by: Renata Noiar
The dossier “ What is the color of the invisible? - The human rights situation of the black LGBTI population in Brazil “, prepared by the International Institute on Race, Equality and Human Rights, denounces the invisibility of the black LGBTI population from a social, political and economic point of view.
Mariah Rafaela Silva is a black trans woman and, despite needing, like all women, she does not know if she will have the courage to go back to a gynecologist. Not after a doctor, when told that she had undergone sex reassignment surgery, called a colleague to the exam room and put a fist in her vagina claiming that she wanted to know its "elasticity and depth".
The professor says that she has been waiting for “an apology from the university” for a decade. During her education, she went through several violations, such as teachers who refused to adopt her social name, the undersigned so that she would not use the ladies' room, a degree separate from the rest of the class, in addition to insults.
The difficulty of access to health, justice, education and the labor market are some of the violations that the black LGBTI population goes through . Millions of people suffer not only from prejudice and violence, but from invisibility.
“Our focus is to show how race, class, gender and sexuality work together,” says Isaac Porto, official of the LGBTI program in Brazil, in charge of preparing the report. “The main idea is to denounce the invisibilities to which the black LGBTI population is subjected, from a social, political and economic point of view”, he points out. Read more via Socilismo Criativo/OGlobo
What color is the invisible?
The human rights situation of the black LGBTI population in Brazil
Excerpt ~ Original Report is published in Portuguese
Executive Summary
Race and Equality, with the support of local organization partners, carried out an investigation regarding the situation of the human rights of black LGBTI people in Brazil, gathering and analyzing data that would give more visibility to this population. The investigation was carried out from an international intersectional perspective, adopting race not as a mere object of study but rather as a lens that allows observing certain hierarchical dynamics that negatively affect black people with diverse sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.
It was verified that Brazilian state fails in the production of specific data on the LGBTI population in the country. This finding authorizes the state not to commit to the rights of this population, the disadvantages experienced by the community and intensifying Socio-racial hierarchies.
It has also been shown that black LGBTI people in Brazil fight for the most basic right: the right to life. It is evident that race constitutes itself as a category with authorizes multiple human rights violations, expressed by an unequal distribution of rights.
There is a pattern of systematic violations which excludes black LGBTI people from access to education, health, and the formal labor market. In addition, the intense police violence in the country shows that for this population the state does not act as a guarantor of rights, but rather as the main perpetrator of violence.
It is urgent to racialize discussions about LGBTI people. Discussions about racism and Black people cannot be seen as a problem exclusive to the black movement, and discussions about sexual orientation and gender identity cannot be attributed to an exclusive agenda of the LGBT movement. Adopting these positions makes the Black LGBTI population invisible and perpetuates a network of glitches for some and disadvantages for others.
Introduction
The International Institute on Race, Equality and Human Rights Brazil
The International Institute on Race, Equality and Rights Human Rights (Race and Equality) is a non-governmental international defense and protection of human rights humans. Through partners and local activists in America Latin America, the Institute aims to promote and promote protect the human rights of marginalized populations, either by their national or ethnic origin, sexual orientation or gender identity.
The Institute's objective is to strengthen organizations basis for becoming increasingly political actors capable of pressures for structural changes in developing countries that they meet. Among the actions are:
Development of skills to document, report and address human rights abuses and violations against historically marginalized groups, such as Afro-descendants, women, community members of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transvestites, transsexuals and intersex (LGBTI) or any persons who, by reason of their sexual orientation and gender identity, are subject to discriminatory processes;
Expanding access to justice for these groups historically marginalized through mechanisms existing at international, regional and local levels of human rights and / or judicial systems;
Promotion of the claim for legal protections in international, regional and local levels through different these instruments;
Sharing South-South experiences, through from which local partners can learn from each other the other ways to document and combat discrimination tion, advocating for causes and pursuing political reforms, economic and judicial.
The Race and Equality Institute carefully observes the serious situation in which black LGBTI people live in
Brazil, with a special concern about people transsexuals and transvestites. For this reason, it has strengthened the presence in the country and sought to deepen relations with different Brazilian Afro-LGBTI organizations.
Objective of the dossier on the human rights situation of the black LGBTI population in Brazil
The purpose of this dossier is to present a list of racialized reading on the LGBTI issue in Brazil, from an intersectional reading on some of the violations human rights committed against that population. The use of intersectionality as a lens analysis allows us to understand how the overlap between race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, class, capacity and other axes of domination are structural elements of both intersubjective relationships and institutional relations, shaping the experiences of people who are crossed by the most different axes and structuring the State, its public institutions and all the society.
Methodologically, it was decided to use as sources of researches meetings with social organizations, focus groups, reports and events produced by civil society, articles, master's dissertations, doctoral theses and other academic works, government reports and reports and the inter-American system (notably the Commission Inter-American Human Rights) and universal system (United Nations Organization, through its
thematic details of the Council's special procedures Human Rights).
Meetings with civil society were held, responding respectively, in the cities of Brasília (DF), Salvador (BA) and Rio de Janeiro (RJ). In Brasilia, meetings were held mediated by the National Network of Black and Black LGBT (Afro LGBT Network). Focus groups were carried out in cities of Salvador and Rio de Janeiro. In Rio de Janeiro, were coordinated by the Instituto Transformar Shélida Ayana (Instituto Transformar). In Salvador, the meetings were held intermediated by the National Association of Transvestites and Transsexuals (ANTRA). In addition, Race and Equality also was also present at a national ANTRA meeting, held between 28 and 31 October 2019 in the city de Tapes (RS), located 108km from the capital Porto Alegre.
Still regarding the methodology, we opted for values to enhance the knowledge produced by those and those whose voices are historically and systematically silenced, using, whenever possible, works, declarations and positions of trans people and other LGBI, blacks / women.
Likewise, it was preferred not to corroborate with a logic that hierarchizes knowledge and limits contributions contributions of these groups to mere “testimonies of cies ”. Thus, the present work has the objective of
promote a horizontal and complementary dialogue between knowledge produced by both activists and researchers users, teachers and any professionals with great technical training, moving away from a position critically criticized by Brazilian organizations in which expresses “they want to talk about us without us”.
It is proposed, in this document, the presentation of a overview of various aspects of the rights framework human rights of LGBTI people in Brazil intertwined with racial issues. In this respect, race acts like a lens that allows us to see how racial tensions in society produce hierarchical relationships that affect and create disadvantages for black LGBTI people, and in especially trans people.