A luta é coletiva, mas a resistência é individual? violências vivenciadas e estratégias de enfrentamento construídas pela comunidade universitária de lésbicas, gays, bissexuais, travestis, transexuais e outras identidades

Abstract

The community of lesbian, gay, bisexual, travesti, transsexual and other identities (LGBT+) has experienced an increase in homicide rates worldwide. This indicator does not consider the daily violence unannounced in news reports, despite having an impact on health of these individuals. Yet, LGBT+ people exist and resist through actions and practices directed against this violent environment, the so-called coping strategies. Thus, this paper identifies and analyzes the violence experienced by the LGBT+ university community and their coping strategies. Understanding how LGBT+ people signify gender-based violence and/or sexual orientation and the manner this population deals with such events are important for strengthening their survival/experience. This is a qualitative exploratory and descriptive-interpretive study with nine participants gathered by the Snowball technique who underwent individual semi-structured interview. Analysis was based on the Social Theory of Discourse, which provides scientific support for research on how discourses function in the establishment, maintenance and/or overcoming of socially constructed matters. The methodological procedure of Social Theory of Discourse has three dimensions: text analysis (description), analysis of discursive practice (interpretation) and social practice (critical explanation). To support textual analysis, we used the Brazilian application software Kitconc version 4.0. The results show that the conceptions of violence developed by the participants are mostly related to lexical items of violent scenarios (death, aggression, violation of rights) and, less frequently, to characteristics of the person who attacks or the person who suffers the attack. Such diversity of concepts of violence is associated with different discursive practices such as the institutionalist, subjectivist or legalistic. The interviews show that defining violence means using elements of one’s own constitution, such as school experiences and academic formation, in which war-based orders of discourse such as “violence is prison” or “violence is being bombarded by aggressive looks” were frequent. Violence, therefore, subjects the LGBT+ individual to limitation-by-body, referring to a body which is symbolically, geographically and physically restricted from their social environment. The violent scenes narrated by the participants permeate all of social life, starting at school, bullying, and being reproduced at work, on the streets, in the neighborhood, in the family. LGBT+ performativity is viewed as violent by society, since it has been based on anachronistic values and beliefs. This paper serves to eliminate the contradictions evidenced by LGBT+ persons and the naturalization of cis-heteronormativity, notably affected by other markers such as racism and xenophobia. The survival of the participants in these violent scenarios permeates the formation of friendship networks that, according to one participant, “if you do not have it, you cannot survive”. Other support networks were also important in this resistance, such as religious (mainly spiritism), familiar and university environments. However, the absence of support against violence targetting the LGBT+ population was also notable, since supposedly protective institutions act negligently in the face of hate crimes by the police and in school. The Internet and social movements appear less frequently as spaces for the empowerment and circulation of counter-hegemonic discourses. Interim conclusions indicate the production of a vigilant life: it is never possible to know when the LGBT+ person will receive a light bulb in their face, be stoned by others or even serve as a jokes scapegoat. All violent scenes mentioned by participants seem to be potentially present wherever the heteronorm – the norms of the others, unreachable, but apparently obligatory – is perceptible or even just latent. Due to the constant presence of something that prevents the individual of being themselves, counter-hegemony also needs to be constant, vigilant, either to transform the scene or to conform oneself to it. The transformation in this vigilant life occurs in defense of a legitimate way of living, which must be respected in its characteristics at all times. The conformation serves for the body to resist, thus it forces an externalization of standard acts, easily accepted and approved, as they are within the norm. If it is not, its physical or symbolic exclusion is certain. Turning this into a metaphor, a life wary of conformation points its monitoring cameras inwards, and a life of transformation directs them out. We know that the direction of the cameras indicates where the danger lies.