Pictures of gay men rio
I founded it along with five other young gay people. The NGO Conexão G was founded in 2008 with that idea in mind. Some two months later I took part in a project about gender equality and slowly started to understand better who I was and what homosexuality was.īit by bit the idea emerged to set up a group inside the Maré favela to work on reducing homophobia, because we know that even though it is never going to disappear altogether, we can reduce it through campaigning and actions that get through to people in their daily lives. I was an altar boy in a church in Maré and later moved to the Toca de Assis Fraternity where I stayed until the age of 21 when I quit studying to be a monk and returned to the favela. I was born in a chauvinist, heteronormative environment, and when I started to show characteristics considered to be more feminine, I kept hearing that I need to ‘be a man.’ The Church was a form of trying to crush this desire that was somehow starting to appear in me, but I didn’t know from where or why it was appearing. When I was about 13 years old I started to become aware of my homosexuality, which led me towards the Catholic Church since I thought my feelings were to do with sin. “My family was always a very humble one, and I have one brother and one sister. And transvestites and transexuals are even less of a priority,” she says.Įxcerpts from Gilmara’s interview with BBC Brasil: “Gays and lesbians in favelas are not the priority. She is constantly active, supporting initiatives with different groups founded in different favelas across Rio and has already received a prize from the Ministry of Health for her work.įor Gilmara, who describes herself as “poor, black, from the favela, and proud of it,” LGBT people in favelas are “far from being included” by public policies as well as “being remembered” by campaigns and anti-homophobia centers or health-promotion centers.
In Maré she has organized six LGBT pride events, which have brought together up to 30,000 people. Today she is a national youth advisor, participates in state and municipal bodies and is often invited to speak at public panel discussions and to give speeches across the country and even in the USA and Argentina. Gilmara began gaining visibility in 2006 as part of Conexão G, the first NGO founded for the LGBT cause in Brazil’s favelas. Born in Complexo do Alemão and resident of Complexo da Maré since the age of six, she was an altar boy and spent her adolescence in a Catholic church fraternity in Marília, in the State of São Paulo, until coming out as homosexual and later as transexual. In an interview with BBC Brasil, Cunha spoke a little about her personal history, which mixes both activism and the maturing of LGBT issues in favelas. And she demands actions and respect for this population from the different spheres of the public sector,” said Serafini.
“Gilmara gives a voice to the LGBT population in favelas, which is such a hidden one. Speaking in session, State Representative Flávio Serafini said that the medal represented recognition of the activist’s work.
Our reality is a different one, the risks are different,” says the 31-year-old Rio resident, who in December 2015 became the first transexual to receive the Tiradentes Medal, the most prestigious title in Rio de Janeiro, awarded by the State Legislative Assembly (ALERJ) for her services to the community. “There they can report prejudice or aggressions and there’s even a chance of the aggressor being punished. This was the response given by Gilmara Cunha, a transexual activist based in Complexo da Maré in Rio’s North Zone, when questioned on the differences between being LGBT in the formal city (“the asphalt”) of the South Zone and in favelas. We’re not fighting to be able to adopt children. Gays, lesbians and transexuals living in favelas have not benefited from the advances that LGBT people have been seeing across the country. “In the favela you can’t kiss or walk holding hands. For the original article by Jefferson Puff in Portuguese published by BBC Brasil click here.