Böcker av Carolina Hernandez Losada

This thesis examines the ways in which transgender women who identify asbeing inside "the closet" in Bogotá, Colombia, negotiate their gender identities. Itprovides a detailed ethnographical account of the experiences of the participants bylooking at how they negotiate gender through three lenses: intimate relationships, spaceand sense of belonging. This thesis also critically addresses the concept of gender byengaging with the participants' embodied, spatialized and relational experiences offamily relationships and being in the closet. This provides the basis for discussing howthe tensions between the experiences of a sense of belonging and not-belonging enablethe participants to create strategies to reduce the conflict between their differentbelongings and maintain their intimate relationships. In this sense, this thesisunderstands gender as constantly negotiated in different contexts, with different peoplein different places. The Introduction provides a brief context of the field of this research.Chapter 2 explains how the research was undertaken methodologically. Chapters 3 and4 deal with the relationship between family relationships and gender and sexuality,arguing that family life is a key arena for negotiating them. Here I engage with theconcept of intimate citizenship and the experiences of the participants around intimatelife, and their relationships as children, parents and partners. Finally, Chapters 5 and 6concentrate on the participants' experiences participants of the closet by looking atgender and sense of belonging, arguing that the closet is not a closed off space. Itsboundaries are not fixed, as people are able to step in and out of it in dialogue withbroader society, their relationships and belongings. Indeed, as with the gendered livesof my research participants being threaded through multiple places and relationships,the closet is dynamic and productive of diversely complex negotiations andperformances of gendered being and doing.