Corpos como campos de batalha: uma etnografia sobre entercruzamentos de gênero, raça e sexualidade no espaço escolar em Maceió

Abstract

This dissertation is the result of an ethnographic research carried out between of April 2017, and April of 2018, in a public school of the state network of Alagoas, in the municipality of Maceió. The objective of the study is to understand the gender-related transitions, undertaken by young high school students who escaped from heteronormative assumptions. For that, observations of youthful sociality were made in extra class moments, especially interval and vague classes. Patios, corridors, cafeteria, sports court, were privileged places of interlocutions. The school in question was perceived as "inclusive" by young lesbian, gay, transvestite and transsexual students, the assertion was anchored in comparison to other contexts of greater visibility of homophobic expressions. The main interlocutors of the research were two Young were people Who experienced the “transition of gender”. Amanda, Who at first described herself as a “lesbian”, and later made a rapid transformation from the feminine to the masculine, calling herself a “trans man” adopting the name Fabio. And Gisele Who made a more gradual transformation from male to female, presviously calling himself Gilson and describing himself as “travesti”. The corporal transformations undertaken by the subject can not be understood without the obervation of a wider social context, especially the centrality of being in school as a marker of youth, for certain social segments. The “gender transition” occurred between religious narratives, from the performance of a student group “JPC” and the proposal of affirmation of suxual rights in school, in the different coping strategies homophobia put in place by the direction. Despite the centrality of the issues of gender sexuality in the school space, the racial dimension was little mobilized by the subjcts to combat discriminatory expressions. The “jokes” practiced by Young people, called “resenhas” comprised racial elements, in which an aesthetic standard regarding bleaching was highly valued. The racialization of bodies reaffirmed gender and sexuality, assigning differentiated and contradictory meanings to the subjects, and it is therefore essential to think of them in na articulated way for the construction of a more democratic school space.