy-boy. But at the age of twenty-three they were both bisexual. Paul had been an affirmed homosexual, but had been disappointed by the gay lifestyle and had just married, though he still had a male lover. Frank had had a lot of girlfriends-but according to his brother and mother he had sold sex to men, something he himself at first denied. H e lived with a man, but denied that he was in love with him and claimed he had only the insertor role sexually and that he still had girlfriends. Green’s interpretation (pp. 3 5 I ff.) is that divergent socialization experiences during boyhood shaped gender-role behavior as “feminine” in one twin and “masculine” in the other, and their later sexual orientations were explained by the constraining influence of their common genetics. So the jotas have considerable scientific support when they claim to have been born both feminine and homosexual. Still it seems a paradox that these persons who so actively go about forming their femininity, through makeup, dressing, and bodily transformations, a t the same time insist that they are born feminine and are merely undertaking the necessary adjustments. Even if I am open to the belief that there are some innate or early founded differences that orient some more toward a heterosexual and other more toward a homosexual preference, some toward a rather masculine and other toward a rather feminine personality, I also believe that the actors’ own essentialist interpretation of these differences accentuates them, polarizes them, and creates binary oppositions out of a continuum. A theory of innate factors cannot offer an exhaustive explanation of homosexuality. As Bech states (1989), one must close the eyes to avoid seeing that some homosexual men are very effeminate, and that some lesbian women are very masculine. But one must equally be very prejudiced not to notice that many homosexual men are very masculine and many lesbian women very feminine. Some have a dominating

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mother, while many have not. Some have experienced at an early age that having sexual relations with persons of their own sex might give them a lot of problems, but they have done it anyway. Others have not even thought about it until they as adults suddenly start to live as homosexuals. The quest for a simple explanation of homosexuality is doomed to be futile. H o m o s e d Experiemes in Childhood and Early “Coming Out”

Marta started to have homosexual experiences at a very early age, and admits the possibility that this is what made her hmosemalthat she was “seduced” into it. The eleven homosexuales I interviewed gave the following accounts of their first sexual experience (all interpreted “first sexual experience” as meaning first experience with penetrative sex, and with the exception of the one who had had his first experiences with girls, they had all had the passive role): -Three of them had been forced when they were six years old, one by an older brother, one by an uncle, and one by a neighbor. For two of them the sexual relationship continued over a longer period. According to my categories of perception, this is “rape” or “sexual abuse,” and one of them, Flaca, uses this term (“he raped me”). The two others use more moderate words, but they express disapproval of what the other did to them (“he forced me,” as Marta says; “I forgive him now,” as Angela says). -Five others had their first experience between the ages of five and ten. Their partners were of the same age or older, and they regard the sexual experiences as parts of play, not as abuse, even when the age difference was considerable. -One thinks he must have been exposed to some traumatic sexual experiences that he has later repressed, and he cannot remember what his first experience was. -Another had his first sexual experiences with girls as an adolescent, in order to show to his schoolmates that he was not homosexual. He had his first homosexual experience when he was sixteen. -And the last one also said that his first sexual experience was at the age of fifteen or sixteen, with a man (but as he told me he had homosexual friends and started to dress like a girl before that, and even said he started to use hormones at twelve or thirteen, I consider it likely that he also made his sexual debut somewhat earlier). This means at least eight of the eleven had sexual experiences before the age of ten, and they had those experiences with men. From

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what Mema and other informants in addition to those interviewed have told me, I believe a majority of thejotas and vestidas in the field under study have made their sexual debuts already as young children. From what I know from the bisexual men I have interviewed and from other informants, I am led to believe that most boys in Neza have their first sexual contact when they are between thirteen and sixteen years old, so that thejotas seem to have started earlier than most other boys. This impression is reinforced by Carrier’s ( I 97 I , 1995) study from Guadalajara and Whitam and Mathy’s (1986)study from Guatemala.’ I am less certain about the degree to which thejotas’ sexual debuts are forced, but I believe it is important to stress both that not all early debuts are voluntary, and that not all early debuts are forced. Moreover, the distinction between forced and voluntary is not always clear-they may tell me the other one took the initiative, or even that he forced them and that it hurt, but they also say that they were curious and fascinated. They usually believe that even if the other took the initiative or forced them, it was no coincidence that they were picked out to have sex with a boy or a man. They claim they were already effeminate, that they were “sissy-boys.” O r they may state “I seduced them,” even if they were only six or seven and the men were adults. Fifi said he was eight years old and his partner was about twenty. “But I already knew-that I liked men. And I made some hints to him. I went to his home when his family wasn’t there. I grabbed him, I took his hand. Since he didn’t say anything, so we started. I went on seeing him for about a year.” I asked him whether he liked it the first time; he said yes. Then I asked him whether it did not hurt. “I suppose yes. It was my first experience, and this guy was well, you know, very well equipped. Th e truth is yes, it hurt. Many say the first time they break up a bit, and bleed. But I didn’t, I never bled. I . Among the twentytwo of Carrier’s (1971,1995) informants who preferred the receptive role, sixteen had had sexual contact with post-pubertal men before the age of thirteen (nine of them before the age of nine), while this was the case for only two of the twenty with an insertive preference. Among the homosexual Guatemalan informants of Whitam and Mathy (1986:48), 37 percent (N = 62) reported sexual contact (defined as touching of sexual paits, oral or penetrative practices) before the age of seven, and 80 percent before the age of fourteen. In the comparison sample of heterosexual men, 20 percent (N = 40) had had their first sexual contact before the age of seven, and 78 percent before fourteen. T h e figures for Brazil, United States, and the Philippines were considerably lower, but this may reflect more a class difference than a geographical difference, since the last samples were more middle-class than the Guatemalan sample.

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Juana at age seventeen.

It just hurt. I had a pain for days and days, until it calmed down, and I got used to being with him. Making love with him. And it didn’t hurt anymore. And I tried out more, around where I lived. And I loved that.” I asked him whether anybody had known about this. “His mother discovered us, twice. But he told her I was just showing him my underwear. She discovered us, but she never said anything.” I think it is important to stress that a lot would probably have happened if the one who discovered it had been Fifi’s mother, not only because he was the youngest of the two but also because he was the one who was learning the homosexual role, the one who took the passive role. We saw the parents’ reaction in Martin’s case; they chased away the neighbor who had abused him. What are the consequences of this early, and often abusive, sexual experience? The jotas themselves say the main effect was that they discovered they liked having sex with men, and afterward wanted to repeat it with the same or with other partners. They do not see the debut as determining their homosexuality, only as unleashing it, and most of them claim their feminine traits preceded the sexual experi-

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Juana at age twenty-three.

ence. However, it is impossible to know for certain, because all this information is retrospective. But if they are right? Is it possible that their sexual partners had already identified them as homosexwles?Perhaps this is not a question of a conscious identification, but instead of a subconscious attraction. In any case, it must mean that the child has given some kind of sign. I must admit it seems strange to me that it would be possible to see that a six-year-old boy “has homosexual tendencies,” as Marta put it. But Green’s study (1987:zz-23) showed that a distinction between male and female walking and gesturing could be made even with four-year-old boys-and, in fact, a majority of the boys who were classified as “acting like girls” at this early age were found to have a homosexual preference as adults. T h e sexual differentiation of children in Mexico seems to take place earlier and to be more comprehensive compared to Europe, and probably also to the United States. Girls have their earlobes pierced as babies; they dress in white dresses and are scolded if they get dirty, while the boys are permitted to be wild and noisy. Gutmann (1996:105) tells about a party in Mexico

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City where the four- and five-year-old girls were dressed in black miniskirts and fishnet tights. Several researchers, among them Peiialosa (1968), Diaz-Guerrero (1970) and Goldwert (1985), have noted that Mexican parents consider it important to suppress any signs of femininity in their sons. They are helped by other family members and by older boys, be it brothers or neighbors, who discriminate against the younger ones by telling them they are not men enough to participate in the toughest games. All this certainly makes non-conforming gender-role behavior become very visible. In addition, awareness about sexuality frequently seems to exist at an early age, thanks to the general promiscuity and particularly to the fact that different age groups live closely together, so that the younger can observe the older. Sexual jokes and flirting, as I have described earlier, may also contribute to early initiation. And this early socialization leads here, I will argue, to a different sexual identity formation for the later self-identified homosexuals than the one that is supposed to be typical in industrialized countries, and perhaps also frequently occurs in the local middle class. The coming-out pattern that has been’described in industrialized countries (cf. Plummer 1975, Dank 1979, Weinberg 1983, Gonsiorek and Rudolph 1991)is considered an inner process, in which a boy or a girl gradually modifies the image of him- or herself to correspond to the attraction he or she feels to his or her own sex. Later comes the coming out for others, the telling the parents, etc. A reason for the difficulties is that the young individuals usually pass through a period of cognitive dissonance, owing to, as Gonsiorek and Rudolph stress, the fact that those who will later be homosexual are raised with culturally sanctioned antihomosexual biases. For men, it seems, homosexual attraction, and often also homosexual practice, usually precedes homosexual identity, and this process may take several years. In Dank‘s study from the I ~ ~ O self-identified S , homosexual men reported having spent on the average six years from the first feelings of attraction to a self-identification as homosexuals. Cultural changes, such as the fact that homosexuality is much more present in the media and in daily life in Europe and in North America today than it was at the time of Dank’s study, has probably speeded up the process, and may also have de-dramatized it, but I believe it still may be seen as an inner process of identity readjustment. Gonsiorek and Rudolph remind us of the fact that the models of “coming O U ~ ”have been developed mainly on middle-class, white, non-Hispanic samples from the English-speaking world, and that the

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process may be very different in other cultural contexts. Pollak (1985) argues, with reference to a German study, that the socialization pattern in the working class is more rigid than in the classes higher up, while the techniques of inculcation are less sophisticated and children less supervised. For these reasons, norms would be less interiorized, and young people less inhibited, thus explaining a higher frequency of sexual contacts in the working class-contacts that often start at an earlier age. Pollak found, though, that feelings of culpability were strong and that a majority kept their homosexuality hidden. What my Mexican informants described was a very different process. In questionnaires or interviews homosexuals in the United States may be asked about their degree of overtness about their sexual orientation through questions such as “Does your mother/father/ employer etc. know you are homo~exual?,’~ with alternatives such as “Neither knows nor suspects/suspects/knows” (in Bell and Weinberg 1978). Such questions would be completely irrelevant for the jotas. Everybody knows, since they can see it for themselves. Only rarely have thejotas had to tell their parents they were homosexualit was apparent. Often, however, the jotas’ parents were among the last to see it, maybe because they did not want to see it, maybe because the signs came so gradually they did not notice. My informants all started to think about themselves as homosexuals rather earlyamong the interviewed, the one latest to think himself homosexual did so a t sixteen. This means that they usually have not had much time to really consider themselves as heterosexuals, which in turn means they did not have any need to reorient themselves. They did not spent months or years asking themselves whether it was really true that they were homosexuals: the signs were visible also to themselves. But often others have seen it before them, and in these cases they start to call themselvesjoto after others do so. Flaca told me about his first experience. “It was a wedding, one of my aunts. I went with my uncle to the bathroom; he told me to pass him a towel. Then he raped me there in the bathroom. That was when I started to really like men. That I felt it was good. m e r e you not scared?] O h yes, I was very little. [Didn’t it hurt?] Oh, terribly, it was the first time and he with his big thing, I was small and it bled a lot. It hurt for about a week, but I liked it.” Later he continued to have sex with his playmates, more as a game. H e said he had always asked his mother to give him girls’ toys, which she never would, but still his teachers noticed his effeminacy before his mother. “A gym teacher always said to me ‘Hit like a man! Run like a man!’

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And he told the other teachers and my mother that I seemedjotito, and my mother said no. Then it was this teacher who asked me a lot of questions. So I told him yes. So he started to fuck me, every day, every day. [Did you like it?I2 Oh yes! I did it with the other teachers, too. And my uncles.’’ H e said he had been twelve then, but that he did not really consider hmself homosexual until two years later, when he started to make himself up and dress more femininely, like the other homosexuales. “My mom noticed the way I talked, and always asked me ‘Son, are you puto?’ ‘No,Mom.’ ‘Tell me the truth!’ ‘No, Mom.’ ‘So why are you like you are?’ ‘Because that’s the way I want to be.’ I never told her anything. At fourteen I met Pancha and saw how she painted herself, and I saw them all and thought ‘Why am I not like they are?’ I want to paint myself and walk around the way they do. I became aware of all this and left home, and I came here [to Mema’s house] .”At the age of twelve he was having sex with men regularly and could affirm that he was homosexual so long as the one who asked was not his mother. But he did not consider himself as really having become homosexual before it also became visible to everybody else. Patricia kept to the same definition: “I have never been a liberated homosexual. Because at home I don’t dress as a woman or anything like that.” H e thought his mother must have closed her eyes and not wanted to see that he was homosexual, but now she knew perfectly well. Of those I interviewed, Patricia and Dani were usually the least feminine loolung (they dress up only for parties or discos). Dani was the only one who had tried to hide from his family that he was homosexual, but without success. This description of the youngjotas in Neza is different from what Carrier (I97 I , 1995) found among his informants in Guadalajara. Of those of his informants who preferred the passive role sexually (the ones who resemble most of mine), only about a third of the parents knew for sure about their son’s homosexual contacts (and considerably fewer among the parents of the other homo- or bisexually behaving informants)-though over 80 percent lived with their parz. This question may seem shocking-a teenager tells me about being sexually abused as a child, and I ask him whether he liked it. But by the time of the interview, I already knew Flaca and his story very well, I knew that he continually med to get new sexual adventures, and he was smiling when he told me about his teacher. I asked t h i s question just after he had told me that he had been raped at six-and that he had liked it. I knew he probably would answer affirmatively, which he did.

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ents. Carrier (1989b:230) claims that most gay youth and their families cope with the problem by using a conspiracy of silence about homosexuality, even when everybody knows about it, although tensions may be relieved by jokmg relationships between the gay youth and siblings, relatives, and neighbors. H e compares two biographies (1989b, 1995). T h e first man comes from a relatively prosperous family in an upper-middle-class neighborhood. H e had deep internal conflicts before he would admit to himself he was homosexual, before he dared to have sexual contact with a man (at twenty-two), and before he dared to tell his family he was homosexual (at twenty-three). Carrier terms his coming out a period of cognitive dissonance. T h e second man comes from a relatively poor family in a lower-middleclass neighborhood. H e had accepted himself early on and apparently without problems. H e had had his first homosexual experiences at the age of four, and was penetrated for the first time a t six. H e never had considered himself heterosexual, but all the same, his family did not notice his homosexuality until he was seventeen. Carrier believes the degree of cognitive dissonance is linked to various factors: degree of masculinity, whether one has the time to establish a heterosexual identity before one starts wondering whether one might be homosexual, number of homosexual experiences and age a t the first of these, and sex role played. Feminine boys who have had their first homosexual experience before puberty and who take the receptive role appear never to think of themselves as being heterosexual, but accept a homosexual identity in their early teens. In such cases, cognitive dissonance is low. There is, I think, another and more important variable behind this: social class. It seems to me that the feminine boys with early sexual experiences and a clear preference for the passive role are much more likely to have a lower-class background. In my study almost all had a lower-class background. But significantly enough, thosejotas who do not regularly dress like women and use makeupsuch as Dani, Patricia, Gata, Mema, and several others who are not dealt with as primary research subjects in this book-come from slightly more mixed backgrounds and/or have a little more education than the others. Gata was the last to see himself as homosemal (at sixteen); Patricia regards himself as a non-liberated homosexual who does not dare to be more feminine, and Dani has been to a psychologist and understands his homosexuality as a result of conflicts with his parents and wanted for a long time to try to live as a heterosexual.

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The middle-class homosexuales I have met, who mostly lived in other parts of Mexico City and rarely came to Mema’s house (I met them at discos, parties, or meetings elsewhere), were never as feminine as those who came to Mema’s. I have not gathered specific information about homosexuaksfrom the middle class, so it may be out of place to venture assumptions about them. But my hypothesis is that the most usual pattern among self-identified homosexuals from the lower class is to be effeminate, have early sexual experiences, and to identify themselves as homosexllales at an early age, while the most usual pattern among self-identified homosexuals from the middle and upper class would be to be less effeminate, and probably to have their first sexual experiences later and come out later as well. But there are many non-feminine homosexually behaving males in the lower class, too, and many “queens” in the middle or upper class. Still there are differences between Carrier’s and my study that surprise me-such as the fact that his informants’ families usually ignored, or pretended to ignore, their son’s homosexuality. This must be linked to a difference in degree of effeminacy. We both use rather rough class definitions, but it seems that even if most of Carrier’s informants are from families a little better off than mine are, he also has several informants from the poor, urban working class. But none of his informants seem to be so effeminate as mine are, while I have no masculine-looking informants with a homosexual preference, as he has. Maybe the sexual culture of Guadalajara is rather different from Mexico City, but I find it more likely that we have oriented ourselves toward different groups. Carrier reports several times that there were some “queens,” some men who were very feminine looking or even dressed in drag, present in the bars and other meeting places he frequented, but they are never his primary informants-while I have concentrated on just that group. I believe one reason for the apparently low level of interiorization of conflicts among my informants is the lack of privacy in their daily life. They very rarely have a room of their own as adolescents, and not always a bed of their own. The families are big, and, in addition, neighbors and friends go in and out of the house. Their very first sexual experiences are usually kept secret, it is true, but for the rest, most of their suffering is public. They are teased, taunted, scolded, and beaten-and everybody knows about it. Their rough childhood has certainly had psychological consequences, but would perhaps have had more dramatic internal consequences if they had had more

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privacy. T h e jotax give the impression of being rather thick-skinned. I find them somewhat nervous, aggressive, always on the defense, and some of them I even consider vicious. Their consumption of alcohol and drugs is heavy. But I have not noticed any cases of serious psychological disorders, such as psychoses or severe depression, and I have not the impression either that suicides occur frequently. Mema agreed with these observations when we discussed them, but while I put most emphasis on the lack of privacy, his primary explanation was that “there are so many mayates here in Mexico”: the young boys who discover their homosexuality are not sexually frustrated, and for this reason they are less depressed and accept their homosexuality more easily. T h e only one he knew who had committed suicide had had problems accepting himself together with severe complexes about his looks. T h e jotas’ early sexual socialization has certainly marked them in a lot of ways, even if they talk about these episodes in a rather neutral and undramatic way. For instance, I wonder if what I perceive as a very strong interest in sex-the fact that sex occupies a very central place in their lives-and the way they collect sexual experiences almost like stamps, detached from emotions, may be consequences of the early experiences. O r do these traits just stem from a more general, cultural influence? I doubt that the sexual experiences alone can have “made” any of them homosexual, partly because they themselves believe that something preceded the experiences, partly because the experiences could have been interpreted in many other ways than the way they interpreted them. They could have seen them as painful, shameful, or disgusting: instead, they wanted to repeat them. However, it is known that traumatized children may want to repeat the traumatic experiences, so this is no proof. It is also known that abused girls may become very heterosexually active, with frequent partner changes, or conversely become lesbians out of disgust for men, or become completely asexual, so the link between sexual abuse and grown-up sexual identity is rather open. I believe the only thing that is really clear is that early sexual experience in many cases leads to more sexual experience. This is definitely the case with my informants. After their first experience they had several others with playmates, young relatives, or grown-ups. So even if “something,” a liking for girls’ games or a curiosity regarding men, preceded the first sexual experience, this experience certainly accelerated their development toward a homosexual identity, and it possibly made them

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exclude hetero- or bisexuality more easily than they would otherwise have done. The social definition of them certainly contributed, too, in placing them in an unambiguous position as early as possible. Labeling: Construm’vistApprombes

Most social research on homosexuality has taken a constructivist perspective. This research has focused less on measuring frequencies than on the different understandings and interpretations of it, less on finding reasons for sexual diversity than on reactions to it, but has still been used to counter essentialism through the documentation of considerable cultural variation. As an example, in his study of the New Guinean Baruyas, Maurice Godelier (1986) showed they have a strong sexual segregation, and see sex as determined by liquids. Blood and milk are female liquids, semen is male. It is problematic that boys are born out of female bodies with a lot of blood and later fed up on milk. They have to be taken away from their mothers in order to become male. They live with men and have oral sex with older boys to get semen. When they themselves grow older, they may in turn give their semen to the younger generation. Homosexuality is for them, then, a prescribed and not a rulebreaking practice; and it does not feminize a man; on the contrary it masculinizes him. Homosexuality is a question not of desire or love, but of a necessity. This is of course no reason why it cannot also give pleasure, and on the basis of a study of another population in the same area, the Sambis, Gilbert Herdt (1981, 1991b) claims that it indeed does. He shows that many researchers have tried to tone down the aspect of pleasure, because it disturbs essentialist presuppositions about sexual orientation. The Sambis’ use of words to describe it gives indeed a hint: intercourse with women is called “work,” while oral sex with boys is called “play” (“in the sense of pleasure”-1991b:612). It is other men’s semen that makes a boy a man, and he cannot live if he does not get enough. A local expert said, “A married man who didn’t play around [swallow semen] enough, will die quickly, like an airplane without gasoline!” When it comes to hstorical studies, one of the best known is Michel Foucault’s (1987) analysis of the ancient Greeks. He describes how they thought about sexual life as a domain for moral choices, dealing with health and dignity, where temperance was considered a good principle for preserving both. Sexual pleasures were submitted to the same regulation as good food and good drink: fine as long

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as one did not overdo it, as long as one did not take more than one needed. Masculine activity was considered the opposite of feminine passivity, and together with lack of self-restraint, passivity was the main form of male immorality. Sexual relationships between men and boys were widespread and accepted, but Foucault stresses that these Greeks cannot be labeled homo- or bisexual, since these concepts refer to an identity, or to a specific kind of desire. T h e Greeks did not problematize these questions of identity or desire. Whether one preferred boys or girls was a matter of taste, like a preference for wine or beer. Instead, the Greeks problematized the sexual roles: masculinity implied control, which again implied being the active partner, being the subject of pleasure and not the object. T h e problematic question was therefore whether the boy would get his masculinity damaged by the fact that he had been treated like a woman. T h e studies mentioned, together with many, many more (for overviews, see Greenberg 1988; Herdt 1991a’b; Bech 1997), describe a vast range of cultural and historical differences, showing clearly that, depending on cultural definitions, a very high percentage of men may engage in homosexual practice. But they give no answer to the question of why some men in many cultures have a predominantly homosexual practice, and why it is exactly these men and not others. Foucault himself stated very clearly the difference between those questions. H e claimed that “the homosexual” as a particular personality was created at the end of the nineteenth century, but he did not say that homosexuality is historical: It is the homosexual’s identity, his character traits and life-form that are historically determined. Foucault did not want to make pronouncements on the question of why some individuals become homosexual (1982-83:1 I): “It’s not my problem and I don’t like talhng about things that are not really the object of my work. On this question I have only an opinion; since it is only an opinion it is without interest.” But constructivist approaches have also been used to try to account for individual recruitment to the homosexual role. A simple theory about social learning, which sees behavior principally as imitation or result of internalization, cannot account for this (homosexuals very rarely have their primary socialization among other homosexuals). Thus, the North American sociologist John Gagnon (1977) has tried to apply a more sophisticated theory of social learning, by supplementing internalization with externalization. T h e learning is basically a learning of different social scripts for sexual behavior that preexist. Albeit social life is part of a self-fulfilling prophecy, the control

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of learning is never complete, as people behave reflexively and may choose not to do what they were wanted to (p. 38). As I see it, the most interesting contribution made by Gagnon’s theory is the possibility it gives to see partner choice as guided by the search for meaning, to focus on the intentional aspects and not the causal aspects, as is usually done. Then choice of partner will correspond to something deeply embedded in every individual, something that reflects his or her individual history. Gagnon draws a parallel to the wish to become a doctor-some want to help humanity, some want to make money, some are driven by intellectual curiosity. The reasons are different, the result may be the same. There are therefore, as he says, more reasons to become homosexual (or anything else) than there are ways to be homosexual (Gagnon 1977:~41). Other researchers put more emphasis on the social labeling. The British sociologist Kenneth Plummer (1975) takes as his point of departure the fact that many people have some homosexual experiences, but only few of them go on to adopt a homosexual role. Plummer argues that a qualitative change occurs when some sexual experiences are labeled deviant, and a carrier as deviant is opened. While Howard Becker’s (I 963) theory of how deviance is produced puts the emphasis on other people’s perception and labeling of particular acts, Plummer finds that in the case of sexual deviance the individual’s own reactions and interpretation of his or her own acts may be of more importance. A man may even become homosexual to himself without anybody else knowing about it-but the process of “learning the homosexual role” will be marked by his knowledge of societal reactions of hostility, although he is not a direct victim of those. Labeling approaches have been used to explain why male homosexuality in some places may take on the particular form of transvestism. The Canadian political scientist Ian Lumsden writes about transvestism in Mexico City (I 99 I :3 5): “The ‘vestidas’are homosexuals who have accepted the popular equation between homosexuality and passivity and femininity. Even if their dresses and appearance are consciously feminine, their behavior is due more to social pressure than to a psychological necessity, . . . ” His analysis of Cuban feminine homosexual men is the same (Lumsden 1996:jo):“By making certain mannerisms unacceptable, machismo ensured that homosexuals who could neither fit traditional male roles nor conceal their erotic attraction to other men would act in a way that confirmed the machista assumption that no homosexual could possibly be ‘un hom-

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bre de verdad’ (a real man). Not only did Cuban maricones often incorporate stereotypical feminine traits, they also tended to idealize machos-ostentatiously masculine men.” H e quotes an informant who has another interpretation, who sees the feminine locas as the ones who did what they wanted. But he does not adhere to this view himself, as his explanation of why many of these homosexual men had occupations which required traditional feminine shlls, such as hairstyling and dressmaking, is that they “had absorbed beliefs that homosexuals are as frail as the stereotypical woman” (p. 34). And a few pages later (p. 56): “Public manifestations of homosexual gender identity [sic] were thus confined to effeminate locas who parodied stereotypical female mannerisms for lack of alternative ways of defining themselves and mahng their sexual orientation visible.” My own interpretation after my first stay with the vestihs was actually rather close to Lumsden’s: I thought the heavy male domination forced these homosexual men to transform themselves to women, to even mutilate their bodies in the same way as Chinese women had their feet bound, or girls in some African countries are circumcised. Today, I will certainly not deny the force of male domination, and that it has considerable impact on the hmosexuales’ lifeform. But I will stress that this force must not be understood as coercion. Quite the contrary, although almost all of thejotas were teased, taunted, and battered when they started to show effeminate behavior, they themselves have chosen to become vestidas or a t least visibly effeminate, and they are happy with their choice. They spend hours in front of the mirror making themselves up, even when nobody else will see them-just for the pleasure of it. This is not to say their choice is not socially determined: the conditions of male domination to which they are subjected have made it a strategic choice in several ways. But first and foremost, this male domination has structured their modes of perception and appreciation in ways that have made them perceive their choice as a positive one-and this is exactly what Bourdieu names symbolic violence: “the violence which is exercised upon a social agent with his or her complicity” (Bourdieu and Wacquant I 992: 167). But their choice also has an element of inversion of the dominants’ judgments, following the same principle as black is beautifil. They pay homage to their own shameful femininity, and are proud of it. In his study from Nicaragua, Lancaster (1988, 19gz:chap. 18) shows first how the perception and conceptualization of male homosexuality differs from the perception and conceptualization of it in

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Fig. I 3. Vanessa (right) is a vestida, while her brother Felipe is gay.

the United States, and is actually very close to the Mexican understanding of it. Through this description Lancaster places himself within the constructivist tradition. But he also tries to explain individual recruitment to the homosexual role as a result of social forces. He gives an example of a twelve-year-old boy who is small, but not effeminate. His peers call him cochdn (the local word that corresponds tojoto) and he gets furious. When the other boys throw him to the ground, they mimic sodomizing him. Lancaster’s interpretation is that the public opinion in the neighborhood was attempting to socialize the boy in the direction of being a homosexual, but he mentions the possibility that they rather tried to avert him from a dishonorable fate by punishing him whenever he showed signs of weakness, dependence, or passivity. And in any case, Lancaster does not know whether the boy became homosexual. Lancaster gives another example, a man who uses obscene gestures offering to sodomize a cochdn who passes by in a car. The common point is, according to Lancaster, that some are labeled as homosexuals, and the men or the boys who do the labeling demonstrate their virility by acting as if they penetrate them. But as the cochdn who passed was already known as one,

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the man’s obscene gestures have probably had little effect on the cochdn’s self-perception, so I cannot see that any of Lancaster’s examples really support labeling theory. Lancaster’s conclusion about recruitment to the role of cochdn or machista is as follows (1992:249): Those who consistently lose out in the competition for male status, or who can be convinced to dispose themselves to the sexual urges and status plays of other men, or who dissent from the strictures of manhood, or who, in spite of the stigma, discover pleasure in the passive sexual role or its social status: these men are made into cochones. And those who master the rules of conventional masculinity, or who desire pleasure through their use of another (stigmatizedby that very pleasure in a sexual position defined as subordinate), are made into machistas.

H e does not discuss whether the label cochdn is arbitrary, a pure social construct, or whether there are some reasons that the labels are given. When he writes about the cochdnes’ femininity, he sees this also as an effect of the labeling and not a cause for it (1992:250): “Feminized by more masculine men, some cochones act out their role in the more extreme form of transvestism.” Carrier does not explicitly discuss the origins of the effeminacy or the homosexuality of his informants. But he would appear to regard effeminacy as coming prior to homosexuality, and to suppose that the latter may be a result of social pressure (1989a:133-34): “From early childhood on, Mexican males are made aware of the labels used to denote males as homosexual, and the connection is always clearly made that these homosexual males (usually called putos or jotos) are guilty of unmanly feminine behavior. It thus becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of the society that feminine males are eventually, if not from the beginning, pushed toward exclusively homosexual behavior.” Certainly the stories of Marta and Flaca could be interpreted in this way. Neighbors, uncles, teachers and playmates thought they noticed something effeminate about them; they then took the initiative to have sex with them, treated them as homosemales-and they became homosexuales. With Gata, who made his sexual debut with men at sixteen, after having sexual experiences with girls, this even seemed to work a t a conscious level: “When I got to the age of reason, people started to insult me, as a joto. And I did not know what it meant,joto. But eventually I discovered thatjoto was a word that meant that I liked men. So I analyzed myself: ‘Do I like men?’ And

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yes, yes, I did.” This sounds like a perfect confirmation of labeling theory. But then Gata went on to stress that the label he had been given was not at all arbitrary. “But why [did they call himjoto]? They had not seen me with anybody, I had not had sexual relations with anybody. It was that I had these manners, homosexual manners. From when I was very little. So from the age of seven I had this idea of being joto, until I had this relation with my cousin [at sixteen]. So after that I accepted myself asjoto, not before.” The years in between had been hard: “When I was seven or eight they started to shout to me ‘joto,’ or ‘marich,’ and it hurt me a lot. Even my own brothers did it, so it was a permanent war, you cannot imagine how it was, because I have always been very aggressive. And I wanted to avoid my homosexuality, but it was a feeling that I carried inside me. That I fought against. But I couldn’t, I had to accept it. For this reason I had a lot of girlfriends, I made love to them. But that was to show to others that I liked girls.” When he was sixteen his cousin came to stay, and they shared a bed. “He noticed that I had these feminine traits. So when I pretended to be sleeping, he masturbated next to me. Until one day I accepted his caresses completely, and that was ecstasy. And I fell in love with him.” The others’ labeling and teasing, their “negative sanctions,” had perhaps helped him to understand that he was homosexual, but not to accept it. He had even resisted it through “conspicuous heterosexuality.” But it was not until he got a “positive sanction,” sexual pleasure, that he accepted the label. And he insists that his effeminacy and homosexual tendencies were reasons for the labeling, and not the consequences. When Gata’s mother criticized him for his homosexual tendencies, and told him she had given birth to a boy with balls, and not to a puto, he told me he had answered her thus: “Look Mom, if I’m puto, it must be your or my father’s fault. Because you have brought me up, you have given me this idea or it was in what I inherited from you. Because I have been like this as long as I know, since I have had conscience. So where is the fault? In me, no. Because, tell me, who wants to be rejected, teased and always be different? T o always have to fight?” I don’t know if his argument convinced his mother, but I must admit I find it rather convincing myself. The stories thejotus tell me are so full of negative sanctions they have received on their homosexuality and effeminacy that I find it very difficult to underwrite any theory that claims that they have become homosexual as a result of social pressure. Their own stories concur on one major point: how they became homosexuales in spite of all social forces.

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T h e constructivist approaches undoubtedly give important contributions to an understanding of why some experiences are interpreted in the way they are and lead to the formation of a homosexual identity, and in the jotus’ case also to transvestism. Radical constructivist approaches, such as labeling theory, undoubtedly can provide other contributions. As noted, labeling theory may explain the rapidity of the coming-out process in these instances I have studied, a process which is highly accelerated in comparison to that in Europe, in the United States and probably also in the local middle class. T h e boys and men who verbally label them as homosemules and/or have sexual relations with them (which is indeed a way of labeling them as homosexuales) certainly contribute to this acceleration, and probably also to the fact that the option of heterosexuality is excluded so early and definitely, so that they rapidly enter a clearly defined category instead of remaining ambivalent. But I do not think that labeling or other constructivist theories can explain how the process started, why these and not other boys were selected, and why they let themselves so easily be selected, and in most cases found such pleasure in being selected-when it was not purely and simply themselves who took the initiative. This, I believe, can be explained only if one recognizes that they did have some particular traits that triggered off the process, be it effeminacy or feelings of attraction to men. But as a sociologist, I cannot say where those traits came from, whether they were results of even earlier emotional experiences or innate or a combination of the two. Learning: The Subcultural Infuence

Thejotas would never agree that they have themselves become feminine because of outside pressure. As they see it, they create their appearance in order to be beautiful and attractive, according to their own aesthetic standards and according to the standards of the men they want to attract. Gata once asked me how Norwegian homosexuals were. I told her many things were different, and that almost none of them dressed like women. Her reaction was, “Poor them, I guess they don’t have the same freedom as we have, to live the way it pleases us. Because there are certainly many who feel the same way.” I told her I did not think there were so many, but to this she answered, “I don’t believe you. If you knew what I feel when I pull on my nylon stockings! It’s marvelous! But it was not something that came all by itself, it was something I had to work out over a long

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time. It took me several years to accept myself, and find out how I wanted to live. It’s not given to everybody to get as far as I have done. But I am a person who does what I feel like.” She named homosexuals who are not explicitly femininejotos tapados, hidden or closet homosexuals: they have not accepted themselves, or they are too cowardly to show what they are. As the feminine-lookingjotas usually see it, those are the ones who are really oppressed by the machismo, too oppressed to show what they are (and therefore they will lose a lot of pleasures, since they will be less able to attract men). Mema’s interpretation of thejotas’ femininity is along the same lines: a result of machismo, yes, but as a form of resistance to it, a provocative answer to it, that ensures them a social space, a room of their own, but that they constantly have to fight for, to upkeep. Mema has not read Foucault, but is familiar with some of his ideas, in this case to his analysis of power and counterpower. In modern societies, we all have at least some choice regarding our appearance. We could, theoretically, dress in many possible ways, but usually we keep within rather narrow limits, and dress in a manner that is considered socially appropriate for the season, for our ethnic group, for our gender, age, and social class, so that the presentation we give of ourselves corresponds rather closely to the representation others have of our social role. It is enough to recall our confusion confronted with minor deviance-the business man with a two-dayold beard, the old woman in a minislurt, the truck driver wearing suit and tie-to understand that the fit between presentation and representation is usually very tight. In most cases, I suppose the adjustment is not a result of intensive reflection, but of a rather intuitive sense of “social orientation,” a “sense of one’s place” (Bourdieu 1984: 466) that makes us perfectly aware of what is suitable and what not. The jotas have made a break with this harmony, and they have made it at a moment when they felt the social definition of them, their parents’ representation of them as normal boys, did not fit with their own perception of themselves, a perception further supported by the fact that others perceived them as effeminate, as homosemles. Marta’s metaphor of Cinderella comes close to what they have felt. Just as Cinderella was misrecognized by her stepsisters, they were misrecognized by their own family. But in order to make this transfer, they need otherjotas-as models, as teachers, even as critics. Most of the learning seems indeed motivated by a positive identification, a wish to imitate the others, to be as beautiful as they are. Marta told me she started to train herself in Mema’s hairdressing

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parlor. Gata said that when he met vestidas, he observed them, and composed his own appearance on the basis of what he had seen. And Patricia today, twenty years younger than Gata, said he would like to look like Gata. T h e dressing up, especially before a party or a night at the disco, is indeed a collective happening, where they comment on each others’ outfits, borrow from each other, help each other with hairdo and makeup, and tease or criticize each other when the result is not too successful. They can be quite mean, mahng parodies of a friend’s deep voice or stiff gait, calling each other nicknames that echo their particularities (such as Daffy Duck for the dark, deep-voiced one with the big mouth). Newcomers are not left in any doubt about what the ideals are. I have witnessed newcomers who have been pressured to show their bodies, and to take part in other aspects of the jotas’ lifestyle; for instance, pressured to smoke marihuana. T h e peer socialization efforts are often very explicit. A boy of about fifteen came to the house together with a known jota. The homosemales in the house considered the boy homosexual, too, and when they asked him his name, they would not accept his answer when he said his name was JosC. They again asked him what he was called. He answered JosC, upon which they insisted he should be called Josefina, or Gorda (“Fatso”) or Negra (“Blackie”) or whatever might be suitable, as long as it was in feminine gender. Pancha told me she considered the boy a jot0 tapado (covered homosexual) who did not accept himself. I myself was not able to spot that JosC was a joto, but Pancha had no doubts at all. One night Flaca and Pancha brought along a boy they presented as Rosaurio (his real name was Rodolfo). H e was wearing a wool dress that might have belonged to his grandmother, with a short leopard-patterned coat and thick, black stochngs. His hair was short, but combed and sprayed a bit wildly. H e had heavy blue eye shadow, violent red lips and a thick layer of rouge, but not enough to hide the fact that he needed a shave. His breasts were made out of two water-filled condoms, but as he had no bra, one was higher up than the other. H e was powerfully built, had a bull neck, a big Adam’s apple, a deep voice, and moved like a longshoreman. Everybody looked at him with astonishment, before they started to giggle and ask him questions. Was it the first time he dressed as a woman? H e answered that it was the first time he did it outside, he had just tried a little a t home. H e had met Flaca and Pancha in the street, and they had taken him with them to do the makeup and lend him clothes. H e denied that he was homosemal, and said he had

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never “done it” with a man. But would he like to? “That is a difficult decision to make.” He would not explain why, but underlying his reaction was probably the common idea that to have sex with a man (which means “a real man,” and not simply a homosexual) means losing anal virginity and then becoming homosexzcal. The others were persuaded that Rodolfo was a j o t a . Afterward I asked Flaca how she could be so sure, since Rodolfo was very masculine and a catastrophe as a vestida. T o this, Flaca said she had not been much better when she had arrived at Mema’s house, and she showed me how she used to sit down with her legs apart, and how she used to stride off when she walked, with stiff hips, the shoulders bent forward and the arms kept out from the body. Now she crosses her legs when seated, walks with shorter steps and swings her hips. This does not mean she had no feminine manners when she arrived, but they were much less pronounced. She said she had noticed Rodolfo had a little something, too, just a way of standing with his hips a bit out. I was not at all convinced by her argument, but I know they are much better observers of those details than I am myself. Still, Pancha’s argument seemed more convincing: “If he’s not homosexual, why would he dress up? A man never lets himself dress like a woman. Not even the most drunk, the most mad, the most stoned, not one single man would let himself be dressed as a woman. And he was sober, and he asked us to dress him up.” And in fact, I have even seen myself a man react with panic when somebody tried to place a bow in his hair, for fun. But still I believe Pancha’s distinction with “homosexuales’7on one side and “men” on the other is less a distinction based on an absolute difference and more one that creates an insurmountable difference. The homosexuales’ own labeling-of themselves, of other supposed homosexuales, and of hombres-contributes exactly as does the outer world’s labeling to create less ambiguous categories. A place for a boy who just plays a little with the homosexual role does not exist: he is homosexual. A place for a JosC who is just a little effeminate but still a boy who considers himself normal does not exist either: he is a closet homosexzcal. A place for a Flaca sitting with her legs apart does not exist either: he is a homosexual who has not yet learned how to behave. The homosexuales themselves contribute to make the group labeled homosexuales as unambiguous and uniform as possible. I do not know whether the jotas in Mema’s house had any influence on Jose or on Rodolfo, I never saw them again. But if they had wanted to come back, they would have had to let themselves be

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influenced. Here, however, we must note that it is a targeted influence that is exercised. It is not staymg with the jutas itself that will make someone be influenced; it depends on what definition is given of the person in question. Many boys come regularly to Mema’s without becoming gradually more effeminate; if they are considered and consider themselves masculine boys, they are not concerned by the norm of effeminacy, and it has consequently no effect on them. ConcLusion: From Ambipity to order

I have here shown how the subculture interprets different signsbodily manners, sexual desires, etc.-and reinforces them through a creation of corresponding identities. All this certainly also gives support to the British anthropologist Mary Douglas’s supposition that it is “part of our human condition to long for hard lines and clear concepts” ( I 989:I 62), and that (p. 4) “ideas about separating, purifying, demarcating and punishing transgressions have as their main function to impose system on an inherently untidy experience. It is only by exaggerating the difference between within and without, above and below, male and female, with and against, that a semblance of order is created.” Whether this longing for order and lack of tolerance of ambiguity are really universal, as Douglas claims, I dare not say, and there certainly exist cultures with schemata for categorization of sexes and genders that give more than two possibilities (cf. Herdt 1994a). But it seems like the categorization of biological men who dress like women follows the rules Douglas suggests: when such an individual cannot be reduced to either category-“he’s just acting a woman, it’s not serious” or “her genital organs are a mistake, she needs some surgery to correct them”-he/she may be reinterpreted into something else, be seen as a third category. And he may also interpret himself in that way-which is what happens in the field under study. T h e homosexually behaving feminine man cannot be assimilated to the category of men or to the category of women. H e could have been understood as something in between, but that would have demanded an understanding of the two sexes as being more a continuum than two poles. Instead he is partly expelled from the male sex. But whether the category of male feminine homosexuals to which he is assigned may be considered a third gender category is another question, one to which I will return in the last chapter. As we will see later, this definition of the humusexzlalmakes it pos-

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sible for men to have sex with them without becoming homosemales themselves: a “homosexual man” would be a contradiction-one is either a man or a homosemal. Not only does this facilitate male bisexuality; it also gives a cover to masculine-looking men with a clear homosexual preference. They may have all their sex life with other men and yet not be regarded as homosemles. The difference between jot0 and mayate is more clear-cut in the categorization than in the reality. I also believe that the “expulsion” of homosexllales from the male gender forms a basis for the resignation the parents seem to show: they try as hard as they can to prevent their son from becoming homosexual,but when he has, he is redefined, and to see homosexuality as basically innate helps to make it acceptable. Let me offer a conclusion, although it is a rather banal one. I believe that becoming aiota is a complex process where many factors are intertwined-some early occurring feelings, genetically determined or psychologically formed; some childhood experiences; labeling and learning. I believe biological factors may act as dispositions, but not as determinants, and that they may scatter people on a continuum that will make a heterosexual choice more probable for some than for others. Primary socialization and childhood experiences may then modify each individual’s position on this scale, and cultural factors will determine where the borderlines are drawn. A strong social pressure may make even the most heterosexually disposed engage in homosexual behavior, as in the examples from New Guinea cited above, or permit, as we will see, many Mexican men to engage in homosexual behavior without any fear of being labeled homosexuals. Likewise, a strong social pressure may prevent even the most homosexually disposed from engaging in any form of homosexual practice. An example would be how ideas of women’s lack of sexual desire led many European women in the last century to find only, according to current standards, nonsexualized ways of expressing affection for other women (Lutzen 1986). The jotas are homosexually behaving males despite social disapproval, and it seems impossible for me to understand their homosexuality as only socially determined. On the other hand, the fact that many Mexican men seem to engage in a more occasional homosexual practice, as mayates, can certainly not be biologically determined. And neither biology nor culture may be determinant in any absolute sense: human beings are creative, and capable of transgressions, both on individual and collective levels. My reasoning may be illustrated by a case rather different from the jotas’ stories: Federico lives in a shantytown outside Mexico City.

