Latin American Perspectives
http://lap.sagepub.com
Transgender Sex Workers and Sexual Transmigration between Guadalajara and
San Francisco
Cymene Howe, Susanna Zaraysky and Lois Lorentzen
Latin American Perspectives 2008; 35; 31
DOI: 10.1177/0094582X07310956
The online version of this article can be found at:
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Transgender Sex Workers and Sexual Transmigration
between Guadalajara and San Francisco
by
Cymene Howe, Susanna Zaraysky, and Lois Lorentzen
Detailed study of microcommunities of transgender sex workers in Guadalajara and
San Francisco reveals a close relationship between migratory motives, economic aspirations, and sexuality. The resonance of both cities as “gay meccas” in their respective nationstates provides a background for the operation of these imagined sites of tolerance in
transgender sex workers’ lives. Migration is gendered and sexualized, and, despite infrastructural support in San Francisco, these workers find more holistic support “at home.”
Keywords: Gender, Sexuality, Migration, Mexico, United States
In the early evening hours in the living room of a Guadalajara brothel,
Veronica, a male-to-female transgender sex worker in both Mexico and the
United States, rose from her chair to turn up the volume on the stereo. She
added her voice to that of the Mexican pop diva Thalia, and a synchronized
rendition of “A quien le importa” (Who Cares?) filled the room:
People point me out
They point at me with their fingers
They whisper behind my back
And I don’t care at all
Maybe it’s my fault
For not being mainstream
It’s too late
To change now
Veronica’s adoption of these lyrics combines a well-articulated defiance and
an acute awareness of the societal opprobrium shared by many Mexican transgender sex workers who journey between San Francisco, California, and
Guadalajara, Mexico. Drawing on ethnographic research and interviews in both
the United States and Mexico,1 this article considers how Mexican male-to-female
transgender sex workers negotiate the often precarious life circumstances of
sex work, border crossings, and gender nonconformity. Our aim is to illustrate
Cymene Howe is an assistant professor of anthropology at American University. Susanna
Zaraysky was a researcher for and Lois Lorentzen directs University of San Francisco’s Religion
and Immigration Project. This research was sponsored by the Pew Foundation and administered
through the University of San Francisco’s Religion and Immigration Project (TRIP) under the
direction of Lois Lorentzen of the Theology and Religion Department. Susanna Zaraysky was
the primary researcher for this project, and her excellent rapport with informants and observational skills over the course of two years in both San Francisco and Guadalajara provided critical data for this research. Inquiries about the research process should be directed to her at
[email protected].
LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 158, Vol. 35 No. 1, January 2008 31-50
DOI: 10.1177/0094582X07310956
© 2008 Latin American Perspectives
31
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LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
some of the structural, social, and cultural factors that condition these workers’
lives. We find that sexual and economic migratory motives are intimately
intertwined. Migration studies in the neoclassical vein have often failed to
account for individual and aggregate forms of agency and instead emphasize
economically framed “push” and “pull” factors in migrants’ reasoning strategies
and movement from the global South to the North. However, following a
body of work on gender and migration, the concept of “sexual migration”
(Cantú, 2002; Parker, 1997) offers a useful paradigm that emphasizes sexual
desire and life goals related to sexuality. Because gender presentations and
sexual practice are integral to participation in the ambiente gay (gay community or “gay scene”) and the microcommunities of Mexican transgender sex
workers in Guadalajara and San Francisco, this research draws attention to the
specificities and multiple crossings that contextualize the lives of these
women. By focusing on microcommunities we take up the challenge posed by
Jean and John Comaroff (1999) to engage questions of cultural practices
through a “scalar” approach in which local communities are understood as
intimately related to the political economic and symbolic milieu of larger
urban centers, nation-states, and transnational processes of finance, policy,
and human movement.
Transgender, transmigratory sex workers understand and experience
particular cities (San Francisco and Guadalajara), states (Mexico and the
United States), and local communities (the gay community in Guadalajara and
the residence hotels of San Francisco’s Tenderloin) in distinct ways. We have
found that migration must be seen as occurring not between countries but
rather between microcommunities that are constituted by sexuality and
gender as well as illicit, socially taboo sexual labor. There are lived contradictions between the ways in which these terrains of sex work are imagined in
the United States and in Mexico. The transgender sex workers represented
here understood their reasons for border crossing in complex terms. Economic
need and a desire to obtain capital were important, but so too was the desire to
express themselves through their sexuality. The specific structural and social
conditions of transgender sex work on the two sides of the border involve
multiple crossings of geopolitical borders, gender roles, and codifications of
legality and illegality regarding sex work and undocumented migration. As
transnational, transgender transmigrants these women face both possibilities
for financial gain and liberal self-expression and the limitations imposed by
racial, linguistic, and heteronormative prejudice in the United States (Almaguer,
1993). We argue that, despite the infrastructural advantages and relatively
well-developed services for sex workers and transgender individuals in San
Francisco, it is in Guadalajara that these women find more support through their
families, their communities, and their continued involvement in the ambiente.
Understanding variable distributions of power and resources along gendered and sexual lines allows for a more accurate and nuanced portrait of
migration, settlement, and return processes as well as resource pooling and
redistribution. As Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo (1994: 187) eloquently puts it,
“Political and economic transformations may set the stage for migration, but
they do not write the script.” The concept of sexual migration has been used
to designate international migration that is partially or fully inspired by the
sexuality of those who migrate and the importance they place on sexuality in
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33
their futures. As a framework sexual migration draws attention away from
strict economistic interpretations of migratory motivations and focuses on the
role of communities, social support networks, and the agency of those who
engage in circular migration, albeit with structural constraints. Decisions to
migrate may evolve from the desire to continue a romantic relationship with
a foreign national or may be connected to hopes of exploring sexual desires or
gender identity transformation. Sexual migration may also be necessary to
avoid persecution, or it may be simply a search for more hospitable environs
and sexual equality. In the case of Mexican transgender sex workers, there is
a clear combination of dynamics at work that includes economic migration
(crossing the border in order to earn dollars) but also the more subtle sexual
migration that involves the pursuit of gender-transformative treatment, capital to start a small business, and a place of relative tolerance
Mexican sexual identities, in the present context of globalization, must be
understood as “multiply constituted and intimately linked to the structural and
ideological dimensions of modernization and development” (Cantú, 2002: 142).
