Doing Fieldwork in Indonesia and Bali

We draw on four ethnographic case studies to build and support our argument. The data were generated by Kjaran (first author) during fieldwork in 2024 with the transpuan community in Bali. This is an ongoing research project which will extend until the end of 2025. The data consist of ethnographic interviews with key informants and other participants. Four ethnographic case studies were then written, which are based on interviews and several informal meetings with three participants (Tasya, Julia, and Timo). Online ethnography was then used to generate the fourth case study about Lucinta Luna, going through Instagram posts and other online material.

During fieldwork, Jón Kjaran also wrote down field notes and reflections during observations in various spaces. For example, they visited massage salons in Kuta (a neighborhood close to the main city Denpasar in Bali) where many transpuan work. They went there with one of the informants, talking to the transpuan working there and helping distribute condoms to those working partly as sex workers. Other establishments were also visited – for example, a medical clinic that caters to the trans/queer community in Bali – while accompanying friends from the local community.

As already mentioned, Kjaran is non-binary and gay and comes from a small island community in the Global North. Mohammad Naeimi is Iranian, born and raised in Iran, identifies as gay and cisgender, and now lives in Western Europe. Working together on the case studies and data analysis through an intersectional and decolonial lens, we brought together our distinct viewpoints and philosophies, providing an insider's and an outsider's perspective – from the Global North and the Global South, respectively – to deconstruct the boundaries of knowledge production and approach the topic from a more critical perspective.

Findings

The notion of ‘trans joy’ as a form of resistance is not only resistive but also productive/transformative, as it takes on diverse forms across different contexts to actively dismantle systematic heteronormativity and cisnormativity (Packnett 2017; Westbrook and Shuster 2023). Through ethnographic case studies, we reveal the multifaceted experiences of transpuan individuals, like Timo, Julia, Lucinta Luna, and Tasya, who navigate their lives differently in circumstances marked by both resistance and misrecognition. We show that Timo boldly embraces her identity on social media and uses her platform as an educative space to dismantle misrecognition and cultivate a supportive community. In contrast, Julia's story demonstrates realities that are shaped by cultural and religious expectations and extends the politics of misrecognition into even the afterlife for the transpuan community. Tasya's narrative reflects her joy for belonging and finding support within the community. On the other side, Lucinta Luna's rise as a social media influencer complicates notions of empowerment, as she strategically navigates public spaces while leveraging her visibility. Together, these narratives confront systemic inequalities and discrimination, disrupting the dominant discourse that frames transpuan lives as mere tales of victimhood. Instead, they celebrate the joy, creativity, and empowerment that flourish within this community.

‘I help those who need my energy!’

Tasya is from a small village in North-Sumatra and her family members are devout Muslims. She has nine siblings and started early to earn her own money by selling wet cakes (kue basah). Like many transpuan, she moved early on from her hometown to search for job opportunities and a better life in larger urban spaces: ‘[We] move to find a better life because in our village our life is just ordinary, and we cannot make a lot of money to support ourselves or our families.’

As Tasya mentioned later in our conversation, the reason for many transpuan to leave their villages is to get in contact with the trans community, establish connections, and reach out to other transpuan in the field. In that respect, relationality and being part of a larger community of transpuan gives them a sense of belonging. The community of transpuan then becomes a home away from home where they can experience mutual care and friendship, which is important due to their precarious existence. For example, most of them do not have stable jobs, health insurance, or any savings to support them if something should happen.

Tasya is energetic and full of care for her fellow transpuan: ‘I want to help people who need it, I help those who need my energy.’ Thus, she often helps to raise money for medical care or if a member of community dies. Death costs money, and many transpuan who live in Bali do not have enough savings to pay for their funeral. Most of them are from other parts of Indonesia and identify as Muslims. In that case, Tasya starts fundraising and tries to contact the family. However, in many instances, the family either does not have the money to pay for the funeral or has disavowed the deceased person. Often Tasya also tries to raise money to bring a sick transpuan back to their hometown, rather than having them die in Bali. This is often their last wish, dying at the place where they were raised and born.

Coming back to Tasya's story, she left her village when she was 20 years old and moved to Malaysia. There she became a sex worker/entertainer (penghibur sex). After overstaying her visa, and along with some other legal problems, she was sentenced to a seven-month prison term in Malaysia. She then came back to Indonesia with nothing and had to start from scratch. She worked to pay her debts to her family and sold some land she had acquired before. After she won second place in a beauty contest close to her hometown, she came out as transpuan in Indonesia. Her family began to dislike her even more because she tarnished the family name and the reputation of the family.

After that, Tasya moved again away from home, this time going to the capital, Jakarta: ‘I became a prostitute in Indonesia. I went to Jakarta to find peace of mind and heart, but it turned out I couldn't live in Jakarta.’ She then moved to Jogjakarta, where she did sex work at the Maliboro railway tracks.

Tasya has faced unemployment, poverty, and detention due to overstaying in Malaysia. Her experiences are intersectional, shaped by her class, gender, sexual identity, and immigrant status within Malaysia's migration regime. Jacobsen and coauthors (2021) discuss migration regimes in terms of coercive prolongation, restricted mobility, deportability, detainability, and the temporal uncertainty of waiting, particularly in cases of migration, refugee status, and asylum-seeking. The overarching goal of migration regimes is rooted in a biopolitical system designed to regulate the movement of people across borders.

Moreover, there is a misrecognition regarding transpuan individuals’ agency. Tasya reflects on how people view transpuan, which can depend on her work and/or if she has a relationship with a bule: ‘If there is a foreigner who supports [us] our name will rise. If we just live alone, or we are doing sex work, we are like dust, people think of us as a problem.’ Although transpuan sex work disrupts normative binaries, they often find themselves excluded from the grid of cultural intelligibility, and accordingly their identities would be marked as deviant or invisible. This dehumanisation reduces them to ‘dust,’ or ‘a problem’ and reinforces the stigma and marginalisation.

Despite this dehumanisation and intersectional violence, which diminishes transpuan agency, renders them invisible, and limits their access to resources, Tasya remains ‘energetic’ and finds joy in the transpuan community. She found a community of other transpuan in Jogja and joined the religious group of waria/transpuan who pray together and read the Quran. This gave her some meaning in life, and she became very active in the transpuan community in Jogja.

However, life in Jogja was hard, and she earned only a small amount of money, because the city is mostly populated by college/university students. She therefore decided to go to Bali because there she could find a ‘source of money’. She also had a friend there who could support her. A year after she arrived in Bali her friend died, and she found herself alone and without support. Gradually, she started to work and continued her activities for the transpuan community – helping those in need. She now works in a hair and beauty salon but is also doing some sex work on the side. She has contemplated leaving Bali, but in the end, she said that she will not have any better future outside of the island. At least she can live here openly as transpuan and, for now, earn some money.

Queering Cis-heteronormativity?

Kjaran first heard the name Lucinta Luna when Adli, one of his interlocutors mentioned her name when we were browsing some YouTube videos and chatting. He had once been following Lucinta Luna on Instagram, and regularly watched her YouTube channel. In fact, Luna is a controversial social media influencer in Indonesia and has many followers. However, they do not follow her because they love or admire her, but rather because they find joy in shaming her and posting hateful comments on her social media platform. This has, in fact, made Luna infamous and increased her viewings/followers, generating money for her through promoting beauty brands, mostly Korean. So, the hate-discourse and shaming constitute Luna as a celebrity and create an opportunity for her to become independent and earn money. In that respect, she has been able to break away from the limited job opportunities previously available for transpuan/waria in Indonesia and has become a successful influencer on social media. This is noteworthy and highlights how resistance manifests differently across different contexts.

While Tasya's non-heteronormativity and involvement in sex work led to her marginalisation, Lucinta Luna strategically capitalizes on her position outside of heteronormativity and cisnormativity to earn a living. But who is Lucinta Luna and why does she generate so much hate and negative feeling online?

Lucinta Luna identifies as transpuan and was born in 1989. She gained some fame after participating in the reality show Be a Man (2008–2010). It was rather popular in Indonesia, following transgender women during survival/boot camp training. They had to dress like ‘men’ and do various physical tasks. It seems that the aim of the show was to make them look funny instead of challenging the gender norms which, in fact, were reinforced in the show – the ultimate value was to become a man and any deviation from masculinity became a laughing matter for the audience.

The Wikipedia entry about the show says that the aim of it was to show how transgender women could be ‘shaped into the perfect man’.² The question then remained as to whether they would ever become the ‘perfect man’. The description of the show and how it constitutes the contestants as weak and in need of redemption resembles what some of my interlocutors have experienced regarding gender/gay conversion therapy. In these ‘therapies’, they reveal being sent to a boot camp or survival course with the aim of making them ‘strong’ and ‘straight’. The happiness and the joy in the show symbolize that cycle of happiness that revolves around socially constructed ideals of masculinity, heterosexuality, and conforming gender roles.

Lucinta Luna refuses to grieve and instead disrupts this happiness by ‘killing the joy’ through her performances on social media, mocking heteronormative and cisnormative values. While Milne (2020) and Ahmed (2010) argue that an unhappy queer or feminist ‘killjoy’ should reject alignment with societal norms that dictate happiness – refusing to ‘sit at the table of happiness’ – Lucinta Luna, as a transpuan in Indonesia, demonstrates that the act of being a ‘killjoy’ must be shaped by context. In her case, the way she performs resistance and disrupts normative values is deeply influenced by her social and cultural environment, where safety, visibility, and societal conditions overlap and play a crucial role. ‘Killjoy’, in her context, involves a mocking of norms, strategic navigation of the risks in a transphobic context as well as the ability to truly live and thrive – both personally and professionally.

Thus, the politics of ‘killing joy’ must remain flexible and sensitive to the realities of one's lived experience. For example, Lucinta Luna's posts on social media are mostly related to her own life as transpuan in which the boundaries between reality and fiction are transgressed. In other words, her posts on social media resemble dramatic episodes or plays, confusing the viewer about the truth of the content. In these episodes, she constructs stories, often fictional, about her life with the aim of shocking and gaining more followers/viewers. For example, some posts are about her relationship with her handsome white European boyfriend. She posts on YouTube when they are talking together, expressing how much they love each other and that soon they will be reunited. It is obviously a setup and can be understood as a joke, particularly because both Lucinta Luna and the assumed boyfriend are overacting in the scene. As such, the story can be read as a critical contribution to heteronormative relationships, the marriage/partner imperative in Indonesia, and its associated romantic discourse.

It is also meant to trigger the envy of other women, because whiteness is highly valued in Indonesian society (Saraswati 2013). Lucinta Luna, who is not perceived as a ‘real’ woman by many Indonesians, is thus capable of having a beautiful white European boyfriend – something many Indonesian women might only be able to dream about. This resonates with some of the stories told by my queer interlocutors in Bali who considered the island a platform to find a bule boyfriend or girlfriend.

In another post, Lucinta Luna queers the notion of what it means to be a woman, mocking the biological essentialism which has discursively constructed what it means to be an authentic woman, often revolving around having a uterus or not. So, in this post, Lucinta Luna states that she is now pregnant, and the father is the handsome white European boyfriend. He has, however, moved away, and they express in one post how much they miss each other and that now she needs to give birth to the child alone – being a single mother. In that post she also ‘confesses’ that she is not transpuan but a ‘real’ woman, the pregnancy serving as proof of that. These posts went viral in Indonesia, and many of her followers posted negative comments. They did not understand the joke: that she was, in fact, mocking the notion of womanhood, which is most often defined biologically.

But why does she cause negative comments and shaming from the society/her followers, who are mostly women/young women? Is it perhaps because she disrupts the notion of womanhood by claiming to be a ‘real’ woman? Is it because, although not being a ‘real’ woman, she presents herself as successful, having, for example, a bule boyfriend? In any case, these young women follow her and make comments on her posts, even buy and wear the products she is promoting on her social media. This indicates that her strategy is working, and she is now a brand on social media.

One of the latest stories about Lucinta Luna is that she was sentenced to six months in prison on drug charges. The main discussion in the media then was about whether she would serve her time in a male or female prison. As she had already received her identity card as a woman, on the grounds that she had already completed full transitioning in Thailand, she was allowed to serve her time in a female prison. Some of the media outlets then pointed out that other individuals who identify as transpuan but who neither want nor can have full transition (being expensive) are most often denied this kind of treatment, and end up in a male prison ward, where they are maltreated and even raped, having to leave their transpuan identity outside the prison walls and become physically men again (Gunadha 2020).

‘I'm a trans woman, Indonesian trans woman’

Timo has been living on and off in Bali since 2020 when she moved to the island during the COVID pandemic. At that time, Timo identified as gay and had not come out as transpuan. That happened in 2023 when Timo came out on social media and began her hormone therapy. Right from the beginning, Timo has been open about her identity as transpuan and has posted regularly on social media, mostly Instagram. Timo reveals an incident which became decisive in being totally open about her identity – whether on social media or in real life: ‘I met a guy at a bar and I said to myself: “Oh fuck, I must be honest with him.” And you know what? After I'm honest with him, he's gone. […] That's why I put in my bio, on my social media, like TikTok, Instagram, anywhere, dating apps, that I'm a trans woman, Indonesian trans woman.

Being ‘honest’ on social media has also generated income for Timo, and today she has many followers. She promotes brands/products on Instagram and receives some payment for that. She also works sometimes as a master of ceremonies, for example in weddings or during openings: ‘I pray to God, that at least I have maximum one master of ceremony for a wedding. Then I'm safe for three or four months’.

During these events she also performs in drag and offers her services with or without a drag show. Most of these events take place outside of Bali, for example in Jakarta or Surabaya. In Bali she mostly relies on her regular revenues from social media and occasional drag shows. The content she creates on social media is mostly about beauty, branding, and entertainment. However, Timo also wants to educate her followers about life. For example, she says that sometimes simply posting about mundane things such as praying can have educational value: ‘My morning prayer is in the name of God in heaven’.

Indirectly, through her posts, she is also educating the public about the lives of transpuan, that they are just like any others – they can be full of both joy and sorrow, and they pursue a diversity of paths in life. In other words, the life of a transpuan is not only about glimmer, salons, makeup, and/or difficulties, which has been the dominant narrative.

Timo is here trying to disrupt the dominant narrative on transpuan and how they are discursively constituted, not only in Indonesia but also in the Global North. They are often depicted as ‘dolls’ in the sense that they are not ‘authentic’ but ‘fake’ versions of ‘real’ women. This politics of misrecognition not only diminishes their agency but also constrains their joy, relegating their existence to a narrow set of expectations. For example, the dominant narrative, especially in Indonesia, is that their options are limited, both in terms of work – mostly working in salons, as entertainers, or as sex workers – but also that their lives lack fulfillment and what Sara Ahmed (2010) would term as ‘happy objects’. In that respect, their lives are misrecognized and deemed to be outside the boundaries of what Butler (2005) has defined as livability.

Transpuan in Indonesia are not only misrecognized discursively but also in real life. For example, identity cards (Kartu Tanda Penduduk or KTP) are not issued to transpuan who have not done a ‘full’ transition. Here it needs to be noted that most transpuan in Indonesia only undertake hormone therapy and some also have breast implants – if they have enough money. Timo is one of them and started hormone therapy one year ago. Later, she wants to have breast implants. She gets her hormones sent from Jakarta and these are supported by one of her endorsers. In Bali, an experienced nurse helps her once per month with hormone injections.

However, on her identity card, Timo is still a man, which can become stressful when traveling, but this is something she has gotten used to: ‘At the airport, I know the gesture. But I'm fine. That is because that guy [in the identity card], it's me. I must accept. I don't feel insulted.’ Today, Timo feels relaxed and says that her character is humbler, which she attributes to her transitioning and finally coming out as a transpuan: ‘I don't have to worry about tomorrow, I just believe that God will take care of me.’ She embraces life and tries to follow her heart. She decided to make Bali her home because ‘Bali chose me’. She says that her life is easier in Bali than in the capital Jakarta where she comes from. People are more tolerant, and it is easier to get in touch with other people, especially bule. ‘So, I choose to stay here […] and I choose to die here’.

‘I want to die as a man!’ Narratives of Misrecognition in Death

Julia comes from a small village close to the main administrative city of Sulawesi, Makassar. She came to Bali before the COVID pandemic, and at that time she identified as a gay man. However, as she revealed to me in our conversation: ‘I always felt like a woman inside’. She lived for more than a year as a gay man in Bali and was dating a bule at that time. During the COVID pandemic, they experienced difficulties in their relationship and in the end, they broke up. At that time, she decided to start her transition and ‘come out’ physically as a woman.

She got into contact with another transpuan and from her she learned how to take the hormone pills to change her bodily physique. Gradually she started to notice some changes in her body, and she started to look more like a woman: ‘But you need to know when to reduce the doses. Your penis should still work and get hard. You need to cum to relax. I am still partly a man,’ she told me when we talked about the hormone treatment. For her it was therefore important to be able to ejaculate regularly, to relax.

We (Julia and Kjaran) also discussed the difference between the categories transpuan and waria: ‘For me there is no difference. Maybe if you are transpuan then you are fully a woman, you have had surgery down there,’ she said. When Kjaran asked her if she wanted to have that kind of surgery, she said: ‘No, it is against my religion [Islam]. I was born as a man with a penis, and I want to die as a man. What will happen to my body when I die? If I don't have a penis there will be confusion about who is going to clean it. I don't want that to happen.’ In Indonesia there are different opinions amongst Islamic scholars with regards to correcting the biological sex.

Here it needs to be noted that Indonesia does not have a state religion, and several religious beliefs are practiced within its borders, although the majority of Indonesians identify as Muslims. The majority of Indonesian Muslims practice Sunni Islam (99 per cent) and belong to the Shafi'i legal school (Buehler 2016). Shari'a law has been introduced in Aceh province (North Sumatra), which discriminates against gender and sexuality minorities as well as other religious groups (Feener 2013). In six other regions/provinces of Indonesia, some aspects of Shari'a law have been put in place (Buehler 2016).

Furthermore, in Indonesia, some Islamic groups are more progressive regarding sexuality and gender diversity, especially in accepting transpuan identities, as some religious scholars have argued that these subjectivities have cultural and historical relevance (Rodríguez 2022). For example, South Sulawesi, which is Muslim-dominated, has a long tradition of perceiving transgender women (transpuan) as the third gender, which played a crucial role in religious ceremonies before the advent of Islam. For example, the bugis culture in South Sulawesi, which is today a Muslim dominated province, assigned the third gender to calalai (a woman who takes on the role of a man) and calabai (a man who takes on the role of a woman). The calabais played a crucial role as priestesses or religious specialists, called bissu, during religious ceremonies before the advent of Islam and were believed to have sacred power (Kjaran and Naeimi 2022; Davies 2010).

However, in general, attitudes both in society and amongst religious groups (not only Islamic groups but also Christians) have become more conservative since 2016 which has caused increased hate speech and violence in both online and offline spaces (Wijaya 2020). Regarding views on transgender issues and transition (gender reassignment), there is no official fatwa or Islamic interpretation in place as is the case in Iran (Kjaran 2019). Furthermore, the law and regulations in Indonesia are rather vague regarding legal gender recognition.⁴ So, to gain legal gender recognition in Indonesia, based on Article 56, paragraph (1) of the Population Administration Law, a transgender person must first request a court order, which then confirms their current gender identity. For example, Lucinta Luna, whom we discussed in the previous section, got her legal gender recognition approved at a district court in South Jakarta (Purbasari and Aurellia 2024). However, these court rulings can be highly subjective and there are many cases of transgender persons who have been rejected for legal gender recognition, even though they have reassigned their gender biologically (Purbasari and Aurellia 2024; Yulius 2024; Riadi and Galuh 2024).

When I met Julia, she was working in a beauty salon in Kuta (part of Bali) but sometimes during the night she would work on the streets, doing sex work. The story of Julia draws attention to the precarious situation of many transpuan/waria after they leave this world. In many cases, they are not recognized as women in death, because of the strict gender binary construction in Islam, which encompasses both death and life (Fortier 2010). Thus, many transpuan therefore receive Islamic burial rituals assigned for men, because they are classified as men, both on their identity cards but also according to Islamic theology, which requires adherence to the gender of their birth.

Julia also indicates that going through a full transition might also cause further confusion regarding Islamic burial rituals. So, to avoid any misunderstanding when she dies, she does not want to do a full transition. She is afraid that it might label her as someone in-between, neither a man nor a woman, and therefore deny her a proper burial. The story of Julia indicates a profound misrecognition that persists even in death. The denial of their lived realities reinforces the stigmatisation they face throughout their lives and extends it into the afterlife, which highlights the continuity of marginalisation. The politics of recognition thus extends beyond life, impacting how transpuan/waria are remembered, honored, and laid to rest.

This was also the case for Dorce Gamalama (21 July 1963 to 16 February 2022) who some decades ago became a media celebrity in Indonesia. In contrast to Julia, Dorce wanted to die as a woman, as she stated many times in the media: ‘I want to be buried the way I am. I have become a woman since the surgery so I should be bathed [and buried] as a woman’ (Fikri 2022). She is one of the first transpuan celebrities in Indonesia and was rather popular and beloved by the public – she starred in couple of movies and was a renowned presenter. She became religious later in life and donated money to her local mosque in Jakarta, where she was then in the end buried as a man. The decision to follow male burial rituals was in the end the decision of her family but it caused some debates inside and outside of Indonesia.

Some Islamic religious scholars commented on her case. The chairperson of the Indonesian Ulama Council (Majelis Ulama Indonesia) argued that because Dorce Gamalama was born as a man, then the burial must be in accordance with Islamic customs. However, another religious scholar from the largest Muslim organisation in Indonesia, Nahdlatul Ulama, had another interpretation of the burial customs in Islamic law. He stated that gender identity is a ‘personal choice’, and in that case Dorce Gamalama should be granted her wish of female burial. These debates draw attention to the ways trans issues have been taken up by religious scholars and thus become part of the religious discourse in Indonesia. The question is then about religious recognition and how transgender subjects should be constituted within Islam. Here it needs to be noted that Nahdlatul Ulama is considered a liberal or progressive branch of Islam in Indonesia and has, for example, supported the religious activities of waria in Jogjakarta.

Dorce Gamalama's death and the fact that she was not granted her last wish of being buried as a woman gained global attention and by LGBTIQ+ activists within and outside of Indonesia. The pink press covered her story and how she was treated after her death (Wakefield 2022). The renowned Indonesian gay/queer activist Dédé Oetomo (born 6 December 1953) wrote an online obituary in which he states that Dorce Gamalama was ‘an accidental role model for gender and sexual minorities in Indonesia’ (Oetomo 2022). Dédé Oetomo might be referring to the fact that Dorce Gamalama herself never identified as an activist for trans rights and had rather conservative views towards the queer community. In fact, she did not identify as being part of it: ‘I've never been offended, because I thought I am not part of them. I am part of my own self,’ she expressed in 2018 in an interview (Indra 2022).

Despite that, Dorce Gamalama, as Dédé Oetomo argues in his reflections, had a great influence upon Indonesian society, educating about gender diversity by being herself. Furthermore, as Dédé Oetomo points out, she demonstrated that ‘the paths of activism are many. While assertive activism is needed, strategies that are less confrontational and more entertaining can also be effective.’ In other words, by embodying queer joy through her work as an entertainer, Dorce Gamalama had great influences on Indonesian society, educating the public about the diversity of lives and how joy and pain coexist. However, the case of Dorce Gamalama also demonstrates how transgender people are misrecognized in death – not only in Indonesia but around the world.

Conclusion

The exploration of the transpuan community in Bali reveals a complex interplay of precarity, misrecognition, and resistance shaped by historical, cultural, and social contexts. While Bali is often idealized as a utopian space for queer individuals, particularly transgender women, this perception is fraught with contradictions. The migration of transpuan individuals from Indonesia to Bali, driven by the desire for acceptance and economic opportunities, underscores the harsh realities of their lived experiences marked by structural inequalities and ongoing marginalisation.

Through ethnographic research, we have shown that the narratives surrounding transpuan lives in Bali are not tales of suffering and victimisation, but they also highlight resilience, joy, and community building. The intersections of race, gender, and class significantly influence how transpuan individuals navigate public spaces, often filled with feelings of exclusion and precariousness. By challenging the dominant narratives that focus on pain and victimhood, we have highlighted the celebratory aspects of transpuan lives that foster trans women's empowerment. This nuanced understanding disrupts the politics of misrecognition that can be seen in different case studies.

For example, Tasya's story shows the precarious nature of transpuan lives and the desire for belonging within a supportive community. Despite her intersectional status of pain and violence, she finds joy in community building and support for her transpuan fellows. The case of Lucinta Luna, however, complicates our understanding of resistance and visibility in the transpuan community. While she navigates a circumstance filled with hate and shaming, she also embodies a form of empowerment that capitalizes on her identity as a social media influencer. On the other side, Timo's case shows how she has used social media as a platform for both her personal expression and societal education to challenge the dominant narratives that portray transpuan lives such that they are misrecognized discursively and marked by pain and lack of agency. Julia's narrative, however, broadens our horizon of understanding of how the politics of misrecognition extends into death. The lack of recognition in life, and especially the afterlife, exemplifies the structural and cultural barriers that transpuan individuals face in perpetuating cycles of marginalisation.