'The ghetto is over, darling': Emerging gay communities and gender and sexual politics in contemporary Brazil

Abstract

This article examines how "gayness" and the "gay community" have been conceived and experienced by participants in Porto Alegre's homosexual/gay subcultures. The objective of this article is to map out some of the key tensions and power dynamics involved in the apparent consolidation of gay communities/culture in Brazil and to explore what might be gained and lost and for whom in these recent transformations of Brazilian male homosexualities. The data was obtained from ethnographic fieldwork among a group of transvestite sex workers based out of GAPA, Porto Alegre's largest AIDS-related organization and out of Nuances, Porto Alegre's principal homosexual/gay rights group. Male-male sexuality has become increasingly visible in Brazil. Additionally, homosocial/sexual commercial establishments and homosexual/gay political organizations now exist in nearly all Brazilian cities, and there is a growing gay press as well as increasingly regular mainstream press coverage of gay cultural and political issues. The current atmosphere provides a wide range of spaces in which Brazilians of different gender and sexual subjectivities can discuss and argue about what kind of "ghetto" culture or political movement they would like to create.