WMC Women Under Siege

Brazil’s trans community fights for equality and safety in a country that ‘allows our extermination’

The cellphone video begins with what resembles a crimson mask before it turns into the bloodied face of 42-year-old Dandara dos Santos, a transgender woman. She is sitting on the pavement cleaning herself with a yellow t-shirt as she tries to regain her senses. Voices in the background can be heard taunting her, calling for more punishment as she begs to be spared.

The scenes that follow show dos Santos being tortured by three men, who beat her with objects like flip flops, pipes, and a plank of wood. The physical violence is accompanied by hateful slurs. At the end of the video, two more men gather and force her into a wheelbarrow as they continue attacking her. Her murder takes place after the recording ends; authorities said that dos Santos was fatally shot and bludgeoned in the head.

dos Santos was murdered in her native Fortaleza, in the northeastern state of Ceará, in February 2017. As the video emerged on YouTube and spread across social media that year, horrified Brazilians were awoken to the violence long suffered by the country’s trans community.

A trans person is killed every 48 hours in Brazil, according to 2017 data from the National Association of Trans People and Transsexuals (ANTRA), an advocacy network promoting the rights, visibility, and safety of Brazil’s trans population. In 2016, Brazil ranked first for countries with the highest murder count for trans and gender-diverse people, counting between October 2015 and September 2016, at 123 murders. The following year, that number climbed to 179, according to ANTRA. In 94 percent of those cases, the victims were trans women.

Activists march against homophobia and transphobia on June 1, 2018 in São Paulo. (Cris Faga/ NurPhoto via Getty Images)

“I live in alert mode daily,” said Megg Rayara Gomes de Oliveira, a professor at the Federal University of Paraná. Rayara takes security measures even when navigating her social life, following specific routes when going to the supermarket or walking her dog. She only takes buses with familiar routes and avoids walking in downtown Curitiba, Paraná’s capital city, where she said she has suffered “countless” verbal aggressions and three attempted physical assaults. She has studied capoeira for the last six years, she said, to have “the agility to react if necessary.”

Rayara herself lives at the intersection of being transgender, black, and from a low-income background, in a country “that allows our extermination,” she said. Indeed, in 2018, ANTRA found that 82 percent of trans murder victims were identified as either black or mixed race.

What’s more, Rayara said, “Black poverty is a result of racism—including from the State—as white cisgender homosexual men are capable of asserting themselves in the workforce, but feminine, black, trans women are kept at bay.” Socially excluded and kept away from formal jobs, trans women especially have been pushed toward work with little earning potential or opportunity to invest in education and professional development. For many, sex work is their only opportunity to earn income.

Racism and transphobia, Rayara said, are routinely employed to keep trans people marginalized to the fringes of society. “Many times, what is left for us is prostitution, a reality for many Brazilian trans people, white or black, as a result of structural transphobia.” Noting the country’s institutional hypersexualization of black identities, Rayara added, “For trans people, it’s no different. [We’re] fetishized bodies with one societal role: to give pleasure.” 

Early this month, in a wealthy neighborhood in São Paulo popular among trans sex workers for connecting with clients, a man attempted to run over two trans women with his car. He later returned and bludgeoned one of the women, 21-year-old Larissa Rodrigues da Silva, in the head with a plank of wood. Her mother believes that her daughter rejected the man as a potential client. The case will be prosecuted as a femicide.

Violence “doesn’t spare any of us,” Rayara said. “For those girls who have to endure working  on the streets, it is because they’ve already been victims of multiple abuses: being expelled from home… being forbidden to be part of a formal educational system, or [being forbidden to] enter the traditional work force.” 

But progress is being made from within. The social project Tranjobs, founded by two trans women, Márcia Rocha—Brazil’s first trans lawyer—and Maite Schneider, seeks to connect trans workers to the traditional workforce. Founded in 2013, Transjobs offers a database of resumés of trans professionals to prospective employers. From its inception, it has both connected professionals to a range of enterprises, from small businesses to multinational groups, as well as transformed those spaces to welcome trans professionals. It is currently working to help employers develop a more “humanized” workplace, “respecting diversities and transgender folks as they specialize in what gives them their dignity,” said Schneider. Transjobs is now sought by trans workers outside of Brazil and counts among its partners Google and French multinational retailer Carrefour. Schneider hopes that Transjobs’ success will spread the message that “more equality lies in more diversity.”

As Brazil’s first black trans woman to earn a PhD—thanks to her research exploring homophobia, transphobia, and racism in academia—Rayara herself is trailblazing for change. But for all the efforts led from within Brazil’s LGBTQ community, Rayara believes more needs to be done. “The social movement isn’t enough—we need a collective political conscience.”

That political will may come soon enough. For a start, a majority on Brazil’s Supreme Court has voted to consider homophobia and transphobia criminal offenses, just as racism has been under anti-discrimination law since the 1950s. The remaining judges will vote in a session expected June 5, after which point the ruling will be issued.

During the proceedings in February, Minister Celso de Mello, arguing in favor of criminalization, quoted Simone de Beauvoir in an impassioned address: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” 



More articles by Category: International, LGBTQIA, Violence against women
More articles by Tag: Transgender, Violence, Homophobia
SHARE

[SHARE]

Article.DirectLink

Contributor
Categories
Sign up for our Newsletter

Learn more about topics like these by signing up for Women’s Media Center’s newsletter.