In this article I discuss the uses of travesti and transexual categories based on fieldwork carried out from 2008 to 2009 with people who joined at Terças Trans. The main issue that frames my analysis was how people researched used categories regarding sexual and gender identities, especially travesti and transsexual and how they agency and articulate several conventional associations in this process to produce meanings and differences about these categories. Although the conventions of medical discourse are key references for the definition of bodies, subjectivities and identity of people surveyed, it was possible to note also a variety of re-elaborations and displacements of meanings. I try to develop the argument that travesti and transexual categories are performatives, and that this performativity is not limited only in statements of gender and sexuality, but can also be expressed by means of contingent articulation which refer to differences of class, color/race and generation.
travesti; transexual; identity; articulated differences; classification systems
