Homens que engravidam: um estudo etnográfico sobre parentalidades trans e reprodução

Abstract

This is an ethnographic study of the relational dynamics of kinship relations involving body transformations, sexuality and reproduction among transgender men who have passed through the experience of gestation. It follows the theoretical trail opened by the authors of the approach known as "new kinship" and through the notion of relatedness. Field research used three methodological strategies: the realization of semi-structured individual interviews with eight trans men; participant observation in spaces inhabited by trans men in the city of Salvador, Bahia; and the study of websites and social media on the internet. The research concerns kinship, affinity and friendship relations within which trans men are enmeshed and explores the dynamics of the body involving transgenderness, sexuality and pregnancy. The ethnography details how nonlinear paths of "gender transition" are based on the prevailing notion of the plastic body. It documents the specific nomenclatures that trans men use to describe their own transitioning body and their sexuality, to show that in these pathways a reclassification of social relations occurs, especially kinship relations. The process of becoming man defines both the new forms of relatedness and occasions a reinterpretation of what was called "motherhood". These trans men give meaning to reproduction and pregnancy as an experience that builds their masculinities through the metaphor of the seahorse. In this way, they break the direct association between feminity-pregnancy-motherhood.