Mema's house, Mexico City : on transvestites, queens, and machos / Annick Prieur.

By:

Prieur, Annick

Material type: Text

TextLanguage: English Original language: Norwegian Series: Worlds of desirePublication details: Chicago, Ill. : University of Chicago Press, 1998.Description: 1 online resource (xv, 293 pages) : illustrationsContent type:

text

Media type:

computer

Carrier type:

online resource

ISBN:

0226682587
9780226682587
9780226682570
0226682579

Uniform titles:

Iscenesettelser av kj�nn. English

Subject(s):

Genre/Form:

Additional physical formats: Print version:: Mema's house, Mexico City.DDC classification:

306.77 21

LOC classification:

HQ77 .P6813 1998eb

Other classification:

71.67

Online resources:

Click here to access online

Contents:

Introduction: The First Night ix -- 1 The Setting and the Approach 1 -- 2 Everyday Life of a Jota 41 -- 3 Little Boys in Mother's Wardrobe: On the Origins of Homosexuality and Effeminacy 104 -- 4 Stealing Femininity: On Bodily and Symbolic Constructions 140 -- 5 Machos and Mayates: Masculinity and Bisexuality 179 -- 6 On Love, Domination, and Penetration 234.

Summary: Mema's house is in the poor barrio Nezahualcoyotl, a crowded urban space on the outskirts of Mexico City where people survive with the help of family, neighbors, and friends. This house is a sanctuary for a group of young, homosexual men who meet to do what they can't do openly at home. They chat, flirt, listen to music, and smoke marijuana. Among the group are sex workers and transvestites with high heels, short skirts, heavy make-up, and voluminous hairstyles; and their partners, young, bisexual men, wearing T-shirts and worn jeans, short hair, and maybe a mustache. Mema, an AIDS educator and the leader of this gang of homosexual men, invited Annick Prieur, a European sociologist, to meet the community and to conduct her fieldwork at his house. Prieur lived there for six months between 1988 and 1991, and she has kept in touch for more than eight years. As Prieur follows the transvestites in their daily activities--at their work as prostitutes or as hairdressers, at night having fun in the streets and in discos--on visits with their families and even in prisons, a fascinating story unfolds of love, violence, and deceit. She analyzes the complicated relations between the effeminate homosexuals, most of them transvestites, and their partners, the masculine-looking bisexual men, ultimately asking why these particular gender constructions exist in the Mexican working classes and how they can be so widespread in a male-dominated society--the very society from which the term machismo stems. Expertly weaving empirical research with theory, Prieur presents new analytical angles on several concepts: family, class, domination, the role of the body, and the production of differences among men.

Average rating: 0.0 (0 votes)

Holdings ( 0 )
Title notes ( 6 )

No physical items for this record

Includes bibliographical references (pages 277-287) and index.

Rev. translation of the author's thesis (doctoral--University of Oslo, 1994).

Print version record.

Mema's house is in the poor barrio Nezahualcoyotl, a crowded urban space on the outskirts of Mexico City where people survive with the help of family, neighbors, and friends. This house is a sanctuary for a group of young, homosexual men who meet to do what they can't do openly at home. They chat, flirt, listen to music, and smoke marijuana. Among the group are sex workers and transvestites with high heels, short skirts, heavy make-up, and voluminous hairstyles; and their partners, young, bisexual men, wearing T-shirts and worn jeans, short hair, and maybe a mustache. Mema, an AIDS educator and the leader of this gang of homosexual men, invited Annick Prieur, a European sociologist, to meet the community and to conduct her fieldwork at his house. Prieur lived there for six months between 1988 and 1991, and she has kept in touch for more than eight years. As Prieur follows the transvestites in their daily activities--at their work as prostitutes or as hairdressers, at night having fun in the streets and in discos--on visits with their families and even in prisons, a fascinating story unfolds of love, violence, and deceit. She analyzes the complicated relations between the effeminate homosexuals, most of them transvestites, and their partners, the masculine-looking bisexual men, ultimately asking why these particular gender constructions exist in the Mexican working classes and how they can be so widespread in a male-dominated society--the very society from which the term machismo stems. Expertly weaving empirical research with theory, Prieur presents new analytical angles on several concepts: family, class, domination, the role of the body, and the production of differences among men.

eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - Worldwide