ISSN 2011-799X
Artículo recibido: 18/07/2022
Artículo aceptado: 28/11/2022
doi: 10.17533/udea.mut.v16n1a039Cross-Cultural Comparability of Queer
and Trans: Unpredictable Adaptations
From Within “the West”
Konstantinos Argyriou
konstantinos.argyriou@cchs.csic.es
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0578-7960
Instituto de Filosofía, Consejo Superior
de Investigaciones Científicas (csic), Spain
Abstract
Cross-cultural and cross-language research on gender faces the recurring issue of attachment to An-
glophone terminology and Anglo-American voiced experience. Queer and trans in concrete are two
concepts that may count with culturally-specific counterparts. However, various power relations op-
erate to silence or marginalize such alternative terms, uses, and pronouncements, either in Academia
or even during lay or activist discussions. Such dynamics do not always follow the rigid Western/
non-Western divide. The present reflection examines how queer and trans have operated within Cas-
tilian Spanish and Modern Greek, in terms of community engagement, gender subjectivation, and
overall linguistic incorporation. For that purpose, this analysis draws upon two specific sociocultural
contexts where the concepts in question have been recently assembled: The discussion about the
latest trans bill in Spain in 2021, on one hand, and the murder of Zak Kostopoulos, a prominent
queer Greek activist, in 2018, on the other. A brief contextualization of both debates shall shed light
on how terminology from sexuality and gender studies has functioned to construct concrete social
realities, but also political tensions with reactionary social groups. The comparison of the linguistic
uses of queer and trans terminology within these contexts is expected to serve queer research related
to translation and cultural adaptation elsewhere.
Keywords: cross-cultural research, gender studies, gender terminology, identity politics, translation
Comparabilidad transcultural de lo queer y lo trans: adaptaciones
impredecibles desde el interior de “Occidente”
Resumen
La investigación transcultural y translingüística sobre género enfrenta el problema persistente del ape-
go a la terminología angloparlante y la correspondiente experiencia angloamericana. Lo queer y lo
trans en concreto son dos conceptos que pueden tener contrapartes culturalmente específicas. Sin em-
bargo, varias relaciones de poder operan para silenciar o marginar términos, usos, y pronunciamien-
tos alternativos tanto en la academia como en las discusiones laicas o activistas. Tales dinámicas no
Artículo recibido: 18/07/2022
Artículo aceptado: 28/11/2022
doi: 10.17533/udea.mut.v16n1a039Cross-Cultural Comparability of Queer
and Trans: Unpredictable Adaptations
From Within “the West”
Konstantinos Argyriou
konstantinos.argyriou@cchs.csic.es
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0578-7960
Instituto de Filosofía, Consejo Superior
de Investigaciones Científicas (csic), Spain
Abstract
Cross-cultural and cross-language research on gender faces the recurring issue of attachment to An-
glophone terminology and Anglo-American voiced experience. Queer and trans in concrete are two
concepts that may count with culturally-specific counterparts. However, various power relations op-
erate to silence or marginalize such alternative terms, uses, and pronouncements, either in Academia
or even during lay or activist discussions. Such dynamics do not always follow the rigid Western/
non-Western divide. The present reflection examines how queer and trans have operated within Cas-
tilian Spanish and Modern Greek, in terms of community engagement, gender subjectivation, and
overall linguistic incorporation. For that purpose, this analysis draws upon two specific sociocultural
contexts where the concepts in question have been recently assembled: The discussion about the
latest trans bill in Spain in 2021, on one hand, and the murder of Zak Kostopoulos, a prominent
queer Greek activist, in 2018, on the other. A brief contextualization of both debates shall shed light
on how terminology from sexuality and gender studies has functioned to construct concrete social
realities, but also political tensions with reactionary social groups. The comparison of the linguistic
uses of queer and trans terminology within these contexts is expected to serve queer research related
to translation and cultural adaptation elsewhere.
Keywords: cross-cultural research, gender studies, gender terminology, identity politics, translation
Comparabilidad transcultural de lo queer y lo trans: adaptaciones
impredecibles desde el interior de “Occidente”
Resumen
La investigación transcultural y translingüística sobre género enfrenta el problema persistente del ape-
go a la terminología angloparlante y la correspondiente experiencia angloamericana. Lo queer y lo
trans en concreto son dos conceptos que pueden tener contrapartes culturalmente específicas. Sin em-
bargo, varias relaciones de poder operan para silenciar o marginar términos, usos, y pronunciamien-
tos alternativos tanto en la academia como en las discusiones laicas o activistas. Tales dinámicas no
Konstantinos Argyriou152Re-sentir lo queer/cuir en la traducción iberoamericana
siempre encajan en la rígida división Occidente/no Occidente. La presente reflexión examina cómo
han operado lo queer y lo trans dentro del castellano y el griego moderno en términos de participa-
ción comunitaria, subjetivación de género e incorporación lingüística general. Para ello, este escrito
trae a colación dos contextos socioculturales concretos en los que lo queer y lo trans pasaron a la pa-
lestra recientemente, a saber, el debate en torno a un nuevo proyecto de ley trans en España en 2021,
por un lado, y el asesinato de Zak Kostopoulos, destacado/a activista queer griego/a, en 2018, por
el otro. Una breve contextualización de ambos debates no solo arrojará luz sobre las formas en que
la terminología de los estudios de sexualidad y género ha contribuido a la construcción de realidades
sociales concretas, pero también ha motivado tensiones políticas con grupos sociales reaccionarios.
Se espera que esta comparación de los usos lingüísticos de la terminología queer y trans contribuya
a la investigación queer relacionada con la traducción y la adaptación cultural en otros contextos.
Palabras-clave: investigación transcultural, estudios de género, terminología de género, políticas de
identidad, traducción
Comparabilité transculturelle de la culture queer et trans : des adaptations
imprévisibles de « l’Occident »
Résumé
La recherche transculturelle et translinguistique des études de genre se voit confrontée à un problème
récurrent : celui résidant dans l´incapacité à prendre le recul nécessaire face à la terminologie anglo-
phone et à l’expérience anglo-américaine qui lui est associée. Les concepts de « queer » et de « trans »
sont notamment susceptibles de présenter des contreparties spécifiques d´un point de vue culturel.
Toutefois, de nombreux rapports de force font en sorte de réduire au silence ou de marginaliser ces
déclarations, termes et usages alternatifs, aussi bien dans le milieu universitaire qu´au sein de discours
laïcs ou militants. Ces dynamiques ne suivent pas toujours le clivage intransigeant occidental/non
occidental. La présente réflexion propose d´analyser les répercussions du « queer » et du « trans » au
sein de l’espagnol et du grec moderne, en termes de participation communautaire, de subjectivation
de genre et d’incorporation linguistique générale. Pour ce faire, il convient de s’appuyer sur deux
contextes socioculturels précis dans lesquels les termes « queer » et « trans » ont été employés récem-
ment, à savoir : le débat en Espagne sur la dernière proposition de loi trans, en 2021, d’une part, et le
meurtre de Zak Kostopoulos, un(e) éminent(e) militant(e) queer grec(que), en 2018, d’autre part. Une
brève contextualisation de ces deux débats particulièrement sensibles permet la mise en lumière de la
manière dont la terminologie des recherches sur la sexualité et le genre a œuvré pour construire des
réalités sociales concrètes, mais aussi des tensions politiques avec plusieurs groupes sociaux réaction-
naires. En comparant les usages linguistiques de la terminologie « queer « et « trans « dans de telles
circonstances, nous espérons pouvoir extrapoler certaines informations sur la recherche « queer «, ce
qui implique également la traduction et l’adaptation culturelle.
Mots-clef : recherche transculturelle, études de genre, terminologie de genre, politiques identitaires,
traduction
siempre encajan en la rígida división Occidente/no Occidente. La presente reflexión examina cómo
han operado lo queer y lo trans dentro del castellano y el griego moderno en términos de participa-
ción comunitaria, subjetivación de género e incorporación lingüística general. Para ello, este escrito
trae a colación dos contextos socioculturales concretos en los que lo queer y lo trans pasaron a la pa-
lestra recientemente, a saber, el debate en torno a un nuevo proyecto de ley trans en España en 2021,
por un lado, y el asesinato de Zak Kostopoulos, destacado/a activista queer griego/a, en 2018, por
el otro. Una breve contextualización de ambos debates no solo arrojará luz sobre las formas en que
la terminología de los estudios de sexualidad y género ha contribuido a la construcción de realidades
sociales concretas, pero también ha motivado tensiones políticas con grupos sociales reaccionarios.
Se espera que esta comparación de los usos lingüísticos de la terminología queer y trans contribuya
a la investigación queer relacionada con la traducción y la adaptación cultural en otros contextos.
Palabras-clave: investigación transcultural, estudios de género, terminología de género, políticas de
identidad, traducción
Comparabilité transculturelle de la culture queer et trans : des adaptations
imprévisibles de « l’Occident »
Résumé
La recherche transculturelle et translinguistique des études de genre se voit confrontée à un problème
récurrent : celui résidant dans l´incapacité à prendre le recul nécessaire face à la terminologie anglo-
phone et à l’expérience anglo-américaine qui lui est associée. Les concepts de « queer » et de « trans »
sont notamment susceptibles de présenter des contreparties spécifiques d´un point de vue culturel.
Toutefois, de nombreux rapports de force font en sorte de réduire au silence ou de marginaliser ces
déclarations, termes et usages alternatifs, aussi bien dans le milieu universitaire qu´au sein de discours
laïcs ou militants. Ces dynamiques ne suivent pas toujours le clivage intransigeant occidental/non
occidental. La présente réflexion propose d´analyser les répercussions du « queer » et du « trans » au
sein de l’espagnol et du grec moderne, en termes de participation communautaire, de subjectivation
de genre et d’incorporation linguistique générale. Pour ce faire, il convient de s’appuyer sur deux
contextes socioculturels précis dans lesquels les termes « queer » et « trans » ont été employés récem-
ment, à savoir : le débat en Espagne sur la dernière proposition de loi trans, en 2021, d’une part, et le
meurtre de Zak Kostopoulos, un(e) éminent(e) militant(e) queer grec(que), en 2018, d’autre part. Une
brève contextualisation de ces deux débats particulièrement sensibles permet la mise en lumière de la
manière dont la terminologie des recherches sur la sexualité et le genre a œuvré pour construire des
réalités sociales concrètes, mais aussi des tensions politiques avec plusieurs groupes sociaux réaction-
naires. En comparant les usages linguistiques de la terminologie « queer « et « trans « dans de telles
circonstances, nous espérons pouvoir extrapoler certaines informations sur la recherche « queer «, ce
qui implique également la traduction et l’adaptation culturelle.
Mots-clef : recherche transculturelle, études de genre, terminologie de genre, politiques identitaires,
traduction
Cross-Cultural Comparability of Queer and Trans: Unpredictable Adaptations From Within “the West”153Mutatis Mutandis. Revista Latinoamericana de Traducción Vol. 16, N.°1, 2023, enero-junio,pp.151-165
1. Queer, Trans, and Linguistic
Representation
Nonbinary people’s representation in language
is a controversial matter of growing interest
worldwide. Nonbinary identities are dispos-
sessed from linguistic conventions in the sense
that their presence is systematically suppressed
and delegitimized (Alabanza, 2022; Barker &
Iantaffi, 2019). Speakers who ignore the exis-
tence of nonbinary individuals, or even worse,
who intentionally discriminate against them,
vary, from being ignorant of their visibility de-
mands to being overtly unwilling to contribute
to their inclusion. What is more, the cis imag-
inary, which is so tightly attached to language
—especially grammatical gender language—,
is unshakeable for many, as pointed out by
Platero et al. (2017). Jyl Josephson and Porger-
dur Einarsdóttir (2016) examine this norm ri-
gidity as manifested in the Icelandic language.
Italian is also a representative example of how
language constitutes gendered realities that are
maximally binary and tied to historical con-
ventional conceptions of masculinity and fem-
ininity (Zottola, 2018).
Examples like these are discussed in a Special
Issue in the tsq, edited by David Gramling
and Aniruddha Dutta (2016), as evidence of
the fact that English dominates gender-relat-
ed terminology. The neocolonial imperative
of reporting research results and conceptu-
alizing queer and trans studies in a way that
reflects prevalent ideas coming from the An-
glophone world leaves no space for alternative
terminologies and linguistic models that stem
from and proliferate in other languages. Thus,
translations may abandon the particular for
the universal or employ parallelisms to facil-
itate correspondence with English terminol-
ogy, potentially improvising the value of the
untranslatable, the vocabulary that resists cul-
tural and linguistic imperialism, and the unme-
diated realm that purely delivers meaning right
through the original term (Robinson, 2019).
This idea also coincides with a view, promoted
by certain theorists, that queer has monopolized
linguistic representations, even though trans is
increasingly also used as an umbrella term to
encompass various expressions of gender vari-
ance. In a controversial discussion between
Andrea Long Chu and Emmett Harsin Drager
(2019), what is suggested is that trans studies
failed to differentiate themselves from queer
theory soon enough, so they got “eaten by it”
even before being born.
[Long Chu:] What everyone knows is that
queer theory has never had any qualms about
arrogating gender as one of its primary sites
of inquiry, and reasonably so, since trying
to study sexuality without studying gender
would be manifestly absurd. Queer has, from
the get-go, described both gender and sexu-
al deviance, and what’s more, gender as sexual
deviance and sexuality as gender deviance.
From this perspective, trans studies is just an
embarrassing redundancy—junk dna.
In trans studies, there is nothing like the rich
conversations about queer temporalities that
took place in queer theory in the mid-aughts,
or like the recent debates over Afro-pessi-
mism in black studies, both of which owe a
lot to polemics (Edelman 2004; Wilderson
2010) and their subsequent fallouts. Instead,
we have warmed-over Pieties. This is what
happens when a massive offload of queer
methods and concepts with the label trans
hastily slapped over their expiration dates
meets an influx of political capital courtesy
of the current transgender identity politics
(Long Chu & Drager, 2019, pp. 103–104).
If queer is defiance of the norm, destabiliza-
tion, and resistance, then transgender, espe-
cially in its genderqueer facet, indeed offers no
conceptual innovation to counter or displace
queer. However, as shall be seen, things are
more complicated than this. Even though queer
might have exercised a sort of “capitalization”
over other categories going far beyond sexuali-
ty issues in a way that trans has not “achieved”
in the realm of gender, queer remains tied to its
Anglophone sociocultural contingency. It is nei-
ther a recognized legal term nor an easy ana-
lytical category of identification (it still resists
assuming ontological dimensions, at least in
1. Queer, Trans, and Linguistic
Representation
Nonbinary people’s representation in language
is a controversial matter of growing interest
worldwide. Nonbinary identities are dispos-
sessed from linguistic conventions in the sense
that their presence is systematically suppressed
and delegitimized (Alabanza, 2022; Barker &
Iantaffi, 2019). Speakers who ignore the exis-
tence of nonbinary individuals, or even worse,
who intentionally discriminate against them,
vary, from being ignorant of their visibility de-
mands to being overtly unwilling to contribute
to their inclusion. What is more, the cis imag-
inary, which is so tightly attached to language
—especially grammatical gender language—,
is unshakeable for many, as pointed out by
Platero et al. (2017). Jyl Josephson and Porger-
dur Einarsdóttir (2016) examine this norm ri-
gidity as manifested in the Icelandic language.
Italian is also a representative example of how
language constitutes gendered realities that are
maximally binary and tied to historical con-
ventional conceptions of masculinity and fem-
ininity (Zottola, 2018).
Examples like these are discussed in a Special
Issue in the tsq, edited by David Gramling
and Aniruddha Dutta (2016), as evidence of
the fact that English dominates gender-relat-
ed terminology. The neocolonial imperative
of reporting research results and conceptu-
alizing queer and trans studies in a way that
reflects prevalent ideas coming from the An-
glophone world leaves no space for alternative
terminologies and linguistic models that stem
from and proliferate in other languages. Thus,
translations may abandon the particular for
the universal or employ parallelisms to facil-
itate correspondence with English terminol-
ogy, potentially improvising the value of the
untranslatable, the vocabulary that resists cul-
tural and linguistic imperialism, and the unme-
diated realm that purely delivers meaning right
through the original term (Robinson, 2019).
This idea also coincides with a view, promoted
by certain theorists, that queer has monopolized
linguistic representations, even though trans is
increasingly also used as an umbrella term to
encompass various expressions of gender vari-
ance. In a controversial discussion between
Andrea Long Chu and Emmett Harsin Drager
(2019), what is suggested is that trans studies
failed to differentiate themselves from queer
theory soon enough, so they got “eaten by it”
even before being born.
[Long Chu:] What everyone knows is that
queer theory has never had any qualms about
arrogating gender as one of its primary sites
of inquiry, and reasonably so, since trying
to study sexuality without studying gender
would be manifestly absurd. Queer has, from
the get-go, described both gender and sexu-
al deviance, and what’s more, gender as sexual
deviance and sexuality as gender deviance.
From this perspective, trans studies is just an
embarrassing redundancy—junk dna.
In trans studies, there is nothing like the rich
conversations about queer temporalities that
took place in queer theory in the mid-aughts,
or like the recent debates over Afro-pessi-
mism in black studies, both of which owe a
lot to polemics (Edelman 2004; Wilderson
2010) and their subsequent fallouts. Instead,
we have warmed-over Pieties. This is what
happens when a massive offload of queer
methods and concepts with the label trans
hastily slapped over their expiration dates
meets an influx of political capital courtesy
of the current transgender identity politics
(Long Chu & Drager, 2019, pp. 103–104).
If queer is defiance of the norm, destabiliza-
tion, and resistance, then transgender, espe-
cially in its genderqueer facet, indeed offers no
conceptual innovation to counter or displace
queer. However, as shall be seen, things are
more complicated than this. Even though queer
might have exercised a sort of “capitalization”
over other categories going far beyond sexuali-
ty issues in a way that trans has not “achieved”
in the realm of gender, queer remains tied to its
Anglophone sociocultural contingency. It is nei-
ther a recognized legal term nor an easy ana-
lytical category of identification (it still resists
assuming ontological dimensions, at least in
Konstantinos Argyriou154Re-sentir lo queer/cuir en la traducción iberoamericana
theory). It could seem like a euphemism for
sexual identity, but since it is not an identity
but a flux, it cannot be sustained that it oper-
ates as an identity label like the rest of the lgb-
tia+ categories.
Queer theory rests on the following basic as-
sumptions: first, the deconstruction of the
main categories of sexuality and gender; sec-
ond, the reappropriation of terms and notions
that have historically been seen as degraded
through a new, strategic lens for concrete po-
litical projects; third, the subversive defiance
of identification through horizontal relational-
ity; fourth, and consequently, an interrogation
of linear historicity based on heteronormative
genealogy and heritage (Berlant & Edelman,
2014; Butler, 1993; de Lauretis, 1991; War-
ner, 2004). As Susan Rankin and Jason Gar-
vey (2015) explain,
Queer theory (Tierney & Dilley, 1996) chal-
lenges assumptions of sexual and gender
normalcy and deviancy that have historically
privileged some and silenced others. Many
scholars who use queer theory in their re-
search do so by dismantling identity binaries.
Queer theory suspends normalized classifica-
tions to encompass a more social, fluid, and
multiple understanding of identity (Britz-
man, 1995; Lugg, 2003). (p. 80)
In the process of presenting ourselves to others,
our social identity encompasses sexual practic-
es, attractions (or what is called sexual orien-
tation), sexual identity, gender identity, gender
performance, and sex characteristics (van An-
ders, 2015). These are many fine lines that can
separately but also altogether assume queer
interferences. Influenced by its phenomeno-
logical origins, queer is therefore a matter of af-
fect, relationality, interactions with others, and
reaching a consensus over what is true, instead
of presupposing truth as a decontextualized, se-
cured given (Berlant & Edelman, 2014). It is also
a multilayered, horizontal attempt to go against
dichotomous hierarchies, where heterosexuality
is always in a higher position than homosexuali-
ty, manhood is always higher than womanhood,
monogamy is always higher than nonmonoga-
my, cisness is always higher than transness, et-
cetera (Rubin, 1984; Sedgwick, 1990).
In terms of the public representation of sexuali-
ty, queer was introduced as a counter-theoriza-
tion against sexual (especially gay and lesbian)
identity politics of the 1980s (McK ee, 1997).
In the late 1990s, the term began gaining cer-
tain legitimacy within the nascent mainstream
lgbtqia+ community, and current perspectives
suggest it is a fluent position that reincarnates
weird, necessarily unstable, and uncomfortable
but still revolutionary, body sexualization (Sal-
amon, 2010). In terms of gender identity, queer
received less attention until the emergence of
the genderqueer discourse. Genderqueer en-
compasses subjects who are not willing or able
to identify with traditional categories of gen-
der, but who also systematically fight against
social pressure for definition (Bornstein, 2016;
Feinberg, 1998; Tate, 2014). In that sense, it is
a political category as opposed to a properly
identitarian one. Nonbinary, non-conforming,
fluid, and agender people could pertain to this
category to a lesser or bigger extent.
As part of the poststructuralist political project,
queer theory has often been accused of deny-
ing the materiality of lived experience, looking
at gender as a simple theatrical performance,
or falling into the same trap of definition in its
attempt to defy all definitions (McKee, 1997).
Not only have queer projects been seen as
easily manipulated by neoliberal, marketized
benefits, but they have also been demonized
as synonymous with capitalist, depoliticized,
and highly individualistic ideological reactions
against feminist claims, reproductive rights,
or familial bonds, even as apologies for ped-
erasty (see, for instance, Binetti, 2022). Nev-
ertheless, these contested domains have been
largely re-examined and thoroughly addressed
by queer theorists. Nowadays, comprehensive
applications of queer theory provide social sci-
ences, gender studies in concrete, with episte-
mological tools and critical stances for inquiry
theory). It could seem like a euphemism for
sexual identity, but since it is not an identity
but a flux, it cannot be sustained that it oper-
ates as an identity label like the rest of the lgb-
tia+ categories.
Queer theory rests on the following basic as-
sumptions: first, the deconstruction of the
main categories of sexuality and gender; sec-
ond, the reappropriation of terms and notions
that have historically been seen as degraded
through a new, strategic lens for concrete po-
litical projects; third, the subversive defiance
of identification through horizontal relational-
ity; fourth, and consequently, an interrogation
of linear historicity based on heteronormative
genealogy and heritage (Berlant & Edelman,
2014; Butler, 1993; de Lauretis, 1991; War-
ner, 2004). As Susan Rankin and Jason Gar-
vey (2015) explain,
Queer theory (Tierney & Dilley, 1996) chal-
lenges assumptions of sexual and gender
normalcy and deviancy that have historically
privileged some and silenced others. Many
scholars who use queer theory in their re-
search do so by dismantling identity binaries.
Queer theory suspends normalized classifica-
tions to encompass a more social, fluid, and
multiple understanding of identity (Britz-
man, 1995; Lugg, 2003). (p. 80)
In the process of presenting ourselves to others,
our social identity encompasses sexual practic-
es, attractions (or what is called sexual orien-
tation), sexual identity, gender identity, gender
performance, and sex characteristics (van An-
ders, 2015). These are many fine lines that can
separately but also altogether assume queer
interferences. Influenced by its phenomeno-
logical origins, queer is therefore a matter of af-
fect, relationality, interactions with others, and
reaching a consensus over what is true, instead
of presupposing truth as a decontextualized, se-
cured given (Berlant & Edelman, 2014). It is also
a multilayered, horizontal attempt to go against
dichotomous hierarchies, where heterosexuality
is always in a higher position than homosexuali-
ty, manhood is always higher than womanhood,
monogamy is always higher than nonmonoga-
my, cisness is always higher than transness, et-
cetera (Rubin, 1984; Sedgwick, 1990).
In terms of the public representation of sexuali-
ty, queer was introduced as a counter-theoriza-
tion against sexual (especially gay and lesbian)
identity politics of the 1980s (McK ee, 1997).
In the late 1990s, the term began gaining cer-
tain legitimacy within the nascent mainstream
lgbtqia+ community, and current perspectives
suggest it is a fluent position that reincarnates
weird, necessarily unstable, and uncomfortable
but still revolutionary, body sexualization (Sal-
amon, 2010). In terms of gender identity, queer
received less attention until the emergence of
the genderqueer discourse. Genderqueer en-
compasses subjects who are not willing or able
to identify with traditional categories of gen-
der, but who also systematically fight against
social pressure for definition (Bornstein, 2016;
Feinberg, 1998; Tate, 2014). In that sense, it is
a political category as opposed to a properly
identitarian one. Nonbinary, non-conforming,
fluid, and agender people could pertain to this
category to a lesser or bigger extent.
As part of the poststructuralist political project,
queer theory has often been accused of deny-
ing the materiality of lived experience, looking
at gender as a simple theatrical performance,
or falling into the same trap of definition in its
attempt to defy all definitions (McKee, 1997).
Not only have queer projects been seen as
easily manipulated by neoliberal, marketized
benefits, but they have also been demonized
as synonymous with capitalist, depoliticized,
and highly individualistic ideological reactions
against feminist claims, reproductive rights,
or familial bonds, even as apologies for ped-
erasty (see, for instance, Binetti, 2022). Nev-
ertheless, these contested domains have been
largely re-examined and thoroughly addressed
by queer theorists. Nowadays, comprehensive
applications of queer theory provide social sci-
ences, gender studies in concrete, with episte-
mological tools and critical stances for inquiry
Cross-Cultural Comparability of Queer and Trans: Unpredictable Adaptations From Within “the West”155Mutatis Mutandis. Revista Latinoamericana de Traducción Vol. 16, N.°1, 2023, enero-junio,pp.151-165
(Mora, 2021; Robles, 2021; Salamon, 2010;
Warner, 2004).
On the other hand, it would seem more reason-
able to criticize queer theory’s overwhelming-
ly White Anglo-Saxon cultural heritage (Baer,
2021). Understandably, the fact that queer
thought breaks with the heteronormative lin-
eage is not sufficient to classify it as noncolonial
or nonimperialist as well. In fact, unless it in-
corporates an intersectional framework, queer
theory could easily reproduce dominant cul-
tural schemes (Martínez Pleguezuelos, 2021;
Mora, 2021; Platero et al., 2017). Aware of
these proclivities, I shall venture two readings
that remain within the margins of the West, or
at least question its unity, in order to observe
the intrinsic marginalizations and impositions
that have taken place in configuring gender, sex,
queerness, and transness as Western notions
(Baer, 2021; de Sousa Santos, 2009; Lugones,
2008). My attempt shall remain in the theoret-
ical realm and does not pretend to transcend
the two contexts where it shall develop. These
two readings may seem irrelevant to each other
and applicable to very distinct sociocultural sit-
uations, but both deliberate on power dynam-
ics in language adaptation and translation, as
well as on cultural dynamics that need more
careful contextualizations. Gender and sexual-
ity are thus leakages that escape the rigid lim-
its of the monolingualist paradigm (Robinson,
2019; Villanueva & Martínez Pleguezuelos,
2022), and as such, they incessantly multiply
meanings, conceptions, and uses of language.
2. Applied Reading 1: The Case of Zak/
Zackie, a Kouir Activist
Moving back to the paradigmatic shift that has
permitted (still unofficial and delimited) lin-
guistic modifications in the context of Greek,
the social reality that accompanies language
reforms is more than evident: in the post-reces-
sionary era, Greece has moved toward a more
assimilationist model of lgbtqia+ politics,
which culminated in the antidiscrimination
laws 4285/2014, 4356/2015, and 4443/2016,1
or the legal gender recognition act (4491/2017)
passed on the 10th of October of 2017 (Papazo-
glou, 2020). Discussions on marriage equali-
ty and adoption by same-gender couples have
also been taking place, and at least the three
most popular political parties of the country
might be willing to advance this agenda by
the next legislature. However, societal chang-
es do not only have neoliberal identity politics
to thank. In 2018, even after the extreme far-
right party Golden Dawn, which spread terror
in the streets of Athens during the recession,
had been expelled from the political sphere,
the Greek society faced the rampant murder of
queer activist Zak (Zacharias) Kostopoulos/
Zackie Oh!,2 near Omonoia Square, in broad
daylight.
I reckon Kostopoulos’s murder a political turn-
ing point for the Greek queer community, for it
helps to exemplify the prioritization of a series
of legal rights claims, but also because it pro-
moted an exercise of collective memory (Atha-
nasiou & Papanikolaou, 2020). Kostopoulos
summoned a series of intersections that mys-
tified him/her in front of the eyes of the cis-
heteronormative Athenian society: he/she was
openly queer/kouir (κουήρ), seropositive, and
“leftist”; he/she supported sex workers’ rights
and performed as a drag queen (among few
others) in underground shows. This is signifi-
cant in order to address the precarity that char-
acterized both his/her life and his/her death
as well as to comprehend the legitimate fury
his murder caused to several parts of Greek so-
ciety. Kostopoulos was seen as a controversial
figure precisely because of the uneasiness he/
she embodied. Yet no one actually expected
that a jewelry shop owner and a random pass-
erby would beat him/her to death on Gladst-
honos Street, in plain daylight. Even though
1 Each act could be seen partly as a reification of
the other, but the three fall under the “Nondis-
crimination act”.
2 Zak’s drag nickname was Zackie (Oh!), a euphe-
mistic wordplay alluding to Jackie Onassis.
(Mora, 2021; Robles, 2021; Salamon, 2010;
Warner, 2004).
On the other hand, it would seem more reason-
able to criticize queer theory’s overwhelming-
ly White Anglo-Saxon cultural heritage (Baer,
2021). Understandably, the fact that queer
thought breaks with the heteronormative lin-
eage is not sufficient to classify it as noncolonial
or nonimperialist as well. In fact, unless it in-
corporates an intersectional framework, queer
theory could easily reproduce dominant cul-
tural schemes (Martínez Pleguezuelos, 2021;
Mora, 2021; Platero et al., 2017). Aware of
these proclivities, I shall venture two readings
that remain within the margins of the West, or
at least question its unity, in order to observe
the intrinsic marginalizations and impositions
that have taken place in configuring gender, sex,
queerness, and transness as Western notions
(Baer, 2021; de Sousa Santos, 2009; Lugones,
2008). My attempt shall remain in the theoret-
ical realm and does not pretend to transcend
the two contexts where it shall develop. These
two readings may seem irrelevant to each other
and applicable to very distinct sociocultural sit-
uations, but both deliberate on power dynam-
ics in language adaptation and translation, as
well as on cultural dynamics that need more
careful contextualizations. Gender and sexual-
ity are thus leakages that escape the rigid lim-
its of the monolingualist paradigm (Robinson,
2019; Villanueva & Martínez Pleguezuelos,
2022), and as such, they incessantly multiply
meanings, conceptions, and uses of language.
2. Applied Reading 1: The Case of Zak/
Zackie, a Kouir Activist
Moving back to the paradigmatic shift that has
permitted (still unofficial and delimited) lin-
guistic modifications in the context of Greek,
the social reality that accompanies language
reforms is more than evident: in the post-reces-
sionary era, Greece has moved toward a more
assimilationist model of lgbtqia+ politics,
which culminated in the antidiscrimination
laws 4285/2014, 4356/2015, and 4443/2016,1
or the legal gender recognition act (4491/2017)
passed on the 10th of October of 2017 (Papazo-
glou, 2020). Discussions on marriage equali-
ty and adoption by same-gender couples have
also been taking place, and at least the three
most popular political parties of the country
might be willing to advance this agenda by
the next legislature. However, societal chang-
es do not only have neoliberal identity politics
to thank. In 2018, even after the extreme far-
right party Golden Dawn, which spread terror
in the streets of Athens during the recession,
had been expelled from the political sphere,
the Greek society faced the rampant murder of
queer activist Zak (Zacharias) Kostopoulos/
Zackie Oh!,2 near Omonoia Square, in broad
daylight.
I reckon Kostopoulos’s murder a political turn-
ing point for the Greek queer community, for it
helps to exemplify the prioritization of a series
of legal rights claims, but also because it pro-
moted an exercise of collective memory (Atha-
nasiou & Papanikolaou, 2020). Kostopoulos
summoned a series of intersections that mys-
tified him/her in front of the eyes of the cis-
heteronormative Athenian society: he/she was
openly queer/kouir (κουήρ), seropositive, and
“leftist”; he/she supported sex workers’ rights
and performed as a drag queen (among few
others) in underground shows. This is signifi-
cant in order to address the precarity that char-
acterized both his/her life and his/her death
as well as to comprehend the legitimate fury
his murder caused to several parts of Greek so-
ciety. Kostopoulos was seen as a controversial
figure precisely because of the uneasiness he/
she embodied. Yet no one actually expected
that a jewelry shop owner and a random pass-
erby would beat him/her to death on Gladst-
honos Street, in plain daylight. Even though
1 Each act could be seen partly as a reification of
the other, but the three fall under the “Nondis-
crimination act”.
2 Zak’s drag nickname was Zackie (Oh!), a euphe-
mistic wordplay alluding to Jackie Onassis.
Konstantinos Argyriou156Re-sentir lo queer/cuir en la traducción iberoamericana
the shop owner seemed to have interpreted
Zak/Zackie’s sudden entrance into his shop as
a burglary, the fact that he ended up valuing his
private property over human life, and killing
for it, can by no means offer him moral alibis.
How can Kostopoulos’s death correlate with
the insertion of nonbinary forms into the
Greek language? Although official accounts
of his/her murder would not reflect any oth-
er aspect than his/her “lgbt”, “homosexual”
or “gay” identity, alternative media (mostly on
social media, but also blogs and personal sites)
would incorporate his/her queer questioning
of prevalent Greek identity labels and would
either mention him/her as queer/kouir activ-
ist or use both male and female pronouns to
reflect both Zak and Zackie’s facet. Kouir was
popularized as a descriptive term especial-
ly attributed to Zak and especially due to the
news of his/her murder. Of course, as with all
uncomfortable stories, he/she was on several
occasions denied the label “murder” as a de-
scriptor of his/her death, the label “woman”
as a descriptor of his/her drag performativity,
the label “victim” as he/she was first accused
of being the one to commit the crime of tres-
passing, and the label “decent” as he/she was
viewed as a “drug addict” who was acting “un-
der the influence of a toxic substance” at the
scene of his/her murder (Kokalou, 2020).3
The story of Zak/Zackie invests the English
loan queer with a characteristically Greek tenet,
establishing kouir as a legitimate counterpart.
Contrary to merely reflecting a direct, auto-
matic translation, the term kouir is impregnat-
ed by the pain inflicted in the communitarian
3 On the tensions over the promulgated denomi-
nations of the incident and profiling of Zak, as
well as their necropolitical connotations, see afp
(2022), Antoniadis (2020), Halva (2022) and Smith
(2022). Although these three are mere examples
of a more generalized tendency, each source
mobilizes distinct vocabulary and imaginaries
to demarcate the event (e.g., “death”, “killing”,
‘lynching to death”, “murder”, “queer campaign-
er”, “gay activist”, “lgbt activist”, “hiv activist”).
imaginary upon the news of his/her tragic end.
It thereby (re)politicizes queerness within the
Greek social reality not as something foreign
but as a folk feature or a piece of embodied,
lay knowledge of the specific cultural envi-
ronment. Previously, claims for the nonbinary
use of the Greek language had been made, for
instance, by Jason/Antigone Dane, the first
person to claim their nonbinary identity before
the State and to win the case in court which
allowed them to change their legal name and
documents to a double form. Yet, such claims
had a highly depoliticized character because
they operated on a remarkably personalized/
individualized basis and were more mediatized
and less collectively and openly discussed.
Community engagement in this story reveals
a) the negotiations between autochthonous
and imported terminology in the Greek lan-
guage and b) how Greece is, both linguistically
and culturally trapped within a complex web
of influences and dynamics that cannot be ex-
hausted following the rigid Western/non-West-
ern divide –as somehow, it is at the crossroads
of both (see Baer, 2018 for a discussion of this
“limbo-position”). Until the arrival of sexual
politics terminology after the 1990s, the vocab-
ulary that described sexual deviancy in Greece
was vernacular (Apostolidou, 2017): poustis
(faggot), aderfí (sissy), lougkra (poofter), kinaidos
(something like pervert), digidanghas or kragme-
ni (gaylord), kolobarás and thilykotós or kounistós
or pisoglentis (something similar to a top/bot-
tom binary) were all descriptive of deviant or
effeminate acts of sexual conduct. The list of
queer terms would be complemented by trave-
li or travestí (travestite, tranny), and anomalara
(abnormal) and be highly restricted to gay men
and trans women —i.e., –all other identities or
embodiments would seem nonexistent.
The issue of behavior versus identity is key in
capturing the differences between the Greek ver-
nacular vocabulary and the identity politics termi-
nology that reached the country after the 1990s.
Anna Apostolidou (2018) describes the gradual
the shop owner seemed to have interpreted
Zak/Zackie’s sudden entrance into his shop as
a burglary, the fact that he ended up valuing his
private property over human life, and killing
for it, can by no means offer him moral alibis.
How can Kostopoulos’s death correlate with
the insertion of nonbinary forms into the
Greek language? Although official accounts
of his/her murder would not reflect any oth-
er aspect than his/her “lgbt”, “homosexual”
or “gay” identity, alternative media (mostly on
social media, but also blogs and personal sites)
would incorporate his/her queer questioning
of prevalent Greek identity labels and would
either mention him/her as queer/kouir activ-
ist or use both male and female pronouns to
reflect both Zak and Zackie’s facet. Kouir was
popularized as a descriptive term especial-
ly attributed to Zak and especially due to the
news of his/her murder. Of course, as with all
uncomfortable stories, he/she was on several
occasions denied the label “murder” as a de-
scriptor of his/her death, the label “woman”
as a descriptor of his/her drag performativity,
the label “victim” as he/she was first accused
of being the one to commit the crime of tres-
passing, and the label “decent” as he/she was
viewed as a “drug addict” who was acting “un-
der the influence of a toxic substance” at the
scene of his/her murder (Kokalou, 2020).3
The story of Zak/Zackie invests the English
loan queer with a characteristically Greek tenet,
establishing kouir as a legitimate counterpart.
Contrary to merely reflecting a direct, auto-
matic translation, the term kouir is impregnat-
ed by the pain inflicted in the communitarian
3 On the tensions over the promulgated denomi-
nations of the incident and profiling of Zak, as
well as their necropolitical connotations, see afp
(2022), Antoniadis (2020), Halva (2022) and Smith
(2022). Although these three are mere examples
of a more generalized tendency, each source
mobilizes distinct vocabulary and imaginaries
to demarcate the event (e.g., “death”, “killing”,
‘lynching to death”, “murder”, “queer campaign-
er”, “gay activist”, “lgbt activist”, “hiv activist”).
imaginary upon the news of his/her tragic end.
It thereby (re)politicizes queerness within the
Greek social reality not as something foreign
but as a folk feature or a piece of embodied,
lay knowledge of the specific cultural envi-
ronment. Previously, claims for the nonbinary
use of the Greek language had been made, for
instance, by Jason/Antigone Dane, the first
person to claim their nonbinary identity before
the State and to win the case in court which
allowed them to change their legal name and
documents to a double form. Yet, such claims
had a highly depoliticized character because
they operated on a remarkably personalized/
individualized basis and were more mediatized
and less collectively and openly discussed.
Community engagement in this story reveals
a) the negotiations between autochthonous
and imported terminology in the Greek lan-
guage and b) how Greece is, both linguistically
and culturally trapped within a complex web
of influences and dynamics that cannot be ex-
hausted following the rigid Western/non-West-
ern divide –as somehow, it is at the crossroads
of both (see Baer, 2018 for a discussion of this
“limbo-position”). Until the arrival of sexual
politics terminology after the 1990s, the vocab-
ulary that described sexual deviancy in Greece
was vernacular (Apostolidou, 2017): poustis
(faggot), aderfí (sissy), lougkra (poofter), kinaidos
(something like pervert), digidanghas or kragme-
ni (gaylord), kolobarás and thilykotós or kounistós
or pisoglentis (something similar to a top/bot-
tom binary) were all descriptive of deviant or
effeminate acts of sexual conduct. The list of
queer terms would be complemented by trave-
li or travestí (travestite, tranny), and anomalara
(abnormal) and be highly restricted to gay men
and trans women —i.e., –all other identities or
embodiments would seem nonexistent.
The issue of behavior versus identity is key in
capturing the differences between the Greek ver-
nacular vocabulary and the identity politics termi-
nology that reached the country after the 1990s.
Anna Apostolidou (2018) describes the gradual
Cross-Cultural Comparability of Queer and Trans: Unpredictable Adaptations From Within “the West”157Mutatis Mutandis. Revista Latinoamericana de Traducción Vol. 16, N.°1, 2023, enero-junio,pp.151-165
move from the stigmatizing and pathologizing
labels of the medical establishment of the 50s,
60s, and 70s, to denominations that pointed to
the existence of a collective category. The termi-
nological shift reflected epistemological advanc-
es: from ephemeral homosexual acts –subject
to conversion, discipline, and admonition, ho-
mosexuality began to be understood first as
a deviant sexual desire, and later as a shared,
stable and even self-proclaimed identity. Gkei
(gay) began to conquer the late twentieth-centu-
ry public sphere on homosexuality, substituting
omofylofilos (homosexual) and aderfí under a pos-
itive(-ist) lens, but was also met with suspicion
and distrust (Apostolidou, 2017). This distrust
was a sign both of resistance towards Western
mimetism, and of a generalised difficulty to
embrace liberational politics after decades of
clandestine existence. Wholly, even by the time
the medical establishment had depathologized
homosexuality, to be defined as “gay” was not
always an acceptable option.
This brings us back to the discussion of queer/
kouir and nonbinary or inclusive language. If
gay politics arrived in Greece with great delay,
this was not only due to stagnant sociocultural
frictions and repositioning, but more impor-
tantly, to linguistic tensions that did not allow
for the blind acceptance of the 80s–90s Anglo-
phone thought regarding sexuality and gender.
This same “delay” can be currently observed
in queer politics, and with the generalized ten-
dency of politics toward umbrella-type solu-
tions to intersectional representation. It was
not until the triggering effect of Zak/Zackie’s
murder that the Greek language was obliged to
address what it had been avoiding for at least
three decades: how to diversify or fluidify the
assumption that the masculine counts as ge-
neric (Vasallo, 2021); how to address identifi-
cations that do not affiliate to the conventional
norms of male and female grammatical gender
(Antoniadis, 2020); how to incorporate affec-
tive events that do not fit the stipulated linguis-
tic schemes; lastly, how to openly negotiate the
imported terms in a lived and shared way and
not simply as part of a conceptual or academic
“package”.
To further instigate the effects of this cultural
momentum, I shall appeal to a personal expe-
rience. In May 2021 and May 2022, I attended
two consecutive editions of an online Con-
ference at the Aristotle University of Thessa-
loniki concerning gender terminology. The
discussions had two main focal points: the first
one was gendered language concerning pro-
fessions following a more traditional feminist
approach to the assimilation of women in the
public sphere through language; the second
one was about inclusive language. The latter
approach was more focused on queer readings
of the structure of language, opting more for
destabilization and deconstruction, and less
for incorporation. In an afternoon debate of
the first version of the Conference about the
almost uncritical incorporation of gender ter-
minology from Anglophone academia, many
participants agreed on the inevitability of de-
pending on foreign loans, especially from En-
glish. Suddenly, an assistant professor among
the participants turned on her microphone to
verify that, at least in her classes, she uses the
word to kouir/ta kouiria, that is, queer trans-
lated into Greek and used both in the singu-
lar and in the plural form. To contextualize the
appearance of the word in the conversation,
apart from exploding like a bomb to our ears,
the term sounded very strange and made the
audience uncomfortable —indeed the kind of
incommodity queer represents anyway. This
alienating auditory experience evidenced the
birth of new terminology, contrary to the dom-
inant opinions not only of that Conference but
of the Greek academy as a whole.
By the time the second conference was held,
opinions had radically changed. During the rest
of 2021, many turbulences shook Greek pub-
lic speech on gender. A lot more participants
accepted and use the term ta kouiria, alongside
ta mathitá (a nonbinary form of the students in
Greek), ta foititá (a nonbinary form of college
students), or ta erevnitá (nonbinary form for
move from the stigmatizing and pathologizing
labels of the medical establishment of the 50s,
60s, and 70s, to denominations that pointed to
the existence of a collective category. The termi-
nological shift reflected epistemological advanc-
es: from ephemeral homosexual acts –subject
to conversion, discipline, and admonition, ho-
mosexuality began to be understood first as
a deviant sexual desire, and later as a shared,
stable and even self-proclaimed identity. Gkei
(gay) began to conquer the late twentieth-centu-
ry public sphere on homosexuality, substituting
omofylofilos (homosexual) and aderfí under a pos-
itive(-ist) lens, but was also met with suspicion
and distrust (Apostolidou, 2017). This distrust
was a sign both of resistance towards Western
mimetism, and of a generalised difficulty to
embrace liberational politics after decades of
clandestine existence. Wholly, even by the time
the medical establishment had depathologized
homosexuality, to be defined as “gay” was not
always an acceptable option.
This brings us back to the discussion of queer/
kouir and nonbinary or inclusive language. If
gay politics arrived in Greece with great delay,
this was not only due to stagnant sociocultural
frictions and repositioning, but more impor-
tantly, to linguistic tensions that did not allow
for the blind acceptance of the 80s–90s Anglo-
phone thought regarding sexuality and gender.
This same “delay” can be currently observed
in queer politics, and with the generalized ten-
dency of politics toward umbrella-type solu-
tions to intersectional representation. It was
not until the triggering effect of Zak/Zackie’s
murder that the Greek language was obliged to
address what it had been avoiding for at least
three decades: how to diversify or fluidify the
assumption that the masculine counts as ge-
neric (Vasallo, 2021); how to address identifi-
cations that do not affiliate to the conventional
norms of male and female grammatical gender
(Antoniadis, 2020); how to incorporate affec-
tive events that do not fit the stipulated linguis-
tic schemes; lastly, how to openly negotiate the
imported terms in a lived and shared way and
not simply as part of a conceptual or academic
“package”.
To further instigate the effects of this cultural
momentum, I shall appeal to a personal expe-
rience. In May 2021 and May 2022, I attended
two consecutive editions of an online Con-
ference at the Aristotle University of Thessa-
loniki concerning gender terminology. The
discussions had two main focal points: the first
one was gendered language concerning pro-
fessions following a more traditional feminist
approach to the assimilation of women in the
public sphere through language; the second
one was about inclusive language. The latter
approach was more focused on queer readings
of the structure of language, opting more for
destabilization and deconstruction, and less
for incorporation. In an afternoon debate of
the first version of the Conference about the
almost uncritical incorporation of gender ter-
minology from Anglophone academia, many
participants agreed on the inevitability of de-
pending on foreign loans, especially from En-
glish. Suddenly, an assistant professor among
the participants turned on her microphone to
verify that, at least in her classes, she uses the
word to kouir/ta kouiria, that is, queer trans-
lated into Greek and used both in the singu-
lar and in the plural form. To contextualize the
appearance of the word in the conversation,
apart from exploding like a bomb to our ears,
the term sounded very strange and made the
audience uncomfortable —indeed the kind of
incommodity queer represents anyway. This
alienating auditory experience evidenced the
birth of new terminology, contrary to the dom-
inant opinions not only of that Conference but
of the Greek academy as a whole.
By the time the second conference was held,
opinions had radically changed. During the rest
of 2021, many turbulences shook Greek pub-
lic speech on gender. A lot more participants
accepted and use the term ta kouiria, alongside
ta mathitá (a nonbinary form of the students in
Greek), ta foititá (a nonbinary form of college
students), or ta erevnitá (nonbinary form for
Konstantinos Argyriou158Re-sentir lo queer/cuir en la traducción iberoamericana
researchers). Those terms are all nonexistent
in the official Greek language and are neuter
transformations of normally binary terms —in
Modern Greek, grammatical genders are male,
female, and neuter only for inanimate objects
while proper nouns are exclusively male or fe-
male. Hence, apart from the evident dehuman-
ization these neutralizations suggest, they are
also exercises of queer cacophony, resistance,
and expansion of the limits of the Greek lan-
guage. It was surprising to witness such a shift
in consensus after only one year. Of course, this
observation is biased: the participants of the
Conference and their willingness to deconstruct
official language forms are not representative of
the attitudes of the rest of the Greek linguistic
community. In any case, the example may serve
to demonstrate how language is (still) an inces-
santly malleable and negotiable construct.
Thereupon, in the case of Greek, consensus
on the nonbinary use of language is far from
accomplished. Beyond the extremely limited
literature on the matter, there is also a lack of
lived experience to confirm that nonbinary lan-
guage is employed under certain criteria: the
rules, exceptions and (political but also linguis-
tic) implications of such usage are still subject
to definition. As a result, some people opt for
substituting male animate forms for the neu-
ter ones; others avoid the neuter despite being
nonbinary themselves in fear of submitting
themselves to their own dehumanization; in
turn, others hesitantly try to figure out alter-
native approaches even in the form of a ne-
olanguage. For instance, I use a conceivably
unintelligible nonbinary alternative by imitat-
ing the Spanish suffix –χ in Greek. Instead of
saying ta kouiria, as the aforementioned profes-
sor did, I would write tx kouirix, which, since χ
is a consonant, would also raise a pronuncia-
tion issue. Acknowledging this serious disad-
vantage of my selection, I also find it relevant
to offer a dysfunctional, uncomfortable, highly
illegible, and unacceptable challenge to what is
supposed to be transparent, easily assimilated,
and massively followed. A queer approach to
language embraces uneasiness as part of the
deconstructive process.4
3. Applied Reading 2: The Case
of Sexual Identity in Spanish Law
Spanish offers a relatively different story in
terms of how it deals with loans and cultural
appropriations. Still, it is equally appealing to
evidence the negotiations and power dynamics
that have been deployed to handle, even count-
er, English assimilationism. Firstly, the efforts
supporting the legitimacy of nonbinary forms
of language have been hotly contested by the
Royal Academy of the Spanish Language
(Real Academia de la Lengua Española, rae). The
institution, which allegedly determines and
informs upon the correct and erroneous uses
of Spanish throughout the enormous Span-
ish-speaking community, has exercised its au-
thority chiefly by opposing itself to attempts
to flexibilize binary terms. It has also been
emitting declarations about the intelligible and
unintelligible forms of “doing language” in ev-
eryday speech performances. In other words,
the rae’s main defense against the increas-
ing claim of nonbinary terms has been that
those are rendered, among other issues, hard
4 This is also especially polemic in the growing
quest for the facilitation of transparent solutions
regarding reading tools for people with disabili-
ties. Regularly, universities discourage the use of
hard-to-decipher inclusive language forms such
as the @ or the –x. What I am sustaining here is
that a political project that wishes to destabilize
the conventional forms of suffixation and gener-
ic inclusion, but in the meantime fears that some
people are not going to have access to the result
of such destabilization, fails to understand what
discomfort is all about. In other words, it is not
only deciphering mechanisms that shall have a
hard time recognizing words and translating them
for people with disabilities; whoever reads the al-
ternative forms is meant to have a hard time com-
prehending. Inclusive language under a queer lens
is not so much inclusive as it is problematizing.
researchers). Those terms are all nonexistent
in the official Greek language and are neuter
transformations of normally binary terms —in
Modern Greek, grammatical genders are male,
female, and neuter only for inanimate objects
while proper nouns are exclusively male or fe-
male. Hence, apart from the evident dehuman-
ization these neutralizations suggest, they are
also exercises of queer cacophony, resistance,
and expansion of the limits of the Greek lan-
guage. It was surprising to witness such a shift
in consensus after only one year. Of course, this
observation is biased: the participants of the
Conference and their willingness to deconstruct
official language forms are not representative of
the attitudes of the rest of the Greek linguistic
community. In any case, the example may serve
to demonstrate how language is (still) an inces-
santly malleable and negotiable construct.
Thereupon, in the case of Greek, consensus
on the nonbinary use of language is far from
accomplished. Beyond the extremely limited
literature on the matter, there is also a lack of
lived experience to confirm that nonbinary lan-
guage is employed under certain criteria: the
rules, exceptions and (political but also linguis-
tic) implications of such usage are still subject
to definition. As a result, some people opt for
substituting male animate forms for the neu-
ter ones; others avoid the neuter despite being
nonbinary themselves in fear of submitting
themselves to their own dehumanization; in
turn, others hesitantly try to figure out alter-
native approaches even in the form of a ne-
olanguage. For instance, I use a conceivably
unintelligible nonbinary alternative by imitat-
ing the Spanish suffix –χ in Greek. Instead of
saying ta kouiria, as the aforementioned profes-
sor did, I would write tx kouirix, which, since χ
is a consonant, would also raise a pronuncia-
tion issue. Acknowledging this serious disad-
vantage of my selection, I also find it relevant
to offer a dysfunctional, uncomfortable, highly
illegible, and unacceptable challenge to what is
supposed to be transparent, easily assimilated,
and massively followed. A queer approach to
language embraces uneasiness as part of the
deconstructive process.4
3. Applied Reading 2: The Case
of Sexual Identity in Spanish Law
Spanish offers a relatively different story in
terms of how it deals with loans and cultural
appropriations. Still, it is equally appealing to
evidence the negotiations and power dynamics
that have been deployed to handle, even count-
er, English assimilationism. Firstly, the efforts
supporting the legitimacy of nonbinary forms
of language have been hotly contested by the
Royal Academy of the Spanish Language
(Real Academia de la Lengua Española, rae). The
institution, which allegedly determines and
informs upon the correct and erroneous uses
of Spanish throughout the enormous Span-
ish-speaking community, has exercised its au-
thority chiefly by opposing itself to attempts
to flexibilize binary terms. It has also been
emitting declarations about the intelligible and
unintelligible forms of “doing language” in ev-
eryday speech performances. In other words,
the rae’s main defense against the increas-
ing claim of nonbinary terms has been that
those are rendered, among other issues, hard
4 This is also especially polemic in the growing
quest for the facilitation of transparent solutions
regarding reading tools for people with disabili-
ties. Regularly, universities discourage the use of
hard-to-decipher inclusive language forms such
as the @ or the –x. What I am sustaining here is
that a political project that wishes to destabilize
the conventional forms of suffixation and gener-
ic inclusion, but in the meantime fears that some
people are not going to have access to the result
of such destabilization, fails to understand what
discomfort is all about. In other words, it is not
only deciphering mechanisms that shall have a
hard time recognizing words and translating them
for people with disabilities; whoever reads the al-
ternative forms is meant to have a hard time com-
prehending. Inclusive language under a queer lens
is not so much inclusive as it is problematizing.
Cross-Cultural Comparability of Queer and Trans: Unpredictable Adaptations From Within “the West”159Mutatis Mutandis. Revista Latinoamericana de Traducción Vol. 16, N.°1, 2023, enero-junio,pp.151-165
to perceive by language users, hence compro-
mising meaning-making (López Rodríguez,
2020).5
Notably, the rae’s conservatism serves
to preserve the well-established androcentric
structure of Spanish. This logic does little to
interrogate the power differences bestowed
upon mechanisms such as the generic mascu-
line form:
It is not only that the masculine is invested
with neutrality, it is also the idea that a single
form represents all, that there is a universal,
and it is the search for that universal. And the
dispute to find the formula that represents us
all (be it the –a, the –e, the –i, the –x, the –@,
the unwinding or any other) is disastrous,
since it continues to affect the idea of uni-
versal representation and continues to con-
fuse enunciation with enumeration, with the
catalog.
It is not only that a perfect gender language
that represents us all does not exist, it is that
there cannot be one, we do not want it to exist
(Vasallo, 2021, p. 101; own translation).
Spanish faces very similar assimilation tensions
to the ones described in the case of Modern
Greek,6 although it would be naïve to directly
compare the implied dynamics in relation to
5 Similar resistance to change is palpable even in
automated corrections in our devices: phones,
PCs, and tablets. All indicate that alternative
ways of representing gender in language are to
be resisted for they are programmed to indicate
that any change in the conventional forms is to
be read as a mistake. Inclusive language is highly
contextual as well: administrations openly reject
it, “serious” public dialogue defies it, and even
in inclusive environments of queer collectives,
it sometimes still feels “artificial”, “misfit”, “un-
easy”. Its artificiality is a strategic weapon, but
only depending on the context which will know
how to (in-)appropriately take advantage of it.
6 This might be related to the fact that both Span-
ish an Greek are grammatical gender languages,
meaning that they prioritize gender segregation
by assigning male and female forms to nouns.
English.7 It would even be counterproductive
in the sense that Spanish is spoken by a signifi-
cantly larger worldwide community, hence its
rapid evolution in gender terminology almost
daily and at several levels; in addition, Greek
adapts to linguistic imperialism in a much
more submissive way than Spanish, particular-
ly in gender studies, since there is hardly a na-
tional or cultural counter-paradigm in Greece
to draw upon. What interests this text is not to
sketch straight parallel lines on the matter; on
the contrary, I wish to observe different phe-
nomena of linguistic negotiation, revealing
the permeability of the heteronormative struc-
turing of language as a symbolic system.8 For
that reason, and to more closely inspect Span-
ish adaptations of English reasoning, I shall
switch from the discussion of pronouns, gen-
dered forms, and queerness, into a more severe
conceptual misalignment, that of the notions
of transsexuality and sexual identity (a very
queer problem, indeed).
The fact that the terms identidad sexual (sex-
ual identity) and identidad de género (gender
identity) frequently converge in Spanish may
suppose serious epistemological conflict and
misconceptions, especially in translation from
and into English. Is identidad sexual a metonym-
ic way of talking about non-normative sexual-
ities such as male homosexuality, lesbianism,
bisexuality, or asexuality? Or is it a metonymy
of transsexuality? Is it the same to talk about
sexual identity and gender identity, and if not,
what are their main differences? These may
seem like questions with clear answers, yet
they are more complicated than they seem. On
many occasions, the Spanish academia may
complain about faithfully and sometimes even
7 Moreover, Spanish lacks a neuter form, thereby
all nouns, animate or inanimate, are either male
or female.
8 I have been implicitly aspiring to integrate plu-
ralist/Whorfian views with universal grammar
approaches, resisting the temptation to fall for an
either/or reading where one wins over the other
(Barker & Iantaffi, 2019).
to perceive by language users, hence compro-
mising meaning-making (López Rodríguez,
2020).5
Notably, the rae’s conservatism serves
to preserve the well-established androcentric
structure of Spanish. This logic does little to
interrogate the power differences bestowed
upon mechanisms such as the generic mascu-
line form:
It is not only that the masculine is invested
with neutrality, it is also the idea that a single
form represents all, that there is a universal,
and it is the search for that universal. And the
dispute to find the formula that represents us
all (be it the –a, the –e, the –i, the –x, the –@,
the unwinding or any other) is disastrous,
since it continues to affect the idea of uni-
versal representation and continues to con-
fuse enunciation with enumeration, with the
catalog.
It is not only that a perfect gender language
that represents us all does not exist, it is that
there cannot be one, we do not want it to exist
(Vasallo, 2021, p. 101; own translation).
Spanish faces very similar assimilation tensions
to the ones described in the case of Modern
Greek,6 although it would be naïve to directly
compare the implied dynamics in relation to
5 Similar resistance to change is palpable even in
automated corrections in our devices: phones,
PCs, and tablets. All indicate that alternative
ways of representing gender in language are to
be resisted for they are programmed to indicate
that any change in the conventional forms is to
be read as a mistake. Inclusive language is highly
contextual as well: administrations openly reject
it, “serious” public dialogue defies it, and even
in inclusive environments of queer collectives,
it sometimes still feels “artificial”, “misfit”, “un-
easy”. Its artificiality is a strategic weapon, but
only depending on the context which will know
how to (in-)appropriately take advantage of it.
6 This might be related to the fact that both Span-
ish an Greek are grammatical gender languages,
meaning that they prioritize gender segregation
by assigning male and female forms to nouns.
English.7 It would even be counterproductive
in the sense that Spanish is spoken by a signifi-
cantly larger worldwide community, hence its
rapid evolution in gender terminology almost
daily and at several levels; in addition, Greek
adapts to linguistic imperialism in a much
more submissive way than Spanish, particular-
ly in gender studies, since there is hardly a na-
tional or cultural counter-paradigm in Greece
to draw upon. What interests this text is not to
sketch straight parallel lines on the matter; on
the contrary, I wish to observe different phe-
nomena of linguistic negotiation, revealing
the permeability of the heteronormative struc-
turing of language as a symbolic system.8 For
that reason, and to more closely inspect Span-
ish adaptations of English reasoning, I shall
switch from the discussion of pronouns, gen-
dered forms, and queerness, into a more severe
conceptual misalignment, that of the notions
of transsexuality and sexual identity (a very
queer problem, indeed).
The fact that the terms identidad sexual (sex-
ual identity) and identidad de género (gender
identity) frequently converge in Spanish may
suppose serious epistemological conflict and
misconceptions, especially in translation from
and into English. Is identidad sexual a metonym-
ic way of talking about non-normative sexual-
ities such as male homosexuality, lesbianism,
bisexuality, or asexuality? Or is it a metonymy
of transsexuality? Is it the same to talk about
sexual identity and gender identity, and if not,
what are their main differences? These may
seem like questions with clear answers, yet
they are more complicated than they seem. On
many occasions, the Spanish academia may
complain about faithfully and sometimes even
7 Moreover, Spanish lacks a neuter form, thereby
all nouns, animate or inanimate, are either male
or female.
8 I have been implicitly aspiring to integrate plu-
ralist/Whorfian views with universal grammar
approaches, resisting the temptation to fall for an
either/or reading where one wins over the other
(Barker & Iantaffi, 2019).
Konstantinos Argyriou160Re-sentir lo queer/cuir en la traducción iberoamericana
uncritically following English terminology in
gender studies; interestingly, though, there are
no definitive or clear-cut transfers from English
to Spanish in this debate.
Sexual identity in English refers to an identi-
ty derived from the systematized expression
of sexuality, and not so much from sex as a
biological category (Rosario et al., 2006). In
other words, sexual identity is not necessarily
defined by primary or secondary traits of sex,
even though these traits are implicated in hu-
man sexuality. Conversely, these are forms (not
entirely inescapable or assured) of categoriz-
ing people in terms of their sexual desires, the
manifestation of their sexuality.
If identidad sexual is used as a synonym of bodi-
ly transition, it remains closer to identidad de
género than to identidad homosexual. This might
risk blurring what identidad sexual really means,
which is not sex identity, but the identity at the
level of sexuality (physical attraction, affective
bonding, construction of one’s self-concept
based on sexual orientation). For Sari van An-
ders (2015), sexuality is a multidimensional
construct. In fact, her study is one of the most
referential compilations because it achieves
reporting robustly and systematically the at-
tempts to theorize sexual orientation at least
in the last two decades. It maintains the useful
distinction between sexual behavior/arousal,
sexual orientation/attraction, and sexual iden-
tity/self-concept, but also proceeds to a fairly
complex schematization of sexuality, under-
stood as sexual desire (physical, emotional,
and intellectual).
When sexuality seems directly derived from
sex, a second epistemological confusion is
risked: that of equating sexuality to procre-
ation. Furthermore, the physical component
(secondary sex characteristics, for example)
becomes disproportionately important when
coitocentrism and reliance on the genitals are
endorsed as major components of human at-
traction. In this way, sex is naturalized as the
signifier of physical attraction par excellence,
even if in reality other people are not catego-
rized by their actual sex characteristics but by
body recognition mechanisms based on visual
cues. Mimicking the Anglophone perspective,
if what is needed is a concept that indicates
the identity attributed by the sex assigned at
birth, it would be more convenient to speak of
identidad de sexo, with sex identity as its English
equivalent. Through the current conflation of
both aspects under identidad sexual, sex and
sexuality become equivalent or parts of the
same construct (supposedly genitalia). More-
over, it is not sufficiently recognized that, even
though very closely linked, sex and gender are
undoubtedly two separate sociodemographic
variables (Rubin, 1984; Tate, 2014). On the
other hand, keeping the terms in the singular
denies their contingency and paralyzes their
flexibility since it is not so convenient to speak
of “sexual identities” and “gender identities”,
at least to describe the same person.9
Second, what in Spanish and sometimes Latin
American literature has been called identidad
sexual seems to suggest that personal identity
can be defined through sex, which is under-
stood as a biological reality (Martínez Guz-
mán & Montenegro, 2010; Mejía, 2006). The
extent to which we define ourselves through
our gonads, chromosomes, hormone levels,
and primary or secondary characteristics of
our sex is not at all apparent in that interpre-
tation of the term. Equating sexual identity
with gender identity in Spanish eliminates the
evolution, which is very important for Anglo-
phone transgender studies, that begins with the
transsexual discourse and evolves to the trans-
gender discourse (Denny, 2004). That is, it
moves from the necessity of a full-scale bodi-
ly transition to a more flexible understanding
of transitioning as mostly social. This second
argument requires a cautious approach because
many discourses within trans activism prefer to
avoid this distinction to this very day, replacing
9 Lately, orientación or identidad afectivo-sexual, translat-
ed as affective-sexual orientation or identity, has been
coined to regulate the described conflations.
uncritically following English terminology in
gender studies; interestingly, though, there are
no definitive or clear-cut transfers from English
to Spanish in this debate.
Sexual identity in English refers to an identi-
ty derived from the systematized expression
of sexuality, and not so much from sex as a
biological category (Rosario et al., 2006). In
other words, sexual identity is not necessarily
defined by primary or secondary traits of sex,
even though these traits are implicated in hu-
man sexuality. Conversely, these are forms (not
entirely inescapable or assured) of categoriz-
ing people in terms of their sexual desires, the
manifestation of their sexuality.
If identidad sexual is used as a synonym of bodi-
ly transition, it remains closer to identidad de
género than to identidad homosexual. This might
risk blurring what identidad sexual really means,
which is not sex identity, but the identity at the
level of sexuality (physical attraction, affective
bonding, construction of one’s self-concept
based on sexual orientation). For Sari van An-
ders (2015), sexuality is a multidimensional
construct. In fact, her study is one of the most
referential compilations because it achieves
reporting robustly and systematically the at-
tempts to theorize sexual orientation at least
in the last two decades. It maintains the useful
distinction between sexual behavior/arousal,
sexual orientation/attraction, and sexual iden-
tity/self-concept, but also proceeds to a fairly
complex schematization of sexuality, under-
stood as sexual desire (physical, emotional,
and intellectual).
When sexuality seems directly derived from
sex, a second epistemological confusion is
risked: that of equating sexuality to procre-
ation. Furthermore, the physical component
(secondary sex characteristics, for example)
becomes disproportionately important when
coitocentrism and reliance on the genitals are
endorsed as major components of human at-
traction. In this way, sex is naturalized as the
signifier of physical attraction par excellence,
even if in reality other people are not catego-
rized by their actual sex characteristics but by
body recognition mechanisms based on visual
cues. Mimicking the Anglophone perspective,
if what is needed is a concept that indicates
the identity attributed by the sex assigned at
birth, it would be more convenient to speak of
identidad de sexo, with sex identity as its English
equivalent. Through the current conflation of
both aspects under identidad sexual, sex and
sexuality become equivalent or parts of the
same construct (supposedly genitalia). More-
over, it is not sufficiently recognized that, even
though very closely linked, sex and gender are
undoubtedly two separate sociodemographic
variables (Rubin, 1984; Tate, 2014). On the
other hand, keeping the terms in the singular
denies their contingency and paralyzes their
flexibility since it is not so convenient to speak
of “sexual identities” and “gender identities”,
at least to describe the same person.9
Second, what in Spanish and sometimes Latin
American literature has been called identidad
sexual seems to suggest that personal identity
can be defined through sex, which is under-
stood as a biological reality (Martínez Guz-
mán & Montenegro, 2010; Mejía, 2006). The
extent to which we define ourselves through
our gonads, chromosomes, hormone levels,
and primary or secondary characteristics of
our sex is not at all apparent in that interpre-
tation of the term. Equating sexual identity
with gender identity in Spanish eliminates the
evolution, which is very important for Anglo-
phone transgender studies, that begins with the
transsexual discourse and evolves to the trans-
gender discourse (Denny, 2004). That is, it
moves from the necessity of a full-scale bodi-
ly transition to a more flexible understanding
of transitioning as mostly social. This second
argument requires a cautious approach because
many discourses within trans activism prefer to
avoid this distinction to this very day, replacing
9 Lately, orientación or identidad afectivo-sexual, translat-
ed as affective-sexual orientation or identity, has been
coined to regulate the described conflations.
Cross-Cultural Comparability of Queer and Trans: Unpredictable Adaptations From Within “the West”161Mutatis Mutandis. Revista Latinoamericana de Traducción Vol. 16, N.°1, 2023, enero-junio,pp.151-165
it with the trans umbrella, which encompasses
a patchwork of all manifestations of gender
variance (Platero, 2017; Robles, 2021).
By revisiting the transsexual/transgender di-
vide, I do not wish to reinforce it in a binary
logic of either/or, but to speak of historical
processes that are not very proliferated in the
literature written in Spanish, precisely because
transexualidad (transsexuality) is used even to-
day much more as a synonym of transgende-
rism than transsexuality is in English –in the
latter, the transsexual/transgender debate is
exclusively antagonistic. In Spanish, a lot more
transgender people may identify as transexuales,
without emphasising the bodily dimensions of
the term, or even reappropriate the term in a
way that Anglophone trans communities would
not. In addition, transgénero (transgender) o
transgenerismo (transgenderism) may even be
perceived as artificial, even biomedical in some
cases, precisely due to not having followed a
linear adaptation process from English. Angli-
cisms, after all, do not have the same connota-
tions that are purported by the source language:
cuir, the Spanish version of queer, is another
clear example that bears witness to that empty-
ing of the old meaning or the transformation of
the word because of its utility for a specific time
and space (Platero et al., 2017).
Even if the terminological conflation dis-
cussed above, between transexualidad and
identidad sexual, may seem like an interesting
Spanish particularity, it might threaten a pos-
sible large-scale legitimation of bodies whose
sex assigned at birth differs from their level of
belonging to a social gender category. What in-
terests me here is how and why identidad sexual
has been used, even within the trans commu-
nity and literature itself, as a settlement that is
not only subjectifying but even legal. For ex-
ample, while Law 09/2019 of June 27 (art. 3)
of the Basque Country uses sexual identity to
refer to sexual orientation, Navarre Provincial
Law 08/2017 (art. 2) does not seem to clari-
fy that sexual identity is not associated with
transsexuality. These are only two indicative
cases of the ambivalent or conflicting use of
the term identidad sexual in the legal field. One
need not be a law expert to assume that a com-
parative approach to such autonomic laws can
lead to misunderstandings and confusion for
not measuring the same legal entity. Nonethe-
less, the Spanish Gender Recognition Act (Law
03/2007 of March 15), which has equally af-
fected all the Spanish territory, mentions the
terms asignación registral del sexo (assignation of
registered sex) mención de sexo (sex mention),
sexo psicosocial (psychosocial sex), sexo reclama-
do (claimed sex), transexualidad and identidad
de género, but not identidad sexual. In the new
Integral Trans Law, the linguistic and social
category personas trans (trans people) appears
as such for the very first time in Spanish Law.
Returning to the discussion on queer cross-lan-
guage conceptualizations, any appeal to “iden-
tity” in gender studies, but also in law, carries
a very serious risk of essentialization, and an
association with so-called “identity politics”
(Alabanza, 2022). Terminological and episte-
mological confusions are prone to occur when
what is mobilized is “identity”. Identity poli-
tics classify social subjects in such a way that
it is difficult to begin political mobilizations
without previously identifying social factors
through the categorizing logics of inclusion
and exclusion. In that vein, identity politics sets
barriers to mapping the particular intersections
and assemblages between various social forc-
es, personal desires, manifestations of intima-
cy, and individual biographies (see Berlant &
Edelman, 2014; Sedgwick, 1990). In any case,
the open debate on terminology in current le-
gal delimitations of what transness stands for,
for which territories, under which conditions,
and with what kind of consequences, provides
a great opportunity for queer theorists and ac-
tivists to intervene and destabilize.
The fact that the debate remains open carries
other types of risks, too. A certain sector of the
radical feminist movement in Spain performs
its own attributions to the notions of identidad
sexual, identidad de género, as well as to inclusive
it with the trans umbrella, which encompasses
a patchwork of all manifestations of gender
variance (Platero, 2017; Robles, 2021).
By revisiting the transsexual/transgender di-
vide, I do not wish to reinforce it in a binary
logic of either/or, but to speak of historical
processes that are not very proliferated in the
literature written in Spanish, precisely because
transexualidad (transsexuality) is used even to-
day much more as a synonym of transgende-
rism than transsexuality is in English –in the
latter, the transsexual/transgender debate is
exclusively antagonistic. In Spanish, a lot more
transgender people may identify as transexuales,
without emphasising the bodily dimensions of
the term, or even reappropriate the term in a
way that Anglophone trans communities would
not. In addition, transgénero (transgender) o
transgenerismo (transgenderism) may even be
perceived as artificial, even biomedical in some
cases, precisely due to not having followed a
linear adaptation process from English. Angli-
cisms, after all, do not have the same connota-
tions that are purported by the source language:
cuir, the Spanish version of queer, is another
clear example that bears witness to that empty-
ing of the old meaning or the transformation of
the word because of its utility for a specific time
and space (Platero et al., 2017).
Even if the terminological conflation dis-
cussed above, between transexualidad and
identidad sexual, may seem like an interesting
Spanish particularity, it might threaten a pos-
sible large-scale legitimation of bodies whose
sex assigned at birth differs from their level of
belonging to a social gender category. What in-
terests me here is how and why identidad sexual
has been used, even within the trans commu-
nity and literature itself, as a settlement that is
not only subjectifying but even legal. For ex-
ample, while Law 09/2019 of June 27 (art. 3)
of the Basque Country uses sexual identity to
refer to sexual orientation, Navarre Provincial
Law 08/2017 (art. 2) does not seem to clari-
fy that sexual identity is not associated with
transsexuality. These are only two indicative
cases of the ambivalent or conflicting use of
the term identidad sexual in the legal field. One
need not be a law expert to assume that a com-
parative approach to such autonomic laws can
lead to misunderstandings and confusion for
not measuring the same legal entity. Nonethe-
less, the Spanish Gender Recognition Act (Law
03/2007 of March 15), which has equally af-
fected all the Spanish territory, mentions the
terms asignación registral del sexo (assignation of
registered sex) mención de sexo (sex mention),
sexo psicosocial (psychosocial sex), sexo reclama-
do (claimed sex), transexualidad and identidad
de género, but not identidad sexual. In the new
Integral Trans Law, the linguistic and social
category personas trans (trans people) appears
as such for the very first time in Spanish Law.
Returning to the discussion on queer cross-lan-
guage conceptualizations, any appeal to “iden-
tity” in gender studies, but also in law, carries
a very serious risk of essentialization, and an
association with so-called “identity politics”
(Alabanza, 2022). Terminological and episte-
mological confusions are prone to occur when
what is mobilized is “identity”. Identity poli-
tics classify social subjects in such a way that
it is difficult to begin political mobilizations
without previously identifying social factors
through the categorizing logics of inclusion
and exclusion. In that vein, identity politics sets
barriers to mapping the particular intersections
and assemblages between various social forc-
es, personal desires, manifestations of intima-
cy, and individual biographies (see Berlant &
Edelman, 2014; Sedgwick, 1990). In any case,
the open debate on terminology in current le-
gal delimitations of what transness stands for,
for which territories, under which conditions,
and with what kind of consequences, provides
a great opportunity for queer theorists and ac-
tivists to intervene and destabilize.
The fact that the debate remains open carries
other types of risks, too. A certain sector of the
radical feminist movement in Spain performs
its own attributions to the notions of identidad
sexual, identidad de género, as well as to inclusive
Konstantinos Argyriou162Re-sentir lo queer/cuir en la traducción iberoamericana
language, as a deliberate assault on “women’s
sexed reality”. Personal identity with respect
to gender and sex, alongside the ability to de-
termine one’s own adscription to the gender
categories, is frequently reduced to a kind of
feeling, desire, or mere decoy, and sensation-
alized as an imported —inevitably always
foreign— “queer ideology” (Robles, 2021; Va-
sallo, 2021). Likewise, trans people are often
accused of falling into “globalized neoliberal
traps” by moving away from the “reasoned
way of perceiving (their sexed) reality” (Binet-
ti, 2022), and of intentionally erasing women’s
rights, both through language and through the
law. The problem with such a conceptualiza-
tion is that it obviates the complexities, contra-
dictions, and dynamic transformations of the
terminological debates that have been raised
throughout this section, and reduces them to
mere “ideology” (Binetti, 2022). What the
discussion of gender terminology in Spanish
points to is that “identity” should be carefully
put into context according to whether it applies
in legal-political terms (consolidated entity),
sociocultural terms (as group identity), or psy-
chological ones (an amalgam of concepts con-
cerning the self and its relations to others), but
also depending on the adjectives accompany-
ing the word and their purposes.
4. Final Remarks
The present theoretical approximation intend-
ed to discuss how a predetermined view of
the West as homogenous serves to silence or
take for granted local meanings and readings
of gender and queer terminology. Such ter-
minology appears to stem almost exclusively
from the Anglo-American context while the
unearthing of peripheral cultural and language
models seems to suggest otherwise without
even having to cross the projected boundar-
ies of “the West” (Baer, 2018; de Sousa San-
tos, 2009). Different types of knowledge and
linguistic inscriptions that are not filtered by
the preponderant meaning-making mecha-
nisms have different potentials in configuring
sociocultural reality. Keeping these pieces of
knowledge and inscriptions in mind serves to
counter all-encompassing pretensions and one-
size-fits-all terminological biases (Robinson,
2019; Spurlin, 2017).
Queer and trans studies need to incorporate
such internal tensions, to counter naive ten-
dencies to apply corresponding terms, notions,
and ideals to all “Western” cultural realities.
The distance that “non-Western” environ-
ments and translations offer often seems safe
enough to approximate the critiques against
Anglophone queer theory and Anglophone
gender studies. Nonetheless, the endogenous
parameters that complicate the debate of a
universal lgbtqia + community, which alleged-
ly shares the same experiences, have not been
sufficiently insisted on.
We depart from the fact that there is no sin-
gle global experience of what queer, or cuir,
is; we do not seek to impose its use, import-
ing a set of Anglo-Saxon values, which can
well be understood as a colonizing academic
enterprise that seeks to become hegemonic.
We do not want to claim that queer is some-
thing in particular either, neither that it has
to be imitated nor that it is better than other
perspectives or life expressions. We are inter-
ested in the queer perspective for it supposes
a questioning, a critical look that focuses on
the processes of appropriation and decontex-
tualization of the phenomena that affect us,
and that often have no name (Platero et al.,
2017, pp. 12-13; own translation).
In order to observe how queer and trans have
been projected on smaller sociolinguistic
scales, I have utilized two imperfect but il-
lustrative examples: one is the way in which
queer has been translated into Modern Greek
and adapted to the recent Greek context. The
transformation of queer to kouir (κουήρ), both
in its political and linguistic dimensions, is of
course not unique to Greek. Spanish itself has
introduced queer as cuir (Mora, 2021). In spite
of that, I did not seek to mark a parallel read-
ing of the specific term, which might be quite
linear and unsurprising, but to stage distinct
phenomena appealing to the same problem:
language, as a deliberate assault on “women’s
sexed reality”. Personal identity with respect
to gender and sex, alongside the ability to de-
termine one’s own adscription to the gender
categories, is frequently reduced to a kind of
feeling, desire, or mere decoy, and sensation-
alized as an imported —inevitably always
foreign— “queer ideology” (Robles, 2021; Va-
sallo, 2021). Likewise, trans people are often
accused of falling into “globalized neoliberal
traps” by moving away from the “reasoned
way of perceiving (their sexed) reality” (Binet-
ti, 2022), and of intentionally erasing women’s
rights, both through language and through the
law. The problem with such a conceptualiza-
tion is that it obviates the complexities, contra-
dictions, and dynamic transformations of the
terminological debates that have been raised
throughout this section, and reduces them to
mere “ideology” (Binetti, 2022). What the
discussion of gender terminology in Spanish
points to is that “identity” should be carefully
put into context according to whether it applies
in legal-political terms (consolidated entity),
sociocultural terms (as group identity), or psy-
chological ones (an amalgam of concepts con-
cerning the self and its relations to others), but
also depending on the adjectives accompany-
ing the word and their purposes.
4. Final Remarks
The present theoretical approximation intend-
ed to discuss how a predetermined view of
the West as homogenous serves to silence or
take for granted local meanings and readings
of gender and queer terminology. Such ter-
minology appears to stem almost exclusively
from the Anglo-American context while the
unearthing of peripheral cultural and language
models seems to suggest otherwise without
even having to cross the projected boundar-
ies of “the West” (Baer, 2018; de Sousa San-
tos, 2009). Different types of knowledge and
linguistic inscriptions that are not filtered by
the preponderant meaning-making mecha-
nisms have different potentials in configuring
sociocultural reality. Keeping these pieces of
knowledge and inscriptions in mind serves to
counter all-encompassing pretensions and one-
size-fits-all terminological biases (Robinson,
2019; Spurlin, 2017).
Queer and trans studies need to incorporate
such internal tensions, to counter naive ten-
dencies to apply corresponding terms, notions,
and ideals to all “Western” cultural realities.
The distance that “non-Western” environ-
ments and translations offer often seems safe
enough to approximate the critiques against
Anglophone queer theory and Anglophone
gender studies. Nonetheless, the endogenous
parameters that complicate the debate of a
universal lgbtqia + community, which alleged-
ly shares the same experiences, have not been
sufficiently insisted on.
We depart from the fact that there is no sin-
gle global experience of what queer, or cuir,
is; we do not seek to impose its use, import-
ing a set of Anglo-Saxon values, which can
well be understood as a colonizing academic
enterprise that seeks to become hegemonic.
We do not want to claim that queer is some-
thing in particular either, neither that it has
to be imitated nor that it is better than other
perspectives or life expressions. We are inter-
ested in the queer perspective for it supposes
a questioning, a critical look that focuses on
the processes of appropriation and decontex-
tualization of the phenomena that affect us,
and that often have no name (Platero et al.,
2017, pp. 12-13; own translation).
In order to observe how queer and trans have
been projected on smaller sociolinguistic
scales, I have utilized two imperfect but il-
lustrative examples: one is the way in which
queer has been translated into Modern Greek
and adapted to the recent Greek context. The
transformation of queer to kouir (κουήρ), both
in its political and linguistic dimensions, is of
course not unique to Greek. Spanish itself has
introduced queer as cuir (Mora, 2021). In spite
of that, I did not seek to mark a parallel read-
ing of the specific term, which might be quite
linear and unsurprising, but to stage distinct
phenomena appealing to the same problem:
Cross-Cultural Comparability of Queer and Trans: Unpredictable Adaptations From Within “the West”163Mutatis Mutandis. Revista Latinoamericana de Traducción Vol. 16, N.°1, 2023, enero-junio,pp.151-165
securing queerness and transness in translation
when we are speaking of precisely unsettling
notions. In Spanish, therefore, I have empha-
sized what I have considered a wrong use of
“sexual identity”. The term frequently appears
as a synonym for transsexual gender identity,
whereas using it to denominate sexuality cat-
egories (homosexuality, bisexuality, etc.), as in
English, is not secured. The issue of nonbinary
or gender-inclusive language emerged, howev-
er, both in the case of Greek and Spanish —
although not through an exhaustive account.
Future attempts to reveal within-the-“West”
peculiarities might benefit from examining
the situated value of nonbinary language. The
same should happen with other negotiations
such as those of the potency of the notion of
transidentités in French, the emergence of the
pronoun elli in Catalan, or the fermentations
between transgenere and transgender in Italian,
to name only a few possibilities. In addition
to that, future research should assume (and
mourn) the rapid societal and linguistic chang-
es that obstruct the generalized influence and
persistent relevance of attempts such as the
present one.
The unavoidable mediation of translated dis-
courses intersects with queer deconstruction
to create patchworks that remind us that a
clear-cut, objective, aseptic, incorporeal trans-
fer of meaning is a positivist illusion (Ala-
banza, 2022; Gramling & Dutta, 2016). The
resemanticization or reinvestment of borrowed
terminology may be invisible unless inscribed
in the local context; by inscribing, we aid to
reveal power impositions and negotiations.
Or, to use an idea by Antonio Jesús Martínez
Pleguezuelos, “it seems inevitable that by rep-
resenting and translating the queer body and its
specific features we are subject to knowledge
structures that will determine our rewriting
and the perception of other bodies” (Martínez
Pleguezuelos, 2021, p. 109). Overall, situated
meanings and terms have the potential not to
simply resist linguistic imperialism, but, more
importantly, to negotiate with it.
References
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death of hiv activist. Macau New Agency Inter-
national. https://www.macaubusiness.com/
greek-court-sentences-two-men-over-death-of-
hiv-activist/
Alabanza, T. (2022). None of the above: Reflections on
life beyond the binary. Canongate.
Apostolidou, A. (2017). Greek nationhood and
‘Greek love’: Sexualizing the nation and mul-
tiple readings of the glorious Greek past. Na-
tions and Nationalism, 23(1), pp. 68–86. https://
doi.org/10.1111/nana.12186
Apostolidou, A. (2018). Queering the motherland: Male
same-sex desire and the Greek nation. Lambert.
Antoniadis, P. (2020). “Ο Ζακ που ήταν Zackie κι
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πολιτικών της ταύτισης (“Zak, who was Zackie
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Gougousis & D. Papanikolaou (Eds.). Κουήρ
πολιτική/δημόσια μνήμη: 30 κείμενα για τον Ζακ
(Queer politics/public memory: 30 texts for Zak)
(pp. 9–27). Rosa Luxembourg Foundation.
Athanasiou, A. & Papanikolaou, D. (2020). “Πες
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politics/public memory: 30 texts for Zak)
(pp. 9–27). Rosa Luxembourg Foundation.
Baer, B. J. (2018). Beyond either/or: Confronting the
fact of translation in global sexuality studies. In
B. J. Baer & K. Kaindl (Eds.), Queering transla-
tion, translating the queer (pp. 38–57). Routledge.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315505978-4
Baer, B. J. (2021). Queer theory and translation stud-
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Kingsley Publishers.