Our analysis follows scholars who have urged better accounting for agency and
the particularities of sexuality and gender as they are embedded in political
economic processes of migration.2 Rather than disarticulating sexual and
economic migratory motives from one another or appending “sexual” motives
to economic desires, we propose that in transgender transmigrant sex workers
these motives are interdependent. The economic potential (or the “pull”) of the
United States is rooted in the sexuality of these women—a sexual life at least
partly predicated on economics and economic aspirations tied to sexuality.
While some popular press accounts have made “sexual slavery” and the illegal
transport of women and children across the border the object of sensational
accounts,3 anthropological research on sexual migration has not yet addressed
sex work specifically as a migratory motivator. In a similar vein, transgender
people have not figured in analyses of men who have sex with men in migration
studies; the emphasis has been on men who identify themselves as “gay” or
have sex with men but are not necessarily identified as transgender (Cantú,
2003).4 Our research considers the circumstances of 29 transgender sex workers
with an emphasis upon how local and specific dynamics bear upon larger
processes of sexuality, gender, migration, and sexual labor.
To describe the ways in which Mexican transgender sex workers in San
Francisco and Guadalajara negotiate the conditions in each nation-state and
within particular communities on both sides of the border, we establish a
working definition of “transgender” and describe the aspirations for physical
gender transformation that partially motivate migration. Integral to the lives
of the sex workers who were interviewed for this project are the conditions of
border crossing in both a literal and a symbolic sense. These transgender women
regularly referred to the cities of Guadalajara and San Francisco as their
circular-migration destinations. Rather than indexing the nation-state, they
centered their attention on these two urban sites of imagined sexual tolerance.
Thus we explore how “the border,” in this expanded sense, operates as a place
of both economic possibility and legal limitations in these women’s lives as
they are drawn by remunerative but legally and socially proscribed work in
the United States to risk border crossing as undocumented migrants. We describe
the historic and migratory ties between San Francisco and Guadalajara, each
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LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
a “gay mecca” in its own right, and the symbolic significance of each city as
particularly tolerant of sexual and gender difference. Finally, we turn to the
social conditions, social services, and residential and working conditions
available to transgender sex workers in the two cities and in their microcommunities, tracing the ways in which these women negotiate both sexual politics and the political economic conditions of their lives. We emphasize how
migration is gendered and sexualized when the microcommunities of the
ambiente gay and transgender social networks are considered and find that,
despite infrastructural support in San Francisco, there is more holistic support
“at home” in Guadalajara.
GENDER TRANSITIONING AND THE AMBIENTE GAY
The term “transgender” is contested territory. In the early twentieth century,
“transvestite” was used to describe those (usually men) who dressed in clothing
of the opposite sex for erotic reasons (Garber, 1992). “Transgender” originally
designated those who wished to change their biological sex (hormonally and
surgically) to match their gender identification. In the biomedical terms of
psychology, “transsexual” became the term for those who felt a dissonant relationship between their biological sex and their sense of gender; more recently
this has been recodified in psychotherapeutic parlance as “gender dysphoria”
or “disorder of gender identity.” Rather than understanding transgenderism as
a pathology, our definition focuses on the transcending or crossing of culturally defined categories of gender (Bockting, Robinson, and Rosser, 1998;
Nemoto et al., 1999). This includes those who wear other-gendered clothing
and those who may have undergone or wish to undergo surgical or hormonal
therapy in order to transform their bodies to correspond to their perceived
gender. We understand transgender in this comprehensive sense, including
those who live outside social expectations and norms of gender behavior and
comportment (Halberstam, 1998; Hooley, 1997). The interviewees described
here were male-to-female transgender persons who exchanged sexual services
for remuneration. Three interviewees identified themselves as “transvestites”
and had not undergone any surgical or hormonal therapy. The remaining
interviewees identified themselves as women and felt sexually attracted to
men, though they did not necessarily identify themselves as “gay.”
Identifying themselves as “feminine” or as “women,” the interviewees
underscored the great cultural variability in gender and sexuality (Herdt, 1996;
Roscoe, 1991; Blackwood and Wieringa, 1999; Ramírez, 1999). In the United
States and Latin America, both gender and sexuality are largely understood in
binary terms (male/female or masculine/feminine). In Latin America, a notable
exception to this dualistic system of gender is found in the “passive” and
“active” construction of male homosexual behavior. Social scientific research
has described male homosexual behavior in Latin America as a phenomenon
that is not socially and culturally taboo per se, although “feminine” behavior by
men or a “passive role” in the sexual act is often stigmatized.5 In Latin America
since at least the beginning of the twentieth century, men who behaved in an
effeminate way or women who wore masculine attire or comported themselves in
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35
a masculine manner became symbols of “perverse sexual transgression” (Green
and Babb, 2002: 6). Research with male-to-female transgender persons in Mexico
suggests that condemnation of gender-crossing continues to this day. At the
same time, however, transgender sex workers have found strategies to protect
themselves both on the street and from social stigma by, for example, creating
shared households and pooling resources (Prieur, 1998). Research on transgender people in Latin America has emphasized the reconstruction of femininity
that occurs on both an individual and a social level, as well as through physical
transformations of the body (Kulick, 1998; Parker, 1997).
In addition to hoping to appear (and “pass”) as women, many study participants described a desire to alter their bodies physically through surgical and
hormonal means; indeed, this was one of the primary reasons transgender sex
workers articulated about their decisions to migrate north. Hoping to appear
more physically feminine both for clients and for their own sense of self, these
women were well-versed in cosmetic surgery. Plastic surgery to reshape the
body (breasts, face, and hips, for example) is of course available in Mexico, but
many women believed that it was more dangerous there than in the United
States. They were well aware, for example, of the story of the former stripper in
Mexico who had started her own plastic surgery clinic without proper credentials.