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At the age of nine, he started to go into the city with his brother to try to make some money as a “traffic light clown,” doing stunts while the cars waited for the green light and begging for money afterward. H e thinks he earned ten to fifteen thousand pesos (three to five dollars) daily that way. H e was fourteen when a driver said he would give him fifty thousand if he came along with him. This Federico did, but he did not know what he was supposed to do, and he had never had sex before. After that he understood that there was a lot more money to gain from prostitution than from anything else, since he had already tried other jobs-shining shoes and unloading crates. At first he had only oral sex, but when I met him, at sixteen, he had active and passive anal sex, too. H e has also had some sexual relations with boys outside the sphere of prostitution now, but he has no homosexual friends. His family does not know that he sells sex. H e has never had sex with girls. There is nothing effeminate about him. When questioned (by Mema) about his sexual identity, he was very open, he recognized that he is living as a homosexual now, but thought he might become “normal.” In this case it seems as though his homosexual practice is partly a result of economic necessity, partly of having learned to enjoy it. Homosexual practice is the only factor that could possibly have led to a homosexual identity, and the practice occurred a t a not very early age. His sexual experience is not accompanied by an experience of effeminacy or feelings of being different as a little boy, nor is it accompanied by a social label as homosexual. Neither is it supported by participation in a subculture of self-identified homosexuals. And so, it is not enough to give Federico an identity as homosexual. Federico feels his future is open in that respect, that he is free to remain in an ambiguous situation. I suppose it would be the same with other factors. In themselves, in isolation, they are not determinant. Gata had the experience of being effeminate and of being labeled homosexual by others, but he needed the sexual experience to make the label his own, and needed other jotas to become one himself (in the sense of becoming a selfidentified homosexual with a feminine style). And, as the next chapter intends to show, to become a jota requires a considerable amount of personal investment. O n the other hand, to become a mayate, or a boy prostitute like Federico, demands much less personal investment, and is not linked to the formation of a specific identity. T h e explanation for all these different kinds of male homosexual practice cannot be one and the same.

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On Bodily and Symbolic Constrmctions

So far I have discussed the early origins of the jotas’ homosexuality, and tried to draw lines between the innate and the social, and to build up a model that can connect the different factors. This chapter deals with a part of becoming ajota which is unquestionably social: the jotas’ style, their shaping of their bodies, and their symbolic constructions. One is not born a woman, but rather becomes one, as Simone de Beauvoir stated. Boys and girls must learn the social meaning of being boys or girls, and they must acquire certain masculine or feminine symbols in order to construct their identities as boys or grls. This is all the more true for those who want to take on a female appearance even though they were not born female. The young boys with a desire to become beautiful vestihs must also learn the social meaning of being a woman and acquire symbols of femininity in order to build up their identity. And these symbols are, to a large extent, linked to the body. The jotas make their identity constructions on the background of objective conditions: a given cultural environment, an urban space of possibilities, economic conditions, a male body, and biologically given sexual desires, although socially formed. Social determination as well as strategic concerns influence their constructions: the choices regarding the presentation of self, the style, are attempts to find the best solution given the existing possibilities, and at the same time choices that reflect their taste, their socially conditioned preferences.

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Thejotas’ construction of an identity and a style is based on an interpretation of themselves, but the construction also takes place in a dialogue with the surroundings. They create a presentation of the self that makes their homosexual desires understandable, since the intrinsic connection between femininity and male homosexuality is a sort of common knowledge in their social environment. But this presentation of the self also accords to their own, class-determined aesthetics, and is one that may be found attractive by the men they are themselves attracted to-basically ordinary, masculine-loolung young men. Bodily Socialization

T h e French anthropologist Marcel Mauss (1966 [ 19361) analyzed the differences around the world in the ways people walk, swim, use a spade, and so forth. H e considered such differences partly as the result of explicit learning, partly as the result of a more indirect influence, through cultural traditions. These bodily manners form a way of being, of behaving, that Mauss called a habitus. For Douglas (I 982), these differences are not arbitrary, but speak of a social group’s structure and its relationship to other groups. Bodily control is a reflection of social control. T h e more clear and explicit a role structure is, the more importance given to a formal bodily style-therefore the differences between bodily style at the workplace and at home, or the differences between the bodily style of artists and intellectuals far from the center of power in a society and that of professionals centrally positioned in the power structure. People in marginal positions are often unkempt and untidy, she says. For Bourdieu (1977, 1984) the differences in focus are those between social classes. W e often think about the body and physical appearance as natural phenomena, but they are to a large degree socially formed. Weight is partly a result of economic resources and of patterns of consumption, height partly of life conditions in childhood. Differences, due to economy or to taste, are reinforced by care, clothes, makeup, and so on. T h e result is that people’s position in the social space very often may be read directly from their physical appearance. Evaluation of differences follow the social hierarchy, so that the dominants’ taste and manners are considered the most distinguished. T h e social hierarchy would overlap the hierarchy of physical appearance-were it not for the autonomy of biology, which may produce poor beauties and rich abominations.

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Fig. 14.Chispa at age seventeen.

When it comes to gender differences in physical appearance and bodily manners, these are often also seen as far more “natural” than they probably are. The German sociologist Frigga Haug (1987) has, together with a collective of women, described and analyzed the bodily socialization of women, using photos and stories from their own childhood to recall the process by which particular emotions became attached to particular parts of the body, what Haug terms the semlization of women. It is the story of all the struggles of childhood, over the backs that should be kept straight, the legs that should be kept tightly together, etc. Bodily expressions are given moral connotations-to sit with the legs apart is not decent, to have a big belly

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Fig. 1 5 . Chispa at age twenty-three.

reveals a weak character. Women are taught subordination through the body, Haug claims. T o become a woman for a person who is born female is a process where one is “helped” or “pushed” by the surroundings. This process may be described, as Bourdieu does, as a predominantly unconscious incorporation of schemata of evaluation and appreciation leading to a gendered habitus. It may instead be described, as Haug, inspired by Foucault, does, more like a training, a disciplinizing process. O r it may, in line with traditional role theory, be described as the internalization of norms and values through socialization. In fact, the jotas’ acquisition of a feminine appearance is both even

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more bodily than what Bourdieu’s theory indicates and even more cerebral than what role theory indicates: more bodily in the sense that the process includes an actual transformation of their bodies, and more cerebral because it is the result of a break with all that is expected from them, a break that is necessarily a conscious choice, the result of reflection. Thejotas’ construction of femininity is therefore a very pamcular instance of the more general case of acquiring a feminine or masculine appearance and identity. The particularity lies in the lack of support for their construction: the jotas find the support neither in their own bodily gender signs nor in their families’ expectations toward them. They have to go about acquiring the symbols of femininity all by themselves. But maybe “self-socialization” efforts have been underestimated in much of socialization theory. The Norwegian sociologist Ivar Frmes (1995:chap. 2) holds that children take active part in the socialization of themselves, that an identity is not formed only as a response to forces external to the individual, but is also a result of one’s own social strategies and actions. A boy who delimits his gender identity may have a strategy of not being a girl without being able to say what it means to be a boy. Children’s friendship constructions may show the same pattern. Two children start by agreeing to become friends, then they start to act as friends, and the content of friendship is created out of this interaction. The social categories are external to the individual, but the individual’s way of entering the categories goes not only through an interpretation of the person one has become (labeling by others or by oneself), but also through an adaptation of oneself to what one perceives as the content of the category. A Question of Taste-and of Class

This physical, bodily making of a transvestite must be seen in a context. Normally, a quick glance is sufficient to distinguish the two sexes. All over the world, sex tends to be confirmed through clothes, ornaments, or by bodily marks, such as tattoos or circumcision. Many of these signs serve also to accentuate the distinction between the sexes, as when female clothing accentuates bodily curves. Apart from the almost obligatory piercing of girl babies’ earlobes, Mexicans use no other permanent bodily marks to confirm a person’s sex, but certainly distinguish it through clothes and through hairstyle. The popular classes have kept an ideal of the female body which perhaps had

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its heyday in the United States in the 1950s with Marilyn Monroe. Girls with big breasts and big buttocks are admired, and expected to wear clothes that underline their advantages. Indian traits are negatively evaluated for both sexes: in order to be considered beautiful, one should have light skin and a straight nose and should be rather tall. Looks count everywhere, but perhaps especially among the popular classes, since economic capital and cultural capital are less important as determinants for internal classifications there than higher up in the social hierarchy. It is true also, I think, that looks are more important in a Catholic and Latin country than they are among, for instance, Nordic Protestants, who teach their children not to say out loud that a fat person is fat, and who try to convince them that it is “what’s inside” that matters. I did not find this reticence in Mexico. For example, a mother discussing possible daughters-in-law with her son complained that the one she liked best was small and darkskinned, while she did not like the one her son was dating at the time, albeit the young woman was “very pretty,” with blue eyes and fair skin and hair. Among the jotas, looks would seem to be the number two topic of conversation, after sex. They are forever commenting on their own or others’ appearance, openly or behind their backs. Many have nicknames that derive from their looks, some neutral, others pejorative. T h e nickname Flaca means skinny; Gata (cat) is named so for her narrow eyes, Negra (black) for her dark hair and skin, Sap0 (toad) for her big mouth, and so forth. One skinny girl was called the magician: she would be able to say just as a magician does when he wants to show he is not hiding anything: “Look, nothing in front, nothing behind . . .” In other words, the context in which thejotas work out their looks is one in which appearance is extremely important, in which they know they will be scrutinized and judged wherever they go. Men who want to look like women cannot choose to look like flat-chested, narrow-hipped, un-madeup women in unisex clothes. They must choose the specific attributes of women. Many women have small buttocks, but only women have large ones; only women wear dresses and high-heeled shoes; only women use makeup. T h e vestidas go further: they choose tight clothes that emphasize the curves of the body-curves which they frequently enlarge by padding their breasts, buttocks, and thighs. Their skirts are short, and dresses, trousers, and blouses are often made of stretch materials that hug

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the body. Necklines are low and bras tight, to lift the breasts-or the padding that serves as breasts. Colors show garish contrasts, often black together with bright or luminous colors. Shiny, glittery materials are popular. Their lipstick and eye shadow have vivid colors; their hair is combed and teased into voluminous styles. The result is indeed dazzling, and the measures to obtain it are far from subtle. Concerning these aesthetic choices we may formulate three rules: -They use effects generally reserved for women, often exaggerated and emphasized, such as high heels and eye-catching hairstyles. -They stress the sexual parts of a woman’s body: breasts, buttocks, thighs. The attire signals fuckability. -Conspicuousness is a must in the choice of clothes, colors, makeup and hairstyle. It might seem that what they are doing is to follow the principle of letting a strong form drown out a lack of content: they may not be born women, but they at least have all the outer signs of femininity. But the wish to pass as women cannot explain their style-on the contrary, they would probably pass more easily if they adopted a somewhat more discreet style. When they adopt the style they do, it is because they themselves like it-it is a question of taste, of having a so-called vulgar taste. Bourdieu (1977, 1984) has analyzed how taste and looks expressand constitute-class differences. Even a very subtle difference in the shade or in thickness of the layer of lipstick will be evaluated according to whether it corresponds to the preferences of the dominant in society. Social dominance includes the power to set the standards, and to make the dominants’ perception and evaluation of oneself and of others into the others’ perception and evaluation of the dominant and of themselves. A glance is social power. We could illustrate Bourdieu’s analysis by imagining a working-class girl who turns up in a miniskirt at a bourgeois party. She may feel the others’ glances, and instead of saying to herself that the other women’s legs are probably not pretty enough to permit a miniskirt, she will feel that her skirt is too short in their eyes, and will start tugging at the hem. She sees and judges herself through the eyes of the others, and her reaction is embarrassment, shyness. The dominant themselves are not embarrassed by the others’ glances, even when they are critical: They feel at ease, self-assured; they may impose the view they have of themselves as the legitimate one. What they do is usually the right thing to do; if not, it will become the right thing to do. They

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Fig. 16. Chispa puts on foam-rubber paddings.

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become for others what they are for themselves. By contrast, the majority become for themselves what they are for others. The dominated classes may try to adopt the dominant taste and lifestyle-a strategy favored by social climbers. Or they may content themselves with imitations or substitutes: polyester has not the same qualities as silk, but it is much cheaper. On the other hand, a lipstick with the “wrong” color is not necessarily cheaper than the one with the “right” color, and the length of the miniskirt is not determined by its price. The popular classes have, according to Bourdieu, some autonomy of evaluation in their own aesthetic choices. And among the basic principles of this autonomous taste are a taste of necessity (they learn to like what they can afford), a taste for what is practical and functional, and a taste for what can provide a maximum of effect at minimum cost. Another principle is that the most distinguished taste is a taste for “purity,” a refined and distanced taste that gives an intellectual rather than a bodily pleasure. A taste for the immediate bodily, sensuous pleasures is by definition a marker of vulgarity. Bourdieu has claimed that the popular classes’ autonomy concerning aesthetic choices is gradually getting lost. Actually, I have always felt myself that in France the most merciless mediators of the distinguished bourgeoisie’s evaluations and of their intimidating glances were the hairdressers and the shop assistants, at least in bourgeois quarters. In Mexico, the classes seem to be more independent, and urban segregation ensures that they rarely mingle. The popular classes are perhaps most frequently confronted with the dominant classes through television-but there, they usually meet a parody of the dominant class through the ever present soaps, a vulgar dominant class of nouveazuc riches, with the same taste for all that glitters that they have themselves (which is of course no coincidence, since this is a fraction of the dominant class that they can identify with much more easily than with the fractions rich in cultural capital or those with a long seniority in the dominant class). One of the most popular Mexican soap operas is named Los ricos tambith lloran (The rich cry, too) . . . The jotas admire the soap beauties, and they follow local taste in their aesthetic choices. But there is always a too much: their dresses are more glittering, their necklines lower, the layer of eye shadow thicker than most women around them would use. Their sisters would get a box on the ear and two weeks of house arrest if they tried to go to a party dressed the way the jotas do. The reason that

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their fathers, brothers, or husbands would not allow young girls to dress like that is that for women such outfits correspond to a shared perception of what sexually available women look like-and thereby also to what heterosexual men react sexually to. What the vestidas want is precisely that: to be perceived as sexually available women (or almost-women), so the outfit works just as it is intended to. Their homosexuality and a vague form of effeminacy may well be founded in their early childhood, as explored in the preceding chapter. Their aesthetic taste is also deeply embedded in their habitus, and a result of their social class. But still, to dress like a woman-and just how to dress like a woman-are indeed conscious choices, and choices made with an awareness of the effect they will have upon others, first and foremost on the men they want to attract. Actually, this is a point where Mexico’s lower-class homosexuales affirm a considerable autonomy vis-i-vis the ones from the classes higher up in the social hierarchy. Confronted with the latter, the lower-class homosexuales gain self-respect by referring themselves to the same hierarchy of masculinity as the working-class men do. Of course, neither the effeminate, working-class homosexuales nor the middle-class ones can brag about their own masculinity, but the former often enjoy bragging about how masculine their sexual partners are, as indicated by the following example. Lulu, aiota at a gay disco, told me he had just met a middle-class homosexual in the toilet, and the latter had said with heavy disgust, pointing at Lulu’s enormous, artificial buttocks: “All that oil! It’s horrible!”-“Come off it! You’d give a fortune for that ass, even if it was just for one night.”-“That’s what you think?”-“Of course. You’ve got no ass at all. And the men I get, they’re real machines, while you’ve got to make do with other tortilleras.” Lulu backed up his argument by pointing to the fact that at working-class gay discos there are a lot of men (meaning heterosexual-lookmg men), together with the jotas and vestidas, whereas at middle-class gay discos there are very few heterosexuallooking men. I have also heardjotas comment with disgust at the sight of two mustache-wearing men kissing each other, seeing it as something “abnormal.” Bourdieu states about class differences in the way the sexes present themselves (1984:107-8): “Sexual properties are as inseparable from class properties as the yellowness of a lemon is from its acidity: a class is defined in an essential respect by the place and value it gives to the two sexes and to their socially constituted dispositions. This

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is why there are as many ways of realizing femininity as there are classes and class fractions, and the division of labour between the sexes takes quite different forms, both in practices and in representations, in the different social classes.” These variations are everydung but arbitrary, Bourdieu shows, for instance, how those fractions of the middle class who aspire to upward mobility place considerable importance on correctness and decency-in dress, language, and behavior. This may explain the more restrained and reserved femininity of middle-class women that seems to occur in many societies, and which indeed is strilung in Mexico. Among urban popular classes the biological differences between the sexes are underlined and exaggerated, in line with a whole ideology about what the sexes are and are supposed to be: different and complementary. They thereby also express a much more joyful attitude to sex than the middle-class does. Thejotas, with their overtly sexualized appearance and their emphasis on being different from their partners, fit in with this scheme of things. This same link between class and homosexual men’s effeminacy seems evident in other Latin American countries as well.’ A class-based contempt for the vulgarity of the vestidas may often be felt, and read from people’s glances. At most homosexual discos with a basically middle-class clientele vestidas are not admitted. I have heard that this is because they have a reputation as troublemakers, but would guess that this is not the whole explanation. Most establishments try to attract a fairly homogeneous clientele, to enable their guests to feel well by mirroring themselves in others present. If they cannot or will not identify with others there, they will not feel at ease-and, of course, will be unlikely to patronize that establishment in the future. The recent history of male homosexuality in industrialized countries is the history of masculinization and of marking a distance toward effeminate homosexuals (cf. Hekma 1994), since effeminate representation of homosexuality is seen as backward and degrading. Instead, identification is sought with “normal” men. A clear expression of this tendency was the “clone style” that emerged I . Parker (1990), in his study of male prostitutes in Brazil, observed that the michis, who prostitute themselves as boys, come from poorer areas than the transvestites do. He believes this is because the transvestites are not tolerated in areas other than the favehs, and that they have to move from family and friends in order to live as transvestites. In my study, however, most transvestites come from the neighborhood in which they now live. I would claim that the difference in style stems more from broader sociocultural differences between the classes, and even between different fractions of the working class.

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among North American male homosexual men in the 1970s: they all looked just alike with their jeans, T-shirts, crew cuts and neat mustaches. But the result was not that they looked exactly like heterosexual men. As Bech noted (1997:11o), a little, unbecomingly feminine detail, perhaps a scarf, made the presentation inconsistent, and thereby “betrayed” them-or they were betrayed by being too consistent: the hair too cropped, the wear holes in the Levis too precise, etc., distinctions just discreet enough to enable them to recognize each other perfectly well. At the time I was in Mexico, at least two discos did not let women enter, and only men wearing jeans or leather and boots; no aftershave was allowed. Mema spoke ironically about those men: “They think they look so tough and manly all dressed up like that. Until they get up and wiggle along.” H e thereby expressed the common view among the jotas that all homosexuales are effeminate, but that some try, unsuccessfully, to hide it. Homosexual men from the middle and upper classes are commonly dismissed by the worlung-class jotas as hidden, or closet, homosexuales-another expression of their autonomy of judgment. I have not studied homosexual men from the middle class in Mexico, and cannot say so much about why most of them seem to have chosen a rather discreet style. But I believe that, for them, their style facilitates integration in their social environment. They can interact without having to take their homosexuality into account since their appearance is not overtly indicative of sexual preferences. Thereby they may be defined according to other traits than their sexual preference, such as their position in the social space. They would certainly not have the same possibility of being integrated in socioeconomic life, to have a career, if they went around looking like thejotas from Neza. T h e latter have in any case no career to look forward to; deprived of other forms of capital, they emphasize their bodily resources. On the other hand, I think, the difference in style very much corresponds to a difference in habitus, and this, in turn, corresponds to difference in taste, in modes of perception and evaluation, among the people around them. Bourdieu (1984) showed how higher up in the social hierarchy bodily pleasures stand aside for more distant ways of achieving pleasure (as through the sight). It may be that this class difference is to be found also among men with a same-sex preference-with those from the middle or upper classes appreciating more reserved expressions of sexual desire, and having a more distanced attitude toward their bodies than those from lower classes.

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The Naked Transvestite

A naked transvestite is inconceivable-it is the dress that makes a person a transvestite. But the vestidas treat even their bodies as if they were something external, changeable. They will not accept Freud’s dictum that anatomy is destiny. They actively form their bodies and create their appearance. Careful makeup, manicure, and hairstyling take time for any woman; to these one must add shaving, hair removal, padding of the bra and around the hips, unless a more lasting solution has been found. A complete change of sex is of course the most permanent solution, but most of them do not want this, finding a certain pleasure in what nature has given them. Some of them believe a sex change might facilitate work as prostitutes, but they see no other advantages from it and perceive it as risky: it might change their minds, not just their bodies. Stories are told about vestidas who became lesbians after a sex change. Surgical sex change would also be too expensive for almost all of them. Only one of the interviewed wanted a sex change, and I have only met one who has actually had one. But they try to get as close as possible to a woman’s body without cutting away anything. Thus, penis and testicles must be kept hidden between the legs with tight-fitting briefs or even adhesive tape to keep things in place. If the penis is long enough, it may be squeezed between the buttocks and kept up by itself. The testicles may then be fashioned around it like sex lips, producing a sight to perplex any gynecologist-it looks like none of the sexes discovered so far in the history of mankind. I have seen how one vestida wrapped the penis completely with the skin of the testicles and then put glue on the two parts of the skin that met each other. The result was a split that definitely looked like a woman’s sex. Thejotas often wear very tight or elastic jeans, and the front is then as flat as for a woman. T o sit on one’s sexual organs all day is reported to be uncomfortable, but bearable. For a lanky boy who wants more feminine curves, the cheapest solution is to use foam-rubber padding around the hips and the thighs and over the buttocks, then don several pairs of tights to keep it all neatly in place. It is of course very hot to use this all the time, winter and summer alike. Another inconvenience is the giveaway sound if somebody smacks their behinds, and yet another the fact that it is rather cumbersome when they want to have sex. But Pancha claims that that may sometimes be an advantage-that the packing has protected her against being raped when she has been too drunk

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or stoned to protect herself, and has thus helped her to remain HIVnegative. T o be beautiful one must suffer, as my mother used to tell me as she tried to comb my tangled hair, and I believe the saying is to be found in most languages. In Mexico I heard: iQuieres ser bella? jSUfie! Th e transvestites suffer from more than getting their hair pulled. Many use hormones, either a stiff dose of the pill daily or injections, weekly or monthly, preferably then one in each breast (which is very painful). They do these injections themselves, or get friends to do them. Breasts are formed, the layer of fat increases and face and body get rounder, while the growth of beard and of hair on the chest and elsewhere is reduced, and the loss of hair stopped. I know one who says he started to use hormones at the age of eleven, another at the age of thirteen, whereas the others were older. Don Kulick (forthcoming) says of Brazilian transvestites that some of them have started at ages as young as eight or ten. When the use of hormones is begun at an early age, beard growth will not develop, the voice will not change, and male sex organs will not develop normally. When stopped, the effect remains quite a long time. I have metjotas with small breasts who told me they had stopped taking hormones more than a year ago. This use of female hormones corresponds to women’s use of male hormones in bodybuilding and other sports-the aim being to go beyond the limits of the body by approaching the other sex. One effect of the use of female hormones which for some is desired, for others undesired, is that it becomes difficult to get an erection, a t least one hard enough to use for anal penetration. O r if they get an erection, they may not be able to ejaculate. Some even lose the appetite for sex. Other clearly undesired side effects are known, such as nausea and fatigue, and some health risks are expected to be present, such as possible liver damage and thrombosis. But these risks are probably of far less importance to health than other aspects of thejotas’ lifestyle (smoking, drinlung, drugs, exposure to violence and infectious diseases, and so on). Some vestidas have breast implants. These are all at least in their twenties, as they have had to work as prostitutes for some time in order to raise enough money for the operation. T h e results vary, aesthetically speahng, but most of these vestidas seem satisfied. As to undesired effects and possible health risks, research still seems inconclusive. A few have also had plastic facial surgery. Some have had this done by local experts, who have given them injections in

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their cheeks or in the chin (in order to remove the cleavage). In 1996 the injections most commonly used were of progesterone, a female hormone (called cuelpo amarillo), which gave a result that would last for about a year. Common also are plastic nose prostheses that are inserted into the nostrils in order to straighten out the nose-as the advertisement in the drugstores says: “A classic profile in ten minutes . . . without surgery!” Several of thejotar have injected oil in their buttocks and thighs, in order to increase the volume of these body parts. A big bottom has strong sex appeal throughout Latin America, much more so than in Europe and North America. Somejotas are satisfied with a bottom that makes them look like an ordinary woman, but others go on to make it big enough to be conspicuous, even for a woman. There are also some women who inject oil in their buttocks in Mexico, the only one I know .personally is a sex worker, but Mema claims it is becoming more and more common. The oil injected is called mineral oil, and is also used in the production of cosmetic creams. However, the aesthetic gains do not always last, and the health hazards are considerable. The main problem is that after a time the oil usually starts to slip down in the thighs or even in the calves, forming hard lumps in the muscular tissue, which can be very painful. Some have problems walking, others sitting. The hairdressers have a particular problem because they stay upright the whole day; the prostitutes have another problem when they are arrested and have to sit on a cold concrete floor. The oil gets hard when it is cold, or it gets heated when it is warm, and gives them fever. Some get problems with blood circulation. Often the skin turns black (as with a black eye), and the whole behind as well as the thighs may become permanently black. I have seen this, but the worst cases I have only seen on photos-as in one case where the skin had burst at several places, and another where terrible scars had resulted from a necessary operation to get the oil out. (Mema collects documentation on this suject, hoping that some medical doctors will take interest in it.) Mema has told me about four deaths that were caused by the oil getting into inner organs, but he claims this happened with another lund of oil, and cannot result from use of the one used today. The injections are done by some specialists among them. I have heard somebody demand $150 for the job-quite a lot of money in Mexico, but not a problem for the prostitutes. If they want to have the oil removed, however, they will have to turn to surgeons, who

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in the best cases may use liposuction but in the worst must resort to the knife. Those who suffer would like to get their pains relieved, but are afraid of surgical intervention, of what they will look like after it. And they can rarely afford it. I know that transvestites in other countries, in Brazil for instance (Kulick, forthcoming), use injections of silicone instead of injections of oil, but also do this themselves. T h e Mexicanjotas are very skeptical toward the silicone, since there was a scandal about it in Mexico some years ago: several show business stars had severe health problems after having used silicone, and one of them actually died. But the mineral oil used for these injections is certainly not a better alternative. There are other products that are considered less harmful, such as those used for facial operations, but they are too expensive in such quantities as are needed for the buttocks. Cristina says of her injected buttocks: “The worst mistake I ever made in my whole life. I did not know. W e were the first to do it, and none of us knew the reactions that would come later on. But I don’t regret it, it gave satisfaction for a couple of years. And if I die because of that, well, I’ll die. You must pay for that satisfaction.” Th e skin is black, and the only way to remove the oil would be to cut away most of her bottom. This she will not do unless it is found to be cancerous. The olderjotas now warn the younger ones strongly against injecting their buttocks. But these warnings do not make it any less exciting or attractive for the young ones. They want to be as sexy as possible, and they want it now. And the older ones who now suffer may talk about their problem, but since they rarely want to show their naked buttocks to anybody by daylight, the younger ones only see that those big behinds are successful in attracting men. W h a t do these transformations say about the jotus’ relationship to their bodies? And, more in general, what do they say about local attitudes toward the body? T h e various kinds of interventions and modifications of the body are much discussed among the jotus. These conversations may be purely technical, about procedure and prices; or they may be aesthetic, about what looks best or worst. Sometimes the jotas mention health hazards, or complain about the pain. But I have never overheard any conversation about ethical or moral issues connected to these operations. For me this was an important point, as I myself reacted very strongly to the bodily transformations I saw. My reaction was indeed emotional, but my arguments were “rational” (pointing to the health hazards), political (interpreting the trans-

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formations as a result of the oppression of homosexuals), or purely moral (blaming them for falseness). My reaction became a point of departure for my investigation, because I wanted to understand the participants’ own point of view. But this became as well an investigation into my own culture’s attitudes toward the body. In the following I will present both views. In Scandinavia, when I have talked about or shown pictures of the jotas’ bodily transformations, the discussion quickly turns to moral issues. Many people seem strongly provoked by these transformations. At times their perception is that these Mexican homosexual men are forced by the macho society around them to make themselves so effeminate, instead of remaining naturally masculine. But thejotas do not agree that they have become effeminate because of outside pressures. As they see it themselves, they create their appearance according to their own aesthetic standards for being beautiful and sexually attractive-to the kind of men they wish to attract. I asked Gata why she wanted to have breasts: “This wish to have breasts, it is because I like bugas [purely heterosexual men]. And hgus like women, so to attract them, to reach my goal more quickly, I had to look like a woman.” She told me that as a teenager she felt very hurt when men to whom she was attracted turned her away. She observed other homosex-des in order to choose a style, and to find out how she could take what she calls her revenge: “By being more feminine, more like a woman, becoming the person you now know. I operated my tits, I took care of myself, I injected my buttocks, I started to use flashy makeup. Then the tables were turned. Men started to beg me for sex, they kissed me, they caressed me, and I liked it.” The vestidas look on their bodies as materials to be styled, an attitude which Finnish sociologist Pasi Falk contrasts with the Western attitude (Falk 1990:69):L‘Hereis neither contempt for the body nor idealizing of the ‘natural’ body image. The body is a work of art which is not yet finished, but has to be worked up, formed and transformed from nature to culture.” In various parts of the world this is the local understanding of tattooing, scars, enlarging of the lower lips, lengthening of the neck and the earlobes, etc.-a ‘‘body art” which the Western world sees as deformation and mutilation because our body ideal today is naturalness. This ideal originates, says Falk, from a Christian view of man created in the image of God; consequently, irreversible operations are infamy to the Creation. The Church banned tattooing in 787. Falk (1990:7z) also quotes from

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English legislation in force from the second half of the seventeenth century: All women, of whatever age, rank, profession or degree whether virgins, maids, widows, that shall from and after such Act, impose upon, seduce, and betray into matrimony, any of his majesty’s subjects, by scents, paint, cosmetics, washes, artificial teeth, false hair, Spanish wool, iron stays, hoops, high-heeled shoes and bolstered hips, shall incur the penalty of the law in force against witchcraft and like misdemeanours and that the marriage, upon conviction, shall stand null and void.

This quotation conveys the idea of the natural body, and a condemnation of all alterations and measures to improve the body. In northern Europe the genuine and natural are still highly valued. Exterior presentation is interpreted as an indication of one’s inner state of mind. This cult of nature is based on a profoundly Protestant ethic. T h e Protestant house of worship is basically without ornament, with nothing to distract the mind from the faith or to come between man and God. In the same way, northern Europeans tend to regard flirtation and finery as expressions of insincerity, and to consider that people should accept their bodies as they are. Manipulations that are solely aesthetically motivated, such as enlarging the breasts, provoke many. T h e only acceptable transformations of the body are those achieved by renunciation, toil, and sweat-like slimming and exercise. Probably this is more acceptable because it does not involve only the surface; the appearance is seen as corresponding to inner qualities (strength of will, etc.). Therefore bodybuilding is less acceptable: it is a sort of showing off, since the muscles do not correspond to a “real” strength, since there is a disparity between surface and substance. According to the French sociologist Jean Baudrillard (1990),it is not natural beauty that seduces us, but ritual beauty. When the body is masked, painted, or even mutilated in some way, this is done in order to seduce. T h e body is forced to bear signs, but the signs have no meaning. T h e colors of birds’ feathers and the detailed courtship rituals of animals fascinate us because they are completely meaningless. T h e beauty lies in the senselessness, in the pure appearance. T h e woman is invisible under the makeup; the enchantment lies in what is hidden. And yet, if one tries to look underneath, there is nothing to be found. T h e seduction does not refer to any form of reality other than the symbolic: all is there. T h e body is composed totally of signs. Traditional societies valued collective rituals and

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signs; people surrendered to the seduction in the rituals. In modern societies the capacity for seduction has become lost in the quest for utility or for profound truths-according to Baudrillard. At this point the jotas and their partners join Baudrillard: That which is acquired is no less valuable than that which is natural. Whether something is genuine or false has little relevance. Their aesthetics are telling; they do not always care about hiding the means used to obtain a certain effect. Discreet makeup, a natural appearance-these correspond to a culture where the exterior contrasts with the interior, where the genuine and original contrasts with the false and superficial. As Marta said, “My body is not all natural. Some of it is false and some is natural, but I tell you: It’s all mine.” The acquired may in fact reflect the self better than the natural, precisely because it demonstrates will and skills. In that sense the artificial can be more genuine than the natural. Marta went on, “I want artificial breasts, hips, buttocks, an operation to make a vagina, and an operation for my nose. I want to do it all to me. Imagine-to be artificial from head to foot! Because here we don’t agree with what God gave us.” The question is not whether the femininity is genuine or false, but whether it works. And indeed, it does. I asked some mayates if it mattered to them that the jotas’ breasts or buttocks were artificial. It was difficult to get them to understand the question; if a breast looked fine, it was fine. On the other hand, as Ernest0 pointed out, the artificial ones are often hard, and they don’t have such big nipples as women’s breasts have. Neither does he care for the injected buttocks, because they often grow dark, showing a body in decay, and that sometimes makes him sick. According to Mema, most mayates do not pay any attention to this, and he told me the jotas used to have good answers if they did: one whose skin has become very dark said she had a suntan; another who had buttocks as hard as rocks used to say, “Oh, don’t tell me you’d like them to be as soft as your sisters’ are.” Most of the mayates told me that when they had sex with women, they cared more for their bodies and caressed them more than they did with the jotas. David was the only one who told me he was fascinated by thejotas’ bodies: “You know the homosemalesalmost attract me more, because they have these big asses, these masses of flesh that you grab, so that you almost get lost in it!” Gata once taunted me, “My boobs are bigger than yours.” I defended myself by saying that mine at any rate were natural. Gata replied, “That doesn’t matter. You know that the artificial is always

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more aesthetic. They are not natural, but you can see that it is an achievement, by a homosexual, a thing that you have been able to provide yourself. As if you wanted a house. And I wanted a big bottom, to have beauty, to have breasts. And I’d like to have a pussy, too, but I’m not willing to give up the pleasure of an ejaculation. Otherwise, I would have done it, because I have the possibility to do it. Fortunately.” T h e jotas are true proletarians: they possess nothing but their bodies. With other resources one may express oneself through work, through art, through creating a home, through children, and so on. Without those resources, all that is left is the body. In this they resemble the gang members from the Parisian suburbs that Gerard Mauger and Claude FossC-Poliak (1983) studied. T h e gang members’ usage of their bodies expresses a whole attitude toward the world, and a vision of masculinity as a physical force. Deprived of economic and cultural capital, they may try to impose physical force as a criterion for classification, as a way to counter the dominance they are subjected to. Just like the jotas, they may invest in the maintenance of the body or the presentation of it. This is even more striking among bodybuilders, the large majority of whom are also of worhng-class origin (Klein 1993):one’s physical appearance is a compensation for other flaws (according to Klein, particularly concerning the self-image). For some, it is also a source of income, through competitions or in the professions of bodyguard, doorkeeper, or hustler. For the jotas, their shaped and fashioned bodies are also symbols of social standing, obtained through hard work and privation. At the same time the body is an investment which may ensure their earnings as prostitutes. And as all symbols of status are extensions of the self, so also the fashioned body. It bears witness to taste and to skills. T h e body is changed from attributed status to acquired status: from destiny to capital, and as capital to a project. Traditional sociology and social psychology, on the one hand, usually treat the question of social role or social identity as a relationship between social environment and human behavior, a relationship where the body does not really have any place. Psychoanalytic theory, on the other hand, has placed the body as a mediator between the social world and the individual psychology, and as a determinant for social experiences, where the body has been the “independent variable,” a variable that conditions individual development. T h e example of the vestidas shows that the body may not only be a point of departure for psychological and social processes: it may also be a result of these. In sociology this dialectical relationship between the

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body and its social environment, of how social experiences leave their marks on the body and are expressed and reproduced through the body, has been described and conceptualized by Bourdieu (I 977, 1984, 1990), and his use of the concept of habitus conveys an experience of the world as an incorporated experience. As Beate Krais (1993) has pointed out, the concept of habitus may thus lead to an understanding of a phenomenon that the role concept could not grasp: why a change of sex is so difficult. What has to be changed is far more complex and profound than social norms, however internalized they may be. The example of the vestidas also shows a phenomenon that transcends the dialectic of the habitus concept: an active and conscious fashioning of the body. The example may seem extreme, but perhaps only in the sense that it is particularly explicit. I do not consider the vestidas a social avant-garde, but their bodily practices seem to have traits in common with a modern attitude toward the body, where the body is seen more and more as a raw material that may be shaped and fashioned according to particular usages. In industrialized societies, we may observe an increasing moralization of the body, and particularly of the female body (cf. Haug et al. 1987). Youthful puppy fat, or middle-aged spare tires are seen, just like certain diseases, as signs of a lack of will. A not-so-pretty girl who earlier would have been considered to have had bad luck may now be seen as someone who does not take care of herself. In their three-generation study, Bjerrum Nielsen and Rudberg (1994:chap. 7) give a fine example of the changes: while the grandmother states “In my family, we have big behinds,” the mother is embarrassed by her behind, tries to hide it, and periodically embarks on slimming campaigns-and the daughter, eighteen years old, plans to lose forty-five pounds in three months. Even getting older loses its naturalness and becomes a choice, hence belonging to the domain of personal responsibility. Plastic surgery becomes more and more common. Activities that earlier were considered play, such as sports, become duties-it is a duty toward oneself to be in good physical condition. Sexual pleasure becomes the product of learning and training. Together with this moralization and responsibilization comes a rationalization. The body perhaps lost its “naturalness” already with the psychoanalytic reading of it, where the body betrayed the self, where it revealed the individual’s subconscious history. The body of our time does not reveal anything-it speaks much more directly of a self and its conscious choices.

