>>29184342

i asked it to go *deeper* ;) and provide examples:

1. Ethnographic Insight from Don Kulick’s Travesti
Don Kulick’s seminal anthropological study of travesti sex workers in Salvador, Brazil, highlights that travesti identity is maintained not just through feminine visual presentation but sexual behavior: “travestis regard any male who identifies as a woman… as mentally disturbed” —they do not see themselves as women, but like women, through the act of penetration and domination

They routinely assume the penetrative, active role in sexual exchanges—not only as preference, but as a defining aspect of identity and social status.

2. Gender and Sexual Politics in Brazil
A report on how gender identity and sexual roles are understood in the context of HIV prevention and sex work states: “nearly all agreed that travestis occupy a unique category… conceptually distinct… from ‘male-gendered’ gay men” —and that economic necessity and client expectations often lead them to penetrate their clients, even when the cultural binary of active/passive is in question. Sex worker strategies depended on meeting a market demand for travestis who top, reinforcing an erotic economy shaped by power dynamics of desire and marginalization.

3. Race, Desire, and the “Mulata” Symbol
Transfeminist studies contrast the racialized fetish of the mulata in Brazil with how travesti bodies are portrayed:
They are both desired and despised, seen through legacies of Black female sexualization while simultaneously embodying transgression. That paradox fuels representations of sexual dominance, aggression, and taboo—making the “dominant trans top” a visual and symbolic trigger in pornography and popular discourse