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Is Brazil one of the world's most progressive countries when it comes to attitudes about gender and gay rights? Or is it a conservative Catholic country that's just another fuel shortage away from returning to the military dictatorship it endured for two decades?
According to an article in yesterday's New York Times, it's both.
As Taylor Barnes points out, drag shows were popular in Rio de Janiero during the 1950's and 1960's. However, as we have seen, people's willingness to go to shows in which drug-addled men don garish clothes and layer crude makeup on their faces has little, if anything, to do with how much those same people would accept their children if they "came out" as gay, lesbian or transgender. In fact, sometimes the same people who go to drag shows commit violence--whether or not it's physical--against people who don't fit their culture's gender norms.
Then, of course, there is Carnival, which may well be the greatest concentration of men in drag as well as flamboyant gay men in the world. (Interestingly, in celebrations like Carnival or the Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans, one rarely, if ever, sees women dressed as men or butch lesbians.) And, as Barnes points out, the careers of transgender models are prospering in Brazil, perhaps more than in anywhere else in the world.
Same-sex marriage is legal in about half of Brazil's states, and laws about gender identity, while not quite as advanced as those in nearby Argentina or Uruguay, are still more in line with current knowledge about gender identity and expression than the laws in most US states. However, those states that allow same-sex marriage are--not surprisingly--the ones that include the country's largest metropoli. On the other hand, more rural areas still hold to their conservative beliefs (often based on the local priest's or politician's interpretation of faith) about sexuality and gender.
Now, I've never been to Brazil, so I can't tell you whether it's "better" for trans people than other places. However, at every Transgender Day of Remembrance commemoration in which I've participated, a fair number of the victims' names we read were Brazilian. To be fair, plenty are Americans, too. But I can't help but to think that transgenders face as precarious a situation in Brazil as we do anywhere.
And I don't know how much things will improve if people continue to associate us with the gross misinterpretations--or perhaps unintentional parodies--of womanhood exhibited by the drag "queens" of Carnival or Mardi Gras--or, for that matter, the Pride March. As long as we're seen that way, we are in the same situation of African Americans in the days of Sambo.
As you've probably heard by now, Minnesota has become the twelfth US state to legalize same-sex marriage. Governor Mark Dayton signed the legislation yesterday, and the first gay weddings in The Land Of 10,000 Lakes will take place on 1 August.
This development really comes as no surprise. After all, say what you will about him, Jesse Ventura voiced his support for same-sex marriage when he was the State's governor. Also, Minnesota has a long history of progressive politics. For example, it was one of the first states to pass laws to improve the welfare of farmers and laborers, and was one of the leaders in civil rights legislation. Minneapolis was one of the first cities, and Minnesota the first state, to include protections for gender identity and expression in its human rights laws.
Plus, it's a neighbor of Iowa, which was legalized same-sex marriage two years ago.
One of the things that makes this victory so sweet and ironic is that Minnesota (or, more precisely, its 6th District, which includes the northern sububurbs of the Twin Cities) has also elected our good friend Michelle Bachmann--who ran for the Republican Presidential nomination last year--to Congress three times. She famously predicted that same-sex unions would become legal in her home state.
The fact that her prediction has come to pass means that Helen La Fave is planning her wedding. Who is Ms. LaFave? She's none other than the lovely Ms. Bachmann's stepsister.
Hmm...Maybe something is in the air or water. At almost exactly the same time Governor Dayton was autographing his state's newest law, Brazil's National Council of Justice decreed that the country's notary publics must register same-sex unions as marriages if the couples so request.
Right now, same-sex marriages are legal in fourteen of Brazil's twenty-seven states. However, conservative evangelical legislators have derailed the Brazilian Congress' efforts to legalize gay marriage in the entire nation.
I know little about the country, but I suspect that their situation parallels that of the US in one way: There is a divide between the cosmopolitan coastal cities and the more homogeneous and conservative rural population of the interior. On the other hand, in nearby Argentina and Chile--both of which have legalized same-sex marriage nationwide--most of the people are nominally Catholic, but the Church has little (and evangelicals have almost no) influence on national politics.
Still, I suspect that allowing same-sex marriages nationwide will happen sooner in Brazil than it will happen in the United States for one simple reason: Rural Brazilians are moving to the cities in search of work. On the other hand, religious and social conservatives in the US are moving to states that already have large populations of like-minded people, which means that those states will be even less likely to allow same-sex marriages, or even civil unions.
Kudos to Kelly Busey of Planet Transgender (one of my "must read" blogs) for posting this story about Fernanda Carrico da Silva, a transvestite who was murdered in Brazil.
Even though police officers witnessed her killing, no suspect has been captured.
I was able, from my knowledge of Spanish, French and Italian, to understand (more or less) the article in the original Portuguese. However, I don't think you need to know any of those languages to get the message of its fourth paragraph, which I will render here:
When a parent of a heterosexual family dies, people notice. When a rich man dies, people rally around him. For the death of a gay person who has money or is "high society," people weep and gnash their teeth to decry homophobia.
But when a transvestite, a hustler dies, it is no more important than the death of a cockroach.
