Everyday Transgender Belonging in Transitioning Yangon

Abstract

This research is the first ethnographic study of male to female trans everyday life in Myanmar. My fieldwork took place at the end of military rule and as the state began transitioning to democracy. I focus on the constraints faced by trans in Yangon, and how they overcome them. Within the natal family, trans typically experience multiple forms of violence, anguish and alienation. Negative experience in the family is in large part a result of anadè, the Burmese rules of civility. For trans, the social consequences of anadè are more pressing problems than state repression. As a result of repression within the family, many trans exit in order to live openly. Others maintain a masculine appearance, passing as gender normative and thereby do not disrupt their family and work lives. Exit is made possible through entry into units of trans kinship. Trans kinship is formed through multifaceted relations between trans mothers and daughters, husbands and wives and spirits and humans, thereby creating an extensive network of trans space within the interstices of the state. A key feature of trans kinship is the re-creation of anadè in a changed form that supports trans ways of being, sex and intimacy. In order to enter the Yangon trans world, intimacy was a necessary element of my ethnographic practice.