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Earnestness or Irony

T h e vestidas are paradoxical. T h e overtly sexual signs and the exaggerated femininity draw attention to the fact that the transvestites are not really women-thereby creating an ambiguity that is in contrast with their efforts to present themselves as unambiguous, as shown in the preceding chapter. According to the British researcher of youth cultures Dick Hebdige (1991),subcultures adopt or create special styles precisely to express difference. Identity is created through the admission of a difference, and style expresses this difference. T h e subculture detaches signs from their original meaning and thus shows that the meaning was not intrinsically given. Objects have a legitimate application: the subculture gives them an illegitimate one, for instance when punks use safety pins as earrings. T h e signs they use are so obviously signs that the conventions are stripped of their naturalness, as when the hippies showed that it was not “natural” for men to have short hair. If we read the vestidas’ style in this way, we can also see that objects are taken out of their legitimate use and applied in a new way. Makeup and high heels are no longer reserved for women. Even the body is stripped of its naturalness: breasts and buttocks become signifying objects, free to be acquired and used in a signifying practice. When a man usurps female signs, it is a profound provocation against all that is taken for granted. Most vestidas, however, use these signs in exactly the same way that women do, and even try to become women-at least partlywhen using them. Femininity and female signs are taken very seriously. These “earnest” vestidas, who are transvestites at a first degree, in a somewhat naive way really try to be as feminine as they can, given their male bodies. They seek to escape public attention by passing as women. Carmen, who looks just like a woman, has no wish to be visibly identifiable as a homosexual. She suffers when people taunt or laugh a t her in public. She wants to be able to walk hand in hand with her lover without attracting notice. Earnest vestidas such as Carmen want to make themselves unambiguous. Other vestidas, however, take the transvestism to the second degree, a t least partially: they add an ironic voice to their selfpresentation. They are ‘more woman’ than any woman can be, exaggerating all the signs. Their skirts are the shortest, their makeup the most dazzling, their hairstyles the most bouffant, and their behinds the broadest. It is all too much to be credible. Their exaggerations

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make them ambiguous and indicate a distance to the femininity they have acquired. Thereby they provoke and attract attention. They squeal, giggle, and act helpless-and just a moment afterward they may brag and scold, driving home their arguments with their fists. They play about with gender, and with ambiguity. Gata may serve as an example of the latter. “What I see as feminine is my body, my way of thinlung or my way of acting or behaving. I feel I am different. Feminine, well, when it suits me, but in the last resort my true identity remains to be found. You must not think I act feminine, but when I am in a woman’s position, I behave like a woman. As when I am in a position where I have sex with a buga [a man who has sex only with women], then I am in a super-feminine position. But when I am in a position in society, for instance at work, I try to be just a little effeminate. Or I don’t have to try, it’s spontaneous.” With big breast implants, her femininity cannot be hidden, even when she goes to her office work dressed as a man. She is tall and strong, and knocks down anyone who pesters her. Femininity is used in the seduction game, masculinity in the power game. When other men respond to the jotas’ femininity by subordinating them, the jotas may choose to strike back with their masculinity. The earnest vestidas are kitsch, the ironic ones are camp; the former make a fetish of femininity, the latter parody it. The drag shows I have seen at Mexican discos are mostly kitsch, first-degree entertainment. The artists seem to take it all very seriously. The public judges them according to whether the artist really looks like a woman, whether he is beautiful, and whether he looks like the artist he is imitating. Very few add an ironic voice to their presentation, as did, for instance, the late North American drag artist Divine (who paid homage to bad taste in his literally speaking stinking movie Polyester). Some of my informants, such as Gata, add a bit of irony to their self-presentation, and keep some distance to it. The effect of this strategy is the freedom to juggle with gender, to never be pinpointed or nailed down. This second voice is a low one, and much less present than in drag in more industrialized countries. But I believe a complete second-degree attitude is impossible: one must enjoy a phenomenon in the first degree in order to be able to enjoy it in the second degree. The vestidas enjoy cheating their partners, being taken to be women. Once, when I arrived in Mexico, Mema and Lupita came to fetch me at the airport, together with Lupita’s new boyfnend, Jorge, who was driving the car. Lupita whispered in my ear, “He doesn’t

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know I’m hornosexuaal, so be careful.” They had been dating each other only for some weeks. T h e next day I asked her how she managed to cheat him when they had sex, but she told me she had told him she was a virgin, and wanted to wait before they had sex. I shook my head. A virgin in the city’s shortest miniskirt . . . this could not last. A few days later she took Jorge with her to Dandy’s, the disco where I had been myself that first night in Mexico City. They stopped to pick up Patricio (who told me this story afterward), then Marta and Cristina. Jorge looked surprised when he saw Marta, but said nothing. Then they stopped at Gata’s place, where Patricio went in. H e came back as Patricia, all dressed up with a garish dress, heavy makeup, and a huge wig, and told Jorge to drive off. Jorge asked where Patricio was, and Patricia answered: “I’m his big sister.” Jorge looked very surprised, but said nothing. At Dandy’s he had been very nice-still according to Patricia-and had paid all the entrance fees and for all the drinks, had held open doors and lit the cigarettes: quite unusual chivalry among my friends. But he was perhaps too generous with the drinks. In the car on the way home Marta started to strip off her clothes, showing her tits through the windowpane, before she threw out a nearly full bottle of rum when she was not allowed to have it first. Then she started to yell, “We’re all putos, we’ve all got horse cocks!” (This is the very same Marta who claims it is a misunderstanding that she was born with a penis.) Jorge slammed on the brakes, but still said nothing. H e drove everybody home, lussed Lupita on the cheek-and never showed up again. But Patricia claimed afterward that Jorge had not been fooled by anybody else but by himself, because he had been with Marta before, also sexually, believing she was a woman. Patricia thought he was just playing stupid, as long as it suited him, as long as the fraud was not too visible. I expected Lupita to be mad a t Marta, but no, she showed no regrets-such things happen all the time, affairs rarely last long. Some vestidas may be taken to be women even when undressed. Angela was stripped by the prison guards after being arrested for robbery, but they did not discover her sex, so that she was placed among the women-fortunately, since to be with the men would have been dangerous for her. Nora works as a strip dancer; all her colleagues are women, and the clients do not notice the difference. T h e ziestzdas may actually be able to fool men during the sexual act. It is of course much easier if the man cooperates a bit in the fraud, if he wants to be fooled, but that is not always necessary. T h e vestidas have stretched their own sexual organs enough to be able to hide

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them completely between their legs, and when seen from the front, even with the legs a bit apart, if they have breasts, they look exactly like women-this I can confirm since I myself have observed it. For the rest I have to rely on their accounts. When they have sex as prostitutes, they often do not undress completely-nor do they always do so with their lovers. In the latter case they may pretend to be too shy to undress, or insist on having the lights out, and not let their partners touch them. For them to have sex basically means having intercourse, with little foreplay, and it does not take much time. The vestdm tell me that by moistening their anus and choosing the right positions they can have anal intercourse with a man who believes he is having vaginal intercourse. The sex workers among them also tell me they sometimes let their clients “penetrate” them just between their legs or their buttocks, or in their hand-if the clients are drunk and excited, they do not notice. Marta informed me that when the clients ask her for the price, she answers, “Fifty in front, sixty in the mouth, eighty behind.” When they want in front, Marta puts on some lubricant, keeps her briefs and tights on, and lets him penetrate her through a hole in the tights. But this is dangerous, since if she gets caught, he may react violently. Marta told me, “I had a bad experience when I was fooling a man. It was about seven in the evening, but it was springtime, and light outside. He made love with a condom, he put it on, and had a very little penis. He was supposed to get into my anus, but got only between my legs. My mistake was to tell him ‘I want more.’ I don’t know how, but he put his hand there, and touched my penis. ‘A,’and he said ‘you son of a . . . ,’ and he took a machete and stuck it between my legs, and waved it in my face. And then I jumped out of that truck, half nude! He didn’t do anything to me, thanks to God.” Several killings are believed to have been caused by vestidas being thus revealed. Gata said, “I choose the position, I caress them, and I let myself be caressed to a certain limit. I don’t spread my legs. When they are about to penetrate me, I don’t do it with the light on. And I put it in its place. Just what a woman sells, nothing more. It’s all superficial, I don’t let them explore me.” She usually sells sex in areas where most sex workers are women, and thinks the clients take her to be one, too, in spite of the fact that she is tall even for a man. Her lovers either think she is a homosexual transvestite or believe she is an operated-on transsexual. She told me, “With my lovers, well, I have different kinds of lovers. I have had some who think I have not been operated on. I have lovers who believe I have been, and with

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them I have to fake. What I enjoy is their company, their caresses, their illusion while they are with me. Because they like to be with me; they are with an imitation of a woman, they know they are not with a woman, but with an illusion of a woman. That’s what I give them, and they’re happy. So as not to have an erection myself, I take hormones, because imagine if I didn’t! I take pleasure in the way I’ve told you. They ejaculate and everything. I don’t, I just enjoy my lover’s body, his face, his caresses. My lovers never know the truth, if I have or haven’t, never. Nor do my clients. Because I keep it dead, hormonized, so they never see anything. If they ask me, I say ‘Can’t you see for yourself?’ And that’s that. They stay with their doubt. I get up on them, I go down on them, they take me from the side, with my legs up toward my shoulders, standing like a dog, anything. But they never see my penis, and they never see where I put theirs.” This cheating might be interpreted as a game, a play. But if it is, the vestidas definitely are bad losers. Marta was picked up on the highway: “It was dusk, it was in November in 1987. I’ll never forget it. I wanted a lift, and nobody would stop. It’s getting dark and more difficult to get a ride. Then a car stops, a green Datsun. T h e driver, he’s very handsome, you know, all my respects, he asks me ‘Where are you going?’ ‘Home.’ ‘Come on, I’ll give you a ride.’ W e talked, and I told him I’m a hooker. Then he stops there on a flat stretch, and says ‘Straight away, how much is it?’ ‘That much, my love.’ ‘O.K.’ I was flattered, because he was really handsome, with a mustache, and not a fake one. I started to touch him with my hand, and I didn’t find anything! Then he says, ‘It’s because I’m lesbian.’ O h my God, take a leave! I got out of the car, throwing up, nauseated. I don’t know how long it lasted, but I swear I was traumatized. Because he was a man with a mustache and hair on his chest. H e was a little fat so he had a bit of breasts, but I never could have imagined he was a woman. So I say, just like I have fooled them, I was fooled that day. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.” Baudrillard ( I 990) praises the transvestites’ fraud. Society consists of signs referring to other signs and human life consists of symbolic transactions, of exchanges of signs and signals. But in modern society we have forgotten the rituals and the seduction. Baudrillard sees production as a masculine principle and seduction as a feminine one. Production is the deadly serious utilitarianism of the bourgeoisie; seduction is the aristocratic play with forms and expressions, versatile and purposeless. For women to claim that they are oppressed is a misunderstanding-they do not understand that seduction stands for

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control of the symbolic universe, while power only stands for control of the real universe (according to Baudrillard). Here I suppose many women would feel that having control over the symbolic universe is a rather poor compensation for an extremely demanding real universe. Baudrillard seems reactionary, but he may have a point concerning today’s disregard of the symbolic universe, and the lack of understanding of rituals and signs. Though we could protest that on the contrary we are inundated by signs. But our sensitivity to signs, our awareness, may be impaired. Interpreted in this way, Baudrillard’s argument joins that of Richard Sennett (1977), who argues that the increased eagerness to know whether something expresses a “true” sentiment or not is accompanied by a weakening of the sensitivity to form. T o Baudrillard, the transvestite cultivates seduction: all is signs. Gender appears when signs confirm biology (an illustration would be that the male child’s gender appears when he gets a boy’s name and a pale blue romper suit-signs that can confirm and mediate the biological condition). What the transvestites do is to separate biology from signs, and thus gender dissolves. The transvestites reveal the truth about gender by showing that the truth is a fraud-it is all makeup, theater and seduction, according to Baudrillard. The fraud knows no limits; there are even women who pretend to be transvestites-false transvestites, working as prostitutes in Paris. On the other hand, in Barcelona there are transvestites with beards and hairy chests. This fact indicates to us that “in this society femininity is naught but the signs with which men rig it up” (Baudrillard 1990: 14). At this point I would claim Baudrillard has gone too far and too fast into postmodernity. Perhaps at some future time, signs will become totally detached from their referents, but I doubt that this is really the case even in the industrial world of today. At any rate, this is definitely not the case for the Mexican vestidas. To them womanhood is an extremely serious project, and even the ironic vestidus would never combine signs in a contradictory way. T o them their feminine signs confirm a feminine essence, despite their male bodies. Their signs express the femininity and the attraction to men that they claim they have always felt. Moreover, they insist that their partners be consistent in their use of signs: they would never accept a partner who looked like a man but actually was a woman. Marta told me she threw up when that happened to her. She wanted a man’s sex, and was not satisfied with having only a man’s gender, even if what she offers is a woman’s gender and only an imitation of

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a woman’s sex. Whenever a man takes her for a woman, this affirms her self-image, but if the man is faking himself, it gives no support to her self-image. T h e vestidas disapprove of any signs of femininity in their partners. For example, bisexual men who are apparently manly but who secretly let themselves be penetrated as if they were hornosexuales are often criticized by the vestidas, even when the vestidas are the ones who penetrate them. A double set of morals? Perhaps, but I take it rather as a confirmation that even if gender consists of signs, the signs must refer to something; if they cannot refer to biological sex, they should at least refer to an experienced essence (of being born feminine and homosexual). Furthermore, these signs must also refer to each other in a consistent way. There are strict rules for combinations of signs, which means that breasts and beard together cannot be anything but a mockery. Genders are package solutions, giving only very limited freedom of combinations of gendered signs. And further: the vestidas do not dress as the opposite sex as some kind of amusement, to play with the sexes. O n the contrary, they dress as they do because they take the sexes extremely seriously. Without sex difference, their world falls apart. “Feminine? Well, wben it suits me.”

“Feminine, well, when it suits me,” Gata said, “but in the last resort my true identity remains to be found.” I was puzzled by the question of femininity-my own, deeply incorporated categories of femininity and masculinity were incessantly at work during my observations. Everything I observed was labeled and classified according to my ideas about femininity and masculinity. But as a sociologist who has studied gender for some years, I was also well aware of the arbitrariness of my own schemata. From reading and earlier stays, in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America, I had a more or less precise idea about the Mexican view on gender. However, what I had to realize was that the gender constructions I observed among thejotas in Neza could not be understood as mere reproductions of the general patterns of masculinity and femininity. Just as their physical presentation of self is a brzcolage, so are their representations of masculinity and of femininity. Their representations depend on the local perceptions of gender, but these perceptions are readapted, for the jotas’ particular use. Some vestidas were seated on one of the sofas in Mema’s living room, while some young men were seated on the other. T h e latter

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had had some drinks, but were still silent and shy. W e all knew that one of the main points of sitting here was that some couples probably would be formed, they would walk over to the Maiden’s Bower, they would have sex. Then they might come back, or they might fall asleep. Patricia had tuned the radio to her favorite station, “Amor 106,”where all the songs are romantic. A couple of the vestidas sang along, in falsetto. Patricia stood up, and made some dancing movements, as if almost by accident, as she walked out of the room, and some more when she got back. T h e boys watched her, but none of them made a move. I remembered the parties I had attended myself as a teenager, and considered that what was now needed was louder music, less light, and more to drink. But one of the reasons they all were so shy was my presence. T h e men wanted to first figure out whether I would join in. One of them caught my eye, and made some movements with his hand, as if masturbating. I could not avoid smiling, it seemed so clumsy to me. Pedro’s use of signs was a bit more sophisticated, he turned his foot to the side, and pointed one index finger to the toes and the other to the heel-and his glance spoke volumes, since his foot was well above average size. While young men often keep rather quiet when they come to Mema’s house, the jotas are usually not shy at all. I was often struck by how they used to tease each other and tell stories to each other. Many of them have astonishing verbal skills; they tell very funny stories with a lot of word play. Since they are also very conscious about their bodily presentations, their storytelling often turns into a performance. They stand up and act out the whole story, using a different pitch of voice for all the characters involved. They are often very direct, even impudent, and often make the boys blush. I used to find the boys rather boring during these shows. They seemed to me to have no impact on what happened, as if they could as well not have been present. But after a while I began to understand that they were a necessary public, that the shows were performed for them. T h e vestidas were a lot more relaxed when the boys were absent. Then they had what may be considered a kind of backstage communication; they more easily told stories not flattering to themselves, and actually exhibited at times a good deal of self-irony-as when Flaca told us about the different embarrassing situations her foam-rubber padding had caused her, when a man smacked her behind and heard the strange sound, or when she did not want to show her skinny legs at the beach, and went swimming, padding and all. When the boys are absent, the jotas form some sort of a “women’s community,”

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.combing each other’s hair, advising on makeup and discussing the boys. For example, Cristina: she is having a hard time figuring out whether a man is really interested or not-he gave her a kiss and invited her to his place, but when she got there, nothing happened, so she had to take the bus to get home some hours later. How is she to understand this? T h e others may give their opinions. They may advise and comfort each other, but actually they more often tease each other, often in a rather rough manner, hurting each other and even fighting. There is a permanent rivalry over positions in the house’s hierarchy. When Pancha breaks into a conversation with a big smile, saying, just like in the ad, “Look at my Colgate smile,” the reason for the remark is that one recently arrived and almost unknown j o t o happens to have very ugly teeth. T h e rivalry between them may take place in front of the boys. In the span of a couple of hours I witnessed the following confrontations. First Pancha and Angela competed about who had the nicest home. Pancha won, since her home was bigger, less crowded, and materially better equipped. But Angela took her revenge, by stating that she could walk about as she pleased at home, wearing a miniskirt and makeup, and be treated like a woman. Pancha knew this was a weak point, but said she wore her foam-rubber paddings at home. This was an obvious loss, and everybody laughed. Then Fifi and Gloria entered a contest. Which of them had sex with real men, and which of them had sex only with other homosexuales? With a seemingly perfect overview, they pattered out all the other’s partners and always found a reason to label the poor guy a homosexual, claiming to always know of somebody who has penetrated him, or referring to the fact that the man in question has never been seen with a woman. T h e otherjotas joined in, giving their opinion on the different men mentioned. T h e winner of this contest was not clear. Gloria entered a new contest with Angela, over looks. Who has the prettiest legs, the biggest behind, and passes the most easily as a woman? They showed the parts of the body under question, and the spectators gave their opinions. I find this competition over femaleness to have a very masculine form. In this permanent competition, looks and age are important. But verbal and social skills also count, as well as the social situation, whether one is independent and earns one’s own money. T h e signs that show adulthood are then more important than the signs of femininity. The permanent competing and shouting, the attempts to get

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all the attention drawn toward oneself-“Look at me, look at me”seem to me more reminiscent of young boys than of grls. I must admit their way of dealing with sex does, too, regardless of whether I keep to my own or their cultural standards. T h e jotus are extremely objectifymg and reducing in the way they talk about men. Sara had not been at Mema’s for some time, so she did not know so much about the boys there. I heard her ask Mema in the yard, “How is C&ar?”“O.K., but tiny.” “No, then I don’t care. What about Pedro?” “Big.” She went back to the Maidens’ Bower and seduced Pedro. Pancha once arrived with a boy who stayed over night. I asked Pancha next morning if she had had a good night. She answered with two signs. First, she used the two index fingers to show me a distance of six or seven inches. Then, she put her two hands together, with the right hand up and slapped the upper palm against the lower, before she turned the hands and repeated the movement with the left hand up. I now knew the boy’s penis size and that he had had both the insertor’s and the insertee’s role. Pancha continued her morning toilet without a word-no comments on feelings, whether they would meet again, or anything else. All the jotas seem to share the ideal that a man should have a big penis. O n the other hand, the biggest should only be admired and not inserted, as the insertee may get too loose afterward. They may claim themselves to have kept their rectums tight, and accuse, mockingly, their peers of being loose like used elastics-punga-gzcanguas a result of having been penetrated too much or by too big men. When they talk about their own genital parts, it is usually, and mockingly, in terms of their “pussy,” and when they admit to having male organs, they use diminutives (for instance pitito). As all the friends know perfectly well the penis size of all the others, there is often somebody who protests and teases the one who claims to have a pitito about having a pitote instead. T h e jotus with big penises may play embarrassed, but it is only play; they are not at all ashamed. T h e jotus mockingly present their own bodies as female bodies, but indeed as women in men’s images, using all kinds of hackneyed, pornographic effects. They talk about their “pussy,” spread their legs, groan, lick their fingers, and caress their nipples. Immediately afterward they may scream and parody female bashfulness. They inspect their peers and exhibit themselves-but only their “female” parts, such as legs, behinds, and breasts. Sometimes they put up contests, where the women present are encouraged to participate as well.

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Once the mayates who were present were invited to hold a contest over penis sizes afterward. This they did not do, but I found it interesting that the part of the body they were invited to exhibit was the part the jotas themselves hid. Apart from the studiously feminine movements, the jotas’ body usages connote, for me, more of a manly than a womanly attitude. When needed, they show their strength as men, they recur to violence pretty often, and they seem to enjoy physical games, although none are active in any kind of sports (except dancing). One night, after some heavy marihuana smoking, we were about fifteen persons who tumbled out from Mema’s house to play in the streets, games that seemed rather tough to me (but I have always been a chicken). They started by playing a t leapfrog. Then they split in two teams, “girls” and “boys,” and played “the donkey”: one team held each other around the hips and all bent down; those from the other team jumped up on them from behind, trying to get as far ahead as possible. The game inevitably ended with the donkey “breaking its back” and everybody falling down on the ground. T h e “girls” were in fact a lot more daring during these games than the “boys,” despite their miniskirts and high heels. They screamed in a very feminine way when they fell, but merely laughed when they got hurt. So all in all-the physical toughness, the way they may strip sexual relations of emotional aspects, the rivalry, the lack of shyness, the harsh humor-I find the jotas to have a communication between them that to me connotes far more masculinity than it does femininity. And this is true regardless of whether I use my European standards or try to adapt their Mexican standards. Is their femininity then only in their appearance? I will in the following section try to go more deeply into the question of identity. Constructing a Feminine Identity

After this look a t thejotas’ bodily construction of femininity and on the rather masculine patterns of interaction between them, I will turn to the more inner aspects of the construction of femininity or masculinity, to the construction of an identity. And, as with the bodily constructions, the exploration of the participants’ views will be paralleled by an exploration of the observer’s presuppositions. I had more or less supposed that I would find something like a “woman’s soul trapped in a male body,” or at least attempts to present oneself as such. But that was not exactly what I found. I was, again, preoccupied

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with the problem of genuineness, of whether their feminine appearance referred to an inner experience of being a woman. But that was not their preoccupation (see also Kulick, forthcoming). In the North American sociologist Harold Garfinkel’s (1967) story about the transsexual Agnes, it appears that her main concern was to “pass” as a woman, and she constantly feared betrayal. She therefore had to plan all social situations, prepare for all kinds of questions, guess the kind of responses that was expected, talk about her past in a way that would avoid further questioning and use a series of small lies (p. 173): “In the conduct of his everyday affairs in order for the person to treat rationally the one-tenth of this situation that, like an iceberg appears above the water, he must be able to treat the nine-tenths that lies below as an unquestioned and, perhaps even more interestingly, as an unquestionable background of matters that are demonstrably relevant to his calculation, but which appear without even being noticed.” To have a female appearance is the least problematic. All the unspoken about female ways of behaving, all that is taken for granted and remain unconscious for natural-born women, that is the difficult part. Garfinkel regards Agnes as a “practical methodologist” (1967:180)in the sexual field, one who can uncover what is seen as natural and taken for granted in everyday life. I agree with Garfinkel that Agnes’s particular position may make her a very sensitive observer, because she needs her sensitivity to be able to pass. But I also think her position colors and biases what she sees, that it even may give her some blind spots. In the same way as Agnes, the Mexican transvestites have to create their femininity by interpreting what femininity is in their culture. Below I will show that they are sensitive but highly selective readers of their own culture. Certainly I should advise against using them as key informants on Mexican femininity in general. This is because their reading of femininity is an interested reading. Regarding her understanding of herself, it was striking how Agnes insisted that she was a woman, that her womanhood was “natural,” also biologically speahng. Her male sexual organs were just a mistake, and when she reached puberty, her breasts started to develop all by themselves. This was perhaps told only to convince Garfinkel and the doctors who evaluated her case that they had to allow her a surgical sex change. After the operation she confessed that she had started to steal hormone pills from her mother at the age of twelve. But her insistence on a “natural” and inborn femaleness is typical of

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male-to-female transsexuals, who very often adhere to a thoroughly essentialist comprehension of the sexes (Carrigan, Connell, and Lee 1985:597). They may be the only persons in the world who actually have chosen their sex, yet they are the last ones to claim that sex is founded on choice: they have always belonged to the other sex, their body was just a misunderstanding. I found the same paradox among thejotas. They very actively go about forming their femininity, but at the same time insist that they are born feminine, and have merely adjusted themselves to the original creation. They claim that even as small children they wanted to play with their sisters’ dolls instead of their own toy cars, and that they also played a t dressing up in their mother’s clothes. They try to present a highly ambiguous situation as unambiguous. I proceeded by asking the jotas what they regarded as feminine features in themselves. T h e question, and my expectations regarding the kind of answers I would get, revealed more about my presuppositions than about theirs. I expected answers of a psychological and emotional nature. But their first answer usually had something to do with their appearance: to them, femininity resides in appearance. O r it resides in sexual behavior, simply in the fact that they are homosexuales. As Gloria answered the question about her feminine features: “I am not attracted by women.” Femininity and homosexuality refer to each other and confirm each other in a closed circle. They find a further sign of femininity in their sexual behavior. T h e only interviewee who wanted a surgical change of sex, Marta, claimed she did not understand why she was born with a penis: “I have always been passive, I don’t like to be heterosexual [active, penetrating]. I am a woman, nothing else. It happens that my penis gets erect, I can’t deny it. But it hurts me. I did not want it, to begin with. I want to be a woman. I look at myself when I pee and I say ‘A,this penis isn’t mine, who stole my little pussy?’ It bothers me to have a penis. There are days when it even makes me sick. Like it isn’t mine, and I would like to take a knife or scissors and cut it off and throw it away, where I can’t find it. I would like to make a lot of modifications in order to look like I am a woman, fully a woman. Even if I’m not, if I can’t get pregnant, but I tell you: I am a woman and I will stay a woman, a woman, a woman.” Marta alternated between saying that she was a woman and that she was not, or not completely. This I interpret as an alternation between different definitions of “woman”: the strictest is the biological and requires the ability to get pregnant; the mildest is based only

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on appearance, but is also supported by her sexual behavior, the fact that she does not like to have the insertor’s role. To only be penetrated during intercourse is an important part of the image thejotas want to give of themselves, but many of them may admit it is not always true. Some added that they enjoyed being reserved during the initial flirt, letting the man take the initiative. As far as I can judge, however, this is far from true; they are about as coy as starving ravens. Flaca is one of those who claimed to be coy. But when I asked her how she expresses this, it all boiled down to her not actually grabbing the sexual organs of the men she accosts. According to my standards of femininity, Lupita is one of the most feminine of them all. It is easy for me to perceive her as a woman because she looks like a woman and because she seems to me to resemble a woman emotionally. She is a very warm person; I am struck by how she always cares for others, how she seems to enjoy helping others and pleasing them, and also how overtly she expresses her feelings, both joy and sadness. And yet, she hardly mentioned any of this when I asked her about what she sees as her feminine traits. She said that she does consider herself as more feminine than many of the otherjotas: “I see how they treat their ‘husbands.’ I’m more loving, and I’m cleaner. And I love to do everything like a woman, it fascinates me:So I started to cook and everything like that. If I had really been a woman, I don’t know if I would have liked to work in the red-light zone, or if I would have dedicated myself only to my home. But I feel I’m more a woman than a man.” Also psychologically? “Yes, psychologically. Because I don’t like to go with the men and turn them or anything like that, but only that they do it to me, because I enjoy to feel them inside me. Like when a woman has a man, like that. And then I try to behave so well as I can. If I go dressed as a woman, I won’t be shouting or whistling or anything like that, because women don’t do that. So when we imitate women, we have to do it with some skill.” So the feminine traits to her are to be loving, to be clean, to enjoy housework, to remain passive sexually, and to practice discreet behavior in public places. What Lupita said corresponds fairly well to what I have observed, but I know she also sometimes enjoys taking the active part, and I have seen that her discreetness evaporates when she drinks. She quite often gets into trouble then, even fights. So Lupita’s description of herself was somewhat selective. She went into a bit more detail about her sexual preferences: “I

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enjoy it very much when they penetrate me. So we have been to parties, where we may be a couple of homosexuales and maybe six or seven men. And my friend may have one of them, while I’ll have them all. ’Cause it fascinates me, to have sex, but only that they penetrate me. Usually I don’t like to suck them. But when I meet some very handsome guys, I like to heat them up a little, to kiss them, and I also love it when they kiss me. T o feel, well, like a woman, I don’t know. Because I’ve seen that women don’t suck them or anything, they are only penetrated, nothing more. So well, I don’t like to suck them. Who knows, I don’t like it.” Underlying the “who knows,” is the possibility that it might be because she is as feminine as she is that she does not like fellatio. Her sexual tastes would then be signs of her femininity. But again she was being very selective-the fact that she likes to have sex with all of the men in turn could be seen as a trait that shows she is probably different from most Mexican women. Lupita was well aware that women and homosexuales live very different lives: “I love to travel, it fascinates me. T o go from one place to another, to take to the highway, to hitchhike, so they take me where I want to go. So I get around, I get drunk, I cheat the men [by pretending to be a woman], I steal from them, I do anything. So in that way one has more fun than a woman has.” This is not necessarily something that makes her less feminine in her own eyes, since I have heard several jotas assume that if women were not subjected to strong social control, they would probably live more as the jotas do. Unfortunately I did not ask Lupita about this. T h e supposedly feminine traits that Lupita as well as Flaca pointed to correspond partly to norms for feminine behavior. There can be no doubt, for instance, that in Mexico women are expected to be more discreet than men. They thereby also demonstrate the ethnomethodological point about norms serving to interpret acts after they have happened rather than motivating them (cf. Heritage 1987). T h e jotas have certainly not become as feminine as they are because of any internalization of norms for feminine behavior! T o a certain degree they have, however, observed how women act, and have tried, rather consciously, to imitate some of these traits. Still, it is hard to sort out what are true descriptions of themselves, what are more superficial parts of a presentation of the self, and what are merely polite responses to a prying sociologist. In the interviews, I followed up the initial question about what they saw as feminine in themselves by aslung if they could indicate

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any feminine features in their mentality. Some answered that they liked to make themselves up and to dress up, so it still revolved around appearance. Others, like Lupita, told me they liked housework. Marta said, “If Mum or I have guests, I help her prepare the food, everything like a woman, or iron my clothes, do the laundry, help my mum with errands. I love being a woman in that way. To wait upon the man I’ll love. If you can wash and iron and know how to wait on a man, then you are a woman. Otherwise, you are no woman.” Having lived with some of them, however, I have good reason to doubt that they really like housework that much. Confronted with a stack of dirty dishes their femininity evaporates, and they start to resemble lazy teenagers. Not that this is any proof that their femininity is superficial-I suspect their sisters are not always fond of doing the dishes either. But their sisters can refrain from liking housework without much ado. (That they lack the same possibilities to escape it is another question.) Those who are not women, but who want to appear as such, might feel another pressure on impression management. They emphasize the feminine characteristics they think they have at least a bit of, passing more hurriedly over the more masculine ones. At least this is what they do when confronted with a persistent interviewer. But I doubt that they need these inner qualities as justifications for their feminine appearance. The fact that they like to have a feminine appearance, are attracted to men, and enjoy being penetrated is justification enough for them. Once I asked Flaca, jokingly, whether she wanted to get married. “Oh yes, I would like to have a long, white gown, and a swell guy, and a honeymoon . . .” And then? “Fucking. Then hds, not more than two.” And housework? “Oh no, my husband will get me a housemaid, I am too smart for that. Sometimes I ask myself why I didn’t become a woman. But good wives who cook, iron, wash, have kids . . . no, no, never! And the husbands who work to provide for the children, take them here and there, buy this and that for them and so on-can you imagine that? As the put0 I am, I don’t work for nobody, I have no children to support.” So after all Flaca didn’t really want a husband: “Then you have to put up with a lot. With a lover, you can get angry, you can beat it at a party, you can dress up all sexy. But with a husband, you have to put up with him. No, no, and what a drag it would be to have to see him every day!” Flaca might dream of womanhood, but still she was a teenager who cherished teenagers’ lack of commitment, and she was well aware of a major advantage of not being a woman: more freedom.

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T o Gata, freedom is the main difference between men and women. She wants the possibility to seduce men that women have, but without the social subordination: “I have watched women. They are slaves, they are servants. That’s the way it is in my country. Maids and other idiots. No, I would have preferred to be a woman, but not like that, no, I would not have preferred it. Because then love would have come to me. I would have fallen in love. I would have abandoned myself completely and I would have let myself get pregnant. Then a child would have come, and I would have worshipped it, adored it. And I would have become the slave of another being. Now, when I fall in love with a man, it is only for a short time, and all the same I become his slave, so imagine what it would be like to have a child. No, when I see it like this, I am better the way things are. Thank God.” Freedom of movement was mentioned by several of them as something that distinguished them from women. One of the basic contrasts or oppositions that sustain sexual division and thereby male dominance in many, perhaps all, societies, is the one drawn between public space and private space. In Latin America the line is drawn up between la casa and la calle, the house and the street. As Parker says about the street in Brazil ( I ~ ~ I : I O I “It ) , offers individual freedom as well as temptation and danger. It is a fundamentally male space, inhabited, perhaps, by whores and sinners, but certainly not by a proper wife or mother.” Women should limit their movements in the street, preferably not be alone, and certainly not after dark. T o break these rules may be perceived as a sign of sexual availability. Th e jotas have not taken up this social agoraphobia, as Bourdieu (1990) names it when women limit their movements in men’s space themselves-because they do not feel at ease there. Thejotas move around in men’s space; this can be risky, as earlier mentioned, but it is also a precondition for realizing their sexual projects. They are, and want to be, sexually available. Mema’s casa is also men’s space, as demonstrated by the fact that “decent” girls or women do not join in, only a few girls who are no longer virgins and no longer are under their families’ control, or women who are divorced and live without a husband. There is a silent field, a blank spot, in thejotas’versions of womanhood: motherhood. That is, after all, the one aspect of womanhood that they have no chances of biologically acquiring. It is hardly an overstatement to say that for Mexican women motherhood means the accomplishment of womanhood (see Melhuus 1992, 1993). T o

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remain childless is seen as a sad fate indeed. Moreover, motherhood implies social security. Their childlessness makes old age an insecure prospect for the jotas. Nevertheless, Gata could only find negative words to refer to motherhood-as dependency or slavery. The others remain silent about it (which does not mean they would not like to have children, if it were possible for them). The jotas, and among them the vestidas in particular, construct their identities by reading a narrative of what a woman is-a narrative they have written on their own bodies. But the text they read is not the same as the one women themselves read. Even if their proposed social role is rigid in many ways, because of the cultural link that is made between male homosexuality and femininity, they use any available maneuvering space to exert their creativity and make their own forms of adaptation. And since they have not grown into this femininity, they will always keep some distance to it, a distance that gives them the possibility to play with it, to exaggerate it or to relax from it, according to the context. They can never be completely absorbed by femininity, because it is not taken for granted and because they do not need to be absorbed by it. They are not women, they know it, and, except for some men who are cheated on, everybody else knows it, too. They become like the children Goffman (1961a: 107-08) observed on a merry-go-round-a little too old to be absorbed by the fun and embrace the role of a merry-go-round rider, and a little too aware of being observed, they try to show how detached they are from their activity, to show their irreverence, their distance from the role, by holding on to the horse by its ear or its tail rather than the reins, and only with one hand. This does not mean that their femininity is inauthentic-albeit it would be so in my own cultural context, where outer presentation of femininity should refer to an inner experience of being a woman, or at least feeling like one. This link is not theirs. Theirs is instead one between external femininity and a feeling of sexual attraction to men together with a liking for the passive role in sexual intercourse.

