On Metabolizing Poison and Misery Tourism: A Review of Bad Girls by Camila Sosa Villada
In Bad Girls, Ms. Villada gives us a novel that is, at least in part, derived from and about her experiences as a trans woman [1] and sex worker in Argentina – a travesti, to use her preferred term, an attempted reclamation of a slur used against Argentinian trans sex workers as well as trans women generally. Although I’ve learned to be cautious in reading trans literature, for reasons I’ll explain in the course of this review, I had high hopes for the book, and it certainly has garnered its share of praises, worldwide. I begrudge her none of that praise, and celebrate it with her, and for her.
But for me, in the main, I found the book to be an unremitting bummer, with no real payoff for (re)exposure to all the misery. In a 2022 interview with Zeitgeister, the publication of Germany’s Goethe-Institute, Ms. Villada, when asked if she had advice for young trans writers, said:
Yes, I have something to say: people love our suffering. They love to hear what we say about our suffering. They force us to talk about our identities, but I think it’s better to create monsters. Zeitgeister, “Identities Matter Little to Me”, Juliana Vaz, November 2022.
And I think this encapsulates most of the book – it comes across as a sort of voyeuristic “insider” look at forbidden and outcast people, a packaged and clean amusement for misery tourists, who can read about our suffering and either exult in it or lament it, comfortably, without doing anything about it, without so much as even remembering it more than a day after reading the book. And so, to paraphrase something a character in an old scifi series said, I guess Ms. Sosa has mined her experience of our misery for a measure of literary fame and money; and I guess that’s…well, I guess that’s something.[2] But I had hoped for better.
A Bit of Background
Stories about trans women are relatively rare; stories told by actual trans women who live this life and therefore know what they are talking about are even more rare. Our stories are mostly unseen and unheard, except by those who love us or count us as friends. In these times especially, trans women are, largely, either invisible or the specific targets of every kind of violence and marginalization. That marginalization happens at every possible level. It often starts, especially in Christian (virtually every denomination; my experience was Catholic) settings, with religious figures teaching young trans people that they are hateful abominations in the sight of their allegedly all-loving god. Those lessons are gleefully internalized by the peers and parents of those kids who, often, are thrilled to have religious pretexts for their bigotry. Those pretexts are then used to justify further marginalization by bullying, harassment, playground violence, street violence, and eventually, government backed or tolerated marginalization, harassment, and violence, the latter of which comes about as the enforcement arm of laws and policies meant to make public life as a trans person untenable, both as “free” persons on the outside, and especially if they have been incarcerated.
Ask any person of trans experience and any of us, of nearly any age, raised almost anywhere in the world, will attest to the truth of all this. These prejudices and the actions that are based on them are not simply a relic or throwback to “how it used to be” for those of us who came of age in 1980s, or some other long ago time of a previous century. They have never really ceased, in spite of some gains made for some discrete period of time from, say, the mid to late 1990s that, perhaps, culminated in the oughties and early teens of this century. In fact, they are getting much, much worse every day, in many countries around the world, specifically including Argentina itself, under Milei. If you are located in or near the “United” States, and think, surely things are better there than in other countries -although I am not sure how anyone who is even moderately awake could formulate such a thought in 2026 – think again.[3]
In such a context, trans people, those who love us, and those who are curious about us, might tentatively reach for trans literature, in hopes of seeing ourselves, or those we love, or those about whom we are curious, reflected there in some positive as well as truthful way. I cannot lie – I have been so often disappointed and put off by trans literature in the past that I have spent many years avoiding it – no need to seek out literary traumas, after all, when day-to-day ones are in such generous supply, in these times of fascist and theocratic ascendancy. But still, I am a reader and a woman of trans experience; I still have those hopes of literary connection, from time to time. So it was that in the spring of 2025, wanting to travel without leaving home, I came across the New York Times’ “Read Your Way Around” the World articles, and right there in the piece on Buenos Aires was a recommendation of Bad Girls. Lo and behold, our excellent library system had it. The book is popular enough locally that there is a not insubstantial hold period for e-lending, but once I came to the top of the line, I checked it out.
