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Mema's House, Mexico City: On Transvestites, Queens, and Machos
Mema's house is in the poor barrio Nezahualcoyotl, a crowded urban space on the outskirts of Mexico City where people survive with the help of family, neighbors, and friends. This house is a sanctuary for a group of young, homosexual men who meet to do what they can't do openly at home. They chat, flirt, listen to music, and smoke marijuana. Among the group are sex workers and transvestites with high heels, short skirts, heavy make-up, and voluminous hairstyles; and their partners, young, bisexual men, wearing T-shirts and worn jeans, short hair, and maybe a mustache.
Mema, an AIDS educator and the leader of this gang of homosexual men, invited Annick Prieur, a European sociologist, to meet the community and to conduct her fieldwork at his house. Prieur lived there for six months between 1988 and 1991, and she has kept in touch for more than eight years. As Prieur follows the transvestites in their daily activities—at their work as prostitutes or as hairdressers, at night having fun in the streets and in discos—on visits with their families and even in prisons, a fascinating story unfolds of love, violence, and deceit.
She analyzes the complicated relations between the effeminate homosexuals, most of them transvestites, and their partners, the masculine-looking bisexual men, ultimately asking why these particular gender constructions exist in the Mexican working classes and how they can be so widespread in a male-dominated society—the very society from which the term machismo stems. Expertly weaving empirical research with theory, Prieur presents new analytical angles on several family, class, domination, the role of the body, and the production of differences among men.
A riveting account of heroes and moral dilemmas, community gossip and intrigue, Mema's House, Mexico's City offers a rich story of a hitherto unfamiliar culture and lifestyle.
Mema, an AIDS educator and the leader of this gang of homosexual men, invited Annick Prieur, a European sociologist, to meet the community and to conduct her fieldwork at his house. Prieur lived there for six months between 1988 and 1991, and she has kept in touch for more than eight years. As Prieur follows the transvestites in their daily activities—at their work as prostitutes or as hairdressers, at night having fun in the streets and in discos—on visits with their families and even in prisons, a fascinating story unfolds of love, violence, and deceit.
She analyzes the complicated relations between the effeminate homosexuals, most of them transvestites, and their partners, the masculine-looking bisexual men, ultimately asking why these particular gender constructions exist in the Mexican working classes and how they can be so widespread in a male-dominated society—the very society from which the term machismo stems. Expertly weaving empirical research with theory, Prieur presents new analytical angles on several family, class, domination, the role of the body, and the production of differences among men.
A riveting account of heroes and moral dilemmas, community gossip and intrigue, Mema's House, Mexico's City offers a rich story of a hitherto unfamiliar culture and lifestyle.
310 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 27, 2022
Comprendo que según su contexto, al momento en que fue escrito, habían conceptos no muy aclarados respecto del género y la identidad sexo-genérica, bajo esta premisa no juzgo con rigor a la autora, pero valdría la pena una reedición con modificaciones mucho menos lgbtfóbicas.
Lo que sí, es que como muchos trabajos de antropología, peca de eurocentrico y trata a las personas sujetas de su estudio, como animales de observación, en ese sentido, fue un poco ofensivo leerlo. No todo tendría que caber en la caja de lo eurocéntrico o partir de sus conceptos para el análisis. En fin, el libro sirve en parte para dar un recuerdo de la época y las vivencias de su comunidad, más allá de eso, mucho que criticar.
Lo que sí, es que como muchos trabajos de antropología, peca de eurocentrico y trata a las personas sujetas de su estudio, como animales de observación, en ese sentido, fue un poco ofensivo leerlo. No todo tendría que caber en la caja de lo eurocéntrico o partir de sus conceptos para el análisis. En fin, el libro sirve en parte para dar un recuerdo de la época y las vivencias de su comunidad, más allá de eso, mucho que criticar.
March 12, 2010
It's a decent book. It can be dry. Not what the back cover promises, but if you're interested in queer theory it's pretty good
Yeah, you have to wade through some blocks of "rape culture" and the like BUT, the author does take a fairly unbiased overview of her subjects in a small segment of a Mexican Bario. She doesn't prejudge, she does "academically process" what she observes for basically a publishable dissertation...but the underlying stories and histories of the myn she interacts with are very true and authentic. Cut out the big words and it's an intimate look at a slice of life of transsexual culture in that bario.
