My body cannot be erased
Public figures all around the world are talking about the election in Brazil. If you haven’t heard about Jair Bolsonaro, you can see this video by Riley J. Dennis or read this quite descriptive article from Vox that describes him as “Trump of the Tropics”. There are many similarities between the two men, from the total disregards for basic human rights for minority groups to fake news tactics of discrediting the media. The election of Bolsonaro and the validation of his hate speech puts million of lives at risk and I want to give a little perspective of how trans lives are affected in this, giving some parallel to what is happening in the US under Trump administration.
Right after Bolsonaro was elected, Trump tweeted praising the newly elected brazilian president
Bolsonaro’s campaign, much like Trump’s, was based on fake news, hate speech, a strong promise of change in a context of political and economical crisis. With one one major difference: Bolsonaro was highly sponsored not only by the military, being a retired Captain himself and having a General as his Vice President, but also by a large religious group related to some Evangelical Churches that is largely known to have a deep influence on politics. Bolsonaro’s racist, misogynistic and LGBT-phobic speeches are widely known and mostly endorsed by many of his followers. And this is what scares me.
The problem with this act is not you, sir, nor those who rule the country with you, but the guard around the corner.
This phrase was supposedly said by Vice President Pedro Aleixo in the meeting in which AI-5 was decreed.
In 1968, in the early years of Brazil’s military dictatorship, the president Marshal Artur Costa e Silva issued a decree known as AI-5, or Institutional Act number 5. Those Institutional Acts were tools used by the regime’s leadership to overrule the already authoritarian Constitution and this specific one paved the path for institutionalized censorship and tortured by the State.
I’ve read about 3 trans women who had either been violently assaulted or murder by men screaming “Bolsonaro” from the time the political campaign began just a couple of months ago. And Brazil already is a leading country on the murder of trans people.
When an important public figure, specially a politician, reinforces hate speech, people feel free to act on their prejudice and bias. Brazil already is a violent country, with alarming rates of murders due to organized crime, inequality, an increase in extreme poverty in the last couple of year and many other factors. What Bolsonaro is doing is reinforcing this boiling pressure cooker. In many ways, much like Trump did and continue to do in the US.
Just the day after Trump was elected, there was a spike on hate crimes on the US. And that tendency kept on growing. Feeling empowered be the president speeches — and his horrible tweets — many people started acting on their violent tendencies, because that is the message they kept receiving. And the more hate they putted out their, the more “keep on hating” the president would say on a vicious cycle.
After Bolsonaro was elected, I started being afraid of leaving the house. His followers celebrated his election by shooting to the air. The images are terrifying, people celebrating doing finger guns, shouting how blacks, queers and poors would die. I am undoubtedly queer and wouldn’t know how to be otherwise. A black queer trans guy. I thought of leaving the country. A couple of days later, I read about Trump’s administration memorandum that wants to ban transgender people out of recognition for the federal government. I started feeling like there was nowhere to go.
Much like in how it happened in Brazil with the #EleNao movement, the first answer was resistance. Protests broke of in many places, the hashtag #WontBeErased went trending and people across the US, and globally, raised their voices to speak on how a government should not rule to erase the experience and life of millions of people and to reduce gender, a social experience, to their genitals and biology, some thing that multiple studies had already proven to not be as binary as we tend to think.
It’s been some intense couple of months for trans people in Brazil and in the US. With the National election in Brazil and mid term election in the US, candidates, voting, proposals and right have been all I have been thinking, reading and talking about. Because politics is not, and will never be, just a topic for light conversation. It is a matter of survival. It is a matter of being recognized. It is a matter of staying alive.
The good thing is, knowing we are not alone. The week after Brazil’s election, many of my favorite American trans creators commented about it, sending messages of love and support for their Brazilian fans.
In Brazil and in the US we are following a dark path of hate, violence, individualism and suppression of rights. The most affected are the ones already considered to be on the borders of society: indigenous, people of color, trans women. One by one, they are taking our rights, inciting hate and taking our lives.
Right now, I am afraid. For me, for my loved ones, for my friends, for those how are like me, for those who are outcasts to this society so marked with exclusion and inequality. This fear gives me anger. And this anger will not let my sit by and see this situation pass by without doing a thing. I will shout. I will raise my voice. I will resist and occupy every single space I can and every other I can’t as well.
My body cannot be erased. And my life will matter.