The Book Itself
As for Bad Girls, it’s not just the circumstances of the narrator’s life as a impoverished sex worker, and the things that flow from and are associated with that, which are sad, though they certainly are. And they are very well told, in a sort of magical realist style, with characters such as “the headless man” and a character who is over 150 years old, that is probably the book’s best feature. Rather, it’s Ms. Villada’s willingness, through her protagonist, to reenact and re-inflict all the gatekeeping, toxic tropes, gender essentialist bullshit, and general hatred that were her constant diet and indeed, the diet of so many women who share something, anything of her history. Unfortunately, one can often count on women of history to turn on each other with the utmost viciousness: anything to rank and subjugate, so that even if every one of us is stuck on a hill of shit, at least some are to be placed lower on the hill. Anything to climb just a little bit higher. Anything to not be “one of those girls”; any chance to make others suffer more so that you might suffer a little less, or simply to unjustly pass on the unjust pain you received. I don’t think that women of history are unique in this; it’s something common to many marginalized populations. But it is something I have seen time and again, in literature and elsewhere, and it disappoints me to see it in such full expression, in the hands of a talented writer, in Bad Girls.
The biggest lie one can believe, as a woman of history, is this: that you can be fed poison over and over again, and transmute it into something sacred and good and holy. Ultimately, you can’t. It’s not your failure, it’s a fundamental impossibility of the entire project. This book is no exception. Ms. Villada, like so many of us, was fed poison; and mostly, she has simply passed it along. From what I can see, there is little attempt at transmutation – perhaps that is an expression of her stated preference for the creation of monsters. But I can’t recommend poison to anyone, and especially not to my sisters. I don’t think this is one to read if you live this life and already have been fed all the poison you can stand, and then some.
Is there value in this book for others, people who don’t know just how hard this road can be? That’s a difficult one for me to answer. Sharing poison with others who don’t have to eat the poison, so they can see how unhealthful it is, how unfair, how uncalled for, how damaging, how corrosive, may be helpful, at least in theory, if readers decide to do something helpful about it. But so many people who read books like this are simply misery tourists – I have seen many reviews of this book where people want to praise how “authentic” the misery is. Well, I guess it’s that, and if you’re such a tourist, a consumer of the suffering of others, I’m sure you’ll love this.
If that’s not you, and I hope it isn’t, I’d suggest reading something different – for example, Alana S. Portero’s Bad Habits, which in some ways is a similar narrative, set in Spain, but which contains a great deal more that can inspire and strengthen – and while you’re at it, if you can, reach out to women of history, in a sincere way, as equals. Reach out to the women of history you know; reach out to those you don’t yet know – again – in a sincere way, as equals. Discount the poison language of a million poison politicians and their poison spewing enablers and apologists. Confront the poison you have internalized. Try to make the world better – including by recognizing poison narratives, calling them out, and voting against them and in favor of something better. Remember we are all of us – every single one of us, no matter our history or experience – in this together.
I generally prefer to refer to trans women as women of trans experience, or women of history. I avoid, like the plague, terms like “transwomen” or any way of referring to ourselves as some other non-woman thing. It might be a fact, for example, that a woman is Jewish, or of Irish ancestry, and there might be times that these facts are relevant, but they are not literal definers of what she is. This is a shift in language that may seem subtle, but it’s important: compare “Black woman” with “Negress”, or Jewish woman with “Jewess” and the difference in import is clear. ↩︎
Firefly, “Jaynestown,” Episode 7, originally aired October 18, 2002. ↩︎
Take a look at the raft of executive orders and legislation targeting trans people, both at the federal level and individual state levels, which have occurred just since January, 2025. In the US, there is no longer any such thing as equal protection for trans people, as trans people. You may be able to live and work and exist as who you are in one state; cross the border into a neighboring state, or the District of Columbia, and you may find your identity documents invalidated, your ability to do the simplest of things fundamental to basic human dignity, such as using the restroom that is consistent with your identity – regardless of your legal, surgical or hormonal status – criminalized. Under federal law, it is now policy that trans people can be harassed and bullied in the workplace, referred to by deadnames and incorrect pronouns, with no recourse whatsoever. Parents are free to indoctrinate their children in the ways of state-preferred religions, or to subject them, many states, to abusive “conversion therapy”; but if they, in consultation with medical professionals, wish to treat their children in accordance with established standards of care for gender dysphoria, many states prohibit that, the Federal regime endorses that prohibition in ways are making the care impossible to obtain even in those states which do otherwise allow it. Last year, trans service members were involuntarily separated from service. In many cases these were well trained personnel with honorable records and valuable skills accrued over many years, including skills honed in combat; if they wished to challenge these proceedings, they were forced to appear in the uniform and appearance of the gender from which they had legally and formally transitioned years before. None of this is an exaggeration or an overstatement; to the contrary, the situation is far worse and far more comprehensive than you know, unless you are a trans person or someone you love is a trans person. ↩︎