Instead of injecting bovine collagen to increase size and curvature in strategic
locations, she allegedly injected a mixture of industrial silicone (used for sealing
car parts and appliances) and gelatin-like soy oil.6 While the women were more
cautious about gender-transformative surgery in Mexico, they were also aware of
the huge cost differential. They explained that it was approximately five times
more expensive to undergo breast augmentation in the United States.
In Latin America and elsewhere, transgender sex workers have devised
ways to alter their physical form without surgical intervention, though they
sometimes risk dire physical consequences. Industrial silicone is used, outside of
clinical settings, to enhance curves in lips, hips, and buttocks in order to create
a more “feminine” appearance. The women reported that many transgender
women inject motor oil to create breasts—a very dangerous practice because
the oil migrates through the body and into the bloodstream. Similar practices
are found in Brazil (Kulick, 1998) and in other parts of Mexico (Prieur, 1998).
Access to materials and funds for undergoing body alterations, even of a
nonsurgical kind, was an important consideration as transgender sex workers
sought to both enhance their sense of themselves as feminine beings and
augment their earning potential through physical transformations. Partly
because of the expense of a complete sex change operation in either Mexico or
the United States, none of the women interviewed had undergone the procedure.
However, a number of them said that their sexual labor was partly dependent
on their preserving their male genitalia. Leticia, for example, explained that
one of her best assets was her “ability to affect a very feminine appearance—
but with male genitalia.” Many sex workers explained that their clients preferred them to biological women because a number of them desired
penetration or enjoyed the idea of being with a woman with male genitalia.
For these women, the decision to avoid genital surgery was one of market
strategy. However, it also demonstrates the ambiguity of gender and a desire
among sex workers, on one level, to maintain that ambiguity.
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LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
Living as a transgender person who is attracted to someone of the same
biological sex can be a daily challenge in both public and domestic settings.
Almost all of these transgender sex workers found support for their emerging
transgender identity in the gay community in Guadalajara. There they were able
to find romantic and sexual partners even though they considered themselves
not “gay” but “women.” Being a part of this community—being an entendida
(someone in-the-know), one who “understands the significances and nuances
of queer subaltern spaces” (Rodríguez, 2003: 24)—was fundamental to their
embracing their gender identity. In these spaces shared histories of gender,
sexual discrimination, and discovery coalesced. Many transgender sex workers
began their transformation from men to women as teenagers. Spending time
at gay clubs and incrementally shifting their social networks, they were able
to use the gay scene as a support mechanism. Through meeting others who
were interested in changing their gender orientation, they learned about
hormones, surgeries, and everything else required to transform oneself, physically and emotionally, into a woman. Their transgender identity generally
prevented these women from working regular jobs in Mexico, and many
turned to work in gay clubs as drag performers, lip-synching to pop anthems
and dancing into the night bedecked in elaborate women’s clothing.
Nightclub work was one of the few options available to transgender women
in Mexico, but it offered a certain glamour, sometimes regional fame, and an
opportunity to dress publicly and literally perform as a woman—an opportunity
that for many was a first. Prostitution, or sex work, was a convenient way to
earn money quickly and steadily. Especially for those who were shunned by
their families and forced to leave their natal homes, the gay scene consistently
provided an ideological and physical safe haven, often facilitating the adoption
of a transgender identity.
While the gay community opened possibilities for gender transitioning and
homoerotic explorations and relationships, there is no seamless relationship
between transgender and “gay” identities. One can be transgender and engage
in sexual behavior with the “opposite” sex—which could be considered, at least
symbolically, a heterosexual relationship. Alternatively, a male-to-female transgender individual might have a sexual and affective relationship with another
woman, effectively a “lesbian” relationship. These two possible configurations
make clear how complex gender identification and sexual practices can be—
how elusive they are to strict, definitive categorization. Thus, a number of scholars have advocated dissolving the binaries by which we codify gender and
sexuality (Altman, 2001; Butler, 1990; 1993; Warner, 1999) and reconsidering the
“classificatory grids” (Donham, 1998) that conflate gender and sexual behaviors.
From this perspective, not only is the homosexual/heterosexual binary ineffective and minoritizing for those who fall outside the norm at any given historical
moment but rigid distinctions around sexuality, sexual behavior, and identification can limit a whole “spectrum of sexualities” (Sedgwick, 1990: 1). Transgender
is a gender category, not necessarily one of sexual behavior or preference,
though strict categorizations can often obscure more than they reveal. While
transgender identity and gay identity and/or behavior are not one and the
same, on the street these distinctions may become irrelevant. Many of the women
whose voices are represented here find themselves marginalized by society
because of their gender transgressions and by the sexual labor they do—which
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37
is seen as “sex for sale.” They often face homophobia as well. The transmigrant,
transnational, and transgender realities of their lives suggest a further blurring
of these distinctions, as they are easily classified neither as “sexual” nor as
“economic” migrants. The perspectives and subjectivities of transgender migrant
sex workers make clear that, just as gender and sexual categories are imprecise,
narrow categories defining migrants—as “legal/illegal” for example—cannot
encompass the complexity of migrant experiences.
Several sex workers reported that their sexual orientation, their gender
transformation, or their chosen profession made for difficult familial relations.
However, despite these difficulties, their ties to their families remained very
strong. About one-quarter of the women who transmigrated between the
United States and Mexico continued to live with their natal families when they
were in Mexico, and others stayed in close contact with them. Some had limited
contact with their families of origin and saw them only occasionally. While
everyone spoke of the difficulties they had had with family relationships as
they became more open about their desire to change genders, some had been
able to reestablish bonds with their natal families more effectively than others.