Yeah, you have to wade through some blocks of "rape culture" and the like BUT, the author does take a fairly unbiased overview of her subjects in a small segment of a Mexican Bario. She doesn't prejudge, she does "academically process" what she observes for basically a publishable dissertation...but the underlying stories and histories of the myn she interacts with are very true and authentic. Cut out the big words and it's an intimate look at a slice of life of transsexual culture in that bario.
March 5, 2016
Muy buena investigación sobre la construcción del género a través del cuerpo, del sexo, de la ideología. Me trajo pensando un muy buen rato; y aunque se circunscribe a lo que sucede en Cd. Neza, toda la parte teórica es muy buena.
July 31, 2025
Annick Prieur, now a criminologist, once a sociologist (I suppose there’s some interdisciplinary overlap) explores the world of homosexual prostitutes in Mexico City’s suburbs. The book is a good balance of intimate details from the lives of her subjects and solid comparative analysis performed post facto. She doesn’t try to make herself the subject of the study, but when nonparticipation would offend the subjects, she participates. And to be fair, she rolls with the punches quite well. I’m not sure, for instance, that most women would have just laughed off being saddled with a nickname that roughly translates as “Loose / Big Pussy.” Then again, a fairly macho character on “The Sopranos” actually had that handle put on him, and he didn’t seem to mind.
Unsurprisingly, Prieur finds that homosexuality and homosexual prostitutes are treated differently in Mexico than in her native Norway. The men in this subculture dress as women, sometimes regard themselves as such and sometimes regard themselves as men. They are typically called “Jotas,” and their more masculine clients called “mayates.” “Jota” is apparently the pronunciation of the letter “J” in Spanish, and homosexuals were supposedly housed in the “J” wing of Mexico City’s prisons. As for “mayate,” the word literally refers to a kind of dung beetle and in American Hispanic gang and prison culture is pejorative slang for a black person.
As you can probably guess, this is a very distinct subculture, with its own language, rules, and norms. But it is not a hidden one, and strange rules about masculinity in Mexico mean that the straight men who sleep with jotas are not considered gay. In an odd sense, they sometimes have their masculinity enhanced by the experience.
Perhaps, then, it could be compared to the old dichotomy between “pitcher” and “catcher,” or, in more formal and Attic terms, sodomite versus catamite. Regardless, it’s a fascinating and informative book, nonjudgmental and insightful in equal parts. And since Prieur clearly knows her field and the work of her forebears in it, she’s always able to contextualize. Such a skill comes especially in handy when the scholar wants to see what is the same across cultures and what’s different. Her sample size is small (a house of gay, sometimes female-identifying male prostitutes), but there is good longitude, more than a decade-plus, all told.
Recommended, with photos, mostly of the subjects under study at work and play. Mostly play.
Unsurprisingly, Prieur finds that homosexuality and homosexual prostitutes are treated differently in Mexico than in her native Norway. The men in this subculture dress as women, sometimes regard themselves as such and sometimes regard themselves as men. They are typically called “Jotas,” and their more masculine clients called “mayates.” “Jota” is apparently the pronunciation of the letter “J” in Spanish, and homosexuals were supposedly housed in the “J” wing of Mexico City’s prisons. As for “mayate,” the word literally refers to a kind of dung beetle and in American Hispanic gang and prison culture is pejorative slang for a black person.
As you can probably guess, this is a very distinct subculture, with its own language, rules, and norms. But it is not a hidden one, and strange rules about masculinity in Mexico mean that the straight men who sleep with jotas are not considered gay. In an odd sense, they sometimes have their masculinity enhanced by the experience.
Perhaps, then, it could be compared to the old dichotomy between “pitcher” and “catcher,” or, in more formal and Attic terms, sodomite versus catamite. Regardless, it’s a fascinating and informative book, nonjudgmental and insightful in equal parts. And since Prieur clearly knows her field and the work of her forebears in it, she’s always able to contextualize. Such a skill comes especially in handy when the scholar wants to see what is the same across cultures and what’s different. Her sample size is small (a house of gay, sometimes female-identifying male prostitutes), but there is good longitude, more than a decade-plus, all told.
Recommended, with photos, mostly of the subjects under study at work and play. Mostly play.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews