I was 19 when I first considered becoming a trans woman. I grew up in a household of women: my parents divorced when I was four, so it was just me, my mother and four sisters. ‘Deepen that voice!’ my uncles constantly reproached me. ‘You’re too delicate! Don’t walk like a girl!’ I’d realised from an early age that I was gay. In elementary school, there was a boy with whom I would hold hands in secret. One day we kissed; a teacher saw and scolded us. That’s when I began to understand this was wrong, though I didn’t know why.
My mother didn’t know how to deal with this. ‘I won’t accept a little faggot for a son,’ I heard her say countless times. She struggled with mental illness, including body dysmorphia, and rarely left the house; she thought people were laughing at her for being overweight. By the time I was eight, I was doing everything on my own – grocery shopping, going to the bank, taking the bus. During these errands, I’d sometimes stop at newsstands and admire the male bodies in magazines, fall in love with the princes in the cartoons.
Looking back, I realise that, for an effeminate, mixed-race, lower-middle-class boy on the outskirts of Brasília, there was always a predator lurking: a neighbour, a relative, someone with bad intentions. When I was 13, we started attending an evangelical church. There was no sense of belonging there either, for me; I was always seen as the guilty one. The pastor there would approach me and ask if I was homosexual.
‘The devil is preparing you for this,’ he warned. ‘You have to pray and fast.’
Once, I was at the home of a pastor who lived next to the church. We were counting flyers that would be distributed before a religious event. Night had fallen. The pastor went to the bathroom and returned in his underwear. Realising his intentions, I fled without saying a word. I left the church after that. That’s when I started spending time around the trans women in Brasília.
I would hang out with them in the industrial zone in Taguatinga, near the Coca-Cola factory, and in the red-light districts in the central parts of the city. Theirs was a world full of contradictions. They lived in houses owned by pimps, to whom they paid a daily fee to live on the properties and work in the streets. There was loud laughter and there was loud makeup – everything felt like a party. There were big egos and intense competition over looks, but food and wigs were freely shared. Once, when a trans woman returned home beaten by a client, the others came together to pay for her food, medicine and her share of the fee owed to the pimp.
By the time I was 16, I’d left home to live with a boyfriend. He was 16, too. Where we lived, in the gay ghettos, there were a lot of fights. But no one messed with me because they knew the trans women would defend me. When you’re young, you’re always looking for a sense of belonging you didn’t find in your own family. I found it in the trans women who accepted and welcomed me.
Some people experience body dysphoria from a very early age – what they see physically isn’t what they actually feel. For others, the possibility of being trans arises only later in life, when they can choose to be something other than who or what they are. I belong to the latter category: it was only after years of living alongside trans women that I began to realise I could be one, too.
My first attempt at transitioning was short-lived – three months into taking hormones, I stopped. My decision had less to do with my gender identity than the ways in which I thought changing it would foreclose possibilities for me. Simply put, I did not want to become a sex worker – often the only means of income for the trans women around me. It is a profession accompanied by a great deal of violence and psychological trauma; most trans women I knew used drugs to cope with that life. I liked their world, I liked being with them, but I didn’t like the situations they found themselves in.
Ten years later, after much reflection, I decided once more to transition. This time, I resolved to follow all the steps to fully become a woman. I began psychological counselling, then hormones under medical supervision. I’d already set aside the funds I’d need, through years of working at a beauty salon in an upper-middle-class neighbourhood in Brasília, a place specialising in hair extensions. The clients there were supportive, even if some found it strange. Some gave me earrings, makeup, clothes, even lingerie. Others asked whether I would now turn to sex work.
Within months, my body began to change. I was also studying nursing at the local university and when I returned for the second semester, I looked like a different person. When I got my breast implants, I was euphoric – I felt I would be a woman only after getting implants and wearing a dress. The other students complimented me, peppering me with questions. Some teachers ignored me; one insisted on calling me by my dead name. She’d never liked me, actually.
