Gifts and Their Transitions: Exchange and Reciprocity Amongst Plastic Surgeons and Patients in Trans Medicine

el intercambio de regalos y la idea de reciprocidad entre cirujanos plásticos y pacientes en el ámbito de la medicina trans

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.11606/1678-9857.ra.216327

Keywords:

surgery, transgender medicine, the gift, reciprocity, body

Abstract

Based on an ethnography developed in a plastic surgery clinic and in hospitals in São Paulo with the help of interviews, I am interested in observing how surgeries, in the context of biomedically assisted sex/gender change, are involved as present through of which people make gifts to each other. Sexual and gender reassignment surgeries, which aim to offer material modifications of signifiers of the sexual body, are carried out in Brazil under different therapeutic practices that compete. Although not yet hegemonic, some affirmative approaches have not focused their actions on the search for the figure of the “real transsexual”, but on supporting people with different performances and erotic habitus in their gender transitions in different languages and state and market practices. In this sense, I demonstrate how a movement of depathologization and biomedicalization takes place that transforms places in sexual and gender diversity in the medical scope.

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References

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Published

2025-11-24

Issue

Vol. 68 (2025)

Section

Articles

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How to Cite

Vieira, F. C. (2025). Gifts and Their Transitions: Exchange and Reciprocity Amongst Plastic Surgeons and Patients in Trans Medicine: el intercambio de regalos y la idea de reciprocidad entre cirujanos plásticos y pacientes en el ámbito de la medicina trans. Revista De Antropologia, 68. https://doi.org/10.11606/1678-9857.ra.216327