M A C H O S A N 1 1 M A Y A TICS

Masculinity and Bisexuality Mayate is the term used by the jotas to denote men who have sex with other men without being feminine and without seeing themselves as homosexual. Many mayates are married, others are still too young for marriage, but most probably also have sex with women. T o the extent that they are with men, they are usually with men who are self-identified homosexuals, such as the vestidas and the other jotas. This chapter deals with the mayates’ homosexual encounters. I will try to give an idea of the extent of it, to describe the context inside which it takes place and the surrounding moral climate. I then discuss how mayates handle these homosexual encounters so as not to damage their sense of masculinity. T h e last part of the chapter deals with the different ways in which the male bisexuality may be explained, or understood. T h e most common explanations have related it to the unavailability of sexually accessible women for young men, or to a supposedly repressed homosexual desire formed by a particular family context. I will put more emphasis on a cultural interpretation, relating male bisexuality to the symbolic structure in which it is embedded. A Widespread Practice

The jotas often claim that all men are mayates, or may become mayates; they may complain that there are hardly any bugas (purely

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heterosexual men) anymore. As Fifi said, “Before, it hardly ever happened that a man would go with a joto, or he would do it very discreetly. But now, most men do, and they do it in front of their friends, it doesn’t bother them at all. That is the truth. Almost IOO percent. Or 90 percent, and 10percent bugas.” This statement probably reflects a particular viewpoint, but even without data from quantitative studies, I would assert that it is not at all unusual for Mexican men from the urban working class to have sexual experience with men, a t least during certain periods of their lives. There are no studies that give any well-founded estimates of the number of mayates. Carrier departs from IGnsey’s estimates for the United States in the 1940sto reason that in Mexico about 30 percent of single, sexually active males between fifteen and twenty-five may have “mixed sexual histories.” But as Kinsey’s estimates were not based on a random sample (cf. O’Connell Davidson and Layder I 994 for a severe criticism of Kinsey’s survey), the basis for Carrier’s estimate is also loose. However, when I explained to him the impossibility of measuring the frequency of males having had at least one homosexual experience, Mema started counting. First he counted the twelve households closest to his own house. Then, since he thought the figure might be biased by the closeness to his house, he counted the twenty-seven households in the street where his mother lived. In this way he arrived at I 30 men in thirty-nine households (excluding pre-pubertal boys). Out of these he affirmed that at least eighty-two (63 percent) had had at least one homosexual experience. And this he knew because either he had seduced them himself or he knew somebody who had. T h e remaining forty-eight were in most cases the fathers in the households or other adults, and Mema would not exclude the possibility that they had had homosexual experiences in their youth. I regard the figure as rather reliable, although Mema may have forgotten some of the men living in these households. But it is of course biased by Mema himself, who is a particularly successful seducer, so that one would not know how many of these men would have had a homosexual experience if Mema had not been there to seduce them. Still, the figure is interesting, because it shows that a high proportion of men may let themselves be seduced by a jota, and probably most young men living in these urban working-class areas in Neza and Mexico City will at some time or another encounter somejotas who try to seduce them. Other researchers, such as Taylor (1986),Alonso and Koreck

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Fig. I 7. Vanessa and Ricardo. ( I 988),

Lumsden ( I 99 I), Carrier (I 985, I 995), and Wilson ( I 995), also provide information supportive of the impression that male bisexuality is fairly widespread in several parts of Mexico. These qualitative studies, my own included, cannot estimate bow widespread it is, but may show how easy it is forjotos to obtain sexual contact with men, which in turn would support the assumption that this bisexuality must be far more widespread in Mexico than in the United States and in European countries. T h e following examples are from my own fieldwork. A feminine

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jota can go into the underground during the rush hour and end up

pressed against a man who feels him up or lets himself be felt up. I have seen men push forward the minute they see a man who can be expected to be homosexual come into the carriage, and they make sure to stand close to him. Many men try to feel up women, too, which is one of the reasons that there exist some separate carriages for women and children only. But an itchy-fingered man may have better luck with ajotu, who often will put a hand into his pants and masturbate him. In the rush hour the carriages are so crowded that it is not possible for anybody to really see what happens ( have I been felt up myself without even being able to tell who did it). This means that I have not really observed the sexual behavior even if I have been present; I have just learned to judge from the positions and the glances (like the stiff gaze and clenched teeth of a man who tries to hide that he is coming), and heard what thejotas have told me about it afterward, a couple of times with semen on their hands as “proof.” Thejotas brag about their exploits, and tell me that they also have tried oral and even anal sex in the crowd. I have also seen how the hairdressing parlors become meeting places. The parlors give a perfect cover, since the men have a good reason to enter them. In some parlors a man will have to follow the hairdresser to the back room in order to have a shampooing; in other parlors another pretext is needed. I noticed it when the shampooing took a bit more time than usual, and the hairdressers told me why afterward. If it is a young and handsome boy, he may get the haircut for free; sometimes the men will have to pay for the sex as with a prostitute, but I think there usually is no money involved. One morning we were awakened by somebody knocking at the gate. Mema went out in his nightgown. He told me when he got back that it had been a man asking whether Mema had any work for a carpenter. Mema told him he did not. The man then grabbed his own genitals, and asked whether Mema would like some other services instead. As the carpenter wanted to be paid for it, Mema let him go. Another day the plumber came to fix the drains. He worked as well as he could considering that some vestidas were running around him, making a lot of jokes, and he finished up in the Maidens’ Bower with Lupita. The man who at that time read the electric meter always ended his work there. In the evenings neighbors often come by, hoping for sex. Usually they enter, take a cigarette, listen to some music, before getting to the point. But sometimes the request is very direct. Once Pancha

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went to see who was knocking at the gate, and came back to tell Mema and Lupita, who were watching television, that “it’s the small, fat guy who lives across the street and another guy I don’t know. They want a tortilla [literally a pancake, here a lay].” Mema asked if Pancha wanted to. Pancha said yes, but not both of them. Neither Mema nor Lupita felt like joining her, so she asked the men to come back another day. I have also been present at neighborhood parties (for instance a celebration of a daughter’s fifteenth birthday) where there is dancing in the street outside the house. T h e men ask the jotas to dance, or they catch their eyes and then follow them to the bathroom, to have sex with them. What happens is perhaps not obvious, but is easy enough for any alert observer to notice. It becomes totally visible only inside rooms where everyone is participating or where the only exceptions, myself or some other woman perhaps, apparently do not count. I suppose the mere fact that we are there indicates that we are not decent women. As noted earlier, some mayates seemed to be disturbed by my presence, but not all, and I have been present several times when mayates have climbed up to the upper bed in the Maidens’ Bower and had sex with a jota, usually by lying behind him, penetrating him without undressing more than strictly necessary. Sometimes thejota has continued to participate in the conversation with the rest of us, sitting below. I have already mentioned (chapter 2) a stag party where some couples went to have sex in a bed in the same room, hidden only by a curtain that was drawn aside several times by some of the other boys present. So I have good reason to beli,eve that when the jotas tell me about sexual relations they have had with several men at places with no women present, they are telling me the truth. After one of the first times Flaca had been arrested and detained in a juvenile hall, she told me that it had been fun. “Of course! I just stayed in bed. I was the only homosexual on the wing, so everybody came to see me.” Later, however, she had far more violent experiences, once being raped by the entire wing (see also Buffington [1997] on the tradition of male homosexuality in Mexican prisons). Flaca also told me about a time when she was in the streets sniffing glue. “And so comes the paddy wagon. And the guy who was with me hides under a car, and he doesn’t warn me. So I have to get in, and they say to me ‘Let’s see, you’re very cbemita [high on glue, diminutive in female gender].’ I tell them, ‘Oh no, I’m chemito [same in male gender], I’m a man. ‘Oh, bloody puto,’ and I don’t know

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what. ‘We’re going to lock you up., They were real assholes. They took me to the station. But they didn’t let me out. So they said, ‘Do you know how to fuck with your ass?’ ‘Oh, no, please sweetie, better if I suck you, isn’t it?’ ‘No, with your ass, or we’ll lock you up,’ Well, so they took me to another place, and there they fucked me. I said ‘Wait a moment, I’ve got the foam-rubber paddings.’ He told me, ‘It doesn’t matter. If I like you, it’s for your face, not your body.’ I wanted to do it without showing my buttocks, but he said ‘No, take everything off.’ So I had to take off the foam rubber, and then . . . my legs! [Flaca screams, embarrassed by the fact the men saw her skinny legs.] Then he fucked me very nicely, several times, from different positions. And then the next one came. No, first they took me to a house. There the second one fucked me, with this enormous cock. Then four other policemen arrived, and I had to receive them all. But with condoms. All of them.” I asked her whether she enjoyed it. “Yes, the first ones, yes. But by the fourth time I couldn’t take it anymore, and when the last one came, I was all loose behind there, guanga-panga.” Mema once took me for some days of vacation to a village close to Veracruz, on the Atlantic coast. This part of Mexico has a reputation for especially widespread male bisexuality. It is said that a man should always be very careful if he has to share a bed with a man from Veracruz. Mema said the Veracruzan men are called macberos“They like to fuck the machos.” The first night we went to a birthday party, to a married girlfriend of a friend of Mema’s. Everyone applauded as we entered, Mema, Gabriel, who is a slightly feminine-looking homosexual man from the middle class, and myself. The living room was cleared of all furniture; the guests were to dance. There were maybe thirty of us, most of us rather young, and more men than women. The most courageous of the young men invited me to dance; he knew that now everybody would stop to watch how the foreign woman danced. But they quickly lost interest, and turned their attention toward Mema. A very old, toothless, barefoot man with tattered clothes and a tired straw hat invited Mema to dance. Gabriel told me the man was a homosexuulwho lived in the village, and was much liked by everybody, because he always gave a helping hand at parties. The other guests applauded for the dancing couple, but only one of the masculinelooking men dared to invite Mema to dance afterward, and Gabriel, less feminine than Mema, was not invited at all. The woman who

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was giving the party was herself a brilliant dancer. She was fat, which is in fact an advantage when dancing to tropical music, as you can get your whole body to shake at breathtaking speed. T h e other girls were younger, and danced in a much more discreet manner, possibly because their brothers were there, too, watching them. T h e boys, however, were more daring in their movements than the boys in Mexico City usually were. Mambo was the kind of music they preferred. Then the boys danced together, making a sort of contest where they bent their legs, leaned over backward, and tried to get their shoulders as close to the floor as possible, and got up again, all while shaking in time with the rhythm. When Mema made a little trip outside, several boys “accidentally” followed him, probably out of curiosity, to observe whether somebody followed him somewhere. Mema told me afterward he thought most of them wanted to, but none wished to be seen by the others. Then we left, and I suppose the girls were happy about that. These parties are among the rare occasions they have to go out and meet the boys, and they were all dressed up in their best finery. They must have been disappointed when a jota and a foreign woman stole the show. W e went to a cantina, a bar for men. I never went to cantinas in Mexico City, because Mema thought it would be too risky for meand for himself. There were about fifty men present at this one, mostly fishermen and farmhands, dressed in their wornout workday clothes, and drinking beer or rum. At one table there was a group of men who looked like homosexuals from the middle class. Three girls were serving drinks, and they sat down at the tables to drink with the clients. These girls usually also sell sexual services. T h e men were drunk and itchy-fingered. At one table they were quarreling; one of them had to be led out, smashing bottles on the floor as he left. Outside there were some penniless young boys looking in through the wrought-iron bars (there was no glass in the windows). A lone vestida gave a poor show; she had seen better days, and was not particularly good-looking. Since she was the only performer, there was a break every time she changed her costume. After the show a band started to play the most popular tropical songs. T h e men started to invite women to dance. But there were only four women present, and Mema ordered me not to dance, since that would have marked me as a prostitute and I might have had trouble. A man with a cowboy hat and shining boots tried to pull me out on the floor, but Mema stopped him. T h e next man I said no to

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promptly invited Mema instead. The vestih who had given the show was already dancing, with a man who was feeling her up. Gabriel was not invited to dance here either. He went over to the bar counter, talked with a couple of young boys, and then came back to tell us we were to let the boys leave first, since they did not want to be seen leaving with us. Mema gave me the keys to the van, and they jumped in the back, where the boys joined them when we picked them up a little further down the road. I drove them to the beach, where I let them enjoy life the way they wanted, while I went for a midnight swim. Half an hour later we drove back to the village, let off the boys, and headed for another cantina. It was about one o’clock, but the show was still going strong, two vestihs taking turns at miming to popular songs. There were about twenty masculine-looking men present, and they all seemed to be very drunk. There were a couple of men who looked like slightly effeminate homosexuals, too, but no women. The pickup procedure worked through glances; a masculine man caught the eyes of a man who seemed to be homosexual, and then one of them went out of the room, with the other following a moment later. Then they, according to Mema, had sex in the toilet or outside, in the dark tropical night. They came back separately. Mema told me that a couple of the men he had followed had asked him for money, but had not insisted. He also told me that several of them had asked him how much they would have to pay to get me. We left, and Mema rounded off a long night by picking up the night guard at our hotel. The next night we went to Nacho’s place. Nacho is a slunny, tiredlooking homosexual man in his forties, who has put up a shed where he sells soft drinks, beer, and rum. The floor is concrete, the roof is of corrugated iron, and the windows are open holes which he covers with wooden shutters when he closes up. Inside, there are three plastic tables, about fifteen chairs and a jukebox. The walls are made of salvaged planks, all in different faded colors. There are no decorations, just a board announcing that the establishment gives no credit today, and none at all tomorrow, and another board where the names of those who all the same have managed to put themselves in debt to the establishment are listed, in chalk. We arrived an hour before midnight, and Nacho was alone. But during the hours that followed, about twenty people came by, all male, the youngest fourteen, the oldest about thirty. A sudden tropical downpour kept them from

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leaving. T h e pickup routine was the same: eye contact, then following each other out to the toilet. But there were so few people that it was necessarily evident to everybody what was going on. Mema was out with one man when two of the youngest ones decided to follow them. T h e other men tried to stop them, told them to leave Mema and his date alone. T h e boys just giggled and went out. Mema told me afterward that the boys had tried to watch, and that he had chased them. When Mema and his date got back, they were applauded by all the men present. Gabriel went out with another man, and they were also applauded when they came back. I believe that Mexican male bisexuality often takes place in a public space but in a way that makes it visible only to the interested eye, or else it is relegated to a men’s room where those who see it are themselves implicated. Some movie houses are well known for male sexual encounters-in the back seats or in the gallery, in the dark, where nobody knows who their partner is. T h e division between a masculine and a feminine part must then be less strict, but is also of less importance, since nobody will know. Another famous meeting place is the public baths, where men hide in the steam, where contact is made silently, where a gaze toward another man’s penis or behind tells what one wants. T h e North American anthropologist Clark Taylor ( I 986) has described homosexual encounters at public places in Mexico. At nighttime, men gather at plazas; they may talk a little, drink a little, smoke some marihuana, and maybe engage in flirting and joking with men who display themselves as homosexuals, and perhaps have a sexual relation. These encounters are not segregated from other activities. Taylor uses Goffman’s terminology, calling such encounters a game, where there are players in different roles: effeminate homosexuals, homosexuals who pretend to be masculine, thieves who pretend to be homosexuals, police agents who pretend to be hustlers, and so on-and a great many people who either don’t notice anything or who pretend not to notice anything. Contact is made through glances. If words are used, they are code words, indicating whether one is an insider or not. In this way the encounters may be evident and secret at the same time, and the players may move in and out of the game. If the game is disclosed, it can be stopped immediately-and nothing has really happened. Taylor does not discuss the psychological consequences, but I would think that this tacit organization of the activity also leaves the participants free to keep it as a nonverbal and only semiconscious

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activity (if this is true, it may explain some of the difficulties involved in reaching bisexual men with AIDS education; many may not even admit to themselves that they are targets). A Tolerated Practice?

Some studies which indicate that male bisexuality is widespread throughout Latin America have linked this phenomenon to its relative acceptability. For example, Carrier writes (1985:77-78), “Masculine males who play the active insertor role in homosexual encounters generally are not conceptualized as homosexuals in Mexico. This lack of stigmatization provides prospective active participants with the important feeling that their masculine self-image is not threatened by their homosexual behavior.” The impact of this statement is, however, weakened by many descriptions of how the participants try to hide what they do and refuse to talk about it (Carrier 1995). The anthropologists Ana Maria Alonso and Maria Teresa Koreck are less nuanced when they state the following (1988:1I I ) , “Our research in rural northern Mexico has led us to conclude that the active, penetrating role in sexual intercourse is seen as a source of honor and power, an index of the attributes of masculinity, including virility. This is why the active role in macho-joto relations carries no stigma.” And Lancaster states concerning Nicaragua ( I 992241): “Only the anal-passive coch6n is stigmatized. His partner, the active hombre-hombre, is not stigmatized at all, moreover, no clear category exists in the popular language to classify him. For all purposes, he is just a normal, Nicaraguan male.” While basically agreeing, I want to add some nuances. Observing the lack of a public label (myate is a term known almost exclusively to the homosexuales) together with the frequency and lack of reservation surrounding these contacts may lead one to believe that bisexual practice is a nonstigmatized and tolerated kind of behavior. But this deduction is problematic: we cannot automatically deduce that a phenomenon is accepted merely because it is widespread-particularly not in the sphere of sexual morals. For example, in large parts of the world marital infidelity is no doubt fairly widespread, but this does not mean it is generally morally accepted. My observations indicate that male bisexuality in Mexico is neither socially accepted nor stigmatized; this polarization does not grasp the complexity of what is happening. Perhaps the practice is not stigmatized-but only so long as it remains relatively invisible, so long as it is kept within a purely

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male context, so long as it is not talked about, so long as certain rules are respected, and so long as it is euphemized. W e have seen that contacts between jotas and masculine men in Mexico are not made too openly-unless in a closed men 5- yoom, such as a prison, a bath, a cantina, or a stag party, where several or all the men participate. T h e jotas may flirt very openly with men in public places, and the men may smile or laugh, maybe even answer and give thejota a compliment, maybe tell him “I like you, too.” But I have never observed any of these ordinary-loohng men engaging in romantic flirtation with a jota, the way I have often seen them do with women. In most cases it will be the iota who takes the initiative, and the man will not consider himself to be in the role of a conqueror. T h e jotas’ feminine bearing serves to conceal the fact that what is happening is actually a homosexual relation. To a certain extent, the mayates can have sex with men without ever being aware of it. Many vestidas look completely like women, even with their clothes off. If they do not let the man touch their intimate parts, they are often capable of having sex without his discovering that he has had anal instead of vaginal intercourse. But what is probably more common is for the men to fool themselves, rather than being fooled. As Gerard0 Ortega (Mema) once stated in an interview (1989:56), “The point of going with a transvestite is that you are with a man enwrapped as a woman. T o the man who does not want to admit his homosexual side, this functions as a justification for himself; he will still be macho, for in the intimacy, who will see him?” But even just some slight signs of femininity in the homosexual may do, may be enough to ensure the other that he is the man in the relationship. These are intricate games where the jota willingly gives the man the excuses and pretexts he needs. A common pretext is money: it is not a t all unusual that the mayates are the ones who “prostitute” themselves (this goes, of course, only for leisure-time partners, the attractive young men, and not for the clients in prostitution). But as a rule these young men “sell” themselves cheaply. Thejotas give them some money, some drinks, some food, or some clothes in exchange for sexual services, just enough to give these young men an alibi: they can pretend they did not enter the sexual relationship out of a desire for the jota: it was just because they could make some kind of economic gain from it. Those who are believed to have money rather than sexual pleasure as their motivation are often called cbich.$os, which means hustlers. But it is not easy to determine the real motivation.

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Ernest0 had his first sexual contact at sixteen, with ajotu, and they thereafter stayed together for three years. “It all happened because I was badly treated at home. There was a time when I started to like drugs, and my father noticed. I then got to know this person who gave me everything, everything I wanted. So perhaps not so much to be with him, like that, sexually with him, but for the things he gave me, I think. But I mixed things up, because I asked him for things, like ‘You know what? I would like some drugs,’ you see, or ‘I would like that thing.’ But I didn’t notice that I was falling in love with him. There were days when we didn’t see each other. And I felt bad, I started to cry. And I used drugs. T h e truth is that I was hopelessly in love with this person. But I didn’t know if I loved him, if I wanted his money or if I wanted his affection. But the tables had been turned, I was not interested in his money anymore, that he should buy things for me. I just wanted him to be with me. H e never paid me, I want you to understand that I didn’t charge him to be with me, but he satisfied all my wishes. I wanted clothes, he bought me clothes or whatever it was.” In conversations with men who did not know that I knew they had sexual contacts with the jotus, they denied such contacts. This made it difficult for me to get interviews with mayates; they had to know I already knew. Those interviewed knew that I already knew, because they knew I was staymg with some of their sexual partners, who had probably told me about it, and sometimes because I had had the opportunity to watch them pick up a partner.’ I knew very well that Felipe himself as well as his younger brothers were all regular lovers of Patricia, and that Felipe also had been with I . Bourdieu claims it is a prerequisite for the interviewer to already know the truth, and for the interviewed to know that the interviewer knows, when the interview deals with certain very sensitive issues where the interviewed will find it too humiliating to admit the truth unless he or she knows it is already known (in Pierre Bourheu et al. 1993;see also Bourdieu 1996). In his study of Mexican masculinities, Gutmann (1996), conducted lifehistory interviews with men in a popular area of Mexico City, and only one of these told of having had sex with other men. Given the frankness with which his informants, and particularly his friends among them, spoke about other issues, Gutmann does not think they were lying. I will of course not state anydung about a group of men I do not know. But given the problems of denial I experienced even among men who I knew had samesex experiences, I would actually have been more surprised if Gutmann’s informants had told him right away that yes, they had had sex with other men. There was also only one of his informants who admitted to ever having been to a prostitute-a figure I find even more difficult to accept as a correct one. Gutmann seems to believe both homosexuality and prostitution are more common in other areas of the city than where he did his fieldwork, but I think he underestimates the methodological difficulties.

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Mema. When he asked me about what I was doing, I put particular stress on my interest in male bisexuality. H e said that I was right, it was a widespread practice, but he claimed it was criticized: “If I for instance did it with Mema or Patricio, everybody would talk about it, in the neighborhood.” I then asked him whether members of his family knew he did it. “Oh no, that was just an example! I don’t do that, I’m just together with them for friendship.” It was the same with Alberto, the youngest of three brothers who have been frequent visitors in Mema’s house. When I first met him, Mema had told me Alberto was his lover. They then spent the night together, separated from where I slept just by a curtain. I thought he would be aware that I probably had heard some noises, but when I tried to approach the matter with him, he immediately told me there were lots of rumors about his having had sex with all the homosexuales in Mema’s house, but that was not true, he only wanted to be with women. With Rogelio, whom I knew had been Gata’s lover for years, I only got him to admit it with the help of Mema. W e were talking about AIDS, and he said he did not feel it concerned him. I asked him whether he used condoms: “With my wife, why should I?”I said I thought he had sex with Gata. H e seemed very surprised and embarrassed; he looked at Mema and asked him whether he should answer my question. Mema just laughed at him. Rogelio then opened up, and was able to talk about it. In the case of Felipe and many others, I have only the jotas’ word for it when I label them bisexual. But here I trust the jotas much more than the supposedly bisexuals. This is partly because I know the jotas better, and they have been very frank with me regarding several other subjects. Among them Mema is a main source. H e has pointed the bisexual men out to me, and has in most of the cases claimed to have direct knowledge about the matter. When I choose to trust him and the otherjotas most, it is also because I think I can understand the bisexual men’s motives for denying the practice (to this I will return shortly), while I cannot see any reason that thejotas would lie about this. After all, they were already labeled as homosemales, and a few experiences more or less would not change anything. Moreover, they have given me very plausible explanations of why bisexual men should want to downplay their same-sex experiences. These explanations concern maintaining a masculine image. Denial also concurs with observations I have made, as when Rogelio and Alberto deny what is obvious or common knowledge in Mema’s house. Another example would be the young men hanging around

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at corners in an area reputed for homosexual prostitution who systematically deny having any other reason to be there than waiting for a friend who is supposed to pick them up, etc., and sometimes they agree to take the condoms Mema hands out only when he says they may use them with women. And when they finally, after having met Mema several times, admit they do sell sex, they often tell him (and me) that most of their clients are women. So this practice of denying was the main reason I was able to get only seven interviews with mayates. At first I was disappointed, not just with the quantity of interviews, but also with the quality. Except for two of them, Ernest0 and Pablo, who were the two I knew the best in advance and felt I had established a friendship with, they gave me the impression of being embarrassed when talking about these matters. Of course, I respected their feelings by not pushing them on questions which I felt to have been superficially or even dishonestly answered-they had agreed to be interviewed, but I had no right to hurt them (I consider unethical the insistence on checking truth and consistency in many manuals on interviewing). With hindsight, I consider these interviews very interesting, precisely because of all that is not said, all that is avoided or euphemized. The methodological problem turned out to be a finding in its own right. Maybe a male interviewer who was himself homo- or bisexual would have been able to get more “honest” answers. But I am not so sure, since even the very experienced gay anthropologist Carrier states (1995: 198):“Over the years of my fieldwork, I have had the greatest difficulty getting access to and communicating with bisexually behaving men and learning about the things that motivate them to have male as well as female sex partners.” I believe the kind of half-answers I got are very telling regarding the moral climate surrounding male bisexuality, a climate that makes it difficult to admit same-sex experienceespecially to a person who is not him- or herself involved, such as myself, a woman (even if it was probably an advantage that I was a foreigner). Moreover, while the interviewedjotas talked very freely, going into all kinds of sexual detail, the bisexual men often searched for the right words, and excused themselves for employing vulgar language, or confined themselves to more indirect, vague allusions. I can only assume this had to do with the fact of my being a woman. So the interviewed knew that I knew, but even so most of them downplayed their same-sex experiences-compared to what their partners had told me about them. They would insist that it had not

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happened often, it probably would not happen again, and they got more out of having sex with a woman. For some of them this was not consistent with my own observations of them, and for others it was not consistent with what their partners told me, namely that these men had had sexual relationships with many of the jotas, and had come back for more over a long period of time. Further, I was struck by how the interviewed mayates often excused themselves in the interviews: “I was so young,” they would say, “I didn’t yet know about women’s love,” or “I was drunk,” “they paid me.” And it was not-oh no!-an emotional attachment. Ernest0 was the only one who told me he had really loved his partner, but he then added that he was very young at the time, and had not yet known any woman. Roberto is a regular visitor to Mema’s house, and several of the jotas claim to have had sex with him, Mema himself on a regular basis. Roberto told me he had had sex with homosexualesonly when he could draw an advantage from being with them: “It has been out of necessity, you understand? T o get something. If I did it with a man, it was for the money.” I objected that the bomosexuales he knew in Mema’s house did not pay him. “No, but here it was for convenience. Because when I came here the first time, Mema said that ‘if you want to come here, you’ve got to do that.’ It’s true, she told me. I had to be with her. But I didn’t feel good about it. But it was for convenience, ’cause now I come here, I stay here.” H e claimed to have bad luck, that bornmemales always were attracted to him, in the underground or wherever he was. H e told me he had had his first samesex experience when he was ten, with an adult man who gave him a lift when he had run away from home. H e said that he only had to let the man do fellatio on him. His next experience was with another adult man who bought him things and “lent” him money. Roberto spoke in detail about the meals, the shoes, the clothes, and the money he got. “When it comes to money, I’m not an idiot, you know. I took advantage of it.” H e said he only had sex with him a few times, and that he did not like it: “He had, what do you call it, his rectum was very tight, and it hurt. So I didn’t feel good. I did it to him once, but I couldn’t come. And when you smell the adrenaline from his body, that it’s a man, you know, you don’t feel good. It’s not like a normal relationship with a woman, ’cause you need to be very, very . . . how can I put it? To need the sex very much, I don’t know which word to use. T o be very crazy. It wasn’t the same trust that you have

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with a woman, where you grab this person and lass her. It’s not the same, ’cause with a woman, one is excited, one makes love. But with a man, it’s not the same, it’s a carnal act, nothing more. You don’t have so much pleasure. It’s not the same, you just put it in and take it out, put it in and take it out.” His conclusion was: “I don’t deny that I have been with a homosexual. But that doesn’t change my personality, that I’m a man, you know. I mean that I’m not attracted to homosemles. I can be with a homosexual,and then I have no erection of my penis. You understand? So, if I have an erection, I’m not able to . . . how can I put it, of course, if I want to, I may have an erection, because it’s my mind that dominates my body. So I can have an erection, but the result is that I have no sperm, or, so that you understand, I don’t have any satisfaction when I do it. There’s no sperm.” Another mayate told me he reacted with nausea the first time; and several said that they could do it only with the lights out, or in certain positions which did not remind them too much of the sex of the other. They tell me they do not caress the homosexual much, and that they have sex rather rapidly. As Pedro said, “With a man you just put it in, you know. Then you come, and you leave.” They told me that while it is important for them to be able to satisfy a woman sexually, they do not care about this with a homosexual. Ernest0 said, “I come here, and I will have a relationship with the homosexual X. You then restrict yourself to making love to him. No caressing him or kissing him. Or, I do not like to do that. You see, with a woman it’s different, ’cause I kiss her and hug her. And, vulgarly speaking, I turn her around, I put her like I want to. With a homosexual, it’s just not the same. And there are occasions where . . .a bit vulgarly, it’s like you’re knocked off your perch. That you say to yourself ‘What happened?’Just look, when you caress him, you may be searching for the breasts or something, and the same with the legs. You start to caress his legs, and there are many homosexuales who have very hairy legs. That’s when you start to feel embarrassed. And with a homosemal, you cannot turn him around like a woman. Because if you turn him-well ‘Hey, what’s this,’ you know. You realize you are having sex with a man who is like yourself, who has the same as you have. So then it’s not the same to have him from the back and from the front.” He told me, however, that when he lived with a homosexual, this was different, because he loved him. He kissed him and caressed him. “I made love to him even with the light on! And I was not embar-

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rassed when I saw him, how he was.” Now, Ernesto is married and says he loves his wife very much. H e is also having an affair with another woman, who is a prostitute, and he is very satisfied with that relationship, too. Nowadays he has sex with homosexuales only when he is drunk, since he considers that this belongs to a period of his life that is over. I can confirm, just by having employed my watch, that mostjotamayate sexual affairs seem to be rather fast-the couples leave the scene and come back only a few minutes later. Mema says the mayates often let themselves come immediately after penetration with a jota, while they would use more time with a woman, and he confirms that most of them do not kiss or caress much. But he and the otherjotas claim that with their regular lovers the sexual repertoire is not a t all as limited as the mayates tell me. Gata explained one of the reasons his lover stayed his lover for years: “I did things to him that his wife never would, nor any other woman would have done. I caress him, I kiss him. I cut his toenails. I kiss his testicles, his penis, I do it to him orally. I scratch him, I take care of him and show him that I like it, too.” Ernesto is the only one of the interviewed mayates who has had a long-term relationship with a vestida. Since they were living together, it could not be hidden. When his parents found out about it, they disapproved strongly: “My father was very firm with me, since I am the only man in the family, of the four kids. H e said that how is it possible that when there exist so many women, that I should feel good with a man, who is like myself. What did I see in him? They even started to think that I was turning homosexual. Because I went to places where there are many homosexuales. And I went around with them quite normally, without caring that people who knew my family could see me. So they went to my home, and said to my parents, ‘Do you know that your son goes around with homosexuales?’ And I did not feel bad about it for a moment.” But things became more difficult when his father started to beat him, and stopped paying for his expenses a t school. After having broken up with his lover and met his wife, he has kept his relationships with homosexuales secret, “out of respect for my wife.” Generally the mayates treat their relationships with jotas with discretion, and rarely speak about them. Pablo told me why he had not told anyone about his experiences, and why no one had ever told him about theirs: “They may grab you and tell you things that might hurt you a lot. And the truth is that I haven’t got the strength to say

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that I have made love to a man. If you make love to a person of the feminine sex, you can comment upon it, because people will not take it badly. But to make love with a man and comment upon it . . . perhaps they will take it badly, even look on you with . . .with repulsion. O r as if it made them sick.” These are pretty strong words. Certainly they show that to state that male bisexuality is socially acceptable in Mexico would be a gross oversimplification. Roberto had not told anybody about his same-sex experiences, and thought that a woman would not accept it. “I’m not a saint or anything. Because I’ve done it with homosexuales. And I see it as a normal thing. I don’t criticize them, I’m not for or against. I’m just within this logic. They are homosexuales, they like to dress up or they don’t like to dress up, that’s their problem, isn’t it? If I told a woman that I’ve been with a homosexual, she wouldn’t see it as something normal. But to me it is normal, because nowadays any man will go with a homosexual.” So he claimed that he really was only acting as other men did, that the problem was that women did not know about it. This may be a fairly accurate description of the moral climate around these same-sex encounters, that they are not morally accepted acts but are justified by the fact that there are so many men who do it. Women may not know that, and many might disapprove of it, as they disapprove of other forms of indecent behavior. So it is better to be discreet. This concurs with Lancaster’s analysis from Nicaragua, where he claims that, from the point of view of civil-religious authority and from the point of view of women, the active role in homosexual intercourse is indeed a ‘sin’ (1992:241):“But like its equivalent forms of adultery and promiscuity, the sodomizing act is a relatively minor sin. And in male-male social relations, any number of peccadillos (heavy drinking, promiscuity, the active role in same-sex intercourse) become status markers of male honor.” Morality is indeed ambiguous, at least for men. Mothers may tell their sons that it is a bad thing to fight, but boys and men will often be expected to fight, and will meet disapproval if they do not, often from their mothers as well because the latter want strong and independent sons. In the same ways some other moral infractions may be positively valued, or at least accepted, albeit they are criticized. Lancaster (19224.4) gives as an example women who speak ill of men for excessive drinking; when the men gather, it is usually the women who send for liquor and prepare the chasers, and usually they do so without being asked.

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I would argue that Latin American masculinity is constructed partly in opposition to Christian morality, and that the virtues of chastity, virtuousness, humility, and willingness to forgive are considered more appropriate for women than for men. T h e fact that many men may have sex withjotos with other men present, as long as the other men are supposed to participate, too, or at least not to disapprove of what they see, shows that it is in no way a threat to male honor-though I do not believe it is a status marker for male honor either. T h e Mexican anthropologist Ana Luisa Liguori has some examples of very harsh talk about same-sex experiences among construction workers, stemming from covert observation by a field assistant in all-male settings. One of the workers tells the others (Liguori et al. 1996:90), “When I was about 24, I got pissed one day and went round to see this widow who had a son of about 14. I’d meant to fuck her, but as she wasn’t there I screwed the boy instead. Now they tell me he’s married but he still likes a bit of cock.” And a driver says, “UStruck-drivers get loads of women. W e take anything, old ones, skinny ones, nice ones, pretty ones, ugly ones, anything. And if a queer fancies it, I’ll even screw one of them.” T h e men are reported to have bragged constantly about sexual adventures. Not all said they had had same-sex experiences, some avoided the topic, and some expressed aversion. Liguori et al. conclude, however, that those who had such experiences boasted of them without any shame or modesty (p. 94): “They make it clear that the ‘queers’ are the others, and refer to them with some contempt, showing that they themselves are just as macho in these relationships as in those they have with women.” Actually, it is strihng that in these examples of boasting about same-sex experiences, as well as in the only example of boasting Lancaster (1992:241) provides (a young man who regards himself as very sexually experienced, because he has had a lot of women and “even done it with cochones”), the men simultaneously talk about experiences with women, as to leave no doubt about their masculinity. T h e attitude to same-sex experiences for the active, male part is not as uncomplicated as Lancaster and Alonso and Koreck seem to believe, and I will rather agree with Murray (1995d:54), who states that “boasting about fucking men is risky to all but the most solidly established macho reputations.” Roberto illustrated the complexity of this sexual morality by stating that he approved of the moral disapproval of homosexuales: “The public opinion about this homosexuality is very important. For exam-

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ple, if there wasn’t any criticism, that it was liberal, how many would not dress up as women then? How many, you don’t know, isn’t it true? So I believe that the public opinion toward homosexuality is something natural.” H e went to a party together with Mema once, and was labeled a homosexual by one of the other guests. Roberto felt so offended that he threatened to kill the labeler. By adhering to the public disapproval of hmosex-ua/es, Roberto, paradoxically, protects himself. Homosexuality is identified with the homosexuales, thejotos, and they alone are stigmatized. T h e bisexual men remain invisible, and “normal.” It is the “ordinary” men who have the power over the categorization, the power to stigmatize only the other part. Contempt for the effeminate homosexual is exactly what makes bisexuality acceptance for masculine-looking men, and this is why homophobia, machismo, and widespread male bisex-uality make a pe$edjt. In chapter 6 we will have a look at the violence that may ensue from this fit. Sexual Roles

For the mayates the most sensitive aspect of homosexual contacts is sexual practice. Ernesto explained to me the difference between him and his lover: “I knew he was a man like I am, that he had the same as I have. But that he enjoyed being with men, and that I didn’t. Or, that I enjoyed being with homosexuales, with pure homosexuales, to have relationships with them. But that I would not like it for a man to have sex with me, if you understand, I don’t know if I can make myself clear . . . it’s a big difference.” For Ernesto, as for the other bisexual men, the difference between himself and the homosexuales is fundamental; but what is only halfway said is what the difference consists in. Ernesto let me understand, by excusing himself several times when he thought his language was too crude, that he did not want to be more precise when speaking to a woman. I nodded, having understood perfectly well what he was hinting at. When he said he would not like it for a man to have sex with him, he meant that he would not like to be penetrated. T o be a man means to be active, penetrating; to be a homosexual means to be passive, penetrated. Therefore he could say that he enjoyed being with homosexuales, but would not enjoy being with a man. Ernesto lived with his lover for three years. Did he ever feel like a homosexual himself? “NO,because with the guy I lived with, I slept naked, totally naked with him. And

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he never tried to grab me, I mean around the waist, my hips. Never.” If his partner did not “grab his hips,” this means in a figurative sense that his partner did not penetrate him. But it is probable that what Ernesto said should be taken in a literal sense, too: that his partner did not want to even evoke the possibility of penetrating Ernesto by touching that part of his body. I asked CCsar whether he kissed and caressed thejotos. “No, I don’t like to hss them nor to touch their sexual organs. Make love, yes, and I have kissed some, and touched them, but not that, you know, not their penis.” But what about being touched? “As long as he doesn’t touch my bottom it’s not a problem. My bottom, no.” Why not? “HOW can I explain to you? It’s that then I wouldn’t feel like a man, but like a gay. O r I would no longer be what I am. Then I pass from being a mayate to being a joto. That’s why I would not like it.” I believe this is to be taken literally, that his partners should not even touch his behind, and the reason is that it might lead further, to them penetrating him. Behind is also zona sagrada in other Latin American countries. An Argentinean man told me that when he was a child his sisters might get suppositories or have their temperature measured in the rectum, but never he-his parents feared he might enjoy it. T he term mayate designates a man who is with homosexuales, and therefore, in principle, a man who takes the active role. All of the mayates I interviewed answered that they were never penetrated. Yet again, on the basis of what their partners told me, I am inclined to believe that some of them were not telling the truth. Thejotas had warned me that no mayate would ever admit to having been penetrated-because that is something that cannot be said. This is of course a methodological problem, but I believe it is also a finding, since I came to realize why they cannot admit it: to be passive means to be homosexual, and this in turn means not to be a man. It is therefore something that should not happen, and if it has happened, it should not become known. My experience of stubborn denial is indeed confirmed by Murray (1995d:64), who says he has “been told by young Latinos with semen inside their rectums that they never get fucked.” He takes it to mean that they are not the kind of persons who take women’s roles. Some experiences of actually doing so will not necessarily change their ideas of themselves. My other sources, first and foremost Mema, confirm Ernesto’s and Cbar’s versions, but claim that David is one who enjoys “to be turned over.” At the time of the interview with David, I had still not

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heard those rumors. But he probably thought I had heard about it, because he immediately told me that two different persons had told him they had heard he liked “round trips,” and that it was Mema who had told them so, but that he had made Mema deny it in front of the others. He would never do that: “HOW can I put it? It’s like it repulses me. Like if I would get sick. It would be like if a homosexual went to bed with a woman. I think one would feel bad.” At a party in Mema’s house, Roberto got drunk, and the day after all thejotas teased him, because they said they had seen him be penetrated by another guest. He told them they were lying, but they just laughed, because they had all seen it. I myself had not seen it, but I had heard rumors about his likings before that. The way he denied it and the way the others teased him left no doubt about the seriousness of the matter. In the interview, a couple of months later, he states, “I would not like it and I have not done it.” Why? “I cannot see it as something normal. And I cannot change my life. Do you understand? I cannot change the rhythm of my personal life.” Why would it be so dramatic a change? “It might be dramatic, ’cause it might continue.” He is very vague, and I have to ask him whether he would then become homosexual. “Exactly. If you make love and all those fucking things. There are changes, and you don’t know how your body might react, or your mind. Morally, you don’t know what might follow. And if I am a man, I want to stay like that for ever.” The mayates I interviewed seemed to be slightly less essentialist in their understanding of homosexuality than thejotas were; at least some of them left the possibility that one is not necessarily born homosexual, but might become it by getting used to it-by starting to like it. Young boys or boys who have not yet had any experience with women should be particularly careful. Roberto told me his mother had a restaurant, and let the waitresses sleep in his bed when he was a little boy: “They took advantage of me, in a way. But I think it was a good thing. Because with time, you get a base, your real personality, something more solid. There may be many different kinds of hmosemales. There’s the one who is like that from when he is very small, there’s another who starts only from a certain age. And I think that what happened to me was something solid that made me what I am, a man. I don’t deny that I’ve been with homosemah. But that doesn’t deprive me of my personality, that I’m a man. I’m not attracted to homosexuales. So if it happens sometimes, don’t believe it’s because I like it. It’s just out of interest, nothing more.”