My social life changed drastically. People stop inviting you to birthdays and barbecues
As my body changed, I felt both fear and joy. My mother cried when she saw my breasts. I think they were tears of frustration but that didn’t bother me. I don’t think my mother ever stopped loving me – she worried only about the prejudice I would face. My sisters were happy that I was happy. I was happy: I was building a whole new self.
Maintaining a feminine appearance is expensive. Your hair has to be silky, straight and long, nails manicured, makeup flawless, clothes beautiful – not to mention the laser hair removal, hormone treatments and plastic surgeries. In order to ‘pass’ – that is, look more feminine so that society would be more accepting – I must have spent more than $25,000. Then, there are expenses you wouldn’t think to account for: occasionally, in order to avoid harassment, you can’t take the bus and you have to take a taxi. You even have to choose where you live carefully.
Despite all these efforts, my social life changed drastically. People stop inviting you to birthdays and barbecues – one friend told me she didn’t invite me because her relatives were evangelicals. She said she wanted to protect me from the possibility of being offended by them. Some began watching my every move, suspicious I would flirt with their boyfriends. It’s as if you’re no longer trustworthy; everything suddenly revolves around sexuality. Once, my friend and I were pelted with eggs on the street. Another time, I was at a nightclub and kissed a guy. Then a girl told him I was trans. He said he was going to the bathroom and would be back. I never saw him again.
After two years of living as a trans woman, I decided to reverse my transition. The truth is, there wasn’t a single day I wasn’t afraid for my life. For many people, gender transition is a vital necessity, but for me it wasn’t. It was a choice I’d made, and I’d made it happily, but it came with costs: the constant shadow of violence, estranged and murdered friends, the high price of upkeep.
I began to wonder whether it was worth going through all that just to be a woman.
For 18 consecutive years, Brazil has topped the global list of countries with the highest number of murders of trans people. Last year, there were 80 documented homicides of trans people. We wake up prepared for war every day. One friend – we called her ‘little whore’ because she was all of five feet tall, 22 years old and sweet – was seen on the street getting into a client’s car, but she never returned. We know she was murdered, but we don’t know how or why. Another, Paula Maia, became a quadriplegic after an attempt on her life, but what ultimately killed her was the industrial silicone she’d used to modify her body – a primitive, painful and irreversible procedure. Another named Julia died after being attacked by an older man who lived in the red-light districts; he would go out with some of the sex workers but had a habit of humiliating trans women: ‘You’re ugly, you’re fat, you’re not worth what you charge.’ Julia argued back once, so he stabbed her.
Life as a trans woman is far riskier than as a gay man
Nothing happened to him. I see him on the street sometimes because he lives near my salon.
I sought counselling for a while and began to ask myself: Why can’t I go back? Little by little, I began telling people about my decision. Some tried to dissuade me, others chastised me for being indecisive, while others, such as my evangelical family, readily supported me – to them, it was a sign of ‘liberation’. Almost everyone understood, however, that life as a trans woman is far riskier than as a gay man.
Some asked if I had become evangelical. This is common in Brazil, where the evangelical population is booming: people who detransitioned after converting, fed false promises that everything would be different for them after, or those who’d fallen into drug use or become homeless and were offered support only on the condition that they stop being trans. I’ve seen how that goes. For many people, religion is a pretext to gain social acceptance because it’s extremely difficult to deconstruct something you’ve built and suddenly declare: ‘I don’t want this anymore and I’m going to change.’ Not everyone has that courage.
I began saving up once more, this time to pay for the removal of my breast implants. If it’s expensive to become a trans woman, it’s also not cheap to stop being one. I’ve heard from others who would like to consider doing so but lack the money or job prospects to do so. A woman named Aline who lived in southern Brazil reached out to me at the time, saying she too wanted to detransition. But it was difficult for her as she’d already altered her jaw, nose and forehead.
It’s been 10 years since I stopped identifying as a trans woman. I was happy with my trans body, and I’m happy now too. It was an experience I wanted to have, and it changed my outlook on life. Trans life in Brazil can be very cruel, but it also offers a sense of belonging. It was important for me to have had that. When you actually live through it, you realise the price is high – some are willing to pay it, while others are not. Those who criticise me don’t understand this is my existence, my decision, and every human is unique.