Mapped vulnerabilities, Located violences: Experiences of transvestites and transgender individuals in Brazil

Abstract

This study discusses the forms of violence and their ways of acting, naturalization and invisibility that transvestites and transgender individuals are subjected in Santa Catarina, Brazil. Trough the applying of questionnaires to 100 trans individuals, it was possible to elaborate a psychosocial profile of this population and identify the specific violence they pass through and the main agents of them. The most frequent types are discrimination, psychological, physical and institutional violence and public security, education, health and social assistance services are pointed out as the main perpetrators. Dispossessed of rights and marginalized of public services, these people, in their majority, work as sex workers and were cast out of home and school when begun to make visible their gender. We seek to problematize the way violence act on deviant bodies of cisheteronorm, including how public policies have acknowledged (or not) the right of these individuals.