Through a written document, the Matanzas activist for Human Rights Florencia Guimaraes García, recounted the serious consequences of the application of industrial silicone, a common practice in transvestite-trans people. “We live in a society that imposes body stereotypes on those of us who build ourselves or wish to position ourselves in femininity,” she said.
Florencia Guimaraes García, Matanzas activist for Human Rights of the transvestite-trans community, Head of the Access to Rights Program for transvestite and trans people of the Women’s Justice Center, made public a document that was written for the presentation of an investigation on the application of liquid industrial silicone that was carried out in the House of the province of Buenos Aires.
The text was published on the activist’s social networks, in a context in which the application of this product on her own body, led her back to a situation of hospitalization.
“Many years have passed since they applied silicone to my buttocks. Today, the consequences of this clandestine practice are advancing, and it prevents me from being able to develop my life as I would like, which leads me to write about what it is like to live with industrial silicone, wrongly called airplane oil, in my body.”
Seeking to “make visible the damage it causes to our bodies,” Florencia proposes to tell her story as “a small attempt to generate awareness and responsibility in the health system, and also in the new generations of transvestite and trans companions about how dangerous and often deadly this practice is, so naturalized among us.”
The activist stated that “the experience of building a transvestite trans body in a society that imposes hegemonic gender stereotypes is, for many of us, a chronicle of pain and resistance. Although this story is crossed by my personal history, I know that it reflects the experience of many companions, who faced similar or even worse experiences.”
In the document presented at the House of the Province of Buenos Aires, Guimaraes García analyzed: “a long time passed until I understood why I felt the need to have this body, a body that many transvestites build in clandestinity, in extreme poverty and under an unavoidable urgency.”
In the same sense, Florencia added: “we live in a society that oppresses us with sexist parameters of beauty and femininity. If cisgender women are victims of these stereotypes, for us, transvestites and trans women, the pressure is doubly suffocating.”
“We need to be treated with humanity”
The founding activist of La Casa de Lohana y Diana, the first Day Center for the transvestite-trans community, explained that “the use of substances such as industrial oil to modify our bodies is a scourge that runs through our community.”
She also provided details of the consequences that this practice has on the body. “This poison runs through our bodies, migrates, destroys tissue, affects our mental health and, in many cases, leads to death. The consequences are devastating: infections, phlebitis, lung clots and even amputations,” she added.
But according to Guimaraes García, “the suffering does not end there,” because when the time comes to go to a hospital in search of help “another odyssey begins.” Why? “The health system, far from offering support, subjects us to prejudice, discrimination and, often, torture.”
Added to the serious health problems is the blaming attitude of many health professionals. “Inquisitive questions like ‘Why did you do this?’ or ‘Who forced you?’ become the prelude to dehumanizing treatment. If we are lucky, they manage to save a part of our body, but not without leaving physical and emotional scars that remind us, again and again, of the supposed ‘mistake’ we made,” the activist stressed.
In this context, Florencia stressed that “it is urgent that society and the medical system understand our realities, our trajectories and our struggles. We need to be treated with humanity and respect, breaking with the body binary and prejudices that perpetuate violence.”
Also, the activist stressed that “it is essential to deconstruct from childhood the body stereotypes that are imposed on us and to work on the training of health professionals capable of addressing these problems from an inclusive and respectful perspective.”
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