During ethnographic research conducted on the West Side of Chicago, many sex working transgender Latinas asserted “somos una fantasía” (“we are a fantasy”) to articulate how they are objectified in sexual economies of labor and in the U.S. nation-state more broadly. However, I argue that fantasía indexes much more.
In this talk I introduce fantasía as a racialized trans analytic that emerged from sex working trans Latinas’ lived experiences. While recognizing how trans Latina sex workers are fantasized, fantasía is attentive to how trans Latinas critically embody, rearticulate, and resist the ways they are fantasized. Moreover, fantasia demonstrates how sex working trans Latinas actively fantasize other ways of knowing, being, and loving. Fantasía moves beyond narratives of hyper-victimization, and honors trans of color creativity that refuses—sometimes partially and contradictorily—transnormativity and normative Latinidad.