BOOK PRESENTATION POR UN CHATO DE VINO

Presentation of Lucas Platero’s Por un chato de vino, a story of transvestism and feminine masculinity in which the writer invites us to discover a lost history in which he intertwines his experiences with those of María Elena and couples them with images by Eva Garrido. It is hard to classify this book because it situates itself on the boundaries, because it is odd and because it speaks about what is silenced. During the presentation we will read extracts from the book and discuss some of the issues raised.

Lucas Platero has been active in the feminist and queer movement since the 1990s, and at once seriously involved in research into non-normative sexuality. He has a PhD in Sociology and Political Science from UNED and lectures in socio-community intervention. Recent publications include Intersecciones. Cuerpos y sexualidades en la encrucijada (Bellaterra, 2012) and Trans*exualidades. Acompañamiento, factores de salud y recursos educativos (Bellaterra, 2014).

Eva Garrido works on artistic, educational and research projects from a feminist perspective within Colektivof, a collective formed with Yera Moreno. After graduating with a BA in Fine Art she has explored various fields such as artistic and industrial design, set design and drawing.

What happens if one day while out for a few drinks the Guardia Civil take you to the barracks? M.E. is trying to get by on the streets of Barcelona in the late sixties, sometimes donating blood, other times accepting charity or hand-outs from her friends. Until one ill-fated day she stumbles across some guardias civiles who discover the curves under her men’s clothing. The barracks, the prison and the hospital are spaces of discipline to which we must submit. All we know is what the doctors, police and judges declare in examinations or questionings, recorded in a few sheets of paper forgotten in some archive. What is most terrifying is not what is said but what can be easily imagined. M.E.’s masculinity was impossible for them to accept, declaring her desire for woman to be pathological and criminal, but also uncontrollable and therefore meriting punishment and imprisonment. Almost involuntarily, M.E. infringes the moral order of Franco’s regime which, while then on the wane, still harshly repressed anyone who dared to publicly challenge its dictates. Sparked off by “public scandal”, repression was vented particularly on all those whose sexuality and gender expression overstepped the limits of “decency”, binary gender roles and obligatory heterosexuality. This story still reverberates today, at a time which prides itself on its sexual rights, but in which these discontinuities with more normative expressions of gender are still signalled as evidence of pathologies which must be diagnosed in order gain access to a handful of incomplete rights.

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