Whether or not they were in the good graces of their families or in regular
contact with them, all of the sex workers explained that one of the reasons
they wanted to earn money in the United States was to help their families back
home in Mexico.7 Most said that they regularly sent money home to their
families when they were in the United States. In addition to remittances, all of
the women expressed a desire to build capital in order to start their own small
businesses. Leticia’s plan, for example, was “to get out of this business [sex
work] and open a beauty salon.”8 Other women wanted to open their own
dressmaking or seamstress businesses in Mexico, enterprises commonly associated with women and therefore “feminizing.”9 In describing the difficult
transition between genders and pursuing a vocation that was both illegal and
often socially condemned, these women connected their gender and sexuality
goals to those of economic necessity—intertwining sex work, gender transition,
border crossing, and earning money for their own futures and those of their
families. As Cantú (2003: 265) points out, “Groups that are marginalized as
sexual minorities are constrained by the limits of discrimination and prejudice
that may limit their socioeconomic opportunities. Thus, when immigrants,
who are a sexual minority, say that they immigrated for financial reasons, part
of the analysis must include sexuality.”
BORDER MOVEMENT AND SEXUAL MIGRATION:
GUADALAJARA AND SAN FRANCISCO
Mexican transgender sex workers who travel across the border face
dangerous conditions along the way. Theirs is a circuitous process of traversing
the border that, like many crossings, is transformative (George, 1992; Gupta
and Ferguson, 1992; 1997; Manalansan, 2003; Ong, 2003; Rouse, 1992). A shift in
status (documented versus undocumented) and a shift in support mechanisms
(language barriers, family networks, social services, and political agency)
must be weighed against the net gain of earning dollars in place of pesos. In
much the same way that gender categories serve to determine one’s status as
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LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
inside or outside of any particular gender system, geopolitical boundaries and
borders serve to “order” identities and citizenship (Kearney, 2004: 134–135).
The border between Mexico and the United States, while only one of thousands,
has become the paradigmatic border. It is here that a Third World economy
and the United States’s global military and economic dominance collide. Thus
it is this geopolitical barrier above all others that may most readily signal
inequality. Its increasingly militarized status increases the risks and dangers
faced by those who cross, making existing vulnerabilities (such as gender
nonconformity) more acute.
The U.S./Mexican border is at the same time the site of multiple possibilities
for the exchange and movement of people, capital, and cultural phenomena.
The literal geopolitical border between the United States and Mexico demonstrates a host of human interactions, including labor and migration, in which
the productive, mobile engagement with wage work becomes visible in a
transnational framework (Fernandez-Kelly, 1983; Kearney, 1991; 1996). Border
policies and settlement patterns also demonstrate the multiple ways in which
the border conditions the lives of migrants, immigrants, and long-term residents
(Alvarez, 1991 [1987]; Chavez, 1994). What has only recently received more
attention is the sexuality and gender dynamics that emerge through border
crossing (Cantú, 2002; Carrillo, 2002; González-Lopez, 2003; Hirsch, 2003;
Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1994). Our research builds upon this work by exploring
the microcommunities of transgender sex workers in Guadalajara and San
Francisco, demonstrating both the structural limitations and the social networks
that shape their experiences, economic and otherwise.
The border is a geopolitical marker and a highly regulated state boundary,
but the Mexico/U.S. border can also be understood in less literal and more
metaphorical terms as a site of shifting identities, conflict, cooperation, and
creative responses to a hierarchically organized world. As many researchers
have demonstrated, the border serves to magnify contradictions as well as
human accommodation. And “borderlands,” as Gloria Anzaldúa (1987; 1990)
has described them, cannot be simply territorialized in a literal sense but
rather must be understood as an experiential phenomenon for those marginalized by their border-crossing status. As Robert Alvarez puts it, “So-called
border people are constantly shifting and renegotiating identities with
maneuvers of power and submission” (1995: 452). The border, more broadly
conceived, is both a conceptual and a concrete place in which identity, practice, and cultural forms are reconfigured. The border crosser is understood to
straddle the worlds on the two sides of the border. Feeling completely “at
home,” though, may be more elusive (Alonso, 1995; Calderón and Saldivar,
1991; Vila, 2000). For transgender sex workers who move back and forth
between Mexico and the United States there are complexities of gender, sexuality, illegal work, and lack of documented presence in the United States that
impact their mobility and their sense of themselves as worthy individuals.
Crossing the border is risky and costly for transgender sex workers. Most
of the migrants stayed in San Francisco for at least a year hoping to earn
enough money for operations, businesses, family members, and, of course, the
trip back to Mexico. Traveling with a coyote, women like Veronica paid
US$2,500 for each crossing from Mexico to the United States. Once in
California, Veronica explained, she would take a bus to San Francisco, and
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39
there she would be picked up by friends at the bus station. Sometimes she and
other sex workers would lend money to fellow sex workers for the coyote fees
associated with crossing into the United States. All of the transgender sex
workers interviewed in Mexico and California had made multiple trips back
and forth across the border and made use of social support networks similar
in form though not in duration to those seen among kin groups in migrant
communities. While in San Francisco the women would invest in inexpensive
phone cards to call family or friends in Mexico. Natalia and Louisa said that
they had called their families immediately upon arriving both to let them
know that they had arrived and to ask them to send items (such as altars and
religious pendants) that they had left behind for fear of having them stolen by
the coyotes. Keeping these transnational connections was important, they
explained, both for their well-being while in the North and for their futures
back in Mexico.
In the same way that the border indexes a sharp separation between nationstates, the shared attributes of San Francisco and Guadalajara point to a
complementarity between each urban center and its country. Guadalajara is
heavily influenced by the Catholic Church and known on the one hand for its
conservatism and on the other for being “the most homosexual city in Mexico”
(Carrillo, 2002: 10). Like San Francisco, the city is home to numerous middleclass gay bars and nightclubs. Guadalajara can be understood on one level as a
city that lies at the center of sexual politics in Mexico, crossing the line between
social and religious conservatism and the liberal ideals of sexual freedom and
sexual identity. Guadalajara has also been the site of many clashes between
conservatives and progressive forces. The city is generally thought to embody
an ideal of mexicanidad that valorizes beautiful and attentive women and the
stereotypical strong men who protect their virtue.10 But these notions of the
nation are being refigured as new generations face new complexities of gender
and sexuality in a transnational setting (Carrillo, 2002; Hirsch, 2003).
