Improper bodies appropriating the expropriated space: the struggle of trans women in Tijuana

Abstract

Cities are inhabited by a diversity of subjects in whose bodies are inscribed differentiated experiences of daily life, since both the corporal and the spatial are crossed by multiple axes of power. Gender is one of these axes since it operates as a double binary classification system: the feminine/masculine and the Normal/Abject. This produces peripheral bodies and, thus, frames of meaning that trace the experiential itineraries of trans women when read as bodies that transgress the gender norm. Using the discussion group and the experiential fieldwork, this article recovers the collective experience of the transsexual sex workers of Tijuana (Mexico) in defense of their right to nonviolence after numerous cases of police extortion, problematizing from the body/emotions their daily urban habitat. The results include an analysis of the production of counter-public spaces that resuscitate the public, the trans and the feminine.