People sometimes wonder why such things happen in Brazil, a country with the most celebrated transgender or "womanless" beauty pageants. I've never been to Brazil, but I have talked with a few Brazilians. From what they tell me, Brazilians have a well-earned reputation for partying and celebrating sexuality precisely because it is still, mostly, a conservative Catholic country. Extravagant shows of cross-dressing, ostentatious displays of sexuality and the seeming celebration of the beauty of trans women is, along with the fetishization of drag, confined to a few tightly-defined areas and time frames, such as certain beaches and during Carnival. From what my Brazilian acquaintances tell me, expressions of sexuality and gender identity that differ from societal norms are not welcome outside those places and times.
What makes this situation even more precarious for male-to-female transvestites or transsexuals are the prevailing attitudes toward violence men commit against women. To put it bluntly, men literally get away with murdering women. In fact, until 1991, it was not even considered a crime when a man killed his wife. To this day, men who kill their wives still escape prison time or worse by claiming that the wives were unfaithful.
When such violence is tolerated, you can be sure that people are allowed to do--and get away with--worse against trans women or transvestites.
A few days ago, I wrote about the murder of a Brazilian transgender woman who went by the name Madona, and how it is just one example of the endemic violence against trans women--and women generally--in that country.
On the other hand, the country's health-care system provides free gender-reassignment surgery, with this caveat: Those approved for surgery have to be approved by clinicians who, basically, have the same notions about gender, sexuality and transsexualism that their American counterparts abandoned at least twenty years ago.
And, as I mentioned, only a few legal occupations are open to trans people. Those jobs pay so poorly (if they pay at all) that many trans people in them double as prostitutes--or sex work becomes part of their unwritten job descriptions.
So, in this environment of paradoxes about gender and sexuality, is it a surprise that Brazil has just hosted its first transgender beauty pageant?
On its face, it seems like a positive step for trans people. Most of the more "progressive" countries on gender issues have not hosted such an event. Some would argue that hosting the event could be a sign that at least some segments of Brazilian society are willing to accord respect and dignity to trans people. Others might see it simply as an expression of a culture in which, perhaps more than in any other, physical beauty is celebrated.
But the contest could also be seen as a sign of segregation. After all, in May, Jenna Talackova became one of the twelve finalists in the Miss Universe Canada Pageant. Her victory did not come without a fight: Pageant organizers challenged her right to be in the competition although there was no written rule forbidding her entry.
Now, I've never been to Brazil. I suspect, though, that if I were going to leave the US, I'd rather live in Canada than in Brazil (or most other places). I'd probably feel even more strongly about that if I were still transitioning, or if I were planning on getting married to another woman.
Having said that, I am glad that Brazil held a transgender beauty pageant. It's one of the best things they could do at this point in their history. Of course, if and when things change, the pageant may be unnecessary. Then again, I think beauty pageants in general are obsolete institutions if, in fact, they ever had any meaning.
In Brazil, same-sex marriages are allowed, although the notaries are not required to perform them. Furthermore, same-sex couples enjoy most of the same legal protections available to non-LGBT people.
Moreover, the Sao Paolo Pride parade is, by all accounts, the largest LGBT pride celebration in the world. In addition, thousands of gays from around the world flock to Carnival in Rio de Janiero every year.
With these realities, gay men and lesbians are, in some ways, better off in Brazil than in most other countries--and, for that matter, most jurisdictions in the United States.
And the country even provides free gender-reassignment surgery. So far, it sounds like an LGBT paradise, right?
Well...not so fast. Those free operations have strings attached. For one thing, any candidate for surgery has to undergo a rigorous medical and psychiatric evaluation. That, on its face, seems reasonable. However, the Brazilian medical establishment mirrors much of that nation's society in that it clings to notions and stereotypes about transsexual people that were more common in Renee Richards' time than they are now in the US.
Plus, lines for the surgery--and the other health care and treatments the Brazilian government provides for its citizens--are very long. So, those with money go to private doctors, or abroad.
But even with free treatments and surgeries available to them, most Brazilian transgenders live lives that can be charitably characterized as pretty miserable. The legitimate labor market is all but closed to them; they allowed to work only in nursing, domestic service, hairdressing, gay entertainment and prostitution. Many of those who are hairdressers, domestic servants or entertainers in gay night clubs also double as prostitutes. Very few trans people have university educations or professional qualifications.
Worst of all, transgender people in Brazil are subject to violence, as they are almost everywhere else in the world. However, the frequency and severity of the attacks are greater in Brazil, as exemplified by the trans woman who went by the name Madona. (Her birth name is Amos Chagas Lima.) She died three days ago, four days after a group of attackers threw stones at her. According to Keila Simpson of the National Council to Combat Discrimination, Madona was the 100th trans woman to be murdered in Brazil since January.
The dangers trans people--particularly trans women--face in Brazil are part of another phenomenon for which Brazil is infamous. In that country, men who kill their wives often go unpunished and police officers kill women (and, to be fair, men) with impunity. In such an atmosphere it isn't surprising that the murder of a trans woman would be such a lightly-regarded crime. But that disdain is also, in part, a product of the low status of transgender people and the fact that, in spite of increased tolerance for homosexuality, the old stereotypes and attendant hatred of trans people still prevail.
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