<i>A body of one's own: A trans history of Argentina</i> by PatricioSimonetto, University of Texas Press, 2024, pp. vii‐288, ISBN: 978‐1‐4773‐2860‐6.

Argentina has often been portrayed as an arena of exotic sexual fascination. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, for example, European anxieties concerning women's sexual agency presaged a moral panic centred on ‘white slavery’, wherein European women would be enticed to Buenos Aires to work in bordellos. The (largely apocryphal) association of the national dance, the tango, with brothels has further served to cement the idea of Argentina as a country of fluid morals and debauchery. Yet these hackneyed tropes of decadence and excess sit in counterbalance to the national history of a country that, for one, remains overwhelmingly Roman Catholic and, for another, suffered years of reactionary, militant dictatorship. Attempting to square this somewhat awkward circle, A Body of One's Own by Patricio Simonetto examines the history of transgender and gender-diverse people as Argentina underwent multiple strands of nation-building and rebuilding. The result is an impressive, thoughtful, deeply compassionate work that offers much not simply to scholars of transgender or queer history, but indeed to those rethinking the very concepts of categorisation, discursive boundaries and what it is to be. Approaching a topic of this breadth requires qualification. Simonetto's introduction lays out the book's programme effectively in this regard: though using the terminology ‘trans’, ‘transgender’ and ‘transsexual’, the author recognises that applying such terms may be problematic in an Argentinian case study. This is for two separate but interconnected reasons. First, and arguably the most familiar to the historian of queer history: the vocabulary of the present does not map precisely on to analyses of the past. Indeed, ‘transgender’ has only enjoyed currency since around the 1990s, and a search of any records before then (or, for that matter, most official records afterwards) will couch the retelling of trans lives in the terms of prejudice current at that time. More specifically in the Argentinian example, however, is the second challenge: applying ‘trans’ or ‘transgender’ wholesale is to impose a hegemonic vocabulary that fails to capture local diversity and variation. Terms such as travesti, mujer operada, invertido, marica and hombre-mujer are found throughout the historical record, each with a specific meaning and inflection, some being defined by the communities they described while others were imposed through medicalised or legal authority, and all having gone through processes of use, abuse, reclamation and supersession. As Simonetto argues, any use of ‘trans’ in this ‘trans history of Argentina’ has caveats, as it not only covers those who today describe themselves as transgender or transsexual, but also absorbs the aforementioned Spanish definitions, as well as some intersex experiences. There is always a danger that an uncritical application of such lenses might lead to the ‘smoothing out’ of variation and local dynamism – in other words, to the imposition of the same sort of hegemonic discursiveness that these tools were invented to subvert. Keenly aware of this, Simonetto appeals for ‘trans’ to be used as an umbrella term, a starting point that does not conflate the experiences of maricas or travestis, but still seeks their commonalities as queer identities and communities within a complex nation-building project. Indeed, there is much that is at once familiar and also unique. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, for example, a period of decriminalisation of queer (and here particularly same-sex) sexual practices within the home provided Argentinian invertidos, much like their European or American counterparts, with some degree of protection in the private sphere. Predictably, however, this was accompanied by sweeping powers granted to police and other authorities, which consequently made the public presentation of queerness increasingly dangerous – a quid pro quo that will feel familiar to historians of contemporaneous queerness in other geographical contexts. In other areas, however, Simonetto draws attention to the localised ‘rituals’ of transness. For example, many travestis seeking to differentiate themselves from sex workers adapted many of the typically Catholic norms applied to their cisgender compatriots: stylised ‘weddings’ between men and travestis, though not recognised in a legal capacity, served to emphasise the act of a ‘respectable’ woman ‘saving’ herself for marriage. On the other hand, other trans Argentinians saw sex acts as being integral to their identity. One, a Spanish-born sex worker known as La Bella Otero, sought to ‘conserve [clients’] sperm inside her by not defecating’, thus evoking the feeling of a ‘potential pregnant mother’ (p. 59). The interplay between the local and the global becomes even more clear as Simonetto explores