Since the São Paulo LGBT Parade reached the mark of 1 million participants, around 2004/05, the issue of the number of people occupying Avenida Paulista has become an obsession of the São Paulo press, businesspeople (from the middle or no), the organizers, politicians, the bar in Augusta and Largo do Arouche. This year, the São Paulo Parade Association (APOGLBT) and the Military Police decided not to publish numbers, which is a good thing, the number is what matters least, however, coincidentally, it is precisely this year that the institute Data Folha decides to apply a new methodology for counting participants, which made its debut at the São Paulo Parade, which took place yesterday, Sunday (10/6).
But, as soon as he explains how this unprecedented method works, he already leaves room for various interpretations, as he himself informs in a report published by the newspaper Folha de São Paulo this Monday (12): “the method does not take into account the floating public”. And anyone who was present at the event, as in my case and walked or tried to walk through the Parade, could notice that, even when it was still, there were much more than 270 thousand people, a photo of the general public was enough. If you want to kick low: around 500 thousand just kidding. But anyway, ending this boring talk of put it here, crush it there, allocate it here, the question we must raise is: who is it useful to work with such a low number referring to an event that has given so much political and cultural significance to Brazil?
The funniest thing is that this question about the number of people occupying Avenida Paulista during the Gay Parade had already been raised with very similar arguments by Pastor Silas Malafaia. The method that the pastor used to demystify the thousands of participants is a cousin to that used by Data Folha. The pastor's intention was to make the Gay Parade a smaller event compared to the March for Jesus, and what about the institute's? The most worrying thing is that, in the rush to get ahead of other portals, he ends up publishing numbers that reflect only one photograph or not even this one. Anyone who stayed in the center and the Jardins after the Parade knows that 100 or 200 thousand were in each block...
Still on the question of “who does it serve” to work around the numbers, we can say that, instead of encouraging establishments to support the Parade more, the hotels, which “fill from top to bottom”, as councilor Ítalo Cardoso so rightly said ( PT-SP) in the Solemn Session last Wednesday (6), no, the press prefers to perversely shape and reinforce the normative structure of society by transforming it based on number and for this purpose it is said to be based on the concept of “scientific method ”, therefore, unquestionable, to say, or, imply, that despite everything and despite “we love these people who go to the Parade” it is not even worth investing in the event.
In addition to Data Folha's questionable method, this weekend's Veja SP comes with a report about “intrigues” within the APO board. Now tell me which association board linked to any type of civil society issue does not have intrigue and political dispute? Therefore, more than the fictitious number of participants in the São Paulo Gay Parade, added to the Veja SP “report”, in short, these two and other instruments, above all, serve to maintain the sexist and homophobic structure of our society. It serves to validate the speech of businesspeople who refuse to link their brand to the Gay Parade, but include it in their tour packages, therefore, the hole is much deeper.