Berlant, L. & Edelman, L. (2014). Sex, or the un-
bearable. Duke University Press. https://doi.
org/10.1215/9780822377061
securing queerness and transness in translation
when we are speaking of precisely unsettling
notions. In Spanish, therefore, I have empha-
sized what I have considered a wrong use of
“sexual identity”. The term frequently appears
as a synonym for transsexual gender identity,
whereas using it to denominate sexuality cat-
egories (homosexuality, bisexuality, etc.), as in
English, is not secured. The issue of nonbinary
or gender-inclusive language emerged, howev-
er, both in the case of Greek and Spanish —
although not through an exhaustive account.
Future attempts to reveal within-the-“West”
peculiarities might benefit from examining
the situated value of nonbinary language. The
same should happen with other negotiations
such as those of the potency of the notion of
transidentités in French, the emergence of the
pronoun elli in Catalan, or the fermentations
between transgenere and transgender in Italian,
to name only a few possibilities. In addition
to that, future research should assume (and
mourn) the rapid societal and linguistic chang-
es that obstruct the generalized influence and
persistent relevance of attempts such as the
present one.
The unavoidable mediation of translated dis-
courses intersects with queer deconstruction
to create patchworks that remind us that a
clear-cut, objective, aseptic, incorporeal trans-
fer of meaning is a positivist illusion (Ala-
banza, 2022; Gramling & Dutta, 2016). The
resemanticization or reinvestment of borrowed
terminology may be invisible unless inscribed
in the local context; by inscribing, we aid to
reveal power impositions and negotiations.
Or, to use an idea by Antonio Jesús Martínez
Pleguezuelos, “it seems inevitable that by rep-
resenting and translating the queer body and its
specific features we are subject to knowledge
structures that will determine our rewriting
and the perception of other bodies” (Martínez
Pleguezuelos, 2021, p. 109). Overall, situated
meanings and terms have the potential not to
simply resist linguistic imperialism, but, more
importantly, to negotiate with it.
References
afp (2022, May 4). Greek court sentences two men over
death of hiv activist. Macau New Agency Inter-
national. https://www.macaubusiness.com/
greek-court-sentences-two-men-over-death-of-
hiv-activist/
Alabanza, T. (2022). None of the above: Reflections on
life beyond the binary. Canongate.
Apostolidou, A. (2017). Greek nationhood and
‘Greek love’: Sexualizing the nation and mul-
tiple readings of the glorious Greek past. Na-
tions and Nationalism, 23(1), pp. 68–86. https://
doi.org/10.1111/nana.12186
Apostolidou, A. (2018). Queering the motherland: Male
same-sex desire and the Greek nation. Lambert.
Antoniadis, P. (2020). “Ο Ζακ που ήταν Zackie κι
ήταν κι οροθετικός”: Η μελαγχολική δόμηση
της αντρικής ομοφυλοφιλίας και τα όρια των
πολιτικών της ταύτισης (“Zak, who was Zackie
and was hiv-positive”: The melancholic con-
struction of male homosexuality and the lim-
its of identity politics). In A. Athanasiou, G.
Gougousis & D. Papanikolaou (Eds.). Κουήρ
πολιτική/δημόσια μνήμη: 30 κείμενα για τον Ζακ
(Queer politics/public memory: 30 texts for Zak)
(pp. 9–27). Rosa Luxembourg Foundation.
Athanasiou, A. & Papanikolaou, D. (2020). “Πες
το όνομά της”: Η κουήρ μνήμη ως κριτική του
παρόντος. In A. Athanasiou, G. Gougous-
is & D. Papanikolaou (Eds.), Κουήρ πολιτική/
δημόσια μνήμη: 30 κείμενα για τον Ζακ (Queer
politics/public memory: 30 texts for Zak)
(pp. 9–27). Rosa Luxembourg Foundation.
Baer, B. J. (2018). Beyond either/or: Confronting the
fact of translation in global sexuality studies. In
B. J. Baer & K. Kaindl (Eds.), Queering transla-
tion, translating the queer (pp. 38–57). Routledge.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315505978-4
Baer, B. J. (2021). Queer theory and translation stud-
ies: Language, politics, desire. Routledge. https://
doi.org/10.4324/9781315514734
Barker, M. J. & Iantaffi, A. (2019). Life isn’t bina-
ry: On being both, beyond, and in-between. Jessica
Kingsley Publishers.
Berlant, L. & Edelman, L. (2014). Sex, or the un-
bearable. Duke University Press. https://doi.
org/10.1215/9780822377061
Konstantinos Argyriou164Re-sentir lo queer/cuir en la traducción iberoamericana
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contrasexualidades emergentes. Clepsy-
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clepsydra.2022.22.04
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limits of sex. Routledge.
de Lauretis, T. (1991). Queer theory: Lesbian and
gay sexualities –An introduction. Differences: A
Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 3(2), iii–xviii.
https://doi.org/10.1215/10407391-3-2-iii
De Sousa Santos, B. (2009). A non-Occiden-
talist West? Learned ignorance and ecol-
ogy of knowledge. Theory, Culture &
Society, 26(7–8), 103–125. https://doi.
org/10.1177/0263276409348079
Denny, D. (2004). Changing models of transsex-
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py, 8(1–2), 25–40. https://doi.org/10.1300/
J236v08n01_04
Feinberg, L. (1998). Trans liberation: Beyond pink or
blue. Beacon Press.
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Transgender Studies Quarterly, 3(3–4), 333–356.
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vist-zak-kostopoulos-zackie-oh/
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πολιτική/δημόσια μνήμη: 30 κείμενα για τον Ζακ
(Queer politics/public memory: 30 texts for Zak)
(pp. 52–56). Rosa Luxembourg Foundation.
Long Chu, A., & Drager, E. H. (2019). Af-
ter Trans Studies. tsq: Transgender
Studies Quarterly, 6(1), 103–116. https://doi.
org/10.1215/23289252-7253524
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del género neutro del inglés al castellano: Propuesta
de alternativas al binarismo de género [Bachelor
thesis]. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
https://ddd.uab.cat/pub/tfg/2020/232794/
LopezRodriguezAlba_TFG2020.pdf
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contrasexualidades emergentes. Clepsy-
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clepsydra.2022.22.04
Bornstein, K. (2016). Gender outlaw: On men, wom-
en, and the rest of us (2nd Ed.). Vintage Books.
Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that matter: On the discursive
limits of sex. Routledge.
de Lauretis, T. (1991). Queer theory: Lesbian and
gay sexualities –An introduction. Differences: A
Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 3(2), iii–xviii.
https://doi.org/10.1215/10407391-3-2-iii
De Sousa Santos, B. (2009). A non-Occiden-
talist West? Learned ignorance and ecol-
ogy of knowledge. Theory, Culture &
Society, 26(7–8), 103–125. https://doi.
org/10.1177/0263276409348079
Denny, D. (2004). Changing models of transsex-
ualism. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Psychothera-
py, 8(1–2), 25–40. https://doi.org/10.1300/
J236v08n01_04
Feinberg, L. (1998). Trans liberation: Beyond pink or
blue. Beacon Press.
Gramling, D. & Dutta, A. (2016). Introduction. tsq:
Transgender Studies Quarterly, 3(3–4), 333–356.
https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-3545083
Halva, Y. (2022, May 28). Athens police acquitted in
death of queer activist Zak Kostopoulos/Zackie Oh.
Unicorn riot. https://unicornriot.ninja/2022/
athens-police-acquitted-in-death-of-queer-acti-
vist-zak-kostopoulos-zackie-oh/
Josephson, J., & Einarsdóttir, P. (2016). Language
purism and gender: Icelandic trans* activists
and the Icelandic linguistic gender binary. tsq:
Transgender Studies Quarterly, 3(3–4), 376–387.
https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-3545107
Kokalou, Z. (2020). Πένθος, υλικό αγώνα (Mourn-
ing, material for action). In A. Athanasiou, G.
Gougousis & D. Papanikolaou (Eds.), Κουήρ
πολιτική/δημόσια μνήμη: 30 κείμενα για τον Ζακ
(Queer politics/public memory: 30 texts for Zak)
(pp. 52–56). Rosa Luxembourg Foundation.
Long Chu, A., & Drager, E. H. (2019). Af-
ter Trans Studies. tsq: Transgender
Studies Quarterly, 6(1), 103–116. https://doi.
org/10.1215/23289252-7253524
López Rodríguez, A. (2020). Análisis de la traducción
del género neutro del inglés al castellano: Propuesta
de alternativas al binarismo de género [Bachelor
thesis]. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
https://ddd.uab.cat/pub/tfg/2020/232794/
LopezRodriguezAlba_TFG2020.pdf
Lugones, M. (2008). The coloniality of gender.
Worlds & Knowledges Otherwise, 2, 1–17.
Martínez Pleguezuelos, A. J. (2021). Translating
the queer body. Babel, 67(1), 99–117. https://
doi.org/10.1075/babel.00207.lep
Martínez Guzmán, A. & Montenegro, M. (2010).
Narrativas en torno al trastorno de identidad
sexual: De la multiplicidad transgénero a la pro-
ducción de trans-conocimientos. Prisma Social:
Revista de Investigación Social, 4, 1–44. https://
www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=353744577003
McKee, A. (1997). Fairy tales: How we stopped
being “lesbian and gay” and became “queer”.
Social Semiotics, 7(1), 21–36. https://doi.
org/10.1080/10350339709360367
Mejía, N. (2006). Transgenerismos: Una experien-
cia transexual desde la perspectiva antropológica.
Bellaterra.
Mora, V. (2021). ¿Quién teme a lo queer? Continta me
Tienes.
Papazoglou, A. (2020). Η ελληνική ΛΟΑΤΚΙ+
κοινότητα τον 21ο αιώνα: Οι διεκδικήσεις και
η συναφής νομοθεσία (The Greek lgbtqia+
community in the 21st century: Claims and
relevant legislation). In N. Athanasiou & E.-O.
Christidi (Eds.), Συμπερίληψη και ανθεκτικότητα:
Βασικές αρχές ψυχοκοινωνικής στήριξης
σε θέματα σεξουαλικού προσανατολισμού,
ταυτότητας, έκφρασης και χαρακτηριστικών
φύλου (Inclusion and resilience: Basic
principles of psychosocial support for issues of
sexual orientation, gender identity, expression
and characteristics) (pp. 423–439). Gutenberg.
Platero, L. R. (2017). Trans* (con asterisco). En
L. R. Platero, M. Rosón, & E. Ortega (Eds.),
Barbarismos queer y otras esdrújulas (pp. 409–
415). Bellaterra.
Cross-Cultural Comparability of Queer and Trans: Unpredictable Adaptations From Within “the West”165Mutatis Mutandis. Revista Latinoamericana de Traducción Vol. 16, N.°1, 2023, enero-junio,pp.151-165
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Spurlin, W. (2017). Queering translation: Rethink-
ing gender and sexual politics in the spaces
between languages and cultures. In B. J. Ep-
stein & Gillett R. (Eds.), Queer in translation
(pp. 172–183). Routledge.
Tate, C. C. (2014). Gender identity as a personal-
ity process. In B. Miller (Ed.), Gender identity:
Disorders, developmental perspectives and social im-
plications (pp. 1–22). Nova Science Publishers.
Van Anders, S. (2015). Beyond sexual orientation:
Integrating gender/sex and diverse sexualities
via sexual configurations theory. Archives of
Sexual Behavior, 44, 1177–1213. https://doi.
org/10.1007/s10508-015-0490-8
Vasallo, B. (2021). Lenguaje inclusivo y exclusión de
clase. Larousse.
Villanueva-J., I., & Martínez Pleguezuelos, A. J.
(2022). Trans* representations and translations:
Two pictures, two spaces, two moments. In F.
Carrero & L. Mejías (Eds.), New perspectives in
audiovisual translation towards future research trends
(pp. 73–95). Universitat de Valencia.
Warner, D. (2004). Towards a queer re-
search methodology. Qualitative Research
in Psychology, 1(4), 321–337. https://doi.
org/10.1191/1478088704qp021oa
Zottola, A. (2018). Narrating transgender identi-
ties: A linguistic perspective. PuntOorg Inter-
national Journal, 3(1–2), 51–62. https://doi.
org/10.19245/25.05.pij.3.1/2.04
How to cite this article: Argyriou, K. (2023). Cross-Cultural comparability of queer and trans:
Unpredictable adaptations from within “the West.” Mutatis Mutandis, Revista Latinoamericana de
Traducción, 16(1), 151-165. https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.mut.v16n1a09