The Categories of Gender and Sexuality Tested in Everyday Life
In the region of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (Oaxaca, Mexico), there are people called muxes, a term that refers to both “homosexual” men and transgender women with sui generis characteristics. This article explores the current transformations of muxe ways of being. By focusing on the gender configuration elaborated by muxes—largely based on sex roles—as well as on the ways it is sometimes subverted, I was able to observe a growing adherence of young muxes to conventional gender models. In order to understand these changes, I will replace them in the history of the muxes’ struggle for social recognition of their collective identity articulating regional identity processes, LGBT+ activism, local festive registers and the HIV/AIDS crisis. I will then examine the economic constraints on modes of being muxe. Finally, I will study the role of the categories used by muxes to designate themselves in this process. Far from opposing each other, vernacular and Anglo-Saxon terminologies allow muxes to inscribe themselves in a global movement while claiming their cultural particularism. However, their uses take different forms that open the way to as many potential trajectories for the becoming of muxe modes of being.