Narrating the self before the law

gendered violence in police records of trans women and travesties

Abstract

This study analyzes how violence is narrated in institutional records, based on the understanding that such documents do not merely describe facts, but also produce meanings, frame subjects, and participate in the very constitution of the violence they claim to record. It advances the hypothesis that the institutional narrative present in police reports operates as a gendered practice, producing and delimiting the contours of what is recognized as violence. The accounts found in the Records of Social Defense Events (REDS) are always constituted in relation to an other, emerging from a face-to-face encounter that demands a specific mode of narration. In the case of trans women and travestis, this process often entails the need to narrate one’s own experience in order to achieve institutional recognition. Thus, the subject is constituted in the very act of narrating, since it is through narrative that they become intelligible to institutions. The recording of violence therefore constitutes a “doing of gender,” insofar as it defines which subjects can be recognized as legitimate victims. For the purposes of analysis, records of attempted and completed bodily injury involving trans people and travestis in the state of Minas Gerais were examined, covering the period from 2019 to 2022. The study highlights the relevance of this topic for debates on the constraints faced in the process of accessing justice and the ways in which bodies are narrated and institutionally produced.