By Paula Bistagnino. Naty Menstrual came from a play on words with Nati Mistral, the Spanish singer. Another trans woman gave it to her one day, almost by chance, because she hadn't chosen another name. And it just happened, she liked it, adopted it, and made it her identity. Naty Menstrual paints, writes: poems, chronicles, etchings, monologues. She acts: in the film Mía, but she also has her own documentary, and in theater. She does café-concert style shows and performances. And for years, every Sunday, she has sold her t-shirts and dolls at the San Telmo Fair—at a stall on Pasaje Giuffra—a Buenos Aires neighborhood where almost everyone knows her. She was one of the guests invited by the Teatro Nacional Cervantes to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx. “They called me to read his poems, and I found it interesting. I had only been to the Cervantes Institute when I received my national broadcasting license… The funniest thing is that when I started telling people about it, many didn’t believe me: ‘But Marx didn’t write any poetry. You’re lying!’ they told me.” But no: Marx did write poetry, and Naty Menstrual was in charge of reading it at the “Marx is Born” arts event, alongside journalists, philosophers, writers, actors, and academics.

-Why do you think you were chosen to read Karl Marx's poetry?

– I don't think they called me because of my history with Marx, but because I read in many places and read many people. I think it's primarily for a performative reason, beyond what I might know or think about Marx. In fact, I didn't even know that Marx wrote poetry. And I wouldn't say it's my favorite either: it's poetry from another era and another time. But it's Marx's poetry. It has nothing to do with "Capital" or with capitalism. It's something else, it's ancient poetry. I think that beyond the value of the poetry itself, it has the value of being the poetry of a figure like Marx and of showing a side of him that no one knows.

-Who is Naty Menstrual?

I don't like answering that question. And I think that, in any case, it's up to other people to answer that. It's up to others to take responsibility for what they see in me, if anything. I don't know, I'm Naty Menstrual: I write, I paint, I do performances. I'm not going to call myself an artist. Everything I do is related to artistic self-expression. But I don't like the idea of ​​being a poet or a writer. That institutionalized view of "I'm a doctor, I'm a lawyer, I'm an architect." I'm Naty Menstrual, and I like creative things. I don't need that definition. It's other people who decide who you are. It's the same with sexuality: whether you're a transvestite, whether you're a woman, whether you want to be a woman. And there, too, I define myself as Naty Menstrual. I don't go around clarifying what I am or what I'm not. Just like I don't go around asking others if they're heterosexual and what they do in bed.

-Did you make the legal change when the Gender Identity Law was passed?

No, I did something I thought was more fun, which was to renew my ID from male but dressed as a woman. Why does it have to match? Besides, a name on an ID doesn't define me. Because my ID always said something else, and I couldn't say Naty Menstrual, which is what I'm really interested in.  I am also someone who is still under construction. It's a process that unfolds gradually.

-You started cross-dressing after 30, but the art came before that, was there a previous place of expression?

-Drawing, writing, I've done that since I was a kid. I think I clung to it to cope with the difference, to resist what you feel—because that's what they tell you—is wrong, and so you use that resource to save yourself. It's quite therapeutic to find a way to get rid of the devil inside. I wasn't a kid who suffered much because of it because I had my own world that protected me. My problems with my parents weren't specifically because I was gay, but simply because I was their son. I was quite adept at adapting to my surroundings for a long time. Until, at 30, I put on a skirt and said, "Fuck everyone." I'd done it before as a gay man, but that's different. Being a gay man in the neighborhood is much easier to deal with, but being a transvestite, now that's a real "ohhhhhhh." Still. Because it's one thing for a celebrity to become a woman, and another for your cousin to become a woman. We're still stuck in that place.

–How are you involved with the activism of the transvestite-trans collective?

-I think activism is fantastic, and that girls are part of what's institutionally called activism. But I also think that rules are being set about what constitutes activism, and I I believe there isn't just one way: I believe that being a soldier is living. I believe that when you behave in a certain way, when in your daily life you assert your identity, when you go out dressed in a certain way, when you say what you say, you are being an activist. Even if you're not in an association, you still advocate for causes. But it's not just trans women: an old fascist like Cacho Castaña, when he says what he says, Mirtha Legrand throughout her life on her television program, they too are advocating for their causes. Unx fights with his life Even if you're not in an association. If you lead a conservative life, you're advocating for that. I think you're even advocating for it in the way you have sex.