Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, Vol 31(4), Nov 2025, 396-403; doi:10.1037/pac0000804
This article draws from a long-term participatory action research (PAR) study in Colombia with trans women who experienced forced displacement in the context of armed conflict. Drawing from 11 semistructured interviews guided by a social cartography component, our argument shifts from victimization to acts of resistance when addressing the lives of trans women and violence against them. We move from dominant accounts of violence body-recipient to our coining of the violence body-repellent framework, and by showcasing this new focus, we advance current scholarship. While we illustrate militarized violence against trans bodies perpetrated by state and illegally armed actors, we underscore trans women’s agentic use of the body to repel the violence they faced. We center the body as the principal analytical lens in order to advance an understanding of trans women’s experiences of dehumanization and resistance to violence. Through the threat of illness, self-cutting, bleeding, and the possibility of death, research actors reveal a strategy to reaffirm life. The violence body-repellent framework could be applied to guide further research away from porno-miseria or damage-oriented research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)