Futebol e lazer dissidente: quando pessoas LGBTQIA+ vivenciam a prática futebolística

Abstract

LGBTQIA+ people have been playing a social role by gradually occupying rigid and binary spaces in sport and has made its “coming out” in the football world, through championships at national, state and municipal level. The general objective of this thesis was to analyze the relationships of LGBTQIA+ people with football as a space and experience of leisure, also highlighting the life trajectories of the subjects and their relationship with football, analyzing the discourses and practices present in the experience of the universe football and the internal and external disputes arising from the participation of these individuals in the sport. To understand the phenomenon, I use the theoretical foundations of Cultural, Queer and Gender Studies, Studies in the field of Leisure and Resistance, Football, Masculinities and Dissent. This research assumed a qualitative nature in the collection, description and analysis of data, based on ethnographic assumptions and focused on the Belo Horizonte Predators team, using the field notebook, participant observation and semistructured interview as data collection instruments. I identified the existence of Ligay, the largest LGBTQIA+ sports association with affiliated teams in all states and 5 thousand amateur athletes. The Predadores team holds weekly training sessions and participates in friendlies and competitions aimed at the LGBTQIA+ and heterosexual communities. The team's subjects are mostly cis gay men with a life path permeated by prejudice, playing football as leisure and experiences in amateur and semi-professional football. We understand that this phenomenon is identified with leisure and football that we call Dissident. For Rubino (2019), “dissent”, unlike “diversity”, is relational and does not refer to a sum of sexual identities, but to a sexual norm, a norm that is always variable and in a system of power. The sporting and football practices of LGBTQIA+ people, as dissidents, expose undesirable existences that are discriminated against by the heterosexual norm, putting tension in the football environment. It was found that internalized homophobia are dilemmas faced by players in their relationship with football, as well as competitiveness x inclusion; performance x participation, triggering the search for new competition formats. The motivations for individuals to practice football are related to the following aspects: vanity-seduction; family and safe environment; friendship; affective-sexual appeal; travel and tourism and the passion for the sport. By exposing their dissident bodies, desires, expressions and sexuality, these individuals end up blurring certainties on and off the football field, claiming for themselves the right to sport and leisure.