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Jaime was twenty years old and had just got married. But he emphasized to me that he was only married by law, in a civil ceremony, and not in church, so he had not promised fidelity. H e told me his first sexual relationship was with a woman a t the age of sixteen, and that since then he had had sex with a few homosexuales, just some who took him around, invited him to parties, and bought him drinks. “SO these ideas got into my head that started to get me tempted. What it would be like to do it, to have a relationship with a man. So I did it. And then this mania stuck to me. So that’s why I’m around with these people.” H e talked slowly, with a voice I could hardly hear, and looked everywhere but at me. I asked him how it was, the first time: “He was almost like a woman, but it’s not the same organism. I felt it almost like with a woman. But a t the same time I got sick. But I realized that after that this habit started to stick to me, I started to forget things. Until I didn’t feel anything anymore. Like something common and habitual. There’s something different, because it’s not the same organism. T o put it vulgarly, a woman you can do it a t the front, but it changes with a man, it’s from behind, That’s the difference. And a woman has a s h n that is fine and soft, while a man is more hairy, and his body is more firmly shaped.” A little later he let me understand that it was not quite that simple. I asked him whether having relationships with women or with homosexuales had any impact on his feelings of being a man. “You feel like a man with a woman or with a homosexual. But you’re there with your mind. You put yourself with a homosexual, you have a relationship with him, and your mind starts to work, on that it’s a woman. But you wake up and it isn’t.’’ In the beginning of the interview, he answered my questions rather easily, but he got more and more vague, and his unease was evident. H e answered the questions briefly, and often the answers seemed to be irrelevant. I did not keep him for a long time, and it was only when I read through the interview that I started to understand what he had really said, when I started to add up half-sentences such as “at a given point, when you open him, when you see him, well, the errors you are making . . .,” “then you enter the stage when the man starts to like to have sex, but with homosexuales,” “later I will not have normal affairs,” “curiosity kills the cat, you know, that’s what they say, so to want to feel how it is with a homosexual . . .” And when I asked him what he thought were the reasons some persons were homosexuales, he answered, “ W h a t I think? I think it’s a bad thing. That there are women for these things.

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That if one follows them [the homosexuales],everything will change. Everything that we men are might change. They may make us change. Because if we follow this way, we will start to like all of this, and it may change everything, everything that a man can be with the satisfaction from a woman. And what is the point if the woman feels set aside?” Like all the others, he told me he would not let himself be penetrated, that he “would not want to be like them”-the homosexuales. Mema gave me the clue for understanding that what gave sense to what Jaime said was what he did not say. Mema said that he had had sex with Jaime immediately before the interview, and that Mema had been the active one, “as usual” with Jaime, but that he pitied this boy who seemed so unhappy and confused. “He’s going to have trouble everywhere as long as he doesn’t want to admit he likes dicks.” It made me read what Jaime had told me as expressions of his anxiety, his fear that he might now become homosexual;because he had got used to having sex with hmosemales, he had learned something about himself that he would rather not have learned-“curiosity kills the cat.” So the idea exists that a man who lets himself be penetrated becomes a homosemal. But there also exists an idea that he will only become a hmosemal if he likes it. Murray (1995b:x I) reports he has heard many of these men who are activos in Mesoamerica say that if they were penetrated, they might want it all the time, so the safest course for their masculinity is to avoid trying it. T h e term “macho probado” or “macho calado” means a tested man, and is often used about men who are so macho that they have had sex with men without being changed by it. Mema imagines men may push this a bit further, and even try out to be penetrated: if they do not like it, they have really confirmed themselves as men, and perhaps they even repeat the experience over and over again, justifjmg it by saying to themselves that they never like it. T h e existence of many bisexual men also serves as a cover-up for men with a same-sex preference they do not want to admit. Some of these mayates have much experience with their own sex, and little or none with the other sex, and they may even live with a person of their own sex over time while they continue to maintain a vision of themselves as hombres, perhaps as mayates, but certainly not as homosexuales. It is of course impossible for me to estimate how many masculinelooking bisexual men allow themselves to be penetrated. I have only

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some indications that make me believe it is not something unusual. My main source is the jotas’ reports. Flaca, sixteen and tired of life, sighed when I asked her whether it is usual that men want to be penetrated. “The usual thing is that they want to fuck. But I see what happens now, that you can ask any man and he will want you to fuck him. O h God, they all want you to fuck them now. There are no men anymore. They are all putos, all guanga-guanga [loose behind like used elastics].” She despised them-they pretended to be men, but were no better than herself. In the accounts which she and some of her friends were accustomed to give of their latest adventures, a recurrent theme was the active role played by themselves. Many young men have come to the house, had sex with different jotas, and been discussed after they left; quite often the jotas have claimed to have penetrated them. But some jotas said they did not like to be active, that they were always passive. They were not always believed by the others, who claimed they said so only to pretend to be more feminine than the others. Cristina insisted; she told me she had tried only once to penetrate a man, but was not able to do it, because she took too great an amount of hormones. Mema said he did not believe her. But Fifi did; he told me that he was like that himself until he started to work as a prostitute and met clients who wanted him to penetrate them. After a while he started to enjoy it. Fifi said, “It was badly looked upon, because we wanted to be very feminine. So we said, ‘Men who let us fuck them, oh no.’ But then some said it was a nice feeling, that it felt good. And if a man was with you and sucked you, and then you did it to him [penetrated him], then it was good. So I wanted to try, and I did. And the truth is that I liked it. But I did it discreetly, because my friends here, they would be shocked. But I started to tell them, and they started to try, too, and liked it. Now most do. But there are many who say they feel they are too much women to do it. And when you are together with other girls or guys who don’t do it, you don’t do it in front of them. Just in our group, with the ones who know.” Before he had told anybody that he did it, he had been caught in the act by Cristina, who evidently told all the others about it. “I felt bad about the gossip; she told everybody I had been with a man and that I had had him on the fork. All that stuff. But then I started to think, ‘ O K , what’s so bad about that? Lots of us do, I’m not the only one.’ I used to feel bad about it, and that was why I said I didn’t do it. But this time I said: ‘Many do. Why not me, too?’ And I gave

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some therapy to Cristina and the other girls, so they started to do it, too, and liked it. So we’re not shocked anymore, as long as nobody else sees us.” Of the elevenjotas I interviewed, three said they never penetrated, and two that they had done it sometimes, but had not enjoyed it. Six said they did it regularly, but five of them underlined that they preferred to be penetrated. Mema confirmed Fifi’s explanation of a process of learning; he said that previously some of thejotas did not want to have their penises touched, or did not even want to have an erection when they had sex, because they wanted to be “women.” Mema wants to teach all thejotas to accept their body, with all its possibilities of pleasures. Of the seven interviewed mayates, none told me that they had taken the passive role, but four were reported by thejotas to have done so. However, I would guess that it is more usual for the regulars in Mema’s house to do so than the more occasional mayates. Mema tells me he often has to know a man a bit before he gets him to “take the return,” in order to choose the right moment, and the man must feel confident before he lets it happen. I have most of my information through thejotas, so I do not know what happens, if anything, when there is nobody around who is identified as a homosexllal. Some of the descriptions by Liguori et al. (1996) suggest, however, that there may be a certain pressure on young boys from adult men to take on the passive role. One of Wilson’s (1995:86)informants claims the young boys in Yucat6n customarily change roles. In his study from Brazil, Parker also reports (1991: 127-28) that young boys easily agree to “take their turn” in the passive role. Sex workers claim it is rather usual that their clients want “the return.” “If not, why don’t they go and see the female prostitutes?” Lupita said. Still, most sex workers say they are passive more often than they are active. Mema estimates that about 60 to 70 percent of the clients want to be active, and that the remaining 3 0 to 40 percent want to be passive, or internacional, or to have oral sex or some sort of kinky sex. As an illustration: I once witnessed a V e d a being picked up by a client, but they returned immediately, and she got another vestida to take her place. I asked why; she told me the client had wanted something harder. Mema explained to me that what she meant was that the client had wanted to be penetrated, and the vestida who had taken her place was known to be particularly well equipped for that.

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On the basis of these different indications, I conclude that some jotas penetrate and some do not, and that some mayates are penetrated, but that they most often are not. So what-the reader may ask-is the point of knowing exactly what they do in bed? I believe it is important if we are to understand this male bisexuality, because, as I will show, it is deeply embedded in the symbolism of penetration. A necessary precondition for this widespread male bisexuality, as presented by myself and as shown by several other researchers as well, is exactly that the strict role division between the effeminate, penetrated partner and the masculine-looking, penetrating partner lets the latter go free of stigmatization and maintain his masculinity. But if the role division is not so strict, what then? Alonso and Koreck state (1988:114): 9 n the areas where we carried out our preliminary study, where the population is largely composed of agriculturalists and rural workers, there were no ‘internationals’ [those who both penetrate and are penetrated].” This may of course be true, but I believe one should be careful about concluding so firmly solely on the basis of what the respondents say. In his study, Carrier ( I 97 I , I 976, I 98j , I 995) succeeded in having the three groups "actives," ‘)asivos,” and “internacionales” represented in his sample, classified according to what they reported themselves to be, but he does not question whether their reports are reliable. However, among the self-reported intemaczonales, most are masculine-looking and believe they are going to marry some day (1976:I 2 2 ) . Carrier believes (199j: 193-94) the “international” practice has become more frequent in recent years, especially in the middle class among those who identify themselves as gay and see it as “politically correct” to move away from the role division. But he also describes cases that show how sensitive the issue is for many of his informants, referring, for instance, to an informant (pp. 83-84) who believed a “queen” had been murdered by a mayate who had been penetrated by him when the mayate got drunk. As indicated above, none of my masculine-loolung informants admitted to being penetrated, although some of them probably were. Why did some of Carrier’s admit it and none of mine? Perhaps his informants felt more confident, because he himself is a gay man. But I believe mine never would have admitted to having assumed the passive role, because I know from the jotas that these informants never admit it even to them. I believe the reason for this difference is that Carrier recruited only a few of his informants from the particular

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subpopulation that I have studied. The lower the class origin is, the more crucial is the role division: it ought to be practiced, but if it is not, one should at least give the appearance of practicing it.* The complexity of the matter is also illustrated by Taylor (1986: I 2 3). One of his informants, Arturo from Veracruz who regarded himself as an “international,” told Taylor that he had once had to share his bed with a stranger. They had tried to have sex, but since both wanted to have the active role, the attempts had been unsuccessful. The day after, the stranger had told him he was on the first string of a leading soccer team. Then Arturo regretted that he had flubbed “the chance of a lifetime”-had he known that the man was so masculine, he would have agreed to take the passive role. That is, I believe, a possible consideration for some self-defined homosexual men with a not too feminine appearance (and probably most of those are middle class). For a man who wants to be able to continue to give the image of being normal, heterosexual and masculine-which is the case for the mayates I met-it is probably very difficult even just to share a bed with another masculine-looking man. If they want to be penetrated themselves, they will probably be more likely to let that happen with a person who does not look like someone who would be likely to do so-such as a very feminine jota. As long as a man is the penetrator, or at least is perceived as such, having a homosexual relationship will not be threatening to his self-image, or to the image others have of him. But since nobody other than a direct witness can really know what happens in bed, there will always be a doubt connected to homosexual encounters, 2 . Three studies of male prostitution in Brazil show that it is not uncommon for masculine-looking clients or masculine-looking prostitutes to have the passive role. The transvestite prostitute informants of Andrea Cornwall (1994) claim that a large majority of their clients want to be penetrated, but still these clients are commonly believed to be acting “like men,” as insertors, because they look like men. Parker (1990:13)believes the image that is transmitted is more important than what actually happens: “[Flew of the travesti’s clients consider themselves to be engaging in homosexual behaviour, even when taking the passive role in anal intercourse, as the classification of the mavesti as a kind of symbolic female is apparently sufficient to counter-act even the most apparent contradictions involved in the actual intricacies of sexual practice.” Mend&-Leite (1993:z74) says, “In the Brazilian culture of sexuality I think that the main thing is not behaving in conformity with norms, but far more, appearing to do so.” H e has himself given an example in an interview (1988:86): a boy who sells sexual services and who looks like a boy goes with a client to a hotel. H e agrees to be penetrated for an additional fee. However, when the same client picks him up some months later, he refuses, explaining that he had accepted only because he had thought the client was a tourist. Since he was not one, the boy was not willing now to run the risk of rumors being spread about his being penetrated. His value would fall, because he would no longer be seen as a “real heterosexual.”

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Fig. 18. La Paul.

and, thereby, the risk that a man’s masculinity may be perceived as impaired. This is a reason for treating such encounters with so much discretion. A Question of Need for a Sexuul Outlet?

Explanations of sexual behavior should always remember that the basic reason for having sex is that it gives pleasure. But this unfortunately is often forgotten. T h e mayates of course have sexual relationships with homosemales because it gives them sexual pleasure. And in addition they have a lot of fun. This would, however, be a too simple explanation for this study, since what one wants to know is not so much why men have sex as why they have sex with other men, and why this seem to be a rather widespread practice in the field under study. A traditional way of explaining homosexuality sees it as a substitute for heterosexuality. Many reports of both male and female homosexuality in prisons make use of this explanation (for an overview and discussion, see Bech 1997). T h e Mexican mayates live in a

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Fig. 19. The author and La Paul (photo taken by Mema).

society where half of the inhabitants are women. But there is a strong mismatch between the sexual desires of men and the sexual availability of women. Women and men are partly segregated, even in the Mexico of today. A brief description of the village near Veracruz may show my point. There are few cars in the village; people walk or use bikes. During the day there are many women in the streets, going shopping or working as vendors. When night falls, there are only men left, and mostly young people. They hang around, at the corner, outside a little shop or on their way somewhere. Women, married or not, stay indoors with their families. There is not a single cafk where women may go, alone or together with men. Their only nights out are at parties, together with at least some male family members. T h e only women in the bars, in the cantinas, are the barmaids, who are supposed to be prostitutes as well. T h e sexual morality is undoubtedly double-standard: restrictive for women, permissive for men. To value female virtue and male virility at the same time is necessarily a paradox. And as Douglas puts

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it (1989:163), “Whenever a strict pattern of purity is imposed on our lives it is either highly uncomfortable or it leads into contradiction

if closely followed, or it leads to hypocrisy.” Men protect their own women against other men, but since other men do the same with “theirs,” there remain only a few, unprotected women who are relatively available. T h e double standard is of course a main reason why female prostitution is so widespread in Mexico. It seems to be not a t all uncommon for men to buy sexual services. But younger men can rarely afford to. For them homosexual encounters may be an alternative: masculine-looking young men happen to be the most valorized partners for the homosexuales (and they may sometimes even get the homosexuales to pay them). Several researchers link male bisexuality to the sexual morality. Lumsden states (1991:2z), “In a world where young men are expected to be sexually aggressive, but in which the outlets that would correspond to the machismo’s needs may be scarce, with the exception of prostitutes who demand to be paid for it, it is not surprising that many adolescents want to ‘get it off’ with other men they can reach.” Liguori adds that same-sex encounters may also be a supplement for married men (1989:37): “Once married, they have an intensive social life apart from their wives, including extra-marital sexual relations. But the woman should be a virgin a t marriage and always remain faithful to her husband, never questioning his excursions. O n many occasions, and specially in the lower strata of society, they will meet other men who let themselves be penetrated, and they prove to be an accessible alternative as a sexual outlet. Other women may represent economic expenses or may be more difficult to get access to.” Alonso and Koreck think the wives even prefer that their husbands see j o t o s rather than other women (1988:113): “Whereas women did not fear that their husbands would abandon them for or divert household resources to supporting jotos who cannot have children, they perceived that there was always a risk of desertion or of diminished economic support if men’s extra-marital partners were female prostitutes or concubines.” Unfortunately it is not clear whether their informants only expressed a general attitude, or if they were speaking from experience. Taylor (1995:96) reports that he actually has heard women on the Mexican Pacific coast talk openly, even joke with pride, about boyfriends’ bisexuality, but I doubt that this is very common. Carrier, too, sees homosexual encounters, to some degree, as a secondary outlet for many men (1985:76-77): “Irrespective of indi-

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vidual preferences, when suitable heterosexual partners are unavailable to certain segments of a society for whatever reason, some individuals will turn to members of their own sex for sexual satisfaction.” In another article (1976) he emphasizes factors leading to shortage of sexually available women: the sharp dichotomization of gender roles, dual categorization of females as good or bad, separate social networks maintained by males before and after marriage, proportion of unmarried males, and distribution of income. He combines these factors with a high level of sexual awareness among males, a result of pressure among boys and of crowded family circumstances, and with a lack of stigmatization of the insertor sex role in a homosexual relationship. But he is aware that some married men continue to have sex with other men in spite of the sexual availability of a woman. He links this to the double moral standard that allows men extramarital sex, and to the upkeeping of separate networks of male friends. Carrier, then, has extricated himself from the “steam engine” explanation that sees the homosexual encounters solely as a secondary outlet for a man’s “necessary” desires. Carrier takes into account that the amount of sex that a man “needs” and how many partners he “needs” are not given quantities, but are determined by normative and cultural factors. The factors Carrier indicates are undoubtedly relevant and important for the case I have studied, even if the point he makes about marrying late does not apply. In Neza people tend to marry rather young, at least if the “informal marriages” are taken into account. Many of the men who have sex with jotas live with a woman. But, as Carrier also notes, they often gather at night with other men instead of staying at home with their wives. What all these explanations have in common is that they see homosexuality as a rational choice. Men seek sexual pleasure, and they choose to get it in a way that gives them the most pleasure at the least expense (of time or money) or moral reprobation. Remaining within this logic, we could add that it is also a way to get pleasure that involves little risk. A woman may get pregnant, and make economic or marital claims, or her father or brothers may want revenge for her lost virtue. Until recently homosexual encounters involved little risk-some risk for sexually transmitted diseases, some risk of police harassment, too-but not until AIDS did homosexual encounters become directly connoted as risk. In 1996 I met Rogelio, Gata’s lover, again. He kept coming back to Gata from time to time, and

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must have done so for almost ten years. H e now had four children, by three different women. H e was drunk and he complained about these vitjas, these old women who made so much trouble for him with all these children. Gata approved and they embraced each other. W e could also add in the same line of explanation that a partner of the same sex may well provide a man with more pleasure than a woman does. Homosemales may be less inhibited than most women are. There are several descriptions of Mexican, or more generally Latin, women’s negative attitudes toward sex. One of the earliest studies was by Evelyn Stevens, who claimed (1973:96), “The ideal dictates not only premarital chastity for all women, but postnuptial frigidity. ‘Good’ women do not enjoy coitus; they endure it when the duties of matrimony require it.” Stevens mentions that a common way to refer to the sexual act was as le hice‘ el semicio-I did him the favor. This sounds rather disenchanting. Later Oliva Espin described Latin women (1984:156) thus, “ T o enjoy sexual pleasure, even in marriage, may indicate lack of virtue. . . . In fact, some women even express pride at their own lack of sexual pleasure or desire.” Sex ought to be regarded as a necessary evil for women, and as she states, men often do what they can to confirm women’s opinion. T h e Norwegian anthropologrst Marit Melhuus (I 992: 167) reports from the Mexican village she studied that women were accustomed to refer to the sexual act as “H/his will,” with eyes averted to the sky, leaving some ambiguity about who “he” was. Not only the pleasure but also the knowledge about sexual matters seems to be somewhat laclung. A survey from the eighties showed that 35 percent of a sample of young girls in Mexico did not know that a woman might get pregnant a t her first intercourse, and 60 percent did not know when the fertile period was within the menstrual cycle (Pick de Weiss et al. 1991). Several jotas thought men had more sexual pleasure with them than with women. As Fifi said, “Then it is not the problem that she will get pregnant and all that. And then it’s that if you date ajoto, you have more fun. You have one more experience in your life. And for instance the men who are married tell they prefer a joto.” Also for the sex? “For the sex, because many say that a j o t 0 is tighter than a woman. Who knows, I cannot tell, of course. And that they do it better. They suck his dick; there are many who don’t get that from their wives. Or they don’t have sex in an open way. But with a j o t 0 they do.” One of the bisexual construction workers in the field studied by Liguori et al. says (1996:91), “They’re [the queers] the best

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Ramon and La Paul.

fuck, they’re so tight. You put some cream on it before you stick it up them and then you slap them on the arse a few times to make them tighter.” It is evident that Mexican women’s sexuality is restricted and under surveillance, but I am not certain that the “premarital chastity and postnuptial frigidity,” as Stevens put it, still are the ideals for all Mexican women. At any rate, I am certain that the reality may be very far from the ideals. This is at least the case in urban, lower-class areas such as Neza in the I ~ ~ O just S , as it was in the area where the Sinchez family lived in the 1950s (Lewis 1961). Sanchez’s daughter Marta had wanted to marry as a virgin, in order to be a respected wife (p. I 5 2): “It had always been my golden illusion to be married in white in church, and to have a home of my own. I wanted to bring up my children without a mother-in-law or relatives to bother me. I knew that if one ran off, it didn’t usually turn out that way. Besides, one’s parents suffer, and people say things. But when I told my friends of my dream, they laughed and said, ‘Look

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who thinks she is going to marry!’ Most of them did not get married and are living in free unions.” Usually the girls fell in love with a boy and had to move in with his parents if she had a child-unless he had run away; then she had to stay with her own parents until another man wanted her. In both cases she would have few rights, since she would not be a virgin at the moment of marriage. T h e Sfinchez daughters’ stories are about being squeezed between their relatives, who beat them if they do not behave properly, and the neighbor boys, who tempt and seduce them, or force themselves upon them. T h e balance is impossible. Two of Sanchez’s daughters “fall.” One does not, but the prize she has to pay seems to be to reject life, to be seen as aloof, as if she thinks she is better than others. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t . . . T h e Mexican view of women’s sexuality seems to be fundamentally dualistic. T h e gap between the ideal and the reality gives men a particular hold on the women, because it is almost impossible for women to fulfill the ideal. Girls are brought up with the idea that they should remain virgins until marriage, but the most usual pattern is to cohabit and often to have the first child before marriage. This is the case in the very traditional village which Melhuus studied (1992:177),where girls usually elope with a boy and then move in with his parents. Opposing Melhuus’s thesis, Stanley Brandes (1993) has suggested that the parents may prefer their daughters not to fulfill the ideal, since an elopement saves the family a lot of money. A wedding requires a big party, with fine dresses and the like. Weddings have therefore become a middle-class custom. Girls from poor families may only dream about it. From Neza I have the impression that even if girls’ sexuality is controlled, premarital sex and cohabitation of young couples are rules rather than exceptions. Ernesto, a mayate, told me he had met his wife when he was eighteen, and had sex with her some weeks after they met. H e believed that to be the most common pattern. His wife had been a virgin then, and he believed she had remained faithful to him, while he had had several relationships with other women, two of whom had borne him children. H e confirmed that the double standard is still the norm. “It’s the typical Mexican macho. W e like being unfaithful to our wives, but take care if they’re unfaithful to us!” David, also mayate, and seventeen a t the time of the interview, said he had a fiancie. H e had been seeing her for some months, but they had not had sex yet. “People are still too closed up. If you say ‘Let’s make love,’ then it’s ‘If you marry me, yes’ and all those

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bloody things. So it’s better not to do it. If we make love, I’ll take her virtue. But if we then have a quarrel and split up, she won’t be a virgin anymore. And then it’s more difficult for her to find a husband.” H e himself definitely wanted to marry a women who was a virgin. But he had had sex with some other women; the first time was with a prostitute when he was fourteen. When it comes to sexual practices, I find no evidence of the postmarriage frigidity ideal in the mayates’ discourses-on the contrary, they stress that it is important for them to be able to satisfy a woman. My data are of course very limited on this point, but I find it reasonable to believe that much may have changed since Stevens wrote her article more than two decades ago. T h e North American anthropologist Matthew Gutmann (1994, 1996) shows how the so-called machismo in many ways had become softer when he went back to the quarter in Mexico City where he had stayed ten years before. Boys might now run errands and men wash dishes or take care of their children, while young men pointed out that they are not traditional machos. By this they mean they do not beat their wife, and they help her in the house. Do same-sex encounters in fact function as a “secondary outlet” for the mayates in Mema’s house? T h e seven mayates I interviewed are between seventeen and twenty-three years old. Six of them told me that the first time they had sex, it was with a woman; five of the six had been between eleven and sixteen years old. T h e first samesex experience had for most of them taken place at about sixteen. Three of the seven were not in stable relationships with women at the time of the interview, and would have had sex very rarely if they had not had partners of the same sex, so these encounters could be said to represent some kind of “relief.” T h e other four were married, but they had had same-sex experiences before they married, and had continued after marriage-probably more out of “desire” than out of “need.” T h e need-relief explanation has of course some value. But it takes men’s basic heterosexuality for granted. Left “free,” men would choose women; their resort to other men is then only a result of constraints. T h e widespread male prostitution is one of several phenomena that would then be unexplainable, because it has as a prerequisite the existence of a real desire for sex with men, strong enough to make quite a lot of men search for it, pay for it, often even more than they would have had to pay a female sex worker. And this expla-

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nation fails to pose the essential question. How is it that a man can be a substitute for a woman for sexual purposes? How is it that the homosexual encounter is conceived of as pleasure? I will end this discussion with an example of male homosexuality in a place where heterosexual encounters are excluded: a prison. I have heard so many stories about group rapes in prisons that I believe it is rather common that incarcerated men who are identified by the other inmates as homosexuals, as the jotas immediately are because of their femininity, are victims of rape. Flaca’s story from a juvenile hall is the worst: “YOUknow about the baptizing? I was in my dormitory. There were thirty guys. It was night. W e were going to sleep. Some said, ‘What are we going to do to him?’ They said ‘he’sjoto,’ so they lined up. Then they held me and started to fuck me, one after the other. But there were almost thirty of them. Then there was a put0 among them, and he said ‘no, not me.’ So they said, ‘Why not, puto? Unless he fucks YOU.’ When they all had passed, I could not support anymore, I cried, it hurt a lot. But I had to fuck him so that they would let me go.” When Flaca was to be let out some weeks later, some of them raped her again as a “farewell”; others had become so acquainted with her that they did not want to participate. For an understanding of this gang rape, it seems to me completely irrelevant to know whether the inmates had passed a long time without sexual contact with women. What happened here has nothing to do with a need for sexual relief, but it may have a lot to do with a performance of one’s own masculinity and with a humiliation of the feminine man. T h e humiliation and degradation, so central to baptisms in total institutions (cf. Goffman 1961b), is confirmed by the fact that in the days following the rape, the other inmates took Flaca’s food and ate it, and they made her get down on her knees and wash away the dirt they made. But it is of course not just by accident that the humiliation took such a sexual form in this case, and in order to understand this, I believe we have to take into account some symbolic aspects of male-male relationships. But first I will look more into homosexual desire as a possible explanation. A Question of a Particular Desire?

Th e explanation above presupposes that the bisexual men’s homosexual activity is only situational, and not deeply rooted in their psychology. In this it differs from those explanations given concerning the

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homosexuality of the predominantly homosexual men, which, as we have noted, is always seen as deeply embedded in the personality, for reasons supposed to be biological or psychological, more rarely social. And actually, as the homosexual men in question seem to be almost exclusively homosexual and seem to remain so their whole life long, an explanation that stressed circumstances would not be very satisfactory. Conversely, when a considerable part of the male population participates in homosexual encounters, purely biological explanations are excluded. But when this bisexuality seems to occur more frequently in some societies than in others, it is often explained not only by external, social factors, as above, but also by reference to a particular family structure that leads to particular psychological traits. In the research literature the idea that the Mexican family structure should predispose for a latent male homosexuality is a recurrent theme. This supposed latent homosexuality is, however, rarely linked to a practiced bisexuality, but logically, the link is not difficult to make. In order to arrive there, I will give brief descriptions of the Mexican mothers and fathers. Some scholars defend the idea that Mexican women tend to regard themselves as superior to men. Stevens (1973:94) sums up the ideal character traits for women: semi-divinity, moral superiority, spiritual strength leading to an infinite capacity for humility and sacrifices. The idealization of these traits is named marianimo, a concept constructed to correspond to machismo, that idealization of certain forms of masculinity. According to the psychologist Diaz-Guerrero (1970:10): “[Tlhe Mexican family is based upon two fundamental propositions: I. the unquestioned and absolute supremacy of the father, and 2. the necessary and absolute self-sacrifice of the mother.” He refers to a survey among Mexican youth where about 90 percent agreed, “To me, the mother is the dearest person in the world” and about 80 percent agreed, “A good wife never questions the behavior of her husband.” The tendencies are striking, but I think this questionnaire may be criticized as biased, since it did not include any items that went contrary to the answers expected. And, of course, much may have changed over the last decades, as Gutmann ( I 996) points out. On the basis of her fieldwork in a shantytown in Mexico City in the early I ~ ~ O Adler S , Lomnitz (1977) states that the hallmark of the female role is a capacity for suffering, a willingness to serve others without expecting any attentions in return. But this responsibility for others also makes women strong (p. 94): “Shantytown women tend

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to develop strong, resilient personalities that eventually make them pillars of strength within their social group.” T o Melhuus (1992, 1993, 1996a, 1996b) Mexican femininity has first and foremost to do with motherhood and with suffering. T h e woman’s dilemma is that she has to sacrifice her purity in order to become a mother. Virgin Mary, or the Virgin of Guadalupe as she is known in Mexico after appearing to an Indian in Guadalupe, unites what cannot be united: she became a mother without losing her virtue (for Roman Catholics, in contrast to Protestants, Mary remained a virgin throughout her whole life). A woman is morally obliged to sacrifice herself for her children. If the children as adults do not take care of her, in return for her sacrifices, this is blamed on the mother and not on them. She has brought them up. If they are not grateful, then she cannot have done it well. If children misbehave, this is often blamed on the mother, as indicated by the current expression about somebody who behaves badly: que poca madre-so little mother, meaning so badly brought up. But usually mothers are adored by their children, particularly by their sons, and their love for their mother is often shown in public. Significantly, one of the favorite songs of perhaps the most popular of all Mexican singers, Juan Gabriel, is a song dedicated to his mother-“and to all mothers in the country.” The father has a more distant role in the family. H e is respected and waited on a t home. But he is not necessarily there so often. H e may pass his time outside, spending his money on drinks, on friends, and on other women instead of on his family. Not rarely he abandons his family. This is what Fernando Peiialosa (1968:684) terms “strong currents of family disintegration in the lowest economic levels characterized by the so-called culture of poverty.” H e sees the relationship to the mother as ambivalent (1968:683): “Sharing in the cultural ambivalence, the son may feel both veneration for and resentment against his mother. H e may in later years pour out his resentment by devaluing, depreciating and humiliating his wife or mistress.” T h e mother, though, is allowed to stay on a pedestal. T h e most common expression of this ambivalence would of course be the division of women into good and bad. T h e absence of the fathers together with the freedom of movement accorded to boys are both phenomena that lead to an importance given to peer groups. A deep inferiority complex, stemming from their feelings of powerlessness toward their fathers together with the impossibility of identifying with them, makes boys invest time and money in order to gain a position in peer

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groups. Marriage represents a less important change in their lives than it does in many other cultures, since they often continue to see their friends in very much the same way. T h e anthropologists Marcel0 Suarez-Orozco and Alan Dundes state ( I 984: I 24), “The initial period of over-identification with the mother and women in general, combined with the aloofness and emotional remoteness of the father and older males, may account for the adolescent Latin male’s excessive concern with being masculine and with denigrating women. These two features constitute the core of what is termed machismo.” They further see the “Don Juan” or “Latin Lover” syndrome, where men lose respect for and abandon women as soon as they have seduced them, as an expression of the impossible dilemma inherent in the idealization of the pure woman. In order to be ideal, a woman should be virgin-but to conquer her implies that she will cease to be so. T h e original Don Juan lost his mother’s attention very abruptly, when a new child was born. This is supposed to be a common destiny for many Latin boys, and it is assumed to be experienced as a very dramatic event, because the mother’s love and attention for the son, so intense and unlimited, suddenly stops. And the fathers remain absent. This might lead the boys to become men who abandon the women they have seduced, out of fear of being themselves abandoned. Suarez-Orozco and Dundes have studied the tradition of piropos, which is the term for flattering, but also for insensitive or crude, comments that Latin men often give passing women. Th e comments may be poetic (“What could be happening in Heaven that angels like you are walking in the street?), they may be vulgar (“Don’t you want to be mustard for my hot dog?”) or mean (“I like the one in the middle”-said to two passing women). Suarez-Orozco and Dundes hold that piropos articulates a collectively held male fantasy about the duality of women’s nature. While I can understand that the cultural representation of the perfect and pure woman must lead to disappointment with real women, I must admit I find other parts of this theory about Latin men’s psychology difficult to apply. They imply hypotheses about individual experiences that are almost impossible to test empirically. Perhaps we could try to see whether men without absent fathers were less machistas, or whether men who had been the last-born of siblings were less inclined to abandon their women? I believe this kind of explanation relies too much on the individual, family experience and

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too little on more general, cultural influences that all men in a society will be subject to, regardless of their specific primary socialization. So, for instance, when all the piropos that deal with women’s breasts are connected to the loss of the mother’s breast, I believe those making the connection forget the fact that in the part of the world under study women’s breasts have sexual significations for everybody, whether one has experienced a traumatic separation from the mother’s breast or not. Even if the piropos are addressed to passing women, the primary audience, I will hold, are usually other men who are present; the aim is to make other men laugh or be impressed. My interpretation of the fact that there are piropos very flattering for women and others that are very humiliating is not, as Suarez-Orozco and Dundes hold, that they express men’s fantasies about women’s dualistic nature, since probably different women receive the flattering or the humiliating ones. I see the piropos tradition instead as a demonstration of men’s power to categorize women, to label them as attractive or unattractive. I regard it as a ritual affirmation of masculinity, and I will soon give other examples of such affirmations. T h e Spanish word macho means male, and may be used as a neutral qualification. But it may also be used more evaluatively, as when a man is characterized as muy macho, “very male.” Usually this will be an ambivalent characterization: the man is perhaps admired but not found very sympathetic. T h e term machismo, a term used both by researchers and in everyday speech, is defined by Stevens as (1973: 90): “. . . the cult of virility. The chief characteristics of this cult are exaggerated aggressiveness and intransigence in male-to-male interpersonal relationships and arrogance and sexual aggression in maleto-female relationships.” But in his study of modern, Mexican masculinities, Gutmann (1996) points out that the meanings of the word are diverse, and are changing. Mexican men seem to refer to past times or to somebody else when they describe machismo today. For my purpose, I am less concerned with the word in itself than with how it is used to explain particular features of Mexican men’s sexuality. David Gilmore ( I 990) gives a description of the Latin male ideal based on fieldwork in Andalusia. H e holds that other researchers have tended to stress only the negative aspects of this ideal, such as the disruptive effects of men’s sexual assertiveness. H e holds that it is the reproductive results that are the most important, and first and

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foremost a man’s legitimate children. The major moral imperatives are (p. 48) impregnating one’s wife, provisioning dependents, and protecting the family, including its honor. In her Mexican village Melhuus (1992, 1996a) finds that a man who is characterized as muy macho is a man who shows that he is in command. Both men and women think machismo leads to alcoholism and to violence, and women think machismo is one of the reasons for their suffering. But still, for a man there is a lot of pride attached to being macho, and no woman would want a soft man. Melhuus claims that to be a provider is a source of respect for men; and certainly, to be provided for is a source of disrespect-such a man is a mantenido, just like a pimp. But in practice men at best provide for the women and children they live with, and only rarely for the ones they have abandoned. So far the descriptions of the Mexican male have been pretty harsh. And in fact, they will get worse. In his description of the Mexican national character the Mexican author Octavio Paz (196 I [ I ~ S O ] ) sees Mexican men as false, egoistic, and violent, and the ideal of manliness as never to “crack,” never to back down, and never to open oneself-neither in a literal or in a figurative sense (p. 30). Woman is perceived as inferior to man precisely because she is open-or opened. Life is seen as a battle, and stoicism is a central virtue. A man should face dangers and pain with indifference. Life is to hurt, punish, and offend-or to be hurt, punished, or offended. Society is composed of the strong and the weak-the strong are the “chingones.” This leads men to feel contempt for women, but also for femininity in men. The origins lie, still according to Paz, in the colonial history-in the conquistadors’ rape of Indian women, and in the more symbolic rape of Indian civilization. The Mexican complex is to be sons and daughters of the violent man and the raped woman. To this analysis one might object that machismo is not unique to Mexico and can even be found in cultures lacking a colonial history (cf. Peiia 1991:3I). But I read Paz rather as an account of the specificity of the Mexican machismo, of what distinguishes it from machismo elsewhere. And then, for instance, the stress on the rape of the mother (through the insult hijo de la chingada), rather than on the mother’s promiscuity (through the insult hijo deputa) as in most other Hispanic countries, or on mother-son incest (motherfkcker) in the United States, is indeed a Mexican specificity, which must be rooted in a culturally specific symbol system. Paz seems to see contempt for femininity as a precondition for indulgence toward the active part in

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male homosexual encounters, but he does not comment upon whether there are particular reasons for a homosexual desire in the Mexican culture. T h e sociologist Salvador Reyes Nevares (1970) defines the machista as a man who accords importance to himself, but in a specific way: his importance stems from his sexual power. H e shows himself as a man when he is together with women, when he drinks, and when he fights. H e seeks to show that he is free from all demands women may make on him. T h e proof of his manhood is that he does exactly what women tell him not to do (one may add that men’s big luck in life is that women love them anyhow). Reyes Nevares follows Paz in seeing Mexican machismo as a compensation for the original humiliation by the Spanish conquistadors. T h e conquest laid the ground for a dichotomy between masculinity-activity-dominance-Spanish on the one hand and femininity-passivity-subordination-Indian on the other. T h e humiliation is seen as in relationship with a “metaphysical tendency to a womanly conduct’’ (Reyes Nevares 1970:16).(This is a vague formulation that Goldwert [1985:161 has translated and quoted as a “metaphysical bisexuality,” but I cannot see that Reyes Nevares employs the term “bisexuality” a t all.) T h e North American Marvin Goldwert (1985) characterizes the real macho as a leader who incarnates sexual aggressiveness, manhood, action, and courage; he is a descendant of the conquistador. H e also quotes a Mexican psychoanalyst’s description of Pancho Villa (Ancieto Aramoni 1961,here from Goldwert 1985:163-64), “He had the attributes that characterize muchimzo: narcissism, petulance, destructive aggressivity, hatred for superiors (not just in the hierarchical sense), profound disdain and fear of the woman-as long as she was not related, relatives were on the contrary respected, great love for the mother and great disdain for the stranger . . . grave insecurity that took as an insult innocuous remarks, according great importance to the genitals and to varied sexuality.” According to Goldwert, the problem for a boy is that he is supposed to grow up to resemble a tnan with whom he has neither a close nor a loving relationship, a man who causes him and his dear mother a lot of suffering. Male dominance is an explicit value, but boys love their mothers, not their fathers. They love the one who sacrifices herself, who is subordinated, while they themselves are expected to make a woman subordinate to them, and put themselves in a role where they, too, will be more feared than loved. One may expect that the love of women easily will be combined with disdain. Goldwert sums up (1985:165),

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“Clearly, a form of sexual rage and underlymg gender insecurity is the result of this combination.” Goldwert makes an equation between a flight from femininity and a denial of bisexuality, and claims both traits are characteristic of Mexican men. But he does not link this to any form of sexual practice. As latent homosexuality often is seen as a consequence of gender insecurity, which again often is seen as a consequence of close ties to the mother and the absence of the father, I am surprised that I cannot find that the link has been made more explicitly. But it would in any case have been a theory that would have been very difficult to confirm. If we compare Latin American countries with Europe and North America, it is certain that family structure and socialization patterns differ, and very probable that the frequency of male bisexuality differs, too; but to link the two phenomena will necessarily be very speculative. I will end this discussion by introducing another way of understanding the particularities of Mexican male homoerotic desire, through an analysis of sexual meanings. As shown in this and the previous chapter, there are sexual meanings connected to the bodily constructions of both the jota and the mayate. The jotas very consciously treat their bodies as carriers of signs. The makeup, the breasts, the big buttocks, and the penis well hidden between the legs-all these signs together form a message sent to possible sexual partners. The first part of the message is: “I’m sexually available, come and get it!” The second part is: “You may forget I’m a man; you don’t have to worry, I’ll be like a woman for you.” There is a tacit agreement on acting as iftheir own and their partners’ bodies were different-thejota’s penis is not touched, neither are the mayate’s buttocks, they act as if the former had no penis and the latter had no anus, the first has no front and the other has no back (just like the bourgeois Victorian woman who had no legs). As both partners know this is not really so, I believe this tabooization of the body is a source of tension, but also of eroticism. In his article “On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love,” Freud (1968) claimed that it is part of human nature to find pleasure in the transgression of norms. I do not know if he is right that it is part of human nature, but the idea that the forbidden pleasures are the most gratifymg is certainly a self-fulfilling prophecy. Parker (1991:101ff.) holds that a mixture of temptation and danger is central to the system of sexual meanings in Brazil. The concept sacanagem may refer to “trickery” or “injustice,” but has a

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number of more positive connotations related to rule-brealung in sexual contexts: to have sex at an improper place (for instance a motel, a public place), or in an improper way (for instance anal sex), or with an improper object (for a man this could be a married woman, or another man). T h e transgressions are sources of a particular excitement. This may explain several particularities of Brazilian sexual culture, for instance that male homosexuality is reported to be very widespread. Even if the passive role has the same feminine connotations as in Mexico, it seems to be less stigmatized. Among boys the idea of exchange, or that everyone has to take his turn, is common (Parker 1991:rzS). In Mexico, I have not found this idea that the greatest pleasures lie in the transgression so explicitly expressed, and have instead met the idea that there are some limits that should not be transgressed. But I would hold that part of what gives spice to the homosexual encounters is exactly that it implies transgression of a prohibition, and that it implies playing with a danger-the danger of losing the so precious manhood. Reinforced by a culturally conditioned fascination for big buttocks and for gender inversals, all this create an erotic climate that most certainly nourish male homosexual desire. Male Dominance and the Representation of Femininity

In the following I will try to make a logical link between machismo and male bisexuality. But rather than offer a causal explanation of that bisexuality, I will try to give an interpretation of it. Here I will explore how representations of femininity and of masculinity together with references to homosexuality mark male-male relationships, since I believe that playful enstaging of homosexuality as well as metaphorical references to homosexuality in everyday language may shed light on the symbolic structure within which the homosexual practice is located. In Mexican daily language many sexual metaphors are commonly used, and, as Lomnitz-Adler (I 992: I 2 5) points out, sexual intercourse is typically a metaphor of exploitation. During his fieldwork in Tepoztlan, he observed, as an example, that politicians often were seen as lusty, exploitative, mean machos who were able to “screw” their followers. When male homosexuality was the metaphor used, the active party was seen as “ h ~ t and ” exploitative, the passive as “cold” and exploited. Mexican men are typically homosocial, working together and gathering a t public places after work, at street corners or in bars if

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they can afford it. Adler Lomnitz (1977:chap. 8) has described male friendships in a Mexican shantytown as follows. Close friends call each other mates, which is Nahuatl for twin brothers. The establishment of the friendship is often marked by getting drunk together. Men frequently form groups of about four or five, who help each other to find work or housing, and defend each other. But first and foremost mates are companions for leisure activities, particularly drinkmg. This is a relationship based on equality. Adler Lomnitz suggests it may be an obstacle to individual social mobility, because one is afraid that social distance will mean lost friends. She thinks these ties often have more emotional investment than do the ties between husbands and wives. When Mexican men do not gather for a specific activity, it is to talk; and their way of talkmg, according to observers such as Paz (1961), Diaz-Guerrero ( I ~ o ) and , Lim6n (1989), is characterized often by a kind of aggressive johng, by heavily sexualized wordplays or contests called eljuegu de 10s albures. Taylor (1995:86) reports that these games were common among the Aztecs. Liguori et al. (1996) give examples of these games among construction workers today, where the skilled worker give orders with a double meaning to the laborer, like “get it out for me,” “now you can come,” etc., or where one worker sees another bending down and rubs against him or pokes him in the buttocks. A central part of these games is to put others in feminine or subordinate positions. According to Paz, the loser in these games is the one who cannot answer, who has to swallow the other’s words-words loaded with sexual aggression. Hence the loser is symbolically raped by the other. Limbn, however, regards Paz’s interpretation as condescending, and claims the aggression is mostly a mockery, and that the games concern solidarity between the men, not humiliation. Let us take an example from Limb’s study, to show what this is about. It is a scene from a bar in Texas where Mexican men gather to eat tacos and drink beer. Jaime greets Simbn, and Sim6n takes his hand and holds it firmly over his own genital area as he responds to the other’s “How are you?” by saying “~Pos,chinga ahora me siento a toda madre, gracias!” (Well, fuck, now I feel just great, thank you!). Jaime responds by grabbing Sim6n’s genitals and squeezing them. They end up on the floor, Sim6n drops his taco, and Jaime tells him to say that he loves him. Sim6n finally says, “Te quiero, te quiero” (I love you, I love you), but as soon as he is released, he goes on to say: “Te quiero dar en la madre” (I want to beat the hell out of you), playing on the

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double meaning o f “quiero” as “I want” or “I love.” T h e y exchange s o m e semi-mock punches before helping each other up, a n d then Jaime tells Simon, “Dejando de chingaderas, anda a traer otro taco y traile u n o a tu papa” (All screwing around aside, go get a n o t h e r taco and bring one for your father). To n a m e oneself the other’s father is a common way of marking one’s superiority. And i t was Jaime w h o won this round. First, Simon tried to put Jaime in the homosexual role, by having h i m “caress” his genitals. But Jaime turned the tables and got S i m o n i n t o the homosexual role by getting h i m to say h e loved Jaime. In his comment on badgering a m o n g Mexican youngsters, DiazG u e r r e r o states ( I 970: I z), In order to achieve his pattern of masculinity, the young boy must be aggressive and very much of a male (muy macho) in the sense that he will not ever withdraw from a fight. . . . [Tlhe Mexican male very fast learns to establish verbal rather than physical masculinity. This verbal masculinity is shown in his ability to “alburear,” the ability to gain “upmanships” in games that young people of Mexico play. These games deal with the competitive ability to symbolize secondary sexual characteristics and sexual interactions as well as to come out ahead of others in this symbolic competition in regard to the size of the secondary sexual characteristics. More important, the winner in this peculiar way of establishing a peclung order is the one who has the verbal ability to end up as the active, successful, dominant, and triumphant sexual partner in either heterosexual or homosexual activities symbolically created in the conversational interaction. T h e Mexican adolescent also shows his masculinity in his ability to have many sweethearts, and through his sexual accomplishments, even if these accomplishments are masturbatory or else achieved in red light zones.

To p u t the other i n a homosexual role is a way o f feminizing the other, and thereby one of several ways i n which one’s o w n masculinity may be demonstrated. In Paz’s comment on the badgering, he emphasizes the homosexual element more t h a n Diaz-Guerrero does, and he links the enacted homosexuality to the practiced ( I 961:39-40): It is likewise significant that masculine homosexuality is regarded with a certain indulgence insofar as the active agent is concerned. T h e passive agent is an abject, degraded being. This ambiguous conception is made very clear in the word games or battles-full of obscene allusions and double meanings-that are so popular in Mexico City. Each of the speakers tries to humiliate his adversary with verbal traps and ingenious linguis-

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tic combinations, and the loser is the person who cannot think of a comeback, who has to swallow his opponent’s jibes. These jibes are full of aggressive sexual allusions; the loser is possessed, is violated, by the winner, and the spectators laugh and sneer at him. Masculine homosexuality is tolerated, then, on condition that it consists in violating a passive agent. As with heterosexual relationships, the important thing is not to open oneself up and at the same time to break open one’s opponent.

Limon objects strongly to this discourse, which he labels (1989: 49) “the subjugating, dominant discourses of elite Mexican thinkers like Octavio Paz concerning Mexican male, working-class, speech/ body play.” He also quotes the Mexican author Samuel Ramos who in 1934 described Mexican men as follows (from Lim6n 1989:47172):

. . . Life from every quarter has been hostile to him and his reaction has been black resentment. He is an explosive being with whom relationship is dangerous, for the slightest friction causes him to blow up. . . . He is an animal whose ferocious pantomimes are designed to terrify others, making them believe he is stronger than they and more determined. Such reactions are illusory retaliations against his real position in life which is a nullity. . . . [His] terminology abounds in sexual allusions which reveal his phallic obsession; the sexual organ becomes symbolic of masculine force. a form of human rubbish.

To Limon, Paz has followed in Ramos’s footsteps, and both are imprisoned in a bourgeois discourse, perceiving the Mexican underclass only negatively, and seeing the humor only as aggression, as if the aim of it were always to hurt or humiliate. Lim6n wants to initiate a new discourse, where the underclass’s expressions are understood as a narrative of resistance, where the aim is to obtain respect and solidarity. His alternative interpretation takes as its point of departure the symbolism in the bodily references. He sees the body as symbolizing society, and the rituals concerning the body as social rituals (Limon 1989:476): “Rather, the themes of anality, pollution, and bodily penetration may also be symbolic expressions of an essentially political and economic concern with social domination.” One example he gives is the use of the word chingar to designate both sexual and social violation, a usage that may be echoed in other languages as well (as in the use of the wordjkck in English today, or in certain Brazilian equivalents-Parker I 99 I 42). Homosexuality provides symbols for social oppression, and in their word games the men transform the social world’s hostility into a

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mocking, playful aggression. T h e outcome of the games is not humiliation, but respect and solidarity among the men-in the end they all laugh. Paz and Ramos have noticed nothing beyond the seemingly harsh words, and not the underlylng atmosphere of friendship. I have, of course, only limited direct knowledge of these purely male settings, but I can recognize the playful and joking communication Limon describes and to which Paz seems to be insensitive. I would add that such games demand impressive verbal skills. T h e subjects are not of a noble kind, and the vocabulary is perhaps not so extensive, but there is an abundance of double meanings and subtleties. O n the other hand, I do not find the interpretations of Ramos and Paz, where the badgering is a revenge for having been assigned an underdog position, so different from Limb's, where the badgering is a way of turning the traditional order on its head, a symbolic way of dealing with social oppression. T h e motive of self-assertion remains strong in both interpretations. Even if I agree with Lim6n in interpreting apparently bodily and sexual matters as social matters, I find it reductionist to regard these social issues only as class issues and not also as gender issues. Sexual and gender relations should not be regarded only as suppliers of metaphors to other social relations; they have a social existence on their own. Only in the last paragraph (1989:481) does Lim6n mention women, where he states that what he has observed among men is “to some considerable degree predicated on a model of their own dominating patriarchy and exclusion of women from these scenes.” But even if women are physically absent from the scene, they are highly present symbolically. What is enacted among men are plays where masculinity opposes femininity, and where the latter is per definition the loser. How is it possible to regard these games as a symbolic reversal of the social order as long as the gender structure, the male domination, is confirmed all the way? We can take this as an example of how different the views of different researchers may be-where one would see only gender, another sees only social class. Another example would be Manuel Peiia (1991),in his study of male Mexican workers’ humor. H e is struck by the contempt for women that is expressed in the jokes-jokes that deal with men who have been left by treacherous women, or men who are so well equipped that women can hardly stand on their feet after sex. But Peiia’s interpretation is that it is only on the surface that these jokes deal with gender, that the real topic is class domination. H e finds support for his argument in the fact that this kind of

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joke seems to be more frequent among working-class men than among middle-class men, and in the assumption that the men are not as chauvinist in their practice as they are in their jokes. He believes there is a pecking-law logic to it, and claims (1991:42), “Through the process of ideological displacement, the folklore shifts attention from its latent text, a class relationship that it signifies but cannot articulate, and focuses that attention on its manifest text, a gender relationship that it articulates but does not signify.” But why cannot something that manifestly deals with gender really deal with gender? Is the gender issue perhaps not important enough, not fundamental enough? The fact that middle-class men express gender issues in another manner does not prove it is not gender issues that are expressed in the working-class jokes he has studied. Gender is constructed through discourses and social practice, and speech acts laden with bodily and sexual metaphors, together with sexist jokes, verbal badgering, and mock fighting among men-dense with references to homosexuality-are, as I see it, all expressions of gender constructions and contributions to these constructions. W h a t is constructed is the vision of the dominant male and the subordinate female. The different verbal and bodily expressions deal primarily with affirmations of masculinity, although they may connect the opposition between masculinity and femininity to other social oppositions. And in these games, just as in children’s games, the limits between teasing and heckling and between heckling and violence are not and cannot be clear. While Lim6n’s interpretation seems reasonable for the cases he has observed, not all cases of badgering are as good-tempered. In some cases the games create social bonds between all participants; in other cases only between the participants on one side. To illustrate this point let us pay a visit to Argentinean soccer. The anthropologist Eduardo Archem (1992)has shown how the supporters at soccer games try to humiliate and offend the other team by representing them as children or as homosexuals in their songs or in their shouting. After a goal the supporters from a winning team sing, “Now, now. They’re really sucking me off properly.” Another team gets the following message: “We’re going to screw you; oh, oh, oh, up your arsehole.” T o make it clear they have no intention of giving the others pleasure, they promise, “We’ll break their little arse.” Archem interprets these songs as a ritual, where men’s identity is

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built up by an affirmation of the difference between being a man and a homosexual, where being a man stands for power, strength, independence, and authority. Reducing the other to less than a man, to a homosexual, implies an enhancement of one’s own masculinity, while a t the same time showing that the other is unable to defend his masculine identity. Archetti also makes it clear that those who are subjected to the labeling do not appreciate it, and that the teasing sometimes goes together with violence. H e gives a psychoanalytic interpretation of the phenomenon: the chants display protective inversion mechanisms, since they combine the sadistic fantasies of the macho with his deep doubts as to his own masculinity. Archetti suggests that such an analysis is possible without assuming that every participant feels the same motivation or has the same unconscious fantasies. T h e symbols operate at a collective level, and the effect is that a public field of discourse is constituted, which is something different from a free expression of individual emotions (p. 2 26): “The fans dramatize these [homosexual] relationships, and their ritual use refers on the one hand to a sensual aspect, in this case sexual relations, and on the other to an ideological aspect where what is affirmed is strength, omnipotence, violence and the brealung of the other’s identity.” I am more inclined than Archetti to bracket off the private matters the rituals may express and focus strictly on the public matters, and to regard the references to the body as social metaphors. As Douglas states (1989:I IS), W e cannot possibly interpret rituals concerning excreta, breast milk, saliva and the rest unless we are prepared to see in the body a symbol of society, and to see the powers and dangers credited to social structure reproduced in small on the human body. . . . Public rituals may express public concerns when they use inanimate door posts or animal sacrifices: but public rituals enacted on the human body are taken to express personal and private concerns. There is no possible justification for this shift of interpretation just because the rituals work upon human flesh.

T h e badgering thus becomes a public ritual where references to the body are used as metaphors. T h e buttocks are a highly sensitive area of the body through which a man might be humiliated, while the testicles stand for male strength and dignity. T h e buttocks are the place where even a male body might be threatened, might be opened-so made to resemble a female body (cf. Paz 1961). In the

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discourses the act of penetration is the most central metaphor, and very often linked to violence (this will be discussed in greater detail in the next chapter). Bourdieu (1990) writes about the connection to the body of schemata of perception and appreciation, and shows how the Kabyl (of Algeria) connect all that ranks highest to masculinity. The eyes, the nose, the mustache, and the mouth give a presentation of the self, and are used in ways that underline one’s masculinity. T o look somebody in the eyes and to speak in public places is reserved for men. It is against this background that the Mediterranean offense par excellence-allusions to male homosexuality-should be understood, as linked to the bottom, a feminine and degraded part of the body. Mauger and FossC-Poliak (1983) note how the male body may be used as a principle of domination among young men who are members of half-criminal gangs in the outskirts of Paris. Subjected to cultural and economic domination, the young men try to impose their own principle of domination, based on physical force and on a “capital of masculinity.” They dress up and move around like cowboys, they use tattoos, they talk argot, they fight, they like hard-rock, football, and motorbikes. Through this presentation of themselves they express, as Bourdieu (I 984:I 92) says regarding worhng-class men, a “practical philosophy of the male body as a sort of power, big and strong, with enormous, imperative, brutal needs.” Bourdieu claims that if men are forbidden every sort of “pretension” in matters of culture, language or clothing, it is not only because aesthetic refinement is reserved for women or associated with the bourgeoisie (1984:382): “It is also because a surrender to demands perceived as simultaneously feminine and bourgeois appears as the index of a dual repudiation of virility, a twofold submission which ordinary language, naturally conceiving all domination in the logic and lexicon of sexual domination, is predisposed to express.” And one of the examples given from ordinary language is pi&-faggot. Mauger and FossC-Poliak see this word as a marker of the distinction from a world in which working-class men have no chance to succeed-but still they claim to be superior to that world, basing their self-esteem on other values, such as the male body. But pe‘de‘ is not merely a metaphor: there are homosexual men who are exposed to violence, as Mauger and FossC-Poliak remind us (1983:66)- “And if the homosexuals have been and maybe still are the prime targets of the tough guys, this is not so much a sign of ‘repressed homosexual impulses’ as because they sum up at the same

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time, from the tough guys’ point of view, the cultural pretension, the financial pretension (first and foremost regarding clothing) and the sexual negation of virility.” Faggot becomes a metaphor for femininity in men, including the pretentious, the refined and fancy, the verbalized and culturally educated, as opposed to the strength of the body. This shows that the hierarchy of masculinity does not coincide with other social hierarchies, but gives a certain superiority to working-class masculinity; or a t least working-class men have an autonomy in their representation of themselves (they do not take over the dominant definition of them as their own definition of self). Masculinity as a bodily principle of domination becomes a tool for resistance against class domination. Just as the violence is not only symbolic, but also, to a certain degree, practiced, so is the sexuality. Carrier reminds us that in the Mexican male groups, they do not only talk about sex; sexual initiation and practice are in some ways a collective practice (1989b:228): Many Mexican males begin an active sex life a t an early age. From birth onward they are made aware of different kinds of sexual relationships by way of joking and the public media. . . . At the first signs of puberty, Mexican adolescent males may be pressured by their brothers, male cousins, friends, or all three, to prove their masculinity by having sexual intercourse with either prostitutes or available neighborhood girls. By this time they are also made aware of the availability and acceptabilityof feminine males as sexual outlets. In some of the examples I have given of the homosexual practice I have witnessed or been told about, the collective aspect is striking: many men who more or less observe each other-in the underground, in a bar, at a party, in prison, in the paddy wagon, in Mema’s house. Even if there sometimes are a few women present, the scenes are almost all male, and, as observers, in a way they are all participants, by expressly or tacitly approving or disapproving with the others (cf. Bech 1 9 9 7 : ~ f fon . male spaces). I believe the enacted and the practiced homosexuality are tightly linked. When references to homosexuality are used as metaphors, this is possible because the reality exists, and when the homosexuality is practiced, it follows the same pattern as in the metaphors. T h e homosexual male occupies a central role in the definition of masculinity. In many societies, kheis a cultural symbol for the opposite of the masculine man. In Latin America he is often used in the upbringing of boys. Carrier (1995:17) gives the example of how a

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father may correct his small crying son by saymg: “Aren’t you a man? You seem like a sissy [marzcbn]!”Lancaster (1992) has many such examples in his study from Nicaragua: the father who calls his baby son a cocbbn (like Mexicanjoto) when he cries (p. 41),parents and siblings who use the term at any sign of sensitivity, weakness or reticence in boys (p. 43), men who answer their wives when asked to give them a hand with the housework by a “I’m not a coch6n” (p. 175), or young men who do not look forward to the military service, but who claim only cochones would run away from it (p. 197). The homosexual man is first and foremost identified with the coward. A more violent use of the homosexual label is quoted by Bech (1997:32-33): the training of Greek soldiers to become torturers under the junta dictatorship. The slang term for a man who lets himself be sodomized was an indispensable prop in all relationships of violence and humiliation between officers and recruits as well as between torturers and victims. To label the other a sodomized man was a humiliation, and at the same time what justified the humiliation. T h e image of the homosexual is used in the same way in the verbal plays and the mock fights between Mexican men, and by the public at Argentinean soccer games. In the Argentinean examples it was only the singers, those who posed themselves as the masculine, penetrating part, who had any pleasure from the sexual acts portrayed in the songs, by having their testicles sucked or by penetrating the other. And yet it was only the others (those who were forced, who were passive) who were considered homosexual. T h e parallel to the practiced homosexuality is evident. About thirty boys may penetrate a homosexual boy in a prison, and even have fun watching this boy penetrate another-but still they are not homosexual themselves. Power and domination imply mastering the categorizations and evaluations, the possibility of enforcing one’s judgments as valid. It is the masculine men who define what homosexuality is and who the homosexual is, as they also may define accepted and unaccepted sexual behavior for women. They have the labeling power, and may thereby affirm their own masculinity. Their categorizations let them themselves go free of stigma-in Argentinean soccer songs as well as in Mexican reality. Homosexuality is defined as limited to the passive homosexual men: they alone carry all shame and guilt, while the active partner remains normal, invisible, and manly. That is why violent homophobia, machismo, and widespread male bisexuality can go so well together. T h e basic problem for the bisexual men is how to engage in ho-

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mosexual relationships without becoming homosexuales themselves. This is only possible through a construction of very different images of the bisexual and the homosexual man. And these two images not only make them different, but order them hierarchically. However, since the foundation for this difference is only in appearance and in norms for sexual practice, it is necessarily a much more fragile relationship than the one between a man and a woman. Allusions to a physical or emotional equality become a threat to the one of the two who strives to maintain a masculine self-image. And violence will then be a way of reestablishing the difference, of showing who the male is.’ T h e masculine domination, the subordination of the feminine, the degradation of the homosexual man-these are the conditions for the homoerotic freedom of the masculine men. This is evident in group rapes where men enjoy having sex with homosexuals, but ensure they are degraded and condemned. However, I believe that relations of domination also structure the more friendly or loving relationships between masculine-looking men and feminine-looking homosexual men in Mexico; that it is only on the basis of masculine domination that the masculine partner may enter these relationships without feeling that his social identity or his self-image will be threatened. It is the domination that gives a license to pleasure. 3 . A similar blending of homosexuality and homophobia may be found among hodybuilders who are hustlers, according to Klein (1993):They are obsessed with proving their own masculinity, they express a lot of homophobic ideas, and yet they resort to selling sex to homosexual men. Klein claims they take care to present themselves in a very masculine way, for instance using exaggerated male language such as swearing (p. 230): “The hustler will brook no emotionality or affection from the gay male during or after the act. And, if this condition is not respected, there is an implicit threat of violence.”

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This far I have described how the jota is formed by social conditions and by himself, a process in which, among other things, he makes himself sexually attractive to the men he is attracted to. I have also shown how the mayate is socially prepared to live out a desire for sex with men more effeminate than himself. So the plot of this love story would seem simple enough-boy meets girlish boy, and they live happily ever after. But this is, unfortunately, not a story with a happy ending. Even if the two parts are prepared for each other, there is no perfect fit between them. Theirs is a relationship of tension and conflict, even violence, although true love exists. A few dates are enough for thejotas to call a man “mimaYido”-my husband-but this they do with a smile. Of the elevenjotas interviewed, all but one have had a stable partner, a regular lover, and five of them have lived with this lover. Of the seven bisexuals, two have had a stable relationship with a jota, one including cohabitation. Many jotas seem to dream about having a marido. But under a thin layer of romanticism lies a harsher realism, the fruit of many disappointments. As F.ifi says, “I think it is better to be a woman, because as a j o t 0 you suffer more. You get to fall in love, if everything fits, O.K., but when it doesn’t, you suffer very often from being betrayed.” Actually, the main betrayal is that most mayates end up marrylng a woman, and the best the iota may hope for then is to remain

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his lover. Most stable relationships are therefore either with a married man who does not live with the jota, or with a young man who will probably marry and leave the jota. Gata has tried both, and been disappointed: “I have known a lot of men, I have known love, but it was frustrating. I did not like love, because even when it is reciprocated, it is something that keeps you stuck to another person, keeps you thinlung of him, and if he comes, he .takes your privacy. And you start to worry so much, you cannot go out because you’re waiting for a call from him, you can’t even go out to buy yourself an ice cream, because what if he should arrive just then? Then he doesn’t turn up, and doesn’t let you know anything until some days later. No, I didn’t like it.’’ Love is not so easy to combine with the jotas’ lifestyle. T h e jotas enjoy going to parties; they drink and use drugs; they flirt and pick up new partners, and they often try to seduce even their best friends’ lovers. When Mema was planning a party, he instructed all the jotas he invited, “It will be an orgy. Bring along as many men you want to, but only men who fuck. And don’t bring your maridos, because then there’s going to be a lot of fighting when you find them with somebody else. O r when they find you.” For this reason, some are not sure they really want a steady partner. As Pancha says, “With a marido, I could not go to parties, or I could go, but he would have to come with me. So I couldn’t pick up boys, be flirting and all that.” And 1,upita says, “You get tired of them; if you stay with them, you get tired.” Although fidelity seems to be the desired norm for stable relationships, it seems in practice to be as transient as any other New Year% resolution. Some dream about stable relationships, while also appreciating their freedom. Others are too disappointed t o really believe in stable relationships, even when they want them. Without a wedding and the family’s support, without children and the responsibility they imply, homosexual relationships may remain some kind of youthlike love story even for those who are not so young anymore. T h e point of the relationship is to have fun-not to create a home, establish a family, and grow old together. That means the relationships are doomed to come to an end when the fun is over. Alcohol and drug abuse together with loose or non-existent ties to work life undoubtedly add to the lack of emotional stability. Still: almost alljotas have a dream of a stable relationship. But they encounter a great many obstacles in trying to establish one-owing

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in part to their lifestyle, as mentioned, but also significantly owing to their own and their partners’ ideas about how such a relationship should be. Love, Money, and Exchanges

A relationship is always one of exchanges, of giving and receiving. In an equal relationship both partners give love to the other, both partners give the other sexual pleasure, both partners bring money or work for their subsistence, both partners take a share of the household tasks, etc. Such relationships of perfect equality are probably very rare. Most relationships, homo- or heterosexual, are characterized by some inequality: both give and receive, but they do not necessarily do so in the same proportion. Then the problem of establishing equivalents arises. In prostitution there is usually a man who brings the money and a woman who makes herself sexually available in return for the money. But no Marxist theory about use value, exchange value, and surplus value can explain how the prices for sexual services are fixed. Only one generation ago, the family in Europe and North America-or at least the idea of this family-was based on a hardly questioned exchange, where the husband was “the breadwinner” while the wife’s contribution was to take care of the housework and the children-and be sexually available for him. I believe this still is seen as a fair exchange in many Mexican families, but very often the reality is that the wives also must contribute economically to the household, in many cases because their husbands do not contribute at all or only irregularly, or have actually left. With modernization the ideals concerning the family-and the realities-have undergone considerable changes in many countries. More women contribute more economically to the household, and demand from their husbands that they take on their share of the household tasks. More and more men seem to value having time with their children. Complementarity is gradually yielding to more equality-perhaps especially in northern Europe, but even in working-class districts in Mexico City changes may be observed (Gutmann 1996): women are working more outside the home, men more inside. Money and love are not overtly convertible to each other, and the different contributions to the household are often seen as free gifts, unrelated to each other-the exchange is euphemized as gifts given without anything expected in return (cf. Bourdieu 1994). But the

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Nayeli hands out condoms to a policeman at an AIDS event.

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reality of the exchange is revealed whenever one of the two feels that the exchange is unfair-when the husband complains because dinner is not ready, when the wife leaves his clothes unwashed and demands more money for the household. Even if the exchange rate is not fixed (eight hours of housework are not seen as the equivalent to eight hours of factory work, or meriting a specific amount of money for the household), it is still clear that both kinds of contributions are precisely that: contributions, given from one partner to the other, or to the common household. When it comes to sex in heterosexual relationships, however, this is far less clear. While sex in many contexts is seen as given from the woman to the man (from the Victorian standpoint, for instance, as shown by the advice to women “Close your eyes and think about trimming a hat”), a more modern view on sex has come to perceive it as a pleasure also for the woman, and therefore as a-ideally-shared pleasure. Further, a romantic ideology puts sex apart from all the trivialities of daily life. But the letters to all the Dr. Ruths and Ann Landerses of the world show that it very often is not so. Sex is often used in an unromantic behavioral therapy, in a logic of punishments and rewards, only partially veiled by euphemisms (such as “headaches” and other excuses). Sex is thus put in relationship with the other exchanges in the marriage, and it seems as though sex still quite frequently is regarded as a favor granted by the woman. What then about homosexual relationships? In northern Europe and the United States the norm seems to be equal contributions (Bech 1997, Prieur et al. 1988, Risman and Schwartz 1988), which go together with a presentation of the self by the two as basically equal-equally effeminate or masculine, etc. In Neza, where the difference in presentation of the self between the two is what gives spice to the affair, we find that equality is not the norm for household exchanges. Fifi dreamed about having a lover. “It is the most important dream of my life, to meet a boy. One who understands me, and whom I understand. One that my friends here could see, but that they would not do it with him. That he was, how do you put it, faithful to me. I have had lovers who were with me, but they had affairs with my friends, too. That is why I did not want to have a lover anymore.” I asked her whether she would like to be faithful herself. “I would like to live with a boy in a house. And be like a woman, when he comes home, that he can go to work and I can wait for him. I can wash his clothes. H e can give me money for the expenses. If the

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opportunity presents itself, why not? I would be very happy.” However, Fifi admitted she was to blame for the infidelity of at least one of her former lovers, because she had been stupid enough to boast to her friends about her lover’s intimate measurements, whereupon they wanted to see for themselves (and were disappointed, because Fifi had exaggerated). Both her former lovers were later married, and Fifi told me she was invited to both wedding parties. T h e model of the relationship that Fifi drew up was one of a traditional exchange between husband and wife. But in practice the exchange is often biased. Ernesto, a mayate, talked about the time he lived with ajota: “It worked out for a while, we lived just the two of us together, in a normal marriage. H e prepared the meals, he washed my clothes, you know, a normal marriage.” But one difference from a “normal marriage” was that Ernesto did not contribute any money. His lover was a prostitute, and paid for everything. Carmen is one of the very few who has lived with a lover for several years. She said they had been very happy, although they quarreled and fought a lot. But after seven years, her lover, JosC, died. They both contributed to the household, but Carmen noticed J o d did not treat her as well as he treated women-and he did have some relationships with women. “It is better to be a woman, because one is maintained. When you’re a gay, most men are used to being paid for. It is changing now; we’re starting to stand up for ourselves. But before they were accustomed to being paid for. That was also one reason I wanted them to believe that I was a woman. Then later, when I lived with my lover, I felt bad because he also wanted to have affairs with girls, with authentic women. And I said, ‘Why does he invite her and everything, while with me I always have to invite him. Is it because I’m gay?’ So I said, ‘I should have been a woman,’ and I made a scene and started to cry. Then I said, ‘Why could I not have been a woman so that you would treat me like you treat her, because you buy her things, give her presents, only in order to have sex with her? Is it because she’s a woman?’ Then he told me it was the only way he could have a woman. Because a woman would not pay for him or anything. I didn’t pay for him either, but we shared the expenses.” Carmen pointed to the fact that when a man dates a woman in Mexico, he will invite her out and pay for her, and he may give her presents. In return he will have her company for the evening-and perhaps also for the night. So her company and sex is defined as her contribution, even if it never is presented as a direct exchange. When

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a man dates a jota, he feels no obligation to pay, which reflects that sex is not defined as something he receives from thejota. Actually, if anyone is to pay for the other, it is rather thejota. T h e situation is paradoxical, because many jotas are prostitutes: they sell sex for money to men who pick them up, and they would never dream of going themselves to pick up a boy prostitute and pay him for sex. But with those men they see as their lovers, they are often willing to be more generous. T h e exchange may resemble that between prostitute and pimp-as in Milner and Milner’s (1973)study of black pimps in a U.S. city, where the pimps, through a subtle, psychological play, managed to define their sexual relationship with the prostitute as a favor they accorded her if she deserved it: that is if she brought home enough money. I would not term thejotas’ boyfriends pimps, because the pattern seems to be the same when thejotas are hairdressers as when they are prostitutes. And I know of no prostitute jota who has a pimp in the classic sense that Milner and Milner, among others, describe: a man who not only lives from the prostitute’s earnings, but also organizes and supervises her trade, takes most of her earnings, and possibly threatens and beats her (according to Mema, female prostitution in Mexico City is much more organized, by men or senior prostitutes, than homosexual prostitution is). What happens between thejotas and their (often young and handsome) lovers is just that sex is defined more often as a favor the mayate accords the jota. T h e only systematic exception is in prison, where thejotas become a scarce good, as the only available sexual outlets for the men. There the jotas usually are maintained and protected by their lovers, in exchange for their sexual services. T h e fact that in love relationships sex is defined more as a favor from the mayate than from the jota is a significant piece of information, revealing that even if it is precisely the fact that thejota in so many ways presents himself as a woman that makes it unthreatening for the man to have sex with him, thejota is not perceived as a woman by the man-in the sense that the jota’s sexuality is not perceived in the same way that female sexuality is. When the two have sex, it is not a favor accorded by the jota: he is considered to be motivated by his own desire, and therefore he deserves no counter good. This is also reflected in the fact that the mayates I interviewed said they felt no responsibility for the jota’s sexual pleasure. They did what they wanted to do, and if thejota enjoyed it, that was O.K., but it was not their problem. With women on the contrary, they had to try to perform well, in order to give them pleasure.

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So the exchange is really very bad for thejotas. They pay for themselves and often quite a bit for the other, but while money in many contexts provides the right to demand something from the one who is paid for-such as services, or housework-the jotas have to (and want to) treat their lovers as men who are not given orders, and who do not do the dishes. Actually, out of their desire to be regarded as feminine, they prefer to do such work themselves. They get sex and they give sex, but while they may make a considerable effort to give the other pleasure, they cannot expect him to do the same. They probably do not want it to be otherwise, as they often do not want to remind their lover (or themselves) about their male sexual organs; they do not want them to be touched. Dani, who is effeminate but much less so than most of the other jotas who come to Mema’s house, had become conscious about the problems of establishing a relationship to a man. He even wanted to marry a woman to escape from what he perceives as exploitation. “I have had happy moments, very fine moments. But moments that I always know will come to an end some day. I may get passionate and then sometimes I suffer, because I’m frustrated that I cannot meet a person who understands me, who has the same ideas as I have. We homosemales deny it, but most of the men who approach us do it with money in mind, to live off us. That is the truth.” “But you have a lover?” “Yes, we see each other every now and then. We used to live together, and we had a fine time, but things have to come to an end one day. Because it hurt me to work while he stayed in bed all day. I said to myself, ‘What’s the use of it for me?’ I’d be better off to go back living with my mother, my sisters and brothers, and support somebody in my own family. ’Cause some faked caresses that you have paid for, well, that I can get anywhere, and not necessarily from somebody who stays permanently with you, who squeezes out the last cent from you.” “So what happened, did he leave?” “We had a lot of problems. He tried to rob me and many things. I got him arrested and many other things. But he came back; we have had three years like that now.” I reminded him that he had shown me his legs full of bruises lately, and asked him whether violence was one of the problems: “Yes, that is the latest problem we have had. We have been fighting; we were both arrested because I hit two policemen, too, but we were let out the same day. But still he has stayed with me, but I repeat to you that it is hard for us to admit it, and

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most don’t admit it, but they live off us! That’s why I have a high turnover with my partners, ’cause it frustrates me to have to put up with somebody. In addition there comes jealousy and violence and a lot of other things, and restrictions, like ‘Don’t go here, don’t go there.’ And I’m the one who brings everything! Then I should be the one who does the ordering, shouldn’t I?” “What do you think about his feelings, does he love you?” “Well, not as much as I love him. Unfortunately many of those who approach homosexuales are traumatized people. Who have suffered from childhood on, from violence, who have lacked material things, or affection. Then they end up with somebody like us who also need a lot of affection, and that is where I think there is an identification between us. But not a full identification, because then we would have shared things, like ‘you work-I work.’ ” “But is he affectionate with you?” “Yes, yes, he’s very affectionate. Definitely, but then I get sick. I get sick when he hugs me or something like that, and I push him away. Because I feel he does it out of hypocrisy. I feel he’s not sincere.” Dani said that he thought his lover was more homosexual than he was willing to admit. “I have always thought that real men live with women, and hornosexzlales with homosexuales.” “So you don’t have a man-woman division in your ;elationship?” “I have an odd idea a t this point. I am supposed to be the homosexual. And to be the active one with my partner-no.” So that is the end point of his ideas about equality for a couple: for money and work, yes; in bed, no. T h e fact that Dani stuck to the passive role and also had a rather feminine appearance ensured that his lover could continue to regard himself as the man in the relationship, as the one who contributed with manhood and therefore did not need to contribute anything else. But of course, according to another vision of homosexuality, he could be redefined as the second half of a homosexual couple, a definition of himself that he probably would object to. Dani’s analysis is a bitter one. If his lover was with Dani primarily for money, his love was faked. But there is not necessarily an either/ or relationship between money and love. Milner and Milner (1973) show how even pimps who calculate every move they make with their girlfriends, in order to make them emotionally dependent on them so that they will continue to provide for them, cannot be seen only as cynical. They may exploit the woman and love her a t the same time. Ernesto, who definitely received a lot while giving very little

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in his relationship with a jota, thought in the beginning that he was with him because of what he received. But he discovered that he really loved him: “I cried when he was not near me.” Even if an objective description may classify a relationship as one of exploitation, the subjective realities may very well have to do with love. Tbe Futile Questfor a Real Man

Thejotas differ, evidently, about the h n d of man with whom to fall in love. But a common feature is that these are men they see as manly men. Some do not think a man is really a man unless he incarnates machismo by being authoritarian, jealous, and violent. Flaca told me she had had a relationship where she was hopelessly in love: “If he said ‘Wait for me here,’ I waited. If he said ‘I like you to look like that,’ I dressed up like that.” I asked her whether her novio loved her. “Yes, but that was because I did some sorcery. That was the only way he could love me. Because this was a boy who doesn’t like putos. And when I met him, I liked him a lot. But when he saw me, he acted as if he threw up, as if I made him sick.” She told me she had succeeded thanks to some witchcraft with a candle. Two weeks later they were together: “He kissed me and said he loved me.” But this did not last long. “The day he learnt I had done witchcraft to get him, he ran away to wash himself. Every time he sees me now he hides.” I believe it says something about Flaca’s view of herself that she can be attracted to a person who shows disdain for her and then believe it was only thanks to witchcraft that she managed to be loved by him. One year later Flaca had had several stays in prison. And more than once she had fallen in love with men who ill-treated her. T h e first time was after a terrible group rape in a juvenile hall, presented in the previous chapter. “Little be little they started to get softer with me. Then I got to know the one who had organized the orgy. And then I started to be with him.” I asked her what kind of feelings she had for him: “This rape, do you think I liked it? No, no, no, no! But about three weeks after they raped me, I had an affair with him. I got to fall in love with him. But I didn’t love him.” Shortly afterward, Flaca was sent to jail again, and this time with adult men since she was now eighteen. After some fighting, she was placed in isolation. One day she was called in to the director’s office, where Alfredo, an inmate with money (he was in charge of the marihuana dealing inside the walls), was waiting together with the direc-

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Fig. z 3 . Nayeli and her lover (photo from private collection).

tor. Flaca was told that she was to move into Alfredo’s dormitory. Flaca understood that she had been bought, that she was to be Alfredo’s lover, possibly also wash his clothes and do other services for him. She had heard that Alfred0 had had otherjotox before in the same role. Flaca did not mind. “Night fell. H e told me to get up in the bed. I did, and he came over me, and he said, ‘I like you, you turn me on, that’s why I asked for your change. I’d like you to be something different from all the others I have filled.’ Because he’s a mayate, he’s had jotos with him before. But they had worked for him, washed his clothes and such things, but I didn’t do anything. And little by little he became very tender with me. And very jealous, very strange, you know. I couldn’t turn around or speak to anybody before it cost me a blow on the ears.” Flaca wanted to do some work to be

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able to pay for various expenses she had in the jail. But Alfredo would not let her. “So I spent the whole day in bed. Waiting for him. And he was very clever, because I wanted to get out and have some fun with the other men. But he would come back every quarter of an hour.” Alfredo’s jealousy may, however, not have been so unmotivated. Flaca rarely leaves a possibility for sex with a new man unexplored. Usually Alfredo followed her to the bathroom, but one day, after a quarrel, Flaca went to have a bath alone and immediately found another man whom she had sex with. They were discovered by a guard and put in isolation. After some days Alfredo bought Flaca out. But Flaca did not want to go back to Alfredo; she wanted to be with the other man. “Then he cried. H e said, ‘What’s this? You’re an asshole. And I love you like you were my old woman. I’ve never loved a put0 like that, neither a man, ’cause I’m not a puto, like I love you, bloody hell.’ ” Flaca tried to play hard to get, but Alfredo insisted. “He said to me, ‘For nobody, listen well, not even for my son’s mother, have I ever cried like I cry for a put0 like you.’ ” Flaca softened little by little. “In those days I did not love him; it was almost as if I was with him only because he bought me. But when I understood that he was so upset with me, I started to fall in love. And there came a time when I became very jealous. I came to love him. And I discovered I’d never loved before. I have felt tenderness with guys I was attracted to. But now I feel that I really love.” Flaca felt certain that Alfredo really loved her, because in addition to his declarations of love and his demonstrations of jealousy, he had given her things, he had arranged for her to have good food, and he had not rejected her after having seen her without makeup and without her foam-rubber paddings-meaning he had seen how skinny Flaca really is. The fact that he battered Flaca was not seen as a sign of lack of love: “A person shows his love in various ways. To me his blows had a taste of caresses. And I’m not a masochist. And I didn’t like it when he hit me. But the more he hit me, the more I loved him. The more stubborn I got, you know.” In Flaca’s logic, violence is a sign of jealousy, which again is a sign of love. And I suppose that the violence also added to Alfredo’s image of being a very masculine man-he was the boss on the wing, he had money, and he practiced boxing. But there is another and perhaps even more important way that a man can show himself as a real man: through his sexual practice. Flaca told me why she enjoyed so much having sex with Alfredo:

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“He’s not the kind of mayate who grabs his dick and wants you to suck it and then wants to fuck you real quick. No, he heated me up, he kissed me all over, from my feet and up, he turned me over and kissed me behind, everywhere. And once I was pretty stoned, and he kissed me, and I had a real hard-on. And I went on ‘Suck it, suck it!’ H e looked at me and then hit me. H e said ‘You’re a woman to me, not a puto, ’cause you’re very different from other putos.’ Then once he was fucking me and touched my dick, just because he happened to put his hand there, and it was really hard. Oh, he was so distressed! And suddenly his thing just became so00 tiny. It’s a person who is mayate, but embarrassed by it, you know. H e cannot accept that he’s with a man.” But Flaca did not really want Alfredo to touch her nor did she want to be the active partner with him. “With Alfredo, no. I swear to you that even if I said it, it was just because he had fine buttocks, and I used to tell him ‘I like your buttocks,’ but when I got to love him, it was not like that anymore.” Alfredo was always on guard, and took care never to turn his back to Flaca when they slept. With Alfredo Flaca managed to suppress erection and never ejaculated: “I tell you that when he took me, it warmed me with love and it filled me, and I was satisfied. And when I had a hard one on, I would not tell him to turn over. No, I went to the bathroom with my jotita friend [another incarcerated jota] and got it off with her. That was because I loved him so much.” Flaca told the same story to all who wanted to listen one evening in Mema’s house, and cried out her embarrassment when she came to the time Alfredo accidentally touched Flaca’s erect penis. Mema called Flaca an idiot. “Why should you be embarrassed? H e cannot have believed he was with a woman.” Flaca answered, “NO,but he was not used t o being with jotos, and once I tried to turn him over, I got a beating I’ll never forget.” Mema considered the affair hopeless and thought that Alfredo would certainly return to one of his women (he had a wife and a mistress who both visited him in prison) when he got out: “Ifyou manage to fuck a man, then there’s hope, because then you give him something a woman cannot give him. Otherwise there’s no hope. That’s why it’s a lot better to have the lund of lover that Pancha has, one who likesjotos; we have got to know him, all of us, and from all sides.” But what made Pancha’s lover a possible prospect for a lasting relationship was in fact what made Pancha lose interest in him. Pancha did not want her lover to come to pick her up a t Mema’s

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house, out of fear that her friends would get interested in him. But her lover did anyway, and happened to do it one day when Pancha was not there. “He came, he slept with Mema, he slept with Lupita, he slept with Patricia-and they fucked him. O n top of the whole damn thing, they fucked him! So I was embarrassed and didn’t want anydung more to do with him.” Infidelity is already difficult to accept, but letting oneself be penetrated is certainly over the limit. Pancha had never penetrated this lover, and never even wanted to do so: ‘‘I don’t care if he lets himself be turned over, what’s it to me? It’s his asshole and his business, isn’t it? But not with the people I hang around with. Because now they’re making fun of me. Not of him, but of me!” I was puzzled by this, because I knew that Pancha liked to penetrate. “But not with my marido.” But why, I asked. Pancha did not answer, and I posed the question more directly: Would it make the lover less of a man? “Yes, then I feel that he’s less of a man than I am. Just think about it-a put0 and me!” When I asked Pancha why that was a problem, she let me understand that she found the question too stupid to be answered, but answered in the affirmative when I asked if it would make her lose respect for her lover. Then I asked Pancha how she thought her lover might respect her in that case: “Look, if I go dressed as a woman with him, then I am a woman and he is a man, right? But if it is going to be tondLas, then I’d better put on men’s clothes and go along fucking men. Fuck them and be fucked by them. And make myself a marido that way. But if I wear a skirt, or nylons, or my paddings, then it’s no point for me going all stuffed out or wearing a dress or high-heeled shoes or a bra or nylons. No use of it! If I am to do it as a man, it’s better that be wears the skirt. But I won’t, because I want a marido so that he can do it on me.” Pancha’s reasoning shows how clothes, physical presentation, and sexual acts are all signs that contribute to the constitution and maintenance of masculinity and femininity. But these signs are interdependent; they refer to each other. So there is no point wearing feminine signs if the partner doesn’t respect the masculine signs he is supposed to show, among which the most basic is to be penetrating. T h e game breaks down, and Pancha must choose between taking off her bra and her foam-rubber padding, or finding herself another man. Kulick (forthcoming) found the same reasoning among Brazilian transvestites. Although they stated much more explicitly than the

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Mexican vestidas that they enjoyed penetrating and ejaculating, they only wanted to do so with their clients and never with their lovers, because the lovers would no longer be “men” for them. Gata agrees with Mema-in theory. She thinks it would be easier to be with a person like herself, but that is not what she wants. “I would have liked to be bisexual. I would have liked to meet a partner who is homosexual like myself. But that he should be the active one. Or I may be active too, without it showing on him. And that you can’t see it on me either.” T h e kind of homosexually behaving males she labels bisexuales are those who are both active and passive. She may also label them closet homosexuales, because they do not reveal their homosexuality by a feminine appearance. T h e problem is that this ideal does not suit her feelings. “I would have liked to feel what a closet homosexual feels, to have their desires, because they may find a love that lasts. But I don’t feel the same as a closet homosexual feels. I don’t get any satisfaction if I know the one who puts his dick into me is anotherjoto. Even if you can’t notice it on him, just to know that somebody else has put his dick into him, then I have no pleasure anymore. Then I know he’s puto, and I have no pleasure.” Gata is trapped, because what she wants is almost impossible to find. After asking me how I used the word bisexual, she continued her description of her dreams, using heterosexual and bisexual according to lexical definitions: “A homosexual in my position looks for a heterosexual. Even if it is just for the moment. And even if he will turn into a bisexual the moment he goes to bed with me. And before that, he has had a normal life and everything. But if he goes with me, it is because he saw a sign of woman in me.” Gata had two regular lovers, and she pretended that since they never have seen her completely naked, they did not really know whether she had been operated on or not. “I put on a mask, I pretend to be a woman. Even if my relationships do not last long, they are satisfactory to me. And that is what matters. If a man came to live with me, I would not be able to bear it, because he would have to know the truth. Do you understand? And if he grves me his buttocks, love ends.” Mema once told Gata she was creating problems for herself: “You attract men by being feminine, but you can’t keep them. Because they fall in love not with you, but with a picture they create in their imagination. That’s why you will always be lonely, behind your mask.” Although Gata agreed she was wearing a mask, she got very upset a t being called lonely and showed me all her photo albums to prove she was not.

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Marta seems even more trapped than Gata by the idea that she wants a man to respond to her feminine side only. For that reason she wants a man who does not usually go with homosexuales, and to ensure that, she prefers to let him believe she is a woman. “It’s best for me to go with a man who doesn’t know I’m homosexual, who thinks I’m a woman. Then I know he’s going to do it like a man.” If he knows about Marta’s biological sex, Marta cannot know why he is with her, what he is attracted to, and that is why she does not like it. Marta had once met a client with whom she had fallen in love. “Some years had passed without any man who really interested me. Only money interested me. It was September the 12th when I met him. I jumped into his car, and we made love, and I did not want to make more money that night. The only thing I wanted was to be with him.” They spent the night together, and made love several times. “He drove me home, and then we stayed one more hour in the car, talking. And I was so afraid that my nephews would come and call me ‘Martin’, that’s my real name, or ‘Uncle.’ But it didn’t happen.” They continued to see each other, and then, on Christmas Eve, he paid her a surprise visit. She had just enough time to tell all her family members to remember to call her Marta before he walked in. “He presented himself to my dad. Dad didn’t like the idea, but he accepts me. So he presented himself as my novio, and my father was so embarrassed, because he didn’t know what to do. And I was so nervous I thought I’d die.” H e even asked her father for permission to marry her. Her perplexed father asked him whether he knew what Marta was. H e answered positively, since he thought Marta’s father referred to the fact that she was a prostitute. Everything went well until New Year’s Eve, when some nephews forgot themselves. “He asked me, ‘Listen, Fatty, who’s Martin?’ I kept silent. Out of fear. Not that he would hit me or kill me, but because I was in love with him, so I feared he would leave me. When I didn’t answer, he repeated it several times, and then he said he was going to leave. Out of fright I had to tell him, ‘You know what? I’m like that. I’m a man who dresses like a woman, who cheats on men.’ Then he kept silent for ten minutes. But he cried, he cried, because I had hurt his heart, his feelings as a man. So he said, ‘How is it possible that I have been going with a man thinking it’s a woman?’ Making up illusions that I was a woman. I had destroyed his heart. I remember all this, these are the kind of things you don’t forget. And I cried, and I said, ‘Don’t leave, honey, don’t you want to spend this night with me?’ Then he

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answered me, after his long silence, ‘Listen Fatty, are you ready to leave with me for a place where nobody knows us?’ I was ready for everything, I swear on it, when I’m in love, I’m ready for everything. I said: ‘Yes honey, I’ll go wherever you want to take.me.’” They stayed together for a year or so, but they never left for anywhere. Marta had actually told him a new lie: That she had been operated on. So she continued to have sex with him without undressing completely, and she continued to work hard in order to get enough money for an operation. But the money went away on other expenses, and the two broke up after many quarrels. Three years later Marta finally had saved up enough for breast implants, but the sex-change operation is still very far away. Several others have told me stories that resemble Marta’s more or less: They have fallen in love with men who did not know their sex, and after a while, they have had to leave or to tell. If they tell, sometimes the relationship continues, but the strain has merely been displaced; there are always many others who do not know, so they have to live with the fear of being unveiled, or with the embarrassment when his family asks them if they are not going to have a baby soon. T h e lies put too much strain on the relationships. Gata and Marta show particularly clearly the interdependence of the image of the self and the image of the other, of the partner. It is only through a man’s vision of them as women that they can maintain their self-image as women. But in order to have “reflecting power,” to be able to reflect their feminine self-image, the man’s own masculinity must be irreproachable. This is due to the fragility of these vestidus’ gendered self-image; unsustained by biological “facts,” by bodily sexual signs, it can be sustained only by others’ vision of it. But relationships based on such visions of the other are based on so much pretending that it makes them very difficult to upkeep. T h e happiest love story I have been told by a vestidu was one where they lied less, to each other and to others. Still it was a difficult and stormy relationship, and there was no happy ending: after seven years together, Carmen’s marido JosC died. Although they differed in appearance-Carmen looks quite like a woman, while JosC looked like an ordinary young man-their relationship was based on equality, on sharing. Carmen had a hairdressing parlor most of this time, but had worked as a prostitute before. Josk worked as a prostitute, as a man selling sex to men. So they both contributed financially. They both had problems with alcohol and drug abuse (and Carmen thinks

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that it was drug abuse, mainly sniffing of glue, that caused the illness which led to JosC’s death), and they often fought out of jealousy, sometimes armed with bottles or knives. JosC had started to sell sex to men at an early age-according to Carmen, when he discovered his mother worked as a prostitute-and had been around homosemales a lot since puberty. But he had also had relationships with women, and had even lived with one and had a child by her. He continued to have affairs with women, which hurt Carmen, but she tried to accept it. He was less able to accept Carmen’s affairs with other men. Concerning the role division Carmen said, “I played the woman’s role, but in reality, we stepped over in each other’s role, doing everything. But I dressed as a woman and he did not. He always dressed as a man, and behaved like a man. But in our sexual relationship, we were equal, I mean, he did it like a woman and I did, too.” JosC told her that as a sex worker he was only active, but Carmen thought that he had embellished the truth a little: “I never asked him whether he was intmcional. He told me he was just mayate. But since I was a vestih, I guess it would have hurt him to tell me ‘oh, well, they fuck me,’ you know. But as I made love to him, I guessed that yes, he was internacional.” So they did not “play” at being a heterosexual couple when they were alone with each other, and not systematically with other people either. Jose’s mother and siblings knew more or less about Carmen’s real sex. They lived with them for some time, and Carmen thought they assumed she had been operated on, since she once had said so and had shown them a (forged) ID card identifymg her as a woman. In any case they would not object to his living with ajota: “He was the one who supported the family.” Carmen and JosC went to live in Acapulco, where during the day it was difficult for Carmen to appear as a woman: the heat melted her makeup. So she appeared as a man by day, and as a woman by night-and Josh had not minded, Carmen said. I cannot tell why Carmen accepted a relationshp based on relative equality while Flaca, Pancha, Gata, Marta, and several others are repelled by that kind of relationship. But there can be no doubt that Carmen’s model is a lot easier to maintain. The others are trapped by all the pretending and self-denial. One partner pretends not to be a man; the other partner pretends not to be homosexual. I end up conceding to Mema. In any same-sex relationship the two will have a lot of problems if they cannot face up to the fact that they have the same biological sex. The role-playing is not a problem

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in itself, but it becomes a problem when the roles also are played in the bed, as they imply the denial of one of the partners’ bodies. When the body, as with the vestida, does not correspond to the other presentations the vestida gives, this discrepancy creates a problem for the individuals concerned-for the vestida and for the vestida i sexual partner. Individual gender constructions take place within a framework of more general ideas of gender, of a social representation of masculinity and femininity based on dichotomous schemata. T h e masculine and the feminine are dependent on each other-the one cannot exist unless confirmed by the other. For those who have incorporated, embodied, these strongly dichotomous schemata, their bodies respond accordingly, their erotic desires are determined by them, and they are not attracted to a person who does not present the counterpart of what they present themselves. So even if I agree with Mema that jotas who remain within this logic have the odds against them when it comes to establishing relationships, I disagree with him when he presents it as if they could just choose to do differently, choose to be attracted to persons more like themselves. Erotic desire is unfortunately not merely a question of will . . . Symbolic Violence-and Resistance

Through the representations of the homosexual and of the “manly” man a fundamental dzference is created between two kinds of men who biologically speaking are the same; and when the homosexual and the mayate are together, they usually cooperate to maintain this difference. But there is always the possibility that the other at any moment could turn out to be the same as oneself, since only an appearance separates the two. This is one of the reasons that these relationships are so fragile-that they so easily may switch from love to disgust, as happened with Pancha; from sexual pleasure to aggression and violence, as happens with many bisexual men, who then make the homosexual their victim. As shown in chapter 5, in Mexico the representation of the homosexual man serves as a symbol of not-male, whether he is physically present or symbolically represented in a game between men. Thus, by being the negation of masculinity, he contributes to the definition of it, to the perception of manhood and to the constitution of men’s self-images. T h e jotos perceive and evaluate their relationships with men according to general schemata of gender symbolism character-

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ized by the idealization of masculinity, and, as the flip side of the coin, the disdain for unmanly behavior in men-which in fact means a disdain for themselves. The dominated share the dominants’ schemes of perception and appreciation, and apply these schemes to themselves. Bourdieu gives as another example of this the difference between black and white ways of speaking English in the United States. Every speech situation with black and white participants will be marked by this difference, and by the evaluation of it that gives a superiority to the white and bourgeois way of speaking, which is seen as the correct and natural way of speaking (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992:1~):“In short, if a French person talks with an Algerian, or a black American to a WASP, it is not two persons who speak to each other but, through them, the colonial history in its entirety, or the whole history of the economic, political, and cultural subjugation of blacks (or women, workers, minorities, etc.) in the United States.” I see the encounter between a jot0 and a mayate in the same way. Both become victims of their own perceptions and evaluations, and every encounter is colored by schemata that give superiority to masculinity (and masculinity to superiority), and inferiority to femininity (and femininity to inferiority). And yet, these encounters might bring both partners love and pleasure, just as love and pleasure are possible in relationships between women and men, between blacks and whites, despite the long history of oppression and domination. Even if the dominated share the low evaluation of themselves, they may, and probably very often will, develop some strategies for gaining dignity from below, some sort of resistance-just as working-class men may use their valorization of physical force as a resistance against the deprivation of other resources. Mexican women are subject to the same general schemata of perception and evaluation as the jotos are. But their subordination is, according to Melhuus (1992, 1996b), in a way compensated for in Mexican gender imagery by the moral superiority accorded to women. This is of course not a type of re-valorization available to the jotas, as they are neither virgins nor mothers. The jotas are in a much more ambiguous situation than women are. As shown in chapter 5, the jota can be desired by men only at the condition of being regarded as unmanly, and being despised for that. But the jotas seem to find it difficult to accept the contempt they are subjected to, and especially when it emanates from their sexual partners. Their attempts to gain dignity add to the complexity

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and the complications of the jota-mayate relationship. One of the j o tas’ dilemmas is that they want a man who is man enough to be dominant, and yet they do not want to be dominated. Even Flaca, who sees battering as signs of love, does not obey the dominant male she is so proud to have found: she takes advantage of every possibility to deceive him. I would assume that the jotas’ socialization as men makes it particularly difficult for them to accept an inferior position. In chapter 4 we saw that there are parts of the female role that the jotas do not want to take. They value their freedom of movement as men; they of course value the lack of restrictions on their sexuality. And they do certainly not value humility. In their sexual relationships the jotos find themselves in a situation loaded with domination and contempt. One strategy of resistance, of gaining dignity, is to show themselves smarter than their partners. They may demonstrate this verbally, or they may for instance steal something from them-and, as indicated earlier (chapter 2), I do not think that those thefts are solely economically motivated: I think they also serve to show the jotas’ smartness, and allow them to position themselves as the one who takes advantage of the situation. But the most important strategy for gaining dignity concerns the gender play, where the jotas use a dual-track strategy to neutralize the loss of male honor. They either refer to their femininity-or they make use of their maleness. T h e first strategy is to become female as far as possible, by looking like women, acting like women, and often passing as women. Then it is “only natural” that they should let themselves be penetrated like women: they are women, or almost. An affirmation of their femininity lies in their partners’ masculinity, which they may help to maintain by always talung the passive part in intercourse-or at least by pretending to do so. In more lasting relationships they often expect their lovers to be rather stereotyped, traditional machos; and they may accept a certain subordination, because the more masculine their partner is, the more feminine they feel themselves. The second strategy is to use their own maleness to deprive their partners of their masculinity. For how can a partner despise them for being jotos if he too allows himself to be penetrated? That makes him a j o t o . Cornwall (1994)found the same judgments of men who are penetrated among Brazilian travestis, but takes it as a simple fact that they share the masculinist attitudes that render them objects of abuse. I believe it is also a defense of the weak: they despise those who despise them, for not living up to their own standards (cf. the

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techniques of neutralization described by Sykes and Matza 1957). It is a defense against the dominant definition of them, by labeling negatively those who label them negatively-in much the same way as many other stigmatized groups seek to disperse the stigma that is put on them (for instance thieves who condemn tax fraud, or female prostitutes who claim that all women have to sell themselves in some way or another). These two strategies, although contradictory, may be combined, as the stories of Pancha and FIaca have shown. They both like to penetrate men, but they do not want to penetrate their maridos. Thus all men who have sex with jotas become either closet homosemales, who cannot despise them for their lack of masculinity because they do not have so much of it themselves, or real men, who prove the jotas’ femininity when they let the jotas have the woman’s sexual role. It is precisely the contradictory nature of the two strategies that makes them perfect as a response to an ambivalent situation. If the iota manages to combine them well, he protects himself against stigmatization. Femininity is the proof that he is a victim of his essence; consequently he cannot be blamed for being penetrated. Still, it is a loss of male honor and he ends up at the bottom of the pecking order, free prey to male aggression and desire. However, he can turn the tables and defend himself with his own physical maleness, depriving other men of their masculinity. Penenation and Gender Conshzcctions

Genders are constructed through a symbol system inscribed in our minds, a system that most of the time works automatically and lets us take for granted the social world and its sexual divisions. This symbolic system refers heavily to “nature” and to the body, and thereby gives the genders their “naturalness.” Gendered categories such as the general categories of “man,” “homosexual,” “woman,” and “maiden” or the more specific categories of “joto,” “mayate,” “tortilla,” and “buga” are all based on certain ideas about the body, the body’s boundaries, and bodily practices-and, in this Mexican example, first and foremost on ideas about penetration. In Mexico, male games and wordplays circle around symbolic acts of penetration, and the daily, vulgar language abounds in references to penetration (another main theme is the mother, but I will not explore that theme here). A difference between Mexican gender imagery in vulgar language and North American imagery or Latin

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American imagery elsewhere is the focus on rape of the mother as the central act. T h e person who is sworn at is either presented as a son of a raped woman (hijo de la chingada) or he is encouraged to rape his mother himself (chinga tu madre). T h e verb chingar covers acts ranging from bother to rape. Chingaderas is a term for a wide variety of bother and trouble, while a chingbn, literally a person who bothers or rapes, is a halfway positive characteristization of a person who is smart and who knows how to take advantage of others. Un chingo means “a and is used to amplify in all hnds of contexts (as for saylng that “it hurts a lot,” or “there were a lot of people”). jQue te chinges! expresses a wish that bad things will happen to a person, and is used like “go to hell” or “fuck you.” But between close male friends all these expressions may be used mockingly (as in a letter to a friend: “Give your sweetheart a kiss from me, even if it will make you jealous, que te chinges!”).These usages are not so different from the different usages of “fuck” in English, indicating how sexuality is linked to aggression, and penetration to power. A Dictionary ofAmerican Slang has listed the figurative significations as follows “to cheat, trick, take advantage of, deceive or treat someone unfairly” (quoted from Beneke 1982:11). Paz ( I 96 I) shows how the two sexes are contrasted in their expressions-the passive, inert, and open versus the active, aggressive, and closed. H e comments on the difference between Spanish and Mexican imagery (p. 80): “ T o the Spaniard, dishonor consists in being the son of a woman who voluntarily surrenders herself: a prostitute. To the Mexican it consists in being the fruit of a violati~n.’~ The Spanish image corresponds to that of Original Sin; Eve gave herself willingly. T h e Mexican image corresponds to the birth of the nation: T h e colonizers’ conquest, symbolized by the rape of the Indian woman. Partly in reality, but mostly in a symbolic sense, all Mexicans are sons and daughters of rapists and raped, and Paz thinks this has had a pronounced influence on Mexican mentality. But why is the act of penetration so symbolically fraught? Penetration implies that the body’s surface is pierced. According to Douglas ( I 989 [ I 966]), ideas about the body reflect ideas of society, and just as the transgression of social boundaries is associated with danger, so is the transgression of bodily margins. Body fluids, nails, and hair transgress the margins of the body. How this will be treated, which symbolic signification it will get, depends on cultural and social conditions which make menstrual blood a mortal danger in some cultures while it has no importance in others. T h e perceived danger is

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that a transgression of the bodily margins may bring pollution from the inside to the outside, or from the outside to the inside. Douglas states (1989:I 2 I), “Each culture has its own special risks and problems. T o which particular bodily margins its beliefs attribute power depends on what situation the body is mirroring.” She holds that there is a correspondence between a society’s social structure and beliefs about the body: concerns for social borders reappear as concerns for the body’s boundaries. Societies are classified (1982 [I9701) according to the level of group adherence (individuals’identification with the group they belong to), and to the existence of recognized, differentiated social roles (“grid”), and, Douglas claims, pollution beliefs occur with a particular strength when the level of group adherence is high, while the internal structure is low. I find this part of her theory rather difficult to apply, since it is not evident how societies, and particularly complex societies, should be classified according to the criteria given. But actually it is striking that while Mexico has relatively relaxed attitudes toward pollution from food, has no circumcision rituals and no isolation of menstruating women, the fear of pollution seems to be concentrated on beliefs about penetration: a woman’s improper sexual behavior pollutes her and affects her male relatives, who lose honor. And a man is polluted if he is penetrated, and he loses honor. This might be a sign that even if positions in a general social hierarchy are relatively clear and fixed (with a low level of social mobility), and men’s positions in relation to women’s also are clearly defined, men’s position among men are less clear and fixed. A man has to gain a position and defend it against attacks from other men toward “his” women and toward himself. A man’s defense of “his” women’s vaginas and his own anal orifice would then symbolize his defense of his masculine self in the struggle between men.’ Penetration is a transgression of the body’s boundaries in both a physical and a symbolic way. The maiden’s body is a closed space that is opened by a man, and thereby becomes a woman’s body. The man’s body is a closed space that should not be opened, but when it is, it resembles the woman’s body. Penetration implies a change I . Cf. Parker (1991:47)on the signification of anal penetration for Brazilian men: “The threat of anal penetration, whether symbolic or real, thus defines the underlying sm*cture of masculine relationships, and defense against the phallic attacks of other males becomes an almost constant concern during the ordinary interactions of daily life.” This statement seems, however, to be somewhat in contradiction to his description of how easily boys agree to “take their turn” in the passive role (p. 127-28).

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of the penetrated self, and thereby passage from one gendered category to another. T h e maiden becomes a woman, possibly a mother. In Mexican gender imagery men produce women in the sense that they have the power to transform maidens into women. This is shown in the expression “le hizo mujet-”-he made her a woman. T h e expression is recurrent in popular songs, usually when a betrayed man reminds thg treacherous woman that she belongs to him, because he was the one who made her a woman. (“Aquel viejo motel trae recuerdos del dia que te hice mujer, lo que quieres olvidar, nena, per0 no has podido”-“The old motel carries memories of the day I made you a woman, which you want to forget, girl, but you have not been able to.”) T h e belief that a woman may be produced only once may explain some of the importance given to virginity. A man not only makes a maiden a woman, he makes her his woman. This makes her a polluted object for other men, polluted by her contact with the first man, and even more so if there have been others after him. In much the same way a man may be made into a homosexual through a penetration, shifting from one gendered category to another if he is penetrated. W e have seen that this is so in the imagery of the jotas, but also in the imagery of the mayates, which is why they have to be so careful not to let it happen, and if it has happened, to keep it secret. And it is the act of being penetrated that is the source of this magic transformation. For the jotas it may be enough that a man has done it once: he is no longer a “man” for them; he is polluted, even if it was one of them who penetrated him. Some men, however, do not consider a man homosexuaj unless he liked being penetrated. T h e other party, the man who penetrates, is not altered by the act-his body is intact. T o thejotas, however, the penetrating man changes status from buga to mayate. Since these categories do not exist in the everyday language of most Mexicans, it is a distinction that is significant only for the jotas. T o the rest of society, the distinction is not recognized-both bugas and mayates are men. As I, following Douglas, use the word “pollution,” I think it is important to stress that the penetrator is not the source of the pollution. It is the woman or the jato who pollutes him- or herself. A woman carries impurity that she has to manage in specific ways to avoid polluting herself. If she lets herself be penetrated in an improper way, she shows a moral weakness emanating from her inside, and the shame is on her. In the same way, a man has a responsibility to defend his manhood against attacks from other men. If he fails in

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this, it is the sign of a weakness in him, a femininity that comes from his inside, not inflicted from the outside. Alonso and Koreck regard what happens to the penetrated male as equal to what happens to a woman (1988:1 I I): “ m h e passive role in sexual intercourse (whether anal or vaginal) is seen as a source of pollution, reduced autonomy, shame, and powerlessness-whether for women or jotos.” I agree that there are similarities, but there are also differences. First, while for a man to be penetrated is always illegitimate, for a woman it depends on the context. A faithful wife who is penetrated by her husband avoids shame and pollution. But if she is penetrated by a man who leaves her, she risks becoming a bad woman, a whorea change in gendered status as dramatic as the change from man to homosem[. Second, it is not obvious that penetration causes reduced autonomy and powerlessness for a woman. A maiden has in fact very little autonomy to begin with, and the penetration will often mean simply that the authority over her is transferred from her father to her novio or m a d o . In most cases, I think, this implies a gain, albeit a small one, rather than a loss in autonomy. And if she becomes a mother, she will certainly have some power in her home. As Melhuus states (1996b), women do not belong to the same hierarchy of power as men do. The profound complementarity implies that even if the two genders depend on each other, they are not dependent on each other for the same reasons. Women are the keepers-or the destroyers-of men’s honor, while men are the guardians-or the destroyers-of women’s virtue. In a relationship between a man and a homosexzcal, however, the two belong to the same hierarchy of masculinity, so it is the same thing that is at stake: men’s honor, or manhood. Their relationship is therefore marked by a certain struggle-even if the homsexllal takes an ambiguous position and may seek to define himself out of this hierarchy by claiming to be almost a woman. The man’s and the maiden’s “virginity” are very different. So my third point is that with a man it is not a question of a real existing membrane. The symbolic aspects of virginity are evidently more important than the material ones, but in the female case there is at least a material basis for the symbolism. In practice this latter aspect is quite important. I have for instance heard about Mexican girls who have practiced anal sex with their novios before marriage-as long as a girl is technically speaking a virgin on her wedding night, she is a virgin (and besides, of course, she will not be pregnant). In that case the signifier, the hymen, is more important than the signified: purity,

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immaculation. Fourth, a maiden saves her virginity for her future groom, while a man’s “virginity” is supposed to remain intact his whole life through. Fifth, the material aspect of female virginity makes the passage irreversible, whereas it seems that homosexlwles may become “men” again by being with a woman. I have heard hints to this effect, for instance when a girl suggested to me that I should make a man out of a iota she cared for, by marrying him. Sixth, a man who loses his “virginity” loses manhood, while a maiden loses her innocence and steps out of childhood; the penetration represents a passage to adulthood for her. And my seventh and final point is that the social importance of female and male “purity” cannot be the same. T h e importance of female “purity” must be seen in the context of a traditional patriarchy where women are the property of men, where women are objects of exchange between men, and where men seek to have control over their descendants. By contrast, the social importance of men’s anal virginity is far less obvious. The existence of the whore confirms the virtue of the virtuous woman, just as the existence of thejoto serves to confirm the existence of masculine men. Masculinity is defined in opposition to femininity, and the two sexes confirm each other by being counterparts. But the degree of masculinity may be defined with the jot0 as a counterpart, and female virtue defined with the whore as a counterpart. Within each gender a position is defined according to other positions for persons of the same gender. Becoming aj o t 0 is of course not the only way a man may lose his male honor. T h e impotent man and the cuckold are other incarnations of dishonored men, or men laclung in masculinity. T h e jot0 and the cuckold resemble each other: the former is himself penetrated by other men, the latter is indirectly so when his wife is penetrated by other men. T h e cuckold “is being fucked over without knowing it,” as one of Parker’s Brazilian informants says (1991:48). T o remain childless may perhaps also affect a man’s honor. While the classification of women is basically in discrete categories (good or bad), the definition of men is more continuous, according to a range of masculinity. (This is shown by the common expression muy macho or muy hombre-“much man.” T h e same expressions do not exist in common usage for women, although there is an expression mucha mujer, which may refer to a woman who has had more sexual experiences or more children than the average, so there is something of a possibility of rankiqg femininity.) While men are defined according to a range of masculinity or male honor,

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women are classified as good or bad according to their virtue. The two hierarchies are related, since the definitions of women also define the men they belong to. This is so within the logic of shame and honor: a woman’s lack of virtue affects her male relatives-her father, her brothers, her husband, and her sons. Melhuus (1992) states that men need virtuous women as wives, in order to uphold their own and their family’s honor. These are the women whom men will provide for, and whose virtue they will defend, and hence gain respect as responsible men. But men also need the other women, as Melhuus states (1996a:r~): In order to confirm his manhood, a man needs both the virtuous woman and thefimcasada (literally a “failed woman”), a local term used to describe the woman who has fallen from grace-that is, one that has had sexual intercourse before marriage or a child out of wedlock. This discrete categorization of women, classifylng women into two kinds, is a prerequisite for this construction of masculinity. However, it is also central to the construction of female identity, but with differing connotations: w e r e a s men need “bad” women if they are to remain men, women need the indecent women if they are to remain good.