the second half of the twentieth century. Here, we see the application of hegemonic narratives not only as an abstract problem of discourse – as in the introduction, when discussing the use of accepted English-language terms originating from the Global North to apply to a non-English-speaking community in the Global South – but also as a clear and present threat to communal and individual identity. From about 1944 onwards, Argentinian trans experiences were medicalised through the work of the doctor José Belby, who acted as a Magnus Hirschfeld-like figure. Belby coined the term travestissiment to describe the state of people ‘seeking to change their sex’, and he did much to pursue and popularise the narrative of trans people being ‘born in the wrong body’, who thus not only desired but required surgical intervention to correct this ‘mistake’ and legitimise their existence. Belby's work took its cues from the pioneering works of German sexologists (surprisingly not that of Hirschfeld, according to Simonetto, but the earlier Richard von Krafft-Ebing), but it also coincided with a public fascination for foreign trans people who were undergoing medical transition at the same time. These included the American Christine Jorgensen, the British Roberta Cowell and, later, the French performer Coccinelle. This had conflicting consequences. The publicity surrounding prominent trans people (most notably trans women) went some way to demystifying their existence. However, while previously transgressive gender presentation was in some measure ‘open to all’ and had significant social, class and economic dimensions, ‘Coccinelle's sensual power’ set a tone for trans people that required medical intervention and, after that transition, an adherence to established social norms of gendered attractiveness in order to be accepted. Moreover, this ‘born in the wrong body’ narrative erased much of the nuance inherent in a travesti identity, reinforcing an imposed gendered binary that one could be a man or a woman (even if those categories could be transited through the help of surgery). Simonetto notes that more recent activism has attempted to challenge this binary, exemplarily through the work of Lohana Berkins, who has adapted feminist scholarship and travesti communal identity to ‘challenge the expected link between corporeality and legal gender identity’ (p. 172). A Body of One's Own has been praised on its jacket for ‘contrast[ing…] moments of inspiration from the past with a challenging present’. In fact, its lessons are more complex than this. That past is, it is true, vibrant and readers will no doubt be delighted at the liveliness and scandal of La Bella Otero, or the Brazilian travesti troupe Les Girls conducting a 4-year residency in Buenos Aires, or the photograph of the performer La Ñoño as she prepares to inject herself with silicone to augment her breasts. But these moments cannot be divorced from their historical context, and Simonetto does not romanticise this history. La Ñoño's self-administering of silicone allowed her to sidestep a repressive medical regime, but this also put her at serious risk of injury or death; Les Girls initially did not dare tour Argentina at all because of the repressive Onganía regime; La Bella Otero was imprisoned more than thirty times before she died of tuberculosis. Hovering over all of this, there is Argentina's punctuated history of dictatorship and repression. In his epilogue, Simonetto relates the story of Julieta ‘La Trachyn’ González, a trans woman who was imprisoned under the military junta and who, along with other travestis, was forced to clean the blood from the cars used by the secret police to spirit away political prisoners. Simonetto relates that González became the first trans person to be officially recognised as a victim of the regime. This recognition was overdue and no doubt a step forward, but our enthusiasm must be tempered by two points: first, that trans people have not as a group been recognised as victims of state violence, in spite of the body of evidence to demonstrate that they were; and, secondly, that La Trachyn's recognition only comes as a result of the fact that she was, indeed, targeted by the state's brutality. Patricio Simonetto has written a lucid, vibrant and above all empathetic book. His focus on the lives and livelihoods of his subjects is admirable, welcome and has urgent relevance in a world where reaction seems to be declaring war on hard-won LGBTQIA+ rights. Rather than romanticising the past, however, Simonetto's book is a salutary reminder that what we euphemistically call ‘progress’ is often complex, multifaceted and in no way linear. As all good histories should, this outstanding contribution to the literature fascinates and delights, but also serves as a vital warning in troubled – and troubling – times. A body of one's own: A trans history of Argentina by Patricio Simonetto was also reviewed in Issue 36.1 as part of the Special Issue: Historicising Trans Pasts.