Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't: Strategizing gender in the experiences of transmasculine folk with police and security forces in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires

Drawing on in-depth, semi-structured interviews, I analyze transmasculine people's perceptions of, experiences of, and strategies used to avoid police violence in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires, Argentina. I highlight the existing contradictions and the contorting logics that are required to incorporate the identity-based model for the determination of gender, as introduced by the Gender Identity Law, in a context of preexisting biology-based models. Transmasculine folks mobilize these tensions in their everyday lives, strategically employing the frameworks of determining gender, as well as traditional social conceptions of femininity and masculinity, as a form of impression management. Identifying threat as a central element in both police criminalization and the social recognition of masculinity, participants negotiate between their identity, desired embodiment, and sense of safety. I focus on the ways that these strategies are informed, even more so, conditioned by respective social positionalities and the limits of embodiment.