Melhuus claims men and women therefore have a common project in labeling bad women, although for different reasons. I have here argued that thejotos may be used by men in much the same way as bad women are-to confirm or verify their masculinity, be it through verbal badgering, violence, or sex. The hierarchies for men and for women are also interrelated in another way: femininity is used as a measure of masculinity, or, rather, of the lack of it. It is, according to Ortner and Whitehead (1981:9), very common that the same axes that divide and distinguish male from female, and at the same time rank male above female, also produce internal distinctions and gradations. My interpretation is contrary to some interpretations of homosexuality and transvestism in other parts of the world, such as the one Unni Wikan has given of the homosexual transvestites in Oman. These, she claims, in the absence of female prostitutes work on the definition of women (1977:3 10):“Through him, the pure and virtuous character of women may be conceptualised.” In a highly sexsegregated society, transvestites keep mainly to the female part of the space. In this they resemble the homosexual males in Mombasa, described by Gill Shepherd (1987), who also socialize much with women. In Mexico, however, the j o t 0 seems to be irrelevant for

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women. H e has a significance for men, which is shown in part by the fact that he belongs to the male physical/temporal space: he is found outside, in the streets, in public places, and also after dark. Other studies from Latin America also place the feminine homosexual man in a purely male context. Lancaster says the following about the interdependence between machistas-“men”-and cochones, the Nicaraguan word that corresponds to jotos ( I 992 :2 4 2 -43): “Used by other men, the cochon is not a complete man. His ‘passive’ acquiescence to the active drive of other men’s sexual desires both defines and stigmatizes his status. Consequently, when one ‘uses’ a cochon, one acquires masculinity; when one is ‘used’ as a cochon, one expends it. T h e nature of the homosexual transaction, then, is that the act makes one man a machista and the other a cochon. T h e machista’s honor and the cochon’s shame are opposite sides of the same coin.” And Alonso and Koreck say (1988:113),“Though more research is necessary on this issue, it is possible that for machos, anal penetration ofjotos involves a particularly erotic intersection of power/pleasurechingar, and hence, to emasculate, another man may represent the ultimate validation of masculinity.” I will not go so far as to state that a man acquires masculinity or finds the ultimate validation of it when penetrating a homosexual man. But we may certainly say that his masculinity is not affected negatively by penetrating one. In the verbal badgering a man gains masculinity from putting himself in the active, penetrating role. And logically it is possible that a man gains masculinity by really doing it, too, since it makes him demasculinize another man. I have heard Mema imagine that men say to themselves “soy tan macho que me cog0 a 10s p~tos”--(~Iam so manly that I fuck the queers.” And I have been told that the same is said in Argentina with a lot of admiration about President Carlos Menem: he is so macho that he even fucks other men, the rumor goes. There is also a saying in Mexico that goes “soy tan macho que hasta el perrico me cogo”-“I’m so manly that I’ll even fuck the parrot,” meaning “I’ll go for anything.” What makes me hesitate about adhering to this view is that I see the mayates’ reticence and embarrassment as signs that they perceive what happens as rather complex or ambiguous. If it were the whole truth that a man enhanced his masculinity by penetrating other men, they would brag about their exploits withjotos, and one could imagine that the less effeminate the jot0 were, the more masculinity would the mayate gain from penetrating him, from showing himself as “more man” than the other. One objection might be that it would

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create doubt about who penetrated whom. But if we take the group rapes in prison as an example, where other men witness who penetrates whom so there should be no doubt about who gained masculinity, it is still striking that systematically the most effeminate, those who are alreadyjotos, are picked out to be raped. It is their femininity that “justifies” the abuse. I believe the reason for the mayate’s ambiguity is that he knows that whether his masculinity will be injured, maintained, or enhanced by penetrating a jot0 is totally dependent on the interpretation that will be given of it, and he knows that different interpretations are possible. While the most common interpretation among workingclass men in Mexico probably is that his masculinity will not be affected, most mayates may realize that women might see it differently, that middle-class people might see it differently, and that North Americans or Europeans might see it differently. They see middleclass homosexual couples formed of two rather equal-looking males, and this European and North American view of homosexuality is conveyed by television and movies. Mayates perhaps may not have a very conscious knowledge about this, but I believe they are basically aware that some people might consider them to be homosexual, too. And this-the mere existence of another perception and evaluation of homosexuality-is a menace to the mayates’ perception and evaluation of themselves. Some Rej4ectJom on Gender P a r a d i p

The fact that penetrated males are not considered as completely male or yet as female raises the question of whether the jotas may be considered a third gender. The j o t a s frequently referred to themselves as something third-neither men nor women. Like Fifi, when I asked him whether he thought his life would have been very different if he had been born a woman. “Who knows? If I had been a woman, I would not have had this wild life. It would have been more relaxed, ’cause women are more prudent. And one is more careful with a woman than with a man. If I had been a man, I guess I would not have been in these circles neither. But who knows? I tell you that I feel fine, because when I want to, I’m a man, when I want to, I’m a woman, and when I want to, then I go around like a jotita.” To be homoseml is then neither to be a man nor to be a woman-or it is to be both, alternately. Lupita came back from the doctor with a

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prescription where the secretary had first filled in her Christian name Luis, then filled in “mascu” under the heading “Sex,” but had then taken a look at her, crossed it out, and written “homosexual.” This tripartite division is in fact quite frequent in daily life, and shows a recognition of homosemales as something different. Herdt (1994a) has traced the history of the reigning EuroAmerican two-sex/two-gender paradigm, showing that the idea about two sexes cannot be considered a universal, ahistoric idea, nor can it be considered a scientifically based idea. H e refers to Thomas Laqueur, who showed that the prevailing idea in popular culture and medical theory from antiquity until the eighteenth century was that there was but one sex: women were incomplete men. Laqueur writes (1990:4), “For thousands of years it had been a commonplace that women had the same genitals as men except that, as Nemesius, bishop of Emesa in the fourth century, put it: theirs are inside the body and not outside it.’” An illustration of this idea could be the story about a French girl who in the heat of puberty jumped across a ditch while chasing pigs through a wheatfield, and, according to a sixteenth-century surgeon, “at that very moment the genitalia and the male rod came to be developed in him, having ruptured the ligaments by which they had been held enclosed” (Laqueur I 990: I z 7). Later, according to Herdt, there occurred a three-sex distinctionmen, women, and hermaphrodites-before the two-sex paradigm took over and naturally occurring hermaphrodites were assigned to one or the other sex. But the one-sex paradigm re-emerged from time to time, as in medical warnings against female masturbation in the eighteenth century: what was hidden inside might fall down (Trumbach 1994:118). When it comes to the scientific basis, Herdt stresses that intersexed persons do occur quite naturally, but that they are interpreted differently in different cultures. An illustrative example (Herdt 1994b) is a specific kind of intersexed person who for genetic reasons occurred with an abnormal frequency in the Dominican Republic (described in chapter 3). In their society they were recognized as different, as a kind of person who would resemble girls as a child but who would get a penis at puberty. When medical practitioners and researchers approached the phenomenon, they systematically assumed that a two-sex system was in operation: they stated that these persons were raised as girls but switched over to the male gender role and were considered men-leaving out the possibility that they may have been considered and considered them-

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selves neither female nor male, but something third, or perhaps rather something in between; that the presence of a recognized third sex might have influenced their sexual and gender development (something the local term for them, gutmedoche, “penis at twelve,” should give a hint about). The Euro-American two-sex paradigm is also reflected in the understanding of transsexuals, according to Bolin (1994). They are considered as switching from one sex to the other, or are considered as having had a “female soul trapped in a male body” (or inversely), whereupon “sex reassignment surgery” serves to restore order, unambiguity replaces the ambiguity. Suzanne Kessler (I990) has studied how physicians in the United States handle the cases of infants born with genitals that are neither clearly male nor clearly female. Even though the baby was born quite naturally with ambiguous genitals, the physicians speak as if there were only two options: the infant is either male or female, one of the options is the correct one, and the question is to find out which one it is-and afterward, one has to stick to the gender that was assigned, even if the child’s physical development gives reason to doubt that the choice was the best one. The doctors regard the infant’s gender as an unknown but discoverable reality, and if it is not possible to discover that reality they treat the infant’s gender as something they must construct. They hold that gender should be assigned immediately, decisively, and irreversibly. The most objective way of determining the child’s sex would be chromosome analysis, but doctors often give more importance to genital appearance, and speciallyto the size of the penis/clitoris, whether it will be possible to make it into a penis that can “function” (with surgery or hormonal treatment). This shows that (p. 18): “In fact, doctors make decisions about gender on the basis of shared cultural values that are unstated, perhaps even unconscious, and therefore considered objective rather than subjective.” The natural occurring ambiguity is socially impossible to handle, and the accountability is masked by the assumption that gender is a given. When it comes to gender paradigms, it seems evident that some cultures operate with more than two genders. The North American Indians’ berdaches (Roscoe 1994) and the Indian hijras (Nanda I 994) are examples of a third possibility that is recognized as neither men nor women. What makes it reasonable to consider them third genders is the existence of a complete understanding of these persons, that they have a specific origin and a specific destiny. Herdt’s ( I 994.a: 65) analysis of the Mohave berhches may serve as an example. The

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Mohave recognized in them a distinctive ontology, expressed in heartfelt desires, task preferences, and cultural transformations, and their role was legitimized by spiritual power. T h e sexual attraction of the berdacbes was recognized as being toward a person of the same biological sex, but of the opposite gender. And this condition was not stigmatized. Rather than being attributed to an autonomous third category, Mexico’s jotas are recognized as non-males inside the category of males, perceived and evaluated according to schemata of oppositions between women and men. These schemata may also be applied within the category of men. Kulick (forthcoming) claims that gender in Latin America should be seen as consisting not of “men” and “women,” but rather of “men” and “not-men,” the latter category comprehending both biological females and males who enjoy anal penetration. But even if there can be no doubt that anal penetration represents a feminization of men, there still remain a lot of culturally significant differences between men and women that make this categorization reductive. And it is basically from a male perspective that penetrated males are assimilated to biological women. For women, I am sure, the differences would by far outweigh the similarities. I also would remind the reader of all the ways in which the mayates show that they do not regard relationships withjotas as equal to relationships with women (the need for discretion, the fact that they do not need to give a jota sexual satisfaction, the economic exchanges in the love relationships, etc.). I therefore find it more accurate to considerjotas as the feminine pole within the male category. With the primacy given to sexual positions (active or passive) rather than to object choice (man or woman), the local understanding of the jotas certainly differs from the last century’s dominant EuroAmerican understandings of homosexual males. But they concur on one point: the idea that homosexual males are men who lack something, “not enough genes, not enough hormones, not enough mother, not enough father” (Herdt 1 9 9 4 b : ~ )More . than anything else, the jotas lack another essence: manhood. As gender constructions are social constructions, they are also social specific. And yet, similarities may be found between culturesI say similarities, and I will not venture myself to call them universals. But the bodily rules and the symbolism connected to the body vary a great deal between societies, and the specific focus on penetration demonstrated in this Mexican case may not be found in so many others. Bourdieu (1990) listed the schemata of oppositions that struc-

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tured the Kabylian perception of gender: up-down, right-left, outside-inside, front-behind, etc. Some of these may be at work also in Mexico, but there are as well some specific oppositions at work, such as the hot-cold classification that runs through conceptions of illness, politics, economic and sexual relations, and that metaphorically connects these phenomena, according to Lomnitz-Adler (I 992 : 124). Though perhaps the most important structuring oppositions in the Mexican case are, as Paz states (1961:77),between active and passive, between closed and open. The symbolism of the active versus the passive might have much wider validity for the understanding of gender. Actually, Parker (1991:41)holds it as the distinction that most clearly structures Brazilian notions of masculinity and femininity. While I in chapter 5 studied the use of sexual metaphors in contexts that are not directly sexual (badgering among men, soccer songs, etc.) in order to understand sexual relationships, Parker studied the use of metaphors in sexual contexts-and also in order to understand sexual relationships. Both ways lead to seeing how symbolic oppositions are intertwined and add up to gender representations. As Parker writes (1991:43), Through its description and interpretation of the natural world, the language of the body transforms biological reality into social significance. A system of sexual classification is built up and a hierarchy of values between the various classes is established. Playing upon deeply ingrained notions of activity and passivity, domination and submission,violence and inferiority, these structures split the sexual universe in two-opposing, without compromise, the world of men, penetrating and metaphorically consuming their partners during sexual exchanges, against the world of women, passively offering themselves up to be penetrated and possessed.

With the exception of the metaphorical consumption of the partner, which refers to the Brazilian-specific usage of the word “to eat” and other food-metaphors for sexual acts, this description would do for Mexico, too. Through such discourse, through the way of talking about sexual matters, representations of masculinity and of femininity are expressed-and produced. Activity is linked to domination and violence, passivity to submission and inferiority. In discourse and in practice the metaphorical relationship between sexual matters or gender matters and other social matters works both ways: gender relations are used as metaphors for social relations and vice versa. Thus they reinforce each other. And more than anything else, what

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is reinforced is male domination.* Male domination, so deeply inscribed in the schemata of perception and appreciation that it appears to be natural, as Bourdieu (1990) states, is probably the most universal feature of gender relations. The Future of Jota-Mayate Rehationships

Several historical studies have shown the passage in Europe and in North America during the past century from a complementary model for homosexual and lesbian couples toward a more egalitarian model (Hekma 1994, Nilsson 1994, Trumbach 1994). Bech (1997) sees the egalitarian model as a relatively modern form of homosexuality, and regards it as a response to modern conditions of life-the city, the collapse of norms, the dissolution of the family, and so forth. H e believes other parts of the world will follow insofar as these conditions become prevalent. But at the same time these conditions will also affect heterosexuals, and what was “specifically homosexual” will therefore disappear. I am not certain that Mexican homosexual men will give the same answer to modern conditions of life as do Europeans and North Americans. Changes in conditions of life in Mexico do not follow the patterns developed in Europe and North America. While the class differences, the poverty, and the lack of social security in Mexico may correspond to the situation in Europe a century ago, the country has kept up with the modernization process when it comes to the media. This probably means that whereas the conditions for individualism and relative independence from the family may not be present, the conditions for awareness about the multiple possibilities of this world are. For these reasons I will be very cautious in making predictions. I do believe that the existing form of homosexuality in Neza, as dez. At this point I am not sure that I understand Parker (1991)well. All the while that he would seem to agree perfectly with this analysis of sexual practices as reproducing gender ideologies and gender hierarchy, he also sees the erotic as standing in opposition to the social. H e links the transgression of sexual norms to the carnival tradition and to the reversal of social order, and claims that “the erotic offers an anarchic alternative to the estahlished order of the sexual universe” (p. 134).To me this seems somewhat contradictory, but one of his own conclusions is exactly that systems of sexual meanings are contradictory, and his analysis is thus contrary to most anthropological descriptions of sexuality, which are characterized by conformity and uniformity (p. I 72). One of the paradoxes in Brazilian erotic culture seems actually to be the norm of transgression of norms.

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scribed in this book, is threatened, and probably will be less frequent in the years to come. The first reason has been mentioned: the fact that new generations of young men are aware that sexual contact with other men might be seen as a sign of homosexuality, even in the penetrating partner; or at least they are aware that there exist homosexual couples where both look like men. Gradually, more men will see sexual contact with jotas as somewhat more risky. The existence of AIDS will surely add to this feeling of risk. Perhaps normative changes concerning female sexuality as well as greater availability and knowledge of contraception also may make women somewhat more sexually accessible. And the fascination for the vestida, for the man enwrapped as a woman, is perhaps losing out now. There are fewer and fewer discos with transvestite shows, according to Mema. Likewise, jotas may also be influenced by the awareness of other models for relationships. Today they may express contempt for the tortillas, but some recognize the advantage of finding a partner who resembles oneself and who also regards himself as homosexual, whatever his appearance is. It is true, though, that thejom are and will for a long time continue to be too attached to their own families to want to take the step over into a model of homosexuality based on the formation of a couple with two equal persons. So far I have no reason to believe that there are fewer vestiah or other very feminine jotas than before, or that former vestidas become gays. But new generations of men with a desire for their own sex will probably gradually be more influenced by the middle-class model and by the representation of the gay man, which are also the images that today are most frequently conveyed by television and movies.

In this book, I have intended to show the complexity of gender constructions through a detailed study of one particular case. T h e complexity is caused by the fact that albeit gender constructions depend on material and social conditions, they cannot be reduced to these. For example, while the different New Guinea cultures have a lot in common regarding material and social conditions, only 10to 2 0 percent of these cultures can be said to have an institutionalized form of transgenerational male homosexuality (Greenberg 1988: 2 7 ) , in the sense that it is an obligatory rite de passage sustained by a belief system shared by the society as a whole. It is not possible to state why exactly these cultures have this practice, while their neighbors have not. In each such culture, the practice is but one component of a complex and specific gender construction. T h e same goes for berdaches: they existed in many North American Indian cultures, but not in all. And as for those in which they did exist: in some it was a permanent condition, in others not; in some the berdaches dressed and behaved like women, in others not; in some they were highly respected, in others not, etc. (Greenberg 1988, Herdt 1991a). To add to the complexity, the form of Mexican homosexuality I have studied coexists with other forms of homosexuality, some of which are only slightly different, some of which are very different. None of these are institutionalized, which is certainly one reason for the diversity. Another reason is the fact that a subculture is not only the result of material and social conditions or of the influence

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from the mother culture-it also creates itself. A subculture has its own dynamic, through its vocabulary, its aesthetics, and its hierarchy, and thereby it also gets its own history. In the course of this book I have pointed to a series of social and cultural conditions that may-partially-explain the specific organization of male homosexuality that I have observed. The big city is a precondition for the formation of subcultures and for the physical space that makes a diversity of sexual encounters possible. A city must be of a certain size in order to sustain specialized establishments, such as meeting places, and to insure the anonymity required to avoid legal and moral sanctions (cf. Greenberg 1988: 346). Further, membership in the lower working class, low social mobility, and poverty are preconditions for the jotas’ rather low social ambitions, and for their resorting to prostitution. Their class also fashions their taste, their aesthetic preferences. The material poverty together with the lack of formal education contribute to give importance to the bodies, to physical capital, and also to sexual pleasure. In addition comes the fact that the participants in this subculture are young, at an age where they-as males-may have a certain social freedom for erotic exploration. The family structure, with its economic, moral, and emotional grasp on the individual, checks the development of a modern, more individualistic’homosexual form of existence (a gay lifestyle). A general disdain for femininity when it occurs in men, with a subsequent stigmatization of the jotas, handicaps the latter in regard to social careers, and leads to the formation of a su_bculture. And the strong norm of complementarity between the sexes is a reason for the identification of male homosexuality with femininity, and is also a reason why the jotas enjoy having a feminine appearance and actually are able to attract masculine-loolung men with it. Male dominance together with this norm of complementarity are preconditions for the jotas’ attraction to the most masculine-defined men. Male dominance is also a precondition for a definition of a jota-mayate relationship that relieves the stigma for the latter partner, and for the perception of the jota as a man deprived of his masculinity. This perception is in turn linked to the understanding of what an act of penetration means: that to be penevated feminizes a man, and makes him at the same time an object of contempt and a possible object for sexual relations. These factors together with the control over women’s sexuality and the importance given to male virility contribute to channeling many men’s sexual desires toward jotas. These social and cultural conditions are all very important, but

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do not give an exhaustive explanation of the phenomenon that has been studied. A major aim of my study has been to show the need for in-depth, concrete, empirical analyses that can reveal the falseness of a number of simplistic statements about transvestic male homosexuality in Latin America-such as “Transvestism is a result of oppression of homosexuality,” ‘‘Homosexual relations are a secondary sexual outlet for men,” “Male bisexuality is tolerated in Latin America,” and the like. Such statements contain a bit of truth, but the truth is always much more complex. Recall the analysis of the social integration of the jotas: it is true that they are victims of marginalization, exclusion, and violence, but it is equally true that they are well integrated in the family structure, and that they have their place in the daily life of the neighborhood. Even a phenomenon such as theft, which seems so easy to understand, cannot be reduced to the economic motivation; it may also be a quest for dignity, or motivated by the wish to have fun. I do, however, not agree with those who equate complexity with ambiguity or infinite diversity. T h e postmodernists’ warnings against false generalizations have led to a series of studies that limit themselves to very concrete, empirically detailed descriptions-sometimes of high ethnographic value, but contributing very little to sociological theory. Th e objective of sociology still is to uncover social mechanisms, to see patterns in the variety. One of the reasons for simplistic interpretation is that the phenomenon usually is seen only from the outside, or, when seen from the inside, only from the inside. I have tried to take the actors’ point of view seriously, but also to understand the objective conditions for that point of view. It is evident that the very strong male domination in Mexican society is one of these objective conditions. But this domination is not experienced by the actors as a coercion, nor even as an oppression; they participate willingly. And they do so not only because they share the dominants’ schemata of perception and evaluation, but also because they develop their own strategies of adaptation, even resistance. These objective and subjective realities should be grasped simultaneously. A current trend in gender studies sees gender constructions as products of discourses in a very wide sense of the term: not only of verbal discourses but also of other exchanges of signs-through appearance and through acts, through bodily and sexual practices, as well as through a lot of other social practices. This research tradition, to which I basically belong, has shown that gender cannot be reduced

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to biological sex, and that the cultural constructions of gendered categories as well as the individual constructions of gendered personalities create possibilities that explode the male-female dichotomy. But when focusing on the social construction through discourses, one runs the risk of neglecting the importance of material conditions and of biological aspects. I have tried in this work to present the objective, material conditions for the observed social practices, and, furthermore, to show in what ways the body limits the possibility of social constructions. The vestidas are indeed practical social constructivists; they show the malleability of gender. But they also encounter the limits of the malleability, the point where the body objects, where it gets ill and the functioning is damaged. And they get to the point where gender and sex meet. Biological sex is also a social reality. Gender is a question of discourses, of signs, of presentations and representations, of gestures, speech, garments and clothes, but it is also a question of naked bodies. And when two persons with the same male sexual organs are naked, the construction of one of the partners as a not-homosexual man and of the other one as a not-male person is difficult to upkeep. Social determination as well as strategic concerns influence the jotas’ gender constructions: the presentation of self, the style, is an attempt to find the best solution given the existing possibilities, and at the same time reflects taste, socially conditioned preferences. In observing thejotas’ marginalized position, their deviant lifestyle, and their very radical project-breaking with the expectations toward them as men-two things surprise me. The first is their courage. The second is their conventionality. They are courageous, they are visible, they expose themselves to contempt and to violence. And they are rather conscious about the political aspects of this way of being-witness, for instance, the way they show their disdain for closet homosexuals. At the same time they are very conventional in the sense that they show a deep respect for the traditional gender order, as well as for the family structure. My interpretation of this conventionality is that it shows the fundamental significance for human beings of belonging. Thej o t a s act as if they resisted social marginalization by refusing to let themselves be culturally marginalized. By linking themselves so closely to the mother culture they grve meaning to their form of existence. They do not want to live in a ghetto, to be shut out; they want to live together with their significant others, with their families. Thanks to their courage they obtain a lot of pleasure. Or maybe

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it is the other way round: what gives them the courage is their quest for pleasure. And their conventionality concerning the gender order is also a source of joy. It gwes the vestidas possibilities that an only discreetly feminine or clearly masculine gay man can only dream of. This I understood when I observed Lupita, exuberantly dancing salsa with the boy next door, at a birthday party. On the second impression of Mema’s House, I can look back thirteen years and recall some of the main persons in this book. I have not seen them for some years, but Mema gives me an update by telephone from time to time. All in all, they have managed in life somewhat better than I had expected of them in 1988. Some of those who used to visit Mema’s house are not alive anymore, but among those who contributed to this book, FideVFifi is the only one, as far as I know, who is no longer alive. He died of AIDS a couple of years ago. The others survive, but have difficult lives. Mema’s house no longer exists. Mema has moved to the city of MorClia, where he lives in a new subdivision and participates actively in the political and social organization of the neighborhood. He organizes arts and crafts classes and, with some funding from a welfare organization, runs a soup kitchen for poor people in his own house. He has a lot of projects and dreams, ranging from working towards a political career, to establishing a local internet service center, to writing a cookbook. Most of all he wants to find an appropriate and affordable treatment for his health problems caused by the oil injected into his buttocks. Mema does not know about all the people who used to come to his house in Neza. He knows, however, that Flaca and Pancha, after having spent two or three years in prison for assault, are out again. During that time, Pancha’s mother had died, and after severe difficulties a t home, her siblings ran her out of the house. Both live in Neza’s streets now, getting refuge from time to time at Patricio’s. He still has his parlor, but has now finished his studies and will start to work as a teacher. Marta has succeeded in putting up a parlor in her home, but I do not know whether she makes a living from it. Carmen lives as she has done for many years-alternating between a relatively straight life in her home and her parlor and periods of drug use and prostitution. Cristina has moved to Chicago, where, I suppose, she lives as an undocumented person. Gata spent many months in a hospital where she was successfully

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treated for the very serious problems caused by the oil injections to her buttocks. The expenses were covered by her employment in public administration. According to Mema, Gata gets more and more eccentric, and has filled her house with cats. A friend of Mema saw Roberto some time ago, and got the impression that he had become an alcoholic and was very ill. Ernest0 still drives his cab in Neza and has seen his children grow up, while David has married and moved to Monterrey. Mema got Lupita to come to live with him;her brother followed her some time afterward. Lupita has an alcohol problem, and is now HIV positive. But she still dances.

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acceptance of homosexuals: in family, 7, 2 2 , 4 3 3 7 ; by society, 57-71 Adler Lomnitz, L., 5,57, 216-17, 224 aesthetics, xiv, 141, 144-51, 156-59, 272 aging, 95-99 AIDS, ix, 7, 17, 59, 61, 65, 89-95, 97, 98, 188, 191, 2 1 0 , 270 Almaguer, T., 2 8 Alonso, A. M., 28, 180-81, 188, 197, 2 0 5 , 209, 260, 263 Aramoni, A,, 2 2 I Archetti, E., 228-29 Atkinson, P., 2 0 Avilts, J., 2 , 3 Barry, T., 2 Baudrillard, J., 157-58, 165-66 Beauvoir, S. de, 36, 140 Bech, H., 38, 39, 40, 1 1 5 , 127, 1 5 1 , 207. 2 3 1 , 232, 2 3 9 , 269 Becker, H., 62, 128 Bell, A. P., 1 2 1 Beneke, T., 257 berdarhe, 108, 266-67, 271 bisexual: definition of, 24, 25-26, 249 bisexuality, male: categories of, 24-3 I ; in different cultures, I 26-27; explana-

tions of, 138,207-33; extent and description, I 79-88; future ofbisexual relationships, 264, 269-70; sexual roles, 198-207; tolerance of, 188-98, 226 Bjerrum Nielsen, H., 160 body: and class differences, 141, 14651; in fieldwork, 19; ideals, 142, 14445, I 57, I 70; and sexual meanings, 222; socialization of, 141-444; and symbolism, 226,2~9-30,256,257-58, 267-68; transformation of, Xiii, 2 0 21,32,40,145-46,152-60,274 Bolin, A,, 31, 108, 266 Bourdieu, P., 6, 16, 2311, 34, 35, 62, 66-67, 96-97? 129, 134, 1413 1432 14, 146-48, 149-50, 1 5 1 , 160, 177, 19on, 230, 236, 254, 267-68, 269 Brandes, S., 2 1 3 breast implants, 18, 32, 96, 153, 156, 162, 2 5 1 Buffington, R., 2 5 , 183 buga: definition of, 24, 27 Butler, J., 36, 39 capital: all sorts of, 6, 1 5 1 ; bodily or physical, 159, 2 7 2 ; cultural and economic, 16, 145, 148, 159; of masculinity, 230; symbolic 5n

290

:

INDEX

Carrier, J. M., 17, 19, 26, 27, 28, 2930,65,87,94, 1 1 1 , 117, 117"~ 1 2 2 24, 131, 180, 181, 188, 192, 205, 209-10, 231 Carrigan, T., 173 categories, according to gender and sexual practice, 24-33, 137-38, 256, 259, 261-62 childhood: effeminacy in, 43, 50-51, 5 2 , 104-6, 111-12; in the streets, 76-77

rhingada,chingar, 49, 220, 224, 226, 2579 263

Chodorow, N., 36 Clarke, J., 63 class: informants' class affiliation, 6, I 1-12,68 clients: relations with, 57-58, 71 Cohen, A, 62, 101 Cohen, P., 63 coming out, 116, 1 2 0 - 2 5 , 133 Connell, B., 173 constructivism, 31-39, 108, 126-33, 2 74 Cornwall, A., 37, 206n, 255 Corrigan, P., 77 Cressole, M., I I I

Espin, 0. M., 211 essentialism, 31, 36, 48,

115,

126, 173,

2 00

ethnomethodology, I 75 Falk, P., 156-57 family: homosexuals' relation with, xiv, 22,42-57, 71, 269-70, 2 7 2 ; Mexican family traits, 216-21; solidarity and SUPPOG 4-5,427 57, 235 femininity: acquisition of outer signs of, 152-60; assessed in tests, 33, I I I ; and class, 150;and identity, 171-78; in relation with homosexuality, 104, 128-37, 141, 173, 2 7 2 ; reactions against femininity in men, 120, 167, 220, 230-31, 254, 259-60, 262, 264, 272; as signals, signs or symbols, 27, 40, '40, 144,146,166, 169,248; signs of injotas' behavior, 167-71 feminism, 35, 36-37,63 fieldwork: description of, 12-24 Finstad, L., 78, 79 Fossi-Poliak, C., 159, 2 3 0 Foucault, M., 24, 37, 126-27, 134, 143 Freud, S., 27, 1 5 2 , 2 2 2 friendship, 16,42, 99-10', 144, 224, 227

dancing, xi, 17, 60, 61, 63-64, 184-86 Daniel, H., 90 Dank, B. M., 1 2 0 Diaz-Guerrero, R., 1 2 0 , 216, 224, 225 Divine, 162 dominance, domination, male, xiii-xiv, 29, 31, 34, 37, 39, 81, 1297 1777 221, 223-33, 244-47, 253-56, 269, 2727 273

Douglas, M., 137, 141, 208-9, 229, 257-583 259 drag shows, 61, 97, 162, 185, 186, 2 7 0 drug use, 8, 10, 18, 73-74, 77, 92, 103, 235, 2 5 1 - 5 2 Dumont, L., 67 Dundes, A., 218-19 Dynes, W. R., 27 Ehrhardt, A. A., 113-14 Emulf, K. E., 109, 1 1 0 - 1 1

Frenes, I., 144 Gabriel, Juan, 217 Gagnon, J. H., 127-28 Garfinkel, H., 172 Geertz, C., 40, 103 gender: construction, xiv, 31-35, 140, 167, 171, 228, 253, 256-64, 267, 271-74; identity, 31, 33, 36, 113-14, 129, 140, 144, 171-78; paradigms, 1 1 5 , 264-69; representations, 35, 39, 167, 223, 268, 274; and signs, 16667, 248, 274 Gilligan, C., 36 Gilmore, D. D., 219-20 Godelier, M., 126 Goffman, E., 19, 178, 187, 2 1 5 Goldwert, M., 120, 2 2 1 - 2 2 Gonsiorek, J. C., IZO Green,R., 109, 112-13, 114, 1 1 5 , I I

~

INDEX

Greenberg, D. F., 28, 38, 63n, 127, 2 7 1 , 272 Guilhem, O., 28 Gutmann, M. C., 119-20, 19011, 214, 216, 219, 2 3 6 Hall, S., 6 2 Halvorsen, R. S., 63n, 66 Hammersley, M., 20 Haug, F., 36, 142, 143, 160 Hebdige, D., 62, 161 Hekma, G., I jo, 269 Herdt, G. H., 37, 110, 114, 126, 127, 137, 265, 266-67, 2 7 1 Heripage, J. C., 17 j hqra, 108, 266 HW, 393 793 873 89-95, I S 3 Heigird, C., 78, 79 homophobia, 66, 198, 232, 233" homosexual: definition, 24-2 5, 3 0 homosexuality, male: biological and psychological factors, 108, 109-16, 138; categories of, 24-3 I; class differences 28-30, 1 2 3 - 2 5 , 149-51, 206; definitions of, 27-28; forms of, 38-39, 126-27, 271-72; impact of childhood experiences, 108, 109, 116-26, 138; in metaphors and wordplays, 2 2 3 - 3 3 , 263, 268; labeling, 108, 126-33, 138; learning, 108, 133-37, 138; origins of, xv, 104-39; sexual roles, 198-207, 243, 246-49, 252-53 hormones, use of female, 3 2 , 46, j z , 71, 116, 153, 165, 2 0 3 Innala, S. M., 109, I 10-1 I intemarional: definition of, 26 interviews, 21-24, 9111, 190, 19on, '92-93 Jefferson, T., 6 2 iota, jato: definition of, 24-2

j,

30

Kessler, S. J., 266 Kinsey, A., 37, 180 Klein, I 59, 23311 Koreck, M. T., 28, 180-81, 188, 197, 2 0 5 , 209, 260, 2 6 3

:

291

labeling, 29, 37, 62, 91, 108, 1 2 6 - 3 3 , 136, 144, 198, 2 2 9 , 2 3 2 , 2 56, 262 Lancaster, R. N., 28, 67, 129-31, 188, 196, 197, 2 3 1 - 3 3 , 263 Laqueur, T., 26 j Layder, D., 37, 180 Lee, J., 173 Lemert, E., 62 lesbians in Mexico, 3 0 , 66-67, 165 Lewis, O., 4-5, 83, 212-13 Libi'ration, I Liguori,A. L., 197, 204, 209, 2 1 1 - 1 2 , 224 Limon, J., 224, 226-27, 2 2 8 Lindisfarne, N., 37 h a : definition of, 2 j Lomnitz-Adler, C . , 2 2 3 , 268 looks, importance of, 7, 15, 1 2 5 , 14546, 169 love, 234-53 Lumsden, I., 28, 61, 62, 87, 128-29, 181, 209 Lutzen, K., 138 machismo, xiii, 4, 128, 134, 198, 209, 214,2 1 6 - 2 1 , 2 2 3 , 2 3 2 , 2 4 4 Malinowski, B., 35 marianismo, 2 I 6 masculinity: as a force or a power, I 59, 162, 230, 2 3 1 ; assessed in tests, 33; hierarchy of, 149, 231, 260, 261, 262; in relation with bisexuality, 188, 197, 205, 206-7, 2 1 j, 2 2 2 , 2 2 3 33, 263-64; as signals or signs, 27, 248; signs of injotus' behavior, 1677' Mathy, R. M., 28, 87n, 109, I I O , I I I 1 2 , 117, 117" Matza, D., 1 0 1 , 2 5 6 Mauger, G., 16, I 59, 2 3 0 Mauss, M., 141 mayate: definition of, 24-2 j. 26-27, 31, I79 Mead, M., 3 j

292

:

INDEX

Melhuus, M., 56-57, 177, 211, 213, 217, 2 2 0 , 254, 260, 262 Mema’s house: description of, x, 6-1 z Mendis-Leite, R., 28, 206n Menem, Carlos, 263 men in Mexico: pamcular traits, 57, 210, 217-22, 223-28 Mexico: description of, 2-3 Mexico City: description of, I Milner, C., 241, 243 Milner, R., 241, 243 money: in family relations, 47, 48, 52, 55-56; in field relations, 15, 16-17; in love relations, 236-44; importance of, 169; in prostitution, 71-72 Money, J., 113-14 moral, morality, 5, 36, 55, 75, 80, 85, 126, 142-43, 155-56, 160, 167, 188, 192, 196-97, 208-10, 2 2 0 , 254, 259, 272

mother: as ideal, 177, 216-18, 221; relations with sons, 49, 56-57, 1 1 2 Murray, S. O., 27, 28, 38,43, 57n7 197, 199, 2 0 2

272; and sexual roles, 198-207; symbolism of, 226, 229 Peristiany, J. G., 35 Pick de Weiss, 2 I I Pillard, R. C., 109, 111, 1 1 2 piropos, 2 I 8- I 9 Plummer, K., 37, 1 2 0 , 128 police harassment, 41, 73, 86-87, 87n, 88n, 183-84 Pollak, M., I 2 I positivism, 2 2 , 2 3 ” postmodernism, 37, 166, 273 poverty, 2 , 4, sn, 40, 42, 94, 217, 269, 272

Prieur, A., 63n, 66, 92, 239 prisons, jails, and detention: homosexuals in, 13, 2 5 , 49, 87-89, 92-93? 183, 207, 215, 244-47; prostitutes in, 7374 prostitution: description of, 71-75 psychoanalysis, 36, 159, 160, 2 2 1 , 229 psychological explanations of bisexuality, 2 I 5-2 3 puto: definition of, 2 5

O’Connell Davidson, J., 37, 180 oil: injection of, 32, 96, 98, 149, 15455, 158 Ortega, G., 90, 189 Ormer, S. B., 35, 262

Ramos, S., 226-27 Ramsey, O., IOO rape, 13, 41, 49, 85, 87, 88n, 92, 105, 116, 1 2 1 , 1221-1, 152, 183, 215, 2 2 0 , 224, 233, 244, 257, 264 Reyes Nevares, S., 2 2 I Ripstein, A., 51” Risman, B., 109, 111, 239 role theory, 143-44, 159 Roscoe, W., 266 Rudberg, M., 160 Rudolph, J. R., 1 2 0

Parker, R. G., 28, 36, 74-75, 90, Ison, 177, 204, 206n, 222-23, 226, 25811, 261, 268, 269n Paz, O., 220-21, 224, 225-26, 227, 229, 2573 268 Peligro, 65 Peiia, M., 2 2 0 , 227-28 Peiialosa, F., 120, 217 penetration: and definition of sexual categories, 24-28, 33, 256-64, 267-68,

school, homosexuals in, 67-68, 71, I 06 Schwartz, P., 109, 111, 239 Sennett, R., 166 sex talk, 103, 170, 197, 224-28 sexual abuse of children, 92, 105, I 1626, ‘93 sexual outlet as explanation of bisexuality, 207-15 Shepherd, G., 262

Nanda, S., 108, 266 neighbors, relations with,11, 57-67, 71 Nencel, L., 29 Nezahualc6yotl, Ciudad de (Neza): description of, 3-4, 5-6 Nilsson, A., 269

social integration, xiv, 41-42, 273 social mobility, 6, 5In, 150, 224, 258, 272

Sendergaard, D. M., 3 2 Serhaug, H. C., 103 Stevens, E., 2 1 1 , 2 1 2 , 214, 216, 219 Stoller, R. J., 113 structuralism, 35 Suarez-Orozco, M. M., 218-19 subculture: analysis of, xiv, 62-67, I O I 3, 161, 271-72; and learning, 133-37 Sutherland, E. H., 62 Sykes, G., 101,2 56 Taylor, C., 28, 66, 87, 180, 187, 206, 209, 224 thefts, analysis of, 77-81, 255, 2 7 3 third gender, third sex, 38, 137, 264-67 tortilla, tonillera: definition of, 24, 26 transsexual, transsexuality, sex change, xiii, 24, 33, 108, 112, 152, 164, 172, 173, 2 5 1 , 266 transvestism, transvestites: earnest and ironic forms of, 161-67; extent of, 28; and identity, I 71-78, 2 5 1 ; origins, 128-37; passing as women, 58, 70, 72-73,84, 162-65, 167, 172, 175, 189, 250-51 Trumbach, R., 265, 269

United Nations, Uribe, P., 73

I, 2

Vilez-Ibaiiez, C., 3 vestida: definition of, 2 j , .30, 108 Villa, Pancho, 2 2 I violence: in general, 2, 81-86; in homosexual couples, 234, 242-43, 244-47, 252; symbolic, 16, 23n, 34, 129, 253-56; toward children, 4, 41, 43, 45, 49, 51, 53, 54; toward homosexuals, 41, 42, 230, 233, 253 Wacquant, L. J. D., 34, 129, 254 Weeks, J., 28 Weinberg, M. S., I 2 I Weinberg, T . S., IZO Whitam, F. L., 28, 87n, 109, 110, I I I 12, 117, 117" Whitehead, H., 35, 262 Whyte, W. F., 7, 100-101 Wikan, U., 2 6 2 Willson, M., 19 Wilson, C., 95, 181, 204 women in Mexico: particular traits, 5657, 208-9, 211-13, 216-18 worklife, homosexuals in, 67-75