Resumen
This dissertation aims to approach cross-dressing through an ethnography mainly
carried out in EnFemme club of Barcelona. Nowadays, it is defined as a support group
for “transgender: cross-dressers, transvestites and transsexuals”.
Cross-dressing is characterised for a contemplation and gender expression no persistent
in time and space. It refers to a presentation and social representation of the own body,
and therefore gender, depending on the social spheres in which this is expressed; in
particular, among people socially interpreted and assigned as men, and many who
identifies as heterosexual. It reveals the dynamic experience of identities and the
flexibility of classifications as well as the ambivalences and complex situation that the
person can live and perceive in relation to gender identity or gender expression in
modern Western societies. It is only explained through an assemblage of other positions
such as social class, age and place of origin, etc. The dissertation shows how decisions
about modes of production and expression of cross-dressing, often carried out through
concealment within the immediate surroundings and the family, cannot dissociate from
the process of cultural construction.
The theoretical approach is based on the idea of sex-gender-sexuality as a cultural
phenomenon. It inherited the studies that problematize categorical organizations based
on polarized binaries systems. They have proposed the necessary denaturing of [gender]
identities as a historic alternative, in symbolic, material and political terms. The
research does not split academic production, Feminisms and activisms. The attention is
how to shape between them. Beyond the known qualitative methods used, the final
understanding has emerged from the dynamics of contact, negotiation and recognition
in the field.
The research has focused on understanding how Secret of cross-dressing is shaped, the
impacts generated by the contact and bond with the community, as well as the processes
of differentiation of cross-dressing in relation to others individuals and groups:
transformists, transvestites, transexuals, etc. Finally, it has been possible to synthesize
the research question that orients me: what I understand as transphobic violence. In
particular, its production and impact on and through out cross-dressing.