In the Guadalajara gay scene, San Francisco is seen as an ideal city in which
to live because of its international reputation for welcoming gays, lesbians, and
transgender people. San Francisco came to be known in the 1950s for its culturally transgressive environment—Beat poets paving the way for the flower
children of the next decade—but it had already seen approximately 100 years of
forging new traditions (Boyd, 2003; Howe, 2001). The University of California at
San Francisco was one of the first institutions to undertake transgender (transsexual) surgeries. The Castro district is known the world over as a hub for gay
male activity, residences, cafés, and nightlife. Every June the Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Pride festivities draw massive crowds for a
weekend-long celebration of LGBT identity and politics. San Francisco is also,
following its history of liberal ideals, a city that prohibits Immigration and
Naturalization Service raids within its boundaries. Transgender sex workers
who cross the border to work in the North do so illegally—indeed doubly so, as
undocumented workers in a criminalized occupation. They have expectations
about San Francisco as a relatively tolerant place for both sexual minorities and
undocumented migrants, a land of economic opportunity and tolerance with
fewer apparent risks than other U.S. cities.
Transgender sex workers migrate from Guadalajara to San Francisco in part
because of San Francisco’s reputation as a tolerant place. Although they do not
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40
LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
experience the kind of surrogate kin networks that Cantú (2003) and Weston
(1991) describe there, this perception of sexual tolerance is reason enough to
choose it over others as a site for sexual labor. These women are at one and the
same time sexual and economic migrants, and yet their marginalization as
undocumented migrants appears to overshadow their sense of belonging to a
transgender or gay community in San Francisco. Despite the structural conditions and well-developed services in the city, the lack of support of family,
friends, and the gay community in Mexico often means that sex workers feel
the limitations of the “gay mecca” in the North.
SOCIAL CONTRACTS AND SEX WORKING IN
GUADALAJARA AND SAN FRANCISCO
LAS CASAS, GUADALAJARA
While San Francisco and Guadalajara share a relative tolerance for sexual and
gender difference, the structural conditions that shape the lives of transgender
sex workers in the two cities are quite different. While San Francisco provides
more state-based and civil-society services, funding a variety of transgender
health and wellness clinics, for example (Clements-Nolle et al., 2001),11 it is
clear that the social networks and sense of “belonging” that these women feel
in Guadalajara, along with the community-based support they also receive,
effectively outweighs these benefits.
In Guadalajara, the women who participated in this project worked at three
brothels owned and operated by a transgender woman named Patty, all of
them in a lower-middle-class area of the city known for prostitution. Every
night Patty or her assistant collects a fee for the use of the space—a room in
the house where sex workers can attend to clients. Patty makes her living from
these “use fees.” She has strict requirements that she pays an employee to
enforce, including that all sex workers use condoms with their clients; to
ensure this, she sells condoms on site. She prohibits the use of drugs and alcohol
on the premises, though more than a few times women came to work apparently inebriated or high. Only a fraction of the sex workers actually lived in
Patty’s houses; most either lived with their families or had their own homes,
using the brothels only for work. This proximity to family does not hold true
in San Francisco.
In 1995, Patty reported that she had been inspired to open the brothels so
that “the girls” would have a safe place to work and be able to save money to
buy hormones and pay for gender-transforming surgeries. Among the women
interviewed in Patty’s brothels, some identified themselves as gay men who
would sometimes cross-dress or as transvestites. The majority, however, considered themselves male-to-female transgenders, and all of these had begun
taking hormones or had undergone some surgical procedure, usually breast
augmentation. Before Patty’s intervention, sex workers were forced to seek
clients on the street, where they were often assaulted by the police, clients, or
ill-wishers. She explained:
In Mexico, as in the United States, prostitution is illegal, so we have created
our own source of funds by opening houses of prostitution where the laws
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41
governing prostitution are not valid, because these are private houses. Since
these are private houses, the police cannot intercede. They can only arrest someone if they catch someone in the act. We have special agreements with the government to allow prostitution. I got my neighbors to agree to allow the brothels
to function as long as I didn’t bother them. They signed a petition. The brothels
are only open from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. when neither children nor old people are on
the street. This way, we are not bothering the neighbors. The girls are instructed
to wear clothes that are not too provocative from 10 p.m. until 12 a.m. After 12 a.m.
there should not be too many people on the street, and the women can be more
scantily clad.
Patty’s description shows a complex analysis of the situation: negotiating
with legal limits on prostitution by “getting special agreements” and at the
same time assuaging the neighbors by limiting the working hours, comportment, and dress of the sex workers. However, her well-considered plans did not
always work well. During the time of this research her houses were raided twice
by police, who beat and arrested some of the sex workers. Later the police
closed one of Patty’s houses and she had to work with them to get it reopened.
Patty, however, is more than simply a bordello madam. She is also the
primary community organizer for transgender women in Jalisco. She operates
an organization called Contraste (Contrast or Difference) that politically represents
the transgender community in Jalisco. She also has ties to the political party
México Posible, which advocates the decriminalization of abortion, equal pay
for women, and gay rights. Patty and members of Contraste were interviewed
on the University of Guadalajara’s Internet gay radio station during the time
of this research. Patty is in a powerful position at the center of much of
Guadalajara’s transgender sexual commerce as well as a major architect of its
political profile.
Patty understands her efforts on behalf of the sex workers as a kind of social
work for the larger community. She sees herself as providing a sanctuary not
only for sex workers but for the larger neighborhood, the male clients, and
their families:
Our job is to fight discrimination against transsexuals. Contraste is an organization that works for the transgender, transsexual, and transvestite population.
Being a sex worker is a very well-known and valued job. (Here we say “sex
worker” and not “prostitute” like in the United States.) The transsexual sex
workers promote health, and they are in charge of caring for the health of their
clients and couples.
Patty’s assistant, Elvira, who is neither transgender nor a sex worker, added:
Here, either the client or the sex worker wears a condom. The health of the
women is very important. This way the men are protected and so are their
families—from any sort of STD. So, this a type of social work, because it’s the
only way to provide safe sex. Imagine if they [the clients] didn’t have this opportunity to unburden themselves sexually. The men who come here and have sex
with one of the girls here is a homosexual and he has a wife and kids. What
would happen if they didn’t have sex with one of these girls? Then they might
rape their children or their neighbors. This opened my mind . . . this man wants
to have sex with a man but can’t get it, and so he beats his wife or hurts his
children.
