A Body of One's Own: A Trans History of Argentina

by Patricio Simonetto

Overview

2024 Best Book in Social Sciences Award, Southern Cone Section, Latin American Studies Association
2024 Sylvia Rivera Award in Transgender Studies, The Center for LGBTQ Studies at the Graduate Center, CUNY

A history of Argentina that examines how trans bodies were understood, policed, and shaped in a country that banned medically assisted gender affirmation practices and punished trans lives.

As a trans history of Argentina, a country that banned medically assisted gender affirmation practices and punished trans lives, A Body of One’s Own places the histories of trans bodies at the core of modern Argentinian history. Patricio Simonetto documents the lives of people who crossed the boundaries of gender from the early twentieth century to the present. Based on extensive archival research in public and community-based archives, this book explores the mainstream medical and media portrayals of trans or travesti people, the state policing of gender embodiment, the experiences of those transgressing the boundaries of gender, and the development of homemade technologies from prosthetics to the self-injection of silicone. A Body of One's Own explores how trans activists' challenges to the exclusionary effects of Argentina’s legal, cultural, social, and political cisgender order led to the passage of the Gender Identity Law in 2012. Analyzing the decisive yet overlooked impact of gender transformation in the formation of the nation-state, gender-belonging, and citizenship, this book ultimately shows that supposedly abstract struggles to define the shifting notions of "sex," citizenship, and nationhood are embodied material experiences.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781477328606
Publisher:	University of Texas Press
Publication date:	01/16/2024
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Patricio Simonetto is a lecturer in gender and social policy at the University of Leeds. He is the author of Entre la injuria y la revolución: El Frente de Liberación Homosexual en la Argentinaand El dinero no es todo: Compra y venta de sexo en la Argentina del siglo XX. In 2021 he was awarded the Carlos Monsivais Award by the Latin American Studies Association.

Table of Contents

• A Note to the Reader
• Introduction. In the Flesh of (National) History
• Chapter 1. Cut from a Different Cloth: Gender Transgressions in the Early Twentieth Century
• Chapter 2. The Body I Was Born In: Governing Sex and Embodiment Repertoires during the Era of the Biomedical Transition
• Chapter 3. Queens in the Theaters and the Streets: The Global Making of Travestis’ Popular Culture and Everyday Technologies
• Chapter 4. Living Laboratories: Travesti/Trans Knowledge and Homemade Technologies
• Chapter 5. The Carnal Revolution: Trans Citizenship and the Limits of Democratic Transition
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

What People are Saying About This

Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes

Patricio Simonetto’s groundbreaking analysis offers lucid insights on the Argentinean trans experience and the complexities of engaging with a Latin American transgender and travesti archive. Centering trans issues and national discourses, Simonetto bravely engages the epistemic violence of the past as he documents the utopian aspirations and numerous achievements of the present. A Body of One’s Own is a major contribution.

Natalia Milanesio

Skillfully researched, A Body of One’s Own is a timely, much-needed history of people crossing gender boundaries that powerfully resonates with the present. By focusing on trans body portrayal and experimentation, Patricio Simonetto offers not only a detailed history of sex change in twentieth-century Argentina, but also a unique perspective on the role of body ownership and gender transgression in nation-building. This is a pioneering, remarkable work that will become indispensable reading for anyone interested in Latin American queer studies.

Editorial Reviews

The book shifts the focus away from an examination of gay and lesbian activism to document how trans people constructed their own unique personas, found ways to transform their bodies in alignment with their gender identities, built support networks, and mobilized to demand basic civil and democratic rights. Since in-depth studies of trans people in Latin America, as well as social histories of lesbians, lag far behind academic production about gay men, Simonetto’s pioneering work on the topic will immediately become a reference point for scholars who wish to carry out similar studies in other countries of the region or beyond.

The Americas

A landmark contribution to cultural sociology, trans studies, and the broader field of gender and sexuality studies... Simonetto’s careful blending of archival rigor, theoretical innovation, and political commitment ensures its relevance for both academic audiences and activists...In capturing the struggles and resilience of Argentina’s trans communities, Simonetto not only rewrites history ‘from below’ but also envisions a future where bodily autonomy is universally recognized. This book deserves a central place in any discussion of culture, identity, and power in the 21st century, offering a profound reflection on how trans lives illuminate the possibilities and limits of democracy...As Simonetto reminds us, for those living on the margins of the white heteropatriarchy, citizenship is precarious and fleeting, which is why the fight must continue.

Cultural Sociology

Patricio Simonetto reveals a hidden world...that is too often overlooked and misunderstood.

Journal of Latin American Geography

This is a book that deftly engages trans and travesti histories as central to Argentine statecraft and nation-building. Simonetto treats both his archival materials and his interlocutors with depth and care. He draws enthusiastically from a multitude of thinkers, including those working both inside and outside the space of the academy.

ReVista

Simonetto has accomplished something amazing with this book. He has managed to focus Argentinian national history on a struggle that is usually kept to the margins of the historical record, that of the body. As such he advances a new field of research that considers not just trans experiences but also cis ones, as the body is a political battlefield for us all....An instant classic.

NACLA Report on the Humanities

[Simonetto's] archival trawling across the decades is encyclopaedic, and this work will doubtless be a touchstone for scholars in multiple fields, laying a solid foundation for the developing subfield of Trans Latin American History. Future scholars of the history of gender and sexuality in Argentina will have to reckon with this work, and will be better for it . . . [A Body of One's Own] joins other recent US and international monographs in shaping a conversation about past lives and discourses ‘before trans’, which are both archivally grounded and theoretically innovative.

Gender & History