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LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
Patty and Elvira both attempt to establish legitimacy for the work they do
and that of transgender sex workers in general. They reframe the debate from
victimhood to valorization. The first step, according to Patty, is not to reject
transgender sex workers, and the next step is to appreciate the work they do in
maintaining the health of their clients. More problematic is Elvira’s description
of the “social work” that transgender sex workers perform. Her conviction that
these men, as “homosexuals,” would likely beat their wives and children were
they unable to find a sexual outlet alludes to a kind of “hydraulic” model of
male sexuality and exposes some common if fallacious beliefs about the sexual
needs of men. Prostitution as a relief for men’s supposed unbridled desire is a
popular assumption that has been deployed for millennia in many places.12
Patty’s success in fighting discrimination and establishing a viable professional presence in Guadalajara suggests that through community-based efforts
change happens, if at a slower pace and more unevenly than she might hope.
However, what is critical is the articulation of transgender sex work as a social
service that serves a greater good. Patty’s “houses” and her investment in the
cause of transgender sex work create a network of community support, shared
struggle, and validation for people who rarely find it in the larger society.
While Patty speaks of social work being performed (and social contracts with
the neighbors and more tenuously with the police), the sex workers themselves
did not describe their work in this way. Perhaps they have not been able to conceive of their work in such positive terms because of discrimination. None of
them used the Spanish word bordello (whorehouse) to describe their workplaces
in Guadalajara. Rather, they always used the term casas (houses), suggesting that
they were trying to establish a modicum of respect for their workplaces, if not
yet for the work itself. Patty is attempting to establish structural conditions to
meet the needs of the population with which she finds an affinity and also a
source of revenue. Even though the sex workers themselves do not see their
occupations as “social work,” their activities are socially embedded in local needs
and desires. Likewise, though the notion of “respect” may remain somewhat
ephemeral, these sex workers find themselves more socially committed and
indeed embedded in this community. In Guadalajara they work in a brothel that
collects money for political work in favor of the transgender and sex worker
community. This is not the case in San Francisco.
THE GRAND POLK HOTEL, SAN FRANCISCO
The conditions for transgender sex workers in San Francisco are very
different from those in Guadalajara. In the fall of 2002 all of the transgender
sex workers who were interviewed lived in a single-residential-occupancy (SRO)
hotel in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, a neighborhood known for drugs
and prostitution, where they paid between US$800 and $1,000 per month for a
room and shared bathroom. At the Grand Polk Hotel (a fictive name) residents
were not allowed to have keys to the front door and visitors and residents had
to ring to be admitted. At the crest of a dilapidated and dirty staircase, a doorperson in a small room monitored all visitors’ and residents’ comings and
goings. Visitors had to tell the doorperson whom they were visiting and leave
a photo ID at the front desk. In the evening they were required to pay a US$10
fee. Evidently, the building managers were profiting from every client who
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43
walked through the door to buy either drugs or sex. Whereas Patty may make
her living and likely some profit from the fees she charges for the use of her
houses, the fee at the hotel speaks of more blatant profiteering. This money
does not go toward bettering the political and social lives of the women on
whose backs these profits are made.
The nighttime hours at the Grand Polk Hotel are punctuated by shouting
matches in the hallways as residents and clients unleash some of the effects of
amphetamines and alcohol. In fact, it was only in San Francisco that project
participants ever missed interviews because of drug or alcohol use.13 In the
Grand Polk Hotel each floor has one common bathroom, and each room its
own sink. Many of the sex workers had microwave ovens and refrigerators
that they used to prepare food. Over time, some of them were able to move to
better residence hotels in the neighborhood; some even found units with
kitchenettes or bathrooms. However, because they were in the United States
illegally and had no credit histories, they could not rent regular apartments in
the city. Usually, they used their own bedrooms to entertain clients, and some
did occasional out-calls.
In San Francisco there is no madam who claims to take care of the transgender community or acts as a direct political representative for Mexican
transgender sex workers, and life in the SRO hotels can be isolating. However,
there are gathering places such as the transgender strip club Divas in the
Tenderloin, where some of the women sought out clients or passed the time
on the street outside. In the Mission district, where the majority of San
Francisco’s Latino population lives, the bar Esta Noche (Tonight) has for many
years hosted transvestite performances by Latino/as who lip-synch pop songs
while appreciative fans encourage them with applause.
There are political groups in San Francisco that advocate for the rights of sex
workers, though they are primarily composed of U.S. nationals or Latino/as
who have lived in the United States and speak English. The city provides health
services for sex workers at the San Francisco City Clinic. Services on “Transgender
Tuesdays” are offered by the San Francisco Department of Public Health, and
the Ark of Refuge, a local nongovernmental organization, provides further services.
However, few Latino immigrant transgender sex workers actually use these
services. The women involved in this project stayed in the Tenderloin district,
worked a lot, and did not take advantage of the free services offered by the city.
Transgender outreach workers from University of California, San Francisco’s
TRANS program, Proyecto Contra SIDA por Vida, City of Refuge Ministries,
and the Instituto Familiar de la Raza often visited them in their places of residence to distribute free condoms and lubricant. They also provided referrals for
free English classes, job training, legal help, drug and alcohol treatment, health
care, and other services.
Chloe, a former sex worker, is a Latina bilingual transgender outreach
worker at the City of Refuge Ministries. She explained why so few transgender
sex workers actually go to the free clinics:
Some go [to the free clinics], but not very regularly. Some get their hormone
treatments in the street. If they prostitute themselves during the night, it is hard
for them to get up early in the morning. Drug addiction has a lot to do with this
as well. I am speaking from my own experience. I don’t know why, I am not one
to judge. I am speaking about when I was under the influence of drugs. It is
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LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
because one doesn’t take care of him/herself well. One’s self-esteem is low
because of the prostitution and from taking drugs. Our self-esteem goes down
due to the relationships we have and our experiences in life. Because of the type
of life we lead, we look for an escape in drugs and alcohol. With this, we are able
to medicate, a little bit, the pain we have.
Chloe’s words point to the effects of ostracism and the perpetual cycle of
ever-declining self-esteem that many transgender sex workers experience.
Some explained that even in their attempts to “better themselves” they found
barriers—such as being mocked by other Latinos in their free English classes not
because they couldn’t speak well but because their gender was different from
their biological sex. While services, clinics, outreach workers, and language
learning opportunities exist in San Francisco, there continues to be a lack of
social structure and initiative on the part of the sex workers earning their living
in the Tenderloin. The Grand Polk Hotel, in contrast to Patty’s casas, is emblematic of a more pervasive alienation that sex workers feel because of the greater
commercialism and commodification of their lives.
CONCLUSIONS: SERVICES, SEXUAL MIGRATION,
AND CIRCULAR JOURNEYS
While they cross the border to work in the underground sex industry,
making their migrations both sexual and financial, it is not coincidental that
transgender sex workers come to San Francisco, a place that they describe as
“more open” to people such as themselves. Their migrations are multiply
motivated—not simply a search for some gay or transgender nirvana in San
Francisco or purely a matter of an economic “pull” from the North in order to
assist families back home in Mexico or build capital for future business
prospects. As Juana Maria Rodríguez (2003: 8) says, “Practices through which
subjects construct identity are never singular.” Instead, these women cross the
border with very complex goals and strategically laid migratory agendas.
Sexual migration, the process of crossing nation-state divides in order to pursue a sexuality-related component of one’s life (whether a relationship or a
search for more liberatory terrain), resonates with the experiences of Mexican
transgender sex workers. At the same time, these women are very clear about
the economic motives they have for contributing to their natal families and
compiling funds for surgeries and hormones to live more fully as women and
ultimately to leave sex work altogether and open businesses in Mexico.
Moreover, sexual and economic migratory motives are combined in the life
experiences of transgender sex workers; their sexual lives are at least partly
interwoven with economic as well as sexual desire. In the same way that pat
classifications “illegal” or “undocumented” fail to capture the full complexity
of transnationalist persons, the grids of “economic” and “sexual” motives
demand more nuance. Considering migration as a social process that is gendered, as opposed to “adding gender” to neoclassical models of economically
and politically driven migration, offers more complex analyses of how power
dynamics factor into migratory practices. However, it is important that these
approaches not overlook the importance people place upon earning a living,
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perhaps especially those whose sexual practices and gendered presentation
make getting work in the formal sector difficult.
In their work lives in both Mexico and the United States, transgender sex
workers encountered various levels of state, civil, and community involvement. In Guadalajara the state interceded with police sanctioning on the one
hand and police abuse on the other. In San Francisco, targeted transgender
health programs stood in contrast to language barriers and fears of exposure
as undocumented migrants. The social networks and political possibilities of
the workplace were also quite different in the two countries. In Guadalajara,
brothels were, according to their owner, an attempt to establish legitimacy for
transgender women and their work. In San Francisco’s Grand Polk Hotel, the
women were effectively taxed, a blatant profiteering from the work of a
vulnerable population. Ironically, perhaps, it was in San Francisco, with all of
its social services and purported tolerance for difference, that transgender sex
workers found less social and psychological support. In Mexico they had family
nearby, a familiar cultural and social world, status as citizens, and the comforts
of being at home.
The relatively isolated lives led by transgender sex workers in San Francisco
involved many vectors of vulnerability: undocumented status, language barriers,
heterosexism, gender role expectations, and, perhaps most significant, participation in an illicit economy of prostitution. Their marginalization as undocumented,
Spanish-speaking migrants, in combination with being “transgressive” in their
gender and sexual presentation and practices, appeared to limit the possibility
of their engaging more fully with transgender or gay communities in San
Francisco; it also limited their participation in Mexican migrant communities in
the city. While many undocumented migrants are forced to work “under the
table” in the United States, transgender sex work has the dubious distinction of
being illicit in two registers: illegal work by “illegal” workers. These particularities of labor and identity demand fine-grained approaches that consider the
micropolitics of sexual and migrant communities in the United States and in
Mexico but also as they “move” with individuals across the border and back
again. In much the same way that gendered studies of migration have drawn
attention to the household as a political economic unit, an understanding of
microcommunities such as those of transgender sex workers and the gay scenes
in the North or the South demands a close consideration of the intersections of
sexuality, gender, and desire, both sexual and economic, as interlocked phenomena. It is not just that gender (as a man or a woman) conditions one’s experience
of border crossing and life on the other side but that gendered desires—for
example, to present a biologically dissonant gender and sexual preference—
constitute specific kinds of “push” and “pull” between individual agency, the
economic niche of transmigrant sex work, and identity practices.
NOTES
1. Because people, commerce, and discourses now constantly cross borders (Lavie and
Swedenburg, 1996), this research was mobile. Interviews with 29 transgender sex workers in the
United States and Mexico were conducted in Spanish and audio-taped unless the interviewee
requested that she not be recorded. All names of interviewees have been changed to protect their
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46
LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
identities. Most participants came from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, but even those who
had started working as prostitutes in Mexico when they were teenagers had managed to finish
high school, and some had a very sophisticated vocabulary. In Guadalajara interviews were
conducted in the brothels where participants worked and in cafés, parks, restaurants, and private
residences. Interviews in San Francisco were sometimes stalled because of the precarious residency status of the participants, all of whom were undocumented. These women spoke little if any
English, were sometimes plagued by alcohol and drug abuse, and lived in blighted neighborhoods. After a year of our visiting their homes and speaking with them on the street and in health
clinics, the women who participated in the study developed a level of comfort with and
commitment to the interview and research process. At one time, there were 18 transgender sex
workers from Guadalajara living in the same residence hotel in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district.
This number fluctuated, however, as transgender women returned to Guadalajara and came
north again.
2. Microlevel migration theories have made a “rational actor” (at the individual or household level) central to their analyses, while macrolevel migration theories have centered on structural forces such as capitalism, labor demand, and trade relations (see Massey et al., 1993).
Several important critiques of neoclassical models of migration adopt a more nuanced approach
to questions of agency, gender, class, assimilation, and localized power dynamics. Research on
the role of households and social networks has demonstrated the importance of pooling
resources (Grasmuck and Pessar, 1991; Menjívar, 2000) and the potential to increase egalitarianism
in marital relations among migrant couples (Grasmuck and Pessar, 1991). Studies such as these
point to the need to understand the household as a political economic unit in its own right,
distinct from though related to individual decision making as well as impacted by larger political
economic forces such as state and labor policies. As Hondagneu-Sotelo (1994) points out, there
is a need consider both the “inside” of households and social networks to understand the power
relationships that impact migrants’ decision making. She argues, for example, that while patriarchal privilege may allow men to migrate more easily than their female counterparts, patriarchal expectations also demand that men financially support female dependents and children,
creating a complex gendering of migration. Grimes (1998) notes that migration changes the
formation of nuclear and extended families. Through migration men are often exposed to domestic
labor and thus more likely to appreciate the reproductive household labor usually undertaken
by women. Following earlier work on social networks and patterns of incorporation (Portes and
Bach, 1985), Portes and Rumbaut (2001) have emphasized that cultural adaptation and adoption
occur on various levels and to various degrees, with “full acceptance” and integration into the
mainstream being just one form of settlement in migrant communities. They point to the distinctions of human capital (such as job, language, and educational skills) in immigrants’ settlement
and assimilation, in addition to the impact of family structure and gender in the context of larger
structures of government policies and ethnic solidarity.
3. For example, the New York Times Magazine article “The Girls Next Door: Sex Trafficking on
Main Street,” by Peter Landesman (February 15, 2004), and the television movie Human Trafficking
(screened on Lifetime October 24–25, 2005) are two popular media representations of the transport
of women and children across the U.S./Mexican border for the purpose of sexual enslavement in
the United States. The former faced much criticism for putatively faulty facts and references.
4. Cantú’s (2002; 2003) work on the migratory motivations and childhood developmental
experiences of men who identify themselves as either bisexual or homosexual (gay) specifically
excludes transgender-identified persons.
5. A number of analyses have maintained that homosexual sexual acts between men in Latin
America do not necessarily mark participants as “gay” or homosexual; behavior does not automatically confer identity or “orientation.” Rather, the “active” or “masculine” partner is understood as
maintaining his masculinity and may evade accusations of sexual transgression or impropriety even
as he regularly engages in “homosexual” acts. The “passive” or “receiving” partner, who may also
be coded as “feminine,” is, however, stigmatized in this equation. Research on the active/passive
dynamic in Latin America has primarily focused on men and the men who have sex with them (see
for example, Carrier, 1995; Lancaster, 1992; Murray, 1996; and Parker, 1998). Stigma appears to follow similar trajectories among transgender sex workers in Brazil (Kulick, 1998) and Mexico (Prieur,
1998), although these cases also point to the agency and at times the relative economic power of
“feminine” (or “passive”) partners. Basing stigma and assumptions upon these categories can therefore be problematic, as it is clear that role-switching occurs and neither partner can be said to be
wholly “passive” or “active.”
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6. A report on this case was aired on National Public Radio on October 30, 2002.
7. Cantú’s (2003) discussion of sexual migration to the United States indicates a similar pattern of remittances to family members who remained in Mexico. He argues that migration transforms the relationships within these families, at times encouraging acceptance of homosexual
identity—that migrant gay men have “inverted” the economic dependencies and interdependencies that existed in the past when they were children or dependent adults. Almaguer (1993)
has proposed, to the contrary, that economic interdependencies in Latino/a and Latin American
families prevent the development of homosexual identity and acceptance because proximity and
financial dependency do not allow individuals to live outside the natal home.
8. Though a number of women in this study mentioned the desire to open their own businesses, during the time period of this research they did not do so.
9. Business entrepreneurship also provides financial autonomy without the need to reckon
with employers’ potential gender and sexual biases.
10. Framing “gay culture” as a reaction against machismo suggests a causal relationship
between the two. In fact, however, much research on male homosexuality in Latin America has
found the opposite to be true: machismo and homoerotic practices are in many ways dependent
upon one another, creating a scale of contrasts between “appropriate femininity” and “appropriate masculinity” that effectively regulates gender behaviors (Foucault, 1980; Brown, 1999; Carrier,
1992; Kulick, 1998; Lumsden, 1996; Murray, 1992; 1996; Palmberg, 1999; Parker, 1998).
11. While in Mexico hormones can be purchased over the counter, in the United States they
require a prescription. In Guadalajara transgender people often prescribe themselves hormones
on the recommendation of friends. In San Francisco the Department of Public Health offers centrally located and free-of-charge weekly clinics in which doctors, nurses, and social workers who
specialize in transgender health and wellness from a holistic perspective prescribe hormones
and other medications, but there are always hormones available for sale on the street; the risk is
that they may be inauthentic or contain harmful substances.
12. Patty’s and Elvira’s points about “service” may also suggest a belief that the employment
of transgender sex workers is the only way for men to fulfill male/male sexual desires.
Furthermore, because these sex workers are glossed as “feminine” or “women,” clients may feel
as though they are not transgressing gender or sexual boundaries. If clients take the active (or
“penetration”) role in sexual encounters, they may also thereby preserve their own masculine,
gendered position, making the question of whether clients are indeed “homosexual” yet more
complex. For a more elaborate consideration of the way homoerotic desires manifest themselves
and encounter prohibitions in Latin America, see Pasternostro (1998).
13. Although some women did use alcohol or drugs (despite Patty’s regulations), they never
missed an interview in Guadalajara for this reason. In San Francisco, drugs and alcohol appeared
to figure more heavily in women’s lives and had more negative impacts on the interview
process. However, this research was not focused on drug or alcohol use or testing, so these are
observations only and not necessarily indicative of